Arapahoe County prosecutors have stacked a new second-degree murder charge on a man already accused in a string of killings across the Denver metro. Ricky Lee Roybal-Smith, 38, remains jailed without bond and is now alleged to be responsible for a 2022 death in Englewood.
New Arapahoe Charge
Prosecutors in Arapahoe County say they revisited the 2022 death of Meg Eberhart, who was found unconscious at an Englewood light-rail station, and decided the evidence supports a second-degree murder charge, according to Law&Crime.
How Prosecutors Say The Crimes Unfolded
Officials say Roybal-Smith is accused of stabbing two men in Aurora on June 29, 2025. Officers found one victim on the 1500 block of Moline Street and another near a bus stop on Peoria Street, and detectives later linked the two scenes, as reported by CBS News.
The following day, Roybal-Smith was arrested in Denver after an alleged hit-and-run. While in custody, his cellmate, 34-year-old Vincent Chacon, was later pronounced dead, and Denver prosecutors brought a first-degree murder charge in that case, The Denver Gazette reports.
Questions About Parole And Risk Scores
Investigations by 9NEWS found state parole paperwork had repeatedly labeled Roybal-Smith “very high” risk before a 2022 reassessment downgraded him to “moderate,” a shift that reduced mandatory supervision in the run-up to his January 2025 release. That reporting helped trigger internal Colorado Department of Corrections reviews and renewed calls for tighter oversight of how the state classifies and monitors parolees, according to Colorado Politics.
Family And Officials React
Relatives of the victims are pressing for answers about why Roybal-Smith kept returning to the community despite repeated warnings in his record. “They threw a monster in that cell with my son,” Chacon’s mother told The Denver Gazette. Eberhart’s daughter told 9NEWS she felt some relief knowing prosecutors had gone back and reexamined her mother’s case…