Ex-GI guilty in teen's 2001 slaying

By Lance Benzel, The Gazette

Published August 28, 2008 at 12:05 a.m.

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A former Fort Carson soldier was found guilty of murder Wednesday afternoon in a drug-related murder conspiracy in 2001 that ended in the slaying of a 19- year-old college student.

Jurors found Ryan Krueger, 31, guilty of first-degree murder and conspiracy in the April 11, 2001, beating death of Patricia Ann Elliott, a freshman at University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. She was bludgeoned with a dumbbell, strangled with a blanket and left in the bathtub at her Colorado Springs townhouse.

Elliott had been dealing ecstasy and marijuana for Krueger, prosecutors said. Krueger enlisted two men to kill her because he believed she was a "snitch."

Krueger received a life sentence on the murder charge and a concurrent sentence of 48 years with five years of probation for conspiracy in sentencing before District Court Judge Kirk S. Samelson.

Addressing the court after the verdict, the victim's father, David Elliott, said the former soldier had disgraced his uniform for the past eight years. It was "ironic," then, that he would be returned to one to serve his life sentence, he said.

Her mother, Connie Elliott, said afterward that she "boiled inside" and made fists on her lap during the trial as Krueger mounted his own defense, having fired his defense attorneys earlier this summer.

For complete Gazette story, click here.

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