Peo v. Lotz

Colorado Court of Appeals·Decided September 3, 2026·No. 23CA1111·Unpublished

Opinion

23CA1111 Peo v Lotz 09-03-2026 COLORADO COURT OF APPEALS

Court of Appeals No. 23CA1111 Jefferson County District Court No. 22CR644 Honorable Christopher Zenisek, Judge

The People of the State of Colorado, Plaintiff-Appellee, v. Wayne Richard Lotz, Defendant-Appellant.

JUDGMENT AFFIRMED AND CASE REMANDED WITH DIRECTIONS

Division VI

Opinion by JUDGE GROVE

Gomez and Moultrie, JJ., concur

NOT PUBLISHED PURSUANT TO C.A.R. 35(e)

Announced September 3, 2026

Philip J. Weiser, Attorney General, Allison S. Block, Assistant Attorney General, Denver, Colorado, for Plaintiff-Appellee

Megan A. Ring, Colorado State Public Defender, Andrea R. Gammell, Deputy State Public Defender, Denver, Colorado, for Defendant-Appellant

¶1 Defendant, Wayne Richard Lotz, appeals the judgment of conviction after a jury found him guilty of first degree murder after deliberation, tampering with a deceased human body, aggravated motor vehicle theft, tampering with physical evidence, and criminal possession of a financial transaction device. We affirm the convictions but remand the case to the trial court for correction of the mittimus.

I. Background

¶2 A reasonable jury could have found the following facts based on the evidence presented at trial.

¶3 Lotz and his girlfriend — the victim — had been in an on-and- off relationship for several years. They had a history of domestic violence that led to police intervention on multiple occasions and resulted in several protection orders in which the victim was the protected party.

¶4 One such conflict between Lotz and the victim occurred on February 7, 2022, while the victim was on the phone with her son. The victim recorded part of the conflict on her phone as she followed Lotz across the yard of her home. Although some of the dialogue in the video is difficult to understand, the victim can be

heard asking Lotz why he was going to get his gun and Lotz responding, “Part of it is going to be suicide, trust me.” The son, who apparently overheard some of the conflict during the phone call, reported the incident to the police and stayed in contact with his mother. After three days, the victim stopped responding to her son’s messages.

¶5 The last day the victim was seen or heard from was February 10, 2022. Three days after that, having been unable to reach the victim, a friend contacted law enforcement. Deputies went to the victim’s home and found the house dark but for an apparent fire in the fireplace. They heard dogs barking inside, but when no one answered the door, the deputies left.

¶6 The next day, the victim’s son gave the friend’s husband permission to enter the home. He forced his way in and found the victim’s dogs inside and a fire in the pellet stove, but neither Lotz nor the victim was there. The friend called the sheriff’s office again to report that the victim was missing. This time, when deputies visited the home, they found suspected blood outside and inside the house, along with cleaning supplies and the victim’s phone. The victim’s car was not at the property.

¶7 Law enforcement opened an investigation and searched for Lotz’s and the victim’s vehicles. Using license plate readers and surveillance video, they learned that Lotz had driven the victim’s car on February 11 and February 14 and that Lotz’s truck had been impounded at a tow yard for almost a month.

¶8 On February 14, Lotz drove the victim’s car to the tow yard. Deputies observed him walking back and forth between his truck and the victim’s car. Then, before Lotz could drive his truck away from the lot, the deputies stopped him. During the stop, the deputies saw a phone and a six-inch knife wrapped in a paper towel in plain view in Lotz’s truck. They also found the victim’s credit card in Lotz’s pocket.

¶9 That afternoon, deputies conducted various forensic tests in the victim’s home and car. Her car and many items and places around her home tested presumptively positive for blood, and there was evidence that someone had tried to clean it up. (Forensic testing later identified both Lotz and the victim as contributors to the DNA collected from the victim’s car and her home, although several tested items also revealed the presence of a third unknown contributor.)

¶ 10 Deputies also obtained search warrants for Lotz’s truck, pursuant to which they found Lotz’s phone, the victim’s jewelry, keys to the victim’s car, and floormats that appeared to be from the victim’s car and tested presumptively positive for blood. A search of Lotz’s phone also revealed that he had researched places to sell or pawn jewelry.

¶ 11 On February 15, five days after the victim went missing, law enforcement found her body in a ravine next to a steep mountain road. Her body was bound in ropes and leashes and hidden under pieces of particle board and rocks. A forensic pathologist could not identify the exact cause of death but believed the victim died by strangulation or blunt force injuries to the head.

¶ 12 Lotz was charged with first degree murder after deliberation, tampering with a deceased human body, menacing, aggravated motor vehicle theft, tampering with physical evidence, criminal possession of a financial transaction device, and two crime of violence sentence enhancers. The jury acquitted Lotz of menacing but found him guilty of all other offenses. The prosecution did not go forward with the crime of violence sentence enhancers, and the court sentenced Lotz to life in prison without the possibility of

parole on the murder count and to consecutive terms of twelve, three, and one and a half years, respectively, on the other felonies.

¶ 13 Lotz now appeals, arguing that (1) the evidence at trial was insufficient to prove he acted after deliberation; (2) the court erroneously denied his motion to suppress evidence obtained from his truck; (3) the court erroneously instructed the jury; and (4) the mittimus incorrectly states that he was convicted of a crime of violence.

II. Sufficiency of Evidence

¶ 14 Lotz contends that the prosecution failed to prove he acted after deliberation. We disagree.

A. Standard of Review and Applicable Law

¶ 15 “[S]ufficiency of the evidence claims may be raised for the first time on appeal and are not subject to plain error review.” McCoy v. People, 2019 CO 44, ¶ 27. We consider the evidence in the light most favorable to the People, giving “the prosecution the benefit of every reasonable inference which may be fairly drawn from the evidence.” Clark v. People, 232 P.3d 1287, 1291-92 (Colo. 2010).

¶ 16 Lotz was charged with first degree murder under section 18-3- 102(1)(a), C.R.S. 2026, which provides that “[a] person commits the

crime of murder in the first degree if[,] . . . [a]fter deliberation and with the intent to cause the death of a person other than himself, he causes the death of that person or of another person.” “The term ‘after deliberation’ means not only intentionally but also that the decision to commit the act has been made after the exercise of reflection and judgment concerning the act.” § 18-3-101(3), C.R.S. 2026. “An act committed after deliberation is never one which has been committed in a hasty or impulsive manner.” Id.

B. Analysis

¶ 17 Lotz contends that there was insufficient evidence to prove that he acted after deliberation. In support of his argument, he points out that “[t]here were no witnesses to the murder”; he “made no statements to the police about it”; “[t]here was no evidence about the events leading up to the murder”; strangulation and blunt force trauma as well as using leashes and rope do not “involve planning or preparation, but instead suggest hasty or impulsive actions”; and “[t]here was no evidence a deadly weapon was used.” He also asserts that the fact that blood was found in the home and car reveals a panicked, not planned, response. We are not convinced.

Free access — add to your briefcase to read the full text and ask questions with AI

Peo v. Lotz, (Colo. Ct. App. 2026).

Peo v. Lotz (Peo v. Lotz) — published by Counsel Stack Legal Research, free access to 12M+ legal documents.

Related

Illinois v. Gates
462 U.S. 213 (Supreme Court, 1983)
People v. Bachicha
940 P.2d 965 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 1996)
People v. McGregor
635 P.2d 912 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 1981)
People v. Madson
638 P.2d 18 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1981)
People v. Padilla
638 P.2d 15 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 1981)
People v. RABES
258 P.3d 937 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2011)
People v. Sanchez
253 P.3d 1260 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2010)
Clark v. People
232 P.3d 1287 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2010)
People v. ZAMARRIPA-DIAZ
187 P.3d 1120 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2008)
People v. Randolph
4 P.3d 477 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2000)
People v. Miller
75 P.3d 1108 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2003)
People v. Jensen
55 P.3d 135 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2001)
Colorado v. Richardson
184 P.3d 755 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2008)
People v. Mendenhall
2015 COA 107 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2015)
People v. Cooper
2016 CO 73 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2016)
People v. Roman
2017 CO 70 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2017)
People v. Cox
2018 CO 88 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2018)
People v. Davis
2019 CO 24 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2019)
McCoy v. People
2019 CO 44 (Supreme Court of Colorado, 2019)
v. Bobian
2019 COA 183 (Colorado Court of Appeals, 2019)