BOULDER COUNTY, Colo. – The man suspected of killing a handyman at a home in Fourmile Canyon was charged Friday with seven felony counts, including felony murder and first-degree murder after deliberation.
Prosecutors direct-filed the charges against Stephen Wolf, 25, in Boulder County District Court on Friday. In addition to the two murder counts, Wolf faces charges of second-degree burglary of a dwelling, tampering with a deceased human body, vehicular eluding and tampering with and destroying physical evidence, according to court records.
Wolf was arrested Tuesday after the owner of the home near Camino Bosque found the handyman, 57-year-old Jeffrey Michael Lynch of Boulder, dead at the property.
Lynch was reported missing that morning by his son, and the woman who hired him to work on her property as she readied to sell it went to the property to look for Lynch.
There, she and her daughter found the windows taped up and spotted an unknown man, later identified as Wolf, inside the garage. They eventually found Lynch’s body inside his vehicle in the garage, which had been wiped with bleach, according to an affidavit.
The woman said she believed that Wolf was going to try and kill her and her daughter before deputies arrived and took Wolf into custody. They say they found a 3-inch fixed blade knife in a sheath with possible blood on it in his pocket.
Authorities say Wolf identifies as a “sovereign citizen” and was involved in a hit-and-run in Boulder just weeks earlier. He was arrested three times in 2018 in Boulder County.
When he was be interviewed at the Boulder County Sheriff’s Office, Wolf told the detective that he felt he had been set up, the home’s garage had “magically opened” and Lynch had attacked Wolf and then, somehow, Lynch was dead and he felt he had to cover it up, according to the affidavit.
Wolf’s mother told authorities that he was a diagnosed paranoid schizophrenic and she had cut him off financially two weeks prior, according to the affidavit. His brother had done the same, and the three of them had sat down to discuss Wolf getting mental health care, his brother told detectives.
Wolf appeared at Friday’s hearing but did not speak, and Lynch’s family members were there as well, according to the Boulder Daily Camera.
Wolf is being held without bond at the Boulder County jail.
His preliminary hearing has been scheduled for Oct. 1 at 1:30 p.m.