A Colorado case is turning into a brutal indictment of “catch-and-release” criminal justice after a repeat parolee was charged in four killings spanning 2022 to 2025.
Story Snapshot
- Prosecutors charged Ricky Roybal-Smith with second-degree murder in the 2022 death of Meg Eberhart after new DNA evidence allegedly tied him to her jacket.
- Roybal-Smith was already facing charges in three additional killings from 2025, including two homeless men stabbed in Aurora and a jail cellmate killed in Denver.
- Colorado records show multiple paroles since 2011 and a risk score that shifted from “high risk” to “moderate” in 2022, reducing supervision.
- Englewood police said they kept working the Eberhart case after an initially “undetermined” autopsy left prosecutors without charges in 2022.
New DNA Evidence Revives a 2022 Homicide Case
Arapahoe County prosecutors added a second-degree murder charge on Feb. 25, 2026, in the June 22, 2022 death of Meg Eberhart in Englewood, Colorado. Investigators previously lacked enough evidence to charge the case after the autopsy was initially ruled “undetermined,” even as police treated the death as suspicious. The new charge follows lab work on DNA reportedly found on Eberhart’s lime-green jacket, submitted for testing in 2025.
According to reporting, Eberhart was attacked during a Lyft ride after the driver stopped, and Roybal-Smith was seen nearby but denied involvement at the time. Prosecutors waited to file the murder count until they received DNA results that allegedly matched him. Englewood police credited persistence, framing the case as a delayed-but-not-denied pursuit of justice—an outcome victims’ families often pray for while legal systems grind forward.
A 2025 Violence Spree Expanded the Case to Four Murders
The revived 2022 case sits alongside three killings tied to Roybal-Smith in 2025. Investigators say Jesse Shafer and Scott Davenport—both described as homeless men in Aurora—were killed on June 29, 2025, in knife attacks marked by extreme violence. Reporting describes Shafer as being stabbed 15 times and Davenport as being stabbed about 90 times. Roybal-Smith was arrested that same day on an unrelated Denver hit-and-run allegation, placing him in custody.
Less than 24 hours later, authorities allege another homicide occurred inside the Denver jail. On June 30, 2025, around 2 a.m., Roybal-Smith’s cellmate Vincent Chacon was found dead. Reporting says Roybal-Smith initially claimed a choking incident sounded accidental, but an autopsy ruled the death a homicide, and prosecutors later filed a murder charge in November 2025. By early 2026, the combined allegations formed one of the more disturbing multi-jurisdiction cases in Colorado’s metro area.
Parole Decisions and “Moderate Risk” Labels Under Scrutiny
The most combustible policy issue in this story is not politics in Washington—it’s the basic question of whether state parole systems are protecting the public. Reporting indicates Roybal-Smith had been paroled multiple times between 2011 and 2023, including after a 2015 vehicular assault/DUI case and a 2022 menacing incident. In June 2022, records reportedly shifted his classification from “high risk” to “moderate,” a change that can lower supervision intensity.
That risk-labeling matters because the June 2022 Walmart incident happened immediately before Eberhart’s death. Reporting says Roybal-Smith threatened customers with a knife at a Walmart in Englewood on June 21, 2022, and was later sentenced to four years on the menacing case before being paroled in 2023. The available reporting does not detail exactly why the risk score changed, but it does connect the classification and release pattern to broader concerns about supervision failures.
What the State Review Means for Public Safety—and Trust
Investigative reporting also points to a wider Colorado problem: parolees who were “misscored” for risk, prompting the state to review and rescore more than 1,700 cases. That context doesn’t prove any single decision caused these crimes, but it strengthens the argument that the safeguards taxpayers expect can be weakened by bureaucratic scoring errors. When officials classify repeat offenders as lower risk, the consequences land on ordinary families, rideshare passengers, and vulnerable people on the streets.
For conservatives who watched years of soft-on-crime messaging, the Colorado timeline reads like a warning label: repeated release, reduced supervision, and victims left to wait for answers. The case is now in court, with Roybal-Smith jailed since June 2025 and expected to return for additional proceedings in March 2026. The core facts still have to be tested before a jury, but the policy lesson is immediate—public safety depends on accurate risk assessments and a system that puts victims first.
Sources:
Frequent Parolee Charged With 2022 Murder – and 3 Others
