Editor's note: Denver7 has chosen to not include the defendant's name in our coverage of the trial to respect victims and their loved ones, and to not glorify the defendant. This trial aims to determine if the defendant was insane or not at the time of the shooting — not if he shot and killed people at the King Soopers, which the defense is not contesting. Therefore, we have removed words such as "alleged" and "suspected" from our trial coverage when referring to him.
BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. — The jury trial is underway to determine if a defendant accused of shooting and killing 10 people at a King Soopers store in Boulder on March 22, 2021 was insane at the time of the shooting.
The defendant was arrested the same day as the mass shooting, but the case was stalled by several competency hearings. He was found competent to stand trial in August 2023 and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity three months later. He faces a slew of charges, including 10 counts of first-degree murder, 38 counts of attempted murder, first-degree assault, and six counts of using a large-capacity magazine in a crime, plus multiple crimes of violence.
The 10 people who lost their lives that day were Suzanne Fountain, Rikki Olds, Boulder Police Officer Eric Talley, Jody Waters, Denny Stong, Tralona Bartkowiak, Neven Stanisic, Kevin Mahoney, Lynn Murray and Teri Leiker. Read more about them here.
Opening statements began on the morning of Sept. 5. Denver7 will follow each day of this trial. Read the latest below.
Denver7's Coverage of the Boulder King Soopers Shooting
Friday, Sept. 20
Closing arguments in the King Soopers shooting trial began Friday morning with prosecutor Ken Kupfner locking eyes with the jury and speaking in an animated tone, as he talked about the shooter's mental state the day of the massacre inside the grocery store on Table Mesa in Boulder on March 22, 2021.
In opening remarks, Kupfner reminded jurors about testimony they heard days prior from a pharmacist who recalled the shooter screaming, "This is fun! This is fun! This is such fun!" while she hid inside the store as the shooting was underway.
Reminding jurors that Judge Ingrid Bakke told them that no disease or defect alone is enough to find the shooter insane, Kupfner told them that during deliberations — which are expected to begin Friday afternoon — jurors will have to find whether mental disease made the shooter incapable of distinguishing right from wrong.
"What happened on March 22, 2021, is not a mystery, it was on video," Kupfner told jurors, recalling an 8-minute video compilation presented to them on Friday. "Based on what you saw in that video, there's no question as to what his intent was."
Driving the point across that the shooter's actions were deliberate and not random, Kupfner also pointed out the thousands of images found in the shooter's cell phone — images of tactical vests, firearms, optics, ammunition — information the shooter was reportedly searching for about three months before amassing an "arsenal" to carry out the attack.
Additionally, he told jurors the shooter was searching for the most deadly type of rounds or bullets around January of that year and purchased four boxes of green tip bullets — which Kupfner said are designed to penetrate steel — on Feb. 1, about a month and three weeks before the shooting took place.
He then recalled the shooter's testimony to doctors: That the shooter didn't commit the attack in January or February because "I was still practicing... I wasn't ready... by March, I'd had enough practice," Kupfner recalled the shooter saying.
"Someone practicing to make sure their weapon doesn’t jam… that’s after deliberation and with intent," Kupfner told jurors. "This was not a hasty act, ladies and gents, this was something planned and prepared for for at least three months."
The shooter, who pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity last year, faces 55 counts — including 10 counts of first-degree murder — in connection with the mass shooting.
In closing, Kupfner told the court Friday that prosecutors have proved every element that the shooter is guilty beyond a reasonable doubt before the court went on recess.
After morning recess, court resumed with defense attorney Kathryn Herold making the case that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity "is holding [the shooter] accountable," after stating that the shooter's actions that day were "born out of disease, not choice... [the shooter] committed crimes because he was psychotic and delusional."
She argued that on the day of the shooting, the defendant's mind "was drowning in the illness, drowning in the voices," and added that no verdict will alleviate the pain and suffering caused by the shooter.
"When you remove emotion, it's clear insanity is the only explanation for this tragedy," Herold told jurors in closing arguments in Boulder District Court Friday.
Making her case before jurors that the shooter was "seriously, mentally ill," Herold asked them to stay focused on evidence that the shooter could not know right from wrong, and recalled testimony from Dr. B. Thomas Gray, a board-certified forensic psychologist, who said earlier in the trial the defendant was sane at the time of the shooting, but that he and another doctor were not entirely confident in that opinion. The psychologist said they were confident that the suspect had schizophrenia but they were hesitant about his state of mind due to his inability to provide more information.
Herold further asked jurors to weigh during deliberations, how the shooter's family described the defendant's deterioration of their son and brother, which according to family testimony included seeing drastic changes in the shooter's behavior from January to March of 2021 — more paranoia, more delusions, and his schizophrenia getting worse and worse as he started to talking to himself and laughing to himself, Herold said.
She argued that the shooter was so sick it took him until February of 2024 to be declared "healthy enough" to undergo a sanity evaluation, "but you're supposed to believe [from the prosecution that] 'Eh, schizophrenia wasn’t that bad,'" she said.
In interview clips presented by the defense from psychologists who were evaluating the shooter, the defendant could be heard responding to several question and then stating that he started "hearing voices, like killing, killing voices, and I opened up the car door and started shooting."
"To some extent… if I committed the mass shooting, the voices would go away… I thought that’s what the voices wanted, a mass shooting," the shooter said in the recording of the interview played before court Friday.
Herold then told jurors the prosecution was only trying to scare the jury and to make them hate the shooter and not look at the case legally, but let sympathy overcome them.
She also argued the prosecutor's argument that there was a plan months before the shooting took place did not hold up to scrutiny as the shooter picked the King Soopers on Table Mesa randomly that day, "which tells you it was the killing voices, the loud, killing voices."
Herold concluded her closing arguments and court went on lunch break.
Watch Denver7's previous coverage of the Boulder King Soopers shooting in the video playlist above.
After the lunch break, court resumed with Boulder DA Michael Dougherty responding to Herold's closing arguments, stating the defense's arguments were contradicted by the planning and the timeline in the months and days leading up to the mass shooting.
Dougherty said that even family testimony showed the defendant, despite having mental health issues, was "completely functioning" and that he event seemed "normal" that morning for breakfast and drove his brother to work with no issue.
"He is methodical and he is brutal, and he’s carrying out the plan exactly as he practiced and that he prepped for,” Dougherty argued before the court Friday afternoon as he outlined how the shooter searched prior mass shootings and equipment needed to carry them three months before the shooting took place, how he made purchases of guns and ammunition as well as bomb-making chemicals, how he researched locations for shooting practice, and how he quickly surrendered to police without confusion or question as to why he was surrendering on the day of the massacre.
Dougherty's rebuttal ended by saying there is one word to "address this tragedy — guilty," he said, in response to Herold's statement that there were no words to address the tragedy on March 22, 2021.
Judge Bakke then went on to explain the verdict forms to the jury.
The jury received the case around 3 p.m. and began their deliberations. They were dismissed around 5 p.m. and will return Monday at 9 a.m.
