Senior Deputy District Attorney John Kellner isn’t daunted by cold cases with seemingly little evidence.
Consider:
- A 1996 murder case in which the body of a mother of two young girls has never been found.
- The discovery that a woman’s body had been moldering in a Rubbermaid container left outside on a porch between 2002 and 2005.
- The knowledge that three street thugs were getting away with murder after gunning down a Sudanese refugee they mistook for a rival gang member on Christmas night 2011.
Other prosecutors reviewed the evidence collected by police in each of those cases and decided there wasn’t enough to file charges.
But years later, Kellner took on each of them and won convictions every time.
“If these were easier-to-prove cases they would have been already,” 18th Judicial District Attorney George Brauchler said Wednesday.
Brauchler said he first noted Kellner’s potential when Kellner was a student of his at the U.S. Army Judge Advocate General School at the University of Virginia. The Marine Corps was the “steroids” Kellner built his career on, Brauchler said. He hired Kellner in 2013 and assigned him to run the office’s first-ever cold-case unit.
Kellner’s accomplishments in a short span have been noted outside Brauchler’ office. The Colorado District Attorney’s Council last month awarded Kellner the group’s highest honor, the Robert R. Gallagher Award, or “prosecutor of the year.”
Kellner and colleagues won trial convictions in numerous cold cases between 2013 and 2016, including the following five:
- Michael Medina beat his 19-year-old wife Kimberly “Kimmy” Greene-Medina with a baseball bat and buried her alive in 1996. Her body has never been found. Medina was convicted in November 2013 and sentenced to life in prison.
- James Mercedes Fennell, then 25, fatally shot 28-year-old Juan Miranda-Hernandez, 28, a betrothed Aurora man, on Halloween night 2010 in his home. Fennell was convicted in August of 2014 of first-degree murder and sentenced to life in prison.
- Edgar Ibarra-Rodriguez, then 26, shot and killed innocent bystander Humberto Bautista in a drive-by shooting outside Club Fuego Fuego in 2013. Ibarra-Rodriguez was convicted in July of 2016 and is serving life in prison.
- Jon David Harrington murdered his roommate, Carolyn Jansen, in 2002, stuffed her body in a Rubbermaid container and toted her decaying remains around like luggage. The body was found in 2005. Harrington was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 25 years in prison in September of 2015.
- Devon Grant-Washington, Brandon Jackson and Amin Elhoweris were involved in a fatal shooting of Sudanese refugee Youn Malual, 43, outside the apartment he shared with his wife and five children after working until 3 a.m. Dec. 26 cleaning Regional Transportation District buses. It was a case of mistaken identity. Each defendant is now serving life prison sentences.
Kellner said he believes his military background prepared him for taking on cold cases.
He was a JAG prosecutor at the Marine Corps Air Station in Miramar, Calif., northeast of San Diego, between 2006 and 2011. He also deployed to Marjah, Afghanistan, with the Regimental Combat Team 7 as the deputy JAG in 2010. He often was put in the role of both investigator and prosecutor. Frequently Kellner was the one who interviewed witnesses and suspects in all types of cases from drunken driving bar brawls or desertion, to attempted murder and rape.
“The Marine Corps teaches you to be a problem solver, not just a problem identifier. Marines are taught that when you run into a roadblock, you don’t quit, you find another way to accomplish the mission. And I think it’s that problem-solving mindset that helps in prosecuting cold cases — because there are challenges at every turn, from faded witness memories, lost evidence, to reluctant witnesses,” Kellner said.
So far, Kellner has not encountered that case-saving evidence that typically drives cold case prosecutions, like a DNA link to a suspect. Most of the cold cases have been solved through people, he said. It could be that a killer’s spouse or friends who no longer feel compelled to stay silent out of allegiance to him. He seeks those sources himself or asks detectives to circle back to sources who had been uncooperative.
“I could not have prosecuted any of these tough cases to a successful conclusion without the support of George and this office or the incredible tenacity and hard work of the detectives who have been pursuing justice for the victims far longer than me,” Kellner said.
Brauchler said when Kellner began running the cold case unit he first reached out to detectives in all law enforcement agencies within the 18th Judicial District in Elbert, Arapahoe, Lincoln and Douglas counties. They identified 200 cold cases — homicides and missing persons cases.
Together, they identified the most promising ones. In many instances, detectives told him they already had collected enough evidence to charge, but couldn’t get prosecutors to file. Kellner said he’ll never charge someone he wasn’t convinced was the killer, but he is less worried than some prosecutors about the possibility of acquittals.
Prosecutors will nit-pick a case to death and talk themselves out of filing, often arguing that if they lose they can never refile charges, he said. But at some point detectives have collected as much evidence as they are ever likely to find. In the interest of justice to victims, their families and society, charging a suspect is the right thing to do.
“I’m not concerned that if I lose a case I’m going to lose my job,” Kellner said.