5 JUNE 11-17, 2026 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NEWS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Scott McCarthy wasn’t supposed to be at United Bank on the day of his murder. The 21-year-old new hire didn’t have a security guard uniform. He wasn’t even on the bank’s payroll yet. But as his supervisor later recalled, McCarthy pleaded to begin early because he was eager to join his best friend, Todd Wilson, who had started as a guard two weeks prior. Wilson, also 21, was the best man at McCarthy’s recent wedding. The pair met in high school while working as dishwashers, and now they were about to work together protecting Denver’s largest bank. McCarthy’s fi rst day on the job was Fa- ther’s Day, June 16, 1991. He and Wilson arrived at the downtown Cash Register building at 6 a.m., joining two weekend guards: 41-year-old Phillip Mankoff, a father of four who worked for Child Support Ser- vices, and 33-year-old William McCullom, who worked in computer operations at an insurance company. By 9:30 a.m. that morning, all four of the men were dead, ruthlessly gunned down in a bizarre robbery that has haunted Denver ever since. A well-dressed man with a thick mus- tache and a bandage on his cheek called the guard monitor room from the loading dock at 9:14 a.m., identifying himself as a bank vice president. He requested an escort to his offi ce. After McCullom responded to the dock, the assailant held him at gunpoint, led him to the sub-basement, and killed him. Using McCul- lom’s keys, the gunman then systematically maneuvered through the building and fatally shot each of the other unarmed guards before anyone even realized he was there. With all of the guards dead and no one in the bank aware of the situation, the mysteri- ous man went to the cash vault. He held up the tellers, making off with nearly $200,000 and leaving the employees locked in the vault’s mantrap. This Tuesday, June 16, marks 35 years since the quadruple homicide, which came to be known as the Father’s Day Massacre. No suspect has ever been convicted for the crime, and no suspect ever will be. The Denver Police Department ended its investi- gation in 1991, with no intention of reopening it, a DPD spokesperson confi rms. As far as law enforcement is concerned, they found the guilty party decades ago, explains Steven B. Epstein, author of “Deadly Heist: The True Story of the Mile High Bank Massacre.” “No one else is going to be prosecuted for this crime,” Epstein says. “Sometimes a guilty man does walk free.” A guilty man? Seventeen days after the bank slayings, Denver police arrested a shocking suspect: one of their own. James King was a 54-year-old retired police offi cer and father of three, living in Golden with his wife and son. He had served on the DPD for 25 years, retiring as a sergeant in 1986. He had also served as a security guard at United Bank for thirteen months, leaving the job in August 1990. The case was already a spectacle. With King’s arrest, it became a circus. News out- lets from across the country jumped on the story of the killer cop. The courtroom was packed with spectators every day of King’s month-long trial in May and June of 1992. Available seats were raffl ed off by sheriff’s deputies each morning, with “those having their names called celebrating, as if they’d won the grand-prize lottery,” Epstein reports in his book. “It was one of the most signifi cant crimi- nal trials in Colorado DENVER PUBLIC LIBRARY continued on page 6
