DENVER -- First, Roberts Walters was charged with killing his 22-year-old girlfriend and staging a car crash to cover it up.
Now, the 24-year-old Walters has been charged with trying to hire someone to kill his estranged wife -- a key witness in the murder case, the spokeswoman for the Denver district attorney said Tuesday.
Walters was formally charged Friday with felony solicitation to commit first-degree murder, DA spokeswoman Lynn Kimbrough said.
The harge states that Walters, while in jail, attempted to hire someone to kill his wife between June 1 and Aug. 13, Kimbrough said.
Walters was earlier charged with first-degree murder in the November 2009 slaying of his girlfriend, Air Force veteran Brittney Brashers, in Denver.
The primary witness in that case is his estranged wife, who has not been identified.
The tangled murder case began in the early morning hours of Nov. 17, 2009.
Walters was in Brashers' car when it appeared to go out of control and crashed into two parked cars. He suffered only minor injuries and said he was asleep at the time of the crash. He told police Brashers shouldn't have been driving because she was too intoxicated.
Police suspected otherwise, but it wasn't until Walters' estranged wife came forward in March that the case moved ahead. She said Walters had confessed to killing Brashers, a Colorado Springs resident, after an argument, according to the affidavit.
Read The Arrest Warrant Affidavit
Witnesses told police that earlier that day, Brashers was in a photo shoot with other women at a strip club in Denver, and Walters was upset because she had taken her top off.
Walters' estranged wife told police that days after the crash, Walters told her he killed Brashers and staged the car accident to get away with it. He told her that they were driving back to Colorado Springs and arguing about what happened at the club when he punched her in the face, grabbed the steering wheel and forced the car to exit the highway, according to the affidavit.
He then drove the Pontiac Vibe to an unknown area and parked the car, police said.
"The victim let out a scream so he began to knee her in the face," the affidavit said. "He wanted to take her to the hospital but he knew she would tell on him. He decided that he had to finish her."
But the car was stuck in the snow at South Yuma Street and West Bayaud Avenue so Walters got out to push the bumper. That's when he noticed his hands and the bumper were bloody, Walters told the estranged wife, according to the affidavit.
When he got back in the car, he noticed that Brashers was still breathing. According to the affidavit, he began to yell at her, "Why won't you die? Why won't you die?"
"He then got on top of her and using his forearms, he began to push down on her throat to stop her from breathing and attempted to break her neck," the affidavit said.
Walters told his estranged wife he pushed Brashers back into the driver's seat and unclipped her seat belt. He then drove to a dark residential street, accelerated the vehicle, and swerved into two parked cars, causing Brashers to hit the windshield.
"He then began to put on a show by screaming for help and crying out for people to help his girlfriend," the affidavit said.
"I heard a loud bang, a crash," said one neighbor, who did not want to be identified. "I went outside and saw that he was holding her and yelling her name and saying, 'No.'"
But police said the emotion was a ruse.
"It didn't look right to detectives," said Denver Police Department spokesman Sonny Jackson. "They didn't take it at face value. They did a lot more work and determined that this was not what it appeared to be."
The estranged wife said Walters has confessed to her several times and on several occasions she was able to record him on her cell phone talking about the killing.
Walters also told his estranged wife that he has tried to commit suicide twice because he does not want to go to prison for the rest of his life, according to the affidavit.
Brashers and Walters had a history of domestic violence, according to the affidavit. In one domestic violence report from October 2009, Brashers told police officers that Walters threatened to cause her, or both of them, to have a car accident.
Detectives also reviewed Brashers' phone messages and heard on Brashers' voicemail a man, believed to be Walters, saying that he "hated her and wished she were dead," according to the affidavit.
An autopsy for Brashers said that the victim's cause of death and manner of death were undetermined. Since she was a member of the U.S. Air Force, agents with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations were present during the postmortem exam.
Walter is due back in court for a preliminary hearing on both counts Sept. 1.
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