Affidavit: Fountain man tried to stage girlfriend's suicide

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Fountain police arrested Miles Kirby on July 27 in connection with the murder of his girlfriend.

Miles James Kirby, a Fountain man accused of killing his girlfriend, Joslyn Teetzel, tried to cover up his part in the crime by making the murder look like a suicide, investigators allege in an arrest affidavit.

At 6:55 a.m. July 26, Fountain police Detective Brian Cristiani responded to reports of a suicide in the backyard of the couple’s Fountain home on Mount View Lane.

Kirby claimed that he found Teetzel hanging from a rope inside a shed in their backyard, the affidavit states.

Kirby also said he and Teetzel had gotten into an argument the previous night about household chores.

At around midnight, Kirby said he went to look for Teetzel following their argument and saw her trying to get into the shed in their backyard. He said he brought Teetzel back inside their home and made sure the shed was locked, according to the affidavit.

Kirby told police that when he woke up the next morning around 6 a.m., he couldn’t find Teetzel. He said he went to the backyard to see if Teetzel was smoking a cigarette and found her hanging from the rafters inside the shed.

“Miles said he knew she did it on her own because she was on the floor and could have stood up and she would have been fine,” the affidavit states.

Kirby told authorities he picked up Teetzel’s body, put her in a nearby chair and untied the noose around her neck. He then placed her on a table in the backyard and began chest compressions before eventually telling one of his neighbors to call 911.

Cristiani said that when he entered the backyard, Teetzel was “clearly deceased,” with two “distinct” ligature marks on her neck.

“I know through my training and experience that a hanging will not typically leave a deep wound and will not typically leave two separate pronounced ligature marks,” Cristiani wrote in the affidavit.

Cristiani said a yellow rope tied to a rafter in the shed was “long enough to reach the floor” and had what appeared to be a noose at the top of the rope, with a knot tied toward the bottom.

After surveying the scene, Cristiani said he noticed two surveillance cameras on the property — one pointing to the backyard, and another pointing toward the side of the house and driveway.

Kirby agreed to let Cristiani review surveillance footage from the previous night. Cristiani was able to access footage from the camera pointed toward the side of the house and driveway, but there was no footage available from the camera pointed toward the backyard and shed.

“(The footage) shows Miles walking quickly from the backyard to the driveway, where he opens the driver’s door of his vehicle, leans inside and then quickly returns to the backyard,” Cristiani said.

Around 6:16 a.m., Kirby can be heard muttering obscenities to himself about Teetzel, even threatening to kill her at certain points in the video, according to the affidavit.

Just over five minutes later, Kirby can be seen walking to the backyard from the front of the house with his neighbor, who appears to be on the phone with 911.

“The call to 911 from the neighbor came in at approximately 6:21 a.m.,” the affidavit states.

Teetzel’s mother, Arlene Teetzel, told authorities that her daughter’s children lived with their mother and Kirby, and they witnessed Kirby “beating on Joslyn.”

“During a subsequent forensic interview, (the kids) both confirmed a physical disturbance between Miles and Joslyn began the night before and continued for several hours and into the next day (July 26),” the affidavit states.

While being questioned at the Fountain Police Department, Kirby denied getting into a domestic disturbance with his girlfriend, adding that if the children had said so they were lying.

Kirby retracted his statement of going to look for Teetzel the night before her death, saying the first time he had looked for her was around 6 a.m. July 26. When Cristiani showed Kirby the surveillance video, he said he didn’t remember saying he wanted to kill Teetzel. He was released following the interview.

The next day on July 27, the El Paso County Coroner’s Office conducted an autopsy on Teetzel’s body. Dr. Jarod Murdoch, a forensic pathologist, told Cristiani that the autopsy indicated the cause of death was strangulation, and the manner of death was homicide.

The injuries described in Teetzel's autopsy are not consistent with a hanging, according to the affidavit.

Kirby was arrested July 27 in connection with Teetzel’s death, and faces charges of first-degree murder and tampering with a corpse, court records show. He is scheduled to appear in court at 8:30 a.m. Aug. 14.

Anthony Vallejos, 33, one of three individuals who were arrested earlier this year and face charges stemming from the incident that led to Fou…

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