In the months before he was charged with strangling a geology surveyor in Colorado, Robert Amos’ Arizona neighbors and co-workers said he threatened to blow them up with pipe bombs and boasted he had already murdered several people.
Two co-workers sought restraining orders against the convicted killer, who faces first-degree-murder charges in the strangulation of Alyssa Heberton-Morimoto on June 26 as she worked in the Pike-San Isabel National Forest.
Amos, who also went by the name Dennis Cook, served 19 years in Colorado prisons for strangling an elderly Kansas City music teacher in 1981.
Bullhead City, Ariz., co-workers, Bullhead City Municipal Court records and police allege that Amos was a menacing and volatile presence in the small town near the Nevada border.
Employees at Mad Dog Fitness and Woody’s Food Store filed restraining orders against Amos, and he was charged with threatening and intimidating. The court case is pending.
Peggy Hirshfeld, who works at the fitness center, said Amos kept a notebook with pictures of past employers that he wanted to retaliate against.
On April 17, Amos became enraged when an employee of Mojave Mental Health refused to give him medication for Parkinson’s disease, said Bullhead City police spokesman Steve Smith.
“‘Do you want me to pull out my guns here,”‘ Smith said, quoting a customer who witnessed the incident at the clinic. “‘You don’t know what will happen if I don’t get my meds.”‘
Smith said he yelled that he had killed several inmates while he was in prison. Smith also said Amos claimed to have cancer and Parkinson’s disease and had no reason to live.
Amos began cooking and stocking meat at Woody’s in April, said store manager Randee Medrano. But Amos never followed orders, she said. When she tried to correct him, she said, he would yell profanities at her.
A young co-worker at the store, who was about 23, quit after Amos repeatedly sexually harassed her and asked her out on dates, Medrano said.
“He really frightened her,” she said. “He was creepy.”
Amos started working at the fitness center shortly before he quit his job at Woody’s.
Fitness-center employee Hirsh feld said Amos told her that he would wait about a month and then return to the deli with pipe bombs to blow the place up.
A Mad Dog employee went to Woody’s and warned Medrano about Amos’ alleged threat, she said. Shortly afterward, Amos entered the store, Medrano said.
“He stared at me. He didn’t even blink,” Medrano said. “After that, I sat in court for four hours and got a (restraining order).”
Hirshfeld said Amos often came into Mad Dog Fitness after his shift as a janitor. He would follow her around and tell her about the people who “screwed him over,” including a couple with two children at the trailer park where he lived.
Amos told her he could put a pipe bomb under their propane tank and blow them up without getting caught, Hirshfeld said. She also obtained a restraining order.
“He was so mad, spit would come spraying out of his mouth,” she said. “He was always mad about something.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
