"He basically set up a murder room": Colorado man gets nearly century behind bars after torturing woman

A woman who was chained to a table and survived a brutal attack in 2021 told a courtroom Thursday she didn't think she would live through the night. 

After she spoke, a Weld County District Court judge sentenced Tory Hammond, now 41, to 96 years to life in the Colorado Department of Corrections. The sentence means Hammond could spend the rest of his life behind bars if he does not successfully respond to in-prison rehabilitation efforts. 

"I didn't think I was going to make it out of this alive," the victim told the judge during Thursday's sentencing, according to a press release from the 19th Judicial District Attorney's Office in Weld County. "When this happened, part of me was taken that I'll never get back."  

Hammond was convicted by a jury in October 2025 of several offenses -- sexual assault, assault, strangulation, menacing, retaliation against a victim and possession of a controlled substance among them.

Hammond and the woman were dating in October 2021 and living in a semi trailer in an industrial lot near Highway 85 and Weld County Road 6, north of Brighton. According to prosecutors, Hammond physically and sexually assaulted the woman for several hours and held her at gunpoint. He wrapped a tow chain around her wrists and neck and tied her down on a table. At one point, Hammond used a power drill to drill into the victim's leg during the attack. 

The woman passed out during the attack, per prosecutors. When she awoke, Hammond was asleep. When she realized the tow chain was no longer secured to the table leg, she escaped from the trailer and ran to the nearby intersection. A driver saw her at 6 a.m., naked and still wearing the chain.  

Weld County deputies found  found Hammond in a vehicle outside the trailer.

"The facts of this case are disturbing," Judge Kundelius stated during Hammond's sentencing, according to the DA's press release. "What you've put her through. I don't know that you can make up a worse story about what you've done to somebody. You are a danger to this community."

Hammond was on parole for an assault case out of Jefferson County and a stalking case out of Boulder County at the time of this attack, according to prosecutors. His criminal history also shows he was at one time a sex offender who was arrested for failing to register in Boulder County twice (2013 and 2014) and once in Jefferson County (2017). He was most recently a resident of Louisville.

"He basically set up a murder room," Deputy District Attorney Amy Petri Beard stated in the DA's press release. "She believed she was going to die that night. She believed he was going to follow through with his plan to kill her. This is the plot of a horror movie, but it was a real-life nightmare for this victim."  

In a press release from the Weld County Sheriff's Office announcing the sentencing, WCSO Patrol Captain Matt Turner stated, "This case is not something we commonly see in Weld County. The Sheriff's Office and the Weld County District Attorney's Office conducted a thorough and dedicated investigation into this incident, and I am grateful to see it prosecuted to the fullest extent possible. Our thoughts remain with the victim, and we sincerely hope she can find comfort, closure, and continued healing now that this case has come to an end."