Last week, my friend Leeann broke out a bag of Oreo Double Stuf cookies and began munching. She wanted to pay homage to her murdered grandson on his birthday.
She also wanted to celebrate reforms to the state parole system passed earlier this year and signed by the governor just before her grandson’s birthday. Leeann helped bring about those reforms by telling her story.
I first met Leeann while interning at a law firm. I had just finished my first year of law school and began working on a case at the firm where she worked as the office manager. A tall, wiry chain-smoker, it did not take long to figure out that her hard outward veneer hid a heart of gold. She cared for her co-workers, loved her dog and regularly talked about her family.
And her grandson, Zel, was the center of her life.
Like many Coloradans, Leeann and her family knew hardship and struggle. Between her own personal battles and those of her children, tough times always seemed just around the corner. But nothing could take away her smile when she talked about her grandson. He lived in her home and always had a mischievous side. That usually expressed itself in practical jokes or tearing apart and rebuilding anything mechanical.
Sometimes it also got him into trouble. As a baby lawyer I met with Leeann and Zel more than once to go over minor infractions and how to avoid any escalation in the future. With a little difficulty, and a lot of help from his grandmother, he navigated that path. He took responsibility for himself and learned to stand up for others, just as his grandmother taught him.
On Nov. 3, 2024, outside the Circle K across from Auraria Campus, doing the right thing cost him his life.
At the pretrial hearing I watched the video of the alleged murderer, Deangelo Luarks, shooting Zel in the chest from less than 10 feet away. Zel had confronted Luarks after he saw him engaged in a heated argument with a woman. Zel did not start a fight or get in the man’s face, he was standing in front of a vehicle in front of the store several feet outside arm’s reach.
He only appeared to stop to make sure the woman was safe.
As it turns out, Luarks has a lengthy, violent criminal history. He should have been in prison, not at the Circle K. But through a series of parole review errors, he had been freed despite the danger he posed.
In fact, those failures were not limited to just Luarks. And the victims were not limited to Zel and Leeann. Through a yearslong investigative series, 9News reporter Chris Vanderveen exposed a stunning and deadly failure in the law enforcement system. As it turns out, many families have lost loved ones due to the broken parole review system.
When Vanderveen first contacted Leeann, she called me. In addition to being a friend and supporting her during the court proceedings against Luarks, she regularly reads my columns in the Colorado Sun and knows I have personal relationships with many reporters across the state, including Vanderveen. She was also worried about what it would mean for the trial.
I told her that in my experience Vanderveen always treated people fairly and let the facts guide his story and not the other way around. Essentially, Vanderveen is the best type of reporter. Fair, honest and dogged. As for the trial, I told Leeann she should trust her heart.
Eventually, Vanderveen made his way down to her home in the San Luis Valley and hers became one of the three centerpiece stories he told.
The findings were horrific. In all eight risk assessments the parole system did on Luarks, Vanderveen found errors. That pattern repeated itself again and again. And again and again it cost Coloradans their lives and left families shattered. Effectively, the Colorado Department of Corrections had been complicit in their deaths.
Even worse, they originally covered it up and denied it. Leeann did not know about the failure until Vanderveen contacted her. She never received a notice or an apology. No one ever took responsibility. To the contrary, when Vanderveen followed up, they told him they had systems in place to catch mistakes. What happened to Zel had been a one-off mistake.
Except it was not. Vanderveen confronted them with other families who lost loved ones. Each had a pattern of mistakes. High-risk parolees were regularly misclassified as low-risk. That meant less supervision, fewer visits, fewer drug tests and a greater chance for something bad to happen.
Eventually when DOC audited a sample of 45 cases, it found mistakes in all but one.
That scandal should have led to a bushel of firings and a fully revamped system. Everyone up the chain, up to and including Gov. Jared Polis, should have faced accountability. They should have looked into the families’ eyes, told them how they failed and committed to doing better.
Government being government, it did not happen that way. But at least a few legislators took note. A bipartisan group of sponsors put together a bill, House Bill 1315, which requires DOC to put together a review team for risk assessments, report their findings annually and provide full transparency to the public.
It could have been better, but it was a step in the right direction. Eventually it passed without a single “no” vote and became law last week when Polis signed the bill.
And somewhere in Southern Colorado, Leeann is eating Oreos, missing her grandson, but proud to have helped make changes that will spare other families the heartache she has endured.
Mario Nicolais is an attorney and columnist who writes on law enforcement, the legal system, health care and public policy. Follow him on BlueSky: @MarioNicolais.bsky.social.
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