One Disorientation From Murder

One disorientation It’s March 2011, 19 year old Kenia Monge is getting ready for a night clubbing in downtown Denver. Kenia is just 4’11” tall, but her firey personality makes up for her petite frame. Kenia was born in Honduras and lived with her grandparents while her mother came here to the states to start a new life for them. While in Denver, Kenia’s mom met her soon-to-be husband, Tony Lee who had his own daughter just a few years younger than Kenia. The couple worked together to bring Kenia to the states in 2004. When she arrived, Kenia didn’t know a lick of English, but she was a passionate student and picked it up quickly. Kenia was a natural leader and after finishing high school, she had her sites set on a career behind the cameras, perhaps as a producer or something in broadcasting. She had just finished a semester at college and she was excited to go out with friends on the nice evening in March. Kenia had just broken up with her boyfriend, Lewis a couple weeks before, but they were still friends. Lewis still had a lot of feelings for her and still texted and spoke to her daily. They had previously lived together, but now Kenia was staying with friends. On this particular evening, Kenia and her friends had plans to hit clubs, but Kenia’s only 19. Lewis manages a 16 and up hookah bar and that’s where Kenia told her family she was going. Lewis does let her park her car at the hookah lounge so she wouldn’t have to pay the exorbitant parking fees downtown. Kenia and her friends, Gigi and Brittney head to Lodo which is short for lower downtown. The ladies get into a club with fake IDs. They’re having a blast drinking and dancing. Kenia starts talking with a tall, thin guy and hangs out with him. At one point, she gives her purse to her friends to watch for her while she heads to the restroom. When about 10 minutes had passed and Kenia hadn’t returned, her friends began looking around the club for her. They didn’t find her, but they weren’t too concerned at first thinking maybe she was having some fun with her new boy toy in the bathroom or something. Since she had left her purse with her phone in it with them, they knew she’d be back. Now an hour has passed and Kenia still hasn’t come back and they’re starting to get worried. The club closes and they can’t find Kenia anywhere. They wonder if maybe Kenia went home with the guy she was talking to. The next morning, Kenia’s ex boyfriend, Lewis, notices that Kenia’s car is still in the hookah lounge parking lot. He tried to call her and leaves several messages, but she doesn’t call him back. Lewis, worried, calls Kenia’s family to ask if they know where she is. It’s April 1st and at first, they think Lewis is playing an April Fool’s prank on them. He assures them he’s not and the family is immediately concerned and they all continue to try to call her. Kenia’s little sister gets a hold of Kenia’s friends, Gigi and Brittney. They go to the family’s home and bring Kenia’s purse and phone. The family tries to report her missing, but they’re told that since she’s an adult, they need to wait 72 hours to file the report. Kenia’s dad, Tony, starts going through her phone to see if he can get any info from it. He sees lots of texts from Lewis throughout the evening, checking in on her and sounding a bit like a jealous ex-boyfriend. He finds a curious text that got his attention. It says, “Hey this is travis, guy with the creepy white van. Just checking to see if you made it home ok.” Tony immediately calls the number and over the next 2 days, he leaves over 20 messages begging this Travis guy to call him back. Travis finally calls Tony back and tells him that he and his friend had seen Kenia while driving in his van in downtown Denver that night and she was obviously very drunk and was talking with a homeless man who seemed to be making her very uncomfortable. They rescued her from the sketchy guy and drove around with her, trying to help her find her car which she didn’t remember she had parked at the hookah lounge. After a while, Travis dropped his friend Eddie off and Kenia said she wanted to stop somewhere to get a cigarette. They stopped at a gas station, but it was closed. While at the gas station, Kenia pointed out a guy a little farther down the road smoking and decided to go bum a cigarette from him. Travis waited in his van for a bit, but then Kenia waved him away, saying she was good, so Travis left and that was the last time he had seen her. He then agreed to take Tony to the gas station he had dropped Kenia off at. Tony, not one to mess around and beyond angry and frustrated at this point, grabs his gun for the meetup. Worried that Tony will take things too far, Kenia’s mom calls the police to tell them what’s going on. The police meet Tony and Travis at the gas station and make sure Tony leaves his gun in his car. While talking with Travis, and taking down a report of his statement, police ask if they can search his van and he agrees. In the front is a bunch of trash, but the back is completely cleaned out and smells strongly of bleach. When asked why, he tells them that he makes and sells gluten-free granola bars and has to keep his van sterile for food safety. Police bring Travis into the station to get an official statement from him. Travis indeed does have a granola bar business and he seems like an up and up guy. He’s good looking and blond, great at speaking with others and he’s charming. He gives the same account he’d given Tony and tells them after leaving Kenia with the smoking man, he went home where he lives with his girlfriend. When interviewing the girlfriend, she confirms that Travis came home that night at around 2:30 in the morning. With his girlfriend confirming his alibi, Travis doesn’t seem to be a likely suspect. Police also called in Eddie, Travis’s friend, for an interview. He said Kenia was an angry drunk, pissed off at the world and talking about how men suck and how angry she was with her ex-boyfriend. He said that he and travis had been in downtown Denver eating at a sushi bar and were driving around downtown when they came across Kenia who was very drunk and being kind of followed by the homeless man. So of course, police bring in Lewis for an interview as well. Lewis tells them he was at work the whole night and that was verified. So, lewis is quickly eliminated as a suspect. They also interview Kenia’s friends and are told about the man Kenia connected with at the bar. He was tall, thin, with dark hair and a baseball cap. The investigators show the ladies a photo of Travis and asked if he was the man Kenia had been with and they said that was absolutely not him. Travis is blond and blue eyed and looks nothing like the man Kenia was with. Police return to the gas station to look for surveillance cameras, but unfortunately, they have none. So, police decide to go back to the place she was last verified to be – the 24k club in Denver. They show staff Kenia’s pictures, but it’s such a busy club, they don’t immediately recognize her. Fortunately, the club has surveillance cameras outside the front door and inside as well. The camera covering the front door shows Kenia arriving with Gigi and Brittney at 11:30. They watch that tape for the entirety of that night but it never shows Kenia leaving. Going through the interior video, they do spot Kenia in her short black dress and red heels talking with the guy that her friends described. Nothing seems out of the ordinary, but they have to figure out if Kenia left through a different door. Police return to the bar when different staff is there to question them. One bouncer said he remembers Kenia and the man she was with. He said he thew the couple out because they were both so overly drunk. He sent them out the back door instead of the front. With this clue, police begin to look around the area outside of the club for other surveillance cameras. They spot literally hundreds of them around. So checking all these tapes will be no small task. They round up footage from every place along 15th street. After searching hours of tape, they catch site of Kenia being pretty much pulled along by hand by a man outside of an apartment building. Kenia is obviously very drunk and off kilter. Luckily, the apartment complex is swarming with cameras and they catch the two walking into the building and going into an elevator. They’re seen getting off on the 5th floor and disappear down the hall, Kenia stumbling as she goes. Police go to the building and go door to door. Finally, at apartment 103 on the 5th floor, a man answers the door and it’s clearly the man from the video. His name is Chad Douglas and he’s brought to the police station for questioning. He tells them he met Kenia for the first time at the 24K club where they danced and flirted. He says they both drank too much and were thrown out of the club. So Kade took her back to his place, but she left a few minutes later after realizing she left her purse and phone at the club. So police go back to the tapes where they find Chad is telling the truth. They watch Kenia go back on the elevator and leave the front door of the building just a few minutes after arriving at Kade’s place. Watching other tapes along the same street, police spot Kenia heading into a hotel, presumably for pee break at 2:04am. She’s alone and seems wobbly, but ok. There’s video of her talking to a man who looks homeless outside and a white van pulls up, probably Travis’s. Travis is a 31 year old entrepreneur who rents out a space in a bakery where he makes his granola bars and he carries them around in a large cooler, making deliveries to shops and customers. Jounalists continue to keep the story in the news to get it to more eyes on the case and hope someone will come forward. A flood of tips come in, including one very important one. Monica Poole, the owner of a gluten free bakery brings in a surveillance tape loaded with footage. She thinks there’s something on the video that police might be interested in. BREAK Monica Poole, the owner of the bakery, had recently noticed money missing from the register at the bakery and she went to check the surveillance tapes to see if she can catch the culprit. She catches more than she bargained for. When going to check them, she notices that one camera in the office is unplugged. So, she plugs it back in and rewinds to find out who unplugged it. She’s shocked to see Travis walk in the office wearing bright yellow cleaning gloves up to his elbows before unplugging the camera. The bakery workers don’t wear giant cleaning gloves normally, so what’s he doing? Fortunately, that’s not the only camera in the bakery. In the storeroom, the camera shows Travis wheeling in his large granola cooler on a cart. The cooler is duct taped shut. He pushes the cart into the freezer. Monica tells investigators that Travis doesn’t freeze his granola bars, so this is also weird. Travis decided to try to get in front of the investigation by talking to a tv station. He’s asked if he killed her or hurt her and he denied it all. The investigator looking for Kenia absolutely could tell Travis was lying. When asked if he murdered kenia, he says no, but nods his head. Another weird detail, he seemed to remember everything from that night but weirdly acted like he couldn’t remember kenia’s name and even asked the reporter what her name was again. Her name had been all over the news and there was no way he wasn’t being bombarded with the name on the constant. Witnesses also come forward saying they saw someone burning something outside of the bakery. Police find a barrel there that obviously had things burned in it. They swab it for any evidence it might hold. Police also attempt to collect any evidence from the bakery and they confiscate Travis’s van to swab it as well. However, everything is spotlessly clean. They do notice dust and weeds on the undercarriage of the van, so they know he must have been driving on dirt roads. Travis agrees to come to the station the next morning to take a polygraph, but he doesn’t show up. Police begin checking Travis’s cell phone records on the night of Kenia’s disappearance. They find that he made and received several calls in a rural area called Keenesburg. Keenesburg is about 40 miles from Denver and definitely off his granola delivery route. Cops and investigators scoured the fields around Keenesburg, but didn’t come across any clues. Travis suddenly disappears from the area. Since police have his van, he clearly didn’t leave in it. Police find out he borrowed an ex-girlfriend’s forerunner and hadn’t returned it so she filed a police report about it. After putting out a BOLO for the truck, the Denver investigators get a call that the forerunner and Travis are in custody in Austin, Texas. Travis is extradited back to Denver to face car theft charges. When asked about the burn barrel, he claims he was burning moldy marijuana. Police are able to get a DNA swab from Travis while he’s in custody. However, shortly after arriving back in Colorado, Travis’s ex-girlfriend drops the theft charges and he’s released. Police decide to follow him and see if they can catch him doing anything. Travis ends up leaving for Fort Collins, just an hour north of Denver and 15 miles south of my house. Police follow him for a while, but he keeps a pretty low profile so they eventually give up. So, it’s 4th of July in Fort Colllins and 30 year old Lydia Tillman is at the fireworks festival that’s so popular here. Lydia had just moved to the area and started a new job as a wine distributer. Walking to her apartment after the festival, Lydia feels like she’s being followed. She gets into her apartment, but a man indeed had followed her. He pushes her into her apartment, fiercely beats her and viciously rapes her. Afterwards, he pours bleach everywhere, also all over Lydia, then lights her apartment on fire and leaves. Lydia’s not done though. Even though her apartment is on the 2nd floor, Lydia jumps out a window and lay broken and bleeding on the ground outside. The apartment was a raging inferno and people blocks away can see the flames eating the building. Calls come in to 911 as people worry there is someone caught in the fire. The fire burns so hot that the door handles are melting in Lydia’s apartment. Rescuers find Lydia barely alive, beaten and naked, on the ground outside and rush her off to the hospital. Her injuries were likened to that of a severe car accident victim. Lydia is airlifted to a Denver intensive care unit, unrecognizable except for a tattoo on her calf. Her jaw was shattered as were her eye sockets. Her wrists were broken and her ribs were cracked and she had nearly been burned to death. After getting to the hospital, Lydia suffers a massive stroke from her beating and doctors put her in a medically induced coma to try to aid in her healing. Police find out while interviewing friends and family that Lydia is single, attractive and popular. They believe the attack must be personal since it’s so aggressive and volatile. However, they can’t find anyone with anything against her. Fortunately, Lydia had fought hard and DNA evidence was found under her nails. Another obstacle for police is that her apartment is so destroyed by the fire, that they can’t find any evidence left behind at all. You could barely just make out where the bed had been. Plus, bleach had been poured everywhere and it smelled strong even with the smoke smell so pervasive. Meanwhile, detectives in Denver are sending Fort Collins info about Travis, sure that he’ll be up to no good soon enough. One of the Fort Collins detectives investigating Lydia’s case noticed and though it was a longshot, she connects with the detective on Kenia’s case. When she mentions the bleach to the Denver detective, he immediately thinks it must be Travis. They decide to re-up surveillance on Travis. Very charming and likeable, police worried Travis might quickly stalk more women. While following Travis, they see him trailing women who were obviously inebriated. He was leading a woman off of the sidewalk into a more secluded area when they nabbed him. They didn’t immediately have anything to arrest him on until he gave them a false name. So they arrest him for giving false information and put him behind bars. That same weekend, the crime lab is desperately trying to finish their comparison tests of the DNA from Travis’s former swab and the tissue found under Lydia’s nails. Travis was able to get bonded out and was scheduled to be released at 10:30 pm on Monday. Just minutes before he was being released, the crime lab confirms a match. Travis is absolutely caught now and decides to make a deal. He tells investigators he’ll tell them everything about Kenia and show them where her body was on one condition. When he goes to prison, he doesn’t want to be labeled a sex offender. Kenia’s family agrees and Travis opens the floodgates of information. He tells them that Kenia had passed out in his van and he began raping her. She woke up and began fighting him. He beat her, strangled and killed her. Then he drove a whole day with her inside the cooler in the back of his van. He put Kenia in the freezer at the bakery then later took her out to bury her. He shows police where he buried Kenia near Keenseburg in a field beneath a copse of trees. Tony and family get the call that Kenia’s body was found. Lydia, meanwhile, is still fighting for her life in the hospital. After 4 weeks in the coma, Lydia wakes, unable to speak or walk. She was then transferred to a physical therapy unit where she relearned how to walk, talk and eat again. Her recovery is slow and grueling, but she never gives up. In time for Travis’s trial, she is able to testify against him, having her father read her statement she had written as she wasn’t able to speak quite yet. In her statement, she wrote: 'Travis Forbes, you caused me no harm. My spirit, my soul and my mind remain untouched. May you find peace in this life.' She forgave him to heal herself. She says she’s sometimes angry at what she’s had to go through but she believes travis was acting out of fear and hatred. She herself chooses love and peace and she won. She met Kenia’s family and they supported her with love. They gave Lydia kenia’s favorite ring. A memorial resides on the plains where Kenia’s body was left by travis. The family now work to help other families with missing family members. During an interview with Dateline, Lydia gave keith Morrison a bracelet with an acronym for her name. It says, “Live your days inspired anew”. Because Travis kept his promise, he’s given a sentence of life without parole for Kenia’s murder, and an additional 48 years in prison without parole and without sexual assault on his record for Lydia’s attempted murder. thecinemaholic.com, westword.com, dailymail.co.uk, coloradoan.com, CBS Denver, Dateline, Secrets uncovered: deadly connection, Man with a van: Handsome Devil, See no evil: Good Samaritan