Crime & Police

Rich Wyatt, the star of American Guns, a once-popular Discovery Channel program that showcased him, his telegenic family, including wife Renee and kids Paige and Kurt, and his business, Wheat Ridge’s Gunsmoke Guns, has been sentenced to 78 months, or six-and-a-half years, in prison for conspiring to deal firearms without a license and multiple tax charges. The verdict, which comes nearly a year after he was found guilty of these offenses, represents the ultimate comedown for a once-prominent TV personality who rubbed shoulders with celebrities such as rock star Ted Nugent and even a former President of the United States, George W. Bush.

In early 2016, we told you about the Western Slope arrest of former Texas death-row resident Claude Wilkerson for allegedly keeping a woman chained to his bed and repeatedly raping her. Just over two years later, Wilkerson has agreed to a plea deal in the case, and it’s a sweet one. He’s admitted guilt to a pair of lesser charges, for which he’ll serve just six years behind bars and three on probation — an astonishingly brief sentence given the initial description of his crimes.

One of the most disturbing crime stories in the nation right now involves Vincent Terry, who was arrested in Florida for allegedly killing his pregnant wife, Chrystal Terry, and taking photos of her corpse. But a Colorado connection to the case that we reported about nearly four years ago makes the latest events even more horrific.

Earlier this month, Richard Darling was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for allegedly killing, dismembering and “filleting” the body of Rey Pesina in an Aurora homeless encampment on Halloween of 2015. The sentence would seem to offer some solace to Candace Chamberlain, who was romantically involved with both men before getting caught in the middle of their fatal conflict. But more than two years later, she’s still struggling to deal with her memories from that awful day.

In 2016, as we’ve reported, at least eleven women accused nurse Tom Moore of improperly touching them while he was supposed to be providing medical care. Now, he’s been given a twelve-year sentence for unlawful sexual contact in the 17th Judicial District, to run concurrently with a dozen year jolt previously doled out in Weld County. But according to one of Moore’s multiple arrest affidavits, the amount of time he’s been ordered to serve is only a little longer that the decade during which he allegedly used his profession as a means to violate one female victim after another.

In March 2017, as we’ve reported, former Longmont medical marijuana dispensary owner Rocky Pedersen was arrested for an AR-15-toting pot-shop robbery spree. He’s now been sentenced to fourteen years behind bars for a series of crimes that he blames on his switch from cannabis to heroin.

An attendee at a town hall in Erie held following the deadly school shooting in Parkland, Florida says pro-gun state representative Lori Saine supported her argument that teachers should be armed by claiming Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had supported gun control and lobbied the state legislature to make schools gun-free zones to prevent return fire during the lethal April 20, 1999 attack that took the lives of twelve students and a teacher. Moreover, the account is backed by two others who were also at the town hall.

As we’ve noted, reporters and anchors covering the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, have frequently mentioned the disturbing similarity between images from the latest tragic event, during which seventeen people died, and those from the April 20, 1999, attack on Columbine High School in Littleton. But there’s another tie between these tragedies beyond bloodshed and heartache. Politicians and stakeholders desperate to deflect calls for tougher gun laws are once again suggesting that violence in popular culture is more responsible for what happened in Parkland than are easily procured automatic weapons. And as was the case after Columbine, one of the main whipping boys is actor Keanu Reeves.

The February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida has sparked numerous threats in Colorado, where student arrests and increased security at various facilities have occurred statewide during recent days, as well as plenty of conversation about whether new gun-control laws are needed. Against this backdrop, Garfield County Sheriff Lou Vallario has stirred controversy aplenty by way of a Facebook video on view here in which he suggests that blaming weapons for such incidents is flat-out nonsensical.

The number of Colorado students arrested for making threats in the wake of the February 14 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida continues to grow. By our count, there have been at least five busts of this type in the state over the past week, including one involving a fifth grader, with three additional incidents leading to increased security measures at other schools. Four of the threats took place in metro Denver, which is known worldwide for the 1999 attack at Columbine High School, whose April 20 anniversary is scheduled to be marked by a national student walk-out.

To battle drugs smuggled in the mail, the Colorado Department of Corrections will no longer allow inmates to receive post cards, greeting cards, or “any items containing drawings.”

The shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida last week has inspired plans for marches and student walkouts to call for tougher gun laws, including one scheduled to take place on April 20, the anniversary of the 1999 Columbine High School massacre. But it also appears to have motivated a number of threats at Colorado schools, with three arrests taking place in recent days. Those taken into custody include a Jefferson County High School student whose social-media joke went terribly wrong.

Despite blustery comments from President Donald Trump on Twitter, it’s now difficult to refute that Russia influenced the outcome of the 2016 presidential election. The 37-page indictment that emerged from Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia investigation on Friday, February 16, was a political bombshell; the stunning document charges that three…

This October, former CU Buffaloes and Carolina Panthers star Rae Carruth is scheduled to be freed from the prison where he was sent after being convicted of conspiring to murder Cherica Adams in 1999, when she was eight-months pregnant. Cherica’s child, Chancellor Adams, survived the ordeal but suffers from cerebral palsy linked to his traumatic birth, and Carruth wants to have a relationship with the now-eighteen year old upon his release, as he makes clear in an open letter. But while Carruth praises Saundra Adams, Chancellor’s grandmother, for how she’s raised him under incredible circumstances, he also lambastes her for supposedly lying about his motivation for taking part in the crime and his relationship with Cherica. Read the remarkable and disturbing text in its entirety below.

Our recent list of school shootings from Columbine to Parkland noted how frequently connections have been made between the killings at the former in 1999 and last week’s massacre at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida. This link is now being made even more explicit by way of plans to stage a “National High School Walk-Out for Anti-Gun Violence” on April 20, Columbine’s anniversary, in the wake of a March 24 rally in Washington being organized in association with organizers of the hugely successful Women’s March.

Last week, the body of Jeanna Leslie was found in her downtown Denver apartment. The former San Antonio, Texas schoolteacher, who’d moved to Colorado mere months earlier and quickly fallen in love with the Mile High City, had been stabbed to death. Now, Terry Dunford, described as a homeless man she’d been trying to help, has been arrested for her slaying, and according to an arrest affidavit accessible below, he made investigators’ job easy by leaving behind a staggering number of clues to his identity.

Jeanna Leslie, 49, was a vibrant free spirit who recently moved from Texas to Denver and quickly fell in love with the community, as she documented in words and photos on her Facebook page. But her obvious joy and excitement over moving into a downtown apartment and starting a new adventure now echoes with poignancy. The page has become a heartbreaking memorial to Leslie, who was stabbed to death in her Mile High City home.

On February 28, Colorado’s Senate’s State, Veterans & Military Affairs committee will consider a bill that would repeal a ban on large-capacity ammunition magazines, which allow guns to shoot more than fifteen rounds of ammunition.

Reporters and anchors covering yesterday’s shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, frequently mentioned the disturbing similarity between images from the latest tragic event, during which seventeen people died, and those from the April 20, 1999 attack on Columbine High School in Littleton. But Columbine’s terrible legacy has been felt consistently over the intervening eighteen-plus years. As documented below, the Parkland incident was at least the 208th school shooting to take place in Columbine’s wake.

A Denver Police Department commander says that the cop at the center of an officer-involved shooting on the 2200 block of South Clermont Street, east of the DU campus, late on Tuesday, February 13, would have been justified in immediately shooting the suspect he encountered, since he was threatening his aged father with both a gun and a knife. Instead, the officer tried to convince the man to give up peacefully and only fired after the man shot his dad in the head. Both father and son died shortly thereafter.

At this hour, investigators are at the scene of an officer-involved shooting on the 2200 block of South Clermont Street, in a neighborhood not far from the University of Denver. At last report, the person shot by a member of the Denver Police Department is in critical condition. The incident marks the fifteenth officer-involved shooting along Colorado’s Front Range since New Year’s Eve, as well as the sixth in nine days. It’s also the second DPD officer-involved shooting since February 5.

Counting the New Year’s Eve gun battle that killed Douglas County Deputy Zackari Parrish, there have been fourteen officer-involved shootings along Colorado’s Front Range over a span of 42 days. This total includes a traffic stop on Saturday, February 10 in Aurora during which an adult male was killed by a member or members of the Aurora Police Department — the fifth OIS in less than a week. During these incidents, eight suspects and three officers have been killed and at least eleven injuries took place involving law enforcers and others.