A graffiti-spree at one of Denver’s most iconic buildings is being investigated by Denver police as a hate crime. Spokesperson Nate Magee confirmed that their bias-motivated crime unit is looking into the incident, which happened between 7:45 and 8 Sunday morning.

Father Samuel Morehead of The Cathedral Basilica of The Immaculate Conception’s says Denver police advised him that a second disturbance, which happened at a Catholic church just a half hour to the south of the historic church, is being investigated as a possible connection.

A woman dressed in a heavy coat, fur hat and sunglasses walked into Littleton’s St. Francis Cabrini Church and yelled, “You are all worshipping Satan!” and “Black lives matter!” before she was escorted out by church security, according to Deacon Chet Ubowski.

Denver police told Morehead that they are looking into a possible link to a third incident which also happened Sunday. Bright red graffiti messages were sprayed on a University of Colorado/Boulder bus stop; however, Boulder campus police say though they are looking for the perpetrator, they don’t believe the bus stop incident is related to the other two.

The Denver Police Department website defines a bias motivated crime  as one which is  “motivated by an offender’s bias against: race, color, ancestry, religion, national origin, physical/mental disability, sexual orientation, or gender identity.”

According to the Denver police department, graffiti crime is on the rise. So far in 2021, there have been already been 461 acts of criminal mischief involving graffiti, already more than in each of the five years before. In all of 2020, 367 criminal acts of graffiti were reported followed by 371 in 2019 and 321 in 2018. Only 2017 came close, when tagging crimes hit 450.

Front Range Catholic Church disruptions

Denver Police have not publicly identified the person who attacked the downtown Basilica, but they told Father Morehead that they know who the woman is and where she lives. Police spokesperson Magee said they are still running down leads to fit the puzzle pieces together.

“The investigation is ongoing and we are working diligently to move it forward,” Magee said.

Morehead told The Denver Gazette that traffic halo cameras and surveillance from nearby businesses caught a woman tagging heinous messages in red spray paint Sunday morning at around 7:45 a.m. in a tagging attack which took fifteen minutes and escaped church security guard rounds. He said a guard caught the alleged tagger within a minute of her vandalism, but that the woman gave her the finger and drove away.

Caught On Camera

Morehead was shown surveillance video. He says as the lone tagger painted “Satan Lives” on the century-old brass front doors, a passerby spoke with the woman, presumably telling her to stop. She then drove around the street, parked on Logan, and jumped over a fence, spraying lewd crimson messages over a statue of Pope John Paul II. Parishioners strolling to the front doors for 8:30 Mass were shocked to see upside-down crosses and words like “KKK,” “White Supremacist” and “Illuminati” scrawled on the building walls and doors.  

Halo cam footage followed the alleged tagger’s car as it drove away from the crime which Morehead says hits him in the gut.

“Pope John Paul II is a hero of mine. He stayed in my house during World Youth Day in 1993. I even sit in the chair he used during his stay here,” the 37 year old priest, who was just assigned to the Basilica this past July, told the Gazette.

Around two hours later and 12 miles to the south, a disturbance at a second Front Range Catholic church was recorded as cameras rolled on it’s 9:30 am Mass. A little under a half hour into Littleton’s St. Francis Cabrini Catholic Church’s recording , a woman who “didn’t look like she belonged” strode in the front door. “One of our staff saw her walking through the parking lot,” Ubowski said. He said the woman was wearing a dark fur hat, heavy coat and gay pride sweatshirt and that she walked up to the altar mumbling and waving her arms. “She insulted a lot of people, but committed no crime,” said Ubowski, a retired forensic document examiner with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation. “People have a misunderstanding of what the Church is and what it teaches.”

Other churches in the Denver area have also been vandalized recently. In late September, windows were smashed and tires slashed at Boulder’s Sacred Heart of Mary church. Earlier, someone sprayed graffiti on the St. Louis Catholic Church in Louisville.

None of the churches have reported further incidents of vandalism or disruptions and the CU campus police report that a the Boulder bus stop graffiti was an isolated incident.