Various unsolved cases involving Coloradans have gotten quite a bit of media attention over the years – that of JonBenét Ramsey, to name one that nearly every American would recognize. That said, one very disturbing case many people have never heard of is that involving the death of Oakey Albert “Al” Kite, Jr.

Editor’s Note: This piece contains graphic content related to a homicide. Reader discretion is advised.

Al Kite was found dead in the basement of his Aurora townhome on S. Helena Street on May 24, 2004, bound, beaten, tortured, and “nearly decapiated” with his own kitchen knives. As of June 2025, the case remains unsolved.

While on Oxygen television show The DNA of Murder with Paul Holes, an Aurora police detective stated that it was believed the torture of Al Kite lasted for hours, also saying “some of the injuries were things I’d never seen before. Like a knife into above the eye, into the ears, down through the shoulders, just a crazy amount of torture.”

In years since his death, Al, 53 at the time he died, has been described as a well-liked member of the community with no known enemies. This randomness adds to the already disturbing nature of the case.

While leads on a suspect have been sparse in decades that followed, Al Kite’s death seems to be connected to an unknown man who identified himself as Robert Cooper.

Prior to his death, Kite placed an advertisement in the newspaper and online related to his search for a roommate – a man identifying himself as Robert Cooper answered the call. Cooper claimed to be from the East Coast, moving to Denver for a job at Wells Fargo Bank – though information he had provided to Kite for his rental application would later prove to be false.

The few witnesses who saw Cooper described him to authorities as a white male in his 40s or 50s, about five-foot-ten and between 170 to 180 pounds. It was also said he walked with a limp and used a cane, possibly having a Romanian accent, too.

One of Al Kite’s neighbors reportedly saw an unknown man leaving Al’s property on May 19 – a day after Kite met with Cooper and agreed to rent him the basement of his home. Kite’s girlfriend at the time of his death also noted that Cooper had been at Kite’s home about three weeks before the killing, too, though she wasn’t introduced to him. Then, on May 24, Al’s employer reported that he no-showed for work that day, prompting suspicion that something may be wrong as he was typically a very reliable employee. Amid that suspicion, Al Kite’s home was searched and his body was found, with authorities believing Al was killed on May 22.

It’s suspected that Cooper brutally tortured and killed Kite, followed by Cooper cleaning up the crime scene and removing pieces of evidence. Following Kite’s death, it’s also believed that Cooper took Kite’s vehicle to a nearby Wells Fargo ATM with Kite’s debit card in hand. A masked man was photographed behind the wheel of Kite’s vehicle withdrawing about $1,000 from Kite’s account. Kite’s vehicle was eventually returned to a spot near his home, but Cooper was never found.

DNA phenotyping would later pin Cooper as being of southeastern European descent – on par with the detail related to a possible Romanian accent. That said, years that have followed have meant little progress in the case.

Various people involved in the case and in the reporting of Al Kite’s death have posed their own theories, one of which was posed by Paul Holes on the aforementioned Oxygen tv show – that the killer could have been involved in Turkish Hezbollah, a group that disbanded in the early 2000s. Holes suggests that bruises on Kite’s feet could have been evidence that a torture method caused falaka was conducted – a type of foot-beating that has ties to southeastern Europe. This detail coupled with the Romanian accent and the specific way that Kite was tied up were used by Holes to support this thought – that a Turkish Hezbollah member fled Europe and immigrated to the United States after the disbanding of the group, continuing signature torture practices in the Denver metro area with Al.

“When he moves away from [the Turkish Hezbollah], he’s now not getting that gratification of [torturing] somebody. And so now he becomes that predator … Al just happened to be the person that he chose,” said Holes when discussing that theory.

More than two decades after Al Kite’s death, the case remains unsolved. Anyone with information that may be related to the case should contact the Aurora Police Department or the local FBI office.

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