Floyd T. Hafley, 50, photo courtesy Denver Police Department
The high-profile Wrangler Bar has had a reputation of being a gay bar for a certain clientele.
Bare-chested men with hairy backs and shoulders – bears – were always welcomed.
Effeminate gays wearing lipstick and dresses – in drag – were not so much.
At 2 a.m., May 1, 2005, Floyd T. Hafley Jr., a successful stockbroker for Charles Schwab, was last seen waiting for a taxi outside the Wrangler on the 1700 block of Logan Street.
Three hours later, he was found by a passerby several miles away in a parking lot.
His class ring from Hearne High School in Texas had been ripped from his finger. His clothes had been taken and his wallet stolen.
“He was in great agony,” said his father, Floyd T. Hafley Sr., 81, of Hearne, Texas, the former city manager of the town. “He was shot in different parts of his body. He had seven bullet wounds.”
Hafley Jr. was hospitalized and died later that morning.
Ten years after his son died, Hafley Sr. spoke in a phone interview from his home in Texas that he is concerned that the case wasn’t investigated as aggressively as it should have been. He said he believes key clues were overlooked.
Whatever did happen, started at Wrangler’s Bar, he said.
