Kauri Tiyme was a highly intelligent, gifted artist whose bubbly personality and skills with tattoos drew people to her.
So when she was found dead in a Denver motel room Oct. 18 — and the notes in the room written by her ex-husband said she died in a suicide pact that went awry — people couldn’t believe it.
“She wanted to live,” said her longtime Breckenridge friend Tiffany Blatnick. “She’d actually just got done doing this genetic experiment for longevity. She was very health-conscious. No drinking, no drugs. I mean, she was extremely, extremely healthy.”
Tiyme had operated a tattoo shop called Breckenridge Body Art for several years.
But according to friends, she wanted to move to Denver and open a tattoo shop and gallery in the city.
“You know, she had this dream of making everything into one like a performing-arts studio — and tattoo artists, piercers, hangings, all that kind of stuff,” said Mike Ligin, who owns the Breckenridge Tattoo Shop, which was formerly the space occupied by Kauri Tiyme in Breckenridge.
Tiyme and her ex-husband, Keenu Tiyme, had gotten a divorce in August in Summit County.
A check of records shows that neither had a criminal history.
In the notes found in the hotel room where the body was found, Keenu Tiyme said his former wife was depressed and wanted to die. She asked him to kill her in the least painful manner, Detective Daniel Wiley said in an arrest affidavit.
The understanding, Keenu Tiyme told Wiley, was that he would kill himself as well.
Tiyme told detectives he ultimately killed her using a variety of means; Tiyme said he tried to kill himself, but it didn’t work.
Keenu Tiyme fled Colorado. On Oct. 22, he was arrested by the New Mexico State Patrol.
The Denver district attorney’s office charged him with one count of first-degree murder.
Kauri Tiyme’s friends didn’t buy his story of being part of a suicide pact.
“He was very introverted, you know what I mean,” said Ligin, who lived with Keenu Tiyme when Ligin first moved to Breckenridge. “All to himself, quiet, spent a lot of time on a laptop.”
Blatnick describes Keenu Tiyme as “definitely an oddball.”
“He was very, very quiet,” Blatnick said. “. . . As far as I knew, Kauri did love him dearly. But she was ready to move on and grow, and he just wasn’t.”
Keenu Tiyme, who is being held at the Denver County Jail, declined an interview request.
When Kauri Tiyme moved to Denver, she moved in with Peter Ausan, who said their relationship began after the Tiymes separated.
“She was the most intelligent person I ever met,” Ausan said. “I would never have thought she was suicidal.”
Ausan said that her personality, her intelligence and her artistic skill drew many people to her.
He said that he knew of two clients from Washington, D.C., who flew to Colorado to get tattoos from her and one person who flew from Australia.
“She was just incredibly smart and incredibly caring and kind,” Blatnick said. “She wasn’t ready to die.”
Howard Pankratz: 303-954-1939 or hpankratz@denverpost.com
