A chilling 47 minute movie has surfaced which appears to show preparation and motivation for last December’s shootings which left five people dead and two wounded including a Lakewood police officer. The movie, titled Warhorse, is for sale on the killer’s website, which advertises his books. 

The sale of the movie doesn’t sit well with Jeremy Costilow, who was mentioned 100 times in Lyndon McLeod’s Sanction trilogy, and just missed getting killed that day. “Nobody should make money off of that. It’s terrible,” Costilow told The Denver Gazette. “I know people are fascinated by killers, but I don’t think anybody should own that movie at all.” 

Not much is known about how the Warhorse movie was made. A holiday wreath decorating a downtown building hints that it was filmed in Denver some time during the holidays last year.  The killer mailed his movie on an SD card to his girlfriend in New Orleans with a note and permission to sell it to make money. According to the woman, who would only give her name as “Anne,” it was dated Dec. 27. 

Amanda Knight, a friend of McLeod’s who warned police about him a year before the slayings, is helping sell the movie, to help Anne recoup the money and property she lost. A statement on the website says that “Proceeds of this film go to victims of the crime.”

Knight knows people are criticizing her for selling the movie, but she said that McLeod’s friends are also traumatized from his murderous ways. “People have to heal. People have to survive. We’re not rich,” said Knight.

Jimmy Maldonado, who was injured in the killer’s first stop at a tattoo shop on South Broadway, was shown a screenshot from the film which showed Lyndon McLeod dressed in tactical gear.

“He was wearing that same helmet as what’s in the movie,” he told The Denver Gazette. “At first I thought it was the police who shot me.”

He said McLeod was wearing all black when he walked in the door and killed his wife, 35 year old Alyssa Gunn-Maldonado and his wife’s friend, Alicia Cardenas, 44, who owned the store. Maldonado was shot in the shoulder, fled through the back door and hid under a car in the back parking lot as the killer stalked him and then gave up. 

In the next hour, McLeod would go on to kill three more people: Michael Swinyard, 67, Danny Scofield, 38; and 28 year old Sarah Steck. Friday was a tough day for Maldonado, as it would have been Gunn-Maldonado’s 36th birthday. 

McLeod is the movie’s sole character and narrator. It’s a mish-mash of quick still photos, drawing-to-video images, animal skulls, totems and civil war references. In the background, a male voice-over rambles about Ghengis Khan and Jesse James superimposed with scenes of McLeod riding a chopper motorcycle through Denver streets and seemingly stalking at least two of his eventual targets from the front seat of a vehicle.

The movie flashes handwritten doomsday messages about revenge and murder, and videos of McLeod dressed for battle. The tactical gear, a black helmet covering his face resembles official police gear. One section of footage shows the body of an armed person dressed like a SWAT officer with the words “police” across the chest in white.

Costilow believes he would have been killed if not for his suspicious girlfriend. He told The Denver Gazette that McLeod came to the door of his home, which is connected to his tattoo business, at around 5:30 the evening of  Dec. 27 disguised as a delivery person. “He had on a big blue postal-looking jacket, a hat with a red light on it and he was holding a package with my name typed on it,” said Costilow.

Chelsea Matthews, who was holding the couple’s infant daughter, closed the door on McLeod and the young family scrambled to a tattoo shop next door. They could hear pounding on their wooden front door as a crazed McLeod splintered it with a sledgehammer, entered, and shot up the walls. He then torched their vehicle and left. 

His merciless rampage involved seven other stops from Denver to Lakewood in just over an hour’s time including a shootout with Denver police, a killing at a Cheesman Park high rise, three murders at two tattoo parlors, a killing at a hotel and even an impromptu drink at a bar.

Lyndon McLeod’s rampage was finally stopped by Lakewood police officer Ashley Ferris. He shot her in the abdomen and she got off a shot of her own as she fell. He died of a gunshot wound. Ferris is recovering. 

“Anne”  gave The Denver Gazette permission to show short clips of Warhorse. Though the movie  is professionally produced, the identity of the video crew is unknown.

According to Gazette partner 9News, at least two of those people were named in a dystopian novel McLeod wrote under the pseudonym Roman McCray called “Sanction.” In the book, the main character, Lyndon McLeod, kills people for revenge in bizarre a preview of his real-life rampage.

Knight told The Denver Gazette that in his final months, the shooter was morphing into the murderous, revengeful lead character he created in Sanction. “He had a Denver dentist file his teeth into fangs,” she said, adding that he got tattoos on the tops of his fingers spelling out SANC on one hand and TION on the other.

In Warhorse, McLeod drinks from a highball in a swanky hotel room and opens a briefcase full of $100 dollar bills, which Knight said is cash he drained from his girlfriend Anne’s savings.

“That was $20,000 she will not get back,” said Knight, who added that the black van and motorcycle McLeod drove the night of the killings also belonged to Anne. She said she will never see them again because they are being held by law enforcement.

Denver and Lakewood police told the Gazette that they know about the movie and that they will be reviewing it as part of their investigation into the murders. The FBI did not respond to an email.