A fresh murder charge in Englewood has widened the debate over how Colorado classified and released a man already known to the system.
DENVER, Colo. — A fourth homicide charge against Ricky Lee Roybal-Smith has intensified scrutiny of Colorado’s parole system, where records had shifted him from very high risk to moderate risk before his release and the three killings prosecutors say followed in 2025.
At the center of the case is not only what prosecutors say Roybal-Smith did, but what state and local systems decided before and after each violent episode. The 38-year-old defendant now faces allegations tied to a 2022 death in Englewood, two fatal stabbings in Aurora and the killing of a cellmate in Denver. Together, the cases have put fresh attention on parole assessments, prior warning signs and the handling of a detainee once he was back in custody.
Long before the latest filing, Roybal-Smith had spent years moving through the correctional system. Reporting on his record found that Colorado officials had repeatedly rated him as very high risk for recidivism. Then, in 2022, his classification was lowered to moderate risk. That status remained important because it shaped how he was supervised and how his later release was understood by the public. Investigative reports said some of the score changes appeared to involve errors, including factors that normally should not have shifted. State agencies have not publicly laid out a full explanation for every change in his assessment history, leaving a central issue unresolved even as the criminal cases mounted.
The public consequences of those decisions came into view in 2025. Roybal-Smith was paroled again in January of that year. On June 29, authorities say, two men were stabbed to death in Aurora within hours of each other. Jesse Shafer, 27, was found on Moline Street after an early morning attack. Scott Davenport, 61, was later found near Peoria Street south of East Colfax Avenue. Investigators said the killings were connected, and both men were identified as homeless. By that evening, Roybal-Smith was under arrest in Denver in a hit-and-run involving pedestrians. A case that had begun as a parole controversy had by then become a multi-agency homicide investigation.
The next failure point, critics say, may have come inside the jail. Roybal-Smith was booked in Denver at about 11 p.m. on June 29. Around 2:15 a.m. the next morning, deputies responded after he told them his cellmate, Vincent Chacon, 36, was choking on an apple. Chacon was pronounced dead, and investigators later said the cause was strangulation, not accidental choking. His family publicly demanded answers about why he had been housed with Roybal-Smith in the first place and why he was still in custody on a lower-level matter. That line of criticism broadened the case beyond parole paperwork to jail intake and cell assignment decisions.
The fourth charge reaches back to a point when the same concerns could already have been visible. Prosecutors now say Roybal-Smith is responsible for the June 22, 2022 death of Meg Eberhart in Englewood. She was found unconscious near a light-rail station after getting out of a Lyft around 3 a.m. Her driver reported hearing her scream. Police believed early on that Roybal-Smith was a main suspect, but the case did not move immediately because the cause of death was ruled undetermined. One day earlier, he had been accused of threatening customers at a Walmart in the same area, a case that led to a four-year sentence he did not fully serve.
The legal picture is now split across jurisdictions but joined by the same pattern of official review. Arapahoe County prosecutors have filed second-degree murder in Eberhart’s death. Separate first-degree murder cases grew out of the Aurora stabbings and the Denver jail death. Court proceedings will test the evidence county by county, while the political and institutional fallout is likely to focus on whether a man with this record should have been downgraded, released or paired with another inmate. Law enforcement agencies have stressed the work of detectives and prosecutors, but those explanations do not answer the underlying administrative questions that made the criminal allegations more explosive.
The result is a case with two timelines running at once. One belongs to investigators piecing together violence from 2022 and 2025. The other belongs to the state itself, where classifications, release decisions and placement choices now sit under the same harsh light. Families of the dead are waiting for trials. Agencies face demands for answers. And Colorado’s handling of risk, once a technical issue buried in paperwork, has become part of the story in plain public view.
The next major turn is expected in court, where prosecutors will begin pressing the four homicide cases on separate tracks while pressure remains on officials to explain the decisions that came before them.
Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.