Officers responded to 911 calls about a fight in the 2100 block of East Colfax Avenue at 4:22 p.m. Tuesday, including one caller who told dispatchers a man wearing underwear got into their car and tried to carjack them.

Someone in the car started fighting with the man to try to get him out of the car, hitting him on the head and upper body before pulling him out of the vehicle. More people called 911 after the man walked away, entered a business and caused a “disturbance,” police officials said.

Officers who first came across the man inside the business said he “appeared to be breathing heavily and began yelling.” The officers handcuffed and subdued the man as he struggled, and later asked emergency medical crews to respond.

The man did not have visible injuries, and officers did not use Tasers or pepper spray during the arrest, Denver police said.

Emergency crews took him to a hospital, and he later was pronounced dead.

The State Patrol, Colorado Bureau of Investigation and DPD’s major crimes division are investigating the case with oversight from the

The Denver medical examiner’s office will release the man’s name and cause of death.

Noelle Davis was last seen on foot near West Sixth Avenue and Zang Street in Lakewood at 5 p.m. Sunday, . She was wearing a white shirt, gray hoodie and colorful pants, state officials said in the alert.

The teenager is described as a 5-foot-6-inch, 125-pound Alaska Native American girl with brown hair and brown eyes.

Anyone who sees Noelle or who has information on her whereabouts is asked to call the Lakewood Police Department at 303-980-7300.

This is a developing story and may be updated.

Davis Mortuary owners Chris and Brian Cotter were each arrested on suspicion of 125 counts of abuse of a corpse, a class six felony; nine counts of forgery, a class five felony; nine counts of theft as a class five felony; nine counts of theft as a class six felony; seven counts of theft as a class one misdemeanor and two counts of theft as a class two misdemeanor, Pueblo County District Attorney Kala Beauvais said during a .

If convicted on all charges and sentenced consecutively, the Cotter brothers could each face up to 255 years in prison and roughly 7.5 years in county jail, according to sentencing ranges given by Beauvais on Thursday.

“The evidence uncovered during this investigation reveals a complete disregard for the dignity of the deceased and the trust placed in Davis Mortuary by families in our community,” CBI Director Armando Saldate said Thursday. “We are committed to ensuring that those responsible for these actions are held accountable.”

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation began investigating 64-year-old Brian Cotter, who was the Pueblo County coroner at the time, and his brother Chris Cotter, 60, in August, after state inspectors found human remains behind a hidden door during a surprise inspection of the mortuary. That included 24 bodies, 83 cremains, 16 sets of bones and two containers of human tissue kept in buckets.

At least 125 victims were found behind the door, Beauvais said. As of Thursday, 19 of the 24 bodies discovered had been identified, she said. Two more victims were identified from human tissue discovered at the mortuary.

Abuse charges were filed for each of the remains that investigators were able to confirm were human, even if they were not yet able to identify the victim, Beauvais said.

In addition to the physical abuse of human remains, the brothers are accused of falsifying government documents, such as death certificates, and misappropriating funds from “preneed” funeral contracts, Saldate said. That’s when families pay for funeral services before they or a loved one dies.

In March 2026, insurance investigators identified a “substantial number” of preneed contracts made with Davis Mortuary that were not properly placed in a trust, Saldate said. That can lead to an unauthorized use of those funds, which can constitute theft, he said.

Brian Cotter stepped down from his position as coroner in late August after dozens of state and local officials called for his resignation.

Identifying the bodies has been difficult because of the lack of mortuary records, the poor condition of the remains and degraded DNA, state investigators said in May. The goal was to identify all the bodies before filing charges, Beauvais said, but it’s unclear if investigators will be able to identify the last five victims in the near future.

“We won’t give up on that,” Saldate said.

The two dozen bodies found in the Cotters’ hidden room likely died between 2010 and 2012, but some of the other remains are believed to have been from as recent as 2017, Saldate said.

“We are dedicated to providing as much clarity and closure as possible for the families whose loved ones were entrusted to this funeral home,” Beauvais said during the news conference. “We know that the families, as well as our community, want swift justice. I cannot give an exact timeline; however, a lengthy court process is to be expected.”

This is a developing story.

The murder trial for Barry Morphew will not begin until 2027, a judge ruled Wednesday, further delaying the court proceedings against the Colorado man accused of killing his wife in a meandering case that has drawn widespread attention for years.

Morphew, 58, is charged with first-degree murder in the death of Suzanne Morphew, 49, who disappeared from the family’s Chaffee County home in 2020. Barry Morphew initially was charged in 2021 with his wife’s death, but the case was dropped in 2022 after extensive misconduct by prosecutors.

Suzanne Morphew’s body was discovered in a shallow grave near Moffat in 2023, and Barry Morphew was again charged with her murder in June 2025.

Barry Morphew had been scheduled to stand trial in October, but 12th Judicial District Chief Judge Amanda Hopkins on Wednesday granted a defense request to push back the trial date into the first half of 2027 because the defense attorneys have not had enough time to go through the voluminous discovery in the case.

“There is an almost unprecedented amount of discovery,” the judge said. She did not set a new trial date Wednesday but instructed the prosecution and defense to schedule a trial before the end of July 2027.

The delay means Barry Morphew, who has maintained his innocence, will not stand trial in his wife’s death until nearly seven years after her disappearance. Both 12th Judicial District Attorney Anne Kelly and Suzanne Morphew’s siblings objected to the delay in court Wednesday.

Tom Grant, an attorney for Suzanne’s siblings, said the siblings already booked travel arrangements in Colorado for the scheduled October trial, that they feared Barry Morphew would run and that they need closure.

“They are objecting for a number of reasons,” Grant said. “The most clear and obvious one being they live every day with the grief and the pain of missing their sister and they’re tormented thinking about what has happened to her. They are just desperately needing some closure for this case.”

Kelly said the prosecution would seek a trial date in January.

A defense attorney for Barry Morphew, Jane Fisher-Byrialsen, suggested that a trial date in May was more realistic when asked by Hopkins at what point the trial needed to go forward.

“Not to be crass, but at the point we are ready to render effective assistance of counsel,” Fisher-Byrialsen said. “Our motion is based in large part on the bulk of discovery that was gotten originally. Working to organize that, catalogue it, review it, cross-reference it with other things… has just been very, very, very time-consuming and a task that has had some hurdles.”

She declined to discuss the specifics, noting that doing so would reveal defense strategy.

In the first case against Barry Morphew, prosecutors argued he killed his wife on May 9, 2020, after discovering her nearly two-year extramarital affair, then disposed of her body and staged a bike crash before leaving for work in Broomfield early the next day.

He has maintained that he left his wife sleeping in bed. The couple’s two daughters — who have since supported their father — were out of town at the time. Before her death, Suzanne Morphew told a friend she did not feel safe alone with her husband and that she was contemplating divorce.

Suzanne’s body was found with traces of prescription animal tranquilizers in her bones. Barry Morphew had access to the chemicals used — a formulation known as BAM — and admitted to using the tranquilizer mix to sedate deer, the prior case showed.

Barry Morphew has been free on bail while awaiting trial. He is next due in court July 6.

The 65-year-old former CBI analyst will be sentenced to between 8 and 16 years in prison as part of her plea agreement, Jefferson County District Court Judge Andrew Poland said.

Woods pleaded guilty to committing a cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. The remaining 100 counts against her were dismissed as part of the agreement.

“Guilty,” Woods said when asked how she pleaded to each count.

Woods mishandled DNA testing in at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career at the statewide criminal justice agency, an internal investigation found. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable DNA testing results in hundreds of criminal cases and sending shockwaves through Colorado’s criminal courts.

Inside the investigation of a CBI scientist’s years of misconduct: “God forbid we have someone in prison that shouldn’t be”

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King charged Woods with 102 felonies in January 2025, including 52 counts of forgery of a government-issued document, 48 counts of attempting to influence a public servant, a single count of perjury and a single count of committing a cybercrime.

The most serious charge was the cybercrime count, which alleged she altered, damaged or interrupted data in a computer system in such a way as to cause more than $1 million in damages. That charge is a class 2 felony, which typically carries between 8 and 24 years in prison.

The cybercrime conviction was connected to a pattern of Woods entering false information into the CBI’s computer system between 2008 and 2023, Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka said Tuesday, noting her crimes resulted in costs “far in excess” of $1 million. The state expects to spend at least $11 million to repair the damage Woods did.

The perjury conviction stemmed from testimony Woods gave during a 2014 jury trial in which she was asked whether she had disclosed all of the DNA testing in the case and lied in her answer, Kafka said.

The conviction for attempting to influence a public servant included 48 instances in which Woods gave false information to law enforcement investigators and government officials about the DNA testing she conducted with the goal of limiting their investigative efforts, Kafka said.

The conviction for forgery related to four additional instances in which she authored a false lab report, he said.

Woods and her attorneys declined to comment after Tuesday's hearing. She remains free on bond and will be sentenced Sept. 8. Her jury trial, which had been scheduled for late September, has been canceled.

King said in a statement Tuesday that ensuring Woods spent time in prison was an important part of the plea negotiations for the prosecution.

"Securing a term of imprisonment, protecting the interests of the community and our shared expectations of integrity in the justice system is reflected in this resolution," King said.

The CBI's internal investigation found that Woods took advantage of the state lab's focus on results and productivity -- as well as professional trust between colleagues -- to hide her widespread manipulation of DNA data for years.

Several of Woods' colleagues raised repeated ethical concerns about her work years before the scandal broke open -- in 2014 and again in 2018 -- but the CBI failed to stop her misconduct until an intern discovered a pattern of missing DNA data in Woods' work in 2023. That discovery prompted the first serious inquiry into Woods' misconduct on the job.

Woods resigned from the CBI in 2023 instead of being fired, and the agency spent all of 2024 sorting through her flawed work. Lawmakers passed a new law in 2025 that put additional guardrails on forensic testing in Colorado and opened up a specific legal path for people impacted by flawed testing to seek post-conviction relief in court.

CBI Director Armando Saldate said in a statement Tuesday that the agency made reforms to its forensic science practices and is changing how its labs work in the wake of Woods' years-long deception.

“This moment is not about moving on, for CBI it¶¶Ňőap about moving forward,” he said. “Today’s guilty plea is an important moment of accountability.”

Woods' misconduct has led to at least one overturned murder conviction -- in the 1994 killing of Marty Grisham in Boulder -- and has raised questions about the validity of hundreds of other convictions, with many post-conviction challenges underway in courts across the state.

CBI officials reviewed 10,786 cases that Woods handled during her career, and found problems in 1,045 of them -- about 10%. Sex assaults made up nearly half of those 1,045 problematic cases, and the majority of the cases that resulted in criminal charges against Woods were sex assaults.

Woods told internal affairs investigators she deleted data about low quantities of male DNA in some sex assault cases so that she wouldn’t have to complete additional testing that was unlikely to produce conclusive results on those small genetic samples. She deleted the data in sex assault cases “because it was easy,” she said, according to an internal affairs report.

A third prisoner was injured and taken to a hospital for treatment, said Alondra Gonzalez, spokeswoman for the .

Gonzalez offered no details about what happened in the incident and did not respond to follow-up questions Monday.

Coroner Jason Nichols declined to comment on the causes or manners of the two men’s deaths, citing the ongoing investigation.

Fisher was convicted of first-degree murder and was serving life without parole in 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 Colorado Court of Appeals that upheld Fisher’s convictions for felony murder, aggravated robbery and conspiracy.

Gates was serving time on 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.

The was called to the prison at about 11:22 p.m. Saturday for a report of “missed count,” which meant prisoners were missing from where they were supposed to be, Sheriff Jake Six said Monday.

“They believed the inmates were still in the facility but weren’t 100% sure,” Six said, adding that it is standard procedure for the sheriff’s office to respond to missed counts.

Sheriff’s deputies checked that the facility’s fences were intact and secured the perimeter of the prison, which is one of two private prisons in Colorado run by . Deputies were on scene for a couple of hours before the missing prisoners were discovered, Six said.

He declined to comment on how they were found, directing inquiries to the Department of Corrections.

Ryan Gustin, a spokesman for CoreCivic, also directed a request for more information to the state agency.

The two deaths on Saturday prompted the Department of Corrections to shut down visitation at all prisons statewide. The agency lifted those restrictions at all prisons except the Bent facility on Monday, officials said in a .

The girl had been last seen at 5:30 p.m. Monday in the 129000 block of Knight Court in Broomfield, according to a Colorado Bureau of Investigation missing person alert.

She was found by 5:45 a.m. Thursday morning, according to a follow-up post.

Police were concerned for her safety, prompting the missing person alert.

All of the remains identified from Davis Mortuary so far are from people who died between 2010 and 2012, the CBI said in a news release. The remains of six people are still unidentified, and investigators continue to use forensic genetic genealogy — working with a private lab to match DNA to public databases and find distant relatives — to try to identify them, a necessity because of the lack of mortuary records, the poor condition of the remains and degraded DNA.

State inspectors found the room of human remains at Davis Mortuary in August during their first inspection of the facility after state lawmakers strengthened Colorado’s funeral home regulations in the wake of other, similar scandals on the Western Slope, in Penrose and metro Denver.

The CBI is still investigating “multiple containers of bones, cremains and probable human tissue representing an unknown number of deceased individuals” that were also found at the mortuary.

Davis Mortuary was owned and operated by then-coroner Brian Cotter and his brother, Chris Cotter. Brian Cotter stepped down after dozens of state and local officials called for his resignation in the wake of the scandal, but neither man is currently facing criminal charges in the case.

Pueblo County District Attorney Kala Beauvais has previously said she will not consider charges until the CBI’s investigation is complete, which includes identifying all of the bodies.

On Wednesday, CBI officials said the agency has “worked in concert with the 10th Judicial District Attorney’s Office every step of the way in this complex investigation.”

“The case information will be presented to the District Attorney’s office for review and filing of charges,” agency officials said.

While Brian Cotter initially told state inspectors the 24 bodies were awaiting cremation, he later said some had been in the room for 15 years and said he may have given families fake cremains.

Other Colorado funeral home owners accused of mishandling human remains in recent years are now serving time in prison, including Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors mother-daughter team Megan Hess and Shirley Koch. The pair pleaded guilty to mail fraud after investigators found they harvested and sold parts from hundreds of bodies without the knowledge or consent of families.

Dakota Santiago was last seen near the school at 13380 Yosemite St. on March 31, according to the Thornton Police Department.

Missing Indigenous Person Alert Activation
Dakota Santiago, Indigenous female with pink hair and brown eyes, 5'07"/100 lbs, last seen in Thornton, Colorado.
Dakota Santiago was last seen wearing a white sweater and black sweatpants.
If seen, please Thornton PD at 720-977-5150.

— CBI (@CBI_Colorado)

Dakota is described as Indigenous; 5 feet, 7 inches tall; and 100 pounds with pink hair and brown eyes. She was last seen wearing a white sweater and black sweatpants, according to an alert from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation.

Anyone with information about here whereabouts should call 911 or the Thornton Police Department at 720-977-5150.

The revelation of prosecutorial misconduct comes four years in to Deborah Nicholls’ latest push — backed by the — to overturn her 2008 convictions for the first-degree murders of her three children, who died when the family’s house caught fire in the middle of the night on March 7, 2003.

During Nicholls’ jury trial, prosecutors relied heavily on findings from one Colorado Bureau of Investigation scientist who found that chemical testing results were consistent with an accelerant being used in the deadly fire. But the district attorneys kept secret a second opinion from another CBI scientist who found that the testing did not show the presence of an accelerant. That second scientist also agreed with a defense expert that some testing had been contaminated, according to an April 28 order from El Paso County District Court Senior Judge Michael Mullins.

“The suppressed exculpatory evidence in this case undermines the core foundation of the prosecution’s case — whether by neutralizing key witnesses or by demonstrating a lack of reliable laboratory confirmation — and thus meets the materiality standard,” Mullins wrote. “Accordingly, there exists a reasonable probability that the outcome (of the trial) would have been different had the evidence been disclosed.”

Prosecutors in argued that the second CBI scientist’s opinion — provided to the prosecution in the form of notes as they prepared for trial — was work product that did not have to be turned over the the defense under Colorado discovery rules, which govern evidence sharing in criminal cases. Mullins rejected that argument on the grounds that exculpatory information must always be shared.

“Clearly, based on the evidence at trial, the suppressed evidence is exculpatory, and it undermines the prosecution’s material witness and supports the defendant¶¶Ňőap expert analysis,” Mullins wrote.

The judge did not take action on Nicholls’ convictions in the April order but set the case for a hearing on May 27. At that hearing, Mullins could overturn Nicholls’ convictions and order she receive a new trial, or he could continue the case in order to hear the rest of her post-conviction relief claims, which her defense team presented to the court separately from the prosecutorial misconduct claims. A spokeswoman for Allen, Kate Singh, did not return a request for comment Wednesday.

Nicholls has long-maintained her innocence in the fire that killed her children, Jay, 11, Sophia, 5, and Sierra, 3. Prosecutors argued during the parents’ separate jury trials that Deborah and Tim Nicholls killed their children in an attempt to collect insurance money to fund their methamphetamine addiction. The parents were accused of spreading a highly flammable cleaning fluid around the house — and on their children’s pajamas — and then intentionally setting the home on fire.

Tim Nicholls allegedly confessed the murder plot to another prisoner while awaiting trial, and that man then became an informant and a key witness for the prosecution. Deborah Nicholls was not home when the fire started; her husband escaped the blaze with burns and injuries after jumping out a second-story window.

Prosecutors alleged Deborah Nicholls masterminded the plot while her husband carried it out and set the fire; she has suggested she may have left candles burning unattended in the home. Deborah’s murder convictions were upheld by the Colorado Supreme Court in 2017.

The newly discovered second CBI scientist’s notes were tucked in a “stack of papers in a cardboard box in a shelf at CBI’s warehouse,” said Janene McCabe, an attorney for Deborah Nicholls. A CBI analyst tasked with reviewing the case amid Nicholls’ 2022 innocence claim pulled the whole file for the review and then disclosed the entire file to the defense for the first time in 2024, McCabe said.

“It is really questionable as to whether she would have been found guilty and whether they would have proceeded to trial with this evidence,” McCabe said. “The prosecutor knew that this science they were relying on was contradicted by another expert at the lab.”

McCabe said Deborah Nicholls is both relieved and frustrated by the finding of prosecutorial misconduct.

“The wheels of justice turn very slowly,” McCabe said. “On the one hand she is very relieved that finally somebody looked at her case in a different perspective … on the other hand she is still sitting in (prison). And it has been 18 years.”