Prosecutors said Ernest Cunningham went to confront a former co-worker and instead killed the man’s 23-year-old wife at the apartment door.

DENVER, Colo. — Ernest Cunningham, a 53-year-old Westminster man, was sentenced to 42 years in prison after jurors found him guilty of second-degree murder in the June 29, 2024, shooting death of 23-year-old Kelsey Roberts-Gariety at her southeast Denver home.

The sentence ends the trial phase of a case that prosecutors said grew out of anger after Cunningham was fired from a job he once shared with Roberts-Gariety’s husband. The state’s case turned on a simple but devastating chain of events: Cunningham went to the apartment to confront the husband, Roberts-Gariety answered the door first, and she was shot. With sentencing complete, the legal outcome is now clear even as some parts of the dispute that led to the killing remain outside the public record.

Authorities traced the case back to a summer afternoon in 2024. Denver police responded to a reported shooting in the 800 block of South Dexter Street, near East Kentucky Avenue, and found Roberts-Gariety dead inside the apartment building area after she had been shot. Prosecutors later said Cunningham had gone there looking for her husband, a former co-worker. According to later reporting on the arrest affidavit, the husband told police Cunningham knew where they lived and had “issues” with him after being fired. Neighbors heard a gunshot and the sound of someone running, and one resident captured video of a man leaving in a car. That video, along with surveillance footage that showed the vehicle leaving moments after the shooting, gave investigators a fast trail to follow.

By the time the case reached trial, officials had outlined a direct theory of motive and identity. The Denver District Attorney’s Office said Cunningham intended to confront the husband but shot Roberts-Gariety when she came to the front door. Public accounts identified Cunningham as being on parole for a prior burglary conviction at the time of the killing. The record available in news reports says the husband told police Cunningham had made repeated threatening calls after losing his job. But one point has stayed less settled in public: reports said the husband believed Cunningham used drugs at work, while also noting it was not clear from the public record whether that was the reason he had been fired. That uncertainty did not alter the core prosecution theory, which focused on intent to confront, the trip to the apartment and the fatal shooting itself.

Roberts-Gariety’s death also left a picture of a life cut short far beyond the courtroom file. Her obituary identified her as Kelsey Angelita Roberts-Gariety, 23, living in Denver with her husband and pets. Relatives speaking after the killing described her as kind and deeply loved. In the months after her death, family members from Ohio spoke publicly about the shock of learning she had been killed so far from home. That family loss resurfaced at sentencing, when her relatives measured the prison term not against abstract guidelines but against the permanence of the death. The public response from prosecutors took a similar line. District Attorney John Walsh said Roberts-Gariety was a young woman with her whole life ahead of her and said the sentence imposed a heavy price for what he called horrific actions.

The procedural path unfolded over many months. Cunningham was charged after the June 2024 killing, then tried in Denver District Court. A jury convicted him on Dec. 22, 2025, of second-degree murder. Under Colorado law, that conviction exposed him to a long prison term, and a sentencing hearing followed on Feb. 27, 2026. After that hearing, the district attorney announced the 42-year sentence publicly on March 3. Senior Deputy District Attorney Matt James and Associate Deputy District Attorney Makayla Samour led the prosecution, and the office also credited Denver Police Detective Gavin Whitman. No new charge beyond the murder conviction was highlighted in the district attorney’s public release, and no new proceeding beyond the ordinary post-conviction process was announced at that point.

For the people left behind, the sentence did not bring a neat ending. Roberts-Gariety’s sister said in local television coverage that any sentence above 20 years was, in practical terms, a life sentence for Cunningham. She added that while her family is serving what she called a life sentence of grief, the prison term made her feel justice had been served. That contrast — a numeric sentence for the defendant and open-ended grief for the family — became the emotional center of the case after the verdict. It also underscored the strange cruelty prosecutors described from the start: the apparent target of Cunningham’s anger was the husband, but the person who died was the young woman who answered the door.

The case now stands in its post-sentencing phase. Cunningham has been convicted, sentenced and transferred into the state prison system, while the public record leaves no sign of any further trial-court fact-finding ahead. The next milestone, if it comes, would likely be any appeal or post-conviction filing challenging the verdict or sentence.

Author note: Last updated March 31, 2026.