Investigators believe two suspects were involved in killing two prisoners and assaulting a third at the Bent County Correctional Facility a month ago, a spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections said Monday.
Prison spokeswoman Alondra Gonzalez acknowledged for the first time Monday that the prisoners’ deaths are being investigated as homicides and an assault between prisoners.
“Following the incident, two suspects were immediately removed from the general population and placed into a more secure facility,” Gonzalez said in the statement, one month to the day after the killings occurred. “Like any criminal investigation, details will be provided upon any indictments.”
Charles Gates, 27, and Michael Fisher, 59, were killed June 6 inside the Bent County prison. A third prisoner, who has not been publicly identified, was injured and taken to a hospital for treatment, Gonzalez said.
Prison officials have offered no additional details about what happened, how the men were killed, how their bodies were discovered or how the suspects were identified. They have not publicly named the suspects, who have not yet been charged. Department of Corrections officials have also refused to say when or where in the prison the men were killed or at what time their bodies were discovered.
Bent County Sheriff Jake Six said his agency was called to the prison after 11 p.m. on June 6 after a missed count at the facility. Deputies worked to secure the perimeter of the prison while staff searched inside for the missing men. They were discovered after a couple of hours, the sheriff said.
The Bent County Correctional Facility is one of two private prisons in Colorado run by CoreCivic, a private prison company.
The victims
The two men killed were serving very different sentences, prison and court records show.
Fisher was convicted of first-degree murder and was serving life without parole for a 1996 killing, according to court and prison records.
On Sept. 19, 1996, Fisher and a second person planned to steal drugs from a woman in Adams County. The person Fisher was working with shot and killed the woman when she refused to hand over the drugs, according to a in 2000 that upheld Fisher’s convictions for felony murder, aggravated robbery and conspiracy.
Although Fisher was sentenced to life in prison, he was working toward his release and was hopeful that he would get out, his attorney, Nick James, wrote in a motion filed in Fisher’s case on June 17, after Fisher’s death.
Fisher was sentenced for felony murder, which means he was found guilty of murder even though he didn’t pull the trigger. Felony murder carried a mandatory life sentence when Fisher was convicted, but lawmakers reclassified the crime as second-degree murder in 2021, which meant people convicted of felony murder after that date faced a maximum 48 years in prison. Some prisoners who had faced life in prison on a felony murder conviction were released after the change.
Fisher had a pending clemency application before Gov. Jared Polis and, under new legislation, could have been eligible to have his sentence reviewed once he turned 60, James wrote in the motion. Fisher was also attempting to challenge his conviction because disgraced CBI scientist Yvonne “Missy” Woods testified during his jury trial, according to the motion, which seeks to posthumously erase Fisher’s conviction since he died while challenging it.
James noted in the motion that Fisher was “doing well in prison.”
“Despite his disappointment in the lack of programming available at Bent County, he remained positive and was working with other inmates on developing peer-led mentoring and education programs within the facility,” James wrote in the motion.
Gates was serving time in connection with five different cases; his longest sentence was a nine-year term for a 2023 motor vehicle theft in Douglas County. He was also serving time for drug possession, assault, theft, vehicular eluding, obstructing a police officer and burglary, according to court records.
Kayla Martin, who said she was a longtime friend of Gates, described the man as funny, protective, caring and smart.
“He’s not a very trusting person due to past traumas, but when he gave you his trust, you were considered family and he took that seriously,” she said. “He would do anything for you. Even if he didn’t have the means to help, he would find a way… he had a heart of gold.”
