Coloradans who tuned into a “Dateline” rerun Monday afternoon, for instance, would have been treated to a firehose of ads about U.S. Rep. Gabe Evans, the Republican fighting to keep his 8th Congressional District seat, or his Democratic opponent, former state Rep. Manny Rutinel.

While other political ads sometimes break in, no race has received as much screen time as the 8th District. One-time colleagues in the state House, Evans and Rutinel are locked in one of the most expensive congressional races in the country, drawing in vast sums from outside groups and filling what feels like every commercial break with grave voices warning about the loss of jobs, healthcare and pickup trucks.

One ad shown Monday afternoon, featuring Adams County District Attorney Brian Mason, hit Evans for opposing efforts to release federal records about Jeffrey Epstein. (Evans did not support a petition that would’ve forced a vote to release the files; after the discharge petition succeeded in forcing that vote, Evans and nearly every other Republican then supported the release.)

In the next commercial break, an Evans ad criticized Rutinel’s votes on two 2024 criminal justice bills: one that would have tightened criminal penalties on certain sex crimes, and another that changed aspects of the state’s criminal competency system. (Rutinel voted against the first and in favor of the second; the second bill had firm bipartisan support, including from a Republican who later appeared in a campaign ad with Evans.)

“Dateline” ended with three back-to-back ads: There was Evans, leaning against the back of a truck, shaking his head as four men ripped on Rutinel. Then, a man and woman criticized Rutinel’s environmentalist past.

The final ad in the trio featured Mason, back again, accusing Evans of “protecting child predators.”

The ads are intentionally ceaseless. Colorado’s relatively new 8th Congressional District, which extends just north of Denver and includes parts of Weld, Adams and Larimer counties, is the most competitive federal seat in the state. The contest was decided by fewer than 3,000 votes in its first two elections, in 2022 and 2024.

In 2024 alone, $29 million in outside spending poured into the race. That was the third most of any House race that year, . The most expensive race this century was a 2018 Georgia contest, which cost more than $82 million.

, the avalanche of ads aims to influence the relatively small number of people who will ultimately decide the race, experts said. Every other viewer serves as something like collateral damage.

“I think a lot of people are not persuaded by the ads,” said Paul Teske, a public affairs professor at the University of Colorado Denver. “Having said that, in a district with fewer than 3,000 votes winning the last couple of races, maybe you’re trying to convince 10,000 people to be part of those 3,000 who swing the race.”

More than $12 million in outside spending, much of it focused on producing or publishing ads, has been spent in the race since Rutinel won the Democratic primary in June.

Millions more have been deployed by the campaigns: Rutinel had raised $4.3 million as of June 30, compared to nearly $5.4 million for Evans. Those are undoubtedly sharp undercounts. Neither campaign has had to disclose updated financials .

Campaign finance reports covering the period from July 1 through September are due Thursday.

The race’s $9.34 million in media spending during most of September was the second highest of any race in the country, behind only Iowa’s 1st Congressional District, .

Evans has been backed by super PACs linked to President Donald Trump and billionaires Elon Musk and Charles Koch, among others. Rutinel has received outside support from prominent liberal groups, plus an organization that backs candidates with a science background and a Colorado-based group that has not yet reported any donors this cycle but was previously funded by a dark money outfit.

Both candidates have also received substantial support from PACs tied to congressional leadership for both parties.

The steady stream of negative advertising in the 8th District race follows a time-worn path, said Robert Preuhs, political science chair at Metropolitan State University of Denver.

“A lot of what we’re seeing in the 8th is what we’re seeing in a lot of close races nationwide,” he said. “You want to mobilize your base and cast your opponent as a threat.”

For Evans, that means painting Rutinel as a dangerous leftist “radical,” while for Rutinel, it means casting Evans as a loyal patsy for Trump. Each man blasted his opponent along those lines during their only debate last week, and the theme has held through the avalanche of ads in Colorado.

Teske said that barrages of negative ads can often drive down turnout: Voters will decide that both candidates are crooks, he said, and throw their hands up. Still, he expected the race — and the election as a whole — to have high participation.

The advantage of wall-to-wall negative advertising, Preuhs said, likely rests with the Democrats — even if it annoys the electorate as a whole. They are the party out of power nationally, and they can assign blame to the GOP brand for the vexing issues — the Iran war, stubbornly high prices and unpopular tariffs — that Trump has yet to fix.

“That is the concern of every Republican,” Preuhs said, “that Trump is a bit of an albatross in this election even though he’s not on the ballot.”

That is certainly the pro-Rutinel ad strategy — tie Evans to Trump while highlighting his own working-class bona fides. Evans and his backers, meanwhile, have worked to highlight Rutinel’s past contentious positions and votes while boosting Evans’ history in law enforcement and the military.

They will continue to make their cases until Nov. 3, when the political ads finally go silent.

“At its core, this case is about trust — the extraordinary trust placed in Ms. Woods, and her breach of that trust,” District Judge Andrew Poland said as he imposed the sentence.

Woods mishandled at least 1,045 criminal cases during her 29-year career as a DNA analyst at the CBI. She deleted, omitted and manipulated data to speed up the DNA testing process and boost her productivity, creating unreliable results in hundreds of criminal cases.

“I know an apology cannot undo the harm or restore the trust that was lost,” Woods said during Tuesday’s sentencing in Jefferson County District Court. “For many years I was entrusted with evidence that could have profound consequences for defendants, victims, families and the courts. I failed that responsibility. I am deeply sorry for that failure.”

Woods could have faced between eight and 16 years in prison under the terms of her plea agreement. The 66-year-old former analyst pleaded guilty to four felonies in June, admitting to committing a cybercrime, perjury, attempting to influence a public servant and forgery. About 100 other counts against her were dismissed as part of the agreement.

Woods’ defense attorney, Tom Ward, sought the minimum eight-year prison sentence, arguing that she took responsibility for her crimes and cooperated with investigators. He said Woods’ misconduct was clustered in a few years later in her career during which her caseload had doubled.

“The things she did in this case are serious and they merit punishment,” he said, “…but they do not erase all of the good things she did.”

Chief Deputy District Attorney Darren Kafka asked the judge to impose a sentence that would start to restore trust in Colorado’s criminal justice system by strongly condemning Woods’ crimes.

“Can we trust our criminal justice system?” he asked. “Or even to some, can we trust science? Sowing this doubt will be Ms. Woods’ legacy.”

In dozens of sexual assault cases, Woods falsely said she found no male DNA in her testing when she had in fact found male DNA, depriving investigators of information key to their cases and ultimately denying justice to victims, Kafka said.

Kafka outlined 10 individual cases in which Woods lied about her DNA findings, including in the alleged sexual assault of a 4-year-old Pueblo girl, a woman who claimed she was raped in Rocky Mountain National Park, and an 88-year-old Denver woman who said she was sexually assaulted. In each case, Woods found male DNA but said she did not, and then covered her tracks by authoring false lab reports and making false changes to data, Kafka said.

“All of this created a mire of uncertainty and confusion that CBI and the state of Colorado as a whole will struggle to untangle, I suspect, for long after Ms. Woods’ sentence is discharged,” he said.

Ward said Woods discarded findings in cases that she believed “were going nowhere,” in an attempt to speed up CBI’s ability to test cases as the agency worked through backlogged sexual assault kit testing.

“It wasn’t her call to make, and she made it anyway, and that is why she is being sentenced today,” Ward said.

Woods struggled to speak at times during her emotional statement in court. She hugged tearful supporters before she was handcuffed and taken into custody at the conclusion of the hearing.

“There are cases where a sample could have gone forward for additional testing and did not because of a choice I made,” Woods said. “A suspect may have gone unidentified because of me.”

The CBI’s investigation into Woods found she altered data from an evidence item in 156 cases, altered quality control samples in 520 instances, failed to document her work in 233 cases, failed to follow policy in 106 cases, and reported results that conflicted with her notes in 30 cases, Ward said.

He noted that one act by Woods often impacted multiple cases, and said the CBI found she acted intentionally to change data 227 times.

Poland said Tuesday that Woods’ crimes were “intentional misconduct by a highly trained professional occupying a position of extraordinary trust,” and that her crimes undermined the integrity of the judicial system.

“When that integrity is compromised, the damage reaches beyond any single case, it affects confidence in the system itself,” the judge said.

First Judicial District Attorney Alexis King said after the hearing Tuesday that law enforcement and victims trusted Woods to handle evidence honestly.

“Instead, Ms. Woods played God,” she said. “She substituted her own judgment for the evidence.”

CBI Director Armando Saldate on Tuesday called Woods’ sentencing “another step forward” amid the CBI’s attempts to rectify her misconduct, reform policies and procedures, and shift the culture of the agency’s forensic services away from a quantity-over-quality mindset. He said Woods’ actions do not define the CBI.

James Karbach, a spokesman for the Office of the Colorado State Public Defender, called for the CBI to submit to independent oversight.

“Even after all that has transpired, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation has still not sufficiently addressed the pervasive systemic and structural issues that this scandal has exposed,” he said. “CBI has continued to downplay the impact of its decades-long fraud, avoid full transparency and accountability, and has demonstrated that it is not capable of regulating itself.”

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, a failure of oversight that a Colorado judge in August found to be “outrageous government conduct.”

Woods resigned from the CBI in 2023 instead of being fired, and the agency spent 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.

Woods’ misconduct 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.

Gretchen Ryan, 55, is charged with second-degree murder in the death of Grace Ryan, who died in the family’s Arvada home on March 9. Gretchen Ryan, who was herself an alcoholic, provided her daughter with significant amounts of alcohol and failed to seek help for the teenager even when the girl vomited blood, became incontinent and begged for help, police alleged in an affidavit.

“I’m in so much pain I can’t keep doing this. Do something,” Grace messaged her mother five days before she died, according to the affidavit.

Gretchen Ryan spent several days in a hospital after her daughter’s death, then went to her sister’s house and entered rehab on March 16, attorney Dilan Sutliff said in court Thursday as she argued that Ryan’s $500,000 cash-only bond should be reduced.

Gretchen Ryan went to Alcoholics Anonymous meetings once a week during the several-week span after Grace’s death but before she was arrested in mid-May, Sutliff said. She has the support of her immediate family and has never failed to show up to court, Sutliff argued.

“She has been completely sober since the police showed up to her house on March 9,” Sutliff said.

Investigators found that Gretchen Ryan supplied Grace with significant amounts of alcohol — they each drank about a bottle of vodka a day, according to the affidavit — and that the pair worked together to hide their alcoholism from Grace’s father. Police found 173 empty alcohol bottles hidden in Grace’s bedroom after she died.

Chief Deputy District Attorney Tyra Forbes argued against the bond reduction Thursday, and noted that Gretchen Ryan never helped her daughter enter rehab even when the girl pleaded for help again and again.

“She went to rehab,” Forbes said of Gretchen Ryan. “Rehab that her child asked for repeatedly in the months leading up to her death. And she wouldn’t get it for (Grace), because she was afraid of the consequences for her.”

Before her arrest, Gretchen Ryan told investigators several times that she felt like she killed her daughter. In messages to the teenager before Grace died, Gretchen Ryan described her own actions as “child abuse and murder” and talked about going to prison. Grace told a friend that her mother didn’t want her to get help.

County Court Judge Sara Garrido refused to reduce Gretchen Ryan’s bond on Thursday, finding the woman might not return to court if released.

“I am not basing that decision on the facts of the case. I am not. The facts are as bad as they can be,” the judge said, going on to find that Gretchen Ryan did not present a safety risk to the community. “…However, I do not believe, and I have no confidence — I don’t see any reason why you would come back to court to face the charges that you face, the facts and allegations you face, and to face a likely lengthy prison sentence that might be coming your way.”

Gretchen Ryan, who was handcuffed and shackled, appeared to begin crying when the bond reduction was denied. She is next due in court Aug. 24.

Judge Russell Klein sentenced Metz to three months of work release and four years of probation after hearing emotional statements from the mothers of the two teen victims and from Metz, along with arguments from the prosecution and defense.

Klein told the courtroom that although the prison sentence requested by the prosecution was not appropriate because of Metz’s lack of criminal history, Metz’s attorney’s proposal of a year of probation “doesn’t really properly address the gravity of what took place in this case.”

“A child being shot in the face is a trauma that can never be taken away from them, and that is a very serious offense,” Klein said.

Jack Howard was 17 years old when he and 15-year-old Luke Brookhouser stumbled upon Metz’s property near Conifer while looking for a place to take homecoming photos in September 2024.

The pair hopped the fence, knocked on a barn door and were sitting in their car writing a note to ask permission to return to take photos when Metz pulled up behind them and got out of his truck.

Metz’s attorneys, David Jones and Christopher Decker, have argued that Metz’s gun went off unintentionally while he was getting out of his vehicle. Deputy District Attorney Christopher Johnson argued that Metz fired the gun.

Howard was shot in the face, and the fragmented bullet broke his nose and hit his eye, lip, tooth and arm, according to a lawsuit.

A Jefferson County jury in June convicted Metz of third-degree assault and illegal discharge of a firearm in the shooting and acquitted him of two counts of felony menacing.

On Tuesday, Brookhouser’s mother, Tiffany, read a letter her son wrote to the court because he could not attend the sentencing hearing.

In the letter, the teen talked about the pain he and those around him have gone through and criticized Metz for not apologizing until it benefited him.

“He will never know what it’s like to constantly have to relive that moment, and he will never be able to take back what he did,” Luke Brookhouser wrote.

Howard’s mother, Allison, also addressed the court and called out Metz for not apologizing or taking responsibility for the shooting.

“What happened that day did not end when the bleeding stopped,” she said. “It changed these boys forever.”

Metz also addressed the court and started by apologizing to the teens and their families.

“I know that an apology cannot erase what occurred or undo the impact it has had on your lives. I can only tell you there hasn’t been a single day since that accident that I have not thought of and prayed for you and your family,” he said.

Before announcing the sentence, Klein said he’s still not clear why Metz parked in a way that stopped the boys from leaving or why he unholstered the gun from where it was secured in his truck — a concern echoed by District Attorney Alexis King in a statement after the sentencing.

“Ultimately, (Metz) was found to be negligent and reckless, and he has caused a lifetime of trauma for those who suffered from his poor decision-making,” King said.

Metz’s attorneys could not be reached for comment on the sentencing, but during the hearing, Jones emphasized that Metz has taken responsibility for his negligence and has felt remorse every day since the shooting.

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����ap 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.

The people indicted were members of a “widespread motor vehicle theft ring” accused of stealing vehicles from small airport parking lots, nearby hotels and other locations in Adams, Boulder, Denver, Douglas, Jefferson, Larimer, and Weld counties, according to the news release.

Weiser and Walsh said members of the ring allegedly stole 41 pickup trucks, trailers, and recreational utility terrain vehicles between July 2024 and January 2025. The value of the vehicles, stolen property and damage exceeds $900,000, according to the news release.

The vehicles were allegedly used to commit other crimes and avoid detection by law enforcement and license plate readers before being taken to Mexico and sold to cartels, Weiser and Walsh said.

“This indictment targets a car-theft organization that is alleged to have been operating on an international scale, with ties extending well beyond Colorado’s borders – but its impact has been felt in neighborhoods and communities across the Denver metro-area and the Front Range,” Walsh said in a statement.

The 11 people indicted face multiple charges that range from racketeering and conspiracy under Colorado’s Organized Crime Control Act to second-degree motor vehicle theft to forgery, according to the news release. Their cases were filed in

Chevrier, who goes by Michael, was a Jeffco Public Schools psychologist at Green Mountain and Bear Creek high schools when he was arrested in May 2025 following a Safe2Tell report about the assault.

A jury convicted Chevrier, 39, in January of sexual assault on a child by one in a position of trust, a felony, as well as two felony drug charges and two misdemeanor charges for contributing to the delinquency of a minor. He was acquitted on charges of of soliciting child prostitution and attempted child sex assault.

Court officials sealed Chevrier’s arrest affidavit early in the case and few details about the investigation were made public, though the previously confirmed the charges involved three students, as well as separate drug-related crimes.

District Court Judge Diego Hunt — from five years to life — that depends in part on complying with sex offender treatment, the district attorney’s office said in a news release. Prosecutors had argued for the maximum sentence of 12 years in prison for the assault charge.

The victim in the case spoke at the sentencing hearing Thursday about how Chevrier’s actions robbed her of her freshman year of high school and trust in adults, the DA’s office said.

In a statement, said Chevrier used his position of trust to identify, target and exploit vulnerable teen girls who came to him for help.

“The abuse only stopped because the victim was brave enough to testify before a jury, face her abuser and describe the lasting impact of his crimes while he sat only feet away,” Spease said.

Chevrier’s attorneys could not immediately be reached for comment on the sentencing.

Sage Valentine pleaded guilty to two counts of vehicular homicide related to reckless driving and DUI in March for the crash on Feb. 20, 2025, according to the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office.

The crash happened at 6 a.m. when Valentine, driving 60 mph southbound in a Toyota 4Runner near mile marker 2 north of Golden, crossed into the northbound lane. Valentine hit two other vehicles before crashing head-on into a vehicle driven by 64-year-old Cynthia “Cindy” Myers. Myers was killed in the crash, the DA’s office said.

Colorado State Patrol investigators found evidence that Valentine was drinking in Boulder the night before and had not slept before driving to work early that morning.

Myers’ husband, Greg Myers, spoke during Valentine’s sentencing hearing on Monday and said his wife was months away from retirement when she was killed, the district attorney’s office said in a news release.

Valentine also pleaded guilty to a traffic infraction for not having insurance. Prosecutors dismissed one misdemeanor count of DUI as part of the plea agreement.

Christopher Thomas, 30, pleaded guilty to driving under the influence, a misdemeanor, and eluding an officer, a traffic infraction, as part of a plea agreement, according to court records. Prosecutors dismissed charges of felony vehicular eluding, misdemeanor reckless endangerment and reckless driving, a traffic infraction, as part of the deal.

Thomas was arrested Dec. 5 after a Colorado State Patrol trooper clocked his truck driving 102 mph in Jefferson County. Thomas, who was off-duty and in the truck with another officer, drove onto Interstate 70 and was headed eastbound at 90 mph before he spotted the trooper behind him and sped up to over 100 mph, CSP investigators said.

The trooper stopped following the truck but used a partial license plate to link the vehicle to Thomas. Another Denver police officer who learned of the incident later reported it to a DPD sergeant, who notified internal affairs.

Investigators also found texts between Thomas’ passenger and one of his family members that discussed reporting the truck as stolen because Thomas “couldn’t get caught up tonight drinking at all … because they’re going to associate that with the car tonight and alcohol and the car don’t mix.”

District Court Judge Tamara Russell sentenced Thomas to two years of probation and 48 hours of community service on Monday.

In a statement, First Judicial District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Brionna Boatright said prosecutors sought a sentence that included jail time because the actions involved were a significant public safety risk.

“The defendant was a law enforcement officer at the time of the offense and therefore understood, perhaps better than most, the dangers his actions created for himself, responding officers, and the public,” Boatright said.

“Ultimately, the Court determined that a sentence of probation was appropriate. We hope the defendant takes that opportunity seriously and fully appreciates the potential consequences his actions could have had for the community,” she continued.

Thomas, who was hired in 2021, is working on a non-patrol assignment until the Denver Police Department’s internal review is complete, spokesperson Sean Towle said.

“I’m in so much pain I can’t keep doing this. Do something,” the girl messaged her mother, according to an Arvada Police Department arrest affidavit released Thursday.

Gretchen Ryan, 55, dismissed her daughter’s concerns. She is now charged with second-degree murder in Grace’s death after investigators found she enabled and encouraged her daughter’s alcoholism even when Grace’s health plummeted to the point that the teenager vomited blood and became incontinent.

“If you’re going to do this to me you need to take me to a hospital,” the girl wrote during a text-message exchange with her mother shortly after 4 p.m. on March 4, according to the affidavit.

“Why did you ask me to get more?” her mother responded.

“I’m gonna die,” the teenager said.

“No you aren’t,” her mother answered.

“I’m not doing it,” Grace wrote.

“Don’t drink anymore. Just smoke weed,” Gretchen Ryan responded.

“Call 911,” Grace wrote.

“Seriously?” her mother said.

“I don’t know what else to do,” the girl answered.

“You are going to breathe and stop drinking,” Gretchen Ryan responded. “Are you throwing up?”

“You won’t do anything,” Grace wrote. “I’m in so much pain.”

The 16-year-old girl died March 9 at her home in Arvada. In her obituary, she is remembered as enjoying music, art, church, pets and friends. She hoped to become a social worker, .

In interviews with police, Gretchen Ryan repeatedly said she caused her daughter’s death, according to the 25-page affidavit.

“I feel like I killed her,” the woman said.

The 55-year-old mother, who described herself as an alcoholic, repeated that sentiment several times before and after the teenager’s death, according to the records, even as she ensured her daughter had a heavy supply of available alcohol and worked with the teenager to hide both of their drinking habits from Grace’s father.

“I’m committing child abuse and murder,” Gretchen Ryan messaged her daughter in a string of unanswered texts in January. “And I will go to prison. So we have to do something it is really bad. Do you understand? Vomiting blood is a really bad sign. Look it up. I probably should tell (redacted) and take you to the hospital. Are you reading these? Hello!!!’nnm Respond!!!!!!!!!! Do you want to die? If (redacted) saw you he’d freak out. Quit ignoring me.”

In other messages, Gretchen Ryan said she “tried to be the cool (redacted) and (expletived) up.”

Both mother and daughter consumed about a bottle of vodka a day each, according to the affidavit. Gretchen Ryan frequently ordered the liquor to be delivered to the family’s home, and the pair worked together to hide the severity of their drinking from Grace’s father, using a backpack to secretly move bottles of alcohol through the house, and hiding bottles for each other in a bathroom.

Grace’s father told investigators he’d only discovered his daughter drinking on two occasions, and that he’d confiscated the alcohol. The father declined to comment when reached by The Denver Post on Wednesday.

In November, Grace messaged her mother to say that her father discovered some of her drinking. Gretchen instructed her daughter on what lies to tell to explain away the alcohol bottle, and Grace reassured her mother that her father did not know how often or how much she drank, according to the affidavit.

Gretchen Ryan estimated that her daughter drank to the point of vomiting at least once a week.

On March 3, Grace texted a friend and said she’d been an alcoholic for a year but wanted to get sober.

“I never wanted to be like this,” the teenager wrote to her friend, before expressing fear that her mother would be sent to prison. “I don’t think she wants me to get help which is what really scares me… I’m gonna die.”

Investigators later found 173 empty bottles of alcohol hidden in the teenager’s bedroom, according to the affidavit. The messages reviewed by investigators show the teenager often had to drink alcohol to avoid withdrawal. Her mother pulled her from public school in the fall of 2025 and enrolled the teenager in an online school.

On the night that Grace died, Gretchen told police she heard the girl fall in the bathroom and checked on her. She rolled Grace on her side but believed Grace was experiencing a seizure and would recover. She said Grace woke up and asked her to leave the bathroom. She checked on the girl one more time before going to bed, the woman said.

She messaged her daughter at 9:52 p.m.

“Doing ok?” Gretchen Ryan wrote.

“Pplplplease” her daughter wrote back at 10:07 p.m.

That was the last message Grace ever sent.