Witness helps police arrest heist suspect
A witness to a bank robbery followed a suspect who walked out and boarded an RTD bus, police said Thursday.
The suspect, Chester Henderson, 43, entered the World Savings Bank at 3490 Youngfield St. in Wheat Ridge about 12:35 p.m. and reportedly told the teller he had a bomb, police said. He demanded cash, which the teller provided, then left and boarded the bus at W. 38th Ave. and Youngfield, they said.
The witness, who followed in his car, stayed on the phone with police dispatch until the suspect was located on the bus and taken into custody without incident at 12:42 p.m.
Man gets life sentence in Lakewood slaying
A Thornton man was sentenced Thursday to life in prison with no parole for the murder of an 82-year-old Lakewood paleontologist.
Michael James Wessel, 41, also received an additional 54-year prison sentence for the slaying and robbery of Charles Repenning at his Lakewood home in January 2005.
Wessel was convicted by a Jefferson County jury last month of first-degree murder, reckless manslaughter, first-degree burg lary, robbery of an at-risk adult, theft from an at-risk adult, aggravated motor vehicle theft, second-degree burglary, false imprisonment and three violent- crime counts.
Repenning, who was awarded a Bronze Star and a Purple Heart after surviving a German prisoner-of-war camp during World War II, lived alone in his home on the 9000 block of West Fifth Place.
His body was found when a neighbor tried to return his dog, which had been loose in the neighborhood.
Applications rejected for 2 charter schools
Two charter-school applications were denied for a second time Thursday night by the Jefferson County Board of Education.
Charter applications for the Madison Charter High School and the Teddy Roosevelt Charter School, remanded for review by the state board of education after both were turned down last fall, failed again, said school district spokesman Rick Kaufman.
The district turned down the Madison application by a 5-0 vote because the district has a new north area option high school opening next fall and wants to give it a chance to get started and be successful before approving any other charters in the north area, Kaufman said.
The Teddy Roosevelt application lost by a 3-2 vote because the application was mostly unchanged from last fall and the board didn’t feel it offered anything substantially different from what was already being offered in neighborhood and other charter schools in the area, he said.
Company settles suit over genealogy scam
A company that sold bogus genealogical yearbooks has settled a consumer-protection lawsuit filed by the Colorado attorney general.
Morphcorp LLC and president Maxwell MacMaster agreed to pay a $30,000 penalty and make changes in the way its “Family Yearbooks” are marketed.
When the suit was filed in November, Attorney General John Suthers called it a lucrative scam that swindled 150,000 people nationwide who bought the fake family histories for $49.95 each.
The yearbooks all had the same family coat of arms, family recipes and family jokes.
“The ‘Family Yearbook’ was nothing more than a photocopy of the same material deceptively sold to thousands of customers,” Suthers said Thursday.
Remains identified as man missing in Jan.
Human remains of a man missing since Jan. 31 were found by Larimer County Search and Rescue personnel in the Buckhorn Canyon in the Roosevelt National Forest west of Fort Collins on Thursday, said sheriff’s spokeswoman Eloise Campanella.
Sheriff’s and coroner’s investigators identified the man as Bart Thomas Strain. An autopsy will be conducted today.
Strain, 30, was last seen Jan. 31, and his car was found Feb. 2 near the Buckhorn Canyon ranger station. As many as 50 people took part in the search.
Salazar matriarch has tests after aneurysm
Emma Salazar, the 83-year-old matriarch of a family that includes U.S. Rep. John and Sen. Ken Salazar, underwent tests at Swedish Medical Center’s neurology department Thursday afternoon after suffering a cerebral aneurysm.
“She is conscious and in good spirits,” reported son LeRoy Salazar, who operates the family’s Salazar Natural Beef business on the Manassas ranch that has been in the Salazar family for more than 150 years.
In a cerebral aneurysm, there is swelling in a weakened wall of a blood vessel in the brain. Aneurysms result from congenital defects and from pre-existing conditions, including high blood pressure and atherosclerosis (fatty deposits in the arteries).
It is a life-threatening disorder, serious enough to prompt U.S. Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid to announce Thursday afternoon that Emma Salazar was extremely ill.
Emma Salazar and her husband, Henry, who died in 2001, raised eight children, including triplets, in the modest Manassas farmhouse where she still lives. The farmhouse famously lacked electricity and telephone service until 1981.
