It was an all-too-familiar American scene. Minutes before midnight on Nov. 19, 2022, Anderson Lee Aldrich, then 22, entered Colorado Springs’ only LGBTQ+ nightclub, Club Q, and began shooting an assault weapon into the crowd. Aldrich killed five people and wounded 19 others in the club that was the one safe space for LGBTQ+ people in the deep red conservative town of Colorado Springs.
Prosecutor Alison Connaughty said, “The defendant was prepared to inflict the maximum amount of damage in the minimum amount of time,” adding that Aldrich fired 60 rounds in less than a minute.
On June 18, Aldrich pleaded guilty to 50 federal hate crimes and was sentenced to 55 life terms in prison in that shooting, giving some measure of closure to victims, survivors and the community, some of whom delivered heartbreaking personal testimonies to the court.
Aldrich did not apologize nor make any statement to the victims’ families for the crime that prosecutors said was motivated solely by hatred toward LGBTQ+ people.
As part of a plea agreement, Aldrich repeatedly admitted on Tuesday to evidence of that hate. Prosecutor Alison Connaughty told the media that this acknowledgment was purposefully made part of the plea agreement.
“The admission that these were hate crimes is important to the government, and it’s important to the community of Club Q,” Connaughty said.
The mass shooting at Club Q was a premeditated act, Connaughty said, and the target was not just the individual people killed and wounded, but that it was an assault on a community and a place of safety for LGBTQ+ people. She said that Aldrich attacked that sense of safety and community as much as Aldrich attacked the individuals who were killed and injured.
Connaughty said, “We met people who said ‘this venue saved my life and I was able to feel normal again.’” She added that the weighty sentence and inclusion of hate crimes “sends a message that acts of hate will be met with severe consequences.”
Aldrich is already serving life in prison after pleading guilty to state charges last year. Last June, Aldrich pleaded guilty to five counts of first-degree murder and 46 counts of attempted murder — one for each person at Club Q. Aldrich was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole after pleading guilty to the massacre. Judge Michael McHenry sentenced Aldrich to an additional 2,208 years in prison for the attempted murder charges.
In the hate-crimes case, federal prosecutors focused on proving the mass shooting was premeditated and motivated by Aldrich’s biases against LGBTQ+ people. The plea agreement also includes a total of 190 years on gun-related charges.
The federal case was heard by U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, who is the first openly gay federal judge in Colorado. As part of the plea, victim testimony was heard prior to Aldrich’s plea being entered into the record.
Some survivors told Sweeney they wanted the death penalty, but she explained that capital punishment had not been sought by prosecutors and would need to have been imposed by a jury. Sweeney explained that the life sentences would prevent a long appeals process by Aldrich and also prevent repeated hearings where in past cases a hate crime defendant might become a symbol for others with anti-LGBTQ bias.
In a powerful statement of her own, Sweeney spoke about the history of the hate crimes law Aldrich was sentenced under: the 2009 Matthew Shepard and James Byrd Jr. Hate Crimes Prevention Act, which was in response to the brutal 1998 killing of the gay Wyoming college student and which expanded federal law to include crimes motivated by sexual orientation, gender identity or disability.
Sweeney recalled how Matthew Shepard’s father Dennis Shepard said at the sentencing of his son’s murderer that he and Matthew’s mother Judy would “show mercy to someone who refused to show any mercy. I’m going to grant you life, as hard as that is for me to do, because of Matthew.”
Sweeney said Aldritch will never get out of prison and will face “a miserable future, with a miserable end. Do not let this individual take any more from you.”
Testimony from those at the sentencing detailed the terror of that night, which had begun as a fun and joyful drag event with performances for a mixed audience of LGBTQ+ people and allies. Survivors spoke of the lasting fear their experience had left them with and how hard it has been to move forward since the shooting. The father of one victim who had asked that Aldrich be executed said Aldrich deserved to be “killed like a dog.”
Raymond Green Vance was one of those killed and his mother Adriana said she “wakes up screaming.”
She said, “All I have left of his now is the urn that I speak to every night,” and that Aldrich “knows nothing but hate” and deserves death.
Wyatt Kent, whose partner, Daniel Aston, was killed while working behind the bar, was performing as a drag queen the night of the shooting. Kent had a different take saying the LGBTQ+ community always sought joy, no matter the pain.
“I’ve had to look at my partner in a casket, attend funerals of my friends and deal with unspeakable trauma,” Kent said.
“I see this person as a hurt person, created by failures of systems around them designed to help,” he added. “I forgive you. We, the queer community, we are the resilient ones.”
Ed Sanders, who was shot in the back and leg said, “I’m sure the shooter thinks he took our spirit that night.You cannot destroy our community by killing individuals. You can’t kill our love and spirit.”
Head shaved and wrists cuffed, Aldrich wore an orange prison uniform and faced the victims, but said nothing when offered the opportunity to speak. Aldrich’s attorney, David Kraut, said nothing about the hate or bias crimes in his comments, but instead asserted there was no one explanation for the mass shooting. Kraut enumerated a list of possible causes for the assault, speaking of Aldrich’s childhood trauma, abusive mother, Aldrich’s engagement with online extremism, plus drug use and access to guns as among the reasons Aldrich would then commit an act of “extreme violence.”
Connaughty said evidence of Aldrich’s hate for the LGBTQ+ community included “two websites created by Aldrich to post hate-related content, a target found inside the defendant’s house with a rainbow ring that had bullets in it and the defendant’s sharing of recordings of 911 calls from the 2016 killing of 49 people at the gay-friendly Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Florida.”
Connaughty said that Aldrich also “studied other mass shootings, accumulated weapons, shared an online manifesto from a mass shooter who referred to being transgender as a ‘disease,’ and coordinated a spam email campaign against a former work supervisor who is gay.”
Prosecutors said Aldrich spent over $9,000 on weapons-related purchases from dozens of vendors between September 2020 and the attack. A hand-drawn map of Club Q with an entry and exit point marked was found inside Aldrich’s apartment, along with a black binder of training material entitled, “How to handle an active shooter.”
More evidence of premeditation included Aldrich visiting Club Q at least eight times before returning in a tactical vest with an AR-15 style rifle. Aldrich killed one person in the entryway and then shot at bartenders and customers before targeting people on the dance floor.
Patrons took Aldrich down: Aldrich was subdued by former Army Maj. Richard Fierro, a 15-year veteran of Iraq and Afghanistan. Fierro was at the club with his family to watch his daughter’s close friend perform at Club Q’s regular Saturday-night drag show. Fierro said that he took a handgun from Aldrich, hit him with it and pinned him down with help from another man, Navy servicemember Thomas James.
Defense attorneys asserted in the state’s case that Aldrich is nonbinary and uses they/them pronouns. The federal plea agreement Aldrich signed also said that. A state prosecutor and people who knew Aldrich refuted that claim in the initial case. The issue was not raised in the federal case.