Anderson Lee Aldrich, 23, was charged this Tuesday with 50 new federal hate crimes charges for the shooting that he committed in November 2022 at a nightclub in the LGTBIQ community in Colorado Springs (Colorado). The killer of five people, already serving a life sentence in a Wyoming prison, pleaded not guilty this morning to federal charges and 24 other firearms charges.
The not guilty plea came as a shock to the victims' families. “This was a cowardly, terrible, stupid and hateful act,” Jeff Aston, the father of Daniel Aston, who died in the attack, told the AP. “This is the closest thing to justice I can imagine [Aldrich] “He suffered as much as the suffering he caused the victims and their families,” Aston added.
Aldrich was sentenced to life in prison in June 2022. He subsequently pleaded guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder for the victims of his attack on Club Q on November 19, 2002. The place was considered a refuge for the community and is located 114 kilometers south of Denver. The sentence handed down by a state judge came seven months after the shooting, a new blow to the United States' LGBTBIQ population. In 2016, another massacre at the Pulse Club in Orlando left 49 people dead.
The conviction was not the end point of the legal troubles for Aldrich, who identifies as non-binary and uses the pronouns “we/them.” The prosecution believes this is a hollow statement that raises doubts as they see it as a strategy to avoid hate crime charges. Prosecutors say there is no evidence that Aldrich identified as non-binary before the attack.
The FBI announced last summer that it was conducting an investigation into the incidents. The federal agency had to correct its file because it had received information warning that Aldrich posed a danger to society. The suspect's grandparents reported him with a call in June 2021, claiming he was building a bomb in the basement and threatening to kill them. Aldrich was arrested, but the Federal Investigation Agency closed the case in July of that year because family members refused to cooperate with authorities. The subject had made his intention to become a serial killer public.
During last year's trial, the killers did not explain what motivated their actions. Aldrich had gone to the club at least six times, including on the night of the mass murder. That night after going to the club, they went outside and went to the car. They then returned wearing body armor and armed with an AR-15 rifle, with which they began to open fire. The shooting ended when a soldier who was at the scene grabbed the barrel of the gun and hit the shooters until police arrived.
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In phone calls to the press, the killer justified his actions by saying that he had consumed large amounts of drugs and steroids at the time of the attack, when he was 22 years old. In a conversation with AP journalists, he assured that the shooting was not provoked by his hatred of homosexuals. Prosecutors showed during the trial that Aldrich managed a website that facilitated the publication of a target practice video with supremacist and neo-Nazi content. A detective assured that the killer made clear his hatred of minorities, including the LGTBIQ group, in some forums.