By the time he turned twenty, it had grown into a full-blown criminal obsession: Braden was hiking mountain park trails in Jefferson County "at least once a week, and often more times than that," he confessed, to "purposely" expose himself to women he'd see or meet.
"He said he didn't remember much of what happened during these episodes because he would get very high on marijuana before hiking," reads Braden's arrest affidavit.
Braden moved to Colorado in 2021 with his family and currently lives with his mother and other siblings on South Blue Spruce Road in Evergreen. "Glenn works at El Rancho Restaurant as a line cook with Mondays and Tuesdays being his days off," according to the affidavit. "On these days he likes to go hiking, usually around dusk, in the mountain parks around Evergreen including Bergen Park, Genessee Mountain Park and Alderfer/Three Sisters. After some discussion, he also admitted to hiking at Flying J Ranch Park."
Braden is accused of being the culprit in at least nine incidents in which female hikers were accosted by a naked man. The Jefferson County Sheriff's Office received the first report on April 3, of a naked man who targeted a woman walking solo along a trail in Flying J Ranch Park in Conifer; he grabbed the hiker's buttocks. Video captured by the victim shows the man darting off into the woods afterward, investigators say.
On May 3, he allegedly set upon a female hiker from out of state on the Beaver Brook Trail at Lookout Mountain Park near the Windy Saddle Area — running up behind her, naked except for athletic-style shoes, according to the affidavit, then masturbating in front of her. Later, a couple hiking on the trail encountered the woman and saw that she was "clearly upset," so they asked her about what happened; she related the story and gave the couple her phone number.
According to the affidavit, the couple contacted police about the "indecent exposure" incident on July 27, and the cops subsequently talked to the victim, who "did not initially report this incident because she thought it wasn't anything more than a 'weird incident.'"
On May 4, an anonymous citizen reported seeing Braden on the Shadow Pine Loop trail near the Apache Springs neighborhood access; no female hikers have come forward to say he targeted them that day.
A little over a month later, on June 13, Braden reportedly "confronted a female victim" at Alderfer/Three Sisters Park in Evergreen "and began masturbating," according to JCSO investigators.
On July 11, Braden allegedly targeted a hiker on the Shadow Pine Loop trail and asked her to aid in his masturbation. "Could you touch me, please?" he asked, according to the affidavit. "Get the fuck away from me," the victim replied.
"I'll pay," Braden responded before the hiker fled.
On July 18, he approached three separate women at Flying J Ranch Park in a single day, fondling two of them, according to JCSO investigators. He also masturbated and engaged in sexual conversation.
Braden allegedly accosted women on hiking trails in Alderfer/Three Sisters Park in Evergreen and Flying J Ranch Park in Conifer, seen here.
Jefferson County Sheriff's Office
On July 24 — just one day before his twentieth birthday — Braden allegedly committed the most violent attack reported to cops: confronting a female hiker and masturbating before grabbing her and trying to tear off her clothing, according to the affidavit. "[Braden] attempted to rip her shirt down from the front collar," it notes. "Her bra was ripped in half from the front strap."
On August 8, he accosted a pair of female hikers walking alone at Stapleton Park near Beaver Brook Trail in separate episodes. In one, he exposed himself and then attempted to grab a woman before fleeing, according to the affidavit; he's also accused of fondling himself in front of a hiker. The incidents happened within a "couple of minutes" of each other, according to JCSO investigators.
By then, though, authorities had put a plan in place to catch the culprit.
"We had a very solid plan...if it should happen again," JCSO spokesperson Jacki Kelley tells Westword. "When we received the 911 call, we deployed a lot of resources to that area. We had a combination of patrol units: unmarked cars, marked cars, un-uniformed personnel, uniformed personnel, a couple of our special units; we had drones in the air, we had canines. We just threw the manpower that we had available to us at that scene to try and lock down a perimeter and catch the suspect — and we did."
Braden is currently facing six felony charges: four counts of unlawful sexual contact, one count of attempted sexual assault and one count of attempted unlawful sexual contact. He's been charged with fourteen counts of indecent exposure, which are misdemeanors.
The young man appeared in court on August 10 and August 11 for his advisement hearings, with the judges setting his bond at $100,000 — cash only — and ordering him to stay away from Jefferson County and Denver County parks should he be released, according to Jeffco's Clerk of Court. He had not bonded out as of late Friday, August 11. His next court date is September 26.
According to JCSO investigators, Braden lives around nine and a half miles from Flying J Ranch Park, a little over three miles from Alderfer/Three Sisters Park, a little under eight miles from Bergen Park, and nine and a half miles from Genesee Mountain Park. Of the eleven incidents listed in the arrest affidavit, only one was not on a Monday or Tuesday — the days when Braden told cops he usually hikes "because those are the days he does not work." That was the May 4 sighting, when no one appears to have been attacked.
"The trail system in Jefferson County is a safer place to be because this guy is in custody," Kelley concludes.
