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Background: Delta County Detention Facility (Delta County Sheriff”s Office) Inset: Mark Burns (Delta County Sheriff’s Office)
A case of double murder in a quaint Colorado mountain town has concluded with a conviction. A 69-year-old man received at least two life sentences related to the offenses.
Mark Burns was convicted of taking the lives of Michael Arnold, aged 69, and Donna Gallegos, aged 65, both from Paonia. In addition, he faced charges for two counts of aggravated robbery, burglary, menacing, and tampering with physical evidence.
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The jury considered the case for eight hours on Thursday, June 12. By Monday, a judge had imposed two consecutive life sentences on Burns, along with additional time for the related offenses.
The case began on Feb. 4, 2022, when Delta County Sheriff’s Office deputies arrived at 15835 Black Bridge Road near Paonia, located some 220 miles southwest of Denver, due to reports of two dead bodies. The residence was both a shop and a home, and in the former, the bodies of Arnold and Gallegos were found with multiple gunshot wounds.
Burns had been living in Idaho at the time. Less than two weeks after the murders, he was arrested there and brought back to be jailed in the Delta County Detention Facility.
Beginning in 2018, Burns rented a home from Arnold on his property, where he stayed until September 2021, prosecutors said during the trial, per CBS News. But by the time Burns left for Idaho, reportedly because Arnold had evicted him, witnesses said he and Arnold had a “contentious relationship.”
Burns had had a romantic relationship with a woman with whom Arnold had also previously had relations, according to court documents reviewed by the outlet, which added that Burns funded a lawsuit filed by the woman against Arnold claiming she and Arnold were in a common law marriage.
When Burns moved to Idaho in the fall of 2021, he “allegedly threatened Arnold, stating he didn’t know who he was messing with,” court documents obtained by CBS News said. But the evidence that prosecutors leaned on during the trial was home surveillance footage showing someone shooting the victims multiple times.
The suspect was wearing a mask, but Burns maintained it was not him in the video. Prosecutors said the culprit had duct tape around their wrists to hold their sleeves in place and may even have worn a wig to give them a different appearance, according to the Grand Junction Daily Sentinel.
In court, prosecutors reportedly suggested Burns’ motives were revenge for being kicked off Arnold’s property, as well as greed — as Burns allegedly had much more money to spend in the days after the murders occurred.
Delta County Sheriff Mark Taylor and Undersheriff Quinn Archibeque reacted to Burns’ conviction by calling it a “just verdict” — hoping it “will help bring closure to the friends and family of Mr. Arnold and Ms. Gallegos.”
