Colorado capers

Just a few items of local import but universal appeal:

Cops lose Karr evidence:

Sonoma County authorities say they’ve lost the computer that belonged to one-time JonBenet Ramsey murder suspect John Mark Karr and allegedly held the child pornography images that he’s charged with possessing.

But the missing computer, seized from Karr’s home in 2001, was not expected to jeopardize the case against him because authorities had copied the entire hard drive contents and printed out the five illicit images, Sheriff’s Department Lt. Dave Edmonds told The Press-Democrat of Santa Rosa on Tuesday.

The revelation came the same day prosecutors offered Karr a plea deal that would waive three of the five child pornography possession charges against Karr if he pleaded guilty to the two remaining ones. Karr would get credit for time served, would be placed on probation for three years and would be required to register as a sex offender.

"I wonder if that was the impetus of the offer today," Karr’s attorney, Robert Amparan, said Tuesday. "It seems like a pretty embarrassing mistake for the Sheriff’s Department to admit."

The JonBenet case is cursed.

Clever gold thieves:

Three former employees of the Victor Gold Mining Company have been arrested in connection with the theft of more than $1 million in unprocessed gold from the mine over a six-year period.

The suspects, two former supervisors and a process technician, apparently succeeded in periodically diverting a line carrying gold-saturated fluid during periods when process-plant staffing was limited, and directing the fluid through their own home-made recovery filter similar to the mine's conventional gold-recovery technology.

The unprocessed metal was secretly removed from the mine's recovery building and shipped to a California metals refinery, where the gold was refined and sold on the open market.

There's a (TV) movie in there squealing to get out. The Victor mine, as the article notes, is the only remaining commercial-grade gold mine in Colorado, smelterating 330,000 ounces of the stuff last year with 0 days of slave labor.

Denver DJs' lives not worth nickel: Two decades ago Denver talk-radio "personality" Alan Berg was gunned down by white supremacists. Now it's "Steven B.," another 80s DJ: Arrest made in murder of Steven B. It's quite a strange story, beyond the fact that (as every account notes) Mr. B. was "found floating six miles off Catalina Island."

Bet you didn't know that the original "reality show," Real World, filmed its new season (its 18th) in Denver's Lodo. Worse, the Post has a blog about it, complete (during filming, anyway) with a 24-hour webcam across the street from the Denver Real World house. Breaking news: "The Denver season is expected to follow the format of the past seventeen seasons."

Finally, a photo from the Rocky with a caption from the pro-pot group SAFER (didn't somebody just mention them?):



"[E]xtraterrestrial-looking DEA agent Jeff Sweetin busting out a fat sack of dank."