More than 6,700 civil and criminal cases have been restricted from public access since 2013, usually by judges who agreed to a request from prosecutors or defense lawyers to shield them, The Post found. Of those, 3,076 are still under suppression orders that keep the details away from the public — 345 are felony criminal cases — as they work their way through the legal system, according to state computer records.

Until recently, no information about any of the suppressed cases was available publicly — not the names of the defendants, the charges they faced or even the identity of the judges who closed them — until The Post began questioning the practice.

The Post identified 66 felony cases that remained closed to the public — including homicides and sex crimes requiring registration as a sexual offender — even though the defendants had already been convicted and sentenced, some to lengthy prison terms.

In every suppressed case, The Post found, the judge’s suppression order and the reasons supporting it are shielded from public scrutiny. Courthouse employees and many law enforcement officials, including prosecutors, will not even acknowledge the suppressed cases exist, The Post found.

That means someone could be arrested, charged, convicted and sent to prison in Colorado without anyone seeing why, how or where, and whether the process was fair.

“This sounds like the Star Chamber to me,” said Alan Chen, a constitutional law professor at University of referring to the chastised for arbitrary rulings and secret proceedings.  “Colorado is one of the worst states in terms of access to criminal court records for reasons I really have no explanation for. I’ve not heard of this being practiced anywhere else in the country. It’s frightening that if anything improper is going on, no one will know about it or have any way to find out.”

Although courtrooms remain open to the public, including hearings for suppressed cases, the only way to know when a hearing is to occur is to be there when it is scheduled. A Denver Post reporter happened to attend one hearing in which a murder suspect pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit first-degree murder, and no public record of the event existed. The only way to learn the defendant’s name was to be there when the judge announced it.

According to interviews and analysis of cases that were later opened to the public, the reasons behind a suppression order are varied: Prosecutors don’t want to alarm other members of a drug ring as they’re being rounded up; the case involves a juvenile defendant; or law enforcement says a criminal investigation is ongoing. Civil cases have been suppressed as well, typically — though not all — to shield victims of abuse or sexual assaults from publicity.

But there are other reasons as well. The Post found one criminal case — that of a board member and part-owner of the Broomfield Academy — in which prosecutors requested and received a suppression order to avoid publicity. The case remains suppressed.

It found another — of a member of the Adams County 14 school board eventually convicted with attempting to lure a child for sex — in which the judge ordered the suppression at the outset, without anyone even asking for it, because the judge “had concerns about releasing information,” records obtained by The Post show. The case remains suppressed.

The case of Clifford Galley, 28, convicted of attempted first-degree murder, was one of a number The Post found that remained suppressed long after the defendant went to prison. Galley was sentenced to 169 years in prison and won’t see freedom in his lifetime. Documents related to the case were suppressed after his arrest in 2013 and no one except for his lawyer, prosecutors or a judge could see them. Last month, a judge lifted the suppression order after The Post asked prosecutors questions about it. His appeal, however, remains suppressed.

Denver Post emails to several of the judges responsible for suppressed cases went unanswered except for one, and that judge passed it along to state court administrators to respond.

Suppressed cases are different than those sealed by the court, the reasons for which are limited by state law. Sealed cases are restricted to those where a defendant was exonerated or, under certain conditions, the case was dismissed, such as with a deferred sentence. Some low-level drug felonies can also be sealed under specific criteria.

By contrast, a judge may suppress a case for any reason at his or her discretion — usually, but not always, at the request of lawyers in the case, but most frequently prosecutors. Once a case is suppressed, it remains so until a judge reopens it, which The Post found often does not happen because neither defense lawyers nor prosecutors ever bother to ask.

“This isn’t right; it can’t be right. It’s a chance for them to victimize our family all over again,” said Mark Chalfant, whose son, Mark, was killed in a Taco Bell parking lot in Aurora in July 2014. Four teenagers were convicted in the case — one as a juvenile — yet all the records remain closed under suppression orders three years later.

Although media attention about the shooting and the arrests was widespread, the court cases were immediately suppressed. Only the 30-year sentence of triggerman Sterling Hook a year later — after prosecutors released the information.

“No one else ever gets to know what they’ve done,” Chalfant said, noting that no one other than family attended court hearings spread over a year. “That’s just wrong.“

Court records “critically important”

Open-records experts and several attorneys interviewed by The Post were troubled by the newspaper’s findings, saying it runs against the Colorado and U.S. constitutions and their guarantee of an open and accessible court system.

“Court records in general are a critically important source of information for the public,” said Jeff Roberts, executive director of the . “Without access to court records and proceedings, Coloradans can’t monitor the judicial system. They can’t know whether it¶¶Òőap working properly or not.”

The Colorado Supreme Court in June refused to declare that access to court records is an absolute right guaranteed by the First Amendment or the Colorado Constitution. But that decision dealt with a specific document that had been sealed within a court file, not the entire case itself or its details.

The Post’s investigation also found:

— Most suppressed cases had scant or no media attention, and the majority of the few that did were typically at the time of a defendant¶¶Òőap arrest, before anything was suppressed by a judge. Several suppressed cases did get press coverage when charges were filed and again after a defendant was sentenced, when prosecutors issued an announcement — but nothing in between.

— Until recently, no trace of a suppressed case existed in the public-access computers the state provides at county courthouses throughout Colorado, or the online for-pay services that compile the same data and . That has changed since The Post began inquiring. Until last week, the public still could not see what charges had been brought against a person in a suppressed case or see any details about it, such as the next court hearing or any sentence given.

— Sealed cases are restricted by law to only the judge who issued the order, and acknowledging their existence is prohibited. Public information about suppressed cases, however, , should include names and case numbers, though the details of a case and the courtroom proceedings around it have been restricted. Despite that, court officials and some prosecutors’ offices still treat the two types of cases as the same and refuse to give any information about a suppressed case.

— Public schedules posted daily outside of courtrooms, called dockets, show the cases being heard that day, including the names of defendants. If the case is suppressed, however, the docket only shows that a time is allotted for a hearing, but not why or for whom.

— Even high-profile cases that received intense publicity are under suppression orders, meaning access to any of their court records today is prohibited. Among them: Aurora theater shooter James Holmes; witness killers Sir Mario Owens and Robert Ray; and Jessica Ridgeway killer Austin Sigg. The media was able to follow these cases by appearing at a public court hearing to learn when the next was to be held. Many times prosecutors and defense lawyers say they simply forgot the case was still suppressed.

“That’s very troubling”

The Denver Post began investigating suppressed cases in Colorado nearly a year ago after reporters were denied access to records and expressed concern about the practice. The Post obtained data from the that helped it determine the extent to which suppressions have been used in each judicial district in Colorado. The Post then reviewed dozens of suppressed cases that have been unsuppressed to see how the practice was being used.

Since 2013, there have been 6,707 cases suppressed by judges in Colorado, and the bulk of them were criminal cases, The Post found — misdemeanors first, then felonies, followed by civil court matters. A judge’s suppression order was lifted in 3,631 of them, meaning the public can now access the cases, sometimes soon after a defendant was arrested or parties to a civil lawsuit were served with court papers, records show.

“Generally it’s one thing to suppress a (single) document, which is very legitimate, but when entire files begin to disappear from the public record, that’s very troubling,” Denver attorney said. “We’re very skeptical in America of things done in the dark, and other than juvenile law, you can walk into an American courtroom and take notes, and they can’t say, ‘It’s none of your business, get out of here.’ ”

The Post’s analysis found that the number of suppressed cases varies dramatically from county to county. , where Durango is the county seat, have suppressed 366 felony cases over the past five years, the most by any jurisdiction, records show. But those cases were nearly always unsuppressed once a defendant was arrested and brought to court, the longest taking two years, The Post found.

“It’s not uncommon to suppress a case until the defendant is arrested and the warrant served,” said Christian Champagne, district attorney for Colorado’s Sixth Judicial District that includes La Plata, Archuleta and San Juan counties. “Ours is an area where people come through and leave for long stretches of time.”

In the , which is made up of Arapahoe, Douglas, Lincoln and Elbert counties, 62 cases are still suppressed from public view even though the defendants have been tried, convicted and sentenced, The Post found, the highest among the state’s 22 judicial districts. The majority of the cases — 47, most of them from a single drug-conspiracy investigation from four years ago — are in Arapahoe County, followed by 14 others in Douglas County, and one in Elbert County.

That total doesn’t include 115 active felony cases that are still under suppression in the district — nearly half the statewide total, The Post found.

“I still think there are some legitimate reasons on behalf of the safety of certain victims and witnesses … that we ought to have the ability to continue to suppress those,” 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler said.

In 2015, prosecutors asked that the Douglas County be suppressed because it likely would garner a lot of media attention. A television station reported his arrest. There was no media report after the suppression order was issued. The private school is to close this year, according to its website.

The case has remained suppressed ever since even though Greenberg pleaded guilty to felony sexual assault of a child in which he received a four-year deferred sentence, and to a misdemeanor charge of child abuse. He is a registered sex-offender in Centennial, records show. Following The Post’s inquiry, prosecutors have asked a judge to unsuppress the case.

“Our office filed a motion to suppress, the reason being is that the case would be subject to extensive pretrial publicity,” Brauchler’s Senior Chief Deputy District Attorney Rich Orman told The Post in an email, saying he and Brauchler were not consulted by the DA who handled the case. “This was a mistake, and we should not have sought suppression of a court file for this reason.”

Brauchler said suppression orders sometimes are important to solving serious crimes, but concedes that once their usefulness is over, cases should not remain hidden from public scrutiny.

“Already in many cases, specifically gang and some domestic violence cases, the concern over an individual’s own safety is so strong that if you can’t provide some other assurance, even in the short-term, I think we’ll lose out on cooperation from a lot of key witnesses,” Brauchler said. “But the public should maintain the ability to scrutinize what we do, why we do it and how we go about that.”

After speaking with The Post, Brauchler’s office began unsuppressing many of the cases and instituted policies limiting how the practice should be used in the future. There are some cases, however, that Brauchler said should remain suppressed for the safety of the defendant — one of whom is serving a 16-year prison term in a rural county jail after having testified against another defendant who was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison, records show.

There have been no suppressed cases involving a criminal defendant in Denver District Court the past five years, the years The Post reviewed, according to records.

“This is just a completely foreign procedure in my years of experience as a district attorney,” said former Denver District Attorney Mitch Morrissey. “In my 33 years, I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’ve never even heard of suppressing an entire case. How can you have cases that don’t even show up on a court docket? I’ve never seen such a thing.”

Experts in open-records law say the practice of suppressing entire cases rubs against the grain of a system intended to be transparent.

“The most outrageous, unjustifiable and unconstitutional thing you’ve found is the public being denied the right to know which cases are on file in our courts of law against which defendants, and to have access, at the minimum, to the indexes of those cases,” said Denver attorney Steven Zansberg, an expert on open-records laws who represents a number of media outlets including The Denver Post.

“How is there a case where the public doesn’t know how or why someone is arrested or in prison?” he asked. “Courts throughout the land have held the public — we the people — have a constitutional First Amendment right to have access to those records.”

Many cases suppressed

When Frank Huner Jr., a 58-year-old Sedalia man, was charged in July 2017 with first-degree murder for allegedly killing his son, whom he said he mistook for an intruder, news of his arrest peppered the media.

Since then, however, there’s been not a word about the Douglas County case — and not a single reference to it could be found anywhere among the state’s courthouse databases available for the public to search criminal and civil cases. Courthouse employees refused to identify the case even existed.

During the course of The Post’s investigation, the State Court Administrator has changed the computer programs that provide the public with information about criminal and civil cases so that a defendant’s name, case number and the county where the case is being heard is displayed.

Until a week ago the public could not see the charges they faced or details about a suppressed case’s progress through the judicial system.

Such is the case of Daniel Pesch, a 34-year-old Littleton man charged in December 2017 for the 2010 murder of Kiowa High School science teacher Randy Wilson. The case has been suppressed since the moment it was filed, even though the media covered Pesch’s arrest. It’s only been recently unsuppressed after dozens of hearings. Still, several key portions of the case remain concealed from public view.

As well with Jeffrey Falk, 54, a former ThunderRidge High School math teacher sentenced in June 2016 to 21 years in prison for victimizing young boys and collecting “a library of child porn.” He had pleaded guilty in Arapahoe County district court to three counts of sexual exploitation of a child two months earlier.

His arrest in 2015 made headlines, but the four cases against him were immediately suppressed until he was sentenced. No other stories were published until after he pleaded guilty, was sentenced, and prosecutors later made a public announcement in June 2016.

One of the four cases against Falk was unsuppressed a month after that, records show — but the other three felony cases for which he was sentenced remained closed. That changed on June 13 after The Post began asking why.

The first-degree murder case in Adams County against juvenile Aidan Zellmer remains suppressed even though a judge has already ruled the 15-year-old is to stand trial as an adult.

And despite media coverage about the case, the warrant affidavit that describes the evidence that led to Zellmer’s arrest remains suppressed, as well as any other information about the case against him.

Even when a defendant has been charged, convicted and sent to prison, if the case is suppressed, some district attorney’s offices still treat it as if the matter has been sealed, even though the two are very different.

“The short answer is that suppressed and sealed means the same thing to the extent the public is barred from access,” Denver district attorney’s office spokesman Ken Lane told The Post when asked to provide information about a suppressed case from 2013 in which Denver was the special prosecutor in a different county. “So, if whatever case you’re referring to is in fact suppressed by a court order, then respectfully, I’m not going to violate a court order and release case information to the public.”

Forensic psychiatrist Steven Pitt, who was shot and killed outside his office in Scottsdale, Ariz., was involved in nearly every major criminal case in Colorado during the past 20 years.

Here is a look at some of the most prominent cases Pitt worked:

JonBenét Ramsey murder

On Dec. 26, 1996, Patsy Ramsey, mother of 6-year-old beauty queen, JonBenĂ©t Ramsey, found a 2 Âœ page note, saying her daughter had been kidnapped and demanding a $118,000 ransom. Later that afternoon, JonBenĂ©t¶¶Òőap father, John Ramsey, found her body in their basement, after she had been hit in the head, strangled and sexually assaulted. More than 20 years after her death, the case remains unsolved.

Tom Wickman, one of the lead detectives investigating the murder, declined to comment on the case, but said Pitt “worked tirelessly to help us.”

“He always felt police officers got the short end of the stick, but was very supportive of my team on the Ramsey case,” Wickman said. “He was just a great friend, I can’t tell you how much I cared for him.”

Columbine High School massacre

Eric Harris, 18, and Dylan Klebold, 17, opened fire on their classmates, killing 12 students and a teacher before shooting themselves. , Pitt oversaw the Columbine Psychiatric Autopsy Project following the shooting.

Deer Creek Middle School shooting

On Feb. 23, 2010, Bruco Eastwood shot and wounded two students in the Deer Creek Middle School parking lot. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity. The prosecution requested that Pitt be allowed to interview Eastwood, but the request was denied. Pitt reviewed the case file, as well as interviews with Eastwood and notes from the state hospital to evaluate Eastwood, Pam Russell, Jefferson County District Attorney spokeswoman, said.

Jessica Ridgeway murder

Austin Sigg, then 17, kidnapped and murdered 10-year-old Jessica Ridgeway on Oct. 5, 2012. Sigg grabbed the girl as she walked to school. Russell said the Jefferson County District Attorney’s office consulted with Pitt before an arrest had been made. Officials also relied upon his expertise concerning an “interview strategy” once Sigg was arrested.

Kobe Bryant sexual assault case

of raping a 19-year-old girl working at a resort in Edwards. The accuser filed a civil suit and the criminal case was eventually dropped. Pitt also was consulted on the criminal case, according to his website.

Aurora theater shooting

In 2015, the Denver Post had Pitt review Aurora shooter James Holmes’ notebook. Pitt said the notebook revealed that Holmes suffered severe mental illness but also seemed to know what he was doing was wrong.

“I think the advantage goes to the prosecution as it relates to the writings,” Pitt said of the notebook. “I also think the advantage goes to the defense as it relates to how serious of a mental illness he had and the internal hell he was writing in.”

What do forensic psychiatrists do?

Dr. Richard Martinez, director of the forensic psychiatry program at the University of Colorado Denver’s school of medicine, said forensic psychiatrists are trained in four main areas: treatment of prisoners in correctional facilities, criminal proceedings, civil legal issues and administrative issues.

“The role of forensic psychiatrist and forensic psychologists in terms of evaluating individuals and testifying as an expert is primarily as an educator to the criminal justice system,” he said. “So what¶¶Òőap important to stress is it¶¶Òőap not about taking sides.”

“We have a core ethical responsibility to strive for objective, fair opinions based on lots of info 
 and present a somewhat objective understanding of the individual within a particular offense.”

In criminal cases, forensic psychiatrists are often consulted to determine how a suspect¶¶Òőap mental health condition may have affected his or her actions.

Peter Weir, Jefferson County District Attorney, frequently consulted Pitt in cases where the mental condition of the suspect was thought to play a role in the case. Pitt would review thousands of pages of notes and interviews before offering an opinion, Weir said, and was known for his objectivity.

“I think he felt a responsibility to get it right,” Weir said. “He wanted to be fair to accusers and to victims and the system.”

Inspired by victim uproar about the hidden movement of the imprisoned Aurora theater shooter, would require the Colorado Department of Corrections to issue alerts within 48 hours of an inmate’s move.

The measure passed 4-0 in the Senate Judiciary Committee, with Gov. John Hickenlooper and the DOC offering their support.

“I want to try to help you understand why this is so important to me, as well as the other victims who may or may not be here to speak to you today,” testified Theresa Hoover, whose son — A.J. Boik — was killed in the 2012 Aurora massacre. “… Knowing where the person who murdered our children was incarcerated was the one thing I had control over. I knew he was in prison. I knew it was in Colorado. Then I received a random email saying he was being transferred, and that was it.”

The corrections department, in the case of theater shooter James Holmes and other high-profile offenders, has made it a policy not to disclose the location of inmates transferred out of state because of safety concerns under an interstate compact. More than 100 inmates are currently being held outside of Colorado under the agreement.

“The Department (of Corrections) sees significant value in this bill,” said Travis Trani, the DOC’s director of prisons.

Hickenlooper’s spokeswoman, Jacque Montgomery, said the legislation “allows us to provide appropriate information to victims and families while ensuring safety for all – including correctional officers.”

“We look forward to seeing (the measure), in its current form, reach the governor’s desk,” she added.

Under the legislation, the DOC would have to disclose to victims where out of state an inmate is transferred, unless:

• The inmate is a witness and the state’s prisons chief finds there is a safety risk
• The convict¶¶Òőap prosecutor requests that their location be hidden
• The inmate’s victim is in imprisoned
• The inmate is a former DOC employee or law enforcement officer and the prisons chief finds there is a safety risk

The measure also allows the decision to disclose to go before a judge if an attorney who prosecuted an inmate believes any of the conditions haven’t been met.

The issue dates to 2016, when several theater shooting victims filed a complaint against state prison officials after they said Holmes had been moved out of state but refused to say where.

Holmes is serving a dozen life sentences and more than 3,000 additional years behind bars for the 2012 shooting that left 12 dead and 70 others hurt.

Ultimately, a state victims rights panel deadlocked over whether the DOC was breaking the law by refusing to reveal where Holmes was being held on the basis of his safety and that of corrections officers. (Holmes was assaulted in a Colorado prison in 2015.)

“The department didn’t play games with the victims — I want to be perfectly clear about that — especially in the Aurora theater shooter’s case,” Trani said. “We couldn’t disclose the location safely. We were sympathetic to the victims.”

But victims of the massacre testified Monday that they felt otherwise. Holmes’ prosecutor, 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler, said there has been a lack of transparency and accountability. 

“You should not have to be a victim or a survivor of the largest mass shooting in the state’s history to know where your killer is located,” said Tom Sullivan, whose son Alex was killed in the theater shooting while celebrating his 27th birthday. “Victims of that crime carry that burden with them every day.”

“We feel it is the right of victims to know where an inmate has been located,” said one of the bill’s prime sponsors, Greeley Republican Sen. John Cooke.

“All they had to do was to share with these families the state where he is being housed at, and they refused to do it,” said another sponsor, Sen. Rhonda Fields, D-Aurora. “That’s unfair. No one wants to read about these scenarios on the front page of The Denver Post.”

The bill is also sponsored by Reps. Leslie Herod, D-Denver, and Cole Wist, R-Centennial. The legislation now heads to the full Senate.

Before joining the search — spanning an area from North Table Mountain to Long Lakes — volunteers first had to undergo a vetting process.

The policy was developed in December 2013, a month after of another 10-year-old Jefferson County child, Jessica Ridgeway.

The Ridgeway case made it clear that a was badly needed, said Steve Davis, spokesman for the Lakewood Police Department.

The Lakewood Police Department spearheaded a project that resulted in the formation of the Jefferson County Child Abduction Response Team, which rapidly brings together a broad spectrum of experts not only in law enforcement, but also city mapping experts and RTD and Xcel Energy employees, Davis said.

The team mobilized about 200 local, state and federal agents in a matter of hours Thursday night. It was about the eighth mobilization since the team was formed, Davis said.

Sheriff’s Office spokeswoman said Jenny Fulton said the CART team and community responded exceptionally well on Friday. Hundreds of volunteers were gearing up when the search was called off because Madeleine was found safe in Aurora.

The girl left her home in Golden after an argument with her step mom and . The driver unknowingly drove her to Aurora. Madeleine then left the vehicle after it was parked. She walked to a nearby residence around 7 a.m. Friday, knocked on the door and asked the strangers for food. The neighbor called police.

While many people are willing to help when a child is reported missing, Davis said, care needs to be taken about who is needed and who is not.

“Anyone with a felony conviction was not going to be allowed to search for a missing child,” Fulton said. Also, no children are allowed to participate, she said.

Besides felons, people with any conviction involving a child or who have misdemeanor convictions for unlawful sexual conduct also cannot participate. Also, anyone with an arrest warrant or an active protection order won’t be allowed.

“You may even have a suspect among the volunteers,” Davis said.

The Jefferson County sheriff’s office asked prospective search volunteers to first watch a in which District Attorney Peter Weir explained who couldn’t participate.

The video was posted on YouTube on Dec.18, 2013, a month after 18-year-old Sigg was sentenced to  for the murder of Jessica Ridgeway, who was .

First, Northglenn Police Chief Jim May introduced the company, which built a mobile app to help alert the “village” within seconds when a child goes missing. Then, co-founder and CEO John Guydon mentioned a new employee: Sarah Ridgeway, mother of Jessica, the 10-year-old Westminster girl who disappeared and was murdered two years ago this month.

Ridgeway, Guydon said, “wants to make sure it doesn’t happen to anyone else again.”

And then, Techstars co-founder Brad Feld said his Foundry Group would become an investor.

” ‘Give before you get’ has been one of our values since the beginning,” Feld told the packed crowd at the Boulder Theater.

The Boulder phenomena that is Techstars offered up an interesting mix of graduates for the class of 2014 — from a better credit card to artificial intelligence for expenses and an investment club for solar projects. Participants get three months of free mentorship and use of facilities.

“What happens after today? They get funded,” said David Brown, another Techstars co-founder. “Across the system, we’ve had 52 exits, including one you may have heard of recently. GrabCAD sold for a reported $100 million. Demo Day is not the end. It’s just the beginning.”

The Lassy Project definitely has a good start. Guydon said Northglenn was one of two dozen cities that have joined the project, and users already have helped with five Amber Alerts. Parents can add a child’s photo to give people more visual clues about missing children. A partnership with Lifetouch, a school-portrait studio, updates existing accounts each year.

While the mobile app is free, the company will charge for premium services such as getting notified when a child either doesn’t reach an intended destination or strays from a normal route. The child would need to carry a phone or other Global Positioning System device.

A few other companies:

— With major retailers reporting credit-card hacks, Final offers a credit card with a number that changes when you decide. Use a number once or let it expire after a certain time.

— Leave it to artificial intelligence to manage your monthly expense report. “Spence” will remind you to take a photo of a restaurant receipt in case it’s a business lunch. Or ask whether the taxi charge is a business expense. It learns your patterns and ultimately will do your expenses for you so you don’t even have to think about it.

— One of the few hardware startups, Notion turns your house into an Internet home where all your appliances, windows, doors, lights and utilities talk to you. Sensors placed around the house can determine whether someone’s breaking into the liquor cabinet, the dishwasher is leaking or the propane tank is running low before the big barbecue.

— This new investment fund vets viable solar projects. It also acts as a utility by charging customers for the energy used, which it then pays back to investors monthly.

Tamara Chuang: 303-954-1209, tchuang@denverpost.com or twitter.com/Gadgetress

Sigg, who was being held at a Denver intake center, was moved to an undisclosed location, said Adrienne Jacobson, a spokeswoman for the department.

Such transfers are not rare, said Jacobson, adding that they usually occur with high-profile offenders in an effort to preserve their privacy and safety, as well as that of their victims.

The news of Sigg’s transfer was first reported by 9News.

Sigg, who was 17 years old when he brutally murdered Ridgeway, an elementary school student from Westminster, to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 40 years in November 2013.

On Oct. 5, 2012, Sigg grabbed the 10-year-old as she walked to school, forcing her into his Jeep before binding her hands and feet with zip ties, according to a confession and police evidence. He then comforted the young girl, showing her a movie and telling her that she would be returned to his mother.

At some point later that day, Sigg strangled the girl with his bare hands and later scattering her remains in Denver suburbs.

Jessica was missing for days as police collected evidence and conducted countless interviews in an all-out manhunt for the girl. Sigg was arrested Oct. 23 after he confessed to the killing to his mother.

Sigg also pleaded guilty to an attempted kidnapping at Ketner Lake in 2012.

Jesse Paul: 303-954-1733, jpaul@denverpost.com

A Christmas Crusade for Children event is from 3 p.m. to 5 p.m. Dec. 15 at the West View Recreation Center in Westminster. The party will include pictures with Santa and Mrs. Claus, as well as activities and snacks for children, according to Jessica Ridgeway’s Legacy, the foundation started by her family.

Parents can learn about , smartphone app that helps prevent child abductions by alerting parents when children aren’t where they’re supposed to be.

The larger purpose of the party is to collect gifts for the KYGO Christmas Crusade for Children, a program in which law enforcement officers help provide the trappings of the holidays to needy children in their communities.

For more information about the gift drive, call 303-322-5437.

Additionally, the Ridgeways’ church, Northglenn United Church of Christ, has raised money for Christmas food baskets for local families in need. The baskets will be delivered by Dec. 14.

The Broomfield Community Foundation accepts donations for the Jessica Ridgeway’s Legacy Fund. Jessica’s family helps decide how the money is spent.

For more information about the foundations, call 303-469-7208.

The Jessica Ridgeway Menorah is now on display at Westminster City Hall in Westminster. A in Jessica Ridgeway Memorial Park.

Those warnings are reflected in a notebook the fifth-grader kept in her desk at school. For a class assignment, she jotted down the four kinds of sentences. In both tiny and oversized letters, she wrote an example of an imperative sentence:

“Do not play at the park alone.”

And an exclamatory sentence:

“Watch out for strangers!”

Just over a mile away from Jessica’s tree-lined suburban neighborhood in Westminster, Austin Sigg grew up with an early fascination with pornography and mortuary science. His parents sent him to a faith-based counselor in an effort to set him back on the right path.

The events on the morning of Oct. 5, 2012, taught a terrifying lesson to parents everywhere. Sometimes, no matter how hard you try, the world can take your child away.

Final hours

In her final moments of freedom, Jessica scooped up handfuls of fresh snow and packed them into a snowball.

Down the block, in his Jeep parked where he knew no one could see him, Sigg watched the 10-year-old carry the snowball toward him. He waited until she reached the end of the sidewalk and had to cross the street.

He watched, slumped on the gray leather seats in the back of his gold vehicle, as she turned and began walking past.

When Sigg sprang from the Jeep, Jessica screamed, but no one heard her.

The details of Jessica’s final hours are known only by her killer. But documents, court testimony, interviews with prosecutors and newly released videotaped statements from Sigg outline the intersection of a troubled 17-year-old and a happy girl just after she left her home at 8:35 a.m.

The evidence shows Sigg as an adept and callous liar, whose chilling confessions may have been understatements or outright fiction.

After his arrest, Sigg spent hours describing to investigators what he says was a crime at a “random place, random time, random everything.” His defense attorneys argued that his actions were impulsive and that he struggled to understand them.

But prosecutors and court testimony suggest Sigg, who pleaded guilty to all of the charges against him on Oct. 1, spent months planning and studying, searching the Internet for chloroform recipes and the “Top Ten Places People Get Abducted.” Sigg’s confidence in his method, however, may have led to some of his greatest missteps.

And Sigg’s confidence in investigator’s methods — he believed they already had linked his DNA to Jessica’s murder and an attack on a jogger at Ketner Lake — turned out to be another mistake.

Only when Sigg surrendered did he and authorities discover the error that lab technicians had made in handling the DNA sample he had brashly offered to investigators. An error that said Sigg had been cleared.

Kind and caring

Jessica and giggled at words she made up and hummed to melodies. Her bright-blue eyes were never lost behind her purple glasses.

At Witt Elementary School, the joyous little girl was loved by her teachers and classmates. She spent her last morning and eating a granola bar for breakfast.

Sigg’s elementary school teachers also described him as kind and caring, according to testimony from his attorneys.

But by age 12, and was sent to therapy. By Sigg’s own admission, the sessions did little and his addiction quietly grew over the years, until he was viewing violent images of children being raped, strangled and dismembered.

Sigg’s interest in mortuary science struck some as odd, but not alarming. In his interview with investigators, Sigg’s younger brother recalled a “slightly creepy comment” his brother made about one of his classes in which he “was learning how to kill people and be able to get away with it,” according to a report by Anna Salter, a psychologist who testified for the prosecution.

A friend of Mindy Sigg, Austin’s mother, later recalled conversations the women had before Jessica was kidnapped. Mindy Sigg joked about her son’s interest in body decomposition and said she had helped Sigg practice restraining someone with zip ties, said Chief Deputy District Attorney Hal Sargent.

Sigg’s girlfriend would later tell investigators he stayed at her house one night a week, Sargent said. Mindy Sigg told detectives her son was gone up to four nights a week. No one is sure where he was the other three nights.

“What he does in the part of his life he keeps hidden — that’s what you make ghost stories out of,” Sargent said.

In the weeks before Jessica’s death, Sigg went out “hunting,” driving his Jeep around neighborhoods.

“Anytime I would even see someone out walking while I was in one of those modes, my heart would instantly start beating really fast,” Sigg told investigators in an interview they videotaped.

Four months before Sigg took Jessica, he tried to kidnap a woman jogging at Ketner Lake by shoving a chloroform-soaked rag in her face. The woman was able to fight him off and call police.

Still, Sigg said he learned from his first try. Months later, he went looking for someone smaller. Someone he could overpower.

“I would lie to her”

Sigg found Jessica walking to school, less than a thousand feet from her front door.

He lunged from the back seat of his Jeep and grabbed the little girl — whom he says he had never seen before. Sigg pulled her into the back seat and bound her feet and hands with zip ties.

Jessica asked him who he was. Did he know her mom?

“She kept asking me questions. I would answer them and I would lie to her,” Sigg said. “I would tell her that everything was going to be OK. I would just lie to her.”

As Sigg carried Jessica up to his room, the little girl who loved animals saw cat boxes. She asked about the cats, and then asked what he was going to do to her.

Investigators aren’t sure whether the wisps of compassion Sigg says he showed her — cutting the zip ties off her wrists, playing cartoons for her, assuring her she’d see her mother again — actually happened or were more lies.

In his room, Sigg said he stared at Jessica before he made her change out of her urine-soaked clothes and stuff her belongings into her backpack. He gave her a white shirt and black shorts from his closet.

Then, he said, he told her to turn away from him — and then he strangled her. He dismembered her body and initially hid her remains in a pool shed behind his house.

Jessica was dead before her mom called 911 that afternoon.

Searching for an adult

For the next 17 days, investigators scoured neighborhoods and collected about 700 DNA samples.

The day Jessica disappeared, a team of prosecutors began building a case. Two days after Jessica disappeared, investigators found her backpack on a sidewalk in a Superior subdivision. Jessica’s purple glasses were inside.

“The glasses tell you she’s dead,” Sargent said. “There’s a reason he chose the items that smelled of urine, her jacket and socks and other items of clothing he threw out. He chose carefully.”

Sigg said he dumped the backpack to lead investigators away from his house. Investigators matched DNA found in the backpack to the DNA recovered from the jogger.

On Oct. 10, Sigg placed Jessica’s torso in two black garbage bags and left it alongside 82nd Street in Pattridge Park Open Space in Arvada — just 9 miles from her home.

“There’s a reason he picked that spot,” Sargent said. “He wanted her found.”

Federal and local authorities were certain they were looking for an adult, and prosecutors began considering it as a death penalty case.

The torso was so clean when they found it that investigators had to swab it twice before they were able to collect a partial DNA sample. That sample matched the other DNA collected.

But investigators still had not linked the DNA from those cases to any of the hundreds of samples they had collected and tested.

DNA missteps

On Oct. 17, the investigation grew closer to Sigg as neighborhood canvassing expanded.

Two days later, a friend of Mindy Sigg’s called the FBI and expressed concerns about Sigg. The woman recognized the photo of a wooden cross that was found with Jessica’s body.

Sigg, who prosecutors say was confident he had not left any DNA behind, provided FBI agents with a DNA sample and said he was home sleeping when Jessica was kidnapped. They noticed a cross Sigg was wearing and asked him about it.

He calmly answered the questions, and the investigators left his home without suspicion. His DNA sample was sent out with a batch of others.

On Oct. 22, media reports said a DNA link had been made between Jessica’s death and the attack on the jogger. Sigg told his classmates he felt “wobbly” and “tremendously” sick. He slept in his mother’s bed that night.

The next day, Sigg told his mother he had something horrible to tell her. Immediately she asked him if it was about Jessica, Sargent said.

Mindy Sigg called Westminster police about her son and asked them to send officers. She cried and hugged him while they waited.

The sudden confession from a juvenile , who had been searching for an adult male.

“I couldn’t believe it,” Sargent said. “We wondered if it was a mistake. That was the first question: Was this a false confession?”

But the details Sigg described for almost six hours were too precise, too graphic to be made up. At the same time, investigators were removing the rest of Jessica’s remains from his home.

Sigg calmly described himself as a monster.

He admitted that he was consumed by some sort of sexual drive when he grabbed Jessica, but maintained he did not sexually assault her. Later, he admitted that was a lie, too.

Still, investigators were missing the final link. An early result showed Sigg’s DNA did not match the samples taken from Jessica and the jogger. During his interview with police, Sigg repeatedly asked about his DNA, and detectives asked whether anyone had helped him.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation tested hundreds of DNA samples obtained by swabbing the cheeks of men in the neighborhood.

They sent back empty envelopes labeled with the names of those who had submitted the samples — an empty envelope meant the DNA did not match samples from Jessica or the jogger.

Sigg’s envelope had come back empty, too.

But hours into Sigg’s interview, investigators learned that his sample had been lost in a batch and hadn’t yet been tested.

They ordered an immediate test and received confirmation: Sigg’s DNA matched the sample found on the jogger, Jessica’s water bottle and her remains.

Because Sigg was three months short of his 18th birthday when he killed Jessica, he was not eligible for the death penalty. But District Attorney Pete Weir and his team worked to ensure that Sigg, who turned 18 in jail,

Despite the DNA misstep, prosecutors say Sigg’s DNA would have eventually been tested. The case the team spent almost a year building was so strong, they say, it would have ended in a conviction had Sigg not decided to plead guilty to all charges two days before his trial was scheduled to begin.

“Frankly, it’s a testament to this team and to law enforcement to be able to collect the evidence and piece it together,” Weir said. “There was no defense in this case.”

Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or twitter.com/jsteffendp

Ridgeway wants people to remember her daughter, Jessica, for the bright, smiling child she was and not the way she died, Ridgeway broadcast on Tuesday. Jessica was kidnapped and killed on Oct. 5, 2012.

Her killer was sentenced to life in prison on Nov. 19.

, which was inspired by Jessica, is a cellphone app that helps parents to create walking routes their children may use, including paths to school or a friend’s house. If a child strays from the route, an alert is sent to the parent’s cellphone. Jessica was abducted while walking to school.

See the full story at .

“Evil is apparently real,” said Jefferson County District Court Chief Judge Stephen Munsinger. “It was present in our community on Oct. 5, 2012. On that day, its name was Austin Sigg.”

In a complicated sentence, Munsinger imposed the maximum sentence for several of the 15 counts, ensuring that Sigg, 18, will never leave prison.

Sigg pleaded guilty to all of the counts against him in October, including first-degree murder in Jessica’s death and attempted kidnapping for an attack on a jogger at Ketner Lake in May 2012. Because Sigg was 17 when he killed Jessica, the first-degree murder charge carries an automatic sentence of life in prison with the possibility of parole after 40 years.

Munsinger, however, ordered Sigg to serve an additional 86 years after he becomes eligible for parole. The judge rejected defense attorneys’ arguments that such a sentence was unconstitutional or cruel and unusual punishment.

“This case cries out for a life sentence,” Munsinger said.

Law enforcement, prosecutors and Jessica’s family exchanged hugs and wiped away tears after the sentencing.

“The damage, the hurt, the loss remains,” District Attorney Pete Weir said after the hearing. “We hope for closure for families but at times I think that’s a hollow term.”

He added: “The full weight of the law has come to bear on Austin Sigg. It’s not enough. More is needed, but it’s all we can do.”

Sigg declined to speak during his two-day sentencing hearing. As Munsinger went through the charges, listing the maximum allowable time for most of them, Sigg stared forward. He did not look back at Jessica’s family or his mother, Mindy.

Mindy Sigg repeatedly sobbed while gruesome details about her son’s crime were discussed. But as Munsinger ordered Sigg’s sentence, she calmly stared forward toward her son.

Jessica’s mother left the courtroom before Chief Deputy District Attorney Hal Sargent began describing Jessica’s last hours alive.

Soft sobs and sniffles echoed in the packed courtroom as Sargent told how Sigg waited in the back seat of his Jeep, watching Jessica. He waited until she walked next to his car and then grabbed her, bound her arms and legs and threw her in the back seat.

“It’s painful to imagine what he did to her in that time,” Sargent said. “We know he sexually assaulted her.”

He described the nearly two hours Sigg kept Jessica in his bedroom, where he made her watch a movie while he cut her hair and laid out clothes for her to change into. When he tried to strangle Jessica with zip ties, the plastic cut into his hands and he later told police that he didn’t “have enough leverage,” Sargent said.

Sigg eventually strangled Jessica with his bare hands for up to three minutes. When he saw Jessica twitching, Sigg filled a bathtub with scalding hot water and forced her face down into it.

Sargent said he did not want to detail how Sigg methodically dismembered Jessica. Sigg told police at the time that he was fulfilling a sexual fantasy.

During Tuesday’s hearing, Sargent struggled to describe the crime.

“Perhaps Austin Sigg’s words are best,” he said. Sigg told investigators: “There is no better word to describe what I have done than evil.”

Jessica’s disappearance on Oct. 5, 2012, set off a massive search effort that at one point included more than 1,000 people and 75 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

On Oct. 23, Mindy Sigg called police after her son confessed to her that he had kidnapped and killed Jessica. He told his mother he was a monster and needed to be punished.

Jessica’s family declined to speak with reporters after the hearing, but Sargent said the family hopes that the community doesn’t remember Jessica for the way she died but for how she lived.

“He stole from Jessica her future,” he said. “Not only everything she was but everything she would be.”

Jessica’s family shared memories and photos of the joyous, caring girl on Monday. Sigg wept in court as he watched as images of Jessica, smiling behind her purple glasses, flashed before him. On Tuesday, defense attorneys presented, for the first time, a glimpse into Sigg’s childhood with a slide show that included photos of Sigg as a baby and smiling child.

For months, defense attorneys presented experts and arguments suggesting that Sigg was not mature enough or able to completely understand his actions. But prosecutors maintained that Sigg meticulously planned before he went “hunting” for the woman at Ketner Lake, and Jessica four months later.

“It’s a chilling thought to think of what a fully matured Austin Sigg is capable of,” Sargent said.

Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794, jsteffen@denverpost.com or

Staff reporter Sadie Gurman contributed to this report.