Aaron Thompson was responsible for the “serious bodily injury or the death” of his long-missing 6-year-old daughter Aaroné, an Arapahoe County jury concluded last year in a noncriminal trial.
The revelations are contained in an unpublished decision last month of the Colorado Court of Appeals.
Aaroné was reported missing from her southeast Aurora home by Thompson on Nov. 14, 2005. After three days of searching unsuccessfully for the child, Aurora police obtained a search warrant for the Thompson home. A custody order was issued to remove the remaining children from the house.
At that time, police said Aaroné probably had been killed. They named Thompson and Shelley Lowe, Thompson’s live-in girlfriend who has since died, as “persons of interest.”
Aaroné’s body hasn’t been found, and no arrests have been made in the case.
The Arapahoe County jury last year heard a nine-day “dependency and neglect” trial over the issue of whether the other children should be returned to the Thompson home.
Experts testified during that trial that Thompson’s children would be “at risk for serious harm” if returned to their father. The jury referred to “proven parental abuse or neglect” of Aaroné.
The jury’s opinion was not released publicly at the time, and its inclusion in the appellate ruling was first reported by 9News on Thursday.
The panel did not give specifics of the evidence it reviewed pointing to Thompson in Aarone’s death, but it is clear from the appellate decision that at least some of it would not be admissible in any criminal trial.
For example, the jury was allowed to consider that Thompson asserted a Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination and declined to testify in the proceedings – something a criminal-court judge would not allow a jury to consider. Additionally, the jury heard from experts quoting statements from the other children – testimony that is permissible in the dependency proceeding but would probably be excluded as hearsay in a criminal trial.
The Court of Appeals judges said testimony from relatives, caseworkers and the police indicated that Aaroné went missing long before she was reported missing by her father.
The appellate decision also said that Thompson and Lowe weren’t forthcoming about the circumstances of her disappearance, that they did not want the children to talk to the police, and that Aaroné was probably dead.
The dependency and neglect trial concluded April 19 with a finding by the jury that Thompson and Lowe were negligent parents and shouldn’t be reunited with their children.
“The jury … determined that father was responsible for serious bodily injury or the death of A.T. due to proven parental abuse or neglect,” according to the Court of Appeals’ Feb. 8 opinion, referring to Aaroné by her initials.
David Lane, Thompson’s lawyer, said Thursday that his client “absolutely denies any involvement in the disappearance of his daughter.”
“In terms of a murder case, if they have probable cause to arrest him, they will arrest him,” Lane said. “They apparently don’t have probable cause, because they haven’t arrested him.”
Lane stressed that the Arapahoe jury was deciding issues related to the custody of the children that had nothing to do with a criminal case.
“If other legal proceedings using other standards of proof conclude what they conclude, that is irrelevant to any issues facing Mr. Thompson in a criminal context,” Lane said.
A grand jury is purportedly hearing the matter, but Lane said that neither he nor Thompson has appeared before the grand jury.
In early December 2005, Lowe and Thompson denied in a TV interview that they had killed Aaroné. But several days later, court documents obtained by The Denver Post indicated that Lowe’s ex-boyfriend told authorities that Aaroné was dead and that Lowe and Thompson had buried her in a field.
Lowe, 33, died in May from an apparent heart attack.
The Court of Appeals’ opinion said that much of the expert witnesses’ testimony suggesting the children would be harmed if returned to Thompson was based on statements from the children.
Staff writer Howard Pankratz can be reached at 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com.
