Boulder – Three teens were charged Wednesday as adults in the slaying of a Lafayette woman on the same day newly released documents revealed chilling versions of the killing.
Jared Smith, 16, who is being held in the death of 52-year-old Linda Damm, said the events leading to the killing started Feb. 3 at a Westminster restaurant when Damm’s daughter, Tess, was complaining about her mother.
“I can fix that,” Tess’ boyfriend, Bryan Grove, said, according to court documents describing Smith’s account to police.
Tess Damm initially told police that Grove, 17, killed her mother without her knowledge, according to her arrest warrant. After Tess was confronted with Smith’s statement, she said she told Grove, “OK, whatever,” after Grove offered to fix her problem, the document said. The 15-year-old told police she didn’t think Grove was going to kill her mom.
Grove is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and tampering with evidence. He is being held in adult confinement at the Boulder County Jail and is on suicide watch.
Tess Damm is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with evidence and being an accessory to a crime. A third teen, Jared Guy, 18, faces the same accessory and tampering charges.
Prosecutors postponed filing of charges against Smith until at least next week.
Carolyn French, a spokeswoman for the Boulder district attorney’s office, said Grove and Tess Damm were charged as adults “because of the serious nature of the case.”
There are several versions of what happened leading up to the Feb. 4 slaying.
Smith, in the account to police, said after the exchange over fixing the problem, Tess, Smith and Grove drove to Linda Damm’s house.
There, Smith told police, Grove got out of the car and told Smith and Tess to drive around until he called them and said it was OK to return.
In Grove’s version of events, he told police he decided to not drive around with Tess and Smith because he had to get up early for a job interview, court documents say.
But, inside the house, he said, he got into a fierce argument with Linda Damm over her drinking. The fight escalated until Grove said Damm shouted that she wished her daughter had never been born because then she wouldn’t have “this black guy hanging all over me,” according to the affidavit.
Enraged, Grove said, he choked Damm to unconsciousness, then grabbed a small knife and thrust it into her neck so deeply that he couldn’t pull it back out, the document says.
Grove said he then went to get a large kitchen knife and stabbed her several more times in the neck, twisting the knife each time, until she stopped breathing, the affidavit states.
The account, though, contradicts what Tess Damm and Guy said Grove told them, according to the documents.
In Tess’ version, she said Grove told her he followed Linda Damm up the stairs to her room – after asking for her to find a TV remote control – locked the door behind them and killed her.
And in Guy’s arrest affidavit, he told police that Grove told him that he arrived at Tess’ house one day to find a drunken Linda Damm choking Tess. Grove told Guy that he threw Damm off Tess and that, when Damm came at him with a knife, he wrestled the knife away and stabbed her.
Grove, Guy and Tess tried and failed twice to dump Damm’s body, according to the court documents.
They were planning to try again, this time by driving to Wyoming and dumping her body in a field, when an anonymous tip brought police to the house on West Brome Place near midnight Feb. 27, the affidavits state.
Teenagers who attended the court hearing Wednesday morning had only praise for their jailed friends.
Smith was an outstanding football player, boisterous and nice, loving toward his girlfriend, said Quinn McNierney, a teammate at Centaurus High School.
Guy was a peer educator with an anti-violence group. Last week, he received an award from the Boulder County commissioners for overcoming adversity in his life.
Tess and Grove were sweet people, deeply in love, their friends said.
“They loved each other so much,” said 15-year-old Grace Matthews. “You think about high school relations and you think it will never last. But Bryan was very mature, and he was always thinking about what he could do for Tess. They lived for each other.”
And now, the teens said, they are left like everyone else, confused, worried, wondering what happened and what went wrong.
“I want to talk to her,” friend Andrew Stygar said of Tess. “I want to hear it from her. I don’t want to hear it from the media or some third-string people. I want to hear from her what happened.”
Staff writer Kieran Nicholson contributed to this report.
Staff writer John Ingold can be reached at 720-929-0898 or jingold@denverpost.com.
