A man who claimed he faked psychotic symptoms to avoid a lengthy prison term has escaped from the custody of the state mental hospital for the fifth time.
Keith Simpson, 54, was placed on escape status last night after he failed to return to Peer 1 Residential Program, a Denver halfway house at 3762 W. Princeton Cir., according to Eunice Wolther, spokeswoman for the Colorado Mental Health Institute of Pueblo.
Simpson was reported missing at 8:20 p.m. when he failed to return to the substance abuse treatment center after signing out, Wolther said.
Simpson, who is 6-foot tall and weighs 220 pounds, was last seen wearing a white t-shirt, black sweatpants, black slippers and a dark-colored hoodie, she said.
Following a long-established pattern, Simpson fled after he earned privileges to be in a non-secure setting.
Simpson last escaped on Aug. 9, 2006, when he had off-grounds privileges and walked away from the Pueblo hospital that does not have a gate surrounding the facility.
Arapahoe and Adams counties sent Simpson to the state hospital in 1992 after he was found not guilty by reason of insanity for robberies in which he threatened store clerks with a fake plastic hand grenade.
Simpson has long said that he faked symptoms of mental illness.
Several of Simpson’s institute psychiatrists dating to 1983 wrote in numerous reports that Simpson was malingering and had no psychotic symptoms. The reports were made available to the newspaper by the hospital after Simpson signed a release.
“Mr. Simpson admitted to having previously malingered psychotic symptoms to avoid charges under the habitual criminal statutes,” Drs. Todd Poch and Sheila Deitz wrote in a 1996 report to Arapahoe County District Judge John Leopold.
Simpson escaped twice in 1990. The first time, on May 5, he ordered a cab driver to take him to Denver, claiming he had a bomb in a sack.
The second time, on Dec. 11, Simpson escaped from the hospital during a ward dance, shoved a woman out of her car and drove the car through a garage door and into a telephone pole. According to a police report, the woman suffered a broken toe.
In 1992, he was convicted of kidnapping and escape and served two years in a Colorado prison for the crimes. In 2002, he escaped again, Wolther said.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
