Colorado’s rural counties got a serial killer case, and the cavalry apparently rode in from Boulder.
That is not a typo. According to Rocky Mountain Voice, when a five-murder case hit the San Luis Valley and a tiny rural DA’s office needed serious prosecutorial muscle, the Attorney General’s Special Prosecution Unit was not the hero of the story. Boulder County was.
Anne Kelly, the 12th Judicial District Attorney covering six rural counties in southern Colorado, said her eight-lawyer office needed help prosecuting Adre Baroz, known as “Psycho,” who was sentenced in May 2024 for five murders and is now serving five life sentences plus 140 years.
Kelly’s quote is the whole courthouse exhibit: “That case was certainly a prime case for which the attorney general’s office could have assisted,” she said. Instead, Boulder County’s DA sent a crew and handled the case from start to finish. Kelly said that was “really the only reason why that case was as successful as it was.”
So let’s slow clap the institutional absurdity here. Colorado has a statewide Attorney General’s Office. It has statewide authority, statewide prestige, and a Special Prosecution Unit with the kind of title that sounds like it should arrive in black SUVs when rural prosecutors are drowning in blood, paperwork, and manpower shortages.
But in one of the ugliest rural murder cases Colorado has seen, the rescue story was not “statewide legal firepower saves the day.” It was “another local DA’s office had to bring the damn toolbox.”
Good for Boulder County. Seriously. Credit where it is due: they showed up. They sent people. They did the work. The victims’ families and the San Luis Valley got a prosecution that ended in five life sentences plus 140 years.
But that is exactly why the Attorney General’s public-safety branding deserves a hard shove into the witness stand.
Phil Weiser and the AG’s office do not get to wear the shiny “top legal officer” badge only when it photographs well. If the state builds centralized legal expertise, rural Coloradans are allowed to ask why that expertise was not the decisive backup in a case that practically screamed for it.
This is not about inventing some secret motive. Nobody needs a conspiracy board with yarn and thumbtacks. The record is embarrassing enough on its own: eight lawyers, six counties, five murders, and the rural DA says the successful cavalry came from Boulder, not the AG’s Special Prosecution Unit.
That is the rural Colorado public-safety paradox in one nasty little package. Denver gets slogans. Boulder gets moral superiority. The Front Range gets task forces, press releases, and ribbon-cutting compassion theater. Rural Colorado gets told it matters right up until it needs something expensive, specialized, and human-shaped.
Because rural DAs do not have Denver-sized staffs. They do not have spare homicide prosecutors sitting around sipping oat milk and waiting for a murder marathon. They cover giant territories with tiny teams, long drives, thin budgets, and cases that would make a metro office start requisitioning backup before lunch.
And when the state’s answer is effectively, “Hope your neighbor county can lend you a prosecutorial fire department,” maybe the problem is not the rural DA. Maybe the problem is a state legal machine that loves statewide authority a lot more than statewide obligation.
This is the part Colorado’s ruling class never quite understands: rural neglect is not just bad roads and closed hospitals. It is also public safety systems that expect small counties to absorb big-city horror with coupon-book staffing.
If the AG wants the credit when Colorado talks law and order, then the AG gets the questions when rural Colorado says the cavalry was an empty chair.
Boulder showed up. The state’s top legal shop now gets to explain why “special prosecution” sounded a lot more special on the brochure than it did in the San Luis Valley.
Source: Rocky Mountain Voice
Just Stop It
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