The two were alone in the room when Travis Forbes leaned back in his chair, put his hands behind his head and looked the detective in the eye.

“I’ll tell you everything, but I want a deal,” he said.

It had been five months since a 19-year-old Aurora woman went missing from a Lower Downtown Denver nightclub, and two months since a Fort Collins woman was attacked and left for dead. Police suspected Forbes in both crimes.

In that time, investigators had come to know Forbes as a well-read, charming liar. While they were skeptical of Forbes’ sudden confession, they were certain that, given the opportunity, he would kill again.

To stop him, they would need his help.

Over five months, detectives systematically unraveled Forbes’ lies, a process detailed here. They also caught some breaks — and took advantage of them — ultimately leading to the grim discovery of Kenia Monge’s body and Forbes’ conviction for her murder.

In the early hours of April 1, an intoxicated Monge wandered away from her friends at the 24K Lounge in LoDo, leaving behind her purse, keys and cellphone.

Later that day, Monge had not contacted her family by the time her friends returned her belongings to her stepfather, Tony Lee. Lee found a text message from a man named Travis. He called the number and arranged a meeting.

On April 2, Forbes, Lee and a Denver police officer met at a Conoco gas station on Speer Boulevard. Forbes, then 31, calmly detailed how he offered a distraught and lost Monge a ride home, taught her breathing exercises after she became upset, and watched her walk away from the closed gas station with another man.

For the next 72 hours, suspicion swarmed around Forbes’ story as the hunt for Monge continued. On April 5, Denver police Detective Nash Gurule, with the Missing and Exploited Persons Unit, was assigned to the case.

The same day, surveillance video of Forbes was recovered from the southeast Denver bakery where he made organic granola bars. The video shows Forbes rolling a large, white cooler into the freezer, carrying in a roll of carpet from his van and later walking out to the van carrying what looked like a bottle of bleach before he turned off the cameras.

Forbes was brought in for questioning. Without a flinch or a stutter, he recited the same story he told Lee days before.

“I didn’t believe him,” Gurule said. “Why would you take a girl to a closed Conoco? From across the river, you can see the Conoco is closed.”

Forbes was calm and confident. Looking Gurule in the eye, he streamed together calculated details about the night.

“He could tell you that he climbed Mount Everest, every detail about it, but he’s never been there,” Gurule said.

Denver homicide Detective Louis Estrada also was brought in to assist in the missing- person case, should it turn into a homicide. The day Estrada was assigned to the case was the day he recognized it as a homicide.

“Every time he talks, he has something to cover up,” Estrada said of Forbes. “He knew what he was doing. He had a story and an excuse for everything.”

Forbes was released after his interview. Gurule would not speak to him again for a month.

Building a case

One week after Monge disappeared, detectives drove through fields near Keenesburg, after records showed activity on Forbes’ cellphone there shortly after Monge went missing. Authorities combed the area on foot, horseback, in helicopters and on ATVs, Estrada said. They said nothing publicly, as the Monge case was officially still a search for a missing living person, but they scoured ditches, waterways and even a nearby dairy farm looking for disturbed earth, predator activity and skeletal remains.

During the next five months, authorities would search the area 15 times and find nothing.

In mid-April, Monge’s parents, Tony Lee and his wife, Maria, asked for the public’s help in finding Monge. At the same time, Forbes started talking to local reporters, depicting himself as a good Samaritan who offered a lost girl a ride home.

What he was really doing, Gurule believes, is trying to find out what detectives knew by talking to reporters who might have information.

“They like to get in there and see what the cops know. I’ve never personally had that happen until now,” he said.

While Forbes was never named a suspect, Gurule and Estrada continued whittling their way through his story. They searched his van, even took the door off the hinges, but the bleach he used to clean the interior erased any DNA and created a false positive in tests used to detect blood.

As they followed leads, police watched as Forbes continued meeting women, giving them different names and taking them out to dinner.

Gurule interviewed the women — all of them found Forbes charming and harmless.

“He could walk into a bar and strike up a conversation with probably 95 percent of the people in that bar,” Gurule said.

Estrada pieced together Forbes’ criminal record, starting with minor offenses he committed as a juvenile, which progressed into violent crimes.

“It started with burglaries, theft, and moved on to harassment, assault,” Estrada said. “It started to get a little more severe every time.”

Estrada said he believes it was the thrill that drove Forbes to more violent crimes. He spoke with two of Forbes’ ex-girlfriends, who described a transformation he went through during sexual role-playing.

“Every time he talks, he has something to cover up,” Estrada said of Forbes.

“He had this real screeching look on his face,” Estrada said. “He really enjoyed the pain he inflicted on them.”

On April 16, Forbes was captured on surveillance video at a gas station in Hudson, a few miles from Keenesburg, and detectives wondered whether he was possibly checking on a grave. A search on the bakery’s computer revealed he had checked missing-persons websites. He quit using his cellphone.

On May 4, Forbes was arrested in Austin, Texas, on suspicion of auto theft. Gurule flew to Austin and interviewed him for more than three hours that night.

Before Gurule arrived, Forbes called friends in Colorado and asked them to watch local news stations for reports about a body.

Before the arrest, The Denver Post published a story detailing the search warrant for the bakery’s surveillance video.

“He just explained everything away,” Gurule said. “He had an excuse for everything: the barrel, the cooler, everything.”

The day after Monge disappeared, someone saw Forbes burning items in a barrel. In Austin, he told Gurule he was burning moldy marijuana in an attempt to cleanse his past.

At one point, Forbes laid his head on the table in frustration; later he prodded Gurule, asking why he hadn’t arrested him yet. Then Forbes leaned back and said, “You guys were so close.”

When pushed for details, Forbes requested a lawyer. Gurule presented Forbes with a search warrant and collected a sample of his DNA.

On June 30, Forbes was extradited back to Jefferson County. He was then released after his friend declined to press the auto-theft case. Forbes’ release would have horrible, life-changing consequences for a Fort Collins woman.

New to town

One of the last things Lydia Tillman remembers was fireworks. The 31-year-old left some friends in a Fort Collins park after watching Fourth of July fireworks — she was found the next morning unconscious in her yard, her apartment on fire.

Tillman was beaten and sexually assaulted, and her attacker had set her apartment on fire. Somehow, she regained consciousness from the beating and managed to jump out of a second-story window to save herself. She suffered a stroke and was rushed to a Denver hospital, where she spent the next five weeks in a medically induced coma.

Detective Jaclyn Shaklee with Fort Collins Police Services arrived at Tillman’s apartment that morning.

“For 48 hours, it was a case of who done it,” Shaklee said. “We could not figure out what the connection was.”

Tillman, who agreed to allow the publication of her name, moved to Fort Collins about four months before she was attacked and had few friends in the area.

Three days after the attack, Shaklee learned that Fort Collins police had, on July 1, received a report of a suspicious man, and she wondered whether that report might be connected. But before they could find him, they were contacted by Denver police, who were conducting surveillance on that suspicious man — Forbes — and asked Fort Collins to back off because he was the subject of a homicide investigation.

Shaklee got wind of Denver’s interest in Forbes, recognized similarities in the attack on Tillman and the Monge disappearance, and then called Gurule. The two discussed details about their cases.

“There was silence on the other end of the phone,” Shaklee said. “This was almost so freakishly similar it has to be the same guy.”

The similarities were fire and bleach.

Just as in the Monge case where Forbes’ van had been cleaned with bleach and suspected evidence burned, Tillman’s attacker started a fire in her bedroom and used bleach to wash evidence off her. But the assailant didn’t do a thorough job. When Lydia Tillman survived, so did her attacker’s DNA.

Now, armed with Forbes’ name, Shaklee was getting close to making an arrest in the Tillman case. But she wanted more.

About 2 a.m. July 10, Fort Collins police followed Forbes to bars in Old Town where he stashed his bicycle and a backpack. As the bars closed, Forbes walked to a hot dog stand and started juggling glowing balls.

Several women wandered out of the bars and started talking with him. One woman chatted with Forbes for about 30 minutes before walking alone with him toward a dark neighborhood.

Officers followed the two for a few blocks before separating them and stopping Forbes for questioning. Forbes, who told officers his name was Travis Kennedy, was released. He returned to his bike, changed his shirt and hat and within minutes, police watched as he started following a visibly drunk woman as she stumbled into a dark neighborhood alone.

Worried about the woman’s safety, police arrested Forbes for lying about his name, but officers did not tell him he was a suspect in Tillman’s attack.

While Forbes waited to bond out, lab technicians with the Colorado Bureau of Investigation worked through the night comparing DNA found on Tillman to the DNA sample Gurule collected from him in Austin.

At 10:45 p.m. July 11, Forbes moved to the front of the line in jail and was minutes away from posting bond. At that moment, CBI confirmed the DNA match, and Forbes was rebooked on suspicion of attempted murder and arson. After waiting for more than a month while building his case, Gurule drove to Fort Collins on Aug. 26 to interview Forbes for the third time. Forbes refused to speak with police after his arrest in Fort Collins, but he immediately agreed to talk with Gurule.

“He throws it out there: ‘I’ll tell you everything, but I want a deal,’ ” Gurule said.

After five months of following Forbes, Gurule said he does not know why he decided to talk.

“Maybe he knew we weren’t going to give up and we were close . . . I have no clue.”

Shaklee said Forbes may have asked for a plea deal to avoid the death penalty or going to prison as a sex offender.

“I believe to some extent it was he knows gotcha,” Shaklee said. “Lydia was so strong; she jumped out the window and saved herself, saved all of the evidence, and she made it scary enough for him that he knew the gig was up.”

All three detectives, who tracked Forbes for months, credited Tillman with solving the case.

“Lydia’s a superhero,” Gurule said.

“Are you happy you found her?”

On Sept. 7, Detectives Gurule, Estrada and Shaklee rode to Keenesburg with Forbes and his attorney. During the ride, Estrada was so nervous that Forbes would change his mind, he couldn’t look at him.

“When we get to Hudson, I hope there’s not a train — is he going to change his mind when we get to the train tracks?” Estrada fretted.

Estrada and Shaklee rode in the back seat with Forbes, who talked about running marathons and organic food. As they approached the site where he said he had buried Monge, he began crying and drawing long, deep breaths.

Walking toward the small grove of trees near Interstate 76 and Weld County Road 53, Gurule and Estrada recognized the site. They were less than half a mile from it during their first search.

Sobbing, Forbes walked over to a berm, pointed down at Gurule and said, “Over to your left a little bit. Right there.”

The ground was flat. Monge’s body was found about 4 feet deep, taped into a fetal position and draped with a plastic tarp.

While Gurule drove back to Fort Collins, Forbes gazed at him in the rear-view mirror. Seeking Gurule’s approval, he asked: “Are you happy, Nash? Are you happy you found her? Are you happy you got her back?”

Finding forgiveness

On Sept. 26, Forbes pleaded guilty to murdering Monge. As part of his plea agreement, he avoided the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison. The next day he pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in Larimer County, and on Oct. 21, he was sentenced to 48 years in prison for the attack on Tillman. He cried in both courtrooms.

Responding to e-mailed questions, Tillman wrote that she has forgiven Forbes.

“It was during his sentencing that I was able (to) forgive him. At first, I felt extreme anger toward him. Then, I felt sad for him. He must be in so much extreme pain to so brutally hurt another human. Thanks to, at least due in part to, the stroke, I know that to forgive is easier than holding anger. Faced with a life in love and forgiveness or a life of fear and hatred, I embraced love. It was easy. That way, my anger is my own. I only have to look inside myself to discover answers. I feel my life prepared for me this until the moment the attack occurred. I don’t consider myself as a victim nor a hero. I have a strong will to live that served me well during the incident. I was fighting to survive, that’s all.”

For about six weeks, Tillman underwent intensive rehabilitation, and speech, occupational and physical therapies.

She continues to do therapy five days a week.

Tony Lee said he still has questions for Forbes and wants to talk with him.

As the holiday season begins, Lee said his family is learning to cope, but he is not sure how they will handle Christmas and Monge’s birthday.

“It’s going to be hard with all these firsts coming up,” Lee said. “April 1 will be rolling around again before you know it.”

A memorial sits on the site where Forbes buried Monge, dried pink rose petals flake on a faded photo of Monge. Gurule and Estrada visited the memorial in October.

“She had her whole life ahead of her,” Gurule said. “He just doesn’t understand how many people he touched, how many people he left in his wake.”

Both men will never forget Monge’s or Forbes’ birthdays.

“He has this inner evil, this demon,” Estrada said. “He can’t control it.”

Jordan Steffen: 303-954-1794 or jsteffen@denverpost.com