Denver PD arrests convicted drug dealer for murder of girlfriend's lover

Denver Police Department officers converged on 45-year-old Patrick Apostol at a Lakewood box store Friday, putting handcuffs on the man they believe killed an aspiring musician three years ago in east Denver.

Apostol is accused of firing a handgun into the rear of a car driven by 31-year-old Zackary Smith on Sept. 10, 2020. A bullet struck Smith in the back of the head as he was driving in an alley between Quebec and Quince Streets, parallel to East 17th Avenue, just before 4 a.m. 

Smith's car rolled and struck a tree. He later passed away at a hospital.

The music

"There's no way I thought I'd get a call to rush to the hospital and watch my friend die," said Josh Nermon, a former bandmate of Smith's. "That's a night I won't forget."  

Nermon said he and Smith, friends for years, were writing music together hours before the shooting. Nermon moved to the metro area two years earlier at Smith's urging. 

"The reason I moved to Colorado was to play music with him. I was a fan of him as much as a friend."

They were playing "epic gigs" within a year.

"What proceeded to happen was nothing short of magic. it's the most fun I've had in a long, long time," Nermon reminisced. "Everything happened to fast. We were plugged in to the music industry, and it worked. It was a really beautiful thing. We fed off the crowd. We were having the time of our lives."  

Speaking as objectively as possible, Nermon said their "ethereal dancetronica" band, Autonomix, was on a promising trajectory.

"It's impossible not to think about it. We would be touring, we would be playing at Red Rocks, we'd have several albums under our belt. It would've been good. It would've been what we dreamed of."

But their song remains unfinished. The band broke up a few months after Smith's passing, and Nermon said he has not touched the particular piece he and Smith were writing that night. 

"Keeping the music alive was our way of dealing with the trauma." But he decided, "if it's not going to be anything close to what it was with Zack, it's not worth playing."  

The investigations

A look at a document from the DPD investigation shows that Smith, the shooting victim, and Apostol, the suspect, had at least one thing in common - the affections of the same woman. 

Two and a half hours after the shooting, DPD investigators noticed surveillance cameras on a nearby residence and knocked on the door. Apostol - not yet a suspect - answered the door wearing a black robe. 

While details of the conversation were not revealed in the document, the results of it were obvious: The surveillance camera recordings were not made available to the investigators.

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The day after the shooting, a tipster came forward to police and told them about Smith's years-long, intimate relationship with a woman. It was a relationship Smith spoke about openly.

Smith told the tipster "the only time he could see her was when her boyfriend Apostol was out of town," a DPD detective wrote.

The woman, who CBS News Colorado is not identifying because she has not been charged with a crime, admitted to police that she previously flirted with and kissed Smith. She stated to investigators they met outside Apostol's residence early in the morning and sat in Smith's car while Apostol was asleep. She denied they had sex, according to investigators. 

But when investigators learned the woman actually lived with Apostol next to the shooting scene, and that the pair had flown to Florida the day after the shooting, they arranged a search of the couple's Denver residence.

What they found inside triggered a federal investigation.

Per federal case documents, DPD officers found a shed dedicated to turning marijuana into hash oil, banded stacks of cash in a basement, and ten firearms in the house, all but one of which were loaded. One of the guns was a short-barreled, .223 caliber tactical rifle with an illegal 100-round ammunition drum.

Two months later, the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives conducted its own search of the residence. ATF personnel concluded Apostol had continued to make and sell hash oil in the time since Smith's shooting, and arrested him. 

While the DPD murder investigation languished, Apostol faced both weapons and drugs in federal court. He pleaded guilty to a single charge of intent to distribute and was sentenced in June 2022 to 30 months in prison. 

Apostol was released from custody after 14 months, according to the U.S. Bureau of Prisons.

As the federal case concluded, Denver's murder investigation advanced: Apostol's black robe tested positive for gunshot residue; the company responsible for storing the surveillance cameras recordings indicated the videos from the time of the shooting had been manually erased; a "gun trace" matched a handgun which Apostol allegedly purchased with the bullet fragment inside Smith's head; the woman's DNA matched that found in the underwear Smith was wearing at the time of his death; and detectives renewed their effort to gain access to the cell phones that were taken from Apostol and the woman. While they found text conversations between Apostol and the woman immediately after the shooting had been erased, they did discover months of texts exchanged between the woman and Smith.

Plus, another tipster stepped forward in March of this year, coinciding with an increase in the reward for information in the case to $20,000, and later $30,000. The information that tipster provided to police was not publicly released. 

Apostol, two and a half months after his release from federal prison, was arrested by police Friday at the Home Depot at 6701 W. Alameda Avenue in Lakewood. He was charged with 1st Degree Murder and Tampering with Evidence. His bond was set Saturday by a Denver court judge at $3 million. 

'It's been a long three years'

Jan Purther, Smith's mother, told CBS News Colorado that detectives suspected Apostol early in the investigation. 

"I had dreamed I would get that call. There's a relief to hear about this man's arrest for the murder of my son," Purther said from Michigan. She and her ex-husband, Zack's father Scot Smith, frequently "talked about our fear how of our son would be forgotten."

Time has moved slowly for her since her son's passing - exactly three years, two months and seven days, she recounted with little trouble. 

"I think it's been 1165 days," she said. "It's been a long three years. We were desperate to do anything after a year."

Purther acknowledged her son's relationship with the woman. They had been friends for seven years, she said. 

Zack was also a self-taught musician. 

"They were doing really well. Colorado is a great place for young musicians," Purther said. 

She plans to visit Red Rocks at some point during Apostol's prosecution, perhaps even hold a remembrance of some sort there.

Nermon, Zack's former bandmate, was happiest for Zack's parents.

"I have to live with the fact my best friend is dead and there's nothing I can do about it,"he said. "But to live with the fact your son is dead is much more tough. I have rejoiced in the fact it's coming to a conclusion. I think we all appreciate justice. But there's only so much relief. It should've happened a lot sooner."