Meet two Colorado cons released early in budget-cutting move

Among the more controversial ways Colorado is saving money during the current budget catastrophe involves the early release of prisoners — something state Attorney General John Suthers hates, as he made clear during a recent appearance on KHOW. Today, the first eight cons are slated to go free — a…

Analyzing the legal technique used to arrest Zazi

Interesting essay on HuffPo Denver about the arrest of Aurora-based Najibullah Zazi and his father from the pen of Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University. Levin acknowledges that the statute making it a felony to lie to an investigator…

Mile High Murder, No. 40: Fatal stabbing near Hinkley High School

View Larger MapA fight took place around midnight near Hinkley High School, located on the 1200 block of North Chambers Road, an area captured in the graphic above (if you have problems seeing the image, click “View Larger Map”). Upon their arrival, Aurora Police found a man suffering from stab…

Zazi learns media spins only goes so far

A blog last Wednesday noted that Aurora-based Najibullah Zazi had taken an unusual tack in dealing with allegations of complicity in a New York-based terror plot, lawyering up and making himself available to limited media interviews. But while this may have seemed canny from a PR perspective (the Denver Post’s…

The Whup-Ass Master warned us about Vance Fulkerson

The sexual connotations inherent in the Greeley Tribune headline “Charges Mount For UNC Prof” are creepily appropriate. After all, University of Northern Colorado drama instructor Vance Fulkerson, who once led a “Self-Defense Singing” class, had already been accused of secretly filming children in his bathroom. And now, he’s facing nine…

The tale of the “S Bandit”: A crime spree of alphabetical proportions

This sordid story is brought to you by the letter “S.” Today, the Denver District Attorney’s office charged Ernie Lee Calbert with nine counts of aggravated robbery and one count of second-degree kidnapping. Authorities believe Calbert to be the so-called “‘S’ Bandit,” so named because most of the seven Denver-area…

Denver’s five most reviled (alleged!) criminals of 2009

In this week’s Westword, reporter Alan Prendergast investigates the gnarly addiction and spotty oversight that led to dozens of patients at Rose Medical Center being infected with hepatitis C. The offending junkie, Kristen Parker (right), has earned the contempt of all of Denver. But she’s not alone. Here, the five…

Mile High Murder, No. 39: Filadelfo Mazariego and Alba Rodriguez-Ruiz dead in likely murder-suicide on 4700 block of Peoria Street

View Larger Map Let’s hope murder-suicides don’t come in threes. Just yesterday, we told you about a likely murder-suicide in Broomfield involving Darryl Stricklin, 45, and Jodi Samuels, 36. Shortly thereafter, the Denver Coroner’s Office identified Filadelfo Mazariego and Alba Rodriguez-Ruiz as a couple found dead on the 4700 block…

See Denver metro’s nineteen most-wanted suspects

Back in March, the Denver Police Department and assorted other law enforcement agencies in the metro area came up with a list of their fifty most-wanted suspects. In just over six months since then, 31 of the men and women on this roster have been taken into custody; click here…

Another marijuana-grow operation is uprooted in Pike National Forest

As smoke continues to gather over medical-marijuana operations in Colorado, local law-enforcement agencies continue to find weed-growing operations in remote locations — and Pike National Forest appears to be a favorite. Pot worth an estimated $2.5 million was seized during a Sugarloaf Mountain raid in July; click here to view…

Behold, the couple that loves/hates salons

In recent days, metro salons have been under assault, and not just from people upset that that the Chinese symbol they paid to have drawn on their nails looks like unidentifiable smegma. First, the Aurora Police Department reported nine break-ins, mostly at salons, over a seven-hour period. Then the Arapahoe…

From Cañon City to Maui: Ex-con Weldon Long’s strange trip

It sounds like a tidy piece of inspirational fiction: A coke-snorting, booze-guzzling dropout squanders every opportunity in life, turns to armed robbery, burglary and sleazy telemarketing scams, spends much of his adult life behind bars as a self-proclaimed “worthless piece of shit” — then discovers the secrets of better living…