Tyler Martin stood in the tiny vestibule of an apartment building Friday, his left hand tucked out of sight as he kept stepping toward the door and waving at officers outside.

"I know I (expletive) up," Martin said. "I'm (expletive) up in the head. I know I killed the only person I cared about.

"She's dead, right? She's dead."

The three-day manhunt for Martin, suspected of running his ex-girlfriend off the road and shooting her to death in Wheat Ridge, was about to end in suicide. But the path that led him here began last summer when Amber Cremeens, 34, finally ended her eight- year relationship with Martin, 35.

"We knew he was stalking her," Cremeens' current boyfriend, Alex Carr, 34, said Sunday. "But you never know to what degree someone's going to take something like this. We took precautions to hide her. I guess we just underestimated what he could truly do."

Telephone calls resumed

After they broke up in June, Martin would call Cremeens five or six times a day. Sometimes he would threaten to kill her, but then he'd call back and say he could never hurt her.

Cremeens began dating Carr a couple months after breaking up with Martin, and she moved into a home her new boyfriend owned and put the phone in his name.

Martin stopped calling. Four or five months went by.

Then, the week before Cremeens was murdered, the calls started again, Carr said. Martin would call and hang up. He apparently had found Cremeens at her gym, followed her home and used the address to locate her phone number, Carr said.

"She was scared, but she wasn't terrified," Carr said. "It's more of an annoyance. Now what do we have to do to make this end?"

Carr and Cremeens came up with a plan. She would move in with Carr, and they would put a "For Sale" sign in the front yard of the old home where she was living. Surely, this would shake Martin.

But before the couple put the plan into place, the calls stopped. A couple days went by.

Then it was Tuesday night. 10 p.m. Cremeens had just left the 24-Hour Fitness where she worked out when she realized Martin was following her. She called Carr.

Even then, Carr thought all Martin wanted to do was talk to Cremeens, plead his case face-to-face. He obviously wanted her back. If Cremeens just kept driving, Martin couldn't get to her.

But he did. Police say Martin ran Cremeens off Wadsworth Boulevard near 35th Avenue. A witness saw Martin walk up to her vehicle and shoot her dead.

"It's just like a nightmare that never ends," Carr said. "I don't know what to do. I just don't know how to move on right now. She was my soul mate. She was my girlfriend. She was my best friend.

"Now that she's gone, she took a piece of me with her. Half of me is gone."

Picked up pets, vanished

Carr said he had urged Cremeens to work out at a different fitness club, but she wouldn't. She liked the classes at her gym, even though it was the same place she had worked out while dating Martin.

"She just didn't want to spend the rest of her life in hiding," Carr said. "She didn't want to spend the rest of her life in fear."

Wheat Ridge police said Sunday that Martin engaged in "obsessive behavior" that included swiping some of Cremeens' mail. The diverted mail was found in Martin's home after Cremeens' murder, spokeswoman Lisa Stigall said.

"He had a very intimate knowledge of her day-to-day activities," Stigall said.

While Martin had not physically abused Cremeens in the past, he had threatened her before. In fact, Stigall said, it wasn't uncommon for Martin to threaten people on a daily basis.

" 'I'm going to kill you' was part of his everyday language," she said.

After the shooting Tuesday, Martin picked up his dog and cat and disappeared.

For the next three days, Wheat Ridge police tried to find him. Detectives figured if he left Colorado, the only logical place for Martin to go was Illinois. He had family and friends there.

Police notified other law enforcement agencies to be on the lookout for Martin. They tried to track his cell phone and his credit cards, but Martin wasn't using either. A fugitive task force with the McHenry County Sheriff's Office started watching "key homes" where Martin might show up in Illinois, Stigall said.

Martin was from Wonder Lake, Ill., in McHenry County, although he was estranged from most of his family, Stigall said.

'It's very sad'

Chicago police spotted Martin around 4:30 p.m. Friday in a neighborhood northwest of downtown. When officers tried to pull him over, Martin ran, discarding a weapon before barricading himself in a building vestibule about three blocks away, Chicago police said.

Nearly three hours later, officers heard a muffled gunshot. When they entered the building, they found Martin dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head. He had two weapons with him.

Daniel Gray, 34, who lives in the building, said he "heard a bunch of sirens and a lot of hollering" around 4:30 p.m. and looked out his peephole to see what was going on.

"It didn't look like he was frantic or panicked or sickly at all. Maybe a little bit upset," Gray said. "Not the way I think a person would be if they were considering killing themselves."

Barricaded in the vestibule, Martin "kept stepping forward and waving to his car," parked haphazardly outside, Gray said.

"Officer, my dog, my cat, please. Please, my cat, my dog," Martin said over and over again. The animals were found unharmed.

Stigall said police don't know what route Martin took from Colorado to Illinois, and may never know. But it does not appear he contacted his family along the way.

Neighbors said they had noticed a car with Colorado license plates in the area as early as Wednesday or Thursday. Martin's stepbrother lives in the apartment building where he killed himself.

Chris Faller, 23, who lives behind the apartment building, said undercover officers were in the neighborhood Thursday asking for Martin's stepbrother.

"They were scoping out the area and staking out the place," Faller said.

Friday night, Faller said police ordered him to leave his apartment, then set up snipers in his home. Police sharpshooters also could be seen on neighboring roofs.

"We were just kind of freaking out. What's going on?" Faller said.

"It's very sad. It's all pretty disturbing."

Martin's stepbrother was not at home during the standoff. Over the weekend, he declined to talk about Martin.

Saturday, the glass in the door to the apartment building was shattered in two places. Gray said that was where police fired beanbag rounds during the standoff. The blood on the walls and on the floor had been cleaned up. But Gray knew exactly where it all had been.

"It seemed like he was curled up in the corner and shot himself there," Gray said.

He didn't see the shooting. Martin was still alive when Gray realized just how serious the situation was and left his apartment through a back door.

But before then, as he stood at the door looking out the peephole, Gray said he debated what to do. He even considered opening his door and letting Martin inside.

Then he heard Martin say he had killed someone. And he heard him threaten suicide.

"I'm just going to kill myself," Martin said to the officer outside. "You have a nice life. Have a nice family. I'm just going to kill myself.

"That's how this is going to end."

Reality starting to sink in

On Sunday, Cremeens' father choked up when asked about his daughter. Her death was a tragedy, he said. Cremeens' parents returned to their McHenry home Sunday afternoon but declined to talk in depth about their daughter. "She was just a beautiful person, the best," Victor Freund said.

Carr said Sunday it is just starting to sink in that Cremeens is really gone.

He is left with a "sea of thoughts, images and past memories" of the woman with whom he planned to spend the rest of his life.

"I miss everything about her," Carr said.

Coming home to her. Talking on the phone. E-mails. Cremeens' touch. Waking up next to her. Meals and parties. Theirs was "a very intense six months," he said.

"The world lost one of the good guys," Carr said. "Why she chose me, I don't know, but I was extremely lucky. I was extremely blessed that a spirit like her chose me.

"The world will miss her."

Back to Top