It's been almost ten months since Queen Phoenix, an activist and organizer who gained prominence in Denver after Donald Trump was elected, disappeared just before she was scheduled to stand trial for marijuana-related charges in October 2017. Phoenix, whose real name is Dezy Saint-Nolde, had amassed supporters by claiming the Denver Police Department had unfairly targeted her with marijuana charges as retaliation for disruptive protests she'd organized.
But then Phoenix shocked many of those same supporters, and caused fissures in local activist circles, when she stole thousands of dollars that had been crowdfunded for her legal defense and skipped town. (See our January cover story, “Missing in Action,” for the whole tale.)
One of the fugitives who left Denver with Phoenix, her wife, Meghan Saint-Nolde, was recently apprehended in North Dakota and transferred to Denver on June 25, where she is being held in the Downtown Detention Center on a $20,000 bond and is awaiting trial.
Meghan allegedly helped Phoenix run multiple unlicensed marijuana businesses in Denver under the assumption that it was legal to “gift” certain amounts of cannabis in return for donations without reporting the transactions to the state. She and another accomplice, Tylone Evans, were indicted by the Denver District Attorney after DPD officers raided Phoenix’s home and seized evidence in December 2016.
Meghan and Evans skipped town with Phoenix; they also had a baby — Zion, to whom Phoenix had given birth in 2017 — with them.
According to North Dakota Highway Patrol Lieutenant Steven Fischer (whose agency first apprehended Meghan), she was pulled over in Burleigh County, North Dakota, on June 14 because she had illegally tinted windows. The officer who pulled her over ran her name in a database and found that there was a warrant out for her arrest in Colorado.
“This was one with a full extradition order sent to all fifty states,” Fischer explains, “so she was taken to a detention center near Bismarck before being transferred to Colorado.”
Fischer says Meghan was alone in the car, a 2006 Toyota Highlander.
This raises a number of intriguing questions —most notably, where are Queen Phoenix, Evans and baby Zion? Has Meghan helped law enforcement pinpoint their whereabouts?
Some information related to these questions may be presented at Meghan's preliminary hearing on September 14 at the Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse.