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| Chapter 13 — Women Who Have Killed Their Partners In Colorado |
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Woman lulls husband to sleep with sex, shoots him, then goes dancing
Golden woman kills boyfriend by running over him
Woman shoots husband in the back with shotgun
Wife drugs husband then beats him to death with an axe
Aspen woman arrested for 1996 killing of ex-husband
Colorado Springs man shot to death by former roommate
Colorado Springs man killed by wife's boyfriend
Estranged wife shoots husband during domestic disturbance in Colorado Springs
University of Colorado professor killed by wife while Boulder policewoman looks on
Rio Blanco woman kills her husband and granddaughter
Murder-suicide in upscale home
Woman claims self defense when attacked by boyfriend's ex-wife in Thornton
Johnstown woman gets pistol, shoots boyfriend, then herself
Wife kills two ministers, husband arrested
Mother charged with drowning her son to keep a boyfriend in Denver
Daughter kills her father with handgun following argument
Woman has sex with boyfriend then has her brother beat him to death
Colorado Springs man killed in motel room by female acquaintance
Wife shoots husband multiple times, no arrest made
Woman stabs live-in boyfriend, claims self defense
Police give gun back to woman, she uses it to kill daughter and self
Army sergeant convicted of premeditated murder after stabbing husband 40 times at Fort Carson
Woman stabs man she is staying with in Aurora hotel
Wife in southwest Denver shoots husband then kills herself
In 1996, a Denver woman, who was having an extramarital affair at the time, had sex with her husband for a change. He then fell asleep, at which point she shot him. After that she disordered the house to suggest that the killer had been a burglar and went to a disco with her sister.
She had previously taken out a large life insurance policy on her husband.
Her conviction was a setback for Lenore Walker, who testified as an expert witness that the woman's behavior was consistent with the “battered woman syndrome.” Walker says a battered woman is one “repeatedly subjected to any forceful physical or psychological behavior by a man in order to coerce her to do something he wants her to do without any concern for her rights” [emphasis added].
April 1996 — Ronnie Kay Thurlow, age 24, was charged with second-degree murder. Police say she ran over her boyfriend, Patrick Morey, age 29, on West Colfax Avenue.
She later pled guilty to manslaughter and was sentenced to five years in prison.
On May 14, 1996, Bill and Hope Grudowski of Colorado Springs had an argument. Bill told her he was leaving the apartment and wanted her gone when he returned. Instead, she got a sawed-off shotgun and waited in their bedroom for his return. When he did, she shot him in the back.
At first she claimed her husband committed suicide, but when police skeptically pointed out how difficult it would be for someone to shoot themselves in the back with a shotgun, she admitted shooting him. She then claimed she fired in self defense.
Hope Grudowski's defense attorney, Ann Kaufman, claims that on his return Bill Grudowski gave Hope the same look he had previously given her before abusing her. Hope claimed he then turned, she thought he was going for a gun is his pocket, and she fired.
Kaufman claims that Bill Grudowski, age 32, was a pimp, drug dealer, and drug addict. Kaufman also claims he took advantage of the 19-year old Hope and that he had a reputation on the streets of being very violent. Kaufman is quoted in the January 10, 1999, Denver Post as saying: “She had to take the life of someone she loved to save her own.”
At first Hope faced life imprisonment for first-degree murder but prosecutors entered a plea reducing her charge to manslaughter. Cocaine and marijuana trafficking charges against her were dismissed. Initially, El Paso County District Judge Douglas Anderson sentenced her to 15 years in prison, but in late 1998 he reduced it to 10 years. In early 1999 she was seeking clemency based on her claim of being a “battered woman.” Former Governor Roy Romer prevented prosecutors from appealing her reduced sentence. She thus became eligible for parole in December, 1999. We do not know if that was granted.
According to the Denver Post, as of January 10, 1999, Grudowski is making plans for when she gets out. On a Web site for women in prison, Hope Grudowski, inmate number CO-F-12, had her picture, and the following information posted:
“Release date 2003. Sweet, sexy, energetic, full of life! Pretty Hot and tempting. Very physically fit body! Oh, I can tease — but you'll always be pleased by me.
Looking for someone who can satisfy my needs just as I can satisfy yours — A real man. One not afraid to speak his mind, his dreams, his deepest, darkest fantasies.
IS THERE A MAN OUT THERE WHO CAN HANDLE ME!?!”
It is our hope this woman remains in prison a long time.
Manuela S. Garcia, age 32 and a German citizen, was originally found guilty in 1997 of lacing her husband's beer with a sleep medication and then hitting him 23 times in the head with an axe in their Edgewater apartment. She was then sentenced to 28 years in prison.
Garcia contends she killed her 36-year-old husband, Henry A. Garcia, after years of abuse, including rape. However, prosecutors expressed skepticism about her “battered woman syndrome” defense, noting that all the head wounds were in the same area and there was no indication her husband was struggling while she beat him to death. There is also evidence that Manuela had obtained the axe several weeks before the murder. She had also apparently told her 9-year-old daughter that she planned to kill her husband and take the children to Germany.
However, her 1997 conviction was thrown out by the Colorado Supreme Court in June, 2001, on the grounds that the trial court failed to tell the jury that Manuela had no duty to retreat from her alleged assailant and had failed to note she could justifiably use deadly force to prevent a sexual assault.
To the credit of Jefferson County District Attorney Dave Thomas, whose sister was killed in an act of domestic violence by her husband, and despite feminist propaganda to set her free, e.g., see Diane Carman's column on p. 1B of the April 4, 2002, Denver Post, Manuela Garcia was to be retried on the same charge.
According to the April 4, 2002, Denver Post (p. 2B) rather than face a new trial, Ms. Garcia chose instead to plead guilty to second-degree murder. She now faces 16 to 22 years in prison and sentencing is scheduled for May 30, 2002.
On November 1, 1996, at about 5:30 PM, 52-year-old Gary Triano got in his car outside of the La Paloma Country Club in Tucson, Arizona. As he started his car it exploded with a blast so powerful that it sent pieces of the car up to 300 yards from the scene. Triano was killed instantly.
For nearly 10 years the investigation was lukewarm, sometimes even cold. The first real lead came after an episode of America's Most Wanted in November 2005. The show featured Ronald Young, a former boyfriend of Pamela Phillips, Gary Triano's ex-wife.
Pamela Phillips and Gary Triano divorced in 1993. She moved to Aspen where she met Young. In 1996 Young allegedly defrauded Ms. Phillips, then fled Aspen. A getaway car he rented in Aspen turned up in California days after Gary Triano's death. A shotgun, Triano's divorce papers and a Tucson map were all found inside. But, no sign of Young, until the national crime show.
A tip helped authorities track Young down in Florida. He was questioned, but never charged, and then taken to Aspen on unrelated charges. Police knew Pam Phillips and Ron Young had a relationship but didn't know for sure if he was somehow associated with the murder until he was arrested.
Police told KVOA News in Tucson that “Since his arrest we have developed information through his phone calls he's made through physical evidence that has to do with his financial paper work that led us to serve a search warrant up in Aspen, Colorado.”
According to the September 8, 2006, Aspen Times the break in the case led them to the front door of Triano's ex-wife's home and, so far, investigators have found what they were looking for. Secret phone recordings linked his ex-wife, Pamela, to a suspected scheme to pay $400,000 to someone involved in his bombing death, a sheriff's homicide detective told a judge. Police found recorded conversations between Ms. Phillips and Young in Young's residence, storage unit and hotel room in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Young recorded the conversations himself.
On September 7, 2006, police released the warrant affidavit they say chronicles the relationship between Ms. Phillips and Young. Recorded conversations include threats, blackmail, money drops, a secret romance, and evidence of conspiracy in the 1996 slaying. Police say that in recorded conversations the two talk about FedEx drops and under-the-radar money withdrawals from ATMs. Ms. Phillips allegedly shipped cash under the label of her Internet business, Starbabies.
A detective said he believes Pamela Phillips stopped sending the scheduled cash payments to Ronald Young, who became upset and told her “you're gonna be in a women's prison for murder.”
According to the September 8, 2006 edition of the Denver Post (p. 4B) Aspen socialite Pamela Phillips is alleged to have hired her business associate and one-time lover to kill her ex-husband in Arizona so she could collect his $2 million life insurance policy.
The affidavit alleges Young was to be paid $400,000 for blowing up Phillips' ex-husband, Gary Triano, with a pipe bomb left in his Lincoln Town Car in 1996.
Ms. Phillips and Young, who is serving an 18-month sentence in a Florida prison for possessing a firearm while he was a fugitive from justice, quarreled often about the murder payment, transcripts released in the affidavit allege.
Arizona-based officers, U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives agents, Aspen police and Pitkin County sheriff's deputies searched Phillips' residence Wednesday and removed boxes of financial documents and computers for forensic audits. Phillips and Young have been “persons of interest” in the Triano murder case for years, but now police said they are developing firm evidence against them.
On March 31, 2010, Ronald Young was convicted of murder by a Tucson, Arizona, jury (Denver Post, April 1, 2010, p. 4B). As of that date apparently Pamela Phillips is still awaiting extradition from Austria where she was arrested in December 2009. In addition to murder charges she also faces a $10 million judgment to Triano's adult children from another marriage who filed a wrongful-death suit against her in 2007.
In April 2014 a Pima County Arizona jury found Pamela Phillips guilty of first-degree murder for the pipe bomb killing her ex-husband Gary Triano outside a Tucson-area country club in 1996. The once prominent Aspen socialite was sentenced to life in prison without parole on May 2, 2014. She was also sentenced to 25 years to life for conspiracy to commit murder. Because it had been necessary to extradite Ms. Phillips from Austria to face trial the death penalty was not an option due to treaty restrictions with that country.
On January 12 th 38-year-old John William Mileski, a popular high school English teacher at Aspen Valley High School, was killed with a handgun wielded by his girlfriend and former roommate, physical therapist Claire Christine Welsh, age 37. John Mileski was reportedly trying to break off the affair at the time he was murdered.
Evidence showed that John Mileski was killed by one gunshot to the back of his head. His body was rolled over, and the gun placed on his chest. It was also shown that Ms. Welsh spent two days trying to buy a gun, finally purchasing a gun and ammunition the day before the homicide. Then, early on the morning of the murder she disrobed, slipped into bed with her sleeping boyfriend and fired into the back of his head in the North Nevada apartment they had shared. Claire Welsh then shot herself twice in the chest.
Ms. Welsh was found guilty of murder in 1998 for murdering John Mileski as he slept.
Prosecutors, who had the burden of proving Welsh was sane at the time she killed Mileski, attempted at the trial to show that her refusal to talk about what happened in the hours after the shooting proved she was sane. They called a series of law enforcement officers and medical personnel who testified that Claire Welsh would either “fade out,” “clam up” or “look away” when asked what happened. She told one investigator that she didn't want to make a statement “because she might say something wrong.” However, she did selectively answer questions from the police, giving her name and other basic information while apparently exercising her 5 th Amendment right to remain silent.
At her trial Ms. Welsh pled innocent by reason of insanity. Mental health professionals who testified for the defense said that Welsh was insane and had “dissociated” at the moment she shot her boyfriend, whatever that means after searching two days for the gun that she used to commit the murder. These “experts” said she lacked the ability to form the intent to kill and lacked the ability to distinguish right from wrong.
After hearing how Welsh had remained silent the jury discounted her insanity defense and found her guilty of murder.
The Tuesday, December 9, 2003, Denver Post (p. 2B) noted that Ms. Welsh will receive a new trial because prosecutors wrongly used her silence after the shooting to say she was sane, the Colorado Supreme Court ruled on December 8, 2003.
Justice Nancy Rice, writing for the majority of five Supreme Court justices, said supposedly mentally ill defendants' silence rarely, if ever, can be used by prosecutors to try to show sanity. Justice Rice said Welsh's silence was irrelevant to whether she was sane or insane.
“That the defendant did not respond to questions regarding the shootings at the victim's apartment is neither proof of her sanity nor inconsistent with her later claim of not remembering what happened,” Rice wrote. “She may have been unable to respond due to lack of memory, confusion, disorientation, or the pain of her own gunshot wounds.”
Justice Rice added that Ms. Welsh may have been unwilling to respond because of her awareness of the criminal justice system or a fear of incriminating herself.
Justice Ben Coats, in a blistering dissent, said from the evidence the murder appeared well-planned.
It would appear that if a woman is smart enough to keep quiet she must be considered insane. One expects that at the new trial she will claim she was abused as the reason she killed John Mileski in cold blood.
According to the Colorado Springs Police Department annual report, Joseph Bailey McShane, age 36, was shot to death by his wife's boyfriend on May 10, 1997.
On September 14, 1997, 44-year-old Walter Edward Johnson was shot to death by his estranged wife, Cecilia Johnson, during an argument according to Colorado Springs Police Department annual report for 1997. Authorities say the fatal shots came after an argument over a $2,000 check.
Prosecutors said Mrs. Johnson shot her husband twice in the back because she was angry that he was leaving her. Mrs. Johnson argued she killed Edward Johnson in self-defense and that she was a victim of domestic violence.
She was sentenced to 35 years in prison in June, 1998, for killing her husband.
In December, 1997, a Colorado University professor was charged by his wife with domestic violence. He was issued the standard restraining order mandating that he vacate the premises of the “victim.” Of course the Fourth Amendment is meaningless in domestic violence cases, and he was forced out of his home. Under the terms of the restraining order he could only return for one hour in the company of a police officer to obtain his possessions. He arranged with the Boulder police for such an escort and returned to pick up his belongings, or what he could grab in an hour. While there, with a female Boulder police officer present, his wife shot him to death. Who was the “victim” in this case?
In a sidebar on p. 10A of the June 22, 2001, issue of the Denver Post there was a note that in January, 1998, a rural Rio Blanco County woman, Marge Townsley, age 58, killed her husband, Harvey, 60, and her granddaughter Michelle, age 9, before killing herself.
There have been more famous cases, but the July 9, 1998, issue of the Denver Post carried an article about two teenage daughters who found their parents in bed, dead, in an apparent murder-suicide in their upscale home. The gun was in the woman's hand. However, investigators concluded that the husband had shot the wife first before killing himself. Seems a little hard to do!
On July 12, 1998, in Thornton, Colorado, near Denver, Susan Beemer, 41, claimed self-defense when the ex-wife of her boyfriend came at her with a knife and she shot the ex-wife, Cheryl Metcalf, of her live-in boyfriend, 39-year old Thomas Rogers. Evidence at the scene apparently did not support her claim and she was eventually taken into custody.
According to the January 8, 2000, Denver Post, she subsequently pled guilty to conspiracy after having been charged with first-degree murder, for which she was slated to go on trial Monday, January 10, 2000.
She presently claims she was present when the shots were fired but that Rogers actually fired the gun that killed Metcalf. Police are said to be preparing to arrest him and charge him with the murder instead.
If her claims that the man actually did the killing were the truth, why did she wait until she was being brought to trial to make them? Also, there is a standard test to determine if a person has fired a gun recently. That test should have been applied to his and her hands at the time of the shooting. One hopes that the police used such tests at the time of the murder. If they did, it should be obvious one way or the other who fired the gun.
Our suspicion (January 9, 2000) is that she made a plea bargain along the lines of Warren Farrell's “Twelve Female Only Defenses.” Naturally, the man must be guilty. After all, she says so, and she has only been proven to lie once, so far.
The July 20, 1998, Denver Post carried a story of a 19-year old woman who, after arguing with her lover in Johnstown, a small town near Greeley, shot him in the face with a .25 caliber pistol, killing him. She then turned the gun on herself and was seriously wounded. She appears to have retrieved the gun from her home earlier in the day following an earlier argument. That would be first-degree murder if the “domestic violence” aspect were omitted and it was a man doing the shooting.
The August 13, 1998, issue of the Denver Post reported on a man who was released from jail and his wife, Natalie Murdock, arrested instead in a double slaying of two ministers, one of whom was the couples landlord. The husband had first been arrested on domestic violence charges after a July 30 th fight with his wife when the woman told police her husband had stabbed her with a knife. Authorities now believe the woman stabbed herself and kicked in the back door to get at her husband. The husband did not return home after that arrest and the two ministers were killed when they went to the couple's home to try and evict the wife. The husband was again arrested on a murder charge but investigation proved that Mrs. Murdock conspired to have her husband murdered. Apparently the ministers were innocent victims of that plot.
Ms. Murdock was later found guilty of two counts of first-degree murder for the minister's deaths and sentenced to life in prison without parole (Denver Post, May 14, 1999). If history is any indicator, in a few years she will be appealing for clemency on the basis that she was suffering from “battered woman syndrome.” Similar appeals are presented here.
It should be noted that such cases do not show up in domestic violence statistics with regard to women because the charge was murder. The arrests of her innocent husband probably do, however.
September 10, 1998 —A Denver mother who told police her three-year-old son drowned in a bathtub was charged with her son's premeditated death. Denver police say the mother, Erika Arroyo, first told them she found her son face down in the tub last week, but later confessed to drowning the boy on purpose.
Police say Erika Arroyo admitted to holding her son under water in a bathtub when he failed to die from a brew of prescription and over-the-counter drugs she mixed. She later took three-year-old Armando Villalobos to a local convenience store and called police, saying the boy had drowned.
Police say Ms. Arroyo told them she killed her son to keep a boyfriend but that he had nothing to do with the killing.
According to the Colorado Springs Police Department annual report for 1998, on December 18 th 50-year-old Gary Schmidt was shot to death by his daughter during an argument.
The January 10, 1999, Denver Post carried a feature story describing women seeking clemency after murdering their male partners.
One case is that of Sheila Barnhart who was convicted of the torture-murder of her boyfriend, Dedrick Jackson, in what a Colorado Springs judge called one of the most horrific crimes he had ever seen.
Jealousy, not physical abuse was her self-proclaimed motive for having her brother hang and beat Jackson to death. Barnhart admitted she had once held a pistol to the head of another boyfriend because of jealousy but didn't pull the trigger that time.
Barnhart lived with Jackson for three-and-one-half weeks and then decided he had to die. First she tried to poison him with drug-laced muffins. When that failed, she had sex with him, and then called her brother over and had him beat Jackson to death with a tire iron. She apparently participated by kicking him as well.
The basis for any claim for clemency in her case is a little vague.
In June, 1999, Priscilla Lee Jansma of Aurora, age 44, shot and killed her husband and the told police: “Jesus told me it was OK to do it.”
Jame Michael Ciccone, age 31, was killed in a motel room in Colorado Springs by a female acquaintance on June 9, 1999. She used a handgun for the murder.
There does not seem to have been any mention of it in the local press at the time. The annual police report for 1999 contains a sparse description.
According to the July 29, 1999, Denver Post, 43-year old Kathyrn Two Bears of Cañon City shot her husband, Daniel, multiple times during a domestic dispute that escalated into a struggle over a gun. Assistant District Attorney Kathy Eberling requested a month to make a decision on whether to file manslaughter charges against Kathyrn Two Bears, who was to return to court on September 8 th .
Forrest Eugene Potts was stabbed to death on October 13, 1999, in Colorado Springs by 39-year old Stephanie Perkins. Potts was living with Perkins at the time. Potts, described by his fellow employees “...a really quiet, nice person” was stabbed once in the upper right chest with a kitchen knife.
Perkins claimed they were arguing and Potts attacked her with a chair. She then took a knife she was using to peel potatoes and stabbed him once, killing him. The District Attorney's office claimed there was not enough evidence to disprove she was acting in self defense and the police report lists it as justifiable homicide.
According to the November 18, 1999, Denver Post, an autopsy confirmed that Paula Bode shot and killed her 5-year old daughter and then killed herself on Monday, November 15 th . Ms. Bode was reportedly devastated over the breakup of her longtime relationship with her child's father.
In February, 1999, police had reportedly visited Ms. Bode's home on a call that she was threatening suicide. At that time police confiscated a handgun from her but it was later returned. That gun was used in her murder-suicide.
A similar case of a man killing his three daughters and then committing suicide by attacking the Castle Rock police station on June 22, 1999, [see Castle Rock vs. Gonzales] prompted Governor Owens to reestablish the Colorado Bureau of Investigations database on domestic violence by executive fiat. The objective of that database is supposedly to keep guns out of the hands of people likely to commit domestic violence. The CBI database was operational during February, 1999, but was discontinued in April until August, 1999.
Army sergeant Kimberly Dobson, age 28, was convicted of premeditated murder of her husband, Sgt. Terry Dobson, at Fort Carson on Saturday, February 5, 2000. In her court martial she was found to have stabbed her husband 40 times in the head the evening of March 2, 1999, at the couple's apartment in Colorado Springs.
According to the February 6, 2000, issue of The Gazette, she initially told investigators that she and her husband had a scuffle and she stabbed him in the face in an attempt to get away. She claimed she had come home and found him and another woman in their apartment and suspected they were having an affair.
Testimony of the neighbors did not support her version. One man testified that he awoke to shouts and saw a man staggering as a woman stabbed him. The body of her husband was found outside their apartment.
Eunice Mae Shije, 42, was arrested early Sunday morning on April 30, 2000, when police were called to the Red Coach Inn at 9201 E. Colfax in Aurora, Colorado on a report of a stabbing. Alonzo Powell, age 41, was found dead in the room according to the April 30, 2000, Metro Digest section of the Denver Post.
On January 19, 2001, Ms. Shje was convicted of second-degree murder in the heat of passion by a jury in the Adams County District Court. She now faces up to 10 years in prison and will be sentenced on March 22, 2001.
According to the January 20, 2001, Metro Digest section of the Denver Post on p. 3B, Adams Country District Attorney stated that: “It was essentially a domestic situation with a past history, and the jury felt she had some degree of provocation.”
Apparently the jury wasn't convinced she was a “battered woman” but it seems likely that will be considered in sentencing and in applications for early release or a later pardon.
According to the May 3, 2000, issue of the Denver Post, Joyce A. Ralat, shot her husband, Raul, several times with a handgun. She then killed herself.
The shooting occurred the afternoon of May 2, 2000. Both were 49-years old. An adult daughter apparently witnessed the shooting, which occurred at their home located in a quiet, well-kept neighborhood across the street from Kaiser Elementary School in southwest Denver.
The couple is reported to have been arguing at the time of the shooting but there were no previous reports of domestic violence.
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