frenchconnections

FRENCH CONNECTIONS
Two new bistros make bidding Le Central adieu a little easier. »1C
Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire
WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 16, 2015
H EN T H ORN TR IA L
Footprint
on car
shown
in court
some sun and clouds E85° F55° »20A B © the denver post B $1.50 price may vary outside metro denver
6
POLLUTANTS IN METRO WATERSHED
Draining to Denver
Mining o∞cial: “You cannot just cork these up so it all goes away”
O∞cer says it may
show defendant’s
intent to kill first wife.
By Kirk Mitchell
The Denver Post
Six days into Harold Henthorn’s
murder trial, the evidence against
the man accused of shoving his
wife off a cliff to her death is
mounting: a suspicious footprint,
stories that don’t match up to the
facts and an actual X that marked
the spot.
As a 20-year-old photograph
flashed on a screen in the federal
courtroom Tuesday, one woman
gasped, “Oh, my God.” The image
was of a shoeprint left on the top
of a fender above the front axle of
a Jeep Cherokee that fell onto the
back of Henthorn’s first wife, Sandra “Lynn” Henthorn, in 1995, killing her. It suggested the Jeep’s collapse could have been intentional.
Henthorn claimed that when he
tossed a “mushy” tire into the
back of the Jeep, it caused the jack
to fail and the axle to crush his
wife. But a juror noticed what
prosecutors hadn’t even mentioned: a photograph after the incident showed the spare tire on
top of the old tire — which was
not flat.
Henthorn is not charged with
his first wife’s death, but he is on
trial on a charge of first-degree
murder of his second wife, Toni.
He is accused of pushing her from
TRIAL » 10A
SPORTS
The abandoned North London Mine, center left, and the South London Mine, lower right, in Park County on Sept. 9. The London
Mine is one of many that leach toxic materials into Denver’s watershed. Andy Cross, The Denver Post
By Bruce Finley The Denver Post
alma» Ninety miles west of Denver, 347 gallons a minute of acidic heavy metals leak into a
tributary of the South Platte River every day from the defunct London Mine. ¶ Not even the
bugs that fish eat have survived in South Mosquito Creek west of Alma, let alone the trout local
leaders hope to restore for the South Park recreational economy.
MILITANTS B LE N D I N WI T H M I GRAN T S
Refugee surge to Europe raises
fears about “disguised terrorists”
MANNING SHAKES
OFF FIRST GAME,
LOOKS TO SECOND
History is on Peyton Manning’s
side against the Kansas City
Chiefs, but the Broncos
quarterback is eager for an
offensive redo. »1B
BUSINESS
DIA KEEPS TRAVELER
NUMBERS ON PACE
Despite Frontier Airlines’
reduced service, passengers
traveling through DIA in July
dipped by just 1 percent. »12A
By Lori Hinnant, Sarah El Deeb
and Qassim Abdul-Zahra
The Associated Press
paris» When Islamic State extremists lost control of a key crossroads town in northern Syria in June,
some militants shed their jihadi garb
and blended in with the flood of Syrians fleeing across the Turkish border.
Since then, the exodus of Syrians and
Iraqis toward Europe has surged —
and Europeans opposed to taking in
more refugees say that more than
ever, they fear “disguised terrorists”
in their midst.
Governments along the route have
different assessments of the threat.
Two senior Iraqi officials and a Syrian
activist say a small group of hardened
Islamic State extremists is believed to
have left the war zones of Iraq and
Syria to blend in with the masses of
asylum seekers in recent weeks.
REFUGEES » 17A
Refugees sleep while waiting in a bus in Roszke,
Hungary, before being taken by police to board a
train to the Austrian border. Muhammed Muheisen, AP
In Europe: Key refugee routes closed off. »17A
Online: Photos of the wave of migrants flooding
into Europe. »dpo.st/migrants.com
The London Mine is one of
many that leach toxic materials
into Denver’s watershed. Municipal water treatment plants keep
contaminants from flowing out
taps in homes; ecosystems, however, continue to be poisoned.
For years, state agencies and
contractors worked on a cleanup at
the London Mine, including installation of a water treatment plant.
But the resurgent discharge into
Denver’s watershed shows how difficult cleanup of old mines can be.
“You’re never going to walk
away from these things,” said
Bruce Stover, director of Colorado’s inactive mine reclamation
program. “Things happen inside
mines that are unpredictable.
Wood can rot. There’s rock stress.
Old mines are constantly changing. Gravity rules.
“You cannot just cork these up
so it all goes away. That’s not going to happen.”
MINES » 8A
Old mines: Complete
coverage of the Gold King Mine
spill and its environmental
legacy. »dpo.st/goldking.com
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