At this writing, a search is ongoing for nineteen-year-old Darius Ratcliff. The reason: He’s suspected of killing one person, Cristian Martinez, 21, and wounding three others at a house party at a house party in the Baker neighborhood. The incident reportedly took place at around 11 p.m. on Friday, November…
The weekend shooting at 18th and Market, which killed one person and injured another, took place in a parking lot that’s long been known by Denver police as the worst place to be during let-out for area bars and clubs. Plenty of drivers would agree. Multiple cars in the lot were…
As Friday night, July 29, was giving way to Saturday morning, July 30, the Denver Police Department responded to the latest shooting in Lower Downtown — one that left one man dead and another one injured. The location — a parking lot near 18th and Market — was no doubt…
Today, a federal judge ordered that former Evergreen resident John Hinckley be released from the Washington, D.C.-area hospital that’s been his official home since he who was found not guilty by reason of insanity for trying to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981. More than three-and-a-half-decades after Hinckley’s failed murder bid, most people…
Lisa Polansky first saw the infamous “confession video” in fragments — a fifteen-minute segment on one old VHS tape, twenty minutes on another. The kid is in a small interview room with his mother and two Denver homicide detectives. Then the mother vanishes and there are three detectives. Even with…
Back in January, our Chris Walker reported about snowboarder Seth Beckton’s claim that someone had pushed him off a chairlift at Aspen Highlands ski area. The following month, Thomas Proesel was arrested in the incident. But there’s been an unexpected twist in the case. Pamela Mackey, Proesel’s Denver-based attorney, says that…
It’s rare that Westword reprints a feature story from another publication. But this year’s Pulitzer Prize-winning article, “An Unbelievable Story of Rape,” was so good that we had to share it with our readers. As a joint project of ProPublica and the Marshall Project, much of the article recounts the…
In November 2015, two female deputies with the Denver Sheriff Department filed a lawsuit alleging that Denver County Jail is a house of horrors for female guards. The complaint suggested that profane verbal abuse, sexual harassment and intentional masturbation are common occurrences at the facility and argued that female deputies are “discouraged…
The decade-long legal battle over one of Colorado’s most infamous death-penalty cases keeps getting stranger. First came the abrupt removal of Arapahoe County District Judge Gerald Rafferty, who presided over the trials of defendants Robert Ray and Sir Mario Owens — a move contested by Owens’s attorneys, who believed Rafferty…
The Denver District Attorney’s Office has formally charged Brett Sisman with sexually assaulting a woman he met using the dating app Tinder. The incident allegedly caused so many injuries to the victim that they were documented by as many as one-hundred photos. This is the second time in just over…
On June 19, 2014, a shooting at a Red Rocks show featuring Nas, Flying Lotus and Schoolboy Q shocked the music community here and beyond — especially after law enforcement announced that Schoolboy Q’s sports-utility vehicle had been specifically targeted by the gunman. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, speculation…
JonBenét Ramsey is on the current cover of The Globe, alongside a screaming headline about “Chilling New Evidence!,” a subhead referencing the “real reason beauty queen was MURDERED!,” and photos of “two suspects arrested.” Case closed? Not quite. As we’ve been reporting, it’s been nearly twenty years since the JonBenét…
On Saturday, July 16, I was heading to Angelo’s CDS & More on East Colfax in search of vinyl 45s for my jukebox when I heard chanting. “Black lives matter! Black lives matter!” Moments later, I found myself in the middle of well over one-hundred people moving down Colfax, many…
“The Denver Police Department, under Chief Robert White, has become a model for criminal-justice reform across America,” said Mayor Michael Hancock during Monday’s State of the City address at Denver International Airport. That came as news to criminal-justice reformers and activists who have long criticized the department for targeting communities…
Seventeen years after the attack on Columbine High School, amateur sleuths have posted a video that calls into question — again — the official version of events, and their sequence, surrounding the most infamous school shooting in American history. The video features brief, grainy images that appear to show the…
In the annals of court rulings, you won’t find any more tight-lipped or to the point than the order handed down by the Colorado Supreme Court yesterday, in response to a 56-page petition by defense attorneys trying to learn why the presiding judge was abruptly removed from a long-running death-penalty…
A decision by state court officials to remove the presiding judge in an infamous death-penalty case just days before he was expected to issue a long-awaited ruling on thorny issues dealing with possible prosecution misconduct has drawn fire from defense attorneys. They claim that the abrupt dismissal of Arapahoe County…
Caleb Bonham didn’t need a video he shot of a violent pipe attack on the 16th Street Mall to go viral in order to become fifteen-minutes-of-famous. He’s already quite prominent thanks to D/CO Consulting, a firm he co-founded, which advises Fortune 500 companies and U.S. Senators, among others. And he…
“Anyone know what happened at Franklin and 35th?” asked a member of a page devoted to Denver’s Cole neighborhood this past weekend. “Crime scene tape….” “They shot up the house across the street from us, I was outside when it happened,” another member reported. “Police are waiting for the crime…
After a series of highly publicized acts of violence on the 16th Street Mall, including a recent stabbing and a video of a man being assaulted, the Denver Police Department, Downtown Denver Partnership and the Downtown Denver Business Improvement District have unveiled their year-in-the-making plan to maintain order at the city’s No…
Lynette Lindsey-Burton’s son, Devonne Burton, was among three people killed in a North Park Hill triple homicide on June 3 — an incident Denver police say took place as a result of a robbery gone wrong. Former CU Buffs football player Chadd Evans, Deashaun Turrentine and Dejuan Jones have been arrested…
In announcing the arrest of Chadd Evans (spelled “Chad Evans” in the press release) for a triple killing in North Park Hill, the Denver Police Department stated that “a booking photo of the suspect is not being released at this time as additional photo lineups are needed. “Denver Police ask…
