The judge discloses the arrest data of the suspect for the attack on Club Q in 2021; the family would not testify | tidings
An unsealed case file shows the suspect in the Club Q attack wanted to be “the next mass murderer” and made a bomb threat in June 2021, but prosecutors reached an impasse with the investigation.
Prosecutors could not move forward because the family of suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich refused to testify against him, District Attorney Michael Allen said, and a judge dismissed the felony kidnapping and menacing case.
These new details came to light as the 4th Judicial District Court and El Paso County Sheriff’s Office (EPSO) unsealed the case and related records on December 7.
of Over 200 pages of records, which were unsealed in August because of Colorado’s case-disclosure laws, reveal that Aldrich’s mother and grandparents evaded subpoenas, Allen said during a Dec. 8 news conference. Laura Voepel, Aldrich’s mother and grandparents Pamela and Jonathan Pullen were the 2021 victims The threats Aldrich made in the Lorson Ranch neighborhood.
Family members were served several subpoenas to testify in the case earlier this year while the Pullens lived in Florida, records show. But Allen said personal subpoena services — that is, actually delivering a paper subpoena to a subpoenaed witness — were “unsuccessful.”
Pamela Pullen once asked the court to quash a “stranger’s summons left in her mailbox or on her front door, but not delivered to anyone at home and certainly not to Mrs. Pullen,” which she claimed ” was improperly submitted,” according to court records.
Aldrich’s defense team also apparently struggled to contact Aldrich’s family to serve subpoenas and commented that there was “no chance these people would show up” and, “these witnesses have basically avoided everyone,” according to Allen.
Until July 2022, prosecutors were facing a six-month, “speedy trial” period to bring the case to trial because Aldrich had entered a not guilty plea, Allen said. And because they couldn’t get adequate witness testimony, a judge “properly” dismissed the case, he said.
About three months after those files were sealed, Aldrich allegedly walked into Club Q with two firearms and immediately opened fire indiscriminately, killing five people and wounding 22, according to an arrest affidavit also unsealed earlier this week. Aldrich faces a combined 305 counts of murderassaults and allegations of bias-motivated crimes.
The attack on November 19 has destroyed the LGBTQ+ community of Colorado Springs and the townspeople at large, and questions immediately arose as to whether the DA or the Sheriff could have done more to prevent Aldrich from obtaining firearms, given the suspect’s arrest record. Community members questioned whether an Extreme Risk Protection Order (ERPO) could have been initiated to stop Aldrich from owning guns.
Allen, for his part, claims his office did everything it could to prosecute the case.
“In any case where you have difficulty getting the actual witnesses – the listed victims – to court, you should call for a trial,” he said. “In this case, obviously, the prosecutor could not move forward without those victims, because the statements they made, the ones related to the statements that were widely covered, … were made by the grandmother and the mother.
“Without those people actually taking the stand and testifying to those statements, there’s no way you can convict [Aldrich] on charges of kidnapping and menacing,” Allen said.
Allen said during the Dec. 8 press conference that weapons and bomb-making materials seized during Aldrich’s 2021 arrest still remain in EPSO evidence today, suggesting Aldrich took other firearms to carry out the Club Q attack.
One of the weapons in evidence, a handgun, was registered by EPSO as a “ghost gun,” which is an untraceable firearm that does not have a serial number, Allen said. Ghost weapons are legal to own and manufacture (most commonly by ordering parts online or making them with a 3D printer), but they are illegal to sell without serial number and dealer license.
(Allen and CSPD have so far declined to say whether the firearms used in the Club Q attack were phantom guns, citing the pending investigation and criminal case. The arrest affidavit from the attack describes a handgun and “AR-style assault rifle -15” were used in Club Q).
The court had also initiated a Mandatory Protection Order against Aldrich for the 2021 arrest, which automatically proceeds with felony charges and is intended to prevent the accused from legally obtaining firearms through a question asked during a background check. licensed gun dealer, Allen said.
This type of order, he said, is more durable than those available through the red flag law. These extended orders, ERPOs, if issued once without further extension by a judge, last up to 364 days. The Mandatory Protection Order against Aldrich lasted 383 days until the 2021 felony charges were dropped, Allen said.
“Even an Extreme Risk Protection Order would not have prevented the shooting at Club Q,” Allen said — although in theory, another agency could have started the process for an ERPO after the case was dropped. (DAs do not have the ability to do this).
However, Allen doubts that Aldrich’s family would have even cooperated in mandatory ERPO hearings, and EPSO claims that too much time had passed since the arrest for her office to request one. More on that later.
A family’s abuse and silence
The unsealed records also reveal details about Aldrich’s troubled childhood and life, with reports from an uncle that Aldrich repeatedly physically abused and threatened the Pullens, with whom the suspect lived in Colorado Springs.
The uncle, Robert Pullen, Jr., wrote a letter to District Court Judge Robin Chittum in November 2021 detailing his knowledge of Aldrich’s violence against their grandparents. In many cases, the grandparents refused to involve the police, sometimes out of fear that Aldrich might hurt them, according to Robert Pullen.
The letter also said Pam Pullen gave Aldrich $30,000, which he used to buy two 3D printers to make guns. One of the printers “reached home after his arrest and returned,” the letter said.
The full letter can be found here here.
Jonathan Pullen, Pam Pullen and Voepel also vouched for Aldrich when a judge was considering whether to reduce his bond from $1 million to $100,000 in August 2021 after Aldrich was jailed for the bomb threat, DA Allen said at press time on the 8 December. conference.
“His mother in that hearing described him as loving and passionate,” Allen said. “His grandmother described him as a sweet young man and [said] that he did not deserve to be in prison. Grandfather described him as extremely bright and someone who would benefit from a second chance.”
Kristy Boots, a crime victim advocate in the Springs community who was brought in by Allen to explain the reasons for giving up victims, said it’s a common phenomenon, especially in domestic violence cases. (Boots did not speak specifically to Aldrich’s family, but to domestic violence in general).
“There are many reasons why a crime victim might be attracted, but in my experience, the most common are love, fear and guilt,” Boots said. “They love the abuser and believe they will change. Often they want the relationship to continue, but this violent act to stop.
“Often, victims of crime are afraid of the perpetrator,” she said. “They are afraid of threats, they are afraid of future violence. It is likely that the perpetrator has made previous threats and the victim believes this will be the case in the future.”
DA and Sheriff attack media for coverage
When records of Aldrich’s 2021 arrest became unsealed, Allen and EPSO took the opportunity to criticize the media for covering the arrest last year, and allegations emerged after the Club Q shooting that officials could have prevented the attack through an ERPO .
A Dec. 8 release from EPSO complained that it was troubled by the flood of “questions, comments, criticisms and condemnations” that poured into its office after the media learned that Aldrich had been arrested by her deputies last year, despite Allen and EPSO said you may not discuss the sealed case before 2021.
“…rumors, false accusations, and inflammatory accusations have reached a crescendo that ignorantly denigrated our actions surrounding our arrest of Aldrich in the summer of 2021, despite our repeated reminders to the media, members of our community, and politicians that the law of the state strictly prohibited any comment made by us regarding that previous involvement,” the announcement said.
“Even recently, local, state and national politicians and other prominent voices have taken these baseless attacks to the next level and begun to imply that this firing happened because EPSO failed to apply for a [ERPO] against Aldrich and did not seize his firearms.”
EPSO could not reasonably do so, they claim, because by the time the Mandatory Protection Order that already prevented Aldrich from legally purchasing guns was lifted, the 2021 arrest records were sealed and the case “was very old to be effective in court because there was no new evidence that a threat could be articulated as existing ‘in the near future’ as required to prove to obtain an ERPO.”
“We certainly recognize that the void of accurate information regarding EPSO’s prior involvement with Aldrich, caused by the court’s prior sealing of that record, created an information vacuum within which such errors could fester,” it said. notification.
The release also includes the 2021 arrest and the timeline of the case from EPSO’s perspective, and can be read in full here.
At the end of the day, Allen believes the case calls for an examination of Colorado’s existing red-flag ghost gun laws and regulations. In response to a question about whether DAs should be added to the list of people who can initiate ERPOs, Allen said, “I’m certainly willing to engage in the discussion and potentially modify that legislation to make it so that appropriate for certain situations.”
On ghost guns, he said: “It’s a difficult area to regulate. There are many websites where you can go and buy gun parts that do not have serial numbers on them. There must be a way to fix it somehow better.
“But you also have to speak up and be aware of people’s constitutional rights,” Allen said.