Shmuck of the Week: The very sleepy Jesse Dennis Dimmick

Aurora’s Jesse Dennis Dimmick was already wanted for questioning in a murder when he went on the lam recently, eventually finding himself in a police chase with Kansas authorities. And while murder is a little too severe to label Dimmick a shmuck, what he did next more than qualifies. During…

Remembering Lilian Verdonkschot and other Denver murder victims

Denver may not be the nationwide leader in homicides, thank goodness. But as demonstrated by our Mile High Murder archive, which has documented forty murders since the project was launched in late May, there’s plenty of violence to go around in these parts. Witness the story of 49-year-old Lilian Verdonkschot,…

Report: Hep-C passer Kristen Parker to plead guilty

Channel 4’s report that Kristen Parker will plead guilty to charges against her won’t go down as the shock of the century. Back in July, after all, she confessed to swiping drugs while working as a surgery tech at Rose Medical Center, where she’s said to have infected more than…

Say goodbye (and good riddance) to Najibbullah Zazi

The pdf of the detention file released by the Justice Department in relation to the case against terror suspect Najibbullah Zazi was sent upside-down — but the evidence against Zazi looks ugly from any direction. As such, expect him to be officially sent packing to New York following a perfunctory…

Connect the dots on Boulder crime map

Among the more intriguing and/or disturbing features on the City of Boulder’s web site is a crime map feature that allows residents and other curious Internet surfers to see precisely where a variety of offenses have occurred throughout the community in a given week — in today’s case, the one…

Have you seen Anthony Bryant, sexually violent predator?

Don’t know if Anthony Bryant’s business cards list him as a “Sexually Violent Predator” — but that’s how the Denver Police Department refers to him in a release that asks for help from the public in tracking him down. Seems Bryant, who has a couple of stranger-on-stranger assaults under his…

Zazi indicted on terror charges, likely headed to New York

Those reports we told you about earlier this morning suggesting that authorities would seek to transfer terror suspect Najibbullah Zazi to New York have proven accurate. The Justice Department confirms that Zazi has been indicted in New York’s Eastern District “on a charge of conspiracy to use weapons of mass…

Nuts on the loose after Bruce’s Bar Nut Run

Some stories could be set anywhere — but not this one. Okay, there’s this joint in Severance called Bruce’s Bar, and for more than a quarter century, it’s sponsored an annual bash called the Nut Run — so named because the main attractions are Rocky Mountain oysters. Men and women…

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…