Colorado convict returns to prison after murder sentences

Ricky Lee Roybal-Smith returned to the Colorado Department of Corrections last week. Since he was last there, he pleaded guilty to murdering four people - a woman who got out of a car to use a bathroom, two homeless men, and an inmate in his jail cell. 

Roybal-Smith was sentenced Wednesday in the last of those court cases. He will now not be eligible for parole until 2093. 

Wednesday's sentencing was for the death of Margaret "Meg" Eberhart in June 2022. A rideshare driver called 9-1-1 from the Englewood Civic Center at 3 a.m. He stopped there, near a light rail station, after she asked to use a portable bathroom at a construction site at the Center. The driver told dispatchers he heard Eberhart scream, then saw a man that appeared to be on top of someone under a tree. 

The woman died from her injuries two days later.

Roybal-Smith was initially suspected in her death but was never arrested or charged. The coroner ruled her death inconclusive and surveillance video showed him in the area but not with the woman. 

Three years later, in July 2025, additional DNA testing on the neckline of the woman's jacket strongly implicated Roybal-Smith. By that time, Roybal-Smith was in jail, suspected of killing three people in two days. 

At 2 a.m. on June 29, 2025, Aurora officers responded to an alley on East Colfax near Moline Street where a man reportedly collapsed. Twenty-seven-year-old Jesse Shafer was pronounced at the scene. He'd been stabbed 15 times, according to the Aurora Police Department. 

Shortly after officers arrived there, another man was reported to have collapsed at a bus stop a half mile away. This man, 61 year old Scott Davenport, was also dead by the time officers rolled up. Per Aurora PD, he'd been stabbed 90 times. 

Aurora PD reported that both men were homeless.

Later that afternoon, Roybal-Smith hit three pedestrians while driving at Galapago Street and 9th Street in Arvada, according to police documents. He fled the scene, hitting another vehicle on I-70 near the Lowell Street exit. Another driver who witnessed that incident followed Roybal-Smith to a parking lot near I-70 and Wadsworth Boulevard. There, Denver Police Department officers took Roybal-Smith into custody.

The following day, Roybal-Smith strangled 34-year-old Vincent Chacon in the jail cell the two men were sharing at the Downtown Detention Center. Family members told CBS Colorado that Chacon Vincent was being held for petty theft and was awaiting his release.

This year, Roybal-Smith pleaded guilty to all four deaths. He received an 80-year prison sentence from an Adams County judge for the murders of Shafer and Davenport, 48 years from a Denver judge for the murder of Chacon, and 30 years for Eberhart's death.