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Weekly writer looks at root causes of violence
On the night of May 30, 1997, 14-year-old Brandaline Rose DuVall was picked up at a Denverarea bus stop by members of a street gang known as the Deuce-Seven Bloods. She was taken to a home where for the next several hours she was raped and tortured by the gang and then, in the early morning hours of May 31, driven into the mountains west of Denver and stabbed to death.
Beginning in February 1999, and ending June 1999, I wrote a six-part series called "Dealing with the Devil" for Westword newpaper, a large Denver weekly. The series covered four murder trials and two death penalty hearings for the men accused of the murder, as well as the related murder of another young woman that set the wheels of this tragedy in motion. However, I felt from the beginning that this series should be more than a crime/court story - that it was a story about the roots of gangs and gang violence, and the impact of such violence on those involved.
I began looking into the murder of Brandy DuVall in June 1997, while investigating the June 1996 murder of another young woman, Venus Montoya. I learned through sources within area police departments and gang counselors that a small Hispanic gang, the Deuce-Seven, was suspected of both murders. My initial story that summer generated a telephone call from Theresa Swinton, the mother of Danny Martinez, one of the young men charged with DuVall's murder. Wracked with guilt for what she perceived as her own role in what occurred, Swinton invited me into her home to give a mother's...