Tess Damm and Bryan GrovePosted on 03/10/2007 1:04:46 PM PST by Ellesu
Group Accused Of Trying To Hide Woman's Body
LAFAYETTE, Colo. -- Two Colorado teens have been arrested after the mother of one of them was found stabbed to death in the trunk of her car.
Investigators allege that Linda Damm's body had been in the car for nearly a month as her daughter and friends tried but failed to get rid of it. On one attempt, police said they buried the body at the edge of a cemetery only to retrieve it later, fearing the grave was too shallow.
Investigators claim 15-year-old Tess Damm and her live-in boyfriend were planning to drive to Wyoming to make a third attempt, when police received an anonymous tip.
The two teens are being held without bail. They are being prosecuted as adults in connection with the woman's killing. Two other teens have been arrested in the case, but only one has been charged.
The family of Linda Damm held a private memorial service Friday afternoon outside the woman's home, but her daughter was unable to attend.
A Boulder district judge on Thursday denied a motion by Damm's guardian that she be released from the Platte Valley Detention Center in Weld County in order to attend the funeral.
The family had offered to pay for the sheriff's deputies who would have had to accompany the girl while she was attending the service.
A statement from Damm's siblings was released to the media early Friday. It discussed the death and said people should honor the memory of Linda Damm by loving, honoring and holding their own children. They also said parents should be involved in every aspect of their children's lives.
"Teach them to value life and maintain integrity," Damm’s oldest sister, Helen, 54, said in the statement. Damm’s sisters, and her brother asked that their last names not be published in order to protect their privacy.
The family statement also talked about Linda Damm's problem with alcohol:
"We want everyone to know that Linda made every effort to dedicate her life to raising her only child, Tess. We are sad to say that alcohol also played a significant role in Linda’s life. She was a functioning alcoholic for many years, however the last few years Linda found her addiction more and more difficult to deal with. We supported and encouraged her recent efforts to get help, but Linda was not able to conquer her addiction," the statement said in part.
Helen said in the statement that her family wants everyone involved in the crime to be held accountable, but they plan to support Tess.
"We want Tess to know that we love her," said Helen, who took Tess in last summer.
Tess Damm's boyfriend, Bryan Grove, 17, and his friend Jared Guy, 18, have also been charged in the homicide. A fourth teen is under arrest but has not been formally charged.
Grove is charged with first-degree murder, conspiracy and tampering with evidence. He is being held in adult confinement at the Boulder County Jail and has been on and off suicide watch.
Tess Damm is charged with conspiracy to commit murder, tampering with evidence and being an accessory to a crime. Guy faces the same accessory and tampering charges. Police allege he and Grove attempted to dispose of the body twice, once in a landfill and the second time by burying it in a cemetery.
A police affidavit alleges that Guy also watched the body as it decomposed because he was taking a police forensics class that dealt with the stages bodies go through after death.
Guy told a Longmont Times-Call reporter on Wednesday that he's not the bad person being portrayed in the press.
"I have seen the news and stuff, and they are not portraying me as I really am," he told the reporter. "They are portraying me as this really bad kid, and I am really not."
Report: Police Often Visited Home
In the year before Linda Damm was killed, police visited her home often on runaway and other alleged offenses.
The Longmont Times-Call reported that police reports showed that officers visited the home Feb. 11, 2006, on a runaway report and on May 16 on another runaway report. They visited May 29 on a report of family related crimes, issued a curfew citation on July 4 and made a welfare check July 15. They issued an underage drinking citation and took yet another runaway report in December.
Tess Damm and Bryan Grove
Must've been the dozen or so pine tree fresheners hanging from the rear view mirror and swarm of flies around the trunk that tipped the cops off...
Damm!
Ugly business.
Words fail me.
Just Damm.
He's not a bad guy, just real curious. My heavens.
What an awful story! I'm puzzled as to why nobody missed the mom for nearly a month. Another article said she'd lost her job, and maybe she didn't always contact her other children or they her, but that seems very strange.
Now that'd be good police work. Instead it was 'an anonymous tip' that alerted police to the situation.
I can not, for the life of me, imagine a situation where I'd permit a live in boyfriend for my daughter.
Just Damm...
Looks like her daughter's friends cured her of that problem.
She does look like a young Hillary!™...
He probably says this on his MySpace page...
"After all, your honor -- she's an orphan now!"
Her own mother too. This is a sad coment on society's morals (or lack thereof).
The mom was an alcoholic. It sounds like she was pretty unstable.
The family's reaction surprises me. I can almost understand them seeing the alcoholic mother and recognizing that the daughter is growing up with no security, stability or guidance, and that might have helped lead to this situation.
But if the situation were truly so bad as to help lead the child to grow up a psychopath, why didn't anyone intervene?
Well, the Aunt did say that the mother was an alcoholic who'd tried and failed to beat the addiction. She was probably so far into the bottle that she either didn't notice, or didn't care.
Maybe that's why the family is rallying around Tess. It's possible that the mother was also violent when she was drunk and the girl killed her while trying to defend herself. If so, she shouldn't have carted the body around. Maybe, in her teenage mind, she was just afraid, and didn't have the judgement to turn herself in. Her boyfriend sounds like he had a part in that decision, as well.
Good observation. I thought she reminded me of somebody. It is Hillary
Heavenly Creatures
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