But legal experts told The Denver Post that Bondi doesn’t have authority to nullify Senate Bill 3. Though the Justice Department could later file a lawsuit challenging it, the feds couldn’t unilaterally declare the measure unconstitutional in any binding manner — meaning the Republican state lawmakers’ request is unlikely to lead to its reversal anytime soon, if at all.

One expert, constitutional law professor Doug Spencer at the University of Colorado Law School, said the letter, sent Monday, mostly amounted to political posturing. The state House’s top Democrat, Speaker Julie McCluskie, called it a “cowardly” attempt to challenge legislation passed by a majority of lawmakers.

But the Republican members see their letter as an appeal to uphold gun rights as they and other opponents try to thwart the most restrictive gun-control law passed in the state. It will require people to pass a background check and a training course before they can purchase certain semiautomatic weapons, like the AR-15.

“Because of the unconstitutionality as well as the imminent risk posed to Coloradans by eliminating their right to firearms as a means for self-defense, it is our belief that the passage of SB25-003 constitutes an emergency for our state and calls for federal intervention,” House Republicans wrote to Bondi.

SB-3 — which was signed into law by Gov. Jared Polis last week — doesn’t go into effect until August 2026, further pushing out potential legal avenues to block it.

The bill was backed by most of the legislature’s Democratic lawmakers, who are at near-supermajority strength in the Capitol, in response to the state’s steady drumbeat of mass shootings and to improve enforcement of an existing ban on high-capacity magazines.

Republicans opposed the measure but lacked the numbers to stop it, prompting their turn to President Donald Trump’s administration.

In their letter, they said they wanted the Justice Department’s 2nd Amendment Task Force to review the bill. Bondi to “combine department-wide policy and litigation resources to advance President Trump’s pro-gun agenda and protect gun owners from overreach.”

It’s unclear if Bondi or her task force will take up the Republican lawmakers’ request. A Justice Department spokeswoman said Wednesday that the agency had no record that it had received the letter yet. A House Republican spokeswoman said it was sent to a staff member in Bondi’s office.

SB-3 does not apply to most handguns or shotguns, nor does it prohibit the possession of any weapon. Several other states have similar permitting requirements, and the U.S. Supreme Court has thus far not ruled them unconstitutional.

The letter comes amid the Trump administration’s unprecedented efforts to withhold funding and pursue legal action against cities, states and universities that run afoul of its agenda. That’s sparked a mix of fear, defiance and confusion in Colorado as legislators and policymakers simultaneously seek to respond to Trump’s efforts while defending crucial federal funding.

If the Justice Department examines the law and believes it to be unconstitutional, that would do little to hamper that law’s enforceability, two legal experts told The Post.

“The Department of Justice doesn’t get to decide the constitutionality,” said Spencer, from the CU Law School. “As of today, our Supreme Court sticks to its longstanding precedent that the Supreme Court gets to decide, ultimately, the constitutionality of legislatively enacted bills. This is as fundamental as it could be.”

Still, he continued, “there could be implications” from an agency review.

The DOJ could file a lawsuit on its own against the state, said Spencer and Jason Dunn, the former U.S. attorney for Colorado during Trump’s first administration. It could also issue a report saying it believes the law is unconstitutional or — should someone else sue to block it — the agency could submit a statement of interest supporting the litigation.

The Justice Department recently took a similar step in support of former Mesa County Clerk Tina Peters, who’s incarcerated for violating election security laws.

A DOJ statement that the law is unconstitutional and its filing of a statement of interest could add heft to a lawsuit challenging it, Spencer said. Those documents could also provide political cover for district attorneys or county sheriffs who don’t want to enforce the law, he said.

County sheriffs play a key part in SB-3: They are charged with providing the background checks and clearing people to purchase the regulated firearms that fall under its restrictions. Three sheriffs — representing Weld, Douglas and Teller counties — were present for House Republicans’ press conference Wednesday morning.

Afterward, McCluskie criticized Republicans’ efforts to draw the nation’s top law enforcement officer into intervening.

“Having to get help from someone outside of this state because you’re not willing to deal directly with the legislation that has been passed by the majority of the General Assembly that was elected by the people of this state, (that) feels like a cowardly approach,” she said. “If there’s a question about this legislation and its constitutionality, great: Let����ap talk to the courts about that. That����ap the appropriate next step.”

Asked why Republicans were seeking an agency — rather than judicial — review of the law, Minority Leader Rose Pugliese said the lawmakers had wanted to ask the Colorado Supreme Court to determine whether SB-3 was constitutional before it passed, but their request was blocked by Senate Democrats.

Senate President James Coleman, a Denver Democrat, denied that allegation Wednesday.

After House Republicans’ press conference, Pugliese and other Republican lawmakers pushed back against a McCluskie-backed bill that would set aside $4 million to defend Colorado against federal lawsuits and investigations or further losses of federal funding. The bill passed a final House vote and now goes to the Senate.

Jefferson County District Judge Jason Carrithers in mid-January granted a preliminary injunction against Lakewood. The ruling will keep the city from requiring developer Kairoi Properties LLC to set aside a certain amount of parkland as part of a mandatory open space dedication for its 411-unit residential project at 777 S. Yarrow St.

The judge found that the new ordinance, which the Lakewood City Council adopted in November after opponents threatened to place it on the ballot, “poses a danger of real, immediate, and irreparable injury because the Initiative would affect Plaintiffs’ interests in real property, including loss of property …”

Kairoi, which sued the city in December over the new regulations, claims Lakewood’s new open space mandates not only make its project next to Belmar Park unviable but also run afoul of a recent state law. That law requires municipalities to let developers pay a fee in lieu of setting aside open space as part of a larger effort to encourage homebuilding in Colorado.

Jason Dunn, an attorney representing Kairoi, said his client was “pleased” with the judge’s ruling.

Cathy Kentner, a representative for , said the Jan. 14 ruling didn’t surprise her, given that “the city offered no opposition to the developer’s desire for an injunction.”

“The only voices heard by the court were the applicant and that of a compliant city hall,” Kentner told The Denver Post Friday.

Save Open Space Lakewood, the group that sought the ballot measure, says Kairoi’s apartment building threatens to despoil the park, which it considers a precious and peaceful city resource on which thousands of migratory birds depend. Opponents of the project are attempting to intervene in the case, which would allow them to file motions with the court.

In a Jan. 3 filing with the court, Lakewood said it decided not to oppose the developer’s injunction request so as to “obtain a speedy resolution to this matter” and “with the understanding that it does not admit or concede any of the underlying legal arguments on the merits.”

Just this last week, Lakewood successfully asked the court to allow it more time to respond to the lawsuit.

Attorneys for Lakewood wrote in their motion for an extension that they expected the ordinance would “be the subject of considerable editing and redrafting over at least the next two weeks, and potentially four weeks,” with a final version ready for adoption at the end of February.

The council is set to begin looking at possible amendments to the land-use ordinance during a workshop on Monday. Kentner said all the delays and legal maneuvers by the developer and the city have done nothing but blow fresh life into the project.

“I am very concerned that during this time Kairoi will be issued a building permit, effectively mooting the issues before the court,” she said. “It will be interesting to see if the council chooses to stand up for the thousands of people who petitioned them, or if they will continue to sidle up to development at any and every cost to our environment.”

Four years ago, Colorado voters could have seen a wide array of Democratic contenders in the flesh in the weeks leading up to the March 2020 primary, including Amy Klobuchar, Elizabeth Warren, Pete Buttigieg, Bernie Sanders, Mike Bloomberg and Tulsi Gabbard, while Joe Biden hit up donors in Denver. Several campaigns had paid staff on the ground here for weeks or months.

Even then-President Donald Trump stopped by for a visit just weeks before the primary, landing in Colorado Springs for a rally at the Broadmoor World Arena.

“This election is not going to be confused with past presidential primaries in Colorado,” said Eric Sondermann, an independent political analyst. “This year strikes me as a going-through-the-motions exercise.”

Ahead of Haley’s rally in Centennial, her campaign on Monday announced her “Colorado state leadership team” — a list of prominent supporters who will try to build support as primary voters return their ballots in the next week. Among them are former U.S. attorneys Troy Eid and Jason Dunn; Tom Norton, a former state Senate president and a former Greeley mayor; Todd Chapman, a former diplomat and U.S. ambassador; and Wendy Buxton-Andrade, a Prowers County commissioner.

But in terms of paid staff, Haley, a former South Carolina governor who served as United Nations ambassador in the Trump administration, has a minimal state operation, with one staffer on the ground.

The reasons for Colorado’s quiet campaign season begin with the slate of candidates on the Republican side being effectively winnowed down early to a David-and-Goliath battle between Haley and Trump. And despite polls showing that voters have concerns about of 81-year-old President Biden, who’s less than four years older than Trump, no serious Democratic contender has arisen to take him on.

The other major reason is that as Colorado has continued to drift to the left — fully shedding its status as a swing state — candidates can’t afford to waste time or money in a place where their political prospects are already evident.

“Nobody should be spending money in Colorado when all those other swing states need to get their infrastructure built,” said Ian Silverii, a longtime Democratic strategist, referring to Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona and other states likely to be in play in November. “A Biden win in Colorado is all but guaranteed — the question is by what margin.”

Biden bested Trump in 2020 by 13.5 percentage points.

Sheena Kadi, a spokeswoman for the state Democratic Party, said she was not aware of a campaign office or a state director for Biden’s reelection effort in Colorado. The same goes for Dean Phillips, a Minnesota congressman who’s the best-known Democrat taking on the president.

Biden was last in Colorado in November, when he promoted recent economic investments at a wind tower factory in Pueblo and attended a private fundraiser in Cherry Hills Village.

“Not speaking for either campaign — campaigns take three finite things: time, money, and resources,” Kadi said. “They are making the best decisions they can with the information they’ve got.”

If Trump wins the nomination, whether he will build the kind of multifaceted general election campaign organization he assembled in Colorado in 2016, during his first presidential run, is yet to be seen.

“Biden and Trump are pretty confident where they are in the presidential primaries,” said Dick Wadhams, a former chair of the Colorado Republican Party.

Colorado allows unaffiliated voters to participate in the party primary of their choosing. Those voters received mail ballots for both parties but may return only one of them.

Wadhams said perhaps the most interesting thing about Colorado’s March 5 primary is the “noncommitted delegate” option at the bottom of the listed Democratic candidates on the ballot. While Kadi, with the state Democratic Party, said that option was added to the ballot because “Democrats are the party of choice, the party of empowering people,” others see it differently.

“It will allow voters who are concerned with Biden’s physical and mental state to vote for someone else,” Wadhams said. “It’s a potential embarrassment for Biden if that gets a significant number of votes.”

Kristi Burton Brown, another former chair of the Colorado GOP, called the uncommitted line a potential “protest vote” for disaffected Democrats.

“They’re trying to gauge how much dissatisfaction is out there,” Brown said of the Democratic Party.

Fellow Democrat David Skaggs, who represented Colorado’s 2nd Congressional District in Washington, D.C., for a dozen years, wrote in a column in The Post last week that had cast his ballot for “uncommitted.”

“It is the ballot option that could lead to an open convention, where Democrats can pick a ticket that could more assuredly save the nation from the disaster of a second Trump administration,” he wrote.

������ showed Biden with the lowest approval ratings of his presidency. But Silverii said that whatever headwinds Biden is facing nationally, he won’t lose Colorado in November.

That’s because of the state’s large contingent of unaffiliated voters, who broke hard for the president in 2020.

“Unaffiliated voters have proven twice now that they will not vote for Trump — and in increasing numbers,” he said.

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The president of the Towing & Recovery Professionals of Colorado, a trade group representing the state’s towing operators, remembers how his industry used to operate. Back in the 1970s and ’80s, property owners paid towers to remove abandoned vehicles from their lots — without charging consumers.

But in recent decades, “we allowed the fox in the henhouse,” state Rep. Andrew Boesenecker, a Fort Collins Democrat, said.

Apartment complexes, which used to pay to have cars removed, now get the service for free. Instead, tow carriers bill drivers hundreds of dollars per tow, causing serious financial strain for a wide swath of low-income residents. And the more cars these companies haul off to tow yards, the more money they rake in.

Colorado lawmakers in recent years have sought to address these financial incentives by passing a “Towing Bill of Rights” designed to better protect consumers from predatory tows. But despite these additional measures, the incentives to tow remain.

“How do you write laws to fix someone’s moral compass?” Connolly asked.

Though he vociferously objected to last year’s towing bill, Connolly has now flipped the script. He’s working with Boesenecker and other state lawmakers to write a bill that would completely reimagine the way towing is handled in Colorado. The idea: Remove the financial burden from consumers and go back to property owners paying for tows.

“The only way to fight this is to eliminate the money, the easy money,” Connolly said. “Towing wasn’t designed to patrol parking lots and try and nail people just to make a buck.”

The owners of one company in particular — Wyatts Towing, Colorado’s largest towing operator — have built a vertically integrated conglomerate on the backs of these financial carrots. They have ownership interests in parking management companies, a slew of other tow carriers, car dealerships and auction houses. These companies operate in each step of the parking and towing process, from the permit you buy from your apartment to the sale of your car at auction if you can’t afford the tow fees.

This arrangement, consumer advocates say, is ripe for abuse and may already break Colorado law.

Wyatts’ owners declined through an attorney to be interviewed for this story. Jason Dunn, the company’s lawyer, acknowledged the companies have overlapping ownership but pushed back on the argument that they are feeding business to one another in a nefarious way.

“They don’t need to search for tows,” Dunn said. “There’s almost an unlimited number of tows they could do if they had the manpower. They don’t need to search for extra business — the business is there.”

Wyatts’ vertical integration

When lawmakers, consumer advocates and even the state attorney general talk about the problems in Colorado towing, they’re implicitly — or sometimes explicitly — talking about one company: Wyatts Towing.

The towing giant has been the subject of 473 complaints to the Public Utilities Commission over the past year. The Better Business Bureau gives the company an F rating and includes an on the company’s business page.

Attorney General Phil Weiser took the unusual step last month of confirming an active investigation into Wyatts in the wake of a in north Denver. Lawmakers and state investigators, meanwhile, have taken aim at the company’s business practices, accusing Wyatts of perpetrating a predatory loan program that skirts state law.

Wyatts, though, doesn’t just tow cars. Its owners also run companies that deal in the parking, auction and auto sale realms.

The company’s vertical integration first came to light in a written by a group of consumer advocates.

The report’s authors, consisting of leaders from the and , laid out the extent to which Wyatts’ leaders had cornered the market.

The companies in Wyatts’ portfolio generally fall under two holding companies, business records show: , a private equity search fund, and . They’re associated with three individuals: Troy and Tony Porras, Wyatts’ owners, and Trevor Forbes, Wyatts’ CEO.

Towing Holdings has gobbled up much of the towing competition across the Front Range. Its portfolio includes Southwest Auto Tow, Capital Tow, Klaus Towing, Aaliyah’s Towing and Recovery, Boulder Valley Towing and Lone Star Towing, records show.

A host of apartment complexes in Colorado and other states use ParkM, a permitting company hired by complexes to manage residential parking lots. in 2018 and the business uses the same Englewood address as Wyatts, 3T Holdings and Towing Holdings.

One of the key provisions in the 2022 bill outlawed tow companies from authorizing their own tows in residential lots, except in cases of emergency. Instead, that authorization had to come from property owners or managers. The idea, lawmakers said, was to make sure management actually wanted a car towed.

But in myriad lots around Colorado, ParkM authorizes the tows. Then Wyatts trucks come and take the cars away.

“I don’t think it’s circumventing the law,” said Boesenecker, who spearheaded last year’s towing legislation. “It’s in direct violation of the law.”

Colorado law allows towing companies to take ownership of abandoned vehicles after 30 days. But it also allows towers to repossess cars when their owners can’t afford the fees to get them back.

The Wyatts owners also run businesses in this segment of the market.

Forbes in 2019 formed , a new and used car dealer that bills itself as the “largest online auction platform in the towing industry.” The business works with towing companies to sell their unclaimed and abandoned vehicles.

“Clear your lot and maximize your profits!” the auction’s states.

Its articles of organization list the same Englewood address as the other businesses. The company’s website names Tony Porras as an auctioneer.

Cars Direct, meanwhile, was by Tony Porras in 2012. It claims to have invented the concept of shopping for cars online, serving millions of customers. The dealership is located on Wyatts’ Brighton Boulevard lot and its business name can be seen on the side of the Wyatts’ customer window in big, red lettering.

“We were all shocked and frankly horrified,” Zach Neumann, co-founder and CEO with the Community Economic Defense Project, said of his reaction to the shared ownership structures. “We had seen tremendous hardship and we thought it was random. We didn’t expect these companies were connected to or owned by the same people.”

Neumann called this arrangement “dangerous for consumers.”

“We’ve given a single profit-motivated company the ability to designate vehicles for tow, tow them and sell them when you don’t pay what you owe,” he said. “Strangely, it’s harder for the government, with democratic due process rules, to seize an asset and sell it than a private company. That doesn’t make a lot of sense to us.”

Dunn, Wyatts’ attorney, would not divulge the ownership stakes in the companies, calling that information “proprietary and confidential.” He said in an email that ParkM, Peak Auction Auctions and Cars Direct are “independently managed businesses with broad operations largely unrelated to Wyatts Towing.”

“The implication made by advocacy groups that these businesses are working together to take advantage of consumers is wholly incorrect,” Dunn said.

ParkM operates in 18 states and does not contract with Wyatts or any other tow company, he said. Property owners may choose to use both companies.

Peak Auto Auction lists vehicles for more than 275 separate sellers, Dunn said, including charities, salvage yards and tow companies. Cars Direct, he said, has not done business with Wyatts since 2020. That year, he said, vehicles bought from Wyatts represented less than 5% of Cars Direct’s sales.

“It’s my favorite car I’ve ever owned”

On July 19, around 2:30 a.m., Jimmy Stanley’s silver 2001 Mitsubishi Eclipse disappeared from his Lakewood apartment complex.

At first, he thought his car had been stolen. But police told him the Mitsubishi had been towed.

Stanley and his wife pay $75 a month to ParkM for permits to park three vehicles in the residential lot. Stanley’s permit for the Eclipse had expired the day prior, he said. Now his car, he learned, was sitting in Wyatts’ tow yard.

He told Wyatts he wanted his car back for $60 or 15% of his fees, a key portion of the 2022 towing law. A manager, he said, claimed not to know about any installment plan.

Over the next 30 days, Stanley said, he and his wife desperately tried to get their car back. They called, showed up at Wyatts’ lot and called some more. Employees told them they needed a title to the car or only a manager could process their request. Each time they were denied.

Stanley’s wife recently had lost her job, making him the sole breadwinner for the couple and their two children. They fell behind on rent, canceling streaming services to save cash.

“There was even a point in that month where if I could have gotten the car back, I didn’t have $60,” Stanley said.

The two-door Eclipse wasn’t just a mode of transportation. Stanley’s wife rode to school in that car every day until she was old enough to drive. Her father sold Stanley the car for $1,500 after he proposed.

When the couple wed, they drove away from the ceremony in the Mitsubishi with the words “just married” scrawled on the back, cans clanging off the bumper. When their daughter was born during COVID, Stanley and his wife brought her home from the hospital in the car.

“I loved that car,” he said. “It’s my favorite car I’ve ever owned.”

On Aug. 21, a Wyatts employee told Stanley his car had been sold by Peak Auto Auctions. (The company did not respond to inquiries about the sale.)

Stanley said his jaw dropped after learning that ParkM, Wyatts and Peak Auto Auctions have shared ownership.

“If the new laws weren’t meant to cover institutions like this,” he said, “I don’t know what they’re meant to cover.”

A radical proposal

It’s these stories that have prompted lawmakers to consider drastic changes to Colorado’s towing industry.

Earlier this month, the state’s , which meets during the months before the state’s legislative session begins in January, drafted an designed to tackle the vertical integration issue.

The bill would prohibit a towing carrier from operating or controlling a business that manages parking lots, a motor vehicle dealer or auction house, or a business that loans money to obtain the release of a nonconsensually towed vehicle.

Vertical integration, the legislators wrote, “allows the business to avoid the checks and balances inherent in a consensual business transaction and creates incentives to make decisions that are not in the best interest of the consumer.”

The bill would also ban tow carriers from patrolling or monitoring properties to enforce parking restrictions and require companies to provide audited financial statements to the state.

It’s clear what the lawmakers are doing here, said Connolly, the towing association’s president: “They’re trying to tackle Wyatts.”

But this piecemeal legislation won’t work, he said. He likened Colorado’s towing rules to a barrel of water. Wyatts, in this metaphor, is holding a gun.

“They keep shooting holes in the barrel of water and legislators keep putting duck tape over the holes,” Connolly said. “If you can’t get the gun away from them, what do you do? Take the bucket of water away.”

On Tuesday, the towing association’s president pitched Boesenecker on a much more radical solution. Scrap the entire thing.

Connolly estimates that 90% of tows would not occur if property owners had to pay for them. He pointed to state Sen. Julie Gonzales’ case, in which the lawmaker was towed by Wyatts from a lot even though there were several empty spaces next to her car.

Under this new system, property owners would be incentivized to only tow in emergency situations, like when a fire lane or handicapped spot has been blocked. Drivers would work with property owners on fees, rather than the tow carriers.

“When the property owner is making the decisions, they’re not towing someone in seconds,” Connolly said.

Dunn, Wyatts’ attorney, said this new system would add layers of bureaucracy and make things much more complicated. Connolly acknowledged Wyatts — which is a member of the Towing & Recovery Professionals of Colorado — is “at odds with the official position of the towing industry.”

Boesenecker said he loves the idea. He and Connolly are working on new language that could replace or add to the drafted towing bill. The devil, as always, is in the details. And the unlikely tandem understands there will be opposition to upturning the applecart.

“John and his association recognize the moment we’re in and the opportunity to right the ship with best practices that benefit consumers,” the representative said.

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And with that sound, dozens of victims let out gasps — hugging, crying and laughing at the conclusion Tuesday of a real-life body-snatching case that the judge acknowledged had little precedent in American history.

“We came today to hear the handcuffs click,” said Erin Smith, who brought her mother’s body to Sunset Mesa Funeral Directors in Montrose after her death in 2011. Seven years later, the FBI informed her family that her mother wasn’t cremated but instead dismembered and sold for profit. “And we got that.”

U.S. District Judge Christine M. Arguello on Tuesday sentenced Hess, 46, to 20 years in prison — the maximum allowable — for her role in a nearly decade-long scheme to sell body parts without the consent of grieving Western Slope families. Her mother, Koch, 69, received a 15-year sentence.

The emotional, daylong hearing brought to a close a five-year legal odyssey that began when the FBI raided the funeral home in February 2018, following a  that found Sunset Mesa to be unlike any other business in the country. The gruesome details of the case — which authorities say included more than 500 victims — drew international attention and shined a light on the  American body broker industry.

Arguello, who at one point Tuesday shared personal anecdotes of her own grief after losing her husband of 45 years, eschewed advisory guidelines for both defendants, saying the scope of this “heinous offense” put her in “uncharted waters.”

“This case falls outside the heartland of any other cases in the United States,” the judge said, calling it the most emotionally draining case she’s handled during her time on the bench.

The FBI, during an investigation dubbed “Operation Morbid Market,” ultimately tracked hundreds of bodies and body parts sold by Hess and Koch to places as far away as Saudi Arabia. Over the course of several years, dozens of Coloradans who used Sunset Mesa were horrified to learn from federal agents that the urns in their homes didn’t contain their loved ones’ ashes.

“While technically not a violent crime, this is a heinous crime, a dastardly crime,” said Tim Neff, an assistant U.S. attorney who prosecuted the case.

“A silent scream of gratitude”

Dozens of those families detailed their unfathomable anguish Tuesday before the court. Nightmares. Post-traumatic stress disorder. Loss of trust. An unending cycle of grief and anger.

“When Megan stole my mom’s heart,” Nancy Overhoff said, “she broke mine.”

A federal grand jury in March 2020 Hess and Koch, charging each with six counts of mail fraud and three counts of illegal transportation of hazardous materials.

Hess sat with slumped shoulders, looking at the ground through much of Tuesday’s proceedings. She wiped her eyes as she approached the podium. When Arguello asked if she had anything to say, Hess slowly shook her head.

Koch, before receiving her sentence, apologized to the grieving families, saying her only motivation was medical research.

“I acknowledge my guilt and take responsibility for my actions,” she said. “I’m very sorry for the harm I caused you and your families.”

The victims, however, universally pleaded with the judge to impose the maximum allowable sentence.

Danielle McCarthy lost her husband, David, on Father’s Day in 2017. Several months after the FBI’s raid at Sunset Mesa, an agent called to tell her David’s cremains were not in the box she had been given. He had been sold and shipped to Detroit — in pieces.

When the judge announced Hess’ sentence Tuesday, McCarthy covered her mouth and sobbed.

“It was truly a silent scream of gratitude,” she said outside the courthouse, hugging people she met through their shared grief.

Hess and Koch each earlier this year to one count of mail fraud. Investigators determined the pair stole the bodies or body parts of at least 222 victims, with another 338 “almost certainly stolen,” according to Hess’ plea agreement.

The mother and daughter sold these bodies without consent — and in some cases forged documentation in order to sell bodies with infectious diseases such as HIV and hepatitis, the government found.

FBI agent John Busch testified during Tuesday’s hearing that Hess ripped off logos and slogans from an organ and tissue company — Denver-based Donor Alliance Inc. — to falsely market to families that they could donate organs to help the blind see or the immobile walk through a new spine.

In reality, Sunset Mesa could not legally offer these services.

Koch, in two interviews with law enforcement in February 2018, told federal investigators that Hess was the “brains” behind the operation, that the funeral home did not keep proper records and that cremated remains were mixed together because it was “‘too hard’ to keep things separate,” Hess’ attorney wrote in a March court filing.

“She was the business part of it,” Koch told an FBI agent, according to an interview transcript included in Koch’s response to Hess’ motion. “I was really the labor part of it.”

Hess and Koch have also been named in seven lawsuits brought by families who said they were deceived and defrauded. Judgments in those cases have totaled millions of dollars.

“Tarred and feathered by the local community”

The Sunset Mesa case exposed Colorado’s lax oversight over funeral homes and crematoriums, prompting state lawmakers to enact several changes, including harshening penalties for tempering with dead bodies, beefing up regulators’ ability to inspect mortuaries and making it illegal to simultaneously operate a funeral home and body broker business.

State Rep. Matt Soper, a Montrose Republican, watched Tuesday’s hearing from the back of the courtroom. He spearheaded the legislation aimed at closing loopholes in Colorado’s funeral home oversight statutes.

“My faith in our judiciary has been restored,” Soper said after the sentencing.

Hess and Koch’s attorneys argued in pre-sentencing statements to the judge that their clients’ motives weren’t entirely bad: They believed strongly that “without donation (of bodies or body parts) there is no cure,” Koch’s attorney wrote. Hess’ lawyers said the Sunset Mesa funeral director didn’t get rich from this scheme; she drives a 16-year-old car and is deep in debt.

“Ms. Hess has been figuratively tarred and feathered by the local community as much as one can in the 21st century,” her attorney wrote in the filing, urging the judge to consider a lighter sentence.

Hess, in a 2016 interview with Reuters, said she viewed the body parts operation as a public service, helping research and medical education.

“It����ap for the good of the world,” she told the news outlet, “and I like to help people.”

The 2018 Reuters investigation found Sunset Mesa operated unlike any other business in the country. The news agency could find no other examples of a body broker business operating under the same roof as a funeral home and crematory.

A former employee, cited in the Reuters story, said Koch extracted gold teeth from the deceased in order to pay for a Disneyland vacation.

It’s not illegal in the United States to sell body parts for research and education, though the industry is not federally regulated. Few states oversee the business and almost anyone — with or without experience — can dissect and sell human body parts.

Tuesday’s hearing marked the end of the Sunset Mesa legal case. But for many victims, the pain doesn’t end now that Koch and Hess are headed to federal prison.

“This is something a person never really heals from,” said Chrissy Hartman. “It becomes our new normal.”

The opioid crisis began in the boardroom, with companies pushing out addictive prescription pills and doctors engaging in widespread overprescribing of them. In recent years, law enforcement authorities held drug companies accountable for their illegal conduct and curtailed the overprescribing of opioids. As a result, these addictive pain pills became harder to obtain. But that led to a vacuum now being filled by drug cartels ready and willing to manufacture and supply deadly fentanyl — as well as heroin — as an alternative.

Fentanyl is a synthetic opioid that is 60 times more potent than morphine and 30 times stronger than heroin. As fentanyl use rose in recent years — as a standalone substance, as counterfeit Oxycontin, Xanax, and Adderall pills, and as an additive laced in other dangerous drugs — it fueled the opioid epidemic and led to major increases in overdose deaths.

As law enforcement officers for the United States and the state of Colorado, we’ve seen firsthand the devastation fentanyl inflicts on Colorado communities. And we led actions to cut off the fentanyl supply chain. Just recently, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Colorado charged two drug dealers for selling heroin mixed with fentanyl to buyers. Those buyers were unaware of the fentanyl contained in the substance — leading to three persons overdosing and dying. Earlier this year, the Colorado Attorney General’s Office partnered with Adams County District Attorney Brian Mason, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, and local law enforcement to dismantle an international drug trafficking and money laundering ring, leading to 64 charges for trafficking of fentanyl, cocaine, heroin, and meth into Colorado. As part of this operation, 77,000 counterfeit oxycodone pills — containing fentanyl — were recovered, undoubtedly saving lives.

But with 100,000 overdose deaths in one year alone, we have more work to do. We must increase resources to interrupting and stopping the flow of fentanyl onto our streets. We need better public awareness so those struggling with addiction do not unwittingly fall victim to fentanyl or other fentanyl-laced substances. And by providing more education about this threat to the public, we can prevent first and one-time users from ever taking a pill in the first place.

For those people already struggling with addiction to opioids, we should expand treatment options across Colorado. Taking a holistic, public health response to this problem will save lives.

On the law enforcement front, it is critical that federal, state, and local agencies collaborate on prevention, interdiction, and prosecution efforts. Only by working together can we adequately respond to the challenges fentanyl presents.

We must also strengthen our criminal laws. Our state’s drug dealing and possession laws were not written for a drug as deadly as fentanyl. Four grams of fentanyl is not equivalent to four grams of cocaine. The General Assembly must reevaluate and update our laws to account for the heightened lethality of this substance.

First, the legislature should raise penalties for drug dealers who sell fentanyl-laced drugs to unsuspecting buyers, resulting in their deaths. Dealers selling counterfeit pills containing fentanyl in our communities are peddling a product likely to kill.  Federal law already has a distribution-resulting-in-death law.  For a substance as fatal as fentanyl, Colorado should follow suit.

The legislature should also re-evaluate our drug possession laws. Three years ago, when the legislature lowered the penalty for possession of four grams or less of illegal drugs from a felony to a misdemeanor, the goal was to not penalize those struggling with drug addiction. But the legislature should think hard about whether this relaxation of penalties should continue with a one-size-fits-all approach for all drug possession offenses. Four grams of fentanyl — an amount that can kill 13,000 people — is not likely to be held by a single person to fuel their addiction. In fact, four grams of fentanyl can kill more people than the population of 29 of Colorado’s 64 counties. The legislature should take a second look at this law as it relates to deadly fentanyl.

The opioid crisis is exacerbated by the availability of fentanyl. To fight this scourge, we need more treatment options for those struggling with addiction, we need better enforcement tools, we need to disrupt the supply chain and arrest fentanyl traffickers, and we need more and better education and awareness. Together, we can build on Colorado’s history of collaboration between federal, state, and local governments to respond to this deadly crisis.

Phil Weiser is Attorney General of Colorado. Jason Dunn served as United States Attorney for Colorado from 2018 to 2021.

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President Joe Biden on Tuesday nominated Cole Finegan, a former Denver city attorney who once served under Democratic governors John Hickenlooper and Roy Romer, to be the next U.S. attorney for the District of Colorado.

Finegan, currently a managing partner at Denver’s Hogan Lovells law firm, beat out two other finalists — Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson and Hetal Doshi, a federal prosecutor — for the region’s top federal law enforcement position.

“I am honored that President Biden has nominated me and I look forward to the confirmation process,” Finegan told The Denver Post in an email.

The White House, in a announcing eight other nominations for U.S. attorney positions around the country, said confirming these prosecutors will be critical for addressing the uptick in gun violence over the past 18 months.

Finegan is a veteran of Democratic politics in Colorado going back decades.

He previously served as Denver’s city attorney and chief of staff under Hickenlooper, as well as chief legal counsel and director of policy and initiatives under former Gov. Roy Romer.

Finegan also did a stint in Washington, D.C., as chief of staff for former U.S. Rep. James R. Jones, an Oklahoma Democrat.

His appointment as U.S. attorney will need Senate confirmation.

The nomination represents Biden’s pick to replace Jason Dunn, who served as U.S. attorney in Colorado after being appointed by President Donald Trump in 2018. Dunn resigned early this year after Biden took office.

Dunn, an appointee of President Donald Trump, told Colorado Public Radio his resignation will be effective Feb. 28. He joined the U.S. attorney’s office in 2018, and he declined to speak of his future plans.

Dunn is one of more than 50 top federal prosecutors who were asked to resign — a normal occurrence in changes of U.S. presidential administrations.

Dunn’s successor will need to be confirmed by the U.S. Senate.

Colorado’s Democratic senators, Michael Bennet and John Hickenlooper, have recommended possible replacements, including Denver City Attorney Kristin Bronson, Assistant U.S. Attorney Hetal Doshi and Cole Finnegan, a former Denver city attorney who served as chief of staff to then-Denver Mayor Hickenlooper.

Logan Scott Debyle allegedly used a green laser pointer during a Nov. 4 protest over the presidential election in the Capitol Hill neighborhood, aiming it at the cockpit of DPD’s Air 1. The helicopter crew was able to pinpoint who was using it, according to a news release from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Colorado.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office filed a criminal complaint against Debyle on Nov. 6 but then took the case to a grand jury. It is against federal law to aim a laser pointer at an aircraft.

“We are proceeding with this and other matters to ensure that laws are enforced both here in Denver, as well as at the United States Capitol,” U.S. Attorney Jason Dunn said in the news release.  “Peaceful protests will be protected, but lawless rule breaking will not be tolerated.”

If Debyle is found guilty, he will face a sentence of up to five years and a fine of up to $250,000.

Kevin Bui, 16, who has been charged with murder in the killings, dealt drugs at the direction of his older sister, Tanya Bui, 23, Celeste Rangel, a prosecutor with the U.S. Attorney’s office, said during a detention hearing for Tanya Bui, who faces federal drug and gun trafficking charges.

Tanya Bui would tell her brother who to sell to, how much people owed, and where to go to make deals, Rangel said.

“She is not only working with Kevin, who is 16 years old, but she is directing him,” Rangel said.

Tanya Bui has not been charged in connection to the fatal fire, but Rangel said those charges are expected.

“The evidence is she was involved in the planning, and, or after the homicide with these juveniles,” Rangel said. “She was also a suspect in a 2016 arson.”

The three teenagers — Kevin Bui, 16-year-old Gavin Seymour and a 15-year-old — have been charged in connection with an Aug. 5 early morning house fire in the 5300 block of North Truckee Street that killed five members of a Senegalese family and drew international attention and horror. In the days after the arson, police released haunting surveillance camera pictures of three people wearing masks and hoodies who had been walking in the neighborhood that night.

The two 16-year-olds will be prosecuted as adults on 60 criminal counts each.

Those killed were: 29-year-old Djibril Diol, 23-year-old Adja Diol, their 2-year-old daughter Khadija, 25-year-old Hassan Diol and her 6-month-old daughter, Hawa Baye. Others escaped by leaping from the burning home.

Authorities have not released a motive for the attack, but during Wednesday’s federal detention hearing, prosecutors depicted Tanya Bui as a successful drug dealer who had easy access to drugs, large amounts of money and guns.

Investigators found a significant amount of fentanyl and cash in the Bui’s home, including 21 pills and more than $1,000 in Kevin Bui’s bedroom.

Rangel also told the judge that Tanya Bui told a potential buyer of a gun that “her brother wanted to hold on to it,” on Aug. 6 —  the day after the fatal fire — which Rangel said was significant because surveillance footage from the arson appears to show one of the suspects holding a gun.

Tanya Bui presented a danger to the community and a flight risk, Rangel said, adding that Tanya Bui’s father, who runs an accounting business, is now also under investigation for “activity as it pertains to his business.” She did not elaborate.

Tanya Bui’s federal public defender, Edward Harris, argued that she should be released because of her deep ties to the community, and he objected to the prosecution’s focus on the state charges she could face in the summer killings.

“Whether she will actually be charged in Denver or not, that����ap speculative at this point,” he said. “Time will tell. This is the case we are dealing with today…and I would like to think it was not just a placeholder.”

Magistrate Judge Kristen Mix called Tanya Bui a “sophisticated, manipulative drug dealer,” and ordered that she be kept in custody.

“For a 23-year-old to own a Tesla Model S worth $80,000 who has no reported income from legitimate employment is very strange,” Mix said. “It is also strange that you’d own a $20,000 Lexus when you have no reported income from legitimate business….The court has very little doubt you would be tempted to flee in light of the charges you are facing.”