“Safe and Protected” Homeless Coalition Building Becomes Site of Grisly Murder

Touted by the Colorado Coalition for the Homeless as the agency’s first “green” apartment building, the five-story Riverfront Lofts project at 3440 Park Avenue West has won state and national awards for the struicture’s eco-friendly construction and design, as well as its contributions to the community. 

Liljander — a 22-year-old who lives in a homeless camp near the Globeville area and is nicknamed “Schiz” — had been to the building at least once before, according to police, and was caught on surveillance footage going in and out of Lane’s apartment between 10:52 a.m. and 2:57 p.m. that day before scurrying away with some items and a backpack. 

Five days later, Lane was found dead in his kitchen — stabbed 27 times in the back of his head, the left side of his neck, his left arm, his left torso and his upper left leg.

The motive? Still unknown, as are the answers for how Liljander, who’s been charged with first-degree murder, knew the 54-year-old Lane and managed to get inside the Renaissance Riverfront Lofts, which CCH has publicly praised as a “safe, protected space” like the others it runs throughout Denver. 

“We do everything we can to prevent trespassers from entering the property, but like all apartment buildings that you will hear about in Denver, sometimes people find ways to get in,” says coalition spokeswoman Cathy Alderman. “[Liljander] did not live at the property. She was not a resident. She was not a tenant. She was not associated with CCH programs. Whether or not she may have been invited in by a guest is obviously not something that we know.”

Security footage obtained by police shows Liljander at the building on March 19 at around 5:30 a.m., entering Lane’s unlocked apartment with “what appears to be a knife clipped inside her right front pants pocket,” the affidavit says. Less than an hour later, she left carrying a skateboard. 

On March 22 — the last day Lane was seen alive, and the day he was believed to have been stabbed to death — Liljanderwas again caught on camera leaving the building through a side exit.

Now the CCH is wondering whether it needs to rethink its safety strategy and security measures in wake of the incident. 

“Our highest-level concern right now is making sure that our residents and our staff on-site feel safe and supported,” Alderman says. “The safety, the comfort, our security at our buildings are top priorities for us. These are buildings that we’ve often built from the ground up, so we take enormous pride in our ability to provide safe and affordable housing to the community. The maintenance of these buildings is really important to us, and the safety of our residents and our staff on site is very important. It’s why we have our security measures in place. That doesn’t mean we’re not always open to evaluating to see if we can do things better or if we can be doing more.”

click to enlarge

The lobby entrance at Renaissance Riverfront Lofts.

Chris Perez

CCH owns and operates at least eighteen different properties and nearly 2,000 units in and around Denver, and it’s possible that there have been problems at housing units before, Alderman says. “But I can’t recall anything along the lines of how violent this particular incident was,” she adds.

Denver City Council approved sending $5 million to CCH in September 2022 to convert a La Quinta Inn motel into affordable housing; that property sits nearly adjacent to the Renaissance Riverfront Lofts, with an address at 3500 Park Avenue West. The money came from American Rescue Plan funds, which were sent by the federal government for COVID relief. 

CCH sought funding out of the city’s COVID relief to continue offering “a lifeline for people experiencing homelessness in Denver to recover from COVID and to stay in safe, protected spaces,” former president and CEO John Parvensky said at the time. “Safety and security are top priorities at all of our buildings,” Alderman notes. 

Asked what the coalition’s response would be to residents and homeless people who move to the Riverfront Lofts after the Lane murder and don’t feel safe, Alderman says, “The first thing is we would figure out what things might make them feel more safe. If that’s the presence of more staff on site, then we would try to shift our staffing structure to accommodate that, obviously within reason. If it’s updates about what’s happening in the area or the property, we’ll provide that. If somebody is feeling very unsafe and can no longer live there, we would work with them to find a suitable relocation option.”

The Lane killing comes just as CCH’s new CEO and president, Britta Fisher — Denver’s former chief housing officer — started working at the end of March.

According to CCH, the properties it owns and manages include more than 1,700 affordable and supportive housing units. The affordable housing is meant to rent at below market rates, while supportive housing also offers services such as case management.

Renaissance Riverfront Lofts was built in 2009 by CCH and comprises 88 one-bedroom apartments and twelve two-bedroom units with low rents and case management services available on site for some. Residents can only live there if they make below the area median income, a state-based standard used by the federal government to determine someone’s income status. 

The Colorado AMI is about $82,000 a year for a single person. The majority of the Riverfront Lofts tenants are also accepted through referrals, according to the property’s website. Rent at the property ranges from $345 to $875 a month. 

The property-management wing of the CCH — formerly Renaissance Property Management Cooperation, now CCH Property Management — owns similarly named affordable-housing complexes, such as Renaissance at Civic Center Apartments on East 16th Avenue and Renaissance at Lowry Boulevard.

The CCH website describes the Riverfront Lofts as being “the Affordable Housing Finance Magazine 2009 Reader’s Choice Award Winner for Best Green Project and the 2009 Gold Hard Hat Award Winner for Multi-Family/Hospitality Project from Colorado Construction.”

Colorado Construction also presented the property with the Gold Hard Hat Award/Judge’s Special Award for Outstanding Community Contribution in 2008, the site says.

According to Alderman, residents at the Riverfront Lofts are given key fobs to get inside the building. It’s unclear whether Liljander had Lane’s fob or was getting in another way.

Suspect Erin Liljander.

Denver Police

“It did appear from the video we shared with the police that she was able to get into the victim’s unit, and it did appear as by invitation or that they may have known each other,” Alderman says. 

CCH actually worked with police to help capture Liljander, handing over the surveillance footage, Alderman notes. The coalition refrained from making a public statement, however, saying it wanted to wait until police officially finished their investigation.

Liljander was already in police custody for separate charges when she was identified as the suspect in Lane’s slaying, according to police. 

A friend of Lane’s who has allegedly known him for two years and was said to have used drugs with him regularly found his body inside his apartment, cops say. 

The friend, whose name was redacted in the police affidavit, had just gone through more than two weeks of rehab and was visiting Lane when he found the body “in a pool of blood” inside his kitchen. He made the discovery sometime between 12 a.m. and 3 a.m. on March 27, according to police.

The friend “then left the apartment and went to use several peoples’ telephones,” the affidavit says. However, “he failed to mention that he found the victim dead to anyone he came into contact with.”

Cops say it wasn’t until around 6 p.m. on March 28 that the friend finally “told a female who he talked to along the path in between 3440 Park Ave W and Downtown, that he found the victim deceased.”

When the friend spoke to police, he claimed to have told “numerous tenants and the security guards in the building” about Lane’s death. “However, no one would believe him,” the affidavit says.

“He even asked to use people’s phones but claimed no one would let him use their phone because they thought that he was going to steal it,” police add.

Since cops found the body nearly a week after the murder took place, they put out statements asking for help finding the suspect. Investigators looked at security footage to identify Liljander. Three days after police discovered Lane’s body — and more than a week after his murder — an anonymous tipster told them only that a young homeless woman named Erin had come back to the camp at Globeville wearing bloody clothes, which she then dumped. 

The tipster also said the woman was known to steal and always carried a backpack, according to cops. 

A search of police databases eventually turned up Liljander, who authorities say was on probation out of Jefferson County. After comparing her booking photo with security footage, detectives concluded that they had found the suspect.

Liljander was in custody at the Logan County Detention Center for unspecified charges. She also had two outstanding arrest warrants at the time, one of which included a request from the Yuma County Sheriff’s Department in southern Arizona to transfer her to their custody after she finishes serving time for her other charges.