CENTENNIAL — Aaron Thompson of Aurora is on trial in Arapahoe County District Court for the death of his daughter Aaroné, who was reported missing in 2005. The girl would have been 6 years old at the time of her disappearance. Her body has not been found.
Electronic devices cannot transmit from the courtroom, but The Denver Post will provide trial updates when possible.
1:43 p.m. After the lunch break, prosecutors resumed playing the DVD recording of Thompson’s interview with police made late on the night of Nov. 14, 2005, the day he reported his daughter missing.
Aurora police Detective Chris Fanning says it is “strange” that Thompson doesn’t allow his kids to have friends. “We keep ’em tight,” Thompson tells him.
Fanning then puts the pressure on Thompson.
Fanning: “If we don’t find her soon, there’s going to be a whole lot of detectives assigned to this case. They can’t find her. We are going to be around your house, around a lot of places. You don’t have anywhere for us to look.”
Thompson: “You know how we feel.”
Fanning: “We don’t have witnesses, and we don’t have a lot of things that are corroborating what you are saying. So if there is something, Aaron, I’m begging you at this point. ”
Thompson: “I ain’t touched my child. I don’t know what to do. It’s my baby girl, man. I don’t know what to do.”
Near the conclusion of the interview, Fanning leaves the interrogation room. Alone, Thompson appears exhausted and puts his heads on the table, sighs, then sits back up.
“Aaroné, where are you, man?” he mutters. “Where are you Aaroné?”
11:20 a.m. Prosecutors play a DVD of the police interview with Thompson on the day Aaroné was first reported missing.
Thompson is sitting alone at a table wearing a dark green shirt in a tiny interview room. After a few minutes, Fanning enters the room.
He asks Thompson about his day, and Thompson says he took his son Eric to school. When he got back, Thompson said, “Aaroné’s up, and I told her to go take a bath and get dressed.”
Thompson said Aaroné ran her bath water “but I think she just washed up.” He, Aaroné and another daughter go downstairs to watch TV.
At about noon, he makes them a bowl of cereal. After they finish, Aaroné has a cookie and then asks for more.
“I look at her, and she just standing there. I said ‘I ain’t giving you no more cookies. Come down here and sit down.’ She came down and sit by me, then went back up to her room.”
That was about 12:30 p.m., Thompson said.
After about 20 minutes, “I just got that feeling,” Thompson told Fanning. He said it was too quiet, so he went back upstairs to check on Aaroné. He looked in her closet, under her bed, in the boys’ bedroom but could not find her anywhere, he said.
At that point, he wakes up Shelley Lowe.
“Then I started panicking a little bit,” Thompson told Fanning. “I told Shelley to keep looking for her, I’m going to go in the truck and look around the neighborhood.”
Thompson says he checks a nearby park and strip mall, but does not see her. He goes back to the home and calls police, but does not use the emergency 911 number.
Police arrive and search the house and area, but find no sign of Aaroné.
Close to midnight, Thompson drives to police to headquarters after agreeing to a comprehensive, recorded interview.
Fanning: “Why do you think she left?”
Thompson: “The only scenario I could see, she seen her brother and Rajon do it, so she figures she could do it herself and come back. Only thing going through my head.”
Fanning: “What do you think happened to her?”
Thompson: “I don’t like to say things. The longer they go, the worse I’m thinking about her.”
Fanning continues to quiz Thompson about where the child could be.
Thompson: “I don’t know whether she went left or right, man.”
Fanning: Who would have been able to do this, to take her away for a long period of time?”
Thompson: “Nobody.”
Fanning: “What do you think should happen to somebody who harms kids?”
Thompson: “I think they should get arrested.
“Somebody got my daughter right now.”
9:45 a.m. A tape is played of an interview with Aaroné’s brother, Thompson and Lowe’s biological son.
He says the last time he saw Aaroné was at about 5:30 or 6 a.m. on the day she was reported missing. He says he saw her on the bottom bunk of a bunkbed set. The boy was about to jump in the shower and get ready for school when he saw her.
Officer Rachel Nuñez asks whether he has seen any recent pictures of Aaroné, and he says “yes,” when they went to the mountains and to the beach in Florida a year earlier.
He says both Shelley Lowe and Aaron Thompson would hit the kids when they got in trouble, with a belt on the butt over the clothes and on the skin.
Sometimes another sister would get five “whacks” for getting in trouble, the brother said.
The officer asks the boy whether Aaroné’s looks have changed since a picture of her that was taken a few years earlier. He says she is taller and bigger and has different hair.
“I hope they find her because I am missing her,” he says of Aaroné.
9:18 a.m. An interview with another child in the home is played. The police sergeant asks similar questions.
“She was lying down in bed,” the girl said.
Authorities say Thompson and his live-in girlfriend, Lowe, coached the kids on what to say.
8:40 a.m. The prosecution plays an audio recording of an interview between Sgt. Nuñez and Aaroné’s stepsister. Nuñez asks the girl several questions about their home life, including what happens when they get in trouble.
“If we lie about it, we either get a whuppin’ or (inaudible),” the girl says.
The officer then asks the girl if she knows where Aaroné is, and the girl answers, “I have no clue.”
She said the last time she saw her was the morning she was reported missing.
