Helen Hand to brother's murderer, Amber Torrez: 'I need for you to be well' | John Moore

Helen Hand has seen the face of Amber Torrez a hundred times. In courtrooms. In news coverage. On the maudlin “Murderperdia” web site she came across on the web.

But when Hand came face-to-face with Torrez on March 24 in Denver’s Lindsey-Flanigan Courthouse, she didn’t recognize the woman who stabbed her brother 30 times back in 2004.

Gone was the wild, drug-addled schizophrenic who was found incompetent to stand trial for the grisly murders of John Hand – founder of the Colorado Free University and Firehouse Theatre Company – and immigrant cab driver Mesfin Gezahegn. Gone was the empty-eyed animal with the pronounced neck scar from having had her own throat slit three years before. The woman who killed, she said, because she claimed to be a government assassin of traitors.

“I vividly remember just looking at her in the courtroom back in 2004 … and I mean, she looked insane,” Hand said. “There was just an absence, a glaze, like she wasn't a fully present person.”

In her place now was “an unquestionably much healthier person,” Hand said. “She was thinner than she was back then. Her hair was in an attractive French braid. She looked human. She looked like a person.”

What happened in that Denver courtroom last month had been in the works for eight years. Back in 2015, Torrez was granted off-grounds privileges from the Colorado Mental Health Hospital in Pueblo – and Hand, at the time, was quoted as saying, "I wouldn't want to meet her on the street.” In 2019, Torrez was given a partial, supervised release from the state hospital, allowing her to live in the Pueblo community. And last month, a Denver judge granted Torrez’s unconditional release from all further supervision, without ever standing trial for her two murders. Hand had no basis (or power) to object – but she did have one request.

“I only asked that she make some sort of acknowledgement of the harm that she has done – or issue an apology of some kind,” Hand said.

Last month, Hand heard Torrez read her letter of apology in open court. In an eight-paragraph statement, Torrez expressed sympathy to both families, she accepted responsibility for her actions, and she credited her treatment program at the state hospital for her recovery. She said she has been mentally stable since doctors found the right drug for her 13 years ago. She promised that she has dug deep into the underlying issues for her mental illness and now has new faith, new beliefs and is making new choices. She vowed to spend the rest of her life making amends for the harm she has done.

Now, Helen Hand is no fool. She is a clinical psychologist with a PhD and has treated thousands of mentally ill people. And her reaction was … mixed. She appreciated the effort, but it seemed a bit perfunctory. Like it checked all the necessary boxes. Hand also knows just about anyone could have written that letter for her. But one section did resonate. 

“Ironically, the events that led up to my arrest, incarceration, hospitalization and treatment actually SAVED MY LIFE,” Torrez wrote. “Before all of this, I wasn't even aware that I had a mental illness. ... I am very sad that two lives were lost because I was unaware of my need for treatment. I have pledged to devote my LIFE to mental health awareness in the community.”

That part made an impression on Hand because the words she was hearing matched what she was now seeing with her own eyes. “This was a new person – physically and otherwise – that I was seeing in court,” Hand said. “And she could not have been a new person if she hadn't had 19 years of treatment.

“Make no mistake: I do not forgive her. And I don't like the fact that my brother's murder helped give new life to the person who took it. But if all of these professionals are saying she has completed her treatment … if they are saying to Amber, ‘Go forth and prosper’ … then I want her to prosper. I don't want to be an obstacle to her well-being.”

John Hand, storyteller

In large part, John Hand made his sister who she is – first in life, and then, unalterably, in death. John, three years older, was the risk-taker of the two growing up. “He was the big brother who went out into the world and did fascinating, exciting things,” said Helen. “And I was the timid, more shy little sister who was less confident and more socially awkward.”

As kids, Helen had a horrible fear of the dark. So her big brother would slip into her bedroom, hop on her other twin bed and tell her stories. Like “Swiss Family Robinson,” “Lost in Space” or some wild adventure of his own invention that thrilled Helen to the core and made her feel safe and accepted.

Until one night, when John snuggled up to his little sister and said, “Helen, you tell the story tonight.”

“I remember just being terrified,” Helen said. “There was no way that I could measure up. But I launched into a story and made the best of it because I couldn't disappoint my big brother. And at the end of it, he told me: ‘That was really good.’” For Helen, it was like getting an instant infusion of courage and self-confidence.

When John Hand was forever taken from her in 2004, about the only thing Helen could do with her grief was to once again face her fear, step up and tell the story in John’s place. His death changed the trajectory of her life in every conceivable way – some of them, she admits, in paradoxically positive ways. 

John Hand, who dreamed up Denver's annual Capitol Hill People's Fair, started the Colorado Free University in 1987 out of the ashes of the Denver Free University. The “Free” of the name comes from the belief that there should be no barriers to learning, and that students should have the freedom to choose what they want to learn. And in 2002, with no theater experience to speak of, John launched the Firehouse Theater Company to give students and community members the opportunity to perform and grow their confidence.

Helen has made it her life’s work to make sure both missions have continued to this day.

“I was happy enough being a psychologist, but keeping John’s legacy alive helped me manage my grief,” said Hand, who serves as both president of Colorado Free University and as Artistic Director of the Firehouse Theater Company. Since John’s death, Helen has produced more than 60 plays and created performance opportunities for about 350 actors of all experience levels in the intimate, 86-seat John Hand Theatre on the Lowry campus.

Honoring her brother, Hand said, “has made me go places I never would've gone before. And it's kept me in relationship to him in ways that have been really fun. I feel like I've been able to do some things with my life that I would have been too timid to do myself if I hadn't been thrust into this role.”

Helen remembers her brother as a rabble-rouser and a shaker-upper and an initiator. “People always talked about the twinkle in his eye,” she said.” He loved to bring people together and get people doing interesting things. He was a catalyst for creativity. He incited people to try new things and take chances.”

But he was also, to his detriment, “drawn to troubled people sometimes,” she said. He was always trying to heal wounded birds – and friends believe he was trying to help Torrez when she robbed and murdered him at his Hilltop home on March 28, 2004. He was 55 years old.

In the wildest, most impossible of coincidences, Torrez was only arrested because, the next night, a Denver woman named Stacey Nelms watched in helpless horror from her apartment window as Torrez stabbed the taxi driver 39 times. That witness turned out to be a local actor who that same year performed at Firehouse in a stage mystery called “Murderers.”

‘Live your life well from today on’

After Torrez read her letter of apology in open court last month, it was Hand’s turn to speak, buffered by her husband and daughter. She took heart seeing that Torrez had about 10 friends and family present and supporting her. “In the first three years of hearings, Hand said, “I don’t remember a single person being there for her.”

Helen talked about John’s two children, who were just entering adulthood when they were forever deprived of their father. “That’s the real loss – because they adored him,” she said. “They are the true victims.”

Helen told the judge she wants to believe that what the hospital evaluators have said is true, and that what Amber Torrez said in her statement is true: That she is ready to go back into the world without supervision and be OK and not do any further harm. Then she addressed Torrez directly.

“I told Amber, ‘The best apology that you could make would be for you to live your life well from today on.’ I said, ‘I hope that you stay mindful of both your health and your mental health. I hope that you take care of yourself, that you stay living in connection with other people, and that you find ways to be of service to others.’” 

Torrez’s defense attorney had told Hand that the potential for forgiveness would have a big impact on Torrez’s capacity to be OK going forward. “But I didn't feel that I could give her forgiveness, because I don't really know her,” Hand said. “I could only go on what I could see. And what I conveyed to her is that, ’If all this is true, then I can support you being out in the world.”

After issuing the order granting Torrez’s unsupervised release, the judge thanked Helen. So did the defense attorney. So did an exiting woman Helen believes was perhaps Torrez’s mother.

In the weeks that have followed, Hand has launched yet another production at the John Hand Theatre – “A Shayna Maidel,” the story of two sisters, one a survivor of Nazi concentration camps, meeting after a separation of almost 20 years. And she’s come to see the blessing in Torrez’s apparent transformation.

“For me to accept the idea that Amber is out there in the community, I need for her to be well,” Hand said. “In some weird way, there is something a little redemptive for me if she is well than if she were just some monster, and she were locked up forever, and that's the end of the story.

“That was a horrible person who was out there in the world in 2004, and she did horrible things, and my brother was lost as a result of that. The idea that what happened to my brother was because somebody was so damaged herself is a tragedy for John – but it is a tragedy for Amber, too.

“I can't ever have my brother back. But this is Amber’s opportunity. And if she can become a person who contributes to the community, then my brother's loss is not just a totally ugly, senseless story. And if I don't wish her well and hope for the best for her, then there's an opportunity in this tragedy that won't be actualized.”

I asked Hand what her brother might say to Amber today.

“I think he would tell her to be good to people – and let people be good to her,” she said. “I think he would say to Amber: ‘Just be good from here.’”

“I'm wanting to give her that grace.”