A year after Brent J. Brents’ crime spree through Denver and Aurora, the case continues to reverberate through the agencies that failed to arrest the serial rapist in a timely manner after he assaulted a prostitute and admitted to molesting an 8-year-old boy.
That delay gave Brents the opportunity to attack a dozen more women and children, many of whom he raped at knifepoint.
“The scrutiny, I think it will be on us for a number of years because of the notoriety of that case,” said Aurora Deputy Police Chief Terry Jones.
“It made me sick to think that because a pedophile wasn’t arrested and a case sat on the shelf for too long that people were horribly attacked,” said District Attorney Carol Chambers.
The Brents case revealed problems within the Aurora and Denver police departments and the 18th Judicial District – from issues with the DNA database to the process of getting an arrest warrant signed.
Denver has improved the way DNA evidence is processed, and Aurora has restructured the way cases are tracked; the DA’s office put safeguards into the system so that cases won’t languish.
DNA test took 2 months
Brents was released from prison in July 2004. Three months later, he raped a 25-year-old woman with a history of prostitution, a crime that could have provided authorities with their first evidence of a re-offense. Yet because of a backlog of cases, it took police nearly two months to test that DNA and submit it to a database.
The DNA sample was submitted by Denver police on Dec. 14, 2004, and uploaded into the state DNA database, managed by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. It could have matched a profile of Brents from his 1988 sexual-assault conviction, but a contractor was performing a transfer between computer servers that day and never placed the samples into the new system.
A match was not made until Feb. 16, 2005, when Denver police ran samples from five sexual assaults through their own database and received a match to the October 2004 assault. Investigators then ran that profile through the state DNA database and hit Brents.
There was another opportunity to stop many of Brents’ crimes. A month after the October rape, the mother of an 8-year-old called Aurora police to allege Brents had molested her son.
An officer, who was training to be a detective, contacted Brents, offering him an interview with a promise he wouldn’t be arrested. In the discussion, Brents admitted to inadvertently touching the boy.
The officer took a week to write his report. Then, the DA’s office took 11 days to determine charges were warranted and waited more than a month for the officer to sign the report. The DA’s office said it tried to e-mail the officer, but most police officers don’t have e-mail accounts. DA officials say the messages were never returned as undeliverable.
The officer signed the report Jan. 19, 2005, and an arrest warrant was entered a week later.
Police say Brents attacked 12 more women and children until his capture on Feb. 18, 2005.
In the fallout, the Aurora City Council suspended City Manager Ron Miller and Deputy City Manager Frank Ragan, who oversees the Police Department, for two weeks without pay. Police Chief Ricky Bennett stepped down. He’s now a captain in the department and didn’t return calls about the Brents case.
CBI director Robert Cantwell told The Denver Post last week that the transfer between databases that held up identifying Brents was a repair that happens only once every five years. Still, Cantwell said, CBI technicians now perform the upload of DNA samples manually instead of automatically, to ensure that none are missed.
“We’ve asked that Denver (police) only submit theirs on Thursdays, so we can clear the day for them,” Cantwell said.
Denver division chief Dave Fisher declined to comment on specific changes made in the Denver crime lab. A backlog still exists, he said, but “we were concerned about backlog issues before the Brents case.” He added: “The crime lab was a major piece of solution in the Brents case.”
Fisher said police have since reorganized the investigations division, creating a “major case” section. For example, sexual assaults and homicides are under the same lieutenant. Fisher said the Brents case highlighted a need for flexibility – the ability to pull resources from other areas, if needed. When Brents targeted prostitutes, for example, the sexual-assault detectives relied on the vice unit for their knowledge of women who worked the street.
In Aurora, “we don’t use the promise word anymore,” said Lt. Bob Stef, head of Aurora police’s crimes-against-children unit. “If we develop probable cause to arrest based on an interview, then we will make that arrest.”
In the past, police say they followed protocols set up by the DA’s office that urged detectives to consult prosecutors on sex cases that involved questionable statements from children. Chambers denies her office told police how to make arrests.
DA sets up new protocols
Cases that detectives give to the DA’s office are tracked using a new computer program. If detectives haven’t heard back from the DA’s office, they contact the prosecutors, Stef said.
The DA’s office also set up protocols, ensuring detectives and their supervisors will be contacted within 24 hours of a case being ready for a signature.
If there’s no response, the chief deputy district attorney will call the police department again, following a directive issued by Chambers after the Brents case. Also, affidavits for arrest warrants on high-risk offenders should be put into the computer the same day.
“There was a huge lesson learned,” Chambers said. “I would hope the Brents case was a one-in-a-million event.”
Staff writer Jeremy P. Meyer can be reached at 303-820-1175 or jpmeyer@denverpost.com.
Staff writer Amy Herdy can be reached at 303-820-1752 or aherdy@denverpost.com.
