Unseen - Unmasking the Bleach Killer | The Case of Lydia Tillman | UNSEEN

Episode Date: May 26, 2025

"He used bleach to do what?" July 4th 2011, arriving on the scene of a burned down house, the Fort Collins Colorado police are shocked by what they are seeing: the fire is so hot that all of the metal handles are melted down but even so, a strong smell of bleach remains. The Bleach Monster has reappeared, but this time, she survived: Lydia Tillman jumped from the second floor and is now in a coma, but nobody expected her to be the one who would solve the case, and find the one responsible for the unsolved murder of Kenia Monge.Learn more about Kenia's foundation: https://keniamonge.wordpress.com/ Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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and regain me the deal, additional terms, conditions, and restrictions apply. Since you're a person of interest, let me ask you this. Did you do something with her? No. Did you kidnap her? No. Did you sexually assault her? I did not.

Did you murder her? I did not. Did you murder her? I did not. I did not. Notting yes while saying no is usually a telltale sign that someone is lying. In this particular case, the suspect is trying to clear his name during a news segment on live television. She chose to walk off with this guy.

And I can't, I can't blame myself for that. God, I'm sorry. He lied. It was in his demeanor. It was in his body language. It was all there. When the pressure is escalating, another tactic commonly used is to feign ignorance. What's her name?

Kenya. Kenya. Yeah. 19 year old Kenya Monhe kidnapped, assaulted, and ultimately, murdered, was the first official victim of the bleach monster. The house smell the bleach monster. He did quite the job with the bleach. I've watched enough, you know, true crime stories and whatnot, but bleach means something.

True to his namesake, the killer never left any traces of his crimes behind, cleaning everything thoroughly, forcing detectives into an endless game of cat and mouse with him. He said, what do you think of me? I said, I think you're a creep. I think you're a jerk. I think you're a monster. For over six months, the Denver police struggled to find any tangible evidence against him. until he struck again, but his next victim survived

and took it upon herself to make sure he wouldn't be able to hurt anyone ever again. She's really kind of the hero of stopping him, because without her, I'm not sure we would have ever found Kenya, frankly. In the infamous city of Aurora, just beside Denver, Colorado, ambitious 19-year-old Kenya Monhe is getting ready for a well-deserved girls' night out after a long week of work and studies. When I was talking to her that day, I just thought it was going to be a regular night for her. She was going to go out, and then she was going to tell me about the night the next day.

But the next morning, Kim didn't receive any calls from her. Instead, Kenya's boyfriend reached out to her. I answered the call, and he's like, hey, have you heard from your sister? No, why? What's going on? And he's like, well, she didn't come back home last night. He was like, yeah, the girls that she was with, they don't know where she's at either. She immediately called her father, Tony Lee, to share the alarming

news with him. When I got my call from my daughter Kemp and she said that she had not heard anything from her that day, that's what I wanted to hire her. Tony then hung up on Kim and immediately called Kenya's friends. He had left her purse and phone and her ID and all that stuff in the bar. He was just like, okay, let me call the police. She was 19, so that's considered an adult. In the state of Colorado, the law prohibits any actions to be taken or warrants to be filled before the end of a mandatory 72 hours waiting period. So, you know, got off the phone and I was pissed. My dad's like, you know, that's not good enough.

I need to know where my daughter is. Without the authority's support, Tony Lee took it upon himself to investigate her disappearance. I'm going through her phone, and her friends were sending her messages trying to get in contact with her, you know, and she's not responding to it at all. And we see a text message from this guy named Travis.

And the message said, hey, this is Travis, the guy in a creepy white band, smiley face. Did you get home okay? For the rest of the day, Tony kept calling everyone. The only person he couldn't reach was Travis. I kept calling him. I kept leaving these messages. I must have called that phone number 20, 25 times over the next 24 hours. It got to the point where I was not calling any of her friends anymore because I felt that this person seemed.

to have been the last person who had seen her. The next day, 48 hours after her disappearance, the phone finally rang. And on the night of April 2nd at about 8 p.m. is when I got my first call from Travis Forrest. He told me this story. Oh yeah, you know, I was seeing her out there. Ask her if she needed any help her.

She seemed like she was really out of it, you know. So I said, well, I better help her. So, you know, she got in my van. Travis then went on to tell Tony what a quote according to him, happened that night. After he picked her up, she asked him to stop by a gas station. There, she saw a man smoking a cigarette in the distance and left the car to go see him. Travis then explained that he left her there with the stranger.

That's what he said, it's the Lassie Sovereign. And I got off the phone, and I thought to myself, that is the most fantastic story I've ever heard. That one word of what he told me made any sense to me. Tony started to boil inside. Even if he was sure Travis was lying, there wasn't much that he could. could do without the police's support, but he didn't mind risking his own life if it meant that he could save his daughter. I'm pissed.

I'm sitting there. It's like, I can't believe this. I took matters into my own hand. I called Travis back. And I said, Travis, I've got some questions I want to ask you. Tell me again where you last saw her at. And he said, tell you what, why don't you meet me there? I told him off on my way.

I grabbed a nine millimeter piece with her. I packed it in my waist. I told her, I'm on my way to meet this God. Maria was begging me. Tony, don't do this. Don't go down there. This is dangerous. This don't sound right.

I told her, I got to go. They're not going to do anything. Got to go. My mom, she knows my dad. So she calls the police and she goes, you need to meet my husband right now because he's meeting up with this man and I don't think it's going to end well. The officers are dispatched there because Mr. Lee's wife says,

hey, he's going to go there and he has a gun. and he's going to confront this guy. When Tony arrived at the gas station, he left his pistol in the glove compartment and started walking toward Travis. But before he could even talk to him, the police arrived and stopped him in his tracks. Since there wasn't an investigation launched yet, the police were unaware of the whole situation, but allowed Tony to talk with Travis for a minute. He then went on to retell his whole story, word for word, in front of the officers, adding a few apologetic comments here and there. Then, he offered his hand to Tony for a handshake.

I stuck my head out and said, appreciate it. We shook hands. When I shook his hand, I said, as if a earthquake was going on under his feet. And it was only in my hand that I could feel his arm wasn't shaking, his body wasn't shaking, and I was no quivered. I felt that shake, and I looked at him. And I knew that I had a shaking hand of the last person that seemed Kenya a lie. There's no doubt in my mind.

I knew it at that instant. Even if the investigation hadn't been properly launched yet, the police decided to comply with Tony's request to at least check Travis' van, they didn't find any evidence of a crime, nor anything to take note of, except the strong smell, the smell of bleach. To the point where when you spray something like on a ceiling, a roof, and you spray it so much it drips down, that's how much bleach heaps sprayed on this van. I've watched enough, you know, true crime stories and whatnot, but bleach means something.

Adding the bleach to the distressing handshake from earlier, Tony was now convinced that his daughter didn't survive that night. After leaving Travis and the police, he tried to go home, but he couldn't face his family, all of them more hopeful than the next, while he knew the actual fate of his daughter. When I needed to let it go, I'd go to my Walmart, and I would park way out front, and I'd lose it. Hey, gotta go to the store, be back, go pick up a pack of gum, just show that I had went to the store, but that's where I went. Because I could not do it in my wife's arms or in my children's present because I was the rock in all this thing. And, you know, and I had to maintain that. With 24 hours to go before the investigation kickoff, Tony decided not to waste any more time and, again, took matters into his own hands. He went looking for her, regardless of how grim what he could feel.

find may be. I went dumpster diving. I was looking at trashcats for her body, up and down the alleys all over her. He had to keep this a secret, since he couldn't afford to hurt his family even more. I couldn't tell. I could not share what I was feeling because that early end would have removed the only thing that right now everybody had. That one thing that everybody had was hope.

The following day, the investigation was finally assigned to a detective. and the news of Kenya's disappearance was made public. Posters can be seen all over downtown Denver for missing team Kenya Monier, last seen at the club 24K. She reportedly went to the restroom, left her purse and cell phone behind, and never came back. Enter Nash Gurulay, Denver's police veteran detective, cruising in his own custom lowrider cop car, looking more like a movie character than an actual police officer.

Garoulet didn't lose any more time, sending out the full force of his department. Everybody got involved in this and we just sent detectives out looking for video, do canvases, I mean interviewing people. It was kind of a shotgun effect. And they did find footage of her from a security camera in a nearby apartment complex. But the only information of value they gathered from these tapes was the apparent state of heavy intoxication Kenya seemed to be in. Very strange behavior for a girl who went out dancing often, but barely drink at all. I absolutely believe 100% that she was seen. the day link drop because everything that she did in that club that night was against anything that she's

ever done before the next day garrulay received an unexpected call from a lady claiming to be Travis's boss back at the bakery they worked at she was looking through her own CCTV footage and noticed something suspicious about him she sees him walk into the office after everybody leaves with long uh cleaning gloves and he unplugs the recorder and she just thought that was odd The day before he unplugged the security system, he stored one of his coolers inside the bakery freezer, something he had never done before. He actually unloads the cooler, puts it on a little cart, and it's taped shut with black duct tape and puts it into the freezer, in the bakery, and there's employees walking around.

And his strange behavior didn't stop there. She also noticed how he kept roving around the freezer. And what caught her as strange is that every time somebody would walk into that cooler, he would walk in after him. When he went to look inside the unit, the cooler was gone, but he didn't let that disappointment stop him. Instead, he sent a whole team to search the surrounding area. We find nothing inside the bakery, but we'll find out back a barrel where things have been freshly burned. At this point, Garoulli interviewed Travis but didn't have any evidence against him.

Even the barrel they found behind the bakery had to be cleared since it had no DNA or fingerprints on it. Since he was a person of interest in the case, the detective got to the a search warrant and gathered a DNA sample from him but couldn't link it to anything in their database. He said, what do you think of me? I said, I think you're a creep. I think you're a jerk. I think you're a monster. He said, am I a psychopath or a sociopath? Maybe he was testing me like I was testing him to see if I would give him an honest answer and I would. Later that day, after Garouli had to let him go, Travis appeared on TV, since the details surrounding the the investigation were leaked to the media. Moral panic engulfed the city of Denver. With their

main suspect under the spotlight, the last thing they would expect him to do was to try and go clear his name on live television. Monhey disappeared March 31st. Police discovered she had been at a gas station with Forbes two miles away later that night. Officers questioned Forbes, but didn't call him a suspect until this month. Prosecutors accused him of killing Monhe after persuading her to get into his car. Tony and Kim gathered their relatives and watched as Travis went on to talk for almost 10 minutes, claiming his innocence to the news reporter. Since you're a person of interest, let me ask you this.

Did you do something with her? No. Did you kidnap her? No. Did you sexually assault her? I did not. She asked him directly. Did you kill Kenya?

Did you murder her? I did not. No. He lied. It was in his demeanor. It was in his body language. It was all there. He says, no.

And to add insult to injury, Travis chose to finish the interview by blaming Kenya for whatever happened to her. Tony and his family couldn't believe what they were hearing. You know, everybody has their own choices, you know, and she chose to walk off with this guy. And I can't, I can't blame myself for that. God, I'm sorry. This has been really emotional for me. And we were all watching and we lost it. And I wanted to go talk to him about that interview.

But Tony never got the chance to face Travis ever again. After Nash called him back to the station to pass a lie detector test, he tried to flee to Mexico by passing through Austin, Texas. But Garoulli took a flight and cut him short in his tracks with another search warrant. He extradited him back to Colorado, but still had no evidence to hold him there. Freed once again, Travis decided to move back to his home. town of Fort Collins north of Denver. He was pretty much keeping a low profile.

Our detectives go up and say, hey, we're watching him. He's a person of interest on our case. They're like, okay, okay, I'll let everybody know. So we pull our surveillance. One month later, on the 4th of July, 30-year-old wine company executive, Lydia Tillman, is enjoying the fireworks show organized by the city. Originally from Fort Collins, she decided to give up a unique opportunity to advance her career in Spain to come back to her hometown to help her critically ill father.

My dad was recently diagnosed with cancer. So one of the reasons I moved back was to take care of him. Ended up quite the opposite. What was about to happen to Lydia ended up affecting her ability to speak, but it is important to let her tell her own story in her own words. This is July 5th, 2011. I was walking home from the fireworks in Fort Collins, and a stranger followed me home. He pushed me into my home. What ensued was one of the worst attacks we have ever had to cover.

What followed was a brutal attack, rape. He tried to kill me. The only reason why he didn't. is because of my strength and will. After it was over, Lydia was knocked out on the floor, convinced she was dead. Her attacker then drenched her body with bleach, set her apartment on fire, and left the building. Somehow I came to enough to jump out of the second-story window onto concrete. Splat. It really hurt, but I was saving myself my life.

Despite the late hours, a neighbor noticed the fire and did his best to take action. We kicked the door in and we're screaming for somebody upstairs. We're just calling for somebody to see if there's somebody in the apartment. Soon enough, all emergency services were on site. Own it all. Pay off your home, travel for life, drive a Ferrari. In celebration of the world premiere of the Monopoly, Big Board Buckslot Machine by Aristocrat Gaming,

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Hasbro is not a sponsor of this promotion. In Shackley, the detective assigned to the case, found Lydia behind the building, miraculously, still alive. We found her in the backyard looking awful. She had been beaten severely and she didn't have any clothes on. And she stood up and ran straight to the ambulance and got in the back. After this, I had a massive stroke. I was totally incapacitated. I couldn't move. move, speak, um, think, eat, breathe.

Lydia's sister, Esther Tillman, was the first to arrive at the hospital. She was unrecognizable. When I first saw her, I couldn't believe it was her. Her jaw was crushed in her eye sockets. And her wrist was broken, shattered, and then she had broken ribs. On top of that, she had to be put into a medically induced coma because of the stroke, so Shackley was unable to question her. Instead, she followed her instinct and called her colleagues back in Denver.

Friday afternoon, I get home from work, and I get a call from a detective Jacqueline Shackley from Fort Collins police, and she tells me a young woman was blitz attacked, the house smelled the bleach, and was set on fire. He did a really good job of cleaning up. He did quite the job with the bleach. With the crime scene destroyed and Lydia out of commission, Shackley was short on Leeds, but she remembered that the Denver police warned her about a potential murderer on the loose in Fort Collins. This possibly could be related. He's wanted for murder and he's in Fort Collins.

I don't know, it could be a long shot, but they may want to know about it. So I laid out what had happened, some of the evidence that we had found, and he was silent on the other end of the phone. And then finally he said, oh my God. And I just told her, I said, this is him. Shackley then sent a forensic team to examine Lydia at the hospital. She didn't have high hopes, though, since Lydia has been drenched in bleach after the crime. But in the end, the forensic scientists did find something, unknown DNA. And the majority of that DNA was under Lydia's fingernails, so no doubt she put up a fight.

She was trying to defend herself. Yeah. At this point, Travis was still out there because the police couldn't directly link the DNA to him. They had to wait an entire week before getting their hands on the test results. It's a long process. It's not like a TV show where you can, they do it in 40 minutes and you have a hit. So I knew it was going to take a while. I just kept praying that it would happen earlier. Afraid that he may either strike again or try to run away, Detective Shackley sent a handful of officers to survey him. He's following a girl. He starts talking her up and they're walking together.

And his police contact him, he gives a false name. They're like, this guy's too much of a danger. We've got to figure out a way to get him off the street. So they ended up arresting him for false reporting, for giving a false name. With Travis out of the street, Shackley and Garulay finally had a minute to breathe, but the clock was still ticking. If they couldn't get their hands on the DNA test results and fast, they would be forced to let him go again.

He was given a bond and was about to bond out like 10.30 on Monday night. As his release was being processed, the detective finally received the so-e-of-either. anticipated call. It was the biggest adrenaline dump ever, and of course I called Detective Gure, who tears. We did it. He's charged. He's in jail. He's not getting out. After this, Shackley also informed Tony and his family. It was always trapped. It validated what I felt after that handshake that night. But Travis was the least of his concerns. He wanted to find Kenya. I said, make a deal. Yeah, I don't care what it is. I don't, I said, I don't care. You can take it down to Mansley. I didn't care. Just make a deal.

It's just we just want Kenyon. So Shackley visited Travis in jail, but unsurprisingly, the man wasn't cooperating at all. Obviously, I wanted to talk to him. I wanted to get an interview with him and see if he would, if he would tell me something. And he immediately said, I'm not talking to you, get, get out of here. So Garouli came back to Fort Collins to face Travis once and for all. He didn't want to talk to any of the detectives, but he always talked to me. Above all else, Garoulai wanted to give closure to Kenya's family, so he tried to talk Travis into a deal from the get-go and asked him what he wanted out of it. He says, I'll tell you what I did, where her body is, as long as you don't label me a sex offender and you don't give me the death penalty.

And I said, you'll tell me everything. He said, yeah. I said, okay. As you can guess, this was completely unexpected. Garoulet himself couldn't believe it at first. I left the jail, went out to my car, and thought to myself, did I just hear this right or am I dreaming? I even played the recording back to myself. The following day, Travis sealed the deal with the district attorney and agreed to deliver Kenya's body to Garulay. We drive out to the site next to a little grove of trees.

He says, she's over there. So we walk over there, and he's standing up on top of the heel, and there's like a little ravine. He says, you're standing right on top of her. While the police forensics dug out the body, the detectives returned to Denver to interview Travis one last time before his trial. There, he confessed to Kenya's murder, starting from the beginning after he picked her up that night. He says that she passed out. He has sex with her while she's asleep.

She wakes up, she confronts him. She starts hitting him. As the fight went on, Travis strangled her, and before he knew it, she was gone, dead, in the back of his van. So he puts her in the cooler and then he goes back to the shop where we have him on camera, you know, plugs the video, he takes her all her clothes off, burns everything, pours bleach on her and cleans her wood bleach, puts her back in the van, and then takes her up to Kingsburg where he buries her. He then also confessed to the assault and rape of Lydia, but before the end of the interview,

Travis stood up and approached Caroulli. He says, you just wouldn't give up. And I looked at him and I said, you're right. As this was happening, the district attorney called Tony to announce to him that they'd found Kenya's body. It was at that moment that I knew that, okay, they found Kenya. And I needed to get home and let Maria and the kids know before this thing hit the news. So I went out to my truck and I kind of just sat there. I had to control myself before I could go and take away their hope.

And that was the toughest thing I've ever done. His family was devastated, but their struggle wasn't over yet. They still needed to attend Travis' sentencing. On the other side of the state, someone else was preparing for this event. Lydia, only two days after being discharged from the hospital, wrote down a victim-impact statement to be read during the court hearing. It took me about an hour to write it and a lot of courage to get up there with my dad, who had to read it because I was non-speaking.

What follows is a word-for-word rendition of that statement? You caused me no harm. My spirit, my soul, my mind, remain untouched. May you find peace in your this life. And to the surprise of everybody in that courtroom, Lydia's father finished reading his daughter's impact statement with these words. these words, Travis Forbes, I forgive you for what you did to me. There wasn't a dry eye in that courtroom, including the judge.

It's freeing for her, and I understand that. And I did the same, because we're not going to live in that hatred. Garuli and Tony couldn't believe their ears. Only three months after the attack, she truly accomplished the impossible. She's amazing. To do what she did and to endure what she went through, I couldn't imagine. She's a superhero on my eyes. What she did during her court proceedings on the day,

that he was sentenced for what he did to her, the amount of her strength and her will to live. After the sentencing, Kenya's family finally got the chance to properly meet Lydia, a powerful experience, especially for Kim, Kenya's little sister. I have nothing but respect for her. She's just such a sweet woman and so strong and positive. When I gave her a hug, I broke down. I just, I don't know, it was weird.

I just felt like a connection with Kenya when I was hugging her. It was like almost like I was hugging my sister. Tony and his family had to go through something infinitely difficult, but he wouldn't let the loss of his daughter stop him from trying to make a difference. I created a foundation, and then through this foundation, I help families of the missing. Her death has changed a lot of girls' lives. I've gotten phone calls and Facebook messages from all these girls have changed their lifestyles about what they do.

how they do, we are absolutely positive that she has saved lives out there. This is why we do what we do. And as for Lydia, life isn't always easy, but she's making the most out of it. On top of her own activism, she reconverted herself as a yoga teacher. Even if her attacker left his mark on her, she refuses to let him control her. Instead, she chose to become the antithesis of what he was. I believe Travis Forbes was acting out of fear and hate red. I choose love and peace over fear. fear and I