Elijah Caudill, the suspect in the 16th Street Mall quadruple stabbing, appeared talkative in a Denver District Court room Friday morning, thick hair covering his eyes.

While Caudill was initially set for a preliminary hearing Tuesday on charges of first-degree murder, two counts of attempted murder, two counts of assault and four violent crime sentence enhancers, his defense attorneys asked Judge Karen Brody on Friday for a competency evaluation to be completed prior to further hearings.

The 24-year-old suspect continued to talk to his appointed defender, Paloma Calipo, while his other defense attorney, Ariana Burnette, discussed the evaluation with the court.

Friday marked nearly four months since Caudill was arrested following an alleged spree of stabbings in the city’s blocks-long shopping district that injured two and killed two others between Jan. 11-12.

• The first stabbing occurred at 16th and Tremont streets at 5:12 pm. on Jan. 11. The 49-year-old male victim, who was slashed in the face, went to the hospital on his own and was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.
• The second stabbing occurred at 16th and California streets about five minutes later at 5:17 p.m. The female victim, 71-year-old Celinda Levno, was stabbed in the throat and taken to a hospital, where she died.
• The third stabbing occurred at 16th and Lawrence streets at about 5:54 p.m., the victim was a 62-year-old man who was stabbed in the arm and torso and taken to the hospital with serious injuries. 
• The fourth stabbing occurred at 16th and Wynkoop streets around 8:06 p.m. on Jan. 12. The male victim, 34-year-old Nicholas Burkett, was taken to a hospital and later died from his injuries.

Caudill was arrested shortly after the fourth stabbing on that Sunday evening and booked into the Denver County jail without bond. He was charged by the Denver District Attorney’s Office on Jan. 17.

The suspect’s mental health and ability to stand trial have continued to be focal points in the case since January, with the defense previously saying Caudill suffered from an “obvious, severe and debilitating mental illness” in a Jan. 17 motion to limit pre-trial publicity and that the judge deny any requests for expanded media coverage in the ongoing case, according to court records.

Brody eventually approved the motion on Jan. 24, denying expanded media coverage requests and banning livestreaming of the case.

Expansive record and mental health concerns

Caudill has been arrested 15 times since 2018 in metro Denver on charges that included criminal mischief, disturbing the peace, robbery, menacing and twice for sex assault, according to court records.

In August 2021, Caudill lunged at the manager of a Commerce City apartment complex with a knife and threatened to cut the man’s throat before he fled. He was arrested on charges of felony menacing and the case was closed in June 2022.

He was considered homeless at the time of the arrest.

His probation officer following the case filed a motion seeking to revoke his probation and requested that the judge order Caudill to complete what’s known as “cognitive behavioral therapy” to address “anti-social behaviors.”

Caudill didn’t complete the therapy, which led to another motion to revoke his probation. In that case, the judge checked a box in a court order that said: “There is reason to believe the defendant poses substantial risk of serious harm to others,” the Denver Gazette’s news partner, 9NEWS, reported.

Three months later, Caudill followed a woman into a Target store in Thornton, grabbed her purse and ran away without it. The case was closed in January 2023.

It appeared that Caudill was sentenced to a year of supervised probation for an assault conviction on June 3, 2024, court records show, and was arrested again on Aug. 8 while in custody at the Denver Detention Center after he kicked a glass door repeatedly and shattered it in the jail’s recreation yard.

Records obtained by The Denver Gazette’s news partner, 9NEWS, detailed two times when it was reported that Caudill was hearing voices.

A Colorado Department of Corrections record of Caudill’s history in the prison system reported an incident on May 20, 2023, in which he began yelling in a day room. When asked if he was OK, he responded “yes” — “just that the voices in his head were bothering him today.”

A Department of Corrections case manager’s Feb. 21, 2024, report of a conversation with someone who had talked to Caudill in jail reported that he was “hearing voices and refusing to take his meds.”

Caudill was ultimately accepted by the Bridges Program — a statewide program that facilitates collaboration between the criminal justice and mental health systems that has placed court liaisons throughout Colorado’s 22 judicial districts — on Nov. 12, with the promise of reporting to the program via the bus in Aurora. His defense attorney claimed he would be staying at a home in Aurora, as well, according to court records.

He was arrested in connection to the stabbings just two months later.

“For a man like that, at 24 years old, to become mentally ill and drug addicted himself and then become a murderer. That’s it for his life?” Wayne Burkett, the father of victim Nicholas Burkett, said of the suspect during a vigil a few days after the stabbing. “That’s not justice. It’s just paying the price for what you’ve done.”

Competency evaluation

Now, Caudill will be evaluated to see if he is mentally competent to stand trial — meaning he is able to understand court proceedings and help his lawyers in his defense.

The evaluation will be done by the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo at the Colorado Department of Human Services in Denver.

The evaluation is supposed to be done within 21 days, per court requirement, but Brody balked at the idea of it occurring in time.

“I think this is going to take a little bit of time, which is probably an understatement,” Brody said Friday morning.

If evaluators find Caudill incompetent, the process may be significantly delayed, with Caudill having to wait to get into the hospital and then staying until he is deemed competent.

The state has the capacity to treat 516 people at the state-run Colorado Mental Health Institute in Pueblo. But due to the number of beds and the lack of mental health professionals in the field, some in-custody defendants have had to wait up to a year or longer before inpatient space becomes available for restoration services.

For example, Ahmad Alissa — the man convicted of shooting and killing 10 people at a King Soopers in Boulder in 2021 — saw around a two-year pause on his trial due to delays in the Colorado Mental Health Institute. 

Caudill’s attorneys are due back in court on June 6 for a status hearing, but Caudill is not required to attend. 

Former Denver Gazette reporter Carol McKinley and the Denver Gazette’s news partner, 9NEWS, contributed to this report.