On the morning of Aug. 15, 2015, Jose Frias-Olivas, 61, left his daughter's Denver home, where he was visiting, to take a walk in the park. On his walk and in broad daylight, alone and unarmed, he was shot to death.
Police responded to the shooting at 10:23 a.m. at South Federal Boulevard and West Vassar Avenue and found Frias-Olivas face down with a gunshot wound to the back of his head, according to an arrest affidavit. He was pronounced dead on scene.
The Denver Police Crime Scene Unit found a single Remington .22 caliber cartridge case on the trail just east of Frias-Olivas's body and several witnesses heard two to three gunshots and saw several people running away from the area.
Several witnesses described the men running from the scene, and that one had tattoos on his face — one over his eye that looked the claw marks on Monster energy drinks, according to the arrest affidavit.
Denver Police actually arrested suspect Nicholas Lujan, 29, in October of 2015 on a robbery charge and the detectives noticed the claw mark tattoo.
Northglenn police found the Ruger handgun in a seized Acura. Ballistics tests showed the .22 casing matched the gun — which had been reported stolen, the affidavit shows.
In September 2016, detectives discovered DNA from the murder weapon's magazine. Lujan's DNA was already on file in the CODIS (Combined DNA Index System) database and identified him as the homicide suspect.
Witnesses did not cooperate and the investigation as they said Lujan was in the GKI street gang and went by "Caesar," according to the affidavit.
In 2017, someone called Crime Stoppers and reported Lujan had bragged that "he killed that old man on feds ... He was supposed to rob him, but decided to kill him instead. He laughed and said he got away with murder," according to the affidavit.
Investigators got a DNA sample from Lujan in 2018 as he was serving time on a robbery conviction in the Limon Correctional Facility. It matched the DNA on the Ruger magazine. Also in 2018, a witness identified Lujan out of a photo lineup as one of the people running from the scene that day.
One of the suspects in that group later told detectives Lujan ran to a nearby apartment and washed his hands with bleach, and cleaned the gun, according to the affidavit. But the magazine was overlooked and that's where Lujan's DNA was discovered.
In 2021, the Denver cold case team arrested Lujan and charged him in Frias-Olivas' murder.
On Friday, Lujan pleaded guilty to one count of second-degree murder, according to a news release from the Denver District Attorney's office. He is scheduled to be sentenced June 9.
"This was a horrific murder and I am very proud of our Cold Case Unit and that of the Denver Police Department for working long and hard to get justice for Mr. Frias-Olivas," Denver District Attorney Beth McCann said in the news release.
Attempts to reach Frias-Olivas family Thursday were unsuccessful.
