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But the isn’t part of a traditional true-crime production. It’s a video created by the to promote the agency’s new podcast, a four-episode look into an unsolved 2016 homicide that investigators hope will spur new tips in the cold case.

Aurora’s foray into the true-crime genre is an unusual approach for Colorado police departments — while a handful of agencies have produced podcasts, the shows typically include straightforward sessions designed to on the basics of policing or offer .

The Aurora police podcast is intentionally framed to feel like a true-crime show, said Joe Moylan, spokesman for the department. The genre is known for retelling the stories of real violent crimes and packaging the evidence and facts of the case in an air of mystery, relying on sensationalism, morbid curiosity and storytelling techniques to keep listeners engaged.

“Weā€™re trying to tap into that audience,” Moylan said. “It¶¶Ņõap a very popular genre; there have been a lot of instances recently where a tip from a podcast has helped solve a case.”

The police-produced podcast is, in some ways, part of a long tradition of law enforcement seeking to connect directly with residents, particularly on social media. But the reality of the true-crime genre also means a police-produced podcast raises questions about ethics and the use of public resources, said Kelly McBride, senior vice president at , a Florida nonprofit focused on media ethics.

“Most of the time when a true-crime podcast jumps in to solve a cold case, it¶¶Ņõap because the police have failed,” she said. “They are the police. They have all the investigative tools available to them, including the ability to just tell their story. So why create a form of entertainment around it?”

Moylan said the hope is that the unusual approach will generate more attention on the case than traditional methods of sharing information. The police department has for years sought tips on the 2016 killing of Chelsea Yasser, but none have yet panned out.

“My best days at work are when I push out a news release or we kick something out on social media and we find out after the fact that a member of the public saw it, we got a good tip on it, we made an arrest and we solved the case,” he said. “If doing something a little bit different generates some interest, and we are able to get that final piece of the puzzle and solve this case, it would definitely be a cool thing to be a small part of that.”

A criticism of the true-crime genre — and mainstream media — has been the tendency for podcasters and journalists to focus on sensational, high-profile murder cases, often with white female victims, said Michael Tracey, professor emeritus in the at the .

“Whenever I lecture about JonBenĆ©t Ramsey, I point out that 804 children under the age of 12 were murdered in America in 1996 and you heard about just one,” he said, adding later that it remains to be seen how Aurora police handle their podcast.

“Is it done professionally and ethically with a real aim at solving a crime?” he asked. “If it is only the dead white girl syndrome, that raises some serious issues.”

‘Just a unique homicide’

Aurora’s podcast will focus on the 2016 killing of 21-year-old Yasser, who was stabbed to death in the parking lot of a Burlington Coat Factory. The case was chosen for the podcast because investigators think it is solvable, Moylan said.

Yasser was stabbed inside a minivan in the store’s parking lot, and the attack was captured on . Police have long focused on identifying the driver of that van and hope the podcast will bring in new tips, Moylan said.

“We decided on this one because it is just a unique homicide in the fact it was captured on video, for the most part, and we still donā€™t have any idea who did it,” he said.

The episodes will cover the day of the killing, the victim, early investigative efforts and more recent cold-case investigative efforts, Moylan said.

Tracey said the police department’s approach is a “clever idea.”

“Podcasts are just an emergent form of communicating. It’s how the technology has evolved and is being used,” he said, adding that the video trailer for the podcast suggests police are on the right track. “The Aurora podcast is clearly an effort to use this new medium to engage with this new world with a legitimate end of solving a really nasty crime. To me, that is laudable.”

Listeners of all podcasts — including podcasts produced by police — should consider the source and think critically about what motivated the podcaster, McBride said. She noted that the Aurora Police Department has a “horrible” reputation nationwide in the wake of high-profile use-of-force incidents like the death of Elijah McClain.

The podcast, she said, is a “roundabout” and labor-intensive way of investigating the cold case.

“It makes me wonder if that is what their real motivation is, or if they are trying to change the narrative about the department, which is nationally known for a couple of notorious incidents,” she said.

She noted that investigative material made public through the podcast should also be made public to anyone who wants it.

“Officials are not supposed to play favorites with public records requests,” she said. “If they are making something public, they are supposed to make it public — and they canā€™t make it public just for themselves.”

Moylan expected the department would release additional materials about the Yasser case. He noted that the podcast — “The White Whale — The Chelsea Yasser Story,” launching June 29 — relied on staff time and resources and did not have any extra production budget.

‘The podcast got them hooked’

Police agencies producing their own true-crime podcasts is not unprecedented.

The New York Police Department has published a , exploring both notorious closed cases and unsolved homicides. The Newport Beach Police Department, in California, published a true-crime podcast in 2018 to try to track down a fugitive who was wanted for murder.

That podcast, dubbed included six 15-minute episodes. The police department launched it alongside a website where podcast listeners could leave tips about the fugitive and photos related to the case.

“The podcast got them hooked on it, and then they would go to the website and they could see what he looked like,” said Jennifer Manzella, a longtime employee at Newport Beach Police Department who spearheaded the project.

That received 1.2 million views between the podcast’s launch in September 2018 and the end of the year, she said. The man was arrested in 2019 after someone tipped off police that he was in Mexico, Manzella said.

She couldn’t say for sure that the podcast reached the tipster, but credited the effort for boosting publicity around the case and generating mainstream media coverage.

“The podcast worked hugely in their favor in that (the fugitive) knew we were actively looking for him,” she said. “He was in the news again, all the sudden. And his face was all over the place. He had to move more frequently.”

Manzella said her team intentionally gave the podcast a generic name so that they could use it on other cases in the future, but the agency has not yet produced another season. No other case has been the right fit, she said.

“It is much easier to justify spending a lot of staff time and resources on doing something that canā€™t be accomplished in any other way, or was an extraordinary need for the department,” she said. “In this case, finding (the suspect) was worth that additional push… There hasnā€™t been a parallel case where the assistance of the community would have had the same impact for us.”

The Denver Police Department has rolled out a over the last several months to try to educate Spanish-speaking residents on policing after discovering that some residents were afraid to attend police educational and outreach events in person during the Trump administration’s immigration crackdown, spokesman Doug Schepman said.

The agency also publishes that feature interviews with investigators and victims’ families, though the series lacks the hallmarks of the true-crime genre.

The Republican gubernatorial candidate has attended only one debate alongside his two opponents. He’s never run for office before and has few prominent Republican officials backing him. His backstory is extensive and full of the sort of bizarre detail that, in a pre-Donald Trump world, would likely have caused his campaign to implode before it left the launchpad.

And after the June 30 primary,Ā Marx very well may be Colorado Republicans’ candidate for governor.

“This is pretty wild,” he said recently, standing in front of his nonprofit’s indoor shooting range, a handgun holstered in his waistband. “Someone like me, running for governor.”

The comment appeared to come less from bewilderment at how far he’d come than from vindicated confidence. And it belied what has been a thoroughly, carefully atypical campaign — one that has leaned on the 60-year-old’s charm, his direct outreach to voters and his use of the now-familiar pitch of a political outsider who shares voters’ distaste for elected politicians and campaign-speak.

As he’s outraised other Republicans and seized headlines, Marx has also been bombarded with questions about his background from reporters and from skeptical conservatives.

He’s said he was forced to kill a man as a child and, when asked by , he replied, “Does it matter?” He once ran martial arts schools in Hawaii and is a black belt in “Cajun Karate,” a form of martial arts created by his dad, Karl.

He describes himself as a “high-risk humanitarian” who trains law enforcement and provides trauma relief to people in the United States and overseas, including in conflict zones. Another humanitarian confirmed that Marx was in Iraq a decade ago and that, though he was largely behind the front lines, he was present when medical workers came under fire at least twice.

Marx also talks frequently about praying to free people from demons that, , can be attracted by porn or unmarried couples living together. In one 2023 podcast, Marx and that, after his dog identified a supernatural presence in a couple at a pool, he set a woman free from “five demons that had been assigned to her.”

In an interview with The Denver Post, Marx said it didn’t matter if reporters believed him and that he was comfortable with scrutiny of his background, even as it’s drawn .

Voters will decide, he said, arguing that he was qualified because of their support.

“Judge us by the ability to run a campaign,” he said, “and look at the guy who’s never done it, nothing — but stepped into it, was aware of the problem and the need, (and) assessed what needed to be done to win. I have avoided some pitfalls of doing it the old way, but the action I’ve taken has broken records.”

Marx raised $2.67 million through late May, the most of any Republican gubernatorial candidate up to that point in at least 20 years. To get on the ballot, he submitted more than 28,000 signatures, more than any gubernatorial campaign since at least 2014. Those signatures were not verified because Marx earned ballot access through an assembly vote.

U.S. Rep. Lauren Boebert, who did not return messages seeking comment; musician Ted Nugent; three county sheriffs; and Mark Geist, who defended the U.S. embassy in Libya in 2012. (Marx’s campaign has also paid Geist and his wife for consulting and security work.)

Dick Wadhams, a former chairman of the state GOP and critic of Marx, said Marx had run “the strangest campaign I’ve seen in all the years I’ve been involved in this business.”

He argued that Marx’s beliefs about demons and his assertions that he’s helped tens of thousands of women and children — some amount of which he’s claimed to have rescued, alongside more he’s said he’s helped by providing them stuffed animals and trauma support — were so outlandish that they would cost the party in down-ballot races in November.

Kristi Burton Brown, another former state party chair, questioned Marx’s apparent disinterest in policy discussions and debates. His opponents, state Rep. Scott Bottoms and state Sen. Barb Kirkmeyer, have called him a fraud and a con man; both said they would not support him should he win the nomination.

‘New territory for a political campaign’

But Wadhams and Burton Brown both acknowledged that Marx’s campaign had proven successful, marshalling what Wadhams described as Marx’sĀ  base of support and expanding it with direct mail and “very aggressive social media outreach.” Marx’s campaign has spent $725,000 on mailers — nearly what Kirkmeyer and Bottoms have raised combined — and he’s leaned into videos and podcast appearances.

When the moderator of one debate, a conservative talk show host, sent Marx a letter pressing him for specifics on his background, Marx skipped the event and organized a rally instead. His campaign later released photos showing more people had attended his event than the debate.

“We are in such new territory for a political campaign in Colorado — frankly, in the nation,” Wadhams said, incredulous at Marx’s TV interviews.

A quick look at the Colorado governor candidates running in this month’s Democratic, Republican primaries

Marx has eschewed dense policy discussions -- an intentional choice, he said, to let voters' eyes adjust to his background.

That hasn't been a concern for his supporters. Marx is likable, which is "gold" in politics, said Jeff Hunt, a conservative activist and radio host. He first met Marx at , where Marx teased his candidacy.

" 'He doesn't have policy chops' -- alright, well, he still outraises everybody," Hunt said. " 'Heā€™s got a unique background' -- well, heā€™s still driving more people to his events. 'He won't debate' -- he still has energy and big rallies. (His opponents) are trying to figure out an angle. But when you're dealing with somebody who has such a big personality force, it¶¶Ņõap just not landing."

Hunt continued: "I've told him (that) if I was a political strategist, I would not ever have told him to tell the stories he has told or the things he has written about in his book ... That¶¶Ņõap part of the enjoyment I have in this whole process. Alright man, you are 100% yourself."

Marx has said he was the victim of profound abuse as a child. In his memoir, he wrote that his stepfather made him behead a cat at age 3. Marx wrote that at age 7, his stepfather put his hand around his own and forced him to shoot and kill a man. His stepfather, he alleges, then smeared blood on him and buried the man beneath the house.

The sheriff of Simpson County, Mississippi, where the shooting allegedly took place, did not respond to messages seeking comment.

A Marine veteran who moved to Colorado to work for Focus on the Family, Marx founded All Things Possible in 2003 "to reach people with the gospel of Jesus Christ through outreaches and crusades primarily to youth," according to the group's first tax filing. By 2024, ATP's annual revenue had surpassed $7.6 million.

A closer look at ministry

ATP has done outreach to youth in prisons and focused on "trauma response," Marx said, which includes handing out stuffed animals loaded with recorded prayers and songs. In an email, All Things Possible said the ministry was separate from Marx's campaign. Marx said he and his wife resigned from the group after he announced his candidacy.

But overlap remains: Marx's campaign address is at the ministry's training center outside of Colorado Springs, which is also the home he sold to the nonprofit for nearly $3 million in 2024. His campaign manager was also listed as an ATP board member on its most recent tax returns.

Marx has said he and his group have worked overseas, including in Iraq, Syria, Israel and southeast Asia. Its tax filings show it has spent more than $4.3 million on those efforts in recent years, though those documents also state ATP had no standing personnel or offices in those countries.

Dave Eubank, the American head of the Myanmar-based , said he met Marx in California roughly 15 years ago. He later invited Marx to Myanmar, where Eubank's group supports rebels and civilians caught in that nation's civil war.

The trip served as Marx's introduction to "high-risk humanitarianism."

Within a year, Marx asked if Eubank and his medics would like to go to Iraq to help civilians amid fighting between the Islamic State military group and Kurdish and Iraqi military units. Eubank said Marx's group funded his efforts.

"I think he came to Syria once while we were there, briefly, and then he came to Iraq multiple times while we were there," Eubank said, praising Marx as a friend and ally. "Usually it was during some lull in the fighting, but not always. He was in at least one ... maybe two engagements with us, when we were providing medical care when we came under direct fire."

Marx has also said he called in an airstrike on Islamic State militants. Eubank said he hadn't heard that story before it came up during Marx's 9News interview in late May. When Eubank was working in the Middle East, he said, the U.S. military had dropped smoke at his request to cover escaping civilians. (The Post sought comment on Marx's claims from U.S. Central Command, which oversees the Middle East. In an email, an unnamed representative said military officials "have nothing for you on this.")

Marx said ATP's goal is now to "equip and encourage" law enforcement . In a statement, Colorado Springs Police Lt. Korey Hutchinson, the lead investigator of the Colorado Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, said his department "has not conducted any direct work or formal collaboration" with ATP.

"However, we have heard positive feedback from ICAC units and personnel across the country regarding the assistance and support they provide," Hutchinson said, referring to ATP's "wellness support for investigators of child exploitation crimes."

Marx said his group also helped train law enforcement involved in .

Abigail Meyer, spokeswoman for the U.S. Marshals Service, which led the operation, said that, "according to those who ran this operation," Marx's group was not involved.

Political outsider or not, in the gubernatorial campaign -- audits of the state budget, support for police and immigration enforcement, strict Medicaid work requirements, tax relief, school choice -- will be largely familiar to voters in the Republican primary.

His website's includes a number of questionable statutory and constitutional citations; one statute it references has been repealed, and another purports to link a constitutional prohibition on sex discrimination to homeowner's insurance spikes. He told The Post that the platform was written by an "attorney who did work for Elon Musk."

Marx said he's withholding some plans for the general election. Besides, he argued, the GOP primary wouldn't be decided on policy.

"I don't think Barb or Scott ... are three degrees different on policy positions (from me)," he said, referring to Kirkmeyer and Bottoms. The real difference, he argued, will be who can convince voters they can win.

"And I think, just naturally, I'm comfortable in that arena."

They say laughter is the best medicine, but it can be easy to forget to consume a daily dose when all that seems to come across the endless scroll is news about war abroad and injustices at home. Heck, even chores like grocery shopping and filling up on gas are enough to send me into a tailspin after looking at the bill.

Recently, though, Iā€™ve found an anecdote to ensure I get the prescribed amount of belly laughs to balance my media diet.

The podcast is a must-listen for folks craving something both light-hearted and deeply entertaining. Hosted by the “Saturday Night Live” alum and ā€œParks and Recreationā€ comedian and actor, Poehler welcomes a steady cadence of funny famous friends into the studio to talk a little bit about their recent work and a lot about their personal lives.

Fans get to know actors, musicians and directors beyond surface level because Poehler approaches each conversation from a more personal perspective, instead of strictly professional. The vibe is jovial; topics are served with a smile and, more often than not, a laugh. The good vibes are simply contagious.

I’m not alone in singing the show’s praises: In January, “Good Hang” won the inaugural Golden Globe award for Best Podcast.

Since it debuted in 2025, Poehler has interviewed people like , , , and . A recent episode featuring was a standout, in part because I learned so much about the singer that I probably never would have read in a music-focused profile. For instance, Eilish is an animal lover with a pet dwarf hamster named Tomato Bisque Soup.

Is this profoundly revelatory information? Of course not. But it is a charming aside that endears me further to an artist whose music I love.

I guess it¶¶Ņõap also worth mentioning I am a Poehler superfan, having followed her television career and read her memoir many times. Over the course of the last year, it¶¶Ņõap been hilarious to learn about her obsession with fake food; it¶¶Ņõap also been cool to hear her refine her style as an interviewer. Early episodes are somewhat chaotic, with many unfinished questions and sentences interjected by giggles. These days, she is more concise and complete, which ultimately makes for a better listen.

One thing I love about Poehlerā€™s interviewing style is how she uses random questions to disarm guests and get deep about silly subjects. One she returns to often is sleep, asking interviewees what their bedtime routines are and if they catch enough zzzā€™s. It¶¶Ņõap actually fascinating to hear about the timing and tools celebrities use for that ubiquitous human experience. Poehler also has candid conversations about aging with many of the women who join her, which I can appreciate as a 38-year-old Millennial.

If you listen to podcasts to develop new skills or study a new subject, ā€œGood Hangā€ may not be an apt pick for you. But when I feel the need to tune in and drop out, I turn on this podcast and tap into a bottomless well of joy.

ā€œGood Hang with Amy Poehlerā€ is a weekly podcast, part of The Ringer network, streaming on Spotify and Apple Podcasts, among other platforms. Fans can also watch Poehler interview her guests on .

Owner Greg Penner and President Damani Leech, meanwhile, turned up the pressure on the Broncos’ stadium project, talked through international game possibilities, training camp impacts, the club’s new HQ and more.

Catch up on everything you need to know on the latest edition of the 1st & Orange Podcast.

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All that and more on the latest edition of the 1st & Orange Podcast.

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Then the conversation turns to Jarrett Stidham and what he and the Broncos must do to pull off an upset, beat New England on Sunday and punch a ticket to the Super Bowl. It’s not the AFC Championship Game that people expected when Nix engineered go-ahead and game-winning drives against the Bills, but there are compelling storylines across the board.

All of that and more on the latest edition of the 1st & Orange Podcast.

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The Bills come to Empower Field at 2:30 p.m. Saturday in a rematch of last year’s Wild Card round game in Buffalo. What does Denver’s defense need to do to slow Josh Allen, James Cook and Buffalo’s terrific run game? Does it set up as a Jahdae Barron game? Offensively for Denver, who are the potential X-factors? And what should Denver’s running back rotation look like?

All that and more on the latest edition of the 1st & Orange Podcast.

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All that and more on the latest edition of the 1st & Orange Podcast.

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