Creepy White Van

Kenia Monge, 19, spent the night of March 31, 2011, with friends at clubs in downtown Denver. She left her purse and phone behind and was never seen alive again. Her family found a message on her phone from a man who called himself “Travis, guy in creepy white van” and said he had given her a ride.

Travis Forbes called her stepfather back and said he left Kenia with another man at a gas station. His white cargo van reeked of bleach and had new carpet, but police lacked evidence to charge him. In July 2011 a man broke into Lydia Tillman’s apartment in Fort Collins, sexually assaulted and beat her, and set the apartment on fire. Tillman jumped from a second-story window and spent weeks in a coma. DNA found under her fingernails matched Forbes, and he was arrested.

In custody, Forbes said he wanted to confess. Under a deal that ruled out the death penalty, he admitted killing Kenia and said he had kept her body in a cooler inside a bakery freezer before burying her. On September 8, 2011, he led investigators to a grave near Keenesburg, northeast of Denver. The next day he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and was sentenced to life without parole. On September 27 he pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in the Tillman case and received 48 more years.