Kenia Monge: Denver woman's disappearance spurs capture of serial attacker

unmasking a killer who ghoulishly hidden the body of one of his victims in a cooler he used to deliver homemade granola bars to his customers he tries to shut the lid of the cooler that won't shut because her arms keep springing up because rigor said in police here in Colorados mile high capital had no idea a psycho sexual maniac was in their midst until a beautiful nineteen year old college student named Kenia Monet mysteriously goes missing ironically on the one day of the year reserved for silly pranks and cheap laughs April 1st April Fool's Day and Kenya's stepfather Tony actually thought his wife Maria was messing with him when she called him that morning saying the teenager was nowhere to be found and I says ok Maria this is not the proper April Fool's joke yet on she says no Tony she and she kind of told me the story Tony was as frantic as Maria he loved Kenya like his own flesh and blood helping raise her since she was 12 after he married her mom what was Kenya like in the beginning very shy as we went along and in the relationship she was there was something different about her something that magically endeared her to Tony she says can we just say daughter father ghetto head I said if that's what you want yes Kenya would be a model big sister to Tony and Maria's two younger children Kimberly and Anthony she liked being a boss she liked telling Kimberly and Anthony what to do loved it and they loved growing up with her looking out for them I just blew my mind cause she was just so happy you always brought someone joy to the house made everybody happy she was like a bright light for everyone so your sister was a pretty thing she was she was beautiful everybody all the guys I remember at school I used to be like oh my goodness like what's going on why do all these guys keep talking to me about my sister Kenya had such a kind heart she even taught a Sunday School class that she had started up herself for the younger kids at her local church kid leadership qualities but she was no different than any preteen or teenage girl either you know I still had to get on her about homework cleaning boys phones all the normal stuff but Kenya had grown into a beautiful young lady who just enrolled in college after graduating high school with dreams of carving out a career for herself in broadcasting it appeared to me that she liked it because of her being in front of the camera and doing these types of things finding herself a job as a customer service rep to pay for her education and rent she had moved out she was living with her boyfriend and getting along with their life that is until Kenya suddenly goes missing while on a night out with some friends did you even know Kenya was out that night no I did not know and Tony would be shocked to learn from Kenya's friends that they were all out drinking and partying at a nightclub even though they were underage I had no idea about this party life that she had secretly going bar hopping for years she and all of her friends had all obtained false IDs they were going to the 21 and / clubs in downtown Denver now if that had been all Kenya had done that night Tony says he would have understood I did the same thing you know I think every teenager does it and it doesn't matter how many times we as parents warned them they're never gonna listen though but Tony is horrified when Kenya's friends tell him another secret that a wild Kenya had to be escorted off the premises by security staff why was she kicked out of the bar they said it was because of intense intoxication she was so drunk that they had to kick her out into the empty streets of Denver in the early hours of the morning wearing a black miniskirt and red high heels without her purse without her phone without her jacket you know and so who had all that stuff her friends did Liv was left in the bar it's so out of character for Kenya the Tony immediately suspects someone at the club may have spiked her drink she was just so out of control her friend said they were drinking together and no one had more than anyone else did and they didn't feel out of control or anything like that and her actions did not match the amount of alcohol she had so maybe someone did slip a drug in her drink that's what we believe and there's one other disturbing detail that sends chills down Tony spine she was kicked out with a guy that she was doing some inappropriate things with on the dance floor and it was not her boyfriend and it was not her boyfriend unalarmed Tony takes the information he's uncovered to police and rather than wait for them to begin investigating an impatient Tony turns detective himself scouring Kenya's cell phone in search of any clue to the identity of that mystery man who'd been thrown out of the club with her I see all these names and all of these messages and I'm going through there you know one of the messages screams out to him and I said hey this is Travis ty from last night white creepy van did you get home okay that night that text message on her phone they said hey this is Travis ty from last night white creepy van did you get home okay Tony thinks it may be from the mystery man who'd been thrown out of the club with Kenya that's why I do wanted to talk to that's why I continued to call him leaving a message and anxiously waiting for Travis to call back that is the only communication with that Travis up to that point but police following up on a missing persons report Tony had filed would make a dramatic discovery this surveillance video showing Kenya and the mystery man shortly after they'd been kicked out of the nightclub together in the lobby of his apartment building we interviewed him he tells police that Kenya had walked home with him he tries to talk her to go to his loft and she agrees only to suddenly change her mind after getting there he says that he wanted her to stay she said no I have to get back to my friends is she leaves within five minutes she's outside the building talking to a homeless man loitering near the lobby before briefly going to a neighboring hotel to use the bathroom based on the videotape does she look highly intoxicated she looks intoxicated yes staggering kind of trying to hold up her balance stuff like that do you believe that she was just drinking or could maybe someone have slipped something into one of her drinks you know anything's possible Kenya returns to the front of the apartment building vanishes you can see her walk out of camera view and police might never have learned what happened to Kenya after that if not for her stepdad Tony who finally gets a call back from Travis that guy with the creepy van who texted Kenya's phone asking if she'd gotten home safely so now we are 48 hours after Kenya was last seen quick Travis tells Tony he'd seen Kenya stumbling on the street outside the apartment building he got out and asked her hey you need any help anything I can help you with Travis says he gave her a ride back to the club in that creepy white van and when they find it's closed he offers to drive her all the way home how does he say the night ended as they were leaving downtown she wanted a cigarette so Travis says he stopped at a gas station along the way only to find that's closed too but he says Kenya got out of his van to bum a cigarette from another man smoking nearby sat down spoke talked with him they got up and they left together Travis says he left - and then did you say to him so how exactly did you get Kenya's phone I I did ask it you know and and and he said I let her use my phone to call her phone to talk to her friend Travis then offers to meet Tony at the gas station where he says he left Kenya and I said when can you be there I said he said I'm on my way I said I am on my way also were you a little concerned about your own safety I was concerned to the point where I went upstairs to my bedroom and I got my 9-millimeter pistol but Tony is in for a very different surprise when he arrives at the gas station when I pulled into the front I saw two police cars there it's like how did this happen how these policemen get here it's only later that Tony would learn that wife Maria fearing for his safety had called police after he left the house so they're like oh my god we got to get there because this guy's he's upset how they did they beat me there and Travis full name Travis Forbes goes to the station for questioning Travis Forbes is the last known person to have seen Kenya alive and as investigators look into a story it seems to hold up Travis tells detectives just what he had told Tony again insisting Kenia had walked off into the night with the guy she was smoking with yes and Travis provides detectives with an alibi along with a witness who can verify it he says I went to my girlfriend's house afterwards at that same time we have other detectives that pick her up bring her in and she cooperates distorted okay and she says yep he was with me from about 3 o'clock 3:30 till like 7:00 or 8:00 in the morning when I woke up Travis tells detectives he wished he had driven Kenia all the way home if she had made the choice to go back home or to take but he says he had no idea she was in any danger I mean if I felt any sort of weirdness Travis describes the man with Kenya at the gas station as a young Asian named Dan who supposedly becomes the main person of interest as police launched a massive operation to find Kenya or at least learn what happened to her we had detectives from a homicide unit the missing exploded persons unit fugitive unit we had so many tecna's working on this case running down video running down leads picking people up for interviews Danya monje has been missing without a trace and now so has Travis Forbes so we should start looking for him Forbes admitted giving the 19 year old a ride the night she disappeared but told cops he dropped her off at a gas station then went and spent the rest of the night at his girlfriend's house a story his girlfriend confirmed to police but his sudden disappearance put him back on police radar that led them to search this downtown Denver bakery where Forbes made his own line of granola bars there they unlocked literally chilling surveillance video of him wheeling his cooler into the freezer the night Kenia vanished anything in it bleach bleach bottles or had been bleached it's been bleached it was washed we found one human cell on the drain plug on the drain plug of the cooler yeah and when they searched his white van it oddly appears to have been scrubbed spotlessly clean it smells like bleach in this van it there's new carpet on the floor something something ain't adding up it's soon wood but for now Travis Forbes is nowhere to be found he kind of chops off the radar until police get word that he's just been arrested in Austin Texas for driving a car that had been reported stolen by an acquaintance in Denver and detective Nash girl a goes to Austin with a warrant to get a sample of Travis's DNA and when I walk in he's pretty shocked at I'm dead Travis is extradited back to Denver but the acquaintance whose car he'd taken declines to press charges so you can't hold him don't we put undercover officers on him they watch him for two days then we're hoping that he'll take us back to Kenya and he doesn't in just two days after police end their surveillance of Travis something happens that suddenly and tragically changes the entire course of the case his police tried to figure out what happened to Kenya about an hour north of Denver a horrible crime would provide some pieces of the missing puzzle another young woman is ferociously attacked in Fort Collins what does he do he attempts to kill video tell me breaking into Lydia's apartment raping her strangling her and mercilessly beating her senseless before dousing her with bleach and leaving her to burn to death her apartment set on fire but a brave Lydia miraculously escaped with her life she jumps out a second-story window Lydia is left so badly injured that she initially can't even tell medics who attacked her because she can't talk because her face is smashed her jaws shattered at the hospital while Lydia fights for her life in a medically induced coma investigators find DNA under Lydia's fingernails and rush it to the crime lab it comes back and detectives have a match it's Travis Forbes and when Lydia finally comes out of her coma she identifies Forbes as the man who tried to kill her and they charge him with attempted murder sex assaults I mean a slew of charges and now we know where he's at so now I could focus solely on my evidence which includes Travis's cell phone records showing his girlfriend Carrie Humphrey was lying when she gave him an alibi on the night of Kenya's disappearance saying he was with her the phone doesn't even show close to her house at the times that she says that he was with her doesn't even show him ever at her house and at some point you just confront her and say we know you're lying yes we do she gets arrested for lying oh yes now Travis Forbes story that he had nothing to do with Kenya's disappearance has completely fallen apart and confronted with the overwhelming case against him Travis Forbes dramatically confesses to raping and strangling Kenya to death in a plea deal to save him from the death penalty I did not [Music] mean to kill her and Travis claims he didn't even plan to kill Kenya the night he gave her a ride in his van I didn't pull over to kill her I pulled over the river better that was in my head none of it was premeditated he tells Denver PD detective grew late Kenya had fallen asleep in his van he says he asked sex with her when she's asleep he says that she wakes up and she's upset she slaps him for having sex with her when she's asleep and he chokes it kills her and puts your body in a cooler that he has had in his van to deliver his homemade granola bars to customers he talks about how he tries to shut the lid of the cooler that won't shut because her arms bringing up because rigor set in so he closes the cooler and taped it shut so for hours he drives around with Kenya and a cooler in the back of his bedroom then takes her back to his bakery where everything he does next is captured on security video he gets a little cart but you're on the cart takes the cooler into the freezer before later dumping the evidence in a barrel takes out of the cooler it takes her out of the cooler takes her out of the cooler strips or washes or with bleach strips himself washes himself a bleach takes everything out of the van washes it down sprays it down with bleach and burns it in that um barrel Travis would then lead detectives to a remote rural area outside Denver where he buried Kenya's body and once you got there he gets out of the truck and he says she's down there by the trees it's kind of looked a ravine and then a grove of trees and I walked down the ravine and he's like screaming and crying and he says you're standing right on top of her and he tells the other detective she's about five feet down and you found Kenya yes not the way everyone wished no not the way I wished not the way her devastated family had wished either Kenya stepdad Tony having to break the news to Kenya's mother and siblings they lost it and there was a nothing I could do for them Kenya's sister Kimberly now a mother herself still can't believe it I really truly believe in my heart I thought my sister was still alive and that she was still gonna come back home to me Kenya's brother hasn't recovered from the heartbreak either that pain is still there it's just never gonna go away no matter what and the family would never be the same again it's kind of broken our family the tragedy even ending Tony's marriage to Kenya's mom Maria there's no second of no day that this is not it's not there it's just just this thing is just there it's always there but amazingly family members of Travis Forbes victims would somehow find it in their hearts to forgive him young heroine Lydia Tillman recovering to express those sentiments herself at his conviction for attempted murder and Kenya's sister has even corresponded with Forbes in prison where he's spending the rest of his life for Kenya's murder what is he saying his life to sum it up he pretty much says like Kenya didn't deserve what happened to her that night she seemed like she was a great person is he able to explain what is it within him that makes it possible for him to kill people he said he's evil he said he is a dark person and he just doesn't know why he did it in fact Forbes said in his confession to Kenya's murder that he may be dangerously insane he also hinted that he may have killed other women yes what do you make of this man is he a serial killer he could be yes Forbes himself says the world would be horrified to know his secrets and Kenya's dad says he certainly wouldn't be surprised to learn that she wasn't the only young woman Forbes had murdered do you believe that Travis Forbes is a serial killer I believe Travis was a serial killer yes

Channel: True Crime Daily

Views: 1,237,401

Keywords: Kenia Monge, Travis Forbes, Lydia Tillman, Colorado crime, True Crime Daily, Crime Watch Daily

Id: ysCVGRq3aH8

Length: 21min 48sec (1308 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020