Thomas Purcel: A young woman disappears on a night out in Belfast. A suspect emerges. He’s just a boy, a dangerous boy indeed.
Dominic Sylvester: According to Dominic, he’d found his grandmother beaten and bleeding on the floor. The truth was rather more sinister than that.
Amanda McGhee: Terrance has just found out that his 15-year-old daughter is dating a 21-year-old. He’s putting a stop to it. Dangerous move.
Quentin Schafer & Carlos Delgado: A high school student is stabbed and beaten to death by his supposed friends. Why? They wanted to know what it felt like.
Dustin Lynch: A teenage girl persuades her father to take in a young runaway for a few nights. That turns out to be a very bad mistake.
Spencer Lewis: A 14-year-old looking to make a name for himself as a tough guy. He has a gun and a plan. Things are about to turn deadly.
Jason Harless & Jason McCoy: Thursday afternoon in the high school cafeteria. It’s as raucous as always. Then someone pulls a gun.
Killer Kids Volume 18
Nathan Ybanez
It was four in the morning on June 6, 1998. In Highlands Ranch, Colorado, a patrol officer was driving through Daniels Park when he spotted the lights of a vehicle in the distance. The car was stationary, and at this location, that normally meant one thing. Local teens, either making out or doing drugs. Either way, the officer had to check on it. He turned his vehicle in that direction and soon had a blue Lexus in his sights, standing at the roadside, its trunk open. A scrawny teen stood beside the Lexus. At his feet lay a sleeping bag containing something vaguely human in shape.
The youth didn’t run when the officer approached, didn’t move, didn’t say a word. He just stood there, a deer in the headlights. Asked for his name, he said that he was Nathan Ybanez. “What’s in the sleeping bag?” the officer asked. To this, the boy suggested that he see for himself. The officer did just that. The bag contained the battered body of a woman, Nathan’s mother, Julie. He’d been about to bury her.
Nathan Ybanez was born in Davenport, Iowa, in 1982, into a family plagued by marital strife and insecurity. His father, Roger, was a born drifter, changing careers and locations as easily as other people change their clothes. During his storied life, he’d spent time in the military, worked as a baker, done a stint as a golf pro, and hawked insurance products, to name just a few. He’d also dragged his family to multiple locations, including some overseas. By the time the family arrived in Highlands Ranch, Nathan had lived in 30 different towns over just 15 years.
Still, home is where the heart is, and the heart of the home is usually the mother. If only that were true, in this case. Nathan’s mother, Julie, was a devout Christian whose faith bordered on fanaticism. She’d made it her life’s mission to protect her son from the influence of Satan. And she saw that influence everywhere. Every aspect of Nathan’s life was vetted by Julie – his friends, the music he listened to, everyone outside the tight-knit Ybanez family unit. Julie tapped her son’s phone, she followed him around town, she accused him of not loving her if he spent too much time away. Later, after the disaster that was to befall the family, Nathan would make some disturbing claims about just how deep his mother’s obsession ran. He’d claim that she made him sleep in her bed when his father was out of town and that she sometimes forced him into sex acts.
We can’t say for certain whether this allegation is true. What we can say is that Nathan was certainly abused physically by both his parents. Roger was the main culprit here. Family members had seen him yanking the boy around, throwing him against walls, choking him, striking him with household objects. Roger later admitted to these transgressions, saying that he sometimes “lost his temper.” But Julie was not averse to inflicting corporal punishment either. Her favorite weapon was a long-handled kitchen spoon. Perhaps she thought that she was beating the devil out of the boy.
And so to late 1996, the year that the nomadic Ybanez clan arrived in Colorado. Here, Nathan was enrolled at Highlands Ranch High School. It was at the school that he met Brett Baker and Erik Jensen, two classmates who had a punk rock band called Troublebound. They had a vacancy for a guitarist, and Nathan had some talent on the instrument. Just like that, he was in.
Troublebound had a rehearsal room in Erik Jensen’s basement. Nathan started hanging out there and soon turned it into a refuge, a place where he could escape his chaotic home life. Erik’s parents liked him, finding him a personable young man, although somewhat introverted. However, they noticed a distinct change in Nathan’s demeanor whenever either of his parents came to pick him up. Suddenly, the boy was wired with tension, his eyes darting from side to side as though alert to an imminent attack.
Gradually, Nathan started to open up to his newfound friends. He told Erik that his father beat him, relating a particular incident where his dad had dragged him from his bed in the middle of the night, beaten him, trashed his room, and then choked him until he blacked out. All the while, his mother Julie stood in the doorway, making no effort to intercede.
Both Erik and Brett urged Nathan to report the abuse to the authorities. When he declined to do so, the boys took the matter to their parents. The adults held a conference and decided to alert social services. They were told that the department’s resources were stretched and that they believed a 16-year-old should be able to take care of himself.
And so, Nathan remained trapped in his unfavorable circumstances, finding other ways to cope with his situation. He began drinking and doing drugs. He ran away from home multiple times, only for the police to deliver him back into the arms of his abusive parents. Things were heading for a showdown. The catalyst arrived in June 1998.
Actually, the seeds of the coming storm had been planted months earlier. Julie’s religious mania was becoming more and more pronounced. She saw the presence of Satan everywhere, in her son’s friends, in his school, especially in the music he loved. In one notable confrontation, she confiscated Nathan’s entire record collection, calling it satanic. Then, she threatened to send him to a Christian military school in Missouri, where he could “learn the right path.” Nathan was determined that would never happen.
On the night of June 5, 1998, Nathan worked his shift at a fast food restaurant, then called Erik to pick him up. The pair drove to Nathan’s home, where Nathan planned to change his clothes and then head back out. Before stepping out of the car, he told Erik to wait 20 minutes. “If I’m not back by then, come upstairs to check on me.”
Erik did as he was told, waiting the full 20 minutes before going up. Julie let him in, and he went directly to Nathan’s bedroom. Only, his friend wasn’t there. Then, as he waited for Nathan to appear, he heard a ruckus that he would later describe as a “fight to the death.” He went to check on the commotion. As he entered the living room, he saw Julie on the floor in a pool of blood. Nathan was standing over her, striking her with a pair of fireplace tongs. “Get some plastic wrap!” Nathan screamed at him.
Julie Ybanez had suffered a terrible beating. The coroner would later document over twenty injuries to her head alone. Several of her fingers were fractured as she tried to ward off the onslaught. However, it wasn’t the beating that had killed her. Nathan had used the tongs to squeeze down on her windpipe as she lay unconscious on the floor. Julie had died of suffocation.
Now, Nathan and Erik had a decision to make. What were they going to do? Were they going to call the police or try to cover up the crime? After a brief discussion, it was decided. They were going to bury the corpse, clean up the blood, and make it seem like Julie had quit town. Nathan would be going too. His days as a member of Troublebound were over. There was much work to do. They decided to bring in Brett Baker to help.
Now followed a frantic effort at a cover-up. The boys wiped down the apartment, and disposed of the bloody cleaning materials in dumpsters. They stuffed Julie’s body into a sleeping bag and carried her down to the trunk of the Lexus. Then they tossed in some of her clothes and personal belongings to support their story that she and Nathan had skipped out in the middle of the night. The plan was for Nathan to bury his mother’s body in Daniels Park. That fell apart when the lights of the Lexus were spotted by the patrolman.
Nathan Ybanez was charged as an adult with first-degree murder. Erik and Brett were charged as accessories. However, a few days in juvenile detention loosened Brett’s tongue. Offered full immunity from prosecution, he decided to flip on his friends. He was now claiming that Nathan had not acted alone. Erik had admitted to him that he had struck Julie “at least three times” with the fireplace tongs. Erik denied this but was charged with first-degree murder. He was ultimately convicted and sentenced to life without parole.
At Nathan’s trial, the defense had a clear and obvious strategy – introduce evidence of the terrible abuse this young man had suffered at the hands of his parents. That would not get him off the hook, but it would, at least, provide mitigation, perhaps getting him a lesser sentence. But the lawyer who represented Nathan was hired and paid for by his father. Roger ordered him not to mention the abuse, and he never did, calling not a single witness. It was no surprise when Nathan was found guilty as charged and sentenced to life without parole. It was only later that the stories of abuse would emerge.
Today, Nathan Ybanez is an inmate at the Sterling Correctional Facility, 120 miles northeast of Denver, Colorado. While serving his time, he has earned his GED. He is currently studying philosophy and chemistry. He practices meditation daily. His situation is by no means ideal, but as he once told a reporter, he feels safer in prison than he ever did at home.
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