Deadly Brew: The Story of the Coors Kidnapping

On a bridge in Morrison Colorado, the fate of two men intersected. One man had everything going for him, the other should have. What happened there led to a search, a gruesome discovery and a manhunt through multiple states and two countries. The result wasn’t just the loss of a life, but the destruction of part of the most famous family in Colorado.

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Executive Producer- Clare O'Donohue 
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Executive Producer - Margaret Smith

Writer: Kara Amis Thomas
https://karaamis.substack.com

Editor – Jessica Stokey

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IT Manager - Conor Sweeney

The History of Murder Logo - Bernadette Carr
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Theme Song “My Carnal Life I Will Lay Down” - Rob Brereton
https://robertbrereton.com

Interview: Philip Jett                                                                          https://philipjett.com/
 
This was truly a team effort, and we’re grateful to everyone who played a part.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_06 0:03

Morrison, Colorado, 1960. On a bridge just outside town, two cars were stopped and two drivers confronted each other. One was the heir of an American fear dynasty. The other, an escaped criminal looking for a big score. What happened between them would result in a deadly brew, a gunshot, and bloodstains. A ransom note, a massive manhunt, an immediate frenzy that gripped the nation. It's the history of murder, and I'm your host, Claire O'Donohue. On the morning of February 9th, 1960, everything had been normal for Adolf Kors III. Adolph, known to everyone as Ad, had ridden around his beloved ranch after having his morning coffee. Then he got into his car and headed to work. And on that bridge, he disappeared. Philip Jett, the author of The Death of an Heir, Adolph Kors III, and the Murder That Rocked an American Brewing Dynasty, said the job Ad was headed to that day was predestined.

SPEAKER_05 1:35

He was the grandson of the founder of the Kors Brewing Company. It was Adolf Kors, Adolph Kors Jr., Adolph Kors III. He was CEO and chairman of the board of the brewing company.

SPEAKER_06 1:49

In 1960, Coors, the largest single-site brewer in the world, was run by AD and his two brothers.

SPEAKER_05 1:57

His brother, Bill, was the president, and so the two of them ran the company. And Joe, the other brother, he ran the porcelain company that Coors has just across the creek from the brewing company.

SPEAKER_06 2:11

As the oldest of three sons and the first grandson of the founder, he was a natural choice to head the brewery. But in other ways, he wasn't.

SPEAKER_05 2:22

He didn't like beer, he was allergic to beer. He preferred ranching over sitting at a desk. And in fact, he was going to retire early and just ranch. He'd already bought a ranch out around Morrison, Colorado, South Denver. So in 1960, it was really remote. That's why they had these dirt and gravel roads and one-lane bridges and that sort of thing.

SPEAKER_00 2:47

Before we continue, please remember to leave a comment, like the video, and subscribe to our channel. It will help us continue to make new content. Now, back to the story.

SPEAKER_06 2:58

On that chilly February morning, 44-year-old Ad completed his morning workout and had coffee with his wife Mary while their four children were still asleep. Then he did some chores around the ranch. The drive to the brewery in Golden was only twelve miles away. Ad put on a tan baseball cap, his favorite navy blue jacket, and got into his station wagon. Normally he would travel along a major highway, but parts of it were closed due to construction. So Ad took a rural road that ran over a bridge that crossed Turkey Creek. But on that bridge, a yellow car was blocking the way. The hood was up, and the driver in a brown fedora seemed to need help. Suddenly, the sound of gunfire ricocheted throughout the Turkey Creek Canyon. It was 8 a.m. Meanwhile, at the brewery, Bill and Joe Coors were in their office, preparing for their usual 10 30 meeting with their brother. But Ad never arrived.

SPEAKER_05 4:20

He didn't show up for work, which he never missed work. And if he did, he'd call in. And you know, um back then we didn't have cell phones, but you you'd call from wherever you were, the gas station, the grocery store, the feed store, wherever you were, and let them know, hey, I'm gonna be a little late, I'm over getting some feed for my horses, whatever.

SPEAKER_06 4:42

By 1045, Ed's secretary began calling around, trying to find him. She called the Coors warehouse in Denver, the Coors Porcelain Factory. She even spoke to Mary at the ranch, but no one knew where Ad was.

SPEAKER_05 4:58

Then a call came into the office from the Colorado Highway Patrol saying that they had found his vehicle abandoned beside a bridge, and they wanted to know what the problem was. Bill took the call, and he was smart enough to know this is not the way Ed operates.

SPEAKER_06 5:19

No, it wasn't. He was a responsible man, Mr. Reliable, and a pillar in the community.

SPEAKER_05 5:31

He was a nice guy, a family man, four kids at home, and wife he married Mary Grant, who's famous in Colorado as well. I think her grandfather was one of the first governors of the state. And you'll see Grant on a bunch of buildings and signs and things out in Denver, as well as courts.

SPEAKER_06 5:53

The marriage wasn't just of two prominent families, it was of two people very much in love. And everyone could see what Mary found in Ad.

SPEAKER_05 6:03

He was a nice guy. You know, he was a tough businessman, but he was a nice guy. I never ran it across anyone who said anything bad about the gentleman, um, as far as his demeanor or how he treated the workers.

SPEAKER_06 6:19

In fact, Ad and the other members of the Kors family were fixtures in Colorado, where the patriarch Adolf Kors had started his brewery back in 1873. Kors, a penniless brewer's apprentice, had stowed away on a ship from Germany and discovered that the clear waters around Golden, Colorado were perfect for making beer.

SPEAKER_05 6:43

Kors was Golden and Golden was Coors. Very small town. In fact, the factory hired more people than populated the Golden at the time. A lot of these people had grown up with the brothers, played sports in school with them, they knew them all.

SPEAKER_06 7:00

At six foot one inch, Ad was the shortest of the brothers, but he was physically fit, weighing 185 pounds. And he was an avid skier. One of the reasons Colorado became noted for that sport was due to Ad, who actively promoted skiing throughout the state in the 1950s. But while Ad was the athletic one, his brother Bill was kind of the brains of the family.

SPEAKER_05 7:33

Went to Princeton, got his engineering degree in chemistry, I believe, and he ran the day-to-day operations, unlike Ad, who oversaw policy and that sort of thing. Bill, he was known for doing a couple things. He was the first one to develop cold pasteurization. He felt that if you heat up beer, it loses some of its flavors. He came up with cold pasteurizations and filters. And Coors had a company spin-off called Coors Container, which made cans and they sold those aluminum cans to other companies. Joe was more into the porcelain plant, and he was really into politics back then and later in life.

SPEAKER_06 8:17

The brothers all had different titles in the overall company, but they ran it together, since their seventy-four-year-old father, known as Mr. Quors, had handed them the reins. He didn't give up ownership though, and the sons owned no stock, but took salaries. Mr. Quors had raised his children to be disciplined and hard working, and as a parent he was strict and unsentimental, as Bill once told a reporter.

SPEAKER_03 8:43

My father believed if he showed affection, it would spoil me and my brothers. I never got a word of approval, nor did my brothers. A perfect job was expected of you. Anything else was underperformance.

SPEAKER_06 8:56

Mr. Kors insisted that the brothers work together as a team and had a surefire way to handle arguments.

SPEAKER_03 9:05

Our father would not tolerate dissension. If there was a difference of opinion, he insisted we sit there and argue things out until we reached unanimity. We were then bound by the decision.

SPEAKER_06 9:15

Mr. Kors made sure his family did not flaunt their wealth and status. Maintaining a low profile was good for business. Prohibition had almost wiped out the company, and he feared it might someday be restored. Also, back in 1933, one of Mr. Kors' close friends, the son of the wealthiest man in Colorado, was kidnapped and held for two weeks before being released for a ransom. So the Korps' style was to look and behave in as low-key a manner as possible.

SPEAKER_05 9:49

You have these three brothers that are running a big company in the United States, and they share an office. And in fact, their metal desks like butt up against each other. They're all in the same room. They dress much like a worker, very casual. They weren't that flashy. Yeah, they had wealth, they had nice things, they belonged to a lot of country clubs, but they had regular cars, that sort of thing. Their father really drove that into them, not be, as we say now, a conspicuous consumer. I think a lot of people liked him for that.

SPEAKER_06 10:23

But his man of the people ways clearly hadn't protected Ad, because by the afternoon of February 9th, his family came to believe he had been kidnapped. And it was easy to understand why. The scene at the bridge. Bill and Joe joined the state patrol there and saw Ad's abandoned car. A milkman making deliveries that morning had found the car with the engine running, the driver's side window down, and the radio playing. He'd honked the car's horn and waited for the driver to return. When no one came, the milkman pushed the abandoned vehicle off the one-lane bridge to the side of the road so he could continue his route. Then he called the police. Now, hours later, with investigators scouring the scenes, they found some disturbing signs. Bill later told the Denver Post.

SPEAKER_03 11:41

This is also incredible, but it's obvious someone waylaid him. I don't think he had an enemy in the world. And he carried very little money. The family is baffled. All we want is ads returned, and we will appreciate anything that anyone can do to bring this about.

SPEAKER_06 11:57

The next day, the FBI arrived. Mr. Corris personally spoke to FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover and was assured this case, codenamed Cornap, would be their top priority. But the FBI's early presence didn't sit well with the local authorities, particularly the man heading up the initial investigation, Sheriff R. Wormuth.

SPEAKER_05 12:21

The FBI came in, thought everybody locally was buffoons. And Sheriff, he was a war hero for World War II, and he had a deputy that had been in naval intelligence, so they weren't complete buffoons.

SPEAKER_06 12:35

Throughout the search for Ad and his abductor, there were clashes between the sheriff and the FBI, mostly about who would be the face of the investigation and who would deal with the media. And there was a lot of media, especially as the case began to make headlines.

SPEAKER_05 12:52

Sheriff Warmouth was always seeking the media's attention and releasing, leaking things to the news like people talk about today. He was doing that. And so the FBI just kind of cut him off. You know, they're like, don't talk to this guy. They told the family, don't talk to him.

SPEAKER_06 13:12

But the family, especially Mary, was desperate to talk to anyone who could help. Because two days after Ad disappeared, a ransom note addressed to Mary arrived demanding$500,000 in exchange for her husband's release.

SPEAKER_05 13:29

The kidnapper sent the ransom note for the day of the kidnapping, and it was set before there was any news of the kidnapping having broken on the news or in the newspaper. So they knew it was legit. Told them to put an ad in the newspaper signaling to him that they had the cash ready, and then he would contact them about where the drop would be made.

SPEAKER_06 13:53

The ransom,$500,000 in small bills, equals about$5.4 million today. It would be shared, it seemed, by several people, since the ransom note stated, quote, We have no desire to commit murder. All we want is that money, unquote. Mr. Kors, without hesitation, made the arrangements to get the cash and told reporters.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

I am dealing with crooks who are in business. They have something I want to buy, my son. The price is secondary.

SPEAKER_06 14:28

When a reporter asked him about treating his son's kidnapping like a business deal, Mr.

SPEAKER_02 14:33

Kors replied, That's what it is. I cannot be emotional about this.

SPEAKER_05 14:39

He is thinking as just as he had done his entire life, it's just everything's black and white. This is just a business traction. They want money. I've got something to sell. He wants to buy.

SPEAKER_06 15:50

Mary and her children were definitely not like the Coors family. They were not looking at events from a business perspective. Mary couldn't eat or sleep. She was so consumed with fear. She was terrified about what might be happening to Ad. Their four kids, ranging in age from 18 to 10, were also scared and confused as they went to stay with Joe's family while they anxiously awaited news about their father. Ad and Mary's son, Adolph IV, known as Spike, was 14 at the time. He later recalled how the kidnapping changed their lives.

SPEAKER_04 16:29

We had an ideal family and were living the American dream. We had the home in the mountains, wealth, social success, and parents who loved us and took time to let us know their love. My life was almost everything a boy could want. Then, on February 9th, 1960, our world was ripped apart.

SPEAKER_05 16:48

There's a lot of fake kidnap calls and letters coming in. Mrs. Corris would have to answer the phone several times a day just for fake kidnaps. The FBI would go out and track these people down and charge them with extortion. So the sad part was that she had to be available and she had to listen to these people that are trying to make money off her husband's kidnapping, and she's she's trying to filter out the real person and deal with them. It was very tough emotionally and mentally processing all of that.

SPEAKER_06 17:26

It was like a a slow torture, you know, after you go through the days passed, then a week, then two, and still the instructions about where and when to deliver the money did not come.

SPEAKER_05 17:39

The family was waiting, waiting, waiting, waiting, and saying, We're ready, we're ready to pay. You know, where are you? They never heard from the kidnapper again.

SPEAKER_06 17:49

With nothing but silence from the kidnappers, Mary couldn't cope. And as time went on, everyone around her began to notice.

SPEAKER_05 17:57

She was not having it well. She started hitting cocktails more often, drinking at home and that sort of thing, and that became a problem, which told me she really loved her husband.

SPEAKER_06 18:10

While Mary agonized over Ad's kidnapping, it seemed to her that the rest of the Kors family was moving on. In March, Mr. Kors called a board of directors meeting, something he hadn't done in a while. He and the brothers began to divide up Ad's duties and settle his financial affairs. Mary worried that she and her children were being isolated from the family, and that with her husband gone, her sons would eventually be cut out of their rightful place in the company. And she felt especially hurt that during this horrible ordeal, the family did not shut down the brewery, not even for a day.

SPEAKER_05 18:48

What may have seemed cold, they just continued on with their business. And Bill and Joe, it was their family business, was their parcel business. And so our employees have no right to be part of this at all. We don't need to talk to them or give them a day off or anything like that.

SPEAKER_06 19:06

You know, have a memorial for the company employees. Actually, many of the Corps' employees were concerned that the kidnappers might turn out to be brewery workers, especially some of the union members. The company had maintained tense relations with the unions over the years.

SPEAKER_05 19:26

They had had some pretty nasty conflicts with the union a year or two before. In fact, the National Guard was called in um to deal with that. And, you know, fights, threats, broken glass, all that sort of thing going on, and it was pretty scary. And so it was natural for the authorities to think, well, this may have something to do with the unions because there was such a nasty clash between the two a couple years earlier.

SPEAKER_03 19:55

I don't think ad had an enemy in the world. Revenge isn't part of this. If it had been Joe or myself, then maybe I could understand it.

SPEAKER_05 20:06

But the entire town and community was fearful that if it is a union man, you know, it could blow the union right up and would give the corps a really good excuse just to say, look, you know, you've kidnapped, killed my brother, whatever. We're done with you guys. Get out of here.

SPEAKER_06 20:25

As the days went by, unbeknownst to Mary and the family, investigators were consumed not with finding Ad, but locating his kidnappers. Though they refused to acknowledge it, they had pretty quickly reached the conclusion that Ad was never coming home.

SPEAKER_05 20:44

There was so much blood on the scene at the bridge that people in the know knew that he was probably dead, either before he got into the car or just soon afterward. But they're still going to operate under the assumption that maybe he lived somehow.

SPEAKER_06 21:03

But if the search for Ad was essentially over, investigators were hot on the trail of his kidnappers. And they had a very big clue. The day Ad disappeared, authorities had questioned family, friends, and neighbors about any suspicious activity they had seen in the area. And several people, including Mary, mentioned seeing a strange yellow car repeatedly parked near the ranch in the weeks before the abduction.

SPEAKER_05 21:32

I grew up as a kid out in a very remote area and you knew who your neighbors were, you knew what cars they had, what trucks they had, you'd see them. If you saw a car that didn't belong, you took note and you're like, What are they doing? And so if you've got a yellow car on top of that, and they come back, they come back, and they come back, then you're like, What is that? He just sits and parks, he just

SPEAKER_06 22:02

In fact, one eyewitness who spotted the yellow car and thought the driver seemed a bit strange had written down part of the license plate. He didn't have all the numbers, but he knew it was a 1960 Colorado plate. And from that, the FBI was able to track the vehicle and get a name. Walter Osborne. That name and the description of the car was sent to police departments all across the country. And on February 17th, investigators got a break.

SPEAKER_05 22:51

And then they go to his apartment. Then they find out from the landlady, oh yeah, he took off, you know, the the day after the kidnapping, and you know, and so they start to piece it together.

SPEAKER_06 23:04

During a search of Osborne's apartment, investigators found leather cases used to hold handcuffs. And even though the apartment had been carefully cleaned, they found another important clue on a discarded paint bucket.

SPEAKER_05 23:18

They find one fingerprint that um led to his identity, and then they find that he had escaped prison California, and then they had his real identity. It wasn't Osborne, it was Joe Corbett Jr. He was using his stepbrother's first and middle name, Walter Osborne. It's funny because his landlady noticed that when he first started using it, Osborne didn't have an E. And then later on it didn't have an E. If you're gonna pick an alias, you need to spell it consistently.

SPEAKER_06 23:53

The 31-year-old Corbett had used a lot of aliases in his life, which had a lot of criminal activity, but it had begun with such promise.

SPEAKER_05 24:05

He started out at University of Washington, he's from Seattle, and did very well, and he actually was admitted to Berkeley, and he was pre-may, I think. And he was a Fulbright scholar, and everything looked bright, and then his mother fell off a balcony at home and he turned.

SPEAKER_06 24:28

Corbett had apparently been working on the balcony's banister just prior to his mother's fall and was simply devastated by her death. Afterwards he dropped out of school, and his life changed completely. In nineteen fifty, he stole a car and shot a hitchhiker to death during a botched robbery. He spent a year in San Quentin, but was transferred to a minimum security prison, from which he later escaped in 1955. He fled to Los Angeles and then Colorado, where he kept himself afloat by doing small-time robberies. Corbett also took great pains to make sure that everyone around him knew how intelligent he believed he was.

SPEAKER_05 25:34

But he had something, you know, as they say, wrong with him. He had been diagnosed in prison as borderline, schizophrenic, narcissistic, and all these other things.

SPEAKER_06 25:46

Not only had Corbett become a dedicated criminal, but he was a confirmed bachelor who had a pretty dim view of women.

SPEAKER_04 25:54

He reportedly told a friend Women aren't to be trusted. They're dirty, disagreeable, expensive, and worst of all, can't keep confidential information to themselves.

SPEAKER_06 26:07

Once Corbett had settled in Colorado sometime around 1957 or 58, he began putting together his abduction scheme. He later admitted he had a longtime obsession with the famous Lindbergh kidnapping. Corbett got a job working at a paint store where he often told a coworker that he was planning to pull off a big job, and he began stalking the man he believed would bring him a fortune in ransom money. Ad course.

SPEAKER_05 26:46

And so just waiting for an opportune time, very patient.

SPEAKER_06 26:53

The construction on Highway 285 in February 1960 gave Corbett what he thought was the perfect opportunity to grab Ad Coors. The well-known beer baron would have to take a detour on his way to work across a lonely rural bridge. But based on the crime scene evidence, investigators believed Ad did not cooperate with Corbett's plan. He had put up a fight. And that, they assumed, probably cost him his life. Afterwards, they figured Corbett, having lost his hostage, had gone on the run.

SPEAKER_05 27:28

He didn't have a plan B really. You know, he had his plan. He thought it was a great plan. You know, how could it not work, kind of thing? He didn't plan for what happens if something goes wrong.

SPEAKER_06 27:40

On March 30th, as FBI geologists examined the mud and dirt on Corbett's yellow car, the FBI put him on their 10 most wanted list.

unknown 27:51

J.

SPEAKER_06 27:52

Edgar Hoover called him the most wanted man since John Dillinger and promised that he would soon be apprehended. But apparently Corbett had escaped apprehension. What investigators didn't know was that he'd already left the country. He had fled to Toronto, Canada, and gotten a job as a lab tech. He spent the spring and summer there trying to blend in and rebuild his life. Then on September 11th, 1960, everything changed, both for Corbett and for the Corps family. All because of a shocking discovery back in Colorado.

SPEAKER_05 28:39

And months later, this pizza delivery guy goes up. He's just a kid. He's 20, 21. He goes up there and shoot. And as he's walking through the woods down to a different level of the garbage dump, he runs across some nice shoes and a nice pair of pants with belt, and he hears things jingle in the pockets, and he he finds coins and a pocket knife, and then he comes up on a piece of key ring that has Adolf Kore's munitions, AC the third, on it. And he knows immediately. And so he he runs and and brings back the posse, the FBI and the local police, and they start scouring for the rest. It starts getting dark, but they start finding bones and that sort of thing. And then they come back the next day with this big search party, and they scour the entire hillside and putting flags for each bone they find or article clothing and taking photos.

SPEAKER_06 29:42

Mary and the family were immediately notified, but it was only when a skull was discovered nearby that dental records could positively confirm Ad Cores had at last been found. Tragically, investigators did not locate all of Ad's remains. Years later, Ad's son Spike would recall how that horrible discovery affected his family.

SPEAKER_04 30:28

Seven months after his disappearance, my dad's remains were found in a garbage dump near Denver. In the meantime, my family had fallen into a deep hole of hate. Mother especially allowed hatred for Joseph Corbett to consume her life. In that hatred, she turned to the only crutch she knew alcohol.

SPEAKER_06 30:50

News about the discovery of Ad's remains hit the papers immediately. This was now not a kidnapping, but a murder case. And for some who had known Joe Corbett, the fact that he was wanted for murder was no surprise. A childhood friend of Corbett's named Dr. Philip Huffman later recalled that when Joe was about twelve or thirteen, he'd wondered what it would be like to kill someone.

SPEAKER_05 31:28

He writes a bad check on a Toronto bank account in Winnipeg. So now the FBI they go to Winnipeg.

SPEAKER_06 31:42

It also helped that Corbett had asked the rental car worker for directions to Vancouver. This self-professed smart guy was making a lot of mistakes and leaving a clear trail for the FBI to follow. Which they did. They went to Vancouver and told authorities to be on the lookout for a bright red Pontiac.

SPEAKER_05 32:05

This Canadian Mountie is is briefed by the FBI and about this red Pontiac, and he's like, you know, I think I've seen that car out in front of a hotel near a town. And so they go and and sure enough, that's when they capture um Joe Corbin. He was not expecting them. The story was he had asked for the delivery of a typewriter. And so the FBI, when they got there, they thought, okay, this would be our hitch. We'll pretend we're delivering a typewriter. But they said we could they just knocked and he answered. And he stand there and they said it looked like he just posed for the uh wanted poster. He looked exactly the same as the wanted poster.

SPEAKER_06 32:56

It was October 29, 1960, when the FBI and the Vancouver police finally arrested Joseph Corbett Jr. He did not resist. In fact, he made a pretty damning statement about himself.

SPEAKER_04 33:10

I'm your man. I'm not armed.

SPEAKER_05 33:13

I give up. And so they use that in court to say, see, he was there was sort of an admission, uh, saying, I'm your man, well, why would he say that otherwise then then it'd be admitting guilt?

SPEAKER_06 33:31

The news of Corbett's arrest went nationwide. The credit for the capture could have been shared by all the investigators, but there was still lingering tension between Sheriff Warmouth and the FBI.

SPEAKER_05 33:44

And there was another funny story between the sheriff and the FBI. And it was so blatant on the FBI's part because the sheriff leaves Denver to go pick him up. He's got the arrest warrant from Colorado. He goes to Vancouver to pick up Joe Corbett. And the FBI says, okay, we'll have all the paperwork and everything ready for you in the morning. Come back in the morning. So when he comes back in the morning, he learns that during the night the FBI flew him back to Denver on their own so that they could have the photographs on the front of the newspaper or the FBI bringing them in rather than the local sheriff. The sheriff he wanted the glory and he was mad at the FBI, but he what he didn't understand was that J. Hoover liked glory too.

SPEAKER_06 34:36

With Corbett in custody, the Kors family now awaited the trial. They were certain he would be convicted, and Mr. Coors told reporters what they hoped would happen after that.

SPEAKER_02 34:48

This is one of those instances where capital punishment, an eye for an eye or a tooth for a tooth should apply.

SPEAKER_06 34:54

Mary Coors agreed. She wanted him executed. But at that time, in order to have a convicted man executed in Colorado, there needed to be one of two things an eyewitness to the crime or a confession. And investigators had neither. No one saw what happened between Corbett and Ed Cores on the bridge, and Corbett never confessed and for the rest of his life maintained his innocence.

SPEAKER_05 35:23

They didn't really have any direct evidence. It was all circumstantial. It was him driving around, scoping out the area. It's him leaving his apartment the very next morning. It's him having talked big to some co-workers that he had a big score coming up. Just things like that. He was a bungler. He does his surveillance out in the country in a yellow vehicle. People are not used to seeing. He keeps his original license plate on the car, which people know. And just on and on, you know. And then when he escapes, he burns the car in New Jersey, which only alerts authorities to look there because they didn't know where he was, you know, at that time. Finally, with all this circumstantial evidence closed the case on hand.

SPEAKER_06 36:11

On March 18, 1961, Joe Corbett's trial began. Prosecutors presented all the evidence that they believed strongly pointed to Corbett. In addition to witnesses that had spotted the yellow car, the FBI matched dirt from underneath it to samples taken from the golden area. They traced the ransom note paper to a type that Corbett had purchased in Denver. They even learned he had bought a typewriter that matched the model they believed had been used to write the note.

SPEAKER_05 36:42

Showing his bloody clothing and you know his bones and all this stuff. I mean, there's a today you have objection, objection everywhere. Um, but they were, you know, building this case.

SPEAKER_06 36:54

Then it was the defense's turn.

SPEAKER_05 36:56

Well, there was no defense, and the defense didn't put on evidence of any kind. They they took the tactic. Bill Erickson was a very bright guy. He was the defense attorney. He decided he was going to attack the case procedurally because he knew he didn't have the facts. He had a 103, I think, different issues with the case. I mean, he was throwing everything at the ball, and uh of course they were all denied.

SPEAKER_06 37:26

With their motions repeatedly denied, the defense team had limited options. Corbyn himself never took the stand, but his team did try to cast doubt on his involvement.

SPEAKER_05 37:38

Because they were throwing some other things out there, like you know, there was a fingerprint in Ed's truck that could not be identified. There were other cars seen in the area, not just his car. So they were throwing these other things out there to kind of muddy the waters because they just need reasonable doubt. They need some one juror to have a reasonable doubt.

SPEAKER_06 38:02

On March 29th, 1961, the jury reached a verdict. Corbett was found guilty of murder in the first degree and sentenced to life in prison.

SPEAKER_05 38:13

I do not think that Joe Corbett intended to kill Ad Corse, and it was only when Ed broke away on the bridge, they were after the struggle and took off running for his vehicle that he was shot. Now, I don't know when the gun was drawn. I don't know if Ed didn't see the gun and just thought, okay, I'm done fighting, I'm gonna run for it. Because I'm thinking if he'd seen the gun, he probably wouldn't have. But who knows? If Ed had just gone along with him, then he might have lived. But who's to say? Joe Corbett, he was still is a very dangerous man. Why didn't he just shoot in the air? Because I'm thinking I would have stopped if I'm add if he'd shot in the air. Why did you have to shoot him twice in the back? So I'm not sure that Ed would have survived in any of it. But Joe Corbett reacted to what he saw as his ransom escaping and just killed him.

SPEAKER_06 39:11

Three months after the trial, Ad Cor's remains were cremated and scattered over Aspen Mountain during a small family service. Mary and her children tried to resume their lives, but everything had changed. And as she feared, it would not be her sons that would ultimately take over the brewery.

SPEAKER_05 39:38

It was very destructive in not only Ad losing his life and how it affected Mary and children, family dynamics, but also the children's future in the company and that sort of thing as well.

SPEAKER_06 39:51

In 1979, Joe Corbett was paroled, and he went to San Francisco only to return to Denver two days later, which was a violation of the terms of his release. He was sent back to prison. He was paroled again on December twelfth, nineteen eighty, at age fifty-two. After serving only eighteen and a half years, he returned to Denver, where the Kors family secretly kept closed tabs on him.

SPEAKER_05 40:18

The Kors family hired someone to watch him for years after that. They still didn't trust him with their family. But, you know, he'd already killed one coors. Um why why give him another chance, I guess?

SPEAKER_06 40:38

Joe Corbett lived in the Denver area for nearly 30 years. He was diagnosed with terminal cancer, and on August 24, 2009, he fatally shot himself. He was 82 years old. In a rare interview with the Denver Post in 1996, Corbett did make a few comments about the infamous Coors case. Mary Coors never remarried after her husband's death. She later suffered another devastating blow when her daughter Brooke died at age 26 from lymphoma. The tragedy of losing ad to murder destroyed her once happy life.

SPEAKER_05 41:29

She had a tough, tough life afterwards. You know, alcohol, hatred. You know, people tell me she was full of hate toward the person that did this. You know, I think it just kind of ate her up inside. To me, that just reflects her love for her husband and her family.

SPEAKER_06 41:49

Mary died at age 60 on July 26, 1975, from injuries suffered from falling down a flight of stairs at a friend's home. The ranch she had shared with Ad had been sold years before, and the family had long since returned to Denver. Bill Coors took over the Coors company, living to age 100. Ad Coors' death was rarely, if ever, discussed, but its effect on the family was never forgotten.

SPEAKER_05 42:18

The son had mentioned on a Christian broadcast that he lost his father to murderer and his mother to alcoholism. So he was terrible. You know, they had all the benefits that in life you would love, you know, name, recognition, power, money, good family, and this guy just stripped it all away.

SPEAKER_06 42:50

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