The latest filing adds an Englewood case to charges already tied to Aurora killings and a Denver jail death.
DENVER, CO — A Colorado man accused of killing three people while on parole is now charged in a fourth death after prosecutors filed a new murder count tied to a 2022 case near an Englewood light rail station.
The added charge widens a criminal case that has stretched across multiple jurisdictions in the metro Denver area and has drawn new scrutiny to how the suspect moved through the state’s parole system. The suspect, Ricky Roybal-Smith, already faces first-degree murder charges in the 2025 stabbing deaths of two men in Aurora and a separate first-degree murder charge in the death of a man inside Denver’s downtown jail. The newest filing focuses on the death of Meg Eberhart, who was found unconscious in Englewood in 2022 and later died.
Authorities have not said when the new Englewood case will be argued in open court, but the charge itself signals that prosecutors now believe they can prove a homicide beyond earlier uncertainties that surrounded Eberhart’s death. The case has lingered for years in the background of Roybal-Smith’s parole record, according to reporting and court documents about his prior arrests. Investigators and prosecutors have described a timeline in which Roybal-Smith’s most serious allegations erupted in a rapid series of incidents in late June 2025, beginning with two killings in Aurora and continuing into the Denver jail system hours later.
Those Aurora deaths happened in the early hours of June 29, 2025, police said. Officers were sent to the 1500 block of Moline Street in northwest Aurora at about 1:45 a.m. after a report of an unresponsive man on a sidewalk. The man had apparent stab wounds, police said, and he died at the scene despite lifesaving efforts. A second call came a few hours later, with officers sent to a bus stop on Peoria Street near East Colfax Avenue, where they found another man with apparent stab wounds who also died at the scene. Police said investigators later confirmed the two killings were connected and identified Roybal-Smith, 38, as the suspect. In later testimony described in court coverage, an Aurora detective said the two men were stabbed a combined 105 times over a period of about 45 minutes.
Roybal-Smith was already in custody later that day in Denver on separate allegations tied to a crash, according to police accounts and court records referenced in multiple reports. Denver officers arrested him after a hit-and-run report involving pedestrians near West 9th Avenue and North Galapago Street, then found him again after another crash, according to an account in court coverage. Police said a syringe with suspected narcotics was found near him and that he showed signs consistent with impairment. Investigators later connected him to the Aurora killings, and he was moved into the jail system as those homicide investigations accelerated.
Less than a day later, authorities say another man died inside the Denver detention center after Roybal-Smith was housed with him. The victim, Vincent Chacon, was 34, according to the Denver District Attorney’s Office and later court coverage. The incident unfolded in the early morning hours of June 30, 2025, at the downtown jail. A sheriff’s deputy reported being alerted that Chacon was choking on an apple, but investigators later found red marks on Chacon’s neck and signs they believed were consistent with strangulation, according to arrest records described in court coverage. Roybal-Smith, Chacon’s cellmate, was taken out of the cell as the emergency response continued. Prosecutors later filed a first-degree murder charge in the jail death, adding to the murder counts Roybal-Smith already faced in Aurora.
The newest murder allegation reaches back three years earlier and shifts the focus to Englewood, a separate city south of Denver with a light rail hub near retail and civic buildings. Eberhart was found unconscious at the Englewood light rail station area on June 22, 2022, just south of West Hampden Avenue, according to details previously reported about the case. She later died. Earlier accounts of the investigation said the case moved slowly in part because officials could not immediately pinpoint a definitive manner of death, leaving investigators to build a case from witness statements, police contacts, and parole records. The new filing indicates prosecutors have now concluded they can treat the death as a homicide in court.
The Englewood case also sits alongside a record of earlier arrests and convictions that followed Roybal-Smith through repeated cycles of prison, parole, and re-arrest, according to court records summarized in public reporting. In one older case, he pleaded guilty to vehicular assault tied to a 2015 incident and received a 12-year prison sentence, according to court coverage that cited arrest affidavits and medical testing. After he was released early from that sentence, he was arrested again in 2022 in an Englewood incident involving an alleged threat with a large knife inside a Walmart, according to a probable cause affidavit described in court coverage. He later took a plea agreement in that case and was sentenced to prison time, records show. By mid-2025, he was again on parole when the Aurora killings occurred, and prosecutors in multiple counties began filing homicide cases against him.
Families of victims have pressed officials for answers as the allegations expanded across county lines. After Chacon’s death, his mother, Angela Hernandez, questioned how jail officials decided to house her son with a man accused in other violent crimes and said she wanted accountability for the decisions that preceded the death. Investigators, for their part, have described a case built from surveillance video, witness information, and forensic steps that began with two separate stabbing scenes in Aurora and quickly widened into a broader review of Roybal-Smith’s movements and prior contacts with law enforcement.
The new murder charge related to Eberhart does not replace the earlier cases. It adds another front to what is now a multi-county prosecution that could involve separate court calendars, different sets of investigators, and different juries. Prosecutors have not publicly laid out how they plan to sequence the cases, but the filings mean Roybal-Smith must defend against homicide allegations tied to events in Aurora, Denver, and Englewood. Court proceedings in the existing cases have included advisements and hearings as judges review evidence and set future dates, while investigators continue to finalize reports tied to each death.
Author note: Last updated March 3, 2026.