A man hosted a barbecue for his neighbors last Saturday. Like him, they are all staying at a Motel 6 in Aurora. Like him, they are homeless or unemployed or both and have found refuge at $34.14 a night. That’s the weekly rate.
The man came into a small windfall and paid for the chicken, the hot dogs and baked beans and potato salad. “Come and get something to eat,” he calls to passers-by. This includes a young couple for whom he paid for a night’s stay. He has paid for the rooms of several families, bought food and shoes for the kids. He took a dozen of his motel neighbors to lunch at Applebees.
In this manner, the man spends the last of his money.
That’s the story I set out to write. It’s not the story I found. The man’s name is Ty Dutcher. He recently resurfaced here in Colorado. Ty is the middle son of Carl and JoAnna Dutcher. They were shot to death on New Year’s Eve 2000 in the tiny community of Guffey, west of Colorado Springs. Their bodies were found a few days later, along with that of their 15-year-old grandson, and Ty’s nephew, Anthony.
Four Palmer High School students, including one of Tony’s friends, were convicted for their parts in the murders. Three will remain imprisoned well into adulthood.
All murders have ripple effects. This one’s proved far-reaching. The aftermath of the killings saw within the Dutcher family suicide, vehicular homicide, incarceration, the death of a child, homelessness, job loss, alcoholism. The last three afflict Ty.
“No one pays attention to what happens after murders like these,” says Stephanie Hamilton, Ty’s longtime friend. “What’s happened here is so broken, you almost can’t fix it.”
Stephanie invited me to the barbecue. Ty wasn’t particularly thrilled she told a reporter what he was doing, but he greeted me graciously. The money he spent came from a settlement in a defamation lawsuit he filed against the author and publishers of a book about the murders.
Ty Dutcher is no saint. He’ll tell you that himself. He has misdemeanor arrests going back before the murders. He has a penchant for driving without a license and for failing to appear in court. In October, he is scheduled for trial in a 7-year-old DUI case.
But a short passage in the book said Ty had been convicted for drugs and robbery, which he verifiably has never been. He says his boss fired him after the book came out. The courts dismissed the case on jurisdictional grounds and the publishers, admitting no wrongdoing, paid Ty $6,000.
“Something told me I should use some of it to help others,” he says. “I’m blessed to have what I have, and I’d rather go without than see a little girl or boy go hungry or sleep in a truck in the parking lot.”
It strikes me as a most generous, foolish way for a man with no place to live, no job and a very sick wife to use the last of his money. I say that as someone habitually foolish with money.
“You could have rented an apartment,” I say.
“I could have,” he says and then points to a little girl.
“Look at that happy face,” he says. “That’s what it’s all about.”
He tells me a few days later that he’s just trying to do the right thing for his mom. “She was my best friend, and I should have been there for her. I feel like I should have known.” He starts to cry.
Why a person does what he or she does is never easy to figure out. It’s Stephanie who tells me Ty’s mom was a funny, generous, vivacious lady who would have done exactly the same thing as Ty.
“Yes, I think Ty’s a little lost and no one has told him more he needs to get it together,” she says, “but this is also the way his mom would have wanted to be remembered. And this is how he wants to remember her. Not as the woman whose body lay in the bathroom behind the toilet. Not as a murder victim, but a generous, loving woman. I think this is his way of bringing her back to life in a way.”
No more need be said than that.
Tina Griego writes Sundays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. Reach her at 303-954-2699 or tgriego@denverpost.com.
