Alleged Club Q shooter Anderson Aldrich to make court appearance Friday
Feb. 8—Alleged Club Q shooter Anderson Aldrich is set to appear in court on Friday for a hearing potentially related to a covert FBI surveillance team that had been watching their mom after Aldrich's arrest.
The Friday morning hearing, which was added to the court schedule this week, is scheduled to be a motions hearing and comes just a few weeks after Aldrich appeared in court in January for a motions hearing.
While it's unclear what motions may be discussed on Friday, the most recent court filings obtained by The Gazette show a defense motion filed on Jan. 25 requesting the District Attorney's Office, United States Attorneys and "every other law enforcing agency," to remove specific attorney-client privileged material from their possession.
The motion alleges that 4th Judicial District Attorney's Office shared confidential attorney-client privileged material with other law enforcement agencies despite letters from defense counsel specifically requesting them not to do so.
Defense attorney Megan Ring, who wrote the motion for the defense, claims that none of the four lawyers assigned to the case for the District Attorney's Office have responded to any attempts at contact by Aldrich's defense attorneys.
"This is both unethical, and inexcusable," Ring wrote in the motion regarding the lack of a response from the District Attorney's Office.
In a written response to the motion, the District Attorney's Office states that it obtained no valuable information from the materials, and that the materials in question were dealt with properly by the District Attorney's Office.
The contents of the attorney-client privileged materials that the District Attorney's Office is allegedly not supposed to have are in reference to a covert FBI surveillance team that had been watching Aldrich's mom, Laura Voepel, shortly after the Club Q shooting. The prosecution's response to the motions suggests that Aldrich's defense attorneys were seen on video entering and leaving Voepel's home by the surveillance team.
"In effect, on November 28, 2022, members of a covert FBI surveillance team were watching an understandably critical witness in the case, Laura Voepel (hence the simultaneous apparent attempt at contact by the defense)," the prosecution response reads. "During the course of that surveillance, they documented and attempted to identify everyone that was in potential contact with the witness ... they observed and documented three unidentified individuals enter the residence of Ms. Voepel."
Previous court filings obtained by The Gazette show that when a prosecution investigator discovered this attorney-client meeting had been recorded on video — without any audio — the investigator stopped watching, and the District Attorney's Office recommended for the court to take control of the exhibit for the time being.
The recommendation for the court to take hold of the materials in question was objected to by the defense on Jan. 20.
Aldrich faces 323 charges for allegedly killing five patrons of Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs, and injuring nearly two dozen more on Nov. 19, 2022.
Aldrich originally faced 305 charges but since the time of Aldrich's arrest the prosecution has added 18 new charges.
Aldrich is slated to have a preliminary hearing on Feb. 22; the hearing is anticipated to last three days.
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