Ebel killed Leon to get the pizza delivery 'props' used to feign a pizza delivery
By Rob Carrigan, robcarrigan1@gmail.com
It is a few miles from the house where Tom Clements was murdered in his doorway, to where I lived at the time in Gleneagle. I sometimes wandered in to work that way, looking for 'wild art' photos for the paper. I remember coming across the tell-tale TV trucks, and realizing "We have a problem."
Nothing hit me harder than the Governor John Hickenlooper's description of local events in March 2013. (Now United States Senator from Colorado) Hickenlooper’s recent book, “The Opposite of Woe: My Life in Beer and
Politics,” reminded us of our area’s impact on that narrative, and
its role in the overall Colorado picture of late.
From the book about the night of March 20, 2013:
“Over the course of the next twelve hours or so we learned that sometime
around 8:30 p.m. the doorbell rang at the Clements’ home in the town of
Monument. Tom answered it, and a guy in a pizza delivery uniform
fatally shot him in the chest. Within minutes, Lisa called the police.
Deputies arrived and found Tom and Lisa inside the home on set of
stairs. Medical crews performed CPR on Tom. He died on the scene, in his
home, in front of Lisa. Tom was fifty-eight years old, and left behind
his “three girls:” Lisa, and their daughters Rachel and Sara.”
The Governor describes learning more in a police briefing later.
“I learned that sheriff’s deputy in Montague County, Texas, pulled over
the suspect on a routine stop, unaware of the search in Colorado. The
suspect shot Deputy James Boyd and then fled. Boyd. who was wearing a
protective vest, radioed to report the direction the car was heading.
After a chase during which speeds reached up to 100 miles an hour, and
eighteen wheeler smashed into the suspect’s car, which caught fire, the
suspect jumped out and shot at officers. They returned fire and killed
him,” wrote Hickenlooper.
“I was told the casing from the suspect’s 9mm Smith & Wesson were
the same brand and caliber as those used by the gunman who’d killed Tom.
Law enforcement was confident that the suspect had killed Nathan Leon,
whose side job was delivering pizzas for Domino’s, then taken his
uniform and his black 1991 Cadillac, dumped Leon’s body, driven to Tom’s
home, killed him, and then made his way to Texas.”
The Governor said he received the briefing in his office with the
officer moving through a lot of slides of the crash, shootout in Texas, a
mug shot of the suspect, Domino’s uniform …
“Wait,” he said. “I interrupted because I thought I saw the word ‘Ebel’
at the bottom of the previous screen of the mug shot, and there he was.
It was the son of my longtime friend Jack Ebel. I had a wave of nausea.”
Former Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper
Hickenlooper said the tragedy was made worse, by finding out that the
Colorado Department of Corrections mistakenly released Evan Ebel before
he had completed his full sentence. While he had been serving an
eight-year prison term, he pleaded guilty to punching a guard in
November of 2006, and was to serve a consecutive prison term of an
additional four years. The reason for the release, according to DOC, was
judicial “clerical error.” The way the forms in the file were written,
it was not clear that his sentences were to be consecutive.
Carol McKinley, in a story for US News, (She also wrote for The Daily Beast, Colorado Sun, Denver Gazette, and more) described events as follows:
"On Friday, the 28-year-old murder suspect and white supremacist was pronounced dead from gunshot wounds sustained in a shootout with police. Ebel was accused of shooting the chief of the Colorado Department of Corrections, as well as a pizza deliveryman."
At the time, interviews with several of Ebel’s friends and acquaintances reveal a troubled young man from a caring family who spent much of his young life in prison, and even a stint in a boot camp in Samoa.
Jefferson County School spokeswoman Lynn Setzer told McKineley that Ebel only went to high school for a month in 1999, from September 2nd to October 18th. Sources say that in elementary school he was in a Severely Impacted Special Education Program.
"Ryan Arci, who ran around in some of the same circles with Ebel, remembered his as “as a dark kid, depressed. His walls in his room were black and his windows were blacked out.” Ebel’s friends say he had a tattoo across his back that said “Hopeless.” He sometimes signed his letters from jail, “Evil Evan.”
"Ebel’s life ended on a Texas highway about 45 minutes outside of Dallas. He had taken law enforcement in Decatur, Texas, on a harrowing car chase that at times reached 100 miles per hour. Ebel eventually crashed into a semi, got out of the destroyed vehicle he had driven all the way from Colorado, and started shooting, eventually getting shot himself, " wrote McKinley.
"It was a grim finale to a bizarre crime spree that has had the state of Colorado on edge since Sunday night when a pizza delivery driver was killed, his body dumped in an open space. Only a pizza and the dead man’s uniform were taken. FBI sources say that an empty pizza box and Domino’s uniform were found in Ebel’s crunched car."
Ebel was also the focus of an investigation into the cold-blooded murder of Tom Clements, Colorado’s Chief of the Department of Corrections. Clements was gunned down at his front door at around 8:30 p.m. Tuesday night. Known as a progressive leader who cared about the mental health of his prisoners and worked to ensure their transition into society once released, no one could understand why anyone would want to kill him. “Tom Clements was someone who worked in a cold, dark world with a remarkably open and generous heart,” said an emotional Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper outside the the State Capitol Wednesday. Clements will be laid to rest Sunday.
"Ebel himself was on life support overnight and declared dead in a Texas hospital early Friday. No one knows where he was headed in the black Cadillac which matches the description given by a half dozen of Clements’s neighbors. El Paso County Undersheriff Paula Presley said whoever murdered Clements may have left the car running and fled. There is speculation it might have been a hit ordered by a White Supremacist group Ebel may have joined in prison called the 211’s, " reported McKinley
In Wheat Ridge, Evans’s former friends are going to work today in a state of shock. “I thought Evan had gotten his life together,” said childhood friend, Ricky Alengi. “He had just gotten out of prison, he was writing books. My walls are covered with pictures he drew. I talked to his mom. She is torn up.” Ebel’s sister, Marin, and Alengi were high school sweethearts, he says.
Marin’s tragic death in a car crash at the age of sixteen may have contributed to his anger, Alengi told McKinley.
"She was killed nine years ago, ironically, her friends say, when she was being pulled over by a police officer right outside of the junior high school where many of them had gotten to know one another."
Jack Ebel, Evan’s father, is a well-respected Denver oil and gas lawyer. He told his son’s friends that he was going to dedicate the rest of his life to helping Evan. Just two years ago, Jack Ebel testified in front of the Colorado State Legislature imploring lawmakers to consider other options for the mentally ill instead of solitary confinement. His son, he told them, would spend many hours in lock up by himself, and it severely affected him.
"He'll rant a little bit. He'll stammer,” said Ebel. “He'll be frustrated that he can't find the words. And I let him get it out, and eventually, because I'm his father, he will talk to me. And I'm convinced, if any of the rest of you were to go talk to him, he wouldn't be able to talk to you."
The following description of the chase and crash in Texas appeared in a Denver Channel story.
"When Deputy James Boyd pulled over a black Cadillac in Bowie, Tex., last Thursday for a simple traffic violation, he did not expect to encounter suspected killer Evan Ebel."
Boyd, 27, had been a deputy in Montague County for 4 years.
"Boyd says something just didn’t look right with the car when he pulled over the vehicle around 11:20 a.m."
After the Cadillac pulled to a stop, the driver suddenly opened fire on Boyd.
"I remember seeing the gun shoot off," Boyd said from a room at Texas Health Harris Methodist Hospital in Fort Worth. "I could see the cartridges fly out, at which point I blacked out."
The driver, Evan Spencer Ebel, was suspected in the murders of Colorado Prison Chief Tom Clements and Denver pizza delivery driver Nathan Leon.
Boyd was hit twice in the chest and suffered one grazing wound to the head. Wise County Sheriff David Walker says the deputy was saved by his bulletproof vest.
"I got kind of halfway up looking for my mic,” says Boyd. “That’s about the time I noticed, 'Hey I'm bleeding from the face. Something’s not right. I need help.’”
When Boyd radioed for help, he gave a description of the black Cadillac and said that it was traveling southbound, Walker said.
The incident began a high-speed chase and shootout with police. Ebel was driving at speeds of 100 mph and shooting out the window at the pursuing officers, said Decatur Police Chief Rex Hoskins.
The chase ended when Ebel ran a red light and was broadsided by a truck hauling rocks in the city of Decatur in Wise County, Texas.
Boyd doesn’t consider himself a hero. He just counts himself lucky to be alive.
“It was already stuff I knew, but it helped kind of put it into play,” Boyd says.
Boyd is expected to recover and will remain in the hospital for awhile longer.
Bomb-making materials, a Domino’s Pizza bag, maps, surveillance equipment and bloody clothing were found in the Cadillac, among other items. Investigators linked the items in the vehicle back to the killings in Colorado.
Evan Ebel, from Colorado Department of Corrections.
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