A Colorado man arrested in Utah earlier this year for threatening to "kill as many girls as (he saw)" has been sentenced to serve up to five years in prison, despite prosecutors' recommendation that he serve probation.
Christopher Wayne Cleary, 27, of Denver, pleaded guilty to a charge of attempt to make a terroristic threat as part of a plea deal with Utah County prosecutors, according to The Deseret News. Cleary, who was arrested in Provo in January, was already on probation in Colorado on two previous convictions of stalking women, the newspaper reported.
Cleary expressed remorse over his words.
"I'm just sorry for what happened," Cleary told the court, according to the News.
Prosecutors in Utah negotiated a plea deal with Cleary for a third-degree felony charge instead of the second-degree felony with which he was initially charged, the News reported. In exchange for his plea -- which would let them secure a felony conviction -- they agreed to recommend no jail time.
The plea bargain was aimed at helping Colorado authorities send Cleary to prison for violating his probation in the stalking cases, the News reported.
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Fourth District Judge Christine Johnson on Thursday declined to take the state up on its recommendation, citing her uncertainty of whether Cleary would serve any jail time for probation violation in Colorado, the newspaper said.
"I don't want to be in the position of guessing what Colorado is going to do," Johnson said during Cleary's sentencing hearing.
Cleary was arrested Jan. 19, the same day multiple women's marches were being held in Utah and throughout the country, based on an alarming Facebook post he wrote the night before, the News said. In the post, he bemoaned his lack of romantic prospects and, like several mass shooters who have targeted women, blamed the opposite sex for his plight.
"All I wanted was a girlfriend," Cleary wrote, according to a police affidavit obtained by The Denver Post. "All I wanted was to be loved, yet no one cares about me. I'm 27 years old and I've never had a girlfriend before, and I'm still a virgin. This is why I'm planning on shooting up a public place soon and being the next mass shooter 'cause I'm ready to die and all the girls the turned me down is going to make it right by killing as many girls as I see."
Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Credit: AP Photo/Rick Bowmer
Another post stated, "There's nothing more dangerous than (a) man ready to die," the Post reported.
Cleary’s threats alarmed state and federal authorities in Colorado and neighboring Utah, where they traced his cellphone the following day. He was arrested at a McDonald’s in Provo and charged with making a terroristic threat.
Following his arrest, Cleary told investigators he was "upset and not thinking clearly" when he wrote the Facebook posts. According to the Post, he deleted the threats after other people called him and threatened him.
Court records obtained by multiple newspapers paint a disturbing portrait of Cleary, who was accused of stalking and harassment by at least eight women and girls dating back at least seven years. The News reported that Cleary was also accused of threatening to bomb a grocery store in 2013 and threatened to commit a mass shooting at a mental health facility in 2016.
An 18-year-old Arvada woman called police on New Year's Eve 2015 and reported that Cleary, with whom she'd been chatting on Facebook, began harassing her online and over the phone after she declined to go on a date with him. According to the Post, the woman told detectives he would use aliases, including one alias on Facebook named John Coleman.
"I've been watching you," the person claiming to be Coleman wrote to her on Facebook. "Soon here, you'll be lying in your deathbed."
During that investigation, Arvada detectives found details of a previous criminal investigation in which Cleary told another woman who spurned his advances she should kill herself, the Post reported. He also posted her name and phone number in an online sex ad, offering her services for $20, court records show.
In a prior misdemeanor harassment case from earlier in 2015, Cleary was convicted after talking a woman into posing naked for him and then posting the picture to a fake Facebook page in her name, the newspaper reported.
A harassment case from Denver found Cleary accused of writing threatening messages to a 17-year-old girl, including a message that said, "I own multipul (sic) guns. I can have u dead in a second. One day I'ma snap and kill everyone," according to court documents.
A second Denver case involved a 19-year-old woman who said she lived with Cleary in a hotel room for two weeks, during which time he choked her and urinated on her, the court documents said.
Cleary was convicted in October 2016 on two counts of stalking and harassment involving two of the three alleged victims in Arvada, the Post said. He was sentenced to two years of probation.
Cleary was arrested in yet another stalking case less than a year later. A 43-year-old Lakewood woman who had dated him called 911 Aug. 5, 2017, to report Cleary was stalking her.
He was arrested outside the woman's house. According to the Post, Cleary told investigators the woman was the only person who loved him and he was lonely without her.
The woman told police she and Cleary had a sexual relationship -- contradicting Cleary’s claim earlier this year that he was a virgin.
Credit: Utah County Jail via AP
Credit: Utah County Jail via AP
The victim told police Cleary, who began stalking her when she broke off the relationship, had called her 45 times that day, threatening her and telling her he hoped she would die.
"I am going to burn your house down," Cleary told her, according to court records. "I am going to send people to your house to kill you."
Cleary also posted her phone number and address on Craigslist “soliciting sexual acts and rape,” according to a probable cause statement in the case. The woman said she’d received multiple phone calls from strangers due to the ad.
The woman told police she lost 20 pounds and began having nightmares and anxiety attacks because of the stalking, the Post reported.
Cleary pleaded guilty to charges of felony stalking and making threats, the newspaper said. A judge in Jefferson County sentenced him last May to three years of probation.
Despite having violated his probation on the Arvada cases, he was not jailed following his guilty plea in the case involving the Lakewood woman, the Post reported. Pam Russell, a spokeswoman for the Jefferson County District Attorney's Office, said Cleary's mental health played a part in his sentencing in that case, as well as in his 2016 stalking conviction, which was handled in Adult Mental Health Court.
"The courts decided to let his mental health issues be a big component of his treatment," Russell told the Post.
Cleary’s defense attorney in the most recent case, Dustin Parmley, said this week that his client’s violent words are related to his mental illness, which he was reportedly diagnosed with at age 10. Cleary told investigators he takes medication for an impulse control disorder.
Parmley said Cleary's words have never turned to action. Investigators found no evidence that Cleary had weapons or attempted to obtain any, the Post said.
The newspaper reported that four of the criminal investigations into Cleary ended without charges filed against him.
Cleary will serve his time in Utah before being transferred to Colorado to face probation violation charges there, the News reported. An official with the Utah Board of Pardons and Parole told the paper his earliest hearing could take place as soon as September.
The News said the board could potentially set a release date at that time, or members could decide to keep him in prison. Cleary could serve the entire five years of his sentence before being returned to Colorado.
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