Longtime El Paso County prosecutor Donna Billek is set to be demoted next week, a move that freed up her senior rank for a former district attorney recruited after a controversial tenure in Adams and Broomfield counties.  

Billek, a nearly 22-year office veteran who handled cases against admitted Planned Parenthood shooter Robert Lewis Dear Jr. and double-murderer Glen Law Galloway, among other high-profile defendants, will lose her position as senior deputy district attorney effective Feb. 8, the 4th Judicial District Attorney’s Office has confirmed. 

Billek held the senior rank for nearly 14 years. The move is poised to cut her salary from $120,000 to $100,000, an office spokesman said.   

“We will not discuss matters involving personnel issues,” said Howard Black, a spokesman for the Pikes Peak region’s new district attorney, Michael Allen, who declined a request for an interview. 

Dave Young, ‘scandal-plagued’ former DA, joins El Paso County office

Billek also declined to comment, referring questions to Black.

Her pending demotion comes on the heels of the Jan. 14 hiring of former 17th Judicial District Attorney Dave Young, who was brought in at Billek’s soon-to-be former rank. Until Billek’s demotion, all other senior deputy ranks had been filled, according to two sources with knowledge of the office’s leadership cadre and internal documents obtained by The Gazette.

Young, who served two terms in Adams and Broomfield counties, was recruited two days after he left office following what The Denver Post editorial board called a “scandal-plagued” tenure.

His time in office was marred by an alleged affair with a subordinate that drew statewide headlines and wide-ranging criticism of his review of the Aurora police response that led to the death of 23-year-old Elijah McClain.

Young declined to charge the officers who placed the unarmed McClain in a chokehold that was later banned, sparking nationwide scrutiny and adding heat to racial justice protests in Colorado. 

Young turned down a request for an interview through Black, instead relaying a fact sheet touting his leadership bona fides, saying that he grew the budget for the 17th Judicial District DA’s office by $10 million to $24 million and personally prosecuted some of the most high-profile homicides in his jurisdiction, including a 2017 shooting that killed three people at a Walmart in a Denver suburb and the murders of two police officers.  

A longtime El Paso County prosecutor criticized Billek’s demotion in an interview with The Gazette, calling it evidence that Allen, also a veteran prosecutor in the El Paso County office, has little regard for experience of longtime employees who were once his peers, particularly “strong women.”

“Women are definitely not favored for promotion and hiring under this administration, and in fact women have been fired or demoted to make room for men,” the prosecutor said, speaking on condition of anonymity, citing fear of retaliation.

Aside from Billek’s demotion, the longtime prosecutor cited the firing of office spokeswoman Lee Richards, a former KRDO news radio journalist, in favor of Black, a retired Colorado Springs police lieutenant; and the promotion of 11-year prosecutor Andy Vaughan over more experienced female candidates.

The pattern of early moves by Allen shows exceptions to the source’s allegations, however.

El Paso County prosecutor tapped for promotion after family’s contributions to DA-elect

Allen named Martha McKinney as assistant district attorney, his second-in-command.

Two of the four prosecutors he appointed as senior deputy district attorneys are women, according to records. Both of the women are relative newcomers compared to others passed over for promotion, records show.

It’s also common for newly elected officials to install their own media representatives.  

However, both attorneys promoted to chief deputy district attorney, the office’s third-highest rank, are men who are close to Allen and supported his successful political campaign — Vaughan and Reggy Short.

“Most of the attorneys are very upset about Andy Vaughan,” the veteran prosecutor said. “He doesn’t have enough experience is the bottom line. And there are plenty of people who have more experience who were passed over.”

Several of the female senior deputies who were passed over for chief deputy have been prosecutors for two decades or more, records show. 

Short’s family was tied to $13,000 in contributions to assist Allen’s campaign, much of it directed to an independent expenditure committee from a trust in Short’s late mother’s name, the newspaper previously reported.  

One political observer likened the Short family’s spending to “dark money” because of how difficult it can be to trace, and Allen previously said he had “no idea” about the group’s activities or Short’s role in them.

“When you told me about that just now is the first I heard about that,” Allen previously said, describing Short as “supremely qualified” for his promotion.

Billek is on the prosecution team involved in the ongoing case against Marco Garcia-Bravo, an alleged triggerman in the killings of former Coronado High School students Natalie Cano-Partida, 16, and Derek Greer, 15. The jury completed its fifth full day of deliberations Thursday and continues deliberations Monday morning.

Billek was notified of her demotion while the trial was underway, sources said.

Known for her aggressive approach in court and command of large, complex cases, Billek was on the team that obtained a first-degree murder conviction in 2009 against Derrick Johnson, who started a 2007 fire at the Castle West Apartments that killed two people and displaced hundreds more. In 2014, she led an effort that obtained a life sentence against revenge-killer Bruce Nozolino, convicted in a decade-spanning series of sniper shootings in which he killed his ex-wife’s former lover, partially blinded her divorce lawyer, and tried to kill a district judge.

In 2018, Billek was part of the team that pursued the death penalty against Galloway in the back-to-back shootings of Marcus Anderson and Janice Nam in May 2016. A jury ultimately threw out capital punishment, resulting in a life sentence without parole for Galloway.

Two months after the trial, Billek received the Colorado District Attorneys Council’s statewide Robert R. Gallagher Jr. Award for Prosecution, also known as prosecutor of the year award.     

Within the office, Billek was known as mercurial, and she sometimes clashed with fellow attorneys, former colleagues acknowledged.

She also had strained relationships with both Allen and McKinney, sources told the newspaper. 

But she is also regarded as a hard worker with an impressive track record, and her demotion is likely to further rattle employees already shaken by Allen’s early changes in office, the veteran prosecutor said. Another source with longstanding ties to the office observed that others with strong personalities weren’t similarly punished.

“I think people are nervous. They don’t understand what’s happening,” the prosecutor said. “I think we really felt like Michael was going to do things differently and promote people based on merit. His whole campaign was ‘I’m a prosecutor, not a politician.’ … All of these decisions are politically motivated, and they have nothing to do with good prosecution, or merit.”

During an interview earlier this month, Allen said staffing changes were based on his assessment of abilities, disputing that politics or friendship were factors.

Said Allen: “When I evaluate people for leadership positions, I look at merit, I look at experience, I look at leadership traits and I also look at the willingness to take on the challenge of leadership.”