Englewood boy weighted down with cinder blocks, tossed in Platte River

Denver Police Department

Melvin Poole Jr., 14

Melvin LeRoy Pooley Jr. walked to his dad’s pickup truck, sat inside and waited for him to finish drinking beer in a bar with his pals on a Friday night.

By the time his father, Melvin LeRoy Pooley Sr., returned to the parking lot of Four Wheel Drive Pickup and Truck Sales on West Evans Avenue, where he had left his son, his green 1960s-model International pickup and 14-year-old son were gone.

It wouldn’t be for another three months before Pooley Jr.’s body was found, washed up on the bank of the South Platte River near the 2700 block of South Platte River Drive.

A steel band had been wrapped around Pooley Jr.’s neck and tied to cinder blocks. Poole said he believed that whoever stole his pickup had murdered his son.

But he said Denver police didn’t agree, nor did they seem that interested in solving his son’s case initially when it was a missing person’s case. They also didn’t seem that interested even after learning his son had been weighted down and tossed in the river.

The detective told him there had been a lot of murders and not enough time to investigate them all thoroughly.

“He knew my son had been in trouble three or four times before,” Pooley Jr. said. “There wasn’t much of an investigation. They had other things they were working on.”