Editor’s note: Melanie Asmar is live blogging the Greeley trial of Allen Andrade, the man charged with murdering Angie Zapata, a transgender teen. Look for updates here. 4:50 p.m.: Court is recessed for the day. Judge Kopcow is telling the jury not to discuss the case with their family or…
Jury selection continues this morning in the trial of the man accused of killing Angie Zapata, a transgender teenager who was beaten to death last year in her Greeley apartment. Opening arguments are expected to begin this afternoon. Westword will be blogging throughout the trial. Check back for updates. Yesterday,…
Jury selection is underway in the trial of the man accused of killing Angie Zapata, a transgender teenager. Allen Andrade, 32, is accused of beating Zapata to death in her Greeley apartment after finding out that she was biologically male. According to Weld County court spokeswoman Karen Salaz, about 150…
What’s happening around the local blogosphere: Court is in session: Jury selection starts in the Zapata slaying case. (Colorado Independent) The Colorado Legislature went black, but is it now going back? (5280) Eat this, recession! Buildings keep flying up in Denver (w/pics). (Denver Infill)…
Jury selection in the trial of the man accused of killing Angie Zapata, a transgender teenager beaten to death last summer in Greeley, starts Tuesday in Weld County. State anti-violence and gay-rights groups are using the occasion to raise awareness about hate crimes and spread the word about Zapata, an…
It’s nice to see that Santa likes to unwind in the Rocky Mountains after a tough holiday season. But I’m thinking that ol’ Kris Kringle has a little too much time on his hands after watching this video of “Santa Colorado” pounding Columbia Crest wine on his back porch and…
Attention, Denver! Please keep your wallet in your front pocket at all times, shred all documents, and ask your girlfriend for two forms of ID before you let her in your apartment. Because apparently it’s Really Brazen But Not All That Clever Scam Week. First, of course, it was reported…
Now that former Qwest CEO and convicted inside trader Joe Nacchio has been ordered to report to prison on April 14 — and presumably has to file his income tax return a day early — we want to make sure his stay goes smoothly, pending the outcome of his never-ending…
A mere sixteen months ago, Casey Holden’s life was neatly stored within seventy square feet of cell space in the Colorado State Penitentiary. Released in January 2007 directly to the street after four years of 23-hour-a-day lockdown and a decade spent mostly behind bars, the 26-year-old seemed to be facing…
When Casey Holden hit the streets last January, fresh from four years of solitary confinement and an adult life spent almost entirely behind bars, the odds of him going anywhere but right back to the Colorado prison system were extra-heavy. Sam-Adams-before-NFL-training-camp kind of heavy. How’s a 26-year-old ex-con with an…
When we last checked in with Casey Holden, he was scraping by as a wage slave at a pizza joint in Grand Junction. This was a better life than being locked down in the Colorado state pen, mind you, but a bit short of Holden’s dreams of getting an education,…
Casey Holden has a job, a bank account and an identification card issued by the State of Colorado. But in the eyes of many government agencies and private employers, he doesn’t quite exist. He lacks the essential paper trail. Holden, 26, lost track of his vital personal records — birth…
Locked down for years, Casey Holden hardly ever talked to anyone. He lived inside his head because there was no one around but the guards, and they were, well, guards. His social skills, never elaborate to begin with, devolved into a series of grunts and cold stares. Now Holden is…
Casey Holden and his parole officer seem to be getting along just fine so far. She approves of his decision to go to school, to try to make something of himself after spending most of the last decade behind bars. He appreciates that she treats him like a human being,…
Fresh out of prison and hunting for a job, Casey Holden has picked up a few dirty looks and plenty of don’t-call-us-we’ll-call-yous. Now 26, Holden has been locked up most of the time since he’s sixteen, including the last four years in Colorado’s supermax — not the best place to…
Sitting in a seven-by-ten-foot cell all day, every day, for four years, Casey Holden learned how to do a whole lot of nothing. Now the world expects him to be a go-getter, a self-starter, a juggler of appointments and budgets and mounting financial obligations. And he has only a very…
Casey Holden was sixteen years old when he got locked up on juvenile drug and theft charges. A series of problems while serving his time, including two assaults and cutting off his ankle bracelet when he was almost done, has kept him behind bars most of the last decade. For…
After Eric Harris shot him and left him for dead on the lawn of Columbine High School, all sixteen-year-old Mark Taylor could think about was seeing his family one more time before the life ebbed out of him. Fighting to stay conscious, he prayed, he babbled — and, with the…
Cradling a sawed-off shotgun in his lap, Eric Harris glares into the video camera. He takes a pull from a bottle of Jack Daniel’s and winces. Then he talks smack about the pathetic losers involved in school shootings in Oregon and Kentucky. “Do not think we’re trying to copy anyone,”…
It took five years, a state grand jury and key evidence from a reluctant witness, but families who lost children in the attack on Columbine High School finally had their worst suspicions confirmed: Top Jefferson County leaders knew something awful about prior police investigations of killers Eric Harris and Dylan…
In a belated effort to clear the air, the Jefferson County Sheriffs Office offered up its souvenirs of a massacre last Thursday. It was quite a show — but not quite enough to dispel the stink that has clung to the biggest criminal investigation in Colorado history. For a few…
The sign on the door at the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office read: “News Conference: Go up stairs and turn right.” Reporters who followed the instructions found themselves in a parking lot. It wasn’t the first time that Jeffco’s finest have sent the press in the wrong direction since the 1999…
