A man found dead on Halloween night near Aurora, Colorado's Ronald McDonald House was apparently shot, then dismembered with a hatchet.
An arrest warrant obtained by our Scripps affiliate Denver7 on Wednesday indicated Candace Chamberlain called police on Oct. 31 at 10:35 p.m. and reported the murder. Chamberlain told police a man she had a sexual relationship with, Richard Darling, had killed her boyfriend, Rey Pesina.
Chamberlain took officers to the place where she said the murder happened.
There, officers found a burning 55-gallon drum and another woman, Lenora Cole, who said she was Darling's wife and that she had also witnessed the murder.
"Ms. Cole advised she then observed Richard Alan Darling repeatedly striking the neck of Rey Pesina's torso, which was missing the arms and legs, severing his head from his torso," the arrest warrant said. "Ms. Cole described Richard Alan Darling as 'fileting' the body, and striking the head with a hacket after it was severed from the torso."
Cole told officers that Darling asked her to get rid of the victim's head, but she did not, the arrest warrant said.
After firefighters put out the fire in the barrel, officers wrote in the arrest warrant that they found what appeared to be human remains in the barrel and blood smeared over a large area.
One of the officers involved in the investigation said he found large chunks of skin and tissue and "a piece of tattooed skin, floating in the water," the arrest warrant said.
The warrant says police talked to numerous people who live under the underpass and several gave similar stories about seeing Pesina shot and/or attacked with a hatchet.
Police said when they searched the dwelling known as Darling's the next day, they found an air pellet rifle, a .22-caliber rifle and several cartridges.
Darling was arrested on suspicion of murder in the 1st degree.
A forensic pathologist and coroner's investigator said they found part of a human spine, a human scapula bone and several other human bones in the 55-gallon drum.
