Going West: True Crime - Kenia Monge // 31

Episode Date: July 15, 2019

On March 31, 2011, a 19-year-old girl goes to a night club with her friends. But before the night is over, she gets kicked out for being too intoxicated, leaving her alone on the streets of Denver, Colorado without her purse and phone. When the morning comes, her family and friends realize that she's missing, but think it might be an April Fools Prank. After viewing local surveillance footage and a strange text message on the victims phone, detectives do everything they can to find out what happened to this young woman. The details would blow their minds. This is the case of Kenia Monge. Do you have anxiety, stress, insomnia, or lack of energy? You need to try Lumi! Get 10% off your order at lumicbd.com using promo code goingwest Get 20% off your first Hunt a Killer subscription box using promo code going west at huntakiller.com Lydia Tillman Tells Her Story: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O5KLyciioec *GOING WEST DOES NOT OWN THE NEWS CLIPS/MEDIA FEATURED IN THIS EPISODE* Crime Watch Daily: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5V_VwFlZw3k&t=3s Associated Press: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=onnXSsgnTPA  Advertising Inquiries: https://redcircle.com/brands Privacy & Opt-Out: https://redcircle.com/privacy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is going on through crime fans? I'm your host Teef. And I'm your other host, Daphne. And you're listening to Going West. Before we get into today's case, we want to give thanks to the people who left us some lovely reviews over on Apple Podcasts this week. Thank you so much to Barcelona from Sacramento, California and Bren from South Florida. In a big thanks to Viva from Massachusetts and Anna from Southgate, California.

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Thank you to Katie, Jennifer, Samantha, Dawn, our friends from Criminal Perspective Podcast, and the lovely ladies at Resolved Mysteries. If you want bonus episodes, you already know to check out patreon.com slash go west podcast. It's a small donation a month, but it really helps out the show and you guys get to check out patreon.com slash going west podcast. It's a small donation a month But it really helps out the show and you guys get awesome content in return and If you guys want to shout out in the show make sure you head over to iTunes and leave us a five star view Just make sure you leave your name and your location All right guys, you know what it is. This is episode 31 of Going West, so let's get into it.

19-year-old Kenya Monhe has just gone missing after being kicked out of a nightclub where she'd been drinking and Harding into the early hours of the morning I just worry every single minute because I don't know what's out there. What happened to her? That night that text message on her phone is that hey, this is Travis guy last night White creepy bad did you get home okay? If she had made the choice to go back home or to get right in, I would have taken her home. It smells like bleach in this van.

If there's new carpet on the floor, something, something ain't at now. I didn't pull over to your. I didn't pull over to your, I didn't pull over to the river. Better that was in my head, better it was pre-meditated. Kenya Monehay was born on January 26, 1992 in Honduras. Kenya grew up there, but migrated to the United States in 2004 when she was just 12 years old. At that time, her mother Maria was already living there and had married a man named

Tony Lee. When she was able to, she had Kenya come over to live with them in Colorado. And at that point, Kenya barely knew any English at all, but she was very smart, so she was able to transition into school in the United States pretty easily. She attended Cherry Creek High School in Greenwood Village, Colorado, which is just about 25 minutes drive from downtown Denver. Tony became Kenya's stepfather, but the two were very close and Kenya actually referred to Tony as dad. And she also had two step siblings, a younger brother and a younger sister, since Tony and Maria had two children in the years that Maria was living in the US. Kenya was really close with her sister Kim and they were like best friends.

Like I said, Kenya was very intelligent and she was a bit shy but she was an incredible leader. Actually, she was given the Mayor's Youth Award in 2007 for her ability to overcome obstacles in her life. She was very involved in something called City Wild, which is a program in Denver, Colorado where youths can learn about the environment and tools to help them become empowered and a part of the community. Kenya quickly became a crew leader there, and as a teenager, Kenya's dream was to become a news broadcaster or weirdly enough a criminologist and after graduating high school she began attending college for broadcasting.

She had then moved in with her boyfriend and started working a job as a customer service representative to pay her rent and her education and she was really enjoying school and was even directing a student film. Like many young people, Kenya had a fake ID. Her parents were completely unaware of this fact, but as an 18 and 19 year old girl, Kenya was going out to the bars with her friends and drinking, but we're looking at one night in particular. March 31st, 2011.

Kenya and her friends had a pact. Whenever they went out to the bars or clubs on the weekends, they would go together and leave together and always look out for each other. But this night in particular, Kenya was with a different group of young girls who she didn't have the same agreement with because she wasn't as close with them.

It was a warm spring evening in Kenya who was 19 years old at this time, was heading to downtown Denver with these friends. She had planned to meet her best friend Janet Gomez, along with a few other friends at a club called Lavish, but Kenya didn't show up. Janet called and texted her a few times around 11pm, but got no response. But apparently Kenya and the two girls she was with couldn't get into lavish because their fake IDs didn't work with the bouncer that night. The three girls then decided to head over to a different bar that was close by called

24k. Kenya and the girls didn't tell anyone they were going to this bar for whatever reason. Janet headed home and just assumed she was out with her other friends and that they'd talk in the morning. Especially since Kenya was known as the responsible one, she really wasn't worried about her. So the girls were at the club 24k in downtown Denver and they were getting pretty drunk. Kenya started dancing with a guy on the dance floor after leaving all of her belongings with her friends. Her purse, her wallet, her phone,

everything. It was obvious that the bar staff caught on to Kenya's intense alcohol consumption because they actually kicked her out for being too intoxicated. And the girl she was with that night didn't witness this. So when they started looking for her but couldn't find her, they just kind of figured that she went off with the guy she was dancing with. And this is interesting to me because they knew she had a boyfriend who she lived with, so it's kind of strange that they would just assume she willingly left with a guy even though they knew she was really drunk and was in a relationship. Not to mention that she left all of her items with them and didn't tell them that she was leaving.

So, at that point, it was super late at night and 19-year-old Kenya is out on the street alone with absolutely nothing wearing a black dress and red heels on the streets of downtown Denver. So the following morning, Kenya's friends still hadn't heard from her and neither had her boyfriend. Her boyfriend texted her sister Kim and asked her if she knew where Kenya was. Kim said she hadn't heard anything. The boyfriend then got extremely worried and told Kim to check with her parents and if they hadn't heard from her to call police.

That's when Kim called their mom Maria to see if she had heard from Kenya. Maria got in contact with the friends that Kenya had been with the night before. The problem was, they weren't telling the truth because they didn't want to get in trouble with their parents or the law for having fake IDs, so they just kept lying about what they were doing the night before. Tony ended up getting the truth out of the girls and discovered that Kenya had left all of her belongings at the bar, which really worried him. He knew that Kenya would never have of her belongings at the bar, which really worried him. He knew that Kenya would never have gone anywhere without her stuff, especially her phone. She also wouldn't leave with someone she didn't know.

She was just more responsible than that. That night, one of the friends went to the Lee's home, so Kenya's parents house, to drop off Kenya's things. She also told Maria and Tony that Kenya had been happy in dancing around 1am when she last saw her. They had stayed until the bar closed, but after that, they didn't have a choice but to leave without her. Maria looked through Kenya's cell phone to see that she had been texting her friends about

where to meet up and when, and that she didn't send any messages after 11pm. But her phone had a ton of unread messages from her boyfriend and friends asking where she was. That's when Maria noticed a very strange text message that was sent to Kenya's phone at around 7pm that night. It said, Hey, this is Travis. The guy with the creepy white van, smiley face, did you get home okay? And shout out to the fellas from True Crime Garage, Ban the van. So Maria didn't know who Travis was and she started asking Kenya's friends, but none of them had heard her talking about a Travis ever. At this point, nearly 24 hours after Kenya went missing, her parents called the police to

file a missing person's report. But since Kenya was a legal adult at 19 years old, the police told them that they had to wait 72 hours before reporting her missing. Kenya's family and friends knew something bad happened, but they pretty much couldn't do a single thing about it without the police helping. Or so they thought. Tony, remember this is Kenya's stepdad, called this Travis person to see if he knew anything. If Travis was asking Kenya if she got home okay, maybe he knew more about where she was.

Tony called Travis multiple times but didn't get an answer. Finally, a day later at 8 p.m., Travis called Tony back. Travis explained to Tony that he saw Kenya walking and that she seemed really drunk, so he asked her if she needed help. He said that she seemed out of it, but she got into his van. When Travis was driving her home, she asked if he would stop by the gas station so she could buy a pack of cigarettes. Travis agreed and stopped at a local gas station, but when Kenya came out of the gas station, she told Travis that she'd run into another guy who was going to take her home the rest of the way.

And that was the last Travis saw of her. After hearing this story from Travis, Tony called the police to report what he had heard, but they still wouldn't start investigating until she was gone for 72 hours. At this point, it had been less than 48. Tony then decided that he had to take this into his own hands. Travis's story didn't make any sense to him at all, so he wanted to get to the bottom of it. He called Travis back and told him that he had some more questions. He asked where it was again that he last saw her. Travis told Tony that it was at a conical gas station. Then Tony asked Travis if he

would meet him there so they could talk more and he could get a better idea of where his daughter went. Travis was completely cooperative and agreed to do this. They hung up the phone and Tony grabbed his 9mm pistol before telling his wife Maria what he was about to do. She was literally begging him not to go down there by himself. She was terrified that he had a gun and that he didn't know who this guy was. But Tony was adamant since the police weren't doing anything. When Tony left, Maria called 911. She explained to them that she knew it was less than 72 hours notice, but that her

husband had a gun and he was about to go meet up with someone who potentially knew where their daughter was. All she was asking was for a police squad car to be there in case anything bad happened. And to this, the police agreed. Of course, they obviously don't want Tony to show up with a gun and something bad to happen here. So when Tony got to the gas station, Travis was already there, and so were police, and the cops actually did most of the talking to Travis. When they met, Tony actually thought Travis looked like a good guy. He was thin, had blonde hair and blue eyes, and was pretty good looking. In fact, he thought Travis looked like the

kind of guy he'd want helping his daughter out. Travis told police the same story he told Tony, and the cops didn't make any sense of it either. But since they didn't know where Kenya was, they really couldn't do anything about it, especially since Travis was so cooperative and seemingly concerned for Kenya's well-being. All any of them could do was ask him questions. Police started to head out when Tony and Travis continued talking by themselves. Then, Travis started crying.

He was upset because he had promised Kenya that he would take care of her and that he just wished that he'd followed through on taking her home safely. He kept saying that he felt responsible for her being missing, and that he wished he could have done more. This really confused Tony because this guy didn't even know Kenya, yet he was crying over her. But at the same time, he thought that Travis seems sincere and that he was telling the truth.

He started to think that maybe the man that Kenya actually supposedly left with had abducted her. Tony reached out his hand and told Travis that he appreciated all the information. But when the two shook hands, Tony noticed that Travis' hand was shaking. His body and arm weren't shaking. It was just his hand. And in that moment, Tony said he knew he was shaking hands with the last person who saw his daughter alive. Do you suffer from anxiety, stress, lack of energy, insomnia, pain? You need to try loomie. They have a variety of products from tinctures to my personal favorite, CBD and aromatherapy

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these natural and medicinal qualities isn't harmful to your body at all. Get 10% off your order using promo code GoingWest on their website, loomecbd.com. That's l-u-m-i-c-b-d.com using promo code GoingWest. What's up gang? Heath here. Are you an armchair detective just like me? Have you ever wanted to know what it's like to solve a murder case? Then you need to try the revolutionary game Hunt a Killer. It's a monthly subscription box that allows you to sift through documents, maps, audio files, and more while eliminating suspects until you finally catch the killer. It's an awesome game you can play with your family and friends, play it on date night, or crack the case by yourself.

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he got this overwhelming feeling that Travis was lying and that he knew exactly what happened to Kenya. In that moment, Tony believed that Kenya was dead, and that this man had done it. But again, Tony couldn't do anything about it. Not yet, at least. Kenya's family and friends put up missing flyers all around town, and once they could officially report her missing, they got help from a veteran Denver detective. Since they were still hoping Kenya was alive, they had to act fast. They had officially lost 72 hours, so every minute counted. Investigators immediately started looking further into Travis Forbes, and discovered that he was a 31

year old who had a gluten-free granola bar business called Forbys. He rented a space at a Denver bakery, and that's where he would bake and package the granola and then deliver it locally. Travis was incredibly friendly and helpful, but police found he had a small criminal record for theft and drug charges. These charges were from before he started to kind of get his life together a little bit once he started his granola company. And do we know what these drug charges were? I could have sworn I read that they were from methamphetamine, but I'm not 100% sure. So, the morning after Kenya went missing, Travis went to the bakery and the owner, Monica,

noticed that he seemed frazzled. He told her about his evening and how he gave some girl a ride home and that she was missing. Monica thought that was a bit strange, but she didn't think Travis was involved. And notice that he said this the morning after, like how would he know that she was missing just hours later? This part really confuses me. So Monica just kind of shrugged it off a bit. And within a few days of this conversation, police showed up to the bakery where they looked around a bit and And within a few days of this conversation, police showed up to the bakery, where they looked around a bit and once again questioned Travis.

The police thought that Travis was very charming, calm and collected. Travis told them the exact same story he had a few days before, including that Kenya and the guy she was with were linking arms while they smoked cigarettes and they spoke Spanish together before walking off. Travis said that he didn't seem like a weird guy and Kenya didn't look at all worried, so he didn't feel bad about leaving her with him. Afterwards, Travis says he went to his girlfriend's house. When they called his girlfriend in for questioning to see if his alibi checked out, she confirmed that he indeed had been at her house that whole night. So police let him go because they had absolutely no evidence that he was involved in what

happened to Kenya. And just to be clear, when we say all night, we mean after this encounter would have happened with Travis and Kenya. The news covered a lot regarding Kenya's disappearance. She was all over local news stations. They even included a bit about the guy who Kenya was supposedly walking off with at the gas station, hoping that someone would come forward. Since police knew Kenya had likely been in Travis's van, they obtained a search warrant and

when they looked inside, it reaked of bleach and not just meaning there had been a spot of bleach inside But it was as if the entire inside had been sprayed with bleach The inside of the van was completely spotless, but the outside was dirty Underneath the van was a bunch of dirt and weeds as if it had been recently driven somewhere rural of dirt and weeds, as if it had been recently driven somewhere rural. The investigators immediately became incredibly suspicious of Travis all over again. They decided to check his cell phone records to see where he was at the time of Kenya's disappearance, which they surprisingly hadn't already done. Travis made and received several phone calls from a rural area near a small town called Keensburg,

which is about 40 miles or 65 kilometers from Denver. Over 20 detectives went to Keensburg that day to look in the fields and small bodies of water in the area. They went around talking to neighbors also to see if anyone had seen a white van or heard anything strange. They didn't come up with a single thing there. Then Monica, remember the owner of the bakery that Travis rented space out of, contacted them with some interesting information regarding suspicious security footage.

When Monica presented them with the tape and they viewed it, the detectives absolutely lost their minds. Monica presented them with the tape and they viewed it, the detectives absolutely lost their minds. So first and foremost, before Kenya went missing, Monica noticed that there was money missing from the bakery's register. A couple days after Kenya went missing, she decided to look at the surveillance footage to see if she could catch whoever was stealing money on video. But when she checked the tapes, it appeared

that someone had unplugged the recorder, so she plugged it back in and rewound it until she could see who was messing with it. On camera was Travis turning off the security system. She rewound the tape a bit further and saw Travis was scrubbing the kitchen with yellow rubber gloves that went up to his elbows. She thought this was incredibly strange because he never cleaned the kitchen, let alone wore yellow rubber gloves to do so that just wasn't his job. That's when Monica called the police, but that wasn't what blew detective's minds. What they found next was a video of Travis loading a cooler from a cart into the industrial freezer. The cooler was taped shut with black duct tape. And he was casually doing this as other employees walked by him.

Monica told police that he never put anything in the freezer because he didn't need to. He made granola bars and they didn't need to be frozen. All that and the fact that he was cleaning and this was just two days after Kenya went missing made them all very suspicious. And this just makes you wonder what we didn't see on camera. Right, we know that Monica rewound the tape, but after the tape had stopped, what did we miss in that point? And there's more. Some of the bakery employees came forward to tell them that they'd seen Travis burning items in a barrel in the alley out back the same night. The barrel that he used was Monica's grease barrel,

so it wasn't typically used to burn items in. Monica had no idea why he would be using it to burn something in it. When police confronted Travis about this, he claimed that he was burning some moldy marijuana. Meanwhile, they sent the barrel to the crime lab and ran it for DNA. But nothing came up from any of their tests, meaning that Travis had completely burned and gotten rid of whatever was in that barrel. Police were really weirded out by this information, but again, cleaning, freezing a cooler, and

burning items doesn't necessarily mean that Travis murdered Kenya. Even though that totally sounds like it. Right, but within a few days, one of the detectives found a new surveillance video from an apartment nearby the club Kenya went missing from. And in this video, Kenya is with a guy, but it's not Travis. The surveillance shows Kenya walking into a lobby of an apartment building with a few people, including a man who she was very touchy-feely with. This video is taken from inside the lobby, showing the front doors and the elevator.

Everyone in the video looks incredibly intoxicated and they're all just kind of hanging out in the lobby and talking. It's one of those stop-motion videos so it's pretty hard to see what's going on in this video. At one point, it's just Kenya and this other guy in the lobby, and it looks like they may have gone up to his apartment, but then shortly after came back down to the lobby. Then this other guy joins them in the lobby and they're all being kind of flirty with each other and playing around, and then the two guys leave and get into the elevator and go up to the apartment, while Kenya just kind of stands there for a minute before walking

out of the building and she's not seen again. After the investigators saw this video, they were convinced that Kenya had been drugged. The way she was swaying in the video made it look like she was completely wasted, and her friends say that this was not like her at all. She never got that drunk. And it's definitely possible that she had more to drink than she meant to, and I think that's probably happened to most of us, but it's absolutely possible that someone slipped a drug into her drink, because that also happens more often than people realize. Detectives tracked down the guy who was in the video with Kenya and questioned

him. It turns out he was the one she was dancing with at 24k. He said after she got kicked out, they went back to his apartment and hung out in the lobby for a minute before he showed her his loft. But he pointed out that, you could even see in the video, she didn't stay long at all before leaving by herself. So whatever happened to Kenya had to have happened by someone else after she left this young man's building. Around this time, Travis went on a local TV news station and was interviewed regarding Kenya's disappearance. Again, he cried and explained that he wished he could have done more, and that if only he had known she was going to go missing, then he would have intervened with her and this

guy she walked off with. And in the interview, he's really frantic and all over the place. He stutters a lot and he doesn't really know what he's saying, and he's crying, and he's putting his hands in his hair. And again, I just think it's interesting behavior for someone who had known her for such a short amount of time. But I mean, on the other hand, if you were one of the last people to see someone who disappeared, you'd probably have a lot of what ifs, but it just seemed like he was very, very emotional about this. The reporter asked him a lot of questions like, did you murder her?

Did you sexually assault her? Do you know where she is? And he denied all of it. And at one point, he's talking about her and he forgets her name. He's like, what's her name? Oh yeah, Kenya, as if he didn't know her name. Which was pretty weird considering he's crying about her disappearance and he's questioned about her on numerous occasions and her faces all over the news yet he doesn't remember her name.

Police couldn't believe it. They continued to interview everyone they could, but they just had such a big feeling about Travis. They were just waiting to find something to arrest him for. The only issue was after this TV interview, Travis fled Colorado. They spent the next few days looking for him, but in the meantime, Tony continued to look for his daughter. He even went dumpster diving in trash cans around the city to see if he could find her body. That's really sad. Extremely sad.

But he didn't tell Maria that he did this because he didn't want to upset her and their whole family was really holding out on hope that she was alive, so he didn't want to just kind of make the rest of the family think that he assumed she was dead, so he just kind of did this privately. Everyone kind of figured that someone was holding her hostage and that they would find her alive. The detectives were working day and night on this case too, so they really were doing every single thing they could to find Kenya. Police knew that in order to find Kenya, they had to find Travis. Two weeks later, they got a call from detectives in Austin, Texas, saying that Travis had taken his girlfriend's car and when he didn't return it, she filed a report.

A police officer in Austin said that he heard about this and later noticed an out-of-state license plate and discovered that Travis was driving the car. So this is a super major, like what are the odd situation because usually when a car is stolen, police don't necessarily go and look for it, especially since Travis wasn't officially a suspect in this case. But this police officer in Austin just happened to notice it and find Travis, so it's just kind of crazy how that happened. I think the biggest part was that his plate was out of state. And I think that typically if there's some suspicion with a police officer about a car, if the car is from out of state, I feel like that's almost automatically grounds for like, Hey, I'm

going to pull this car over and check it out. Right. But I mean, it's just crazy that this happened in a completely different state. the car was reported stolen and the fact that a police officer happened to pull him over for that in a different state and he happened to know about this stolen car. It's just so weird. Yeah, no, absolutely. I definitely think it's a strange thing and I'm very glad that it happened. that it happened. That night Denver detectives with a DNA search warrant for Travis and Toe got on a plane. Turns out Travis ended up in Mexico, and that's where detectives found and questioned him. This specific detective was very non-confrontational and very casual with Travis, so they have a pretty good relationship if you will. Detective Nash asked Travis if he did anything to Kenya, and Travis, again, said no. He then asked if he heard her, Travis responded, no, we never touched.

This interrogation went on for over three hours, but Travis kept his same exact story from the first time they ever spoke to him. Because they had a warrant for his DNA, they did obtain it from him. Because of the stolen car charge, they were actually able to extradite him out of Mexico and back to Colorado where he ended up in jail. And this was great for detectives because they knew exactly where he was and they could continue to question him and try to get the answers. So, it's now three months after Kenya disappeared, and Travis is in jail, but they're just holding him on suspicion of stealing a car.

He hadn't actually been charged with anything yet. Detectives were convinced they'd be able to coax him to confess to something, but then Travis' girlfriend dropped the charges against him regarding the stolen car and told police that he didn't do anything wrong. She also didn't believe Travis was capable of abducting and murdering someone. So once again, Travis was a free man. But detectives really believed he was dangerous, so they were afraid that he would do something to another girl now that he could do whatever he wanted. But they just couldn't hold him. So, they surveilled him for a couple of days, and interestingly enough, he went back to that little farm town of Keensburg.

They know this because they were watching his bank records, and he used his card at a gas station in that town. So they went up there and obtained surveillance footage of the gas station and sure enough it was Travis. They decided to search the area again to see if anything would come up but nothing did. They just wanted to figure out why he was in that town. Thanks to cell phone records, they discovered that Travis was on the move again, but this time he was headed 60 miles or 90 kilometers north. A team of undercover cops were on their way to follow him and found that he was heading

to Fort Collins, Colorado, which is his hometown. It's a beautiful and quaint college town with a lot of historical aspects, but was also a place where a lot of young people partied. This made police incredibly nervous. If he did something to Kenya, he was now and yet another town where girls are out drinking. While police are watching, Travis goes out in downtown Fort Collins, and he's doing a lot of dumb things to get attention, like jumping on cars and being obnoxious. Fort Collins' police actually pulled him aside and talked to him, but they were completely unaware

that Travis was being watched by Denver police too. They didn't charge him with anything, they just had to talk with him about his behavior. After they were done with Travis, Denver investigators went up to police to clue them in on who Travis is and let them know that they were looking after him. That night, he stated his grandparents' house in town, and the Denver police came to the conclusion that he didn't seem to be doing anything harmful and they couldn't just be up there surveilling him for no reason. Unfortunately, this decision would backfire. On July 4, 2011, something terrible would happen to a 30-year-old woman named Lydia Tillman. She was walking home from seeing fireworks in Fort Collins when a stranger followed her

home. When they got to her house, he pushed her inside. He then brutally attacked and raped her. He beat her head, shattered her jaw, crushed her eye socket, broke her wrist and ribs, and covered her body and home in bleach before setting her apartment on fire. He fled the scene and miraculously, Lydia wasn't dead. She was naked and leaped out of her second story window to avoid the flames and then ran into an approaching ambulance. So it seems like someone had seen the flames and called 911. The medics asked Lydia if she knew the assailant and after she said no,

she suffered a massive stroke. She was in a coma for five weeks. Lydia Tillman has an incredible story and for anyone who wants to hear her speech, search Lydia Tillman tells her story on YouTube. She's a serious warrior and survivor. She's actually from Colorado, but she moved to New York for a while, and she became a sommelier, which is a wine expert, and she was a world traveler. She lived in South America, and she actually dreamed of moving to Spain to make wine, but that never happened because she

couldn't get a visa to work there since the economy wasn't very good. She then did a lot of volunteer work in Peru, and then her father was diagnosed with cancer, so that's why she moved back to Colorado, so that she could take care of him and in her speech She says that it ended up quite the opposite her dad ended up beating cancer, but on July 4th, 2011 her entire life changed the next day She couldn't move speak eat you name it like we mentioned she was in a coma for five weeks The damage done to her brain and throat from her injuries have limited her ability to speak, and she actually had to relearn how to read

speak and write altogether. She still maintains a great sense of humor as she tells her story, and here's a little clip of her speaking. You caused me no harm. My spirit, my soul, my mind, remain untouched. May you find peace in your this life. She is an extraordinary human being and such a survivor and I wish her all the best in her life. Police originally thought that Liddy is attack how to have been done by somebody Liddy and knew, because the attacks seemed so incredibly personal. So they spent the next couple of days pretty much scouring Fort Collins for people that Lidia knew who would potentially want a herder.

They talked to different men she dated along with her friends and family, and nothing was coming to fruition. The Denver detectives heard about this case, and had a gut feeling it was done by Travis after hearing the detail about Lidia's body and apartment being doused in bleach. Just like Travis's van had been, detectives tested the DNA under Lydia's fingernails and days passed as they waited for the news. The detectives basically couldn't even sleep waiting for the news. They just paced and waited to get the results.

And the worst part was that if the assailant was indeed Travis, he was still on the loose. Just a few days after Lydia's attack, Travis was being surveilled by Denver Police once again. He was hanging out in Old Town Fort Collins in the bar district and it was a Friday night. He had been carrying around a bottle of whiskey so police knew he wasn't going to be going into any bars and drinking, which he wasn't. He was just watching other people who were going into bars and drinking. As the night went on, an undercover cop spotted Travis following a young woman who was walking home by herself.

He then approached Travis and asked him a couple questions, including his name. Travis said his name was Travis Kennedy. Then the undercover cop let him go, but they continued to watch him. Soon enough, he was following yet another young woman who appeared to be drunk. They didn't know what to do because they were so confident that Travis was dangerous, so they ended up arresting him on false reporting since he had given the police a fake name. The issue was that this charge was only a misdemeanor, so he wouldn't be held for very long at all. They needed something else and quick. Travis had been given a bond and would be released on Monday night at 10.30 pm. Crazy enough, just minutes before 10.30 pm, the Colorado Bureau of

investigation called saying, we have a hit. The man who attacked Lydia Tillman was Travis Forbes. Kenya's family quickly received this news and they were incredibly emotional because this basically confirmed in their minds that he had done something with Kenya. The main detective on the case went and talked to Travis one more time. He had to get more information out of him. They talked for a couple hours casually about philosophy and books since Travis was a pretty spiritual guy, and then finally, he asked Travis about Kenya.

He told Travis that the next time they saw each other, he would be charging him for murder. He asked Travis what he wanted out of the deal. Travis said, I want to be out without being labeled as a sex offender. That's it. To that, Detective Nash said, so you'll confess to everything if you can go to prison without being labeled as sex offender, is that what you're saying? And Travis said yes that's what I'm saying. Detective Nash was a little bit worried that he was going to retract this so he wanted to really push Travis's buttons. He said I think you're full of it.

I don't think you're gonna do this. I think you're going to back out and I think you're spineless and I think it's all about you. It's a game. I think you're going to pull out and Travis said, no, I won't. Detective Nash was so surprised by this whole thing that he even had to listen to the recording over again when he left and got into his car. This just wasn't the way it usually went with personers. People didn't just casually agree to confess that it was no big deal, especially because Kenya hadn't been found. So Detective Nash pretty much thought Travis was incredibly dumb for basically agreeing to confess to a murder when there wasn't even a body. Apparently that had never happened in the Denver Police Department's history. Within hours, Travis pulled out of the deal just like Detective Nash thought he would.

But then, days later, he went back to his original plan of going forward with the deal. In September 2011, so five months after Kenya went missing, Travis agreed to show police where he buried Kenya. As he sat in the investigator's car, police followed to, guess what little farm town in Colorado, Keensburg. During the drive, Travis had been pretty chatty, but as they got closer, he got quieter and quieter. I just want to point out that during this drive, investigators had no idea whether or not Travis was bullshitting them and so they were kind of just going along with it

hoping that he was serious so they could come to a close with this case, but they had no idea whether or not he was lying. As they approached a patch of trees at a field, they stopped the cars and everyone got out. Detective Lombardi, who was the other main detective on the case alongside Detective Nash, said that Travis' entire demeanor changed when they got out of the car and that he suddenly let out a blood-curdling scream. It was so sudden that it made everyone jump. Travis then pointed at one of the detectives' feet and said, you're standing right on top of her. Her body was buried next to a ravine. They began digging

as an anthropologist aided. It took a while to dig since they had to do it very carefully, but they finally found her body. The detectives described this as an incredibly difficult thing to do because they had been trying so hard for five months to find her after seeing countless smiling photos of her and getting to know her family. And there she was. The detectives called the Lees and told Kenya's mother, father, brother and sister the Travis had taken them to Kenya. The first thing they asked was, is she alive? And Detective Lombardi just didn't have it in him to say no, but he had to. On the drive home, Travis asked Detective Lombardi if he was happy now that he knew where

Kenya was. He said he wouldn't be happy until all of his questions were answered. Finally, Travis explained what happened that night. He admitted that he killed her. He said he didn't mean to kill her, and that he didn't pull his car over to kill her. He didn't pull over to rape her. None of it was premeditated. He said that he spotted Kenya when she was out on the street after she left that apartment building. He pulled his car over, raped her, he strangled her, he stuffed her body in the cooler, and he drove around with her body in his van for an entire day before deciding to put it in the bakery's freezer while he cleaned out his van with bleach and burned her clothes. Then, the next morning, he drove out to Keensburg where he buried her body near a row of cottonwood

trees. Later that day, he also confessed to the attempted murder of Lydia Tillman. A few weeks later, Travis was sent to trial. Lydia was up and walking by this time, and she was able to meet Kenya's family. Lydia still wasn't able to speak at this time, but her dad read a statement written by Lydia to Travis. It said, You caused me no harm.

My spirit, my soul, my mind remain untouched. May you find peace in this life." In an interview, she later said, I believe Travis Forbes was acting out of fear and hatred. I choose love and peace over fear, and I won." Travis Forbes was charged with a life sentence for the murder of Kenya Monei and 48 years for the attempted murder and sexual assault of Lydia Tillman. He cried as his guilty verdict was read. In my opinion, Travis Forbes is a manipulator, which we've talked about many serial killers

in the past being master manipulators. Yeah, that's actually what the detective said that he was a master manipulator. And for him to cry like that, and to play this whole part as an actor in this whole story. I just think he's a huge piece of shit and I think that he is spineless just like Detective Nash labeled him as. Well yeah, I mean like how dare he cry in court as his guilty verdict is being read when the family of the girl that he murdered is sitting there and so is this other woman who literally can't talk just because of the attack that he instilled on her.

Exactly. And would he have ever felt this way or acted like this and cried if he wouldn't have been caught? I don't think so. I think he would have kept going on to kill. I also wanted to mention, we forgot to say that his girlfriend at the time actually retracted her statement where she said that he was with her that night and she said that that was a lie and that he wasn't.

So she was kind of putting up that front for him and she did lie for him because she didn't believe he was capable of it and it just kind of shows you that you don't really know people as well as you think you do sometimes. In this case, we really applaud Kenya's family and also Lydia Telman for their strength and resilience through the heartache and trauma that was caused by such a monster. Thank you so much everybody for listening to this episode of Going West. Yes, thank you so much everyone and tune in next week for an all-new case. Make sure to follow us on Instagram and you can check out photos and video surveillance footage

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