CO: One of the lucky ones

A man who was arrested and spent two weeks in jail for the armed robbery of an Estes Park souvenir-photo studio has been cleared through DNA evidence, and the case was dismissed.

“It was quite a scary experience,” said Kevin Matthies, 43.

He’d been accused of robbing Memories Old Time Portraits with a BB gun last month and attempting to tie up an employee with duct tape before fleeing the scene. The Larimer County District Attorney’s Office, after receiving information from the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, moved Thursday to have the case dismissed.

Defense attorney Linda Miller said the DNA analysis cleared her client after police were “jumping the gun” in arresting him, having received a tip through Crime Stoppers.

“I find it a little disturbing that an innocent man was arrested based on a confidential informant’s phone call,” she said.

Matthies spent the day of the robbery shopping with his mother in Estes Park. He was surprised to be arrested a few days later at his brother’s Loveland home.

“With the lack of evidence they had, to come to my brother’s house with the SWAT team, for one, I think, was overkill,” he said, adding that he’d been watching TV with his 10-year-old niece. “To scare her and put her through something like that was pretty bad.”

Matthies said he also feels bad for the robbery victim, who now knows the perpetrator is still on the loose.

The case was set for a preliminary hearing next month, but that’s been vacated now that District Judge Thomas French dismissed the case immediately. The district attorney’s office declined to comment on the case because the robbery investigation is still under way.

Miller had previously made a court filing arguing that Matthies was likely not the man shown in surveillance video the day of the robbery.

Video from a Safeway grocery store showed Matthies leaving at 1:31 p.m. April 2, “at the exact same time security video from Lonigans Saloon shows the robbery suspect” having a beer a half mile away, according to the court filing.

The Estes Park Police Department investigation indicates the suspect was at the bar about 1:40 p.m., before robbing the nearby photo studio about 3:10 p.m. A photograph of the suspect at the bar was released to media as police searched for him; in it, the man is wearing different clothing from what Matthies was wearing in the Safeway surveillance. The man depicted in both images is bald.

Police conducted a photo lineup that included Matthies, two other bald men and three men with hair. Both the robbery victim and the bartender indicated Matthies was not the suspect, according to the court filing.

The shoes, pants and sunglasses Matthies was wearing April 4 looked similar to those worn by the suspect during the robbery, and his physical features were consistent with the suspect, according to the arrest affidavit.

A confidential informant tipped off police to Matthies, but Miller said people often only see someone for a prominent feature.

“(Police) got numerous, numerous calls from people saying, ‘That guy looks like so and so,’” Miller said. “One feature is all somebody sees, and in this case, the person is bald.”

During the robbery, the suspect took $128 from the cash register, then ordered the employee to a back room, where there was a safe, according to Matthies’ arrest affidavit.

The suspect tried to bind the employee’s wrists with duct tape, but she began hitting him and eventually broke free. The BB gun was dropped, and she picked it up and tried to pull the trigger, but the gun didn’t fire. The suspect ran, and she struck him twice on the back of the head with the butt of the gun.

Once he was outside the store, he said “he would return to ‘get her kidneys,’” according to the affidavit.

The confidential informant told police Matthies was a practicing “‘Satanist’ and was potentially very dangerous,” according to the affidavit. Police research later determined that kidneys are closely related to Satanism rituals, and this was among the information leading to Matthies’ arrest.

Matthies said Thursday he is not a Satanist and believes in God.

“It’s been a really weird couple of months,” he said. “It’s nice to have that weight off my shoulders, and I’m grateful to my family for support, and my lawyers.”

He had been unemployed when he was arrested, but he said he hopes to get back to truck driving soon.

Miller said Colorado doesn’t provide automatic compensation when a person is wrongfully arrested, and it will be up to Matthies whether he wants to pursue any kind of claim.

Original report here




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