On December 27, 1973, Colorado State Trooper Thomas Carpenter, 31, was abducted during a traffic stop on the westbound on-ramp from Broadway to the Boulder Turnpike. Carpenter, a husband and father of three and a former U.S. Marine who’d joined the Colorado State Patrol in 1968, was forced into his own patrol car by two men described as one white and one Black. He was later seen driving with the men as passengers in the I-25 and I-70 areas before the patrol car ended up in a parking lot on Albrook Drive in the Montbello neighborhood.

Trooper Carpenter was found shot to death in the driver’s seat; witness reports and scene evidence indicate the shots were fired from the back seat. Two men matching the earlier descriptions were seen running from the car about 10:50 a.m. Despite an extensive investigation and a later recovery of Carpenter’s service weapon in a New Mexico ditch two years after the killing, no arrests were made. The Denver Police Department reopened the inquiry in 2018 and the case remains active with a substantial reward offered for information.

Did anyone in the Denver area know Trooper Carpenter or see suspicious activity around the Broadway on-ramp or Montbello on the morning of December 27, 1973?