The man accused of killing five people in the metro area Monday published a trilogy of books detailing similar slayings as part of an extensive, pseudonymous online presence.

Denver metro shooting spree suspect ID’d, police announce 5th victim death

Police say Lyndon J. McLeod killed five people and injured two more in a shooting rampage across Denver and Lakewood on Monday night. At least two of those shootings were described, in detail, in books written at least two years ago by McLeod under the pseudonym Roman McClay. 

In one book, he describes the main character, named Lyndon McLeod, walking into an apartment on Williams Street near Cheesman Park and killing a man named Michael Swinyard, according to Denver Gazette news partner 9News. On Wednesday, authorities said McLeod shot and killed a 67-year-old man named Michael Swinyard during the Monday night rampage at an apartment building bordering the park on Williams Street.

Another book included a passage about the main character walking into a tattoo shop on Sixth Avenue in Denver and killing a woman, according to the TV station. Police say McLeod killed Alicia Cardenas and Alyssa Gunn-Maldonado at the Sol Tribe tattoo shop on Broadway, which Cardenas owned. 

Police said McLeod also killed Danny Scofield, 38, and Sarah Steck, 28, during the rampage.

The books were no longer available on Amazon as of Wednesday afternoon. Their publisher was listed as Flat Black Ink Corp. McLeod registered a company by that name with the Colorado Secretary of State’s Office in June 2005. He filed regular reports with the state through 2016.

Fifth victim dies in Denver shooting rampage; gunman identified

The address listed on the filing is 246 W. Sixth Ave. A representative of the company that owns the property confirmed that the space had been used as a tattoo shop during that time. She declined to comment further. 

In 2016, Sol Tribe was issued a body art establishment license by the city at the same address where McLeod registered Flat Black Ink 11 years prior, said Eric Escudero, spokesman for the city’s Department of Excise and Licenses. McLeod was listed on the lease for a 2015 application for a license at that same address; that application was withdrawn, Escudero said. 

Police say McLeod went to the 200 block of West Sixth Avenue on Monday night and broke into a home, shooting at the people inside but hitting no one.

Escudero said in a statement that McLeod “was never licensed as a tattoo artist nor as a business owner” for Flat Black Ink or for All Heart Industry. Flat Black Ink is listed as the trade name for All Heart Industry, Escudero said.

“Mr. McLeod also never applied for a body artist license either in Denver,” Escudero added. “So if he was doing any tattoo work in Denver, he was doing it illegally since he was unlicensed.”

During a 2019 interview with a podcast host, McLeod said he “always knew that if I was gonna go out that I wanted to at least have my novel written first. Like my explantation to the world of why this guy lived the life he did.”

Denver metro shooting spree suspect ID’d, police announce 5th victim death

At least two of McLeod’s Twitter pages, both listed under his pseudonym, were suspended by 4:30 p.m. Wednesday. His tweets frequently promoted his writing, his calls for war, and his misogynistic, hyper-masculine worldview. He named other people in his books, including allegations against a now-retired Denver judge and Mitch Morrissey, who was the district attorney in the county until 2017.

Morrisey told The Denver Gazette that he was unaware of his inclusion in McLeod’s writing but that it didn’t mean he was a target. 

McLeod tweeted often about run-ins with Denver law enforcement. He said he had been criminally charged at least twice. Interviews and a review of public records in Colorado and Texas, where McLeod previously lived, indicated no arrests or charges. Denver police said Tuesday that McLeod was on their radar but that they had not arrested or charged him. The District Attorney’s Office said it had no open cases involving McLeod and that the office’s last contact with him “was about a decade ago.”

McLeod tweeted that he left Denver after a “falling out” with the police department. Gabriel Thorn, who purchased McLeod’s home in 2016, said his home was raided by Denver police shortly after he purchased it, apparently under suspicion that it had been the site of an illegal marijuana grow operation. Thorn said he still gets McLeod’s mail regularly.

Thorn said there were safes, some of which were designed to hold firearms, hidden throughout the home. He didn’t know they were there when he purchased the home, he said. 

“It was just all these little things. There are skulls spray-painted outside of the house,” he said. “A lot of little things that made us think, ‘This is strange.’ And then a month after we moved in, we got raided by DPD.”

Thorn said police in tactical gear told him they’d received a tip that there was an illegal marijuana grow at the house and asked him if he was Lyndon McLeod. He showed police around the house, he said, including a small room in the garage. Thorn said police told him marijuana had been grown in the room.

He said police arrived at the home again Monday night, after the shootings. He didn’t know until the next morning that McLeod was involved. 

Denver, Lakewood shooting spree suspect identified

According to public records, McLeod in 2015 purchased a 35-acre plot for $109,000 in Las Animas County in a rural patch of the Spanish Peaks State Wildlife Area, north of Weston. On Twitter, McLeod wrote about living in southern Colorado in a shipping container, sharing photos of it on his feed. 

A relative whose name also appears on public records associated with the property referred comment to his attorney Wednesday. Through that attorney, the family said they were “devastated” by the shootings and that the deaths were “evidence of the deep need for a system geared toward helping mentally-ill individuals.”

“Our family has been estranged for a number of years; we lost our son and brother years ago,” the family wrote. “We mourn the loss of life and injuries caused by this horrendous crime.”

A Weston, Colorado, electrician said he installed wiring in two large shipping containers in which McLeod had brought to his property. Tim Beane described McLeod as being covered in tattoos and said he acted strangely.

“He was kind of a nutcase,” Beane said.

He said a friend who did the concrete for the container home drove McLeod to Walmart for supplies because he didn’t have a vehicle of his own. Beane said he became concerned a couple of years ago when McLeod asked his friend to drive out to the home and remove everything inside.

“He said marshals were coming and he needed for us to get his stuff out before they got there,” he said.

After that, Beane said, McLeod disappeared. His last tweet, an enigmatic reference to a series of puzzles released online nearly a decade ago, was sent the morning of June 3, 2020.

Denver Gazette staff writers Julia Cardi and Carol McKinley contributed to this report.