Retired Denver homicide cop shares body of expertise
Jon Priest, who retired in November as head of the Denver Police Department's homicide bureau, is an expert in crime-scene techniques who now teaches law enforcement officials in the U.S. and abroad what he learned during 22 years in the homicide bureau. (RJ Sangosti, The Denver Post)
Jon Priest had seen a body or two at funerals before a sergeant at Denver's Police Academy ordered him to attend an autopsy as punishment for coming late to class. Priest, who retired as head of the Denver Police Department's homicide bureau last November, was unfazed by the penalty.
"There's two or three bodies all laid out on these slabs back there. They bring this guy out. As soon as (the coroner) is going through this stuff, I'm thinking: 'Well, what's that? Why are you doing that? How come this is happening?' Before I know it, I'm wearing the gown and holding stuff, and I'm moving things around, and I'm helping him and I'm having a great time," he said.
He tells the story with the mischievous air of a school kid, but the man behind the grin is dead serious about the police work needed to solve a murder.
"A detective told me years ago we're not paid to be emotional, we're paid to be effective," Priest said. "Emotion reduces your ability to absorb information."
Priest, 57, is a nationally recognized expert in crime-scene search, documentation, reconstruction and other techniques. He now works as a consultant, giving instruction on investigating procedures and techniques to members of law enforcement in the U.S. and abroad.
During his 22 years in homicide, he worked on some of the most high-profile, and disturbing, murders in Colorado.
There was Emily Johnson, a teacher beaten to death by students who wanted to steal her Lexus; Teresa Schilt, killed by her husband, who threw her body in the trash; the rape and murder of Peyton Tuthill by Donta Page, who had recently been thrown out of a drug and alcohol treatment center on her block; and the drive-by shooting of Denver Broncos cornerback Darrent Williams.
The investigator's responsibility is holding perpetrators responsible for their misdeeds, Priest said. "But more important than that is holding the right people responsible. I don't want to be the guy that puts somebody in jail that didn't do it."
A start on the streets
Priest joined the Denver Police Department in 1980, patrolling the streets for three years before going to the vice and narcotics bureau. He joined the homicide unit in 1989 and took the helm in 2000.
"I took an interest in the crime scene. I wanted to know what happened, what were the dynamics," he said.
Denver Deputy District Attorney Tim Twining remembers Priest as an extraordinary investigator who relied on tenacity and skill to unravel difficult cases.
It was Priest's questioning of Lisl Auman that led to her conviction in the 1997 murder of Officer Bruce VanderJagt, Twining said. Auman recruited skinhead Matthaeus Jaehnig to break into her ex-boyfriend's room in a boarding house.
Sheriff's deputies chased them after they robbed the room, and Auman held the steering wheel as Jaehnig fired shots at pursuing police. She was later arrested. As she sat handcuffed in a police car, Jaehnig killed VanderJagt and then committed suicide.
"Initially, the case was focused on the skinhead, but during (Priest's) interview, it became clear she set up and instigated the burglary," Twining said.
The Colorado Court of Appeals upheld her conviction for felony murder, saying she was culpable under the law because she initiated the events that led to VanderJagt's ambush and death.
"It would not have come to light but for Jon's interview," Twining said.
Public pressure
Curiosity, the desire to make a difference and dogged determination are just a few of the qualities needed to solve murder cases, Priest said.
Investigators have to handle pressure from the public, the media and superiors, especially in high-profile cases.
The Emily Johnson case is a good example, he said.
Johnson's boyfriend was sleeping off a drunk in her northwest Denver home when she was beaten to death in 2000. Suspicion quickly fell on him.
"The media was hyped on the fact that the boyfriend was inside the house and we didn't arrest him," Priest said. "We knew he wasn't the guy, but we couldn't come out and say that because we saw a benefit. All of a sudden, if everybody thinks that we're incompetent, that frees us to go after the real suspects."
Two teens — Lorenzo Rubin Montoya Jr. and Nicholas David Martinez — were convicted of the 29-year-old's murder and sentenced to life.
In cases like that of Darrent Williams, who was killed in 2007, the victim's fame can add to background noise that complicates an investigation.
"It is static. It is the interference of constant questions by chiefs, division chief and mayors and city officials who are all being pressured by the community. They're not going to do the investigation, but they are going to talk to investigators, say 'Do something about this, get something done here, make positive strides.' Whoa, whoa, time out," Priest said. "We know our jobs. It is not something we can rush."
It was more than a year before anyone was charged in the Williams case. Gang member Willie D. Clark was convicted of William's murder.
Priest said the number of people on downtown streets early on New Year's Day 2007, when Williams, 24, was shot as he left a Golden Triangle nightclub, turned a simple drive-by shooting into a complex case that required sifting through massive amounts of evidence, and conducting hundreds of interviews.
The case generated "truck-loads of paper," Twining said. And Williams' fame brought more than 300 witnesses out of the woodwork, even though few had useful information. "Jon was kind of the invisible hand guiding the front-line guys."
A buffer for his crew
As head of the homicide bureau, Priest said, it was his job to shield detectives from outside pressure.
When the brass came to him with a complaint or concern, it was "you tell me, I will tell them because the way I will talk to the investigator is probably going to be a lot different from the way a chief or command officer will talk to them."
With his detectives, Priest was unobtrusive, never interfering in a case but always making sure they had what they needed to solve the mystery, said Detective Joseph Delmonico, who worked with Priest for nine years.
"You could always go to him for advice, and if you needed something done, he would get it done," Delmonico said. "If you had to fly across the country and interview a witness, he would make it happen. You wouldn't have to worry about the bean counters."
Priest could be helpful even when he was a sergeant detective, taking care of small items needed to move a case forward that others would have left to those they supervised, said Detective Martin Vigil. "He would take up the slack on his own. We would get out of the interview and say, 'We need to contact this guy,' and he would say, 'I already got a car going.' "
Pressure from above
Rank has its privileges, and Priest didn't always agree with concerns from above, such as the cost of a case.
When Teresa Schilt, 51, disappeared in 2006, the investigation began as a missing person's case but soon turned into a homicide investigation. "Through blood-stain pattern analysis, we were able to show she was probably beaten to death at home," Priest said.
Her husband, Frank Schilt, confessed to killing her during an argument. He threw the body into a trash bin, and Schilt wound up in the Arapahoe County landfill.
Denver police spent six months digging through trash but couldn't locate the body.
"We spent over $ 1 million on the case," and city officials were concerned about the cost, Priest said.
"If the family had said, keep digging, we might have, but the family said, 'We're content with the fact that our mother is dead and that our father threw her in the trash Dumpster, and we're content that she is probably in the landfill, so if you want to stop, we are OK with it.' "
Schilt's daughter, Amy Schilt, 29, said family members felt the investigation was handled "more than exceedingly well," and credits Priest with pushing the search as far as it went.
She was aware of how much was being spent and thought that there might be better uses for the money, she said. "It seemed it was going almost too far. The fact that they went that far was appreciated."
During Priest's years in homicide, technology gave police DNA testing, a tool that can help to convict — or clear — a suspect.
In 1999, when 24-year-old Peyton Tuthill was raped and murdered in her home, investigators found a beer bottle they thought could lead to the killer. They also found the knife used to kill her and a tag from a sweat shirt bearing the name of a halfway house resident.
There was no one who could say that the suspect was somewhere else when the crime was committed. "We're starting to think, hey, we got our bad guy," Priest said.
But DNA left on the beer bottle wasn't his. The genetic material came from a former resident of the same group home, Donta Page. It turned out that Page, who killed Tuthill, had stolen the sweat shirt from another resident.
Without the DNA, "we might have arrested the wrong guy," Priest said.
Tom McGhee: 303-954-1671, tmcghee@denverpost.com or twitter.com/dpmcghee
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