The former director of the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, who helped modernize the agency’s laboratories, has died after a two-year battle with lung cancer. He was 69.
Carl W. Whiteside, who died Sunday night, is survived by his ex-wife, Terry Whiteside, 64; his son, Lane, 38; daughter, Valerie, 42; and five grandchildren.
“He had the most integrity of any man I’ve ever known,” Lane Whiteside said. “He never compromised his values for anything. He battled cancer in the same way. He gave it his all.”
Carl Whiteside will be buried this spring in Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia with full military honors, his son said.
Friends and colleagues described the former CBI boss as a consummate policeman who even after he was running CBI would work on major cases.
“He was the best criminal investigator I ever saw,” said former Denver prosecutor and retired District Judge Dick Spriggs.
Whiteside had been an undercover narcotics detective with the Lakewood Police Department in the 1960s, said Chuck Green, former editor of The Denver Post and a close friend of Whiteside’s.
Whiteside joined the CBI in 1970, three years after the agency was formed.
Within a few years, he led an investigation against union organizers who were torching multimillion-dollar condominium complexes when contractors refused to unionize, Spriggs said.
Undercover CBI agents flew a state plane to New Mexico, picked up dynamite the union workers planned to use to blow up the Southglenn Shopping Center, and flew back to Colorado to finalize the deal.
Whiteside arrested the bomber in his office, Green said. Spriggs, who was the prosecutor, said three men were convicted in the plot.
Whiteside became director of the CBI in 1987 and served until 1999. During his administration, CBI modernized its laboratories and expanded into satellite offices in Grand Junction and Pueblo, Green said.
Green recounted an incident at City Park Golf Course in which a young child snatched Whiteside’s ball from the ground and ran. Whiteside jumped into his golf cart and chased the child down. When he latched onto the boy’s collar, the child threatened to call police.
” ‘I am the police,’ ” Green said Whiteside exclaimed. “I’ll never forget the look on the kid’s face.”
After retirement, Whiteside moved to Bradenton, Fla.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com
