Convicted meth dealer Raymond Cordova has pleaded guilty to desecrating a human body in the tragic case of Kelly Mae Myers, an eighteen-year-old Grand Junction resident. Authorities now believe Myers, who went missing in late 2014, died of an overdose while in the company of Cordova, who cut up her body and stuffed it into a suitcase that was found several months later.
Rocker and gun lover Ted Nugent has waded into the 2018 race for Colorado governor, Facebook-posting an endorsement of 18th Judicial District DA George Brauchler, who’s best known nationally for having prosecuted the Aurora theater shooting case. As the Nuge sang on the 1977 hard-rock classic album Cat Scratch Fever, “Wang dang sweet poontang!”
It’s just over a month before the 2017 edition of Denver Go Topless Day, which is scheduled for August 26. But in the run-up to that event, Fort Collins continues to fight a temporary restraining order issued earlier this year against the enforcement of a public-indecency ordinance that includes the words “the breast or breasts of a female,” despite a statement from the ruling judge that he would likely rule against the community on constitutional grounds. This stance exasperates co-plaintiff Brit Hoagland, who continues to follow the case even after leaving FoCo, as well as regular criticism by residents and officials opposed to topless equality.
Thirteen people associated with Hoppz’ Cropz stores in Colorado Springs, including co-owners Joseph Hooper, also known as “Joey Hops,” and Dara Wheatley, nicknamed “Boss Lady,” have been indicted on charges that they illegally distributed nearly 200 pounds of marijuana in a variation on the sort of “free” pot giveaway schemes that date back to the days before and just after the launch of legal recreational cannabis sales.
Kent Thiry, the CEO of Denver-based kidney dialysis giant DaVita, who was recently satirized in brutal fashion on an episode of HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, has opted out of running for Colorado governor in 2018. But while this development removes one well-heeled potential guv hopeful from the equation, the amount of money expected to be spent by current competitors and those still flirting with candidacy will likely be record-setting.
Prosecutor George Brauchler, who’s running for Colorado governor in 2018, is using Shawn Geerdes’s conviction for murdering Jason Dosa nearly three years ago as an opportunity to criticize legal pot even though the marijuana grow in which the two partnered was illegal.
Although rent prices in Denver have been sky high in recent years due in part to a severe shortage of available units, that situation may be changing. A new report estimates that more than 13,000 new apartments will open up in Denver over the course of 2017, with the majority of them situated in some of the city’s hottest and most rapidly growing areas.
Eric Ashby, 31, remains missing after his raft reportedly flipped on a challenging part of the Arkansas River on June 28. A friend who’s leading online efforts to raise awareness about the situation believes Ashby died searching for what’s described as a $2 million treasure hidden by New Mexico author Forrest Fenn. If he’s right, Ashby is the third person from Colorado to perish while looking for this prize in just over a year and a half, and the second in two months.
The fifteen-year-old boy who was pulled from Cherry Creek Reservoir on July 22, as recounted in our previous coverage, on view below, has died. The teen has been identified as Trent Nims, and while the final cause of death hasn’t been determined, drowning is suspected. He is at least the fourteenth person to die at a Colorado water attraction in 2017. Continue for our earlier report.
Amadou & Mariam, who headline at the Boulder Theater on July 29, may be the planet’s unlikeliest dance music icons: He’s 62, she’s 58, and they’ve spent decades as both musical and romantic partners following their 1975 meeting at the Institute for the Young Blind in their native Mali, Africa. But if you can listen to Bofou Safou, a remix-heavy EP released in advance of La Confusion, an album due on September 22, without moving, it’s probably because you’re distracted by the priest giving you last rites.
The Massachusetts Supreme Court has ruled that a company acted improperly when it fired medical marijuana patient Cristina Barbuto after she tested positive for pot. The Colorado Supreme Court reached the opposite conclusion in an analogous 2015 case, determining that DISH had the right to dismiss paralyzed MMJ patient Brandon Coats following his own positive test for cannabis. And while the Barbuto finding won’t directly impact the Colorado case, Coats’s lawyer sees a trend toward granting more patient protections here and in other medical marijuana states.
For years, the tragic 2012 murder of Dylan Redwine shared one major element in common with the JonBenét Ramsey case. In both slayings, a parent or parents were under suspicion, yet law enforcers never brought criminal charges. But that changed on Saturday, July 22, when Mark Redwine, Dylan’s father, was arrested in Bellingham, Washington, on suspicion of killing his son. And a grand jury indictment released in the wake of the bust and accessible below reveals why in greater detail than has been previously shared with the public.
This week, Wheelchair Sports Camp MC Kalyn Heffernan and nine other members of the advocacy organization ADAPT pleaded not guilty to trespassing and other charges related to a three-day sit-in at the office of Senator Cory Gardner on June 29. And next week, several of the activists, many of whom have disabilities, are scheduled to be back in court regarding another matter. On Monday, July 24, the first of those cited for a previous protest targeting Gardner will go on trial, and there’s definitely crossover between the two groups.
9News’ Kyle Clark has been engaging in a war of words with Denver-based Frontier ever since needling the carrier for turning flight attendants into “awkward props during executives’ speeches about the virtues of the ultra-low cost airline,” which has recently scored poorly in airline quality rankings. And when he learned that Frontier staffers had accessed his personal travel records in an apparent effort to learn if he was an Ann Coulter-esque whiner about air travel, he became even more exercised, as he makes clear in an interview below.
As we’ve reported, alleged Capitol Hill white supremacist William Scott Planer was recently arrested in Colorado Springs on a charge that he put an anti-Semitic sticker on a synagogue, after which authorities discovered that he’s wanted in California on an assault charge. Now, the Traditionalist Worker Party, which has been described as an extremist group, is conducting an online fundraiser for Planer’s defense in which it claims he was merely defending himself and is being victimized because of political pressure from leftists.
The reward being offered for information about the person or persons who killed Travis Mason, a former Marine who was fatally shot while working as a security guard at a marijuana dispensary in June 2016, has been increased to $55,000, more than triple the original amount. Authorities hope the increase will help break the case that’s remained unsolved for more than a year.
Samuel Brunelus, a 23-year-old from Florida, has been arrested on suspicion of manslaughter and more in relation to the deaths of two men to whom he allegedly provided heroin laced with carfentanil, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid best known as an elephant tranquilizer.
According to a new study, the number of high-poverty neighborhoods in the Denver metro area nearly tripled over a fifteen-year period, due in part to high housing costs. In addition, poverty is increasing more quickly in the suburbs than in the city itself.
Five years ago today, James Holmes killed twelve people and injured seventy others during a screening of The Dark Knight Rises at the Century 16 theater in Aurora. In the 24 hours afterward, Westword published twenty stories that, when viewed in retrospect, capture the terror and confusion unleashed by this horrific crime.
The July 10 death of William Anderson, a forty-year-old inmate at Denver’s main jail, has led to a war of words between the Denver Sheriff Department and Immigration and Customs Enforcement. Anderson died during a fight with fellow detainee Ricardo Lopez-Vera, nineteen. But while the Denver District Attorney’s Office declined to charge Lopez-Vera in the incident, his undocumented status led to detention by ICE, which claims the DSD released him without properly informing the federal agency even though there was an immigration hold on him.
William Scott Planer, who was accused online of violent activity and affiliation with white supremacist and neo-Nazi groups in the Capitol Hill neighborhood late last year, has been arrested in Colorado Springs. He was initially charged with a misdemeanor for placing an anti-Semitic sticker on the door of a synagogue, but he is currently being held on a $500,000 bond related to a felony charge in California, where he allegedly attacked a protester during a white supremacist rally in California last year.
KNUS morning host Peter Boyles is among the last people still standing from the golden age of Denver radio, and he’s not planning to lay down anytime soon, as he makes clear throughout a wide-ranging interview in which he defends many of his most controversial views while offering a very personal history of a medium whose future prospects remain very much in flux.
