Kenia Monge,19, CO. murdered

[soothsayer]

He's back in the news! And back in jail again.

Travis Forbes: Kenia Monge suspect busted for arson, attempted murder of Lydia Tillman

snip: According to the Fort Collins Police Department, officers and firefighters converged on an apartment at 1202 Pomona Street at around 5:30 a.m. on July 5 following reports of smoke. Police believe Forbes assaulted Tillman -- and poured bleach on her -- before setting the blaze. She had to jump from the second-story window in order to escape, and a week later, she's still in the hospital, recuperating from her injuries. She's said not to have known him prior to the attack.

The cops say Forbes became a person of interest after they learned of his presence in Fort Collins. He was arrested early Sunday on a false reporting charge unrelated to the Tillman matter, but over the course of the next couple of days, they developed enough information to arrest him on attempted first-degree murder, first-degree assault, arson, aggravated motor vehicle theft and sexual assault.

Thus far, no new information about Monge.

MORE HERE http://blogs.westword.com/latestword/201...illman.php

[HairOfTheDog]

Kenia has most likely been recovered.

Sept 7, 2011

Denver police believe they've found the remains of missing Aurora teen Kenia Monge at a makeshift grave in Weld County. A source told 7NEWS that investigators were led to the remote location by Travis Forbes, the last person known to see Monge alive. The source said Forbes agreed to lead investigators to the grave in return for the district attorney taking the death penalty off the table. Forbes has not been charged with Monge's death.

The police department's Crime Lab was expected to continue working "well into the night" at the location, according to the joint statement.

This is not the first time Denver officers have searched in Keenesburg. On April 8, officers were searching the roads near a Keenesburg landfill. Police never said for what they were searching and if they found anything.

Snipped from:
http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/291...etail.html


Travis Forbes (douche bag, imo)

[Lady Cop]

he made a deal in exchange for body.




KEENESBURG, Colo. -- The search for Kenia Monge appears to be over Thursday.

Human remains located along Interstate 76 in Keenesburg, Colo. on Wednesday are believed to be those of the missing Aurora teenager, the Denver District Attorney’s Office said.

Keenesburg is roughly 40 miles northeast of Denver.

A source says the self-proclaimed "suspect" in her disappearance, Travis Forbes, led investigators to where her remains were located.

“A positive identification and cause of death is still pending and will be released with the results of the coroner’s report,” Denver Police and the DA’s office said in a joint news release.

Officials said the search for Monge resumed Wednesday based on “new information” that led Denver homicide detectives and the DA’s Office to an area in south Weld County near I-76 and Weld County Road 53.

Investigators were seen digging a hole in field just footsteps from the interstate.

“With great, great sadness I have to report to you that Denver Police has called me and they believe they have found Kenia,” Monge’s stepfather, Tony Lee, posted on a Facebook page dedicated to the search for Kenia earlier in the afternoon. “They are telling me she has passed.”

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks for the update LC. I'm very relieved for Kenia's family that her body has been recovered. Based on press releases, seems they've pretty much known that Forbes killed their baby. He is the scariest kind of piece of shit, imo. He's not scary looking. He seems to have a type that he targets. I bet he can lay on the "helpful stranger" bs to a young woman without raising eyebrows.

It pisses me off that LE has to (justifiably, imo) deal with these kinds of murderers in order to locate the victims. The ones that have the least problem killing vulnerable victims are the ones that will only give up information so the death penalty is taken off the table (so that they can continue to bless us all with their pitiful existence).

RIP Kenia....

[soothsayer]

The inevitable conclusion to this sad story.

[flcraxr]

"Travis Forbes charged with murder in Kenia Monge's death
Web Staff FOX31 Denver

3:25 p.m. MDT, September 8, 2011
DENVER -- The Denver District Attorney has filed first degree murder charges against Travis Forbes for the death of Kenia Monge, the 19-year-old Aurora woman whose remains were unearthed in a field along Interstate 76 on Wednesday.

“The charge alleges that in the early morning hours of April 1, 2011, Forbes met the victim, convinced her to get into his car, and later killed her,” the DA’s office said in a statement. “Her body was recovered yesterday in an area of south Weld County after new information was developed jointly between the Denver DA’s Office and the Denver Police Department.”

{snip}

He remained in custody in Fort Collins Thursday.

The Denver Office of the Medical Examiner has positively identified the remains as those of Monge. The cause of death, however, has not yet been determined.

{snip}

Tony Lee previously said he wanted the District Attorney’s Office to offer Forbes a deal in exchange for him leading them to Kenia’s body.

A law enforcement source tells FOX31 Denver that Forbes was taken to the scene where the body was discovered Wednesday; indicating that a deal was likely reached. "

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-forbes-cha...14874.stor

Parents Of Kenia Monge Say Discovery Brings Closure
KDVR video

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-parents-of...2618.story

[flcraxr]

Police: Forbes cooperating after confessing to murder
10:35 PM, Sep 8, 2011

{snip}

"The Denver DA's office says Forbes is still in custody on an unrelated case in Larimer County, where he is charged with attempted first-degree murder. Forbes is suspected of beating and sexually assaulting a woman in Fort Collins and setting fire to her apartment on July 5.

He will appear in court in Denver on Sept. 23 to be formally advised of the charge against him."

{snip}

http://www.9news.com/news/article/218024...enia-Monge-

[HairOfTheDog]

Monica Poole, who rented space to Forbes at Deby's Bakery and Cafe in Aurora for his granola-bar business and is a witness in the Monge case, said Forbes often spent the night in her office, scanning the Internet.

When detectives found the missing-person sites on her computer, Poole said, they began investigating whether Forbes was involved in the disappearance of any of those women.

Police sources told 9News there are similarities between the murder of Monge and attempted murder of the Fort Collins woman. Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI behavioral profiler, said that suggests there may be more victims that can be linked to him.

"The question for law enforcement is not, 'Is he capable of murder?' but how many people he might have killed," Van Zandt told 9News on Friday.

Forbes could possibly confess to other murders without facing any additional punishment, which could bring closure to family members, the officer said.

snipped from:
http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_18865042
===================================

Sounds like LE suspects Forbes may be connected to other missing women.

[Lady Cop]

DENVER -- Travis Forbes, the man charged with the slaying of 19-year-old Kenia Monge, pleaded guilty to first degree murder Monday and was immediately sentenced to life in prison without parole.

Forbes, 31, was making his initial court appearance in Denver when the plea was announced.

“What happened to Kenia was a horrific, horrific crime,” Forbes said, crying throughout a prepared statement. “What I did was horrible and cowardly. It was a mistake. I didn’t plan on it. I took her away. I took a life. I will spend the rest of my days in prison and I deserve it. I’ll never make things right for the people who knew me and remember me as I was, and not the monster I became.”

[soothsayer]

Jeezy peasy, now the girlfriend is under arrest.

http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19115307

Travis Forbes' girlfriend charged with two felonies

By The Denver Post
Posted: 10/14/2011 04:04:25 PM MDT

A girlfriend of convicted murderer Travis Forbes today was charged with two felony counts of attempting to influence a public servant.

AND ANOTHER RECENT ONE

Exclusive: Denver Police Interrogated Forbes In Texas
DENVER -- When Travis Forbes was arrested in Austin four months ago, accused of stealing a car from Wheat Ridge, Denver police sent a detective to Texas to interrogate Forbes about the disappearance of Kenia Monge.

Despite repeatedly denying Forbes was a suspect in the 19-year-old Aurora teen's disappearance, Denver police had a detective in Austin about eight hours after Forbes was arrested.

7NEWS exclusively obtained the nearly three-hour videotaped interrogation that had little to do with a stolen car and focused heavily on Monge.

MUCH MORE: http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/294...etail.html

[soothsayer]

It's a damn shame they weren't able to arrest him before he raped and tried to kill that other woman.

Police release interrogation tape of Travis Forbes

DENVER - Before he pleaded guilty to the murder of Kenia Monge and before he was even arrested for her disappearance, Travis Forbes was questioned for four hours after being picked up for driving a stolen car in Austin, Texas on May 4.
....
"How are doing, Travis?" said the detective. "Dude, I've been waiting for you."
...
"I keep checking the internet," Forbes tells the detective. "To see if they found that girl. I'm surprised you guys haven't charged me with it."
....

The interrogation changes when the detective asks Forbes how Monge's hair, ripped to the root, ended up in the back of his van.

"If you guys find a piece of her hair, with a root, in the back of my van, how are you not arresting me?" asked Forbes. "There's a hair with a root in the back of my van. That's not good. That's incriminating."
....
After the statements, the DNA samples, and four hours of interrogation, Forbes is still not arrested for Monge's disappearance.

After being brought back to Colorado, the stolen car charge is dropped and Forbes goes free.

On July 5, Forbes commits another crime. He sexually assaults a woman in Fort Collins then tries to kill her by setting her apartment on fire. She survived. Forbes pleaded guilty to that crime and is expected to receive 48 years in prison.

Much more here http://www.9news.com/news/article/224783...vis-Forbes

[soothsayer]

Murderer Forbes weeps in court as he is sentenced to 48 years for attack on Lydia Tillman
By Monte Whaley
The Denver Post
Updated: 10/21/2011 01:29:05 PM MDT

FORT COLLINS — Convicted killer Travis Forbes wanted to skip his sentencing hearing today for his attempted murder of Lydia Tillman last July in Fort Collins.

But Larimer County District Judge Thomas French denied his motion to be absent, so Forbes was forced to listen again to Tillman's words of foregiveness and defiance Friday morning.

"My spirit and my soul, in my mind, remains untouched," said Tillman wrote in a message to Forbes read aloud by French. "I wish you peace in this life."

French then sentenced Forbes to 48 years in prison to be served consecutive to the life sentence he received last month for the murder of Kenia Monge, 19, whose body was recovered from a grave near Keenesburg.
....

Forbes beat and sexually assaulted Tillman at her north Fort Collins apartment early July 5. He then tried to destroy DNA evidence by setting her home on fire, but Tillman was able to leap out of a second-story window.

Tillman suffered a stroke on the way to the hospital and endured nerve damage on her right side and other side effects of a severe beating, police said.

....
"What you did is dark and inexplicable," the judge said.

But his attack also shined a light on Tillman's courage, French said.

"I can honestly say, I won't remember much about you but rather I'll hold the memory of her (Tillman's) heroism," said French.

At one point in today's hearing, Forbes put his head on the defendant's table and wept.

But prosecutor Michelle Brinegar wasn't convinced Forbes was showing true remorse.

"I don't think his remorse is not serious at this point," Brinergar said. "He just seems to love the spotlight."

more at link http://www.denverpost.com/breakingnews/ci_19165091

[soothsayer]

http://www.kdvr.com/news/kdvr-surveillan...1962.story

Julie Hayden Reporter

9:08 p.m. MDT, October 31, 2011
DENVER -- Even knowing how it ends, Kenia Monge’s parents say they could watch the surveillance tapes forever.

“I just want to see her, I just want us to see her,” says Tony Lee, Monge’s stepfather. For the first time prosecutors releasing surveillance tapes that show the last moments of the 19-year-old’s life.

She walks into the Loft Apartments at 15^th and California, with the man she left a LoDo nightclub with.

She gets into the elevator, then changes her mind and gets out. She uses the bathroom in a nearby hotel, and then returns to the foyer of the Loft Apartments.

The tape shows her stumbling and she appears intoxicated as she leans against the wall and slides to the floor and takes off her red high heels. A man, waiting inside to stay warm, talks to her for several minutes.

more at link

[soothsayer]

http://www.thedenverchannel.com/news/296...etail.html

Autopsy Results Inconclusive; Other Video Shows Forbes With Large Cooler
Russell Haythorn, 7NEWS Reporter

That's the official finding from the Denver Medical Examiner's office on Kenia Monge.

The report just released Tuesday goes on to say the lack of autopsy findings does not rule out asphyxia, or death by suffocation or strangulation.

7NEWS also obtained new surveillance video which shows Monge's last moments alive.

On the video, Monge stumbles into a downtown apartment lobby and several minutes later stumbles out.

19-year-old Kenia Monge walks into the Loft Apartments downtown on April 1, 2011 behind the man police say she left the bar with, not Travis Forbes.

Monge is wearing a black dress and red high heels.

The video shows her stumbling into the elevator with two men, while two others get into an argument in the lobby.

Then, Monge decides not to go up to the apartment with the man she left with. Instead, she appears to break up some kind of fight between the two men ....

more at link

[soothsayer]

Solving the puzzle of the Kenia Monge case

DENVER - It was a puzzle - the five-month long quest to find 19-year-old Kenia Monge after she disappeared in downtown Denver.

VIEW TIMELINE OF TRAVIS FORBES' CASE

"This isn't TV," Nash Gurule, detective with the Denver Police's Missing and Exploited Persons Unit, said. "We don't come to work and get a case at the beginning of our shift and in an hour we have it solved - the guy is in prison."

A 20-year police vet, Gurule got assigned the case of the missing Aurora teen April 5, four days after the she vanished.

"I didn't believe him. I just had a weird feeling about him. I felt that he was lying," Gurule said about his first interview with 32-year-old Travis Forbes.

Forbes admitted to police he was the last person to see Monge alive. He said texted her phone asking is she got home OK and later set up a meeting with Tony Lee, Monge's stepfather, who asked Forbes about his daughter's whereabouts. At the time, patrol officers were on-hand to help.

....
"He was very calm," Gurule said about his interview with Forbes. "He was always looking you straight in the eye. He's very manipulative. He can talk his way out of pretty much anything."

After police let him go, Forbes vanished until May 4. Forbes was arrested on auto theft charges in Austin, Texas. Gurule flew down to interview Forbes again and this time he had some new questions.

"He had an excuse for everything, the burning of the barrel, the cooler, everything," Gurule said. "When I got close, that's when he says, 'I want my lawyer.' And that's when I knew we're real close. It's just a matter of getting our lab stuff back."
....

Denver Police say they followed him for a few days, but then stopped. Why is unclear. Denver Police spokesman Sonny Jackson told 9NEWS the department does not discuss its tactics.

On July 4, Forbes attacked Lydia Tillman in Fort Collins. He brutally beat her, sexually assaulted her and set her apartment on fire.

Fort Collins Police Services Det. Jaclyn Shaklee called Gurule.

"There was silence from him after I told him about the facts of my case that I was working, then he said, 'Oh my gosh, I think we have a connection here,'" she said.

"She's the one that calls and says, 'Hey, this is what we have going on, what's your case about?' I told her. That's how we connected the dots. Things worked out," Gurule said.

"The biggest connection that we found was the fact that fire was used to destroy evidence in their case and it was also an attempt to destroy evidence in our case, as well as the bleach connection," Shaklee said.

Both police departments compared DNA.

Shaklee told 9NEWS investigators started following Forbes on July 8. On July 9, she said he met a woman and was following her to a dark neighborhood. Police contacted him then and he gave them a false name and let him go.

Shortly after, he was seen talking to another woman, according to Shaklee. He was arrested on July 10 for giving false information to police. Shortly afterward, he was facing charges for the attempted murder of Tillman.

"It's really scary to have such a heinous crime and who'd done it for as long as it was," Shaklee said. "For 48 hours we had absolutely no idea who did this and that was very scary and it was very challenging emotionally because of the fear there was somebody out there running around in our community that could possibly do this again."
...
Gurule says he wished he could've had something to hold Forbes on sooner.

"You know, I feel bad. I feel bad the fact that we couldn't do something, we couldn't prevent that," he said.

On Aug. 26, Gurule went back to Fort Collins to ask Forbes once again about his case and Monge.

"We talked about everything - Texas, the media, his interviews, then he throws it out there, he says, 'I'll tell you everything, but I want a deal,'" he said.

...

Detectives believe there could be more victims out there and Monge was not the first one.

Police also believe if not stopped, Forbes would've killed again. They are still not sure why he killed in the first place.

"It's his thing," Gurule said. "He met other girls. When I was building my case and we were doing all this stuff, I talked to other girls he met. They went to dinner with him, he used different names, but it was the same guy."

LOTS MORE HERE http://www.9news.com/news/article/227423...Monge-case-

[blueberryhill]

Last evening (11/11/11), ²⁰⁄₂₀ had two shows and one was this case. I didn't catch first part and by then it was too
late (i am on Mountain time) to tell anyone.

[Lady Cop]

i think they can be viewed online:

http://abcnews.go.com/2020/

[soothsayer]

Thanks, blueberryhill and LC.

[soothsayer]

More on the weirdo who killed her. http://www.denverpost.com/news/ci_19419185

snip:

One week after Monge disappeared, detectives drove through fields near Keenesburg, after records showed activity on Forbes' cellphone there shortly after Monge went missing. Authorities combed the area on foot, horseback, in helicopters and on ATVs, Estrada said. They said nothing publicly, as the Monge case was officially still a search for a missing living person, but they scoured ditches, waterways and even a nearby dairy farm looking for disturbed earth, predator activity and skeletal remains.

During the next five months, authorities would search the area 15 times and find nothing.

In mid-April, Monge's parents, Tony Lee and his wife, Maria, asked for the public's help in finding Monge. At the same time, Forbes started talking to local reporters, depicting himself as a good Samaritan who offered a lost girl a ride home.

What he was really doing, Gurule believes, is trying to find out what detectives knew by talking to reporters who might have information.

"They like to get in there and see what the cops know. I've never personally had that happen until now," he said.

While Forbes was never named a suspect, Gurule and Estrada continued whittling their way through his story. They searched his van, even took the door off the hinges, but the bleach he used to clean the interior erased any DNA and created a false positive in tests used to detect blood.

As they followed leads, police watched as Forbes continued meeting women, giving them different names and taking them out to dinner.

Gurule interviewed the women — all of them found Forbes charming and harmless.

"He could walk into a bar and strike up a conversation with probably 95 percent of the people in that bar," Gurule said.

Estrada pieced together Forbes' criminal record, starting with minor offenses he committed as a juvenile, which progressed into violent crimes.

"It started with burglaries, theft, and moved on to harassment, assault," Estrada said. "It started to get a little more severe every time."

Estrada said he believes it was the thrill that drove Forbes to more violent crimes. He spoke with two of Forbes' ex-girlfriends, who described a transformation he went through during sexual role-playing.
"Every time he talks, he has something to cover up," Estrada said of Forbes.

"He had this real screeching look on his face," Estrada said. "He really enjoyed the pain he inflicted on them."

end snip

Lots more at link.