After three years, a quiet Custer County neighborhood finally has answers for who killed three of its residents.

A jury on Thursday convicted 47-year-old Hanme Clark of fatally shooting three of his neighbors — Rob Geers, his wife, Beth Wade Geers, and James Daulton — over what authorities suspect was a land dispute in November 2023. Daulton’s wife, Patty, survived the shooting but sustained serious injuries, The Gazette previously reported.

Clark’s convictions include three counts of first-degree murder, one count of criminal attempt to commit murder in the first degree, one count of first-degree assault and one count of menacing.

Deputy District Attorney Stacey Turner focused the prosecution’s closing argument on the testimony of Patty Daulton and a surveyor named William Bechaver — who both witnessed the shooting.

Turner recalled a video seen by the court that showed Rob Geers telling authorities that Clark had allegedly told him that he and his wife had “targets” on their back in the days leading up to the shooting.

Turner said Rob Geers did the “right thing” by hiring a surveyor to check if part of his driveway was actually part of Clark’s property. She said Clark knew that the surveyor wouldn’t side with him, and that’s why he decided to kill the Geers.

District Attorney Jeff Lindsey pointed to video footage that captures a person he says is Clark walking toward the scene of the crime with “intent” and “malice” moments before the shooting occurred. He also mentioned the 911 call Patty Daulton made moments after the shooting. In it, her husband can be heard saying, “Hanme,” before he succumbs to his wounds, according to Lindsey.

Lindsey also mentioned concerns from Rob Geers a day before the shooting. He played an audio recording between Rob Geers and a deputy. In it, Rob Geers said he was worried authorities wouldn’t do anything to resolve the situation until his “cold, dead body” is found.

“It wasn’t a boogie man. It wasn’t a ghost shooter. … It was Hanme Clark,” Turner told the jury.

Defense called the investigation ‘sloppy’

Defense attorneys Janene McCabe and Ian McDavid focused their closing arguments on what they called a “sloppy” investigation done by the Custer County Sheriff’s Office.

McDavid told the jury that the state failed to conduct a photo lineup of possible shooters, which he said was “critical.”

“Maybe that would have been a softball for (the witnesses), but we don’t know that because the state chose not to do that,” McDavid said.

He continued by recalling a moment in court when a detective falsely identified McDavid as Clark, which the attorney said could have happened to Patty Daulton and Bechaver.

“Ultimately, the stakes are too high. You saw the false identification of me happen before your eyes. That man was unequivocal. He (the detective) identified me as the shooter. … He made the exact same mistakes that could have happened here,” McDavid said.

Further “sloppiness” by investigators, McDavid said, was the fact that they didn’t bother to identify a magazine that authorities found at the crime scene. McDavid said the magazine is the only physical evidence investigators have that linked Clark to the shooting, but the state never showed what gun the magazine belonged to.

He also mentioned Clark’s fingerprints were never found on the magazine, and the gun believed to be used by the shooter was never recovered.

He also noted that investigative efforts, including firearm and fingerprint analyses, by the Colorado Bureau of Investigation didn’t point to Clark as the shooter.

“This is a lack of care and the lack of attention to detail by the state, and they are asking you to convict a man of first-degree murder when they have been so sloppy throughout the entire thing,” McDavid told the jurors.

Everything we know

On the afternoon of Nov. 20, 2023, authorities were called to a secluded neighborhood along Rocky Ridge Road near the Fremont County line. They found the bloodied remains of three people and a horrified Patty Daulton, who had suffered serious injuries but survived.

Authorities would later learn that a shootout happened between James Daulton and the shooter, formally identified now as Clark.

Minutes after the shooting, Clark and a woman living with him, Nancy Medina-Kochis, were spotted leaving their property in a truck. The two would later be arrested in New Mexico after authorities say they fled there.

Why the two fled to New Mexico remains unclear, but a woman named Robin Salazar told the court that the two were supposed to visit her in Albuquerque for Thanksgiving. Doug Nelson, a friend and a business associate of Clark, confirmed this trip, saying Medina-Kochis told him they were supposed to leave on Nov. 19 but didn’t because of her health issues.

Both Patty Daulton and the surveyor, Bechaver, identified Clark as the shooter during their testimonies. However, Nelson said the defendant was present during a phone call when the shooting occurred.

Nelson told the courtroom that Medina-Kochis called him at 12:59 p.m., which is around the time authorities believe the shooting happened.

About a minute into the call, Nelson said he heard the door open and then Clark say, “Someone is shooting at me.” Nelson also recalled hearing several “popping” sounds that he claims were gunshots.

Nelson told the two to follow the emergency protocol they had established in the days leading up to the shooting: leave. He said the protocol was made after Clark and Medina-Kochis told him that they were scared because neighbors would repeatedly fire guns on their property in what Nelson claimed was an effort to scare the two off.

The day before the shooting, the Custer County Sheriff’s Office received calls from both Medina-Kochis and Rob Geers. According to court records, Medina-Kochis told Deputy Brandon Thurston that someone had fired a gun toward and over Clark’s property.

Body-camera footage viewed in court shows a conversation between Thurston and Rob Geers, who told the deputy that he and his wife were afraid of Clark. Rob Geers said he believed that Clark had been walking on his property while wearing camouflage and carrying a rifle, which he said felt like a threat.

After the shooting, a camouflage jacket and a rifle were found in Clark’s home. Both Turner and Lindsey said the collected evidence and a photo of the person wearing camouflage on the Geers property show that Clark was the “camo man.”

But the defense argued that it’s possible someone else was the “camo man.” During closing arguments, McDavid mentioned that the recovered camouflage jacket was fitted for a woman, and that the state never bothered to confirm if the rifle seen in the photo was the same as the one recovered.

“If you’re looking at this case and wondering if there is a reasonable doubt, you should look at ‘camo man,'” McDavid told the jury.

The land dispute

Throughout the trial, it was revealed that the primary issue between the Geers and Clark was over who owned part of the Geers’ driveway.

The ongoing issue led to a civil battle between the Geers and a company called Herbal Gardens Wellness, a nonprofit that owned the property Clark and Medina-Kochis were a part of. Both Clark and Medina-Kochis were also board chair members for the company, according to Nelson, also a board member.

Herbal Gardens Wellness was also having land disputes with other residents in the neighborhood at the time.

Tension continued to grow as the civil case unfolded, leading to both sides accusing the other of trespassing on each other’s land. It was during an argument over their property line that Clark told the Geers that they have “targets” on their backs.

To collect more information on Herbal Gardens Wellness, Rob Geers hired a private investigator from Westcliffe named Brian Corrigan. Corrigan testified in court that he was shown a picture of “camo man,” and the individual did appear to be threatening.

He also said that it felt like Rob Geers may have wanted to collect information on Clark and the nonprofit company for “blackmail.” However, he did say Rob Geers seemed to be afraid of something happening to him or his wife.

In the days leading up to the shooting, Rob Geers hired Bechaver to survey the land, and he also had plans to install a fence along the property line. Deputy Thurston agreed to return to the Geers property on Nov. 20 to supervise the survey and offer protection for the parties, but he testified that he was called away that day. Instead, the Daultons were present to act as witnesses in case Clark arrived.

Bechaver told law enforcement that he saw a man come through the trees, and an interaction between the person and Rob Geers ensued. During the conversation, Bechaver said he heard Rob Geers call the person “Javier,” specifying, when asked, that Rob Geers did not mention Clark.

When the man turned to walk away, Rob Geers mentioned something about trespassing on his property while the man was hunting, Bechaver said.

The man turned around and said, “I only hunt lying sons of (expletives),” before pulling out his weapon and shooting Rob Geers in the chest, according to Bechaver.

After that, the shooter “rapidly” fired at the others, Patty Daulton said in her testimony. “He (Clark) just shot us like we were tin cans,” Patty Daulton said on the first day of trial.

Rob Geers was supposedly recording the entire interaction, but his cellphone has never been found.

In her testimony, Patty Daulton described a tense relationship with Clark and Medina-Kochis after meeting them with her husband when they moved to the neighborhood in early 2020.

During that interaction, she claimed Clark was holding a rifle, though she noted that he wasn’t pointing it at anyone. Ever since, the Daultons tried to avoid the two.

Medina-Kochis, 52, was arrested in November 2023. She was later charged with five counts of being an accessory to a crime, all lower-level felonies. She pleaded not guilty to all five counts, court records show. Her jury trial is slated for April.

Clark is being held in the Fremont County jail on a $2 million bond, court records show. His sentencing is scheduled for 8:30 a.m. Friday.