Leto Willis was 31 years old when he was found lying in a Five Points alley in the 2500 block between Glenarm Place and Welton Street on December 3, 1993, stabbed to death in a killing that has never been solved. He was rushed to Denver General Hospital, where he was pronounced dead, and more than three decades later, no one has ever been charged in his murder.
The Denver Police Department issued a new crime alert this week asking the public for help identifying who killed Willis, according to the Denver Police Dept. The department is asking anyone with information about Willis’s friends or associates at the time of his death, or about the circumstances of the murder, to come forward. State cold case records specify that Willis died of stab wounds, a detail confirmed by Colorado Bureau of Investigation records, which is not spelled out in the department’s own alert.
Willis was a Denver resident and the father of two children, according to historical case notes from the Denver District Attorney’s office cited by former Denver DA Mitch Morrissey. Those same records note that homicide detectives were never able to identify a suspect at the time of the killing, and that then-District Attorney Bill Ritter, who served from 1993 to 2005, was never able to file criminal charges in the case.
A Killing In the Heart of Five Points
The alley where Willis was found sits within Denver’s historic Five Points neighborhood, long recognized as a cultural hub for the city’s Black community, per the state cold case database. His death also fell during a grim stretch for the city: Denver recorded 74 homicides in 1993, part of an era locally remembered as the “Summer of Violence” that eventually pushed state lawmakers and city officials toward major public safety reforms, as reported by The Colorado Sun. That surge in violent crime stretched police resources thin at the time, leaving many cases like Willis’s without the follow-through that might have identified a suspect.
One Case Among Hundreds Still Open
Willis’s file is one of more than 780 cold cases under Denver Police Department jurisdiction, out of roughly 1,800 active unsolved cases logged statewide, according to Law Week Colorado. The same reporting found that roughly 60% of Denver’s outstanding cold cases involve racial minority victims, even though the city’s non-white population was under 20% at the time of that analysis — a disparity that underscores how cases like Willis’s have long gone without resolution…