[chris]

A Boulder County jury convicted Devan Schreiner of first-degree murder in the fatal shooting of her former boyfriend, U.S. Postal Service letter carrier Jason Schaefer, in Longmont, Colorado, on October 13, 2021.

Schaefer, 33, was delivering mail near Heatherhill Street and Renaissance Drive in southwest Longmont at about 12:30 p.m. when a person walked up and shot him. Reports differ on the number of shots. The Postal Inspection Service reported three, while Denver7 reported four. Schaefer was hit in the face and died at the scene.

Schreiner, 27 at her trial, was Schaefer's former girlfriend and the mother of his young son. The two were not married. The child is not named here. Schreiner also worked as a postal letter carrier and was based in Loveland. Two days before the shooting, Schaefer had filed court papers seeking primary custody and the majority of parenting time with their son.

Postal inspectors and Longmont police investigated together. GPS data from Schreiner's postal scanner showed it stationary at a Loveland address from about 11:06 a.m. to 1:28 p.m. on the day of the shooting, when it should have been moving along her route. Investigators also focused on Andrew James "AJ" Ritchie, who they believed was in a relationship with Schreiner, though he initially denied it. Ritchie worked as a guard at the prison in Englewood.

Police interviewed Schreiner on the evening of the shooting. After being told that her former boyfriend had been shot and killed, she denied involvement and offered explanations for the evidence presented to her. The interview ended with her arrest on the night of October 13, 2021, on a first-degree murder charge. Ritchie was arrested on October 19, 2021, on suspicion of complicity to commit first-degree murder.

After about eight hours of deliberations, a Boulder County jury convicted Schreiner on March 7, 2023. Boulder District Judge Patrick Butler immediately imposed life in prison without the possibility of parole, the mandatory sentence in Colorado for first-degree murder. Ritchie was tried separately. Prosecutors said he tracked Schaefer along his route and acted as Schreiner's eyes and ears, and they presented a text message he sent Schreiner that read, "You could just kill them both and make it look like they killed each other." A jury convicted him of first-degree murder on September 27, 2023, and he was sentenced to life without parole. No appeal by either defendant has been publicly reported.

The video is a police interview-room recording that runs about 107 minutes. It shows the interview itself and begins with a short narrated introduction naming the people involved.

[chris]

Part 2 of 2 of the recording described above.