Crime & Police

Richard Kirk has been sentenced to thirty years in prison for murdering his wife, Kristine Kirk, nearly three years ago, shortly after he’d consumed a marijuana edible. During the hearing at which this punishment was formalized, Kirk implied that the pot candy had spurred the killing, saying, “I had no idea how it would affect me…. I’m so sorry that I became the monster that I was supposed to protect them from.” But a major cannabis business organization maintains that legal marijuana actually reduces crime instead of increasing it.

As many as eight possibly gang-related shootings have taken place near the booming RiNo area over the past two weeks or so according to Mark Ungar, president of the Whittier Neighborhood Association, including a thus-far-unsolved broad daylight gun-down near 31st and Gilpin earlier this month that resulted in serious injuries for two men.

CBS has formally asked a court to dismiss a lawsuit filed on behalf of Burke Ramsey over a 2016 docuseries in which a team of analysts concluded that he’d murdered his sister, JonBenét Ramsey, in their Boulder home on Christmas Day 1996. In response, Ramsey family attorney Lin Wood summarily rejects the arguments made by CBS and Dr. Werner Spitz, a participant in the docuseries being sued separately for comments he made last September during a WWJ-AM/CBS Detroit interview publicizing the program.

An opioid epidemic is sweeping across the country and ravaging Denver’s drug addicts. It’s motivation enough for the Harm Reduction Action Center to push for a safe injection site in Denver, and has staff at the Denver Library, whose Central branch has seen six overdoses this year, training on how…

Rocky Pedersen, who has been charged with 35 criminal counts, including attempted first-degree murder, for a series of robberies at marijuana businesses over the past five months, once owned a medical marijuana dispensary that was itself the target of a high-profile robbery back in 2013.

Julian Archuleta resigned as a Denver police officer after pleading guilty to stealing money from the scene of a car crash, a crime documented by his own body camera. But his punishment is a relative wrist-slap.

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 found guilty of conspiring to deal firearms without a license and multiple tax charges.

Boulder’s Adam Densmore has been arrested and charged with first-degree murder in the death of Ashley Mead. The details of the homicide are particularly shocking; the largest part of Mead’s body recovered to date is her torso, from which the organs had been removed according to Densmore’s arrest affidavit, on view below. However, Boulder District Attorney Stan Garnett has decided against seeking the death penalty in the case, and in general, he believes the circumstances of a killing shouldn’t be the sole factor for determining whether or not capital punishment is appropriate.

On Sunday, March 5, relatives of Holly Lynn Moore will join friends and supporters in a procession, on foot and motorcyles, around the perimeter of the Outlets at Castle Rock shopping mall, marking the second anniversary of the nineteen-year-old’s death. It sounds like a strange way to commemorate what local…

John Orlando Sanchez, who goes by his middle name, has been sentenced to life in prison plus an incredible 108 years for the 2015 murder of 41-year-old Eric Schnaare. And a newly unsealed arrest affidavit shared below paints a brutal portrait of the slaying. Afterward, Andrew Gutierrez, who was sentenced to life plus sixteen years over the incident, is quoted as saying, “Wasn’t that awesome? That almost made me cum in my pants.”

In a jailhouse interview, Joshua Cummings, who has been charged with the slaying of RTD security officer Scott Van Lanken in late January, calls himself a “soldier of the Islamic state” and maintains that his actions were done for the “pleasure of Allah.”

Ever Valles, one of two men arrested after the February 7 RTD light-rail station murder of Tim Cruz, is due in court today after being formally charged with murder and more by the Denver District Attorney’s Office. The case has garnered national attention, especially in the conservative press, thanks to the revelation that Valles, who’s from Mexico, was released by the Denver Sheriff Department in December 2016 after his arrest for another crime despite him being targeted for deportation.

The Aurora Police Department is actively investigating a murder attempt allegedly committed by Richard Darling a year before his 2015 arrest for an incredibly brutal Halloween night slaying in which he’s accused of dismembering and “filleting” the body of his victim before stuffing it into a barrel and setting it ablaze.

The latest attempt to repeal Colorado’s seldom-used death penalty was defeated in a committee hearing Wednesday evening — after emotional testimony from families of homicide victims on both sides of the issue that underscored how deeply divided the state remains on the issue of capital punishment.

By the end of 2017, the Colorado Department of Corrections plans to distribute electronic tablets to every one of its 19,000 inmates.

The delay in approving a contract extension for University of Colorado Boulder head football coach Mike MacIntyre has everything to do with domestic-violence accusations against Joe Tumpkin, one of his assistants.