Boulder – Two of the four youths being held in connection with the stabbing death of a Lafayette mother were charged as adults today.
Teenaged sweethearts Tess Damm, 15, and Bryan Grove, 17, were charged with conspiring to murder Linda Damm, Tess’s 52-year-old mother.
Grove was also charged with first-degree murder, as authorities believe he was the one who killed Damm in her Lafayette home in early February, and with evidence tampering.
Tess Damm faces a charge of being an accessory to the slaying and of tampering with evidence.
Another teen – 18-year-old Jared Guy, Grove’s best friend – was formally charged with being an accessory to a crime and with tampering with evidence. Police believe Guy participated in two failed attempts to dispose of Linda Damm’s body, according to a court record.
Charges against the fourth teen being held on suspicion of being an accessory to murder, 16-year-old Jared Smith, were postponed a week.
Grove, Damm and Guy all appeared in a Boulder District courtroom this morning to hear the charges against them. Grove and Guy wore jail-issue jumpsuits. Damm was dressed in blue jeans and a long-sleeved top, though she was also handcuffed. The three didn’t appear to make eye contact with one another.
Details of what happened inside Linda Damm’s house on West Brome Place remained murky, despite the release today of portions of police interviews with all four suspects. Indeed, each suspect appears to tell a different story of what happened.
In Grove’s interview with police, he told detectives he killed Linda Damm after the two got into a heated argument in which Damm said she wished Tess had never been born because then she wouldn’t have “this black guy hanging all over me,” according to Grove’s arrest affidavit. Grove is of Indian descent and was adopted.
Tess Damm told detectives that she and Smith were out for a drive when Grove killed her mom and only afterward did she learn about what happened, according to her arrest affidavit.
And Guy told detectives that Grove told him he stabbed Linda Damm in self-defense after Grove broke up a fight between Damm and Tess and then Damm came at him with a knife, according to his arrest affidavit.
But Smith told detectives, according to the court documents, that he, Grove and Tess Damm all gathered at an International House of Pancakes restaurant on the night of Feb. 3. There, he said, Grove and Tess Damm talked about how much they hated Linda Damm, with Grove saying, “I can fix that,” according to Tess’s arrest affidavit.
The trio left the restaurant on early Feb. 4 and drove back to the Damms’ home, Smith told detectives. There, Grove told Smith and Tess Damm to drive around and that he would call them when it was OK to come back, according to Grove’s affidavit.
A short time later, according to the document, Grove called and asked Tess Damm to drop off Smith so the two could move Linda Damm’s body into the back of her car.
