Operation Fortune Cookie, a 2008 raid that netted 24,000 marijuana plants, was the largest weed bust in Colorado history — but it imploded among suspicions of police snitches, paid-off politicians and a secret DEA investigation. Now a court filing quoting from that investigation alleges the prime suspect for tipping off…
Betsy Long, the former green-biz entrepreneur who blew a .252 blood alcohol content following a crash that killed Mary Warren, a young woman bound for the Peace Corps, pleaded guilty to vehicular homicide and more in December. But accepting responsibility didn’t result in a small sentence. She’s been handed fifteen…
The longer our current economic downturn lasts, the longer buildings sit vacant — and that can be dangerous. Case in point: an attack that took place earlier this month behind a shuttered Albertsons at 3125 South Sheridan Boulevard. The Denver Police Department has released a disturbing sketch of the suspected…
Update: An arrest has been made in the Trison Mitta homicide at the Sports Station Bar & Grill in Aurora late last month. The suspect, Donnell Littleton, made it easy on the Aurora Police Department. Rather than waiting for officers to chase him down, he surrendered to authorities. Get details…
Initial reports about the arrest of Michelle Aleman in an attack on her sister, Bernadette Deleon, referred only to a stabbing. Days later, Fort Collins authorities are releasing more information about the incident, for which Jeremy Velasquez was also busted, including the implement used to seriously wound Deleon — a…
It’s an indication of just how dangerous authorities consider Marc Patrick O’Leary, 32, that he’s being held on a $5 million bond. That’s a $5 million cash bond. And while he’s been charged with sex assault, kidnapping and more in two incidents, the cops fear he may have left more…
What to get that special someone on Valentine’s Day? Candy and flowers are so played out — so how about a hand grenade? Granted, we don’t know for certain that the grenade found at Colorado Springs’ Memorial Park yesterday morning was intended as a gift. But it was wrapped –…
Update: The Denver coroner’s office has identified the man found dead in a house on the 100 block of North Stuart Street as Ronald Ford, 63. “The cause of death is blunt force trauma to the head,” reads an office release. “The manner of death is homicide.” Look below for…
It is an established fact that love makes people act like fools. If the goo-goo eyes and baby talk weren’t enough, fools in love often feel the need to broadcast their idiocy to others. The tools they use and the location of the valentine vandalism reveal much about a valentine…
Update: The Denver Police Department has identified a suspect in the shootout at Dandy Dan’s strip club that killed George Valenzuela-Lopez. He’s Benjamin Lucero, 22. Look below to see two photos of Lucero and a DPD release with more information…
There’s something more than a little creepy about suspects barely beyond childhood accused of distributing child pornography. But that’s what the Douglas County Sheriff’s Office accuses Phillip Abernathy and Connor Greenwall of doing in separate cases. Below, see full size booking photos and a DCSO release with more details…
We don’t usually hear about folks accused of contributing to the delinquency of a minor — and at first blush, the charge against Jacquelyn Perea, who allegedly took a sixteen-year old to a party where alcohol and drugs were being used, and gave her marijuana, doesn’t seem especially newsworthy. But…
This weekend, David Shefte, David Trainer and Kurt Heckle learned you can get ticketed for throwing snowballs in Aspen. Crazy? Maybe — but there were some extenuating circumstances, including the ages of the alleged attackers and the descriptive word they hurled at their victim after he dared to complain…
During the recession, most businesses specializing in big ticket items have found the going rough. So it’s something of a surprise that Christine Sylvester, a title and billing clerk for Windish RV Center just sentenced to five years in jail, was able to steal almost $1 million between 2007 and…
It’s a story made for TV news: a puppy theft from a Northglenn pet store in which video shows two adults apparently in league with a child, who walks out with a chihuahua in her coat. And the tale’s not done spinning, or wagging. An arrest has been made, but…
Prior to the hit and run that killed Rockstar Lounge valet Jose Medina, the vehicular crime that got the most attention in these parts involved the arrest of Brandon Mondragon for severely injuring Tim Albo and Heather Kornman last October. Now, Mondragon has pleaded guilty to the crime — but…
Brian Hicks, the reputed leader of the Tre Tre Crips gang, has been convicted of soliciting two men to kill a witness named Kalonniann Clark. The 28-year-old Clark was killed on December 6, 2006 — just a week before she was scheduled to testify that Hicks tried to shoot her…
This week’s cover story, “The Devil’s Playground,” presents Scott Howard’s account of enduring rape and extortion by a notorious white supremacist gang in Colorado’s prisons — and then battling the indifference and even alleged cover-ups by the staffers he went to for help. But can he prove it?…
Was Parris Mathis immune to marijuana’s well-known calming effects? You’ve gotta wonder given the police release about his arrest. Seems he got into an argument with a woman for “sitting on the stairwell” (!), and when a man tried to intervene, he allegedly pummeled both of them with a “Native…
Our top forty most memorable mug shots of January includes booking photos of an alleged meth-fueled crime gang, busted Denver Broncos, a Fort Collins teacher found naked with a student in a car, and a guy accused of robbing a Domino’s delivery man of pizza and wings but skipping the…
The latest high-profile cases to pass through the Denver District Attorney’s Office are quite different in terms of their specifics but similar when it comes to shock value. One woman has been accused (again) of prostitution with knowledge she has AIDS, while a teenager was convicted as an adult for…
Last week’s acquittal of Alejandro Perez in the murder of another inmate at the Limon Correctional Facility provides fresh ammo for critics of Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney Carol Chambers, whose determination to seek the death penalty for a prison gang homicide has resulted in a six-year debacle of prosecutorial missteps…
