Gudino case could bring Colorado full circle in charging juvenile killers | old, colorado, year - Public Safety - Colorado Springs Gazette, CO

Gudino case could bring Colorado full circle in charging juvenile killers | old, colorado, year - Public Safety - Colorado Springs Gazette, CO
If 14-year-old Daniel Gudino is charged with murder as an adult and if he is convicted, two major ifs at this point, he would be the youngest person currently to serve time in the Colorado prison system.
Of the 56 juveniles currently serving life sentences in Colorado, none were younger than 14 when they committed their crimes. Gudino was 13-year-old when he allegedly killed his 9-year-old brother in May 2009.
However, if he were to be found guilty, Gudino would not be the youngest person ever sentenced for murder in Colorado. That distinction belongs to an 11-year-old boy who served his time when Colorado was still a relatively young state.
Anton Woode began serving a 25-year sentence at the old Territorial prison in Canon City on April 8, 1893, making him the youngest prisoner in the state’s history according to Kay Ellifon, director of the Museum of Colorado Prisons.
Dick Kreck, a former reporter for The Denver Post and The Gazette, wrote a book on the case called “Anton Woode, Boy Murderer.”
Kreck said Woode had gone hunting near his home in Brighton when he met four other hunters from Denver. One of them was a man named Joseph Smith, who was carrying a gold pocket watch.
Three of the hunters went looking for ducks while Smith and Woode went rabbit hunting, Kreck said. Woode then shot Smith once in the back and fled with the pocket watch.
“It had been snowing, so they had no trouble following his footprints to his house,” Kreck said. “They found him hiding under his bed.”
The first trial ended in a hung jury. The big issue was whether the then-10-year-old could know right from wrong, Kreck said.
At a second trial the jurors found Woode guilty of second-degree murder. The governor had threatened to pardon the boy if he was found guilty of first-degree murder. Woode was sentenced to 25 years.
Although he had only a second-grade education to that point, Woode learned to speak fluent French and German while in prison. He also learned to play the violin and to paint water colors, Kreck said.
Woode took part in a prison break in which a guard was stabbed to death, but it was later determined that he was forced to take part. He was freed from prison after serving 12 and a half years at the age of 23.
He settled first in New York and then Minnesota. He worked as a bookkeeper and died in the 1940s.
At the time of Woode’s case, Colorado did not have a separate juvenile justice system. Teens were held in the same jails as adults, Kreck said. That began to change in 1903 when Denver started its own juvenile court.
The idea was that juveniles should be treated separately and not charged as adults.
“Now we’ve kind of come full circle,” Kreck said.


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