James Papol and the 1988 Murder of Mary Lynn Vialpando

James Papol is the Colorado man who, in 2021, was sentenced to 60 years in prison for the 1988 murder of Mary Lynn Vialpando, a 24-year-old woman killed in an alley in Colorado Springs. Papol was 15 when he committed the crime. It went unsolved for three decades until a 2018 DNA database hit identified him, and his conviction was upheld on appeal in 2026.

What Happened to Mary Lynn Vialpando

On June 5, 1988, Mary Lynn Vialpando’s body was found in an alley in the Old Colorado City neighborhood of Colorado Springs. She was 24 and married. She had returned to Colorado Springs in the early morning hours from a wedding in Pueblo with her husband, his brother, and his sister-in-law, and was last seen running from her residence on West Kiowa Street.¹

Vialpando had been stabbed, sexually assaulted, and killed by blunt force trauma when her head struck a rock. Years later, at his plea hearing, Papol told the court he had seen her in the alley, noticed her jewelry, and tried to rob her. He admitted stabbing her with a knife and pushing her to the ground, causing the fatal head injury.²

District Judge Robin Chittum, who later presided over sentencing, described what Vialpando endured as “a prolonged period of her being the focus of hate and rage and anger,” and said the victim “struggled and she suffered and she fought back.”³

A 30-Year Cold Case Broken by DNA

Forensic DNA testing barely existed in American law enforcement in 1988. Then-deputy district attorney Dan May, called to the scene that Sunday morning, later said he personally pressed police and the coroner to collect biological evidence for DNA analysis. No U.S. law enforcement lab performed the testing at the time, so the evidence was sent to Cellmark in Great Britain.⁴ The Vialpando case is believed to be the first in Colorado history in which officers collected DNA from a crime scene.²

The evidence sat without a match for thirty years. May, who by then had become the elected District Attorney for the 4th Judicial District, later called the delay a “tragedy” and said the case “should have been solved years ago.” He pointed to a missed chance to collect Papol’s DNA in 2008 while Papol was at the state mental hospital, and to a failure to file charges after his DNA was finally obtained following his escape from that facility in 2015.⁴

In September 2018, a routine DNA database search matched Papol’s profile to semen recovered from Vialpando’s body.⁵

Arrest and Charges

Papol was arrested in September 2018. He was then a long-term patient at the Colorado State Mental Health Institute in Pueblo, where he had been held for much of the previous two decades under prior insanity commitments unrelated to Vialpando’s death.³ He was charged with first-degree murder and prosecuted as an adult despite having been 15 at the time of the killing.⁶

In January 2019 a court denied a defense motion to move the case to juvenile court. In August 2019 Papol entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.² He was found competent to stand trial, and a separate sanity evaluation was ordered at the state hospital in Pueblo.⁷

His sanity trial began in October 2020 but ended in a mistrial on the second day of jury selection because of COVID-19 exposures affecting defense counsel and the courthouse. Judge Chittum ruled a fair trial was not possible under the circumstances.⁸

Guilty Plea and 60-Year Sentence

In February 2021, instead of returning to trial, Papol changed his plea. He pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, aggravated robbery, and four crime-of-violence sentence enhancers, under an agreement stipulating a sentence between 40 and 60 years in prison.² Prosecutors did not charge sexual assault because the statute of limitations had expired, even though evidence of the assault existed.³

After his arrest, investigators recorded a phone call in which Papol told his mother he had found Vialpando dead, taken her jewelry, and caused her body to tumble down a hill. At the plea hearing he admitted the stabbing and robbery but said nothing about the sexual assault.⁵

On May 5, 2021, Judge Chittum imposed the maximum sentence: 60 years in prison followed by five years of parole. She said Papol had taken “no accountability for his actions” and that even considering his age at the time of the crime she would still have imposed the maximum.⁹ In court, Papol apologized to Vialpando’s family and said he had “forgotten committing the murder in the chaos of the years that followed.” Chittum rejected that explanation as “implausible.”⁵

The defense had sought a sentence at the lower end of the 40-to-60-year range, citing childhood abuse and neglect and substance use that began in elementary school. Attorney Julian Rosielle told the court the crime would not have occurred if Papol had received proper support as a child, and that Papol had “shunned violence” and focused on his mental health after starting antipsychotic medication at the state hospital.⁵ Dan May, who had retired as District Attorney in January 2021, returned as a volunteer prosecutor to argue for the maximum sentence. He called the plea deal “fair” given Papol’s age and the family’s desire for closure, and said he had “never seen anybody that cold.”⁴

The 2026 Appeal

In 2023, Papol filed motions for postconviction relief, asking to set aside his plea and vacate his conviction. His argument turned on a change in Colorado law. In 2012, the legislature had required judicial hearings before juvenile cases could be transferred to adult court and raised the age for direct filing from 14 to 16. Papol argued that because he was charged in 2018, the 2012 law should have applied, meaning his case should have started in juvenile court with a right to a reverse-transfer hearing.¹⁰

The trial court denied the motions, relying on People v. Godinez to hold that the 1988 version of the direct-file statute controlled based on the date of the offense.¹¹

On April 30, 2026, a three-judge panel of the Colorado Court of Appeals affirmed that denial in People v. Papol, 2026 COA 32, but on different reasoning. Judges Sueanna P. Johnson, Neeti V. Pawar, and Christina F. Gomez agreed with Papol that the 2012 law did apply and that his case should have originated in juvenile court. They then held that the failure to do so was a procedural error, not a jurisdictional one, because the district court’s authority to hear criminal cases comes from the Colorado Constitution rather than the direct-file statute. Since Papol was age-eligible and charged with an offense (first-degree murder) that could have been transferred, the district court had subject matter jurisdiction, and Papol waived the procedural error by voluntarily pleading guilty.¹⁰

The court called Colorado’s juvenile transfer requirements “important safeguards to protect juveniles,” and noted that if a defendant were not age-eligible or the offense were not one covered by the direct-file statute, subject matter jurisdiction would be absent entirely.¹⁰ Defense attorney Jonathan Reppucci, commenting publicly on the decision, said the ruling “has a ring of unfairness to it” because it denies juveniles the individualized consideration the statute was meant to guarantee.¹²

Papol remains in the custody of the Colorado Department of Corrections, serving his 60-year sentence.

1
Colorado Bureau of Investigation. Mary Lynne Vialpando Case Detail
2
The Pueblo Chieftain. Pueblo Man Pleads Guilty in Cold Case Homicide of Mary Lynn Vialpando
3
The Colorado Sun. James Papol Sentenced to 60 Years in Colorado Springs
4
Fox 21 News. Dan May Reflects on 1988 Cold Case Ahead of Killer’s Sentencing
5
The Gazette. Man Gets Max in 1988 Rape and Murder That Haunted Colorado Springs
6
KOAA. James Papol to Be Tried as an Adult for 1988 Murder
7
KKTV. Suspect in 1988 Murder Case Pleads Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity
8
The Gazette. Judge Declares Mistrial in 1988 Rape Murder Case Amid COVID-19 Concerns
9
KOAA. Sentencing for Man in 1988 Murder of Colorado Springs Woman
10
Colorado Court of Appeals. People v. Papol, 2026 COA 32
11
Findlaw. People v. Papol
12
Denver Gazette. Judges: Error Allowing Juvenile Defendant to Be Prosecuted as Adult Cannot Be Reversed, Appeals Court Says