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Your personal space should be an expression of who you are.
The couch I bought for my first home was from Ashley.
It was this little cream sectional that I sat on and wrote 12 different drafts of the very first Crime Junkie episode.
I am still writing scripts on a couch from Ashley.
This time, it's the Alyssa Court sofa. The machine washable cushions are clutched And no matter how many times I wash them, they look great.
So trust this Ashley and get furniture from Ashley.
Visit your local Ashley store or head to Ashley.com to find your style.
Hi, Crime Junkies. Britt and I are off this week, but I am not going to leave you hanging.
I wanted to bring you a case that is easily in my top five for keeping me up at night.
I mean, not since we talked about Israel Keys has a predator unnerved me so much.
And this guy still isn't caught. At least not yet.
I did two episodes on this case for the deck.
And when I covered it, I know there was some DNA stuff happening.
And that might mean that a solve is to come in the near future.
If and when that happens, all anyone's going to be talking about is this case.
So I want to make sure you're in the know ASAP.
And more importantly, I want this story to get as far and wide as possible because a crime junkie out there might have the one tiny piece of information that law enforcement is working on.
So check out this episode of The Deck. And reminder, I put out new episodes of The Deck every Wednesday wherever you listen to podcasts.
And the deck is now included in the Crime Junkie Fan Club app, where you can listen to all of our episodes ad-free.
And by the way, the deck isn't even the only show we've added.
If you haven't been there in a while, you can now find multiple shows from our network like Dark Down East, Counter Clock and more.
Now, there is so much to today's case that I actually had to separate it into two parts, like I was saying.
So what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna give you the first part right here.
And then you can listen to part two right now by searching the deck in any podcast player.
Or you can listen ad-free to part two in the Crime Junkie fan club.
I'm going to have a link to that in our show notes.
But this is the story of Ogie Alkite. Our card this week is Okie Alkite, the Nine of Hearts from Colorado.
There are certain cases that I obsess over.
The ones that dig their way under my skin and keep me up at night or just pop into my head in the middle of the day unannounced banging on my conscious demanding answers.
And the 2004 case of Al-Qaeda is one of those.
This case is the definition of a mystery.
And for over 18 years, investigators have looked at this case from every angle trying to track down an elusive killer, but they have been stumped at every turn.
However... technology is changing, and investigators hope that that means their luck is changing too.
I'm Ashley Flowers, and this is The Deck.
It was mid-morning on Monday, May 24, 2004, when a man named Phillip was just realizing that one of his employees, Al, hadn't come into work.
They both worked in the office of a construction company in Aurora, Colorado.
And Al was never late. He'd been in accounting for years and took a lot of pride in his job, so his absence stuck out like a sore thumb, even to his other coworkers who, after a few hours, started to worry too.
At some point that morning, they decided to go ahead and call his landline just to check on him and make sure that he was okay.
But no one picked up. They tried his cell phone next, and this time someone did answer, but it wasn't Al.
The man on the other end said that his name was Joe and he had the phone because he found it on top of a payphone in the neighboring city of Denver the night before.
It was at that point that Philip was convinced that something was wrong with Al.
The guy on the other end of the phone, Joe, offered to meet up with Philip and give him the phone if he wanted.
So Philip and another one of his employees went to meet this guy at a Safeway grocery store in Denver.
When they got there, they learned Joe was experiencing homelessness and wanted to sell the phone back to them.
Ten bucks got the deal done, and once they went their separate ways, Philip and the other employee immediately started going through the phone.
I'm not sure exactly what they were looking for.
I'm not sure if they even knew what they were looking for.
But eventually they found Al's contacts and came across his sister, Barbara.
So they called her to try and get some answers about where Al was, but she didn't know what was going on either.
She hadn't seen or spoken to Al recently, and she actually lived in Virginia, so it's not like she could just meet up with them and help figure things out.
But she did think that they were right to be concerned, so she suggested that they call the police to do a welfare check.
Both Philip and Barbara called the Aurora Police Department, and by 4 p.m., two officers arrived at Al's townhome to poke around.
Al lived in this area called Chambers Ridge.
It's middle class and kind of the residential center of Aurora at the time.
It was also a really low crime neighborhood.
So at least outside, they weren't surprised to see that everything was normal.
Al's front door was locked and the windows were secure.
Same with the garage door out back. They went back to the front door and knocked, but there was no answer.
They knocked again, still nothing. By then, I'm not sure what they were thinking.
Maybe that Al had a medical emergency and needed help, or maybe there would be something inside that could clue them in as to his whereabouts.
But basically, they call Barbara back and ask for her permission to enter his house, to which she said yes.
They had to pick the lock, but once they got the door open, they stepped inside.
And again, everything looked totally normal.
Al was a rather organized person, so all of his stuff in the small living room space, bedroom and bathroom, was neatly put away and looked untouched.
But when the officers got to the kitchen, they noticed something a little strange.
All of the knives from a butcher block on the counter and a set of keys were soaking in the sink.
And the liquid that they were soaking in smelled a lot like bleach.
Unsure yet what they were dealing with, officers didn't touch the knives, and they continued through the house, making their way towards the basement.
Down there, they found a finished space like this little living room.
There was a bathroom, a storage closet, and then another room.
But what was once probably a bedroom didn't look like a bedroom anymore.
It looked like a scene from a horror movie.
There was blood everywhere. It was splattered on the walls.
It was pooled on the carpet floor. And it was even spotted across the ceiling.
And there, in the middle of all of it, was Al.
He was fully clothed, lying face down on the floor with his feet slightly under a bed frame in the corner of the room.
His head and upper torso were covered by a small blue bath mat.
But one look at him among the carnage told the officers that he was already deceased.
They removed the mat and it was immediately clear that the majority of the damage on Al's body had been done to his head and upper torso.
What they could see of his face was bruised and covered in bloody injuries that continued down to his neck and shoulders.
He had one huge laceration on the back of his head, and based on pieces of drywall scattered around his body, They believe that at some point, the killer had swung a knife so hard at Al that they had hit the wall on the follow-through, which caused it to chip off.
His throat had also been cut so deep that it looked like he was almost decapitated.
Upon closer inspection of his body, they found what looked like ligature marks on his arms and legs.
And as they scanned the room, there wasn't any sign of whatever had restrained him.
But they did notice a mattress leaned up against the wall, covering the only window in the room. with two pillows tucked between it and the window to make sure that nobody could see in.
Once they confirmed Al was deceased and that there was no one else in the house, officers exited the townhome and called their supervisor.
And it was around this time that Agent Tom Sobieski with the Aurora Police Department was assigned to the case with two other detectives.
Once all three of them arrived to the scene, though, they quickly realized that none of them had ever handled a case like this before.
We actually called the Arapahoe County Coroner to the scene because this was something that we had never seen before.
He walked in there and I walked in there.
We walked down the stairs directly to the victim.
And we had a CSI person with us. And we took video and photographed.
And then we removed the victim from the scene without processing everything else.
And he went to the coroner's office. Once Al had been removed, they were able to do a more thorough search of his home, starting with the basement bedroom.
And that was when Agent Sobieski found about a quarter inch of rope on the carpet near where Al's body had been.
Considering where it was found, Agent Sobieski believed that the killer had likely used rope to restrain Al, and maybe he just missed that little bit when they were cleaning up.
Other than all the blood, and there was a lot of blood, there wasn't much more in the way of physical evidence there in the basement bedroom.
They searched what remained of the lower level and didn't find a scrap of evidence in any of the other rooms.
So they decided to go back upstairs. But just as they were heading up the stairs to the first level of the townhome, something caught their eye.
It was what looked like a blood transfer spot on the very bottom step.
And it stuck out to them because it was the only visible trace of blood outside of the bedroom.
So they collected a sample of that too before they headed upstairs.
Next, they took a close look at all those knives in the sink and confirmed that they were in fact soaking in a mixture of water and bleach, which immediately dashed any hope of getting evidence off of them.
But they weren't left without any clues in the kitchen.
When they checked the keys in the sink, they discovered that they unlocked Al's front door.
Now, they weren't sure yet if those were Al's main set of keys or maybe a spare or what, but at least they knew what they went to.
So then they moved on to the trash. And in there, they found a signed rental agreement for that basement living space where Al was just found.
It seems like Al was going to be renting it out, and a man named Robert Cooper had signed a lease for it.
The document was dated almost a week before, May 18th.
Even though there weren't any personal items in the basement to suggest that someone had already moved in, officers started to wonder if they should be looking for a roommate.
In the trash, they also found one of Al's bank statements.
It was kind of torn up, but that's okay because the statement itself wasn't what was important.
They were interested in a note that Al had scribbled near the top of the paper.
It was a phone number along with the name Robert.
They figured it had to be the same Robert from the rental agreement, so they assigned someone to go track this guy down.
While all of this was solid evidence to have, it was really the things that they didn't find that stood out to them the most.
For instance, Al's wallet and vehicle were both missing, and they couldn't find a container where the bleach in the sink came from.
Some of the towels in the bathroom were missing, which made them think that the killer had taken a shower or maybe cleaned up before they left.
Police also didn't find evidence that Al owned rope or any other items that could have been used to restrain him or caused his injuries besides the knives.
So they began to suspect that the killer might have brought a sort of murder kit with him.
And chillingly, they noticed some clothes missing as well.
Oki was very... I mean, everything was in its place, from his office to... his closet and there was one pair of pants missing one shirt missing from his closet and we couldn't find the just empty hangers This indicated that the killer had likely changed out of whatever they were wearing and left Al's house wearing the clothes of the man that they had just murdered.
Now, I also want to point out that a lot of the online buzz about this case says that the killer slept at Al's.
But Agent Sobieski said that wasn't true.
Obviously, he spent a lot of time in the home during and after the murder, but they didn't find a trace of evidence that indicates the killer slept there at any point.
With their initial search completed, Agent Sobieski told us that their next step was to canvas the neighborhood.
But just as they were getting ready to head out, a neighbor actually came right to them with a tip.
They knew where Al's car was. Surprise!
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The neighbor told Agent Sobieski and the other officers at the scene that they were just driving home for the day when they noticed Al's GMC pickup truck parked about a block and a half down the road from his place.
They said that they didn't think much of it initially, but then when they pulled around the corner and saw all the cops at his home, they decided to pull up and say something.
So Agent Sobieski sent a team of officers to find the truck, and sure enough, it was right there where the neighbor said it was.
And then a canvas was done of where Al's truck was found because it's parked right in front of a whole row of townhomes and apartments and nobody saw anything there that... was substantial.
They thought it had been there a couple of days.
When the officers got into the vehicle, they didn't find anything significant right off the bat.
Again, Al was an organized guy, and that extended to his truck.
But as they looked closer, they noticed one thing that stood out.
There were a few strands of medium-toned brown hair.
Now, Al did have darker hair, but the 53-year-old had developed a lot of grays too, kind of a salt and pepper look.
So whoever's hair this was, it likely wasn't Al's.
And since they weren't aware of anyone else having access to his truck, Agent Sobieski suspected that this could be the killer's hair.
So they took samples to test later. The rest of the evening, investigators talked to as many people as they could to learn more about Al and the people he associated with.
Neighbors told officers that they hadn't heard or seen anything suspicious the entire weekend.
And friends and family were able to give them names of his best friend as well as a former roommate who had just moved out a month prior, although no one was aware if Al had ever had issues with either of them.
And when it came to Al himself, everyone had the same things to say.
Al was a very well-liked man. We couldn't find anybody that would say a bad thing about him.
He was divorced. He joined some singles clubs.
He recently had a new girlfriend. He liked NASCAR.
He liked hanging out and watching NASCAR on Sundays.
But other than that, he was a hard worker.
He traveled the world pretty much as an accountant.
Al's loved ones told investigators that he loved to cook.
He was always a gentleman. relationships with all of his neighbors, and just like Agent Sobieski said, he had just started a new relationship with his girlfriend Linda.
Because Al was so well liked and so well known, his murder was a total shock to his community.
Again, this area was not used to even petty crimes, much less such an intense act of violence.
And while people were devastated about Al, they were also unsettled by something else.
Whoever did this to him, they were still out there.
Detectives were thinking the same thing, so they were pulling on whatever loose thread they could find to try and unravel some answers.
And their strongest lead so far was still this mystery roommate, Robert Cooper.
And luckily, the people that they interviewed were able to shed some light on this guy.
It turned out that Al had talked about him quite a bit to his friends and family.
Investigators were told that Robert had responded to Al's rental ad for the basement space and agreed to be the new tenant.
Al told people that Robert was from the East Coast and transferred to Aurora with Wells Fargo.
One person was even able to remember exactly which Wells Fargo Al had mentioned.
It was the one that was only about six minutes from Al's townhome.
Yet another neighbor even claimed to have seen who they believed to be Robert.
They said that several days before the murder, they noticed a man with a cane walking into Al's home.
He had dark hair, he was well-dressed, and he looked to be maybe in his early 50s.
Now, even if this Robert guy had nothing to do with Al's murder, Agent Sobieski still had men on his team trying to track this guy down.
Because witness or suspect... Either way, he could hold valuable information.
But as their search for him continued, Al's autopsy results came back and uncovered the true horror of what he had gone through.
Now before I even go into the autopsy, I just want to say that what Al endured is going to be hard to hear.
But I think it is important to include as much detail as we can without getting too graphic in order to show you what kind of monster the investigators are looking for.
And I personally think that this MO seems so specific that maybe the key to catching this guy is in the details.
So that being said, the first thing that stood out to the coroner was the sheer amount of ligature marks on Al's body.
Once he removed his clothing and analyzed the full extent of the marks, he determined Al had been hogtied with rope. likely the same kind of rope as that small piece found near his body.
We actually had, we simulated how the markings were from the bruising of the ropes, arms behind his back, Legs tied together, his ankles tied to his wrists. and they were wrapped several times, and there was different cross patterns.
It would take over 40 foot of rope to do that.
It was quite an elaborate pattern. It was all... perfectly spaced out and the crosses where the ropes crossed were all perfect.
So I'm sure that was part of the The ritual or the thrill the suspect got.
The position would have left Al's feet exposed, and the coroner found that they were severely bruised from having been beaten.
Severe bruising of different sizes on the rest of his body also indicated that he was beaten with several different blunt objects.
But that wasn't even the worst of it. Not by far.
Al had a total of 11 stab wounds on his body, in his ears, in his eyes, on the tops of his shoulders and his upper torso.
The coroner at the time thought that the torture went on for several hours because It had time for his eyes to bruise and actually close shut.
And with the blood evidence in the room, if you're dead, your heart's not beating.
You're not throwing blood all over. So it went on for several hours.
The knife wounds were so deep, the coroner determined it would have taken an immense amount of force to do that kind of damage.
But despite how disturbing it was, Agent Sobieski was hopeful that this particular act of violence might be the killer's undoing.
If you're cutting somebody and stabbing them with kitchen knives and they get bloody, any investigator will tell you that your hand slips up to the blade of the knife and you'll cut yourself. and with a number of cuts in the stab wounds, we felt that he had to have done it, had to have cut himself.
There was also the gaping laceration on the back of Al's head that the officers who first found him had seen.
But, you see, none of those wounds ended up being fatal.
It was the cut to his throat that the coroner believed finally ended his suffering and his life.
So my theory is we had a witness who saw Robert Cooper walking with a cane. go into Okie Kite's townhome a few days prior, probably the day he rented the place.
With the injuries, the lacerations to the back of his head, I think Oki may have been walking down the stairs in front of him, and he starts striking him with this cane, causing those...
Large lacerations. I think there was two or three of them to the back of his head.
I don't know if it knocked him unconscious, but it might get him to submit. you know, to being tied up.
The coroner declared the manner of death as homicide, but it was the time of death that was a little trickier to figure out.
They couldn't determine an exact time, but they knew that he had been dead for at least a day.
So combine that with the fact that they knew he had been at work on Friday.
Well, that narrowed it down to some point between Friday afternoon and Monday morning.
That is a lot of time to try and cover. So if they couldn't narrow in on a small window, they would narrow in on what the autopsy told them about their killer.
We wanted to get as many people that were in his inner circle, coworkers, friends, family, because the amount of torture that Al had, we knew the suspect would probably have cuts to his hands. from punching or from the knife.
So we checked everybody's hands, looked for injuries, got alibis for everybody.
Agent Sobieski talked to his former roommate, but they didn't have anything useful to add.
And that person didn't have any noticeable injuries.
Tom also talked with Al's ex-wife, but the same thing, and she was quickly cleared too.
They were on good terms and she no longer lived in Colorado.
We had no information that she had been back or that there was any bad blood between them at all.
Agent Sobieski just kept going down his list.
And next was Al's best friend. And this guy actually said that he had been with Al on Saturday.
He said that he was working with Al on a construction project in Denver, but they wanted to go out that night.
So they decided to wrap things up at around 3. and go home and get cleaned up.
Just before they went their separate ways, he said that Al told him he was also meeting with his new roommate before they went out.
And of course, Agent Sobieski's ears perk up at hearing this.
But he still just doesn't know enough about this Robert guy.
And he's even more interested when Al's friend says that was the last time he saw Al, because Al never showed up for their plans that night.
The next person that Agent Sobieski wants to go talk to was Linda, Al's new girlfriend.
And little did he know that she would actually be the one that could give him the most information yet on Robert Cooper.
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Linda told Agent Sobieski that she had also last heard from Al on Saturday, sometime between 3.30 and 4.00.
She had had a flight out of town that morning, and he had taken her to the airport.
On their way, they had decided to officially become boyfriend and girlfriend since they'd been seeing each other for a couple of months.
So when Linda finished her travel and got to her hotel, she called just to check in with him.
Now, he picked up the phone, but she said that something felt off.
She couldn't really tell why at the time, but when she learned what had happened to Al, she believed that Al's killer was in the house as they were speaking.
She said he seemed different. He didn't seem like himself.
I don't remember her exact wording, but she thought there was something different about him when she talked to him.
In my opinion, and it's just my opinion, there is no way that a killer who went to this elaborate scenario to set this all up would ever let him talk on the phone for any reason to anyone.
He says two words to her. you know, call 911 or help me or whatever, and suddenly he's got to leave, the police are coming or whatever.
So I don't see that as a scenario at all.
Regardless of whether the killer was in the house by then or not, the call and best friend's interview were important because it let the coroner know that Al was at least alive at 4 p.m. on Saturday.
Agent Sobieski also asked Linda if she knew anything about a guy named Robert.
And just like so many other people he'd spoken to, she was like, oh yeah, his new roommate.
Not only did she know about this guy, but she also said she saw him too.
Linda said that on May 8th, she went over to Al's and when she arrived, Al was giving Robert a tour of the basement.
She called out to Al to let him know that she was there and he called back that Robert was there and he wanted them to meet.
Now she needed to use the restroom first, and by the time she got out, all she caught was just a little glimpse of Robert going out the front door.
As soon as he hears another witness, he's getting out of there.
I don't know what he told Al to leave that quick, but.
From the time she went up the stairs till she came out of the bathroom, he's up and out, going out the door.
From the quick look that she got, Linda was able to give a vague description of the man she saw.
She said he was white, had dark brown hair, He was well-dressed in a suit and tie, and notably he didn't have a cane.
Now she was also able to confirm that Robert had gone back to Al's to sign that rental agreement on the 18th.
And when he was there, he paid $1,000 for half a month's rent and a deposit. and he took a key to the house.
When she describes the key that he took, investigators are certain that it is part of the same ones that they found in the sink.
But what struck her as odd was that after he left, he didn't come back.
Like, he had had a key, he had paid, he just never showed up again, at least not to move in.
Now, this is definitely weird. And when Al talked to Linda about it, he said something about some furniture that Robert had that wouldn't fit down the stairs.
So he was like waiting to figure it out.
And I know that's super vague, but Linda told Agent Sobieski that she couldn't remember the exact details of that conversation.
So we'll never really know what Roberts' excuse was for the delay in moving in.
Either way, at this point, investigators were convinced that Robert had something to do with Al's murder.
So the first week of their investigation was a mad dash to just track this guy down.
They obviously started with that rental agreement, which, besides his full name, included Robert's address.
He also had two references. There was a social security number, a driver's license number.
But every single thing on there turned out to be bogus.
The address was an elementary school about 24 minutes from Al's.
The references were made-up names. The social security number led them to an 81-year-old woman named Veronica who was living in the Midwest.
And the driver's license number didn't even lead them to a real person.
It was just a jumble of numbers. The name Robert Cooper was almost definitely fake, too.
But for the sake of clarity, I am going to continue using it when referring to the suspect.
So the only thing about this document that seemed to be legit was the date written at the top.
The victim's handwriting wrote the date 5-18-04 up in the right top corner of that application is, I guess, when he completed it.
We did handwriting analysis on it and they could tell us based on We gave them samples of Al's handwriting back then.
Everything was handwritten. And they can tell us what on that application form that the victim had filled out.
And then... The rest of it was filled out by Robert Cooper.
They can't tell me if it was right-handed, left-handed, or anything.
Now, if you are screaming at me right now, yelling call the number on the bank statement, Please.
Already done and looked into. And like everything else about Robert Cooper, it's smoke and mirrors.
The phone wasn't in service anymore. And when they got the records, they learned that it was attached to an AT&T cell phone and was registered at the same fake address that Robert put on the rental agreement.
Now, the phone was prepaid for 90 days of use, but this isn't a total bust because Along with getting the records on Robert's phone, they had also requested Al's cell phone records and his landline records.
And those showed that both cell phones were used after Al's murder.
Detectives were so grateful for this data because even though they had Al's cell in their possession, as far as physical evidence went, it was kind of a bust.
The screen was cracked. It had been damaged.
And the guy named Joe had handled it. And two co-workers had touched everything, trying to find phone numbers.
So, forensically, it was not worth doing anything to.
So looking at Robert's data first, a lot of the usage on the phone after the murder were calls, a lot of them to the same number. which they learned belonged to a woman living in West Denver.
We do a traffic stop on her. We confront her with who's this guy who's calling you.
He could be a suspect in a murder. And she tells us that it's a homeless man that she knows. that lives at the Good Samaritan homeless shelter in downtown Denver.
So we get a description of him, he doesn't match the the Robert that we were looking for.
They did track down the man just to be sure, though, and they learned that his name was Acide Rios Rios.
He was Latino and much older than even the oldest description of Robert.
He had gotten the cell phone from a local guy who was known in the area for selling goods at low cost to people experiencing homelessness.
But when Agent Sobieski asked him for the phone, Asid said that he couldn't give it to them.
He said once the phone quit working, he threw it in the Platte River, so we never did recover it.
They tried to track down the guy Asid said sold him the phone.
But after doing so, they determined that he wasn't involved at all either.
And Al's phone usage after the murder was a dead end as well, because investigators already knew that the activity that they were seeing on the phone records was from that man named Joe, who had sold the phone back to Al's boss accidentally. after he'd found it.
But the fact that both cell phones, Okie Kite's and Robert Cooper's cell phones got into the hands of homeless people threw us off for a week during the investigation. because we had detectives writing court orders for phone numbers for both phones, trying to figure out who our victim was calling and who our suspect was calling.
Well, it was because the homeless people had these phones, and they were letting other people use them, and it really messed us up for a week.
If we'd have known that, we could have been doing a lot of other things.
But this doesn't mean that the phone was a dead end by any means.
Phone records from before the murder show Robert had called Al 10 times over several weeks.
But Al hadn't been the only one. Robert had made dozens of calls, all to people who had spaces available to rent.
Agent Sobieski took on the tedious task of contacting every single number, which ended up being over 100 calls to people renting out their homes.
And he found some interesting connections between them.
But I'm going to have to tell you about that in part two, which you can listen to right now.
The Deck is an AudioChuck production with theme music by Ryan Lewis.
To learn more about The Deck and our advocacy work, visit thedeckpodcast.com.
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