Colored Red

Colored Red is a Colorado true crime podcast hosted by Laura, split between cases built from police interviews and older crimes drawn from Denver's history. The episode titles show the split. Several carry the label 'Historical Murders', while others, such as 'The Murder of Susan Hernandez', stand on their own. That family case shows how Laura handles suspects. She takes the detectives' interviews one relative at a time: one man was with his young daughter on the day of the killing, and the eldest child, executor of the estate, says he has no idea where a missing money ledger went. She raises the possibility that control of the family money was a motive, then says it is hard to call without more evidence. Her opening calls this kind of case a deeper cut than a random killing, because a family loses more than one member and has to live with having raised someone capable of murder. The historical episodes lean on named books. For the 1919 case of Emily Powell, who shot her 10-year-old daughter, Jacqueline, and then herself, and survived, she works from 'Wicked Denver, Mile High Misdeeds and Malfeasance' by Sheila O'Hare and Alfred Dick. Laura reads the butler's account from the coroner's inquest, starting with the breakfast tray he brought up and ending with what he saw when he pushed the door open. 'Historical Murders: The Great Mint Robbery of 1922' draws on 'Murder in the Mile High City' by Linda Womack and Linda Jones, along with the United States Mint's official website. At its center is a guard, Charles T Linton, shot as masked bandits robbed an armored car outside the Mint, and Laura notes that he had once arrested Doc Holliday. Not every story starts with a body. 'Historical Murders: The House of a Thousand Candles' follows a Denver house that inspired a novel through its Masonic ornament and its line of owners, reaching the murder only after the property became apartments. Laura even suggests listeners walk past it and look for the iconography hidden in the architecture. 'Historical Murders: Brief History of the KKK in Colorado' covers the Klan and the lynchings in the state's history, and Laura explains why that belongs on a true crime show. Her commentary gets sharp here, casting the Klan's appeal as a backlash against lost privilege after years of reform. Another case follows a practitioner named O'Connell, whose office held thousands of patient files on payment plans for black salve and a light therapy that turned out to be a hardware-store fluorescent lamp, and Laura credits her mom, whom she calls her research assistant, with finding it. She often names her sources at the start, and at the end of the KKK history she asks for corrections and promises to share them. Episodes close with a pointer to an Instagram of case photos she promises is meme-free, a Patreon that sends supporters a sticker and a homemade card, and her usual sign-off, 'stay sane'.