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Travis Forbes Wiki – Biography

Travis Forbes is serving a life sentence for the murder of Kenia Monge who was 19 years old when she was abducted and murdered. He also left another woman, Lydia Tillman, for dead and in a coma for five months. The Forbes’ murder is featured on Dateline: NBC episode titled “Deadly Connection.”

Tillman met Forbes at the 2011 Fort Collins, Colorado, 4th of July celebration. They went back to her apartment where Forbes sexually assaulted her and beat her so badly that it shattered her jaw. He then doused her with bleach and set the apartment on fire. Tillman survived by jumping out the second-story window. EMTs had just arrived on the scene and were able to help her when she then suffered a stroke at the scene that left her in a coma for five weeks.

Authorities credited Tillman’s escape with preserving the DNA evidence that came back as a match for Forbes, according to ABC News. Police arrested Forbes on July 10th of the same year and he immediately confessed to both Tillman’s assault and the murder of Kenia Monge.

East Coast and Central, a classic 2-hour #Dateline is starting RIGHT NOW! pic.twitter.com/BHq2vTghd5

— Dateline NBC (@DatelineNBC) July 4, 2020

Kenia Monge Murder

Kenia Monge was out drinking with friends on April 1st, 2011, when she wandered away from the group. She was intoxicated and left behind her phone, purse, and keys. Her family and had not heard from her when her friends brought her belongings to her stepfather, Tony Lee. On her phone, he found a text message from a man named Travis, called him, and set up a meeting, according to The Denver Post.

Forbes, Lee and a Denver Police officer met at a gas station the next day. Forbes claimed he gave Monge a ride, and she was upset. He taught her breathing exercises, he told them and watched her leave with another man from a closed gas station.

Charges

Tillman met Forbes at the 2011 Fort Collins, Colorado, 4th of July celebration. They went back to her apartment where Forbes sexually assaulted her and beat her so badly that it shattered her jaw. He then doused her with bleach and set the apartment on fire. Tillman survived by jumping out the second-story window. EMTs had just arrived on the scene and were able to help her when she then suffered a stroke at the scene that left her in a coma for five weeks.

Authorities credited Tillman’s escape with preserving the DNA evidence that came back as a match for Forbes, according to ABC News. Police arrested Forbes on July 10th of the same year and he immediately confessed to both Tillman’s assault and the murder of Kenia Monge.

Lydia Tillman & Kenia Monge Forever Connected By Murderer Travis Forbes https://t.co/iM2BcaRFkE

— QNewsHub (@qnewshub) July 4, 2020

Forbes Confessed to the Murder of Kenia Monge

According to an Oxygen profile of the case, Forbes requested that authorities not seek the death penalty nor let him go to prison labeled as a sex offender. He confessed to Monge’s murder in a sworn affidavit saying that he found Monge walking around intoxicated in downtown Denver and got her to get into his van. After she passed out, he sexually assaulted her and when she regained consciousness and realized what he had done, she began hitting him, so he hit her back and then strangled her until she was dead.

Forbes told police he drove around with her body for an entire day before stashing her in the freezer of the bakery where he worked, then cleaned out his van with bleach. He later buried Monge’s body in a small grove of trees about 40 miles outside of Denver. Crime scene analysts found her remains after Forbes confessed.

Police had previously questioned Forbes in Monge’s disappearance because Monge’s stepfather found a text message from Forbes on Monge’s cell phone. Forbes initially said he was giving Monge a ride home when she asked to stop at a Conoco gas station to get cigarettes. There he said she wandered off with a fellow smoker and he never saw her again. With no physical evidence tying him to Monge’s disappearance, police had no grounds to arrest Forbes, but the police just knew somehow Forbes was involved, especially because his van smelled overwhelmingly of bleach and had brand-new carpet inside.

Investigation Report

Travis Forbes is serving a life sentence for Monge’s murder, escaped the death penalty by pleading guilty and leading investigators to Monge’s body. In September 2011, Forbes agreed to plead guilty to first-degree murder in the death of Kenia Monge and attempted first-degree murder in the attack on Lydia Tillman in exchange for prosecutors not seeking the death penalty.

He received a life sentence without the possibility of parole for Monge’s death and a 48-year sentence for Tillman’s attack.

“We wanted 48 more years on top of that to make sure that there’s no chance that for the rest of his life he’d ever get out,” Larimer County District Attorney Larry Abrahamson told Denver’s CBS affiliate at the time.

“Why did I do this? I have been searching for that also in my heart and soul. I think we commit violent acts because deep down we find hatred of ourselves. I am so thankful that Lydia Tillman survived because if I hadn’t been caught, I probably would have done this again because deep down I’m f**ked up. I’m evil,” Forbes said in court.

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