When John Paul “J.P.” Kelso’s body was discovered in the bathtub of his Denver home on November 13, 2006, someone had tried determinedly to erase the crime.
The 43-year-old businessman had been shot in the head. His body had been moved, washed, and placed in the tub. Clothing, bedding, and the spent shell casing were gone. The killer had not simply panicked and run; he had cleaned, rearranged, and returned to the house, trying to wipe away every trace of himself.
Yet murder leaves fingerprints even when physical prints are gone.
Within days, police were looking for 25-year-old Timothy Boham, a former adult-film performer who had worked under the name Marcus Allen. Boham was young, striking, and had appeared on the Playgirl cover. He had also worked briefly at Kelso’s collection agency.
For Kelso, however, their relationship began long before Boham was handed a desk and a phone.
Kelso recognized Boham from adult films and knew Boham hid that secret from his girlfriend. Kelso allegedly used the secret as leverage, demanding sex under threat of exposure. Kelso paid Boham, but payment is not consent under coercion.
The two remained connected for eleven months.
Friends described Kelso as intelligent, successful, and generous. But generosity does not erase coercion. If the allegation was true, Kelso placed Boham in a deeply humiliating situation.
None of that made what Boham did next inevitable.
By November 2006, Boham believed Kelso kept $100,000 to $400,000 in a home safe. It was enough money, he imagined, to finance an escape and begin a new life with his girlfriend.
On November 11, Boham arrived at Kelso’s home carrying a handgun.
He later told investigators he sat on the sofa for nearly an hour, debating whether he could go through with his plan. This detail strips away any claim of momentary madness or sudden anger. Boham had time to think, leave, and walk out the door.
Instead, he went upstairs.
According to prosecutors, Boham demanded that Kelso open the safe. He struck him near the eye with the gun and attempted to handcuff him. Kelso reached for a panic button connected to the house’s security system, but Boham forced him toward the foot of the bed.
Then he pressed a pillow against Kelso’s head and fired.
Boham used a belt to drag the body into the bathroom and placed it in the bathtub. He washed Kelso to remove forensic evidence, gathered clothing and bedding, and disposed of the bundle in Cherry Creek, where a construction crew later found it. He also removed a Rolex, rings, and a bracelet from Kelso’s body.
Then came the object at the center of the plan: the safe.
Boham took it from the house, bought a power saw, and cut it open, expecting the fortune that would transform murder into opportunity.
There was no fortune.
Inside were vehicle titles and a few personal belongings. The vast pile of cash Boham envisioned did not exist. He carried a gun into Kelso’s home, committed murder, altered the crime scene, and risked his life for a glorified filing cabinet.
According to his family, Boham realized almost immediately that he had done it all for nothing.
His behavior after the killing was chillingly ordinary. While Kelso’s body remained in the house, Boham took his girlfriend to dinner at California Pizza Kitchen and then to a show at Comedy Works. He sat through food and jokes while his victim’s body sat in a bathtub.
Whatever composure Boham managed during date night soon collapsed. He confessed to his mother and sister, and they contacted police. He also admitted to a Denver detective that he shot Kelso during the attempted robbery.
Boham fled south, reaching Lukeville, Arizona, near the Mexican border. On November 16, customs officers found him outside an inspection facility. When they approached him, he calmly acknowledged that authorities in Denver were searching for him.
By the time his case went to trial in June 2009, Boham traded his confession for an elaborate new story: he claimed Kelso had killed himself, and that they had agreed to stage the death as a robbery so Kelso’s life-insurance policy would still pay out. His previous confession, he claimed, was an invented fantasy.
It was a remarkable pivot: Boham claimed to be a loyal accomplice in an insurance scheme.
Unfortunately for Boham, nearly everyone else could contradict him. His mother, sister, and former girlfriend testified against him. Jurors heard about his repeated confessions, his belief in the money inside the safe, and his attempts to destroy evidence. The physical crime scene supported a calculated robbery and cleanup, not an assisted suicide.
The jury deliberated for fewer than five hours before finding Timothy Boham guilty of first-degree murder. He was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
At the center of the case was a secret Boham was terrified of losing control over and a fortune he was certain would buy him freedom. One was already slipping away; the other had never existed.