CENTRAL CITY — By the time a cell-tower maintenance man found the remains of Mark Francis, his body was covered with snow and frozen to the ground, and his midsection had been consumed by a mountain lion.
The 2002 discovery, along with 19 spent bullet shells surrounding Francis just off the “Oh My God” Road above Idaho Springs, would remain an unsolved crime for months until some careless burglars began talking.
Their story of a trap set on a dark night, of a friendship betrayed and of a “practice killing” will put shooter Brent McKellip in prison for life when he is sentenced Monday.
“This was just the sickest thing,” said Central City Police Sgt. Mark Douglas. “What kind of friends would do this?”
The story began four years ago, when McKellip, then 22, recruited his younger cousins, Zach McKellip and Troy Santarelli, to team with him in a home-invasion and extortion ring — a “mini-Mafia,” according to Douglas, a Clear Creek County sheriff’s deputy at the time.
“At one point, Brent suggested that they should each kill somebody for practice, in case they had to kill somebody during their break-ins,” Douglas said.
In February of that year, they even cased a metro-area shopping center in search of a victim — but grew bored and turned back.
A short trip to reload
At a drunken 18th birthday party on Feb. 28 for Zach, McKellip announced that he would shoot Franci — Zach’s lifelong best friend — that night.
“Zach just goes along with it and says, ‘All right,”‘ Douglas said. “He later said he thought it was just booze talk and he didn’t think it would happen.”
With Justin Reents, McKellip and his cousins persuaded Francis to go with them to the top of Virginia Canyon to retrieve a truck they had stolen.
Parking in a pullout from the gravel “Oh My God” Road — so named for its precipitous drop-offs and tight switchbacks — the group headed into the woods. Zach and Justin sprinted off into the trees, suggesting later that it was to avoid being around if McKellip was serious about killing Francis. Meanwhile, a drunk Francis played “hide and seek” among the pines with McKellip.
When the unwitting Francis reappeared, McKellip shocked him by pulling out a 9 mm handgun and shooting him the first time. Then — as the wounded Francis shouted, “Stop! Stop! Don’t do that!” and curled up into a fetal position — McKellip fired three more times.
Francis lay squirming with pain and gasping for breath, while McKellip trudged 500 yards through knee-deep snow to his Chevrolet Suburban, retrieved a clip of 15 bullets, and returned to fire them into his victim from point-blank range.
Mark Francis, who was 23, died in the snow that night.
The group drove back to Idaho Springs in complete silence, other than the ringleader saying: “It wasn’t like TV. He didn’t fly through the air,” Douglas recalled from interrogations.
Remorse reveals crime
When Francis didn’t show up for his March 7 birthday party, his family reported him missing.
A drifter who hung out with a rough crowd, he had a fiery temper and drank too much, said his father, Pat. But he also had a kind side and a ribald sense of humor.
“He was a warm person. Little children and pets would come up to Mark like he was a magnet,” Pat Francis said.
A good carpenter, self-taught mechanic and all-around handyman, Francis had moved to Leadville in search of work in the weeks before he was slain and seemed to be on the right path.
But his best friend Zach kept bringing him back to a lifestyle of booze and drugs and into the deadly web of his older cousin.
On March 18, nearly three weeks after the slaying, McKellip and his cousins forced their way into the home of a Jefferson County couple and robbed them at gunpoint. Before departing, McKellip warned the man not to alert law enforcement and instructed him to get $500, which the group would come back to collect the next day.
Sheriff’s detectives, staking out the residence the next day in a marked car, were amazed when the culprits returned.
“These guys weren’t rocket scientists,” Douglas said.
Meanwhile, Douglas was close to connecting the McKellip clan to Francis’ death, but his case was largely circumstantial.
Facing 10 years in prison for the robbery, a remorseful Zach started talking. The others reluctantly corroborated the story.
“At his sentencing, Zach said: ‘Your honor, I’ll always have to live with the fact that on my birthday, my best friend was murdered and I wasn’t brave enough to prevent it,”‘ Pat Francis said.
In exchange for their testimony, Zach McKellip and Troy Santarelli pleaded guilty to felonies but were not given additional time on their sentences in the home-invasion case. Charges were dismissed entirely against Reents, the teen who was said to have no part in the murder plot.
Friends and relatives built a small stone cairn beside the dirt road where Mark Francis was left to die.
“He was lured up there and shot in cold blood just so Brent could prove that he could do it,” said Mark Hurlbert, the district attorney who won a first-degree murder conviction against McKellip after a nine-day trial in March. “Mark Francis just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time when Brent was looking to kill somebody.”
