I wonder if they knew about the Labor Day 1998 killing spree in Aurora, Colorado. It was committed by two friends - one 17, the other 18:
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Tuesday, September 8, 1998
SIX SLAIN IN ARAPAHOE COUNTY
COPS SEEK 18-YEAR-OLD AFTER 5 BODIES FOUND AT 2 HOMES IN AURORA AND 1 IN FIELD
By John C. Ensslin and Ann Carnahan
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writers
Free-lance reporter Randy Lynch contributed to this report.
Six people were killed in three locations in Arapahoe County Monday, and police were looking for an 18-year-old suspect named Michael Martinez .
Two young men, one of them believed to be Martinez, walked into an upscale home in the Berkshire subdivision about 2 p.m. and shot a woman to death in her kitchen and two teen-agers in the basement.
"They just walked in, fired the shots and walked out," Aurora police spokesman Bob Stef said. "Apparently it happened pretty quickly."
About 9:30 p.m., police found three more bodies - one in a field at East Nichols Avenue and South Akron Street in unincorporated Arapahoe County and two more in a home in the 2000 block of South Paris Way in Aurora.
Police pleaded for the public's help in finding Martinez, described as Hispanic, 5 feet 7, 115 pounds. He was last seen wearing black pants and a white T-shirt. Anyone with information on Martinez's whereabouts is asked to call Aurora police at (303) 739-6050.
"There are a lot of people who don't know where Martinez is now who are very worried," Stef said.
Police said they were looking for a second unnamed suspect but that Martinez is "the main player in this."
Seamus Dolan, 19, said he went to school with Martinez at Overland High School.
"You couldn't say anything wrong, you couldn't look at him wrong without him going off on you," Dolan said. "Nobody liked him."
The first three bodies were found in a two-story home in the 11800 block of East Harvard Avenue.
Details on the three subsequent killings were sketchy, and police did not release the names of the victims.
Stef said police got a call earlier in the evening about shots fired at the South Paris Way address - six blocks blocks from the scene of the triple slaying. Police showed up but didn't find anything unusual and left the scene, Stef said.
Such calls are "common and routine," Stef said. "There was nothing suspicious about it at the time."
While investigating the triple homicide, police learned that an acquaintance of Martinez lived at the Paris Way address. Police went back to the home and found the two bodies, described as two teen-age males.
Stef did not have information on how police were led to the body in the field, which is six miles from the scene of the triple murder.
He also said it was not yet clear exactly how the three additional people were killed.
After discovering the first three bodies, police blockaded a three-block area around the home on East Harvard Avenue and told residents to stay indoors. At the time, officers said they knew the name of at least one suspect and that the family knows him, too.
Two of the dead woman's young children apparently witnessed the shotgun shootings before escaping with an older brother.
"I heard two loud noises, and then I heard a little girl screaming," said 13-year-old Meghan Lyle, whose family had just moved into the Berkshire subdivision.
"She was yelling, `My mom is dead.' She said she had looked back in and saw her mother lying in a pool of blood."
Lyle said she also heard the girl tell police she recognized one of the intruders as a friend of a family member.
Kelly Danielson, who lives near the home on East Harvard, said she heard two gunshots about 2 p.m.
"And then I heard a boy yelling, `Help me! Help me!' and I heard him yelling about his mom being shot.
"I just froze . . . and I thought, `My God, am I hearing things or are kids just playing?' I listened for sirens, which I did hear."
Danielson said most of the people in the neighborhood are professionals and there are many stay-at-home mothers.
"This is typically a very quiet neighborhood," she said. "This is very disconcerting."
Stef said police have responded to four previous calls at the residence for family violence, all in late 1997, but no details were available.
A pair of in-line skates lay in the driveway of the home. Witnesses said the little girl was cleaning them just before the shooting.
The dead woman's husband was at work when the shootings occurred.
Investigators said Martinez lives at the nearby Telegraph II apartments. They contacted Martinez' father immediately after the shooting. He told them he had not seen his son since Sunday.
"We don't want them to know that we know who they are," Stef said at the time. "We want him to screw up so that we can catch him."
But after the three additional bodies were found, Stef said that police did not release Martinez' name sooner because they did not have positive identification.
A witness who saw the suspects leave the East Harvard home said one of the pair was carrying a firearm wrapped in clothing. Both wore bandanas.
Stef said the killers were known to the victims. He declined to offer a motive for the slayings.
"It's too early to tell if this is gang-related or drug-related, but it does not appear to be," Stef said.
Using a piece of clothing taken from one suspect's apartment, the police canine unit used Scooter, a bloodhound, to try to track him.
As police combed their neighborhood, Darrell and Debra Tuenge and their dog, Shadow, sat on a curb waiting to be allowed into their apartments. The couple had just returned from a vacation in Winter Park.
"Just let me go home," said Darrell Tuenge, who said he would feel safe enough in his apartment with his weapons and his dog.
"I'd want to be safe before I go back," Debra Tuenge said. "I'd feel better if they were caught."
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Wednesday, September 9, 1998
NO MOTIVE IN KILLING RAMPAGE
AURORA POLICE DESCRIBE THEIR INVESTIGATION INTO SLAYINGS OF SIX PEOPLE, BUT CAUSE STILL UNKNOWN
By Kevin Vaughan and Michael O'Keeffe
Rocky Mountain News Staff Writers
Staff writers John C. Ensslin, Tustin Amole, Hector Gutierrez, Guy Kelly, Burt Hubbard, Manny Gonzales and Lynn Bartels contributed to this story.
A trail of terror that ended with six people dead left investigators unable to answer the question on everybody's mind Tuesday.
Why?
Police linked the two teen-agers suspected in the Labor Day shooting spree and their victims but couldn't explain a motive.
Only one suspect remains alive: Alexander Pogosyan, a 17-year-old Aurora boy, was being held on suspicion of six counts of murder.
The second suspect, Michael Martinez , an 18-year-old Overland High School dropout, was found shot to death in an office park near the Park Meadows mall in southern Arapahoe County.
No other suspects were being sought Tuesday, said Deputy Chief Mike Stiers of the Aurora Police Department.
The rampage began when two shotgun-wielding teen-agers, their faces covered by red bandanas, went to a fourplex in west Aurora where they gunned down two young men. It continued a few minutes later, when they burst into a home a few blocks away, shooting down a woman, her step-son and his girlfriend.
It ended, police believe, when Pogosyan killed Martinez and then surrendered to authorities.
"I can't figure out what would go so wrong in someone's life that they would react that way," said Joe Knowles, who lives near a home where three of the victims died.
The slayings shocked even veteran detectives.
"Horrific," was the way Stiers described the killings.
Police spent Tuesday dealing with six bodies at three locations:
* At 11898 E. Harvard Ave., officers found Penny Medla, 37, dead on the first floor, and two more bodies in the basement. One was identified as her stepson, Greg Medla, 18. The other was his girlfriend, Marissa Avalos, 16. All three were killed by shotgun blasts.
* At 2004 S. Paris Way, officers found Edgardo Morales Jr., 18, and Zach Obert, 18. They also were killed by shotguns.
* In a landscaped area of the Highland Park office park at the intersection of South Akron Street and East Nichols Avenue, where officers found the body of Martinez. He had suffered "multiple" gunshot wounds from a handgun, investigators said.
None of the weapons had been recovered Tuesday.
About a dozen friends held a candlelight vigil late Tuesday in front of the homes where the killings occurred.
The spree began around 2 p.m. Monday, police said, when Morales and Obert were gunned down. But it would be hours before police discovered the crime scene.
A few minutes later and a few blocks away, a neighbor called police, reporting that two shotgun-toting teen-agers had entered the Harvard Street home.
Across the street, Dwight Lyle was unloading a truck with his two children, Tom, 15, and Meghan, 13, when gunshots echoed through the neighborhood.
Two of Penny Medla's younger children, a 9-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl, ran from the home. Investigators were unsure Tuesday whether the children saw the shooting.
Meghan Lyle comforted the girl.
"She said `Greg's friend Michael shot my mom," recalled Dwight's wife, Mary Lyle, who pulled up to the family's home just after the shootings.
"She was really brave," Mary Lyle said. "Maybe she's young enough that she didn't think it was real."
Then at 8:30 p.m. Martinez's body was found in the field near the mall. They'd gone there after receiving a tip that the weapons used in the Harvard Avenue shooting might be hidden there.
Investigators were looking into a July 6 shooting in Aurora that Martinez witnessed. In that case, a shotgun was used, but the victim recovered.
Stiers would not disclose other details Tuesday because the case is at the district attorney's office, where prosecutors were considering whether to file charges.
One thing was clear Tuesday, Stiers said, Martinez, Pogosyan and the teen-age victims were all acquainted.
There'd been a party at the Morales home on Sunday, a barbecue attended by a handful of kids, said a neighbor, Jan Turner.
Martinez and some victims were there.
"He was a good friend to my nephew," Anibal Morales, Edgardo's uncle, said Tuesday of Martinez. "I don't know what happened."
Some of those at the party dressed like gang members with baggy pants and muscle shirts, Turner said. But Stiers said investigators had found no evidence that the shootings were gang-related, and Morales' father disputed the contention.
"I trusted my son," Ed Morales Sr. said. "He was a responsible guy. He didn't have anything to do with gangs."
Several of the dead attended Overland High School. Morales and Obert had graduated from the school last spring, and Martinez dropped out during the 1996-97 school year.
The East Harvard Avenue homes where three of the victims were shot has been the scene of conflict before, neighbors said.
"There's always been a lot of noise," said Cathy Odean, who lives across the street. "They are a noisy family. It was slightly annoying."
Teens hung around the home, and loud music was common.
"We heard a lot of arguing during the middle of the day," said Dwight Lyle.
Others in the neighborhood said they'd seen Martinez around.
"He looked mean," said Barb Bahl.
Monday's killings happened just a few blocks from another crime that grabbed headlines - the Dec. 14, 1993, slayings of four people at a Chuck E Cheese restaurant at 12293 E. Iliff Ave.
Like those murders, the latest round of shootings shook residents living near homes where the killings occurred. The East Harvard Avenue neighborhood looks to be middle class, relaxed - the kind of place people look for to get away from violence and crime.
"There is no safe place regardless of your economic standing," Mary Lyle said.
The sequence of events that left six people dead in Aurora:
2:07 p.m. Monday - A neighbor calls 911 to report a burglary in progress by two armed men as 11898 E. Harvard Ave. Minutes later a second 911 call reports a possible shooting. Officers arrive at the scene to find three people dead, all from shotgun wounds.
2:45 p.m. Monday - A woman calls police from a pay phone, reporting she'd heard gunshots in the 2000 block of South Oswego Way around 2 p.m. She hangs up without giving her name. A short time later, police receive a second call. Officers look through the area but find nothing out of the ordinary. Police later theorize she got the address wrong.
8:30 p.m. Monday - Police head to a lot in the area of South Akron Street and East Nichols Avenue after receiving information that the guns used in the Harvard Avenue shooting are there.They find of the body of one of the two prime suspects in the shooting: Michael Martinez, 18.
9 p.m. Monday - Investigators develop information that leads them to 2004 S. Paris Way. Inside the condominium, they find Edgardo Morales Jr., 18, and Zach Michael Obert, 18. Both are dead from shotgun wounds.
5 a.m. Tuesday - Alexander Pogosyan, 17, calls Aurora police to report a suspicious vehicle outside his home. The vehicle is an unmarked Aurora police car; officers have been looking for Pogosyan for questioning. He and his parents agree to go to police headquarters, where Pogosyan is arrested and booked on suspicion of six counts of murder.
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Tuesday, November 17, 1998
GUNMAN WANTED TO BACK OUT
WITNESS TELLS OF HEARING MASKED MAN EXPRESS DOUBTS MOMENTS BEFORE LABOR DAY SLAYINGS
By John C. Ensslin
News Staff Writer
One of two shotgun-toting suspects in a Labor Day killing rampage in Aurora got cold feet moments before three people were shot to death, testimony revealed Monday.
"Let's turn back," a teen-age neighbor overheard one of the bandanna-masked gunmen tell the other as they trooped toward the one-family house at 11898 E. Harvard Ave.
"No," the other replied. "We're going to do this."
Moments later, three people were dead in one of the bloodiest rampages in Aurora's history. Six people were killed Sept. 7, including Michael Martinez, 18, one of the suspects in the five other killings.
The other suspect, Alexander Pogosyn, is facing first-degree murder, burglary and conspiracy charges in the killings. Aurora detectives began airing their case against him at a preliminary hearing Monday in Arapahoe County District Court.
Pogosyn's younger brother, Roman, invoked his Fifth Amendment right not to incriminate himself when prosecutors called him as their first witness.
The move sparked an outburst by a relative of one of the victims in the hallway outside the courtroom.
"I think he's hiding something," shouted Ed Acosta, a cousin of Edgardo Morales Jr., 18, who was one of the first people killed that day. "The family knows something, and he's not talking."
One of the prosecution witnesses' is the 7-year-old girl who found her mother in a pool of blood on a kitchen floor.
Kayla Reichert had been in her upstairs bedroom changing clothes.
After the first two shots, she told police, she heard her mother ask what the two bangs were. Then she heard a third shot. Through the slats of the stairwell, she said, she saw Martinez standing over her mother's body on the kitchen floor.
"She screamed and screamed as loud as she could," Detective Chuck Mehl testified. He said the girl told investigators that she covered her eyes with her hands.
"She was thinking it was a dream when she saw him," Mehl said. "When she opened her eyes again, Mike was gone."
Under cross-examination, Mehl said the daughter initially told police that she saw Martinez shoot her mother in the stomach, but later said she did not witness the actual shooting.
She recognized Martinez as a friend of her stepbrother, Greg Medla, 18. Police found Greg Medla and Martinez's former girlfriend, Marissa Avalos, 16, shot to death in the basement.
Another witness identified Martinez as one of two people who stormed into an apartment about an hour before the murders on East Harvard. Morales and Zack Obert, both 18, were killed in the first attack.
The hearing is scheduled to continue through Wednesday.
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Wednesday, November 18, 1998
MAN ADMITTED `SMOKING' VICTIMS
PAIR WENT TO STEAKHOUSE TO KILL GIRLFRIEND, PAL TESTIFIES AT HEARING IN LABOR DAY MASSACRE
By John C. Ensslin
News Staff Writer
After telling a friend that he had "smoked" several people in a Labor Day killing spree, Michael Martinez went looking for another victim: his girlfriend.
He never found her at the steak house where she worked, the friend testified Tuesday in Arapahoe County District Court. Instead Martinez turned up dead several hours later in a field in a business park just west of Interstate 25.
Steve Lawson, a friend of Martinez's, testified during the second day of a preliminary hearing for Alex Pogosyan, who is accused in five of the murders. No one has been charged with killing Martinez.
Lawson, 18, described how he had just arrived home when he saw Martinez standing in his doorway, holding a shotgun.
"He said he had just smoked Greg, Marissa and some other names," Lawson testified. "He was yelling, kind of excited, like an adrenaline rush."
Martinez wanted a ride to the Outback Steak House. As the two headed outside, Lawson said he saw Pogosyan carrying another shotgun, trying to stuff it inside a pair of sweatpants.
Lawson said the pair described how they had first killed Ed Morales Jr. and Zack Obert, both 18, two friends whom Lawson had known since high school. Then they talked about killing another friend, Greg Medla, 18, his mother Penny Medla, 36 and Marissa Avalos, 16.
"That was cool, " Lawson quoted Pogosyan as saying while he described feeling one of the blasts from Martinez's shotgun blow past him. Lawson said Pogosyn asked Martinez "Did you see when I got this person?," possibly referring to Avalos.
None of the testimony so far has shed light on a possible motive for the killings.
Lawson drove them to the restaurant where Martinez's girlfriend Jackie worked, but they could not find her car.
"He said, `I'll come back later and kill her and steal her car.' " Lawson said.
Before dropping the pair off at a Home Depot, where they had lined up another ride, Lawson said Martinez gave him one last instruction:
"Michael said I shouldn't tell anybody. If I told anybody, he'd kill me."
Lawson kept his silence for several hours. After telling some friends, he contacted police and led them to where he thought the guns were stashed.
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Thursday, November 19, 1998
MOTIVE EMERGES IN LABOR DAY KILLINGS
POLICE RELAY STORY THAT MAN WAS ON MISSION TO MURDER `SNITCHES'
By John C. Ensslin
News Staff Writer
Michael Martinez emerged from a Denver hospital on Labor Day looking to kill the people who had "snitched on him."
He wanted to kill them before they could kill him, a witness told police.
Martinez would die that day but not until after five other people were murdered in one of the deadliest crime sprees in Aurora's history.
The teen-ager accused of helping Martinez carry out the shotgun killings was bound over for trial Wednesday in the five deaths.
An Arapahoe County District Court judge ruled there was enough evidence for Alexander Pogosyan, 18, to face charges of first-degree murder, first-degree burglary and conspiracy.
Testimony Wednesday gave the first hint of Martinez's motive.
According to police detectives:
Police interviewed Artur Martirosyan the day after the Sept. 7 murders. When they later tried to arrest him as the getaway driver in the murders, he had fled to California. He remains at large.
Martirosyan, 18, said he had called Alex Pogosyan on Labor Day morning. At Pogosyan's request, they drove to Denver Health Medical Center to pick up Martinez, who was there for an undisclosed ailment.
Martinez seemed happy to get the ride, but quickly grew angry, Martirosyan told police.
"(Martinez) said that a number of people were going to go down that day because they had snitched on him," Detective Franklin Michaelson testified. "He specifically mentioned that Ed (Morales Jr.) and Zach (Obert) . . . were going to go down."
Martinez was driven to his apartment, where he got a gym bag containing two 12-gauge shotguns.
After picking up Pogosyan's brother Roman, they drove to Morales' apartment.
Martirosyan said Martinez took one of the shotguns and gave the other to Alex Pogosyan. The pair went inside and Martirosyan said he heard several shots.
When the pair returned, Martinez said, "I blew his brains out. Let's get out of here."
Police say Alex Pogosyan and Martinez later made their way to a house at 12041 East Harvard Avenue, where they gunned down Penny Medla, 36, her son Greg Medla, 18, and Marissa Avalos, 16.
Roman Pogosyan said he did not know who killed Martinez, whose body was discovered later that day in a field where the suspects had stashed their shotguns.
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Rocky Mountain News (CO) - Saturday, June 19, 1999
POGOSYAN GUILTY OF KILLING 5
TEEN FACES LIFE SENTENCES FOR LABOR DAY SLAYINGS, ACQUITTED ON TWO CHARGES OF CONSPIRACY
By John C. Ensslin and Amber Batson
News Staff Writers
Compiled by Denver Rocky Mountain News librarian Carol Kasel.
A jury Friday found Alex Pogosyan guilty of murdering five people during a Labor Day killing rampage with another teen who later was found dead.
After deliberating nearly 30 hours this week, the juror returned guilty verdicts of first-degree murder and second-degree murder.
Pogosyan smiled slightly and showed little emotion on hearing the verdict. His mother and at least one juror wept.
The jurors acquitted him of two charges of conspiracy to commit murder. They also chose to convict him of murder committed in the course of a crime, rather than premeditated murder.
"We feel it's immaterial at this point," Chief Deputy District Attorney John Topolnicki said after the verdict. He noted that Pogosyan still faces five life sentences when he is sentenced Aug. 5.
The death penalty did not apply in the case because Pogosyan was 17 at the time of the Sept. 6 murders of Penny Bowman Medla, 37; her son Greg Medla, 18, his girlfriend Marissa Avalos, 16, Edgardo Morales Jr. and Zack Obert, both 18.
The five were shot to death at two Aurora homes. Later that night, police found the bullet-riddled body of the second suspect, Michael Martinez, 18, in a field near an office park. No one has been charged in his death.
Pogosyan's public defenders however, said they will ask the judge to overturn the verdict, arguing the jury's findings were contradictory.
"We believe the verdicts are inconsistent," Lisa Moses said. She noted that while finding Pogosyan guilty of two counts of first-degree burglary, the jurors also ruled that the burglary did not cause the murders.
Jurors were slipped out of the courthouse before anyone could question them.
The verdict capped an emotional three-week trial for the relatives of the victims, many of whom attended court each day.
"I'm just glad it's over," said Margaret Medla, Greg Medla's grandmother. She and her husband, Walter, had traveled from Las Vegas to attend the trial. Just before the verdict, she had pulled out a small flowered handkerchief.
"The trial was very emotional and tough at times," Walter Medla said. "The verdict doesn't make what happened any better, but it brings closure to everything."
Later, he and his wife hugged Ed Morales Sr. outside the courtroom.
Sue Morales, the victim's sister, echoed those sentiments.
"Sitting through the trial was agonizing," she said. "It was very hard to sit there and hear exactly what our family members went through, but at least now I know."
"I feel the verdict was fair, and although it doesn't put my mind at ease or change anything that has happened, I feel better knowing that Pogosyan will be punished for his actions."
Despite his smiling outward demeanor, Pogosyan's lawyers said he was crushed by the verdict.
"You have to remember, he's a young kid. He was on the verge of tears," Moses said. Of his smiling, she said, "That's nervousness and his inability to let all the emotions of this out."
Her partner, Hollynd Hoskins, decried the fact that Congress weakened a gun-control bill one day before the verdict.
She noted that testimony during the trial detailed how an 18-year-old not charged in the case was able to obtain the two 12-gauge shotguns used in the murders by purchasing them at an East Colfax pawn shop.
"Just like that," she said, snapping her fingers. "And that shouldn't happen."
"We need to learn from cases like this and from cases like Columbine."
5 VICTIMS IN LABOR DAY KILLINGS
Edgardo Morales Jr., 18, and his family moved to Aurora seven or eight years ago from Passaic, N.J. Morales graduated from Overland High School May 1998. He was planning to attend college eventually. Earlier in the year Morales' mother died in a car crash blocks from home. Morales was killed at his home at 2004 S. Paris Way.
Zach Obert, 18, graduated in May 1998 from Overland High School. He received the school's Founding Principal Award, given to a student who overcomes obstacles and turns his life around. Obert was gifted in math, loved to draw and was obsessed with basketball. Obert and his sister, Danielle Morrin, 20, lived with their grandparents in Aurora. Obert was killed at 2004 S. Paris Way.
Penny Bowman-Medla, 37, left Milwaukee to build a new life in Colorado with husband Don, Greg Medla, and their 9-year-old son and 7-year-old daughter. The two younger children were home, but not injured at the time of the shooting. Friends and family recall Bowman-Medla as "a loving and doting mother to her children, as well as the other neighborhood children." She was gunned down in her home at 11898 E. Harvard Ave.
Greg Medla, 18, and his girlfriend Marissa Avalos, 16, were engaged and expecting a baby. The young couple had dropped out of Overland High. Avalos had told her friends she was interested in returning to school. If she did return classmates hoped she would rejoin the school choir. Medla and Avalos were gunned down in his family's Aurora home at 11898 E. Harvard Ave.
Subject: Eric and Dylan: The Prequel? 
Tue Mar 18, 2014 12:48 am