Club Q shooter escapes death penalty and is sentenced to another 55 life sentences

Colorado Springs police, the FBI and others investigate the scene of a shooting at Club Q on Sunday, Nov. 20, 2022, in Colorado Springs, Colo. (Helen H. Richardson/The Denver Post via AP)

DENVER (KDVR) – On Tuesday, Anderson Lee Aldrich was sentenced to 55 life terms in prison after pleading guilty in federal court to both hate crimes and weapons possession charges.

The verdict came after Aldrich, now 24, pleaded guilty to killing five people and injuring 19 others at Club Q, an LGBTQ+ nightclub in Colorado Springs.

Aldrich is currently serving 55 additional life sentences in addition to his previous life sentence.

Evidence shows the shooting was biased and premeditated

After he pleaded guilty in 2023, prosecutors focused on proving the shooting was premeditated and motivated by bias.

Prosecutors said Aldrich was involved in a spam email campaign targeting a former supervisor who is gay less than a month before the shooting. Court records also accused Aldrich of distributing another person’s manifesto, which included racist and anti-Semitic statements and falsely claimed that being transgender was a mental illness.

Defense attorneys argued that Aldrich, who is not known solely as she/her, was under the influence of cocaine and drugs at the time of the shooting. However, investigators also found evidence that the shooting had been planned in advance.

Aldrich visited the club at least eight times before the attack, including an hour and a half before the shooting, prosecutors said. Investigators also found a hand-drawn map of Club Q and a folder titled “How to Deal with an Active Shooter” in Aldrich’s apartment.

Aldrich was also convicted of weapons offenses for spending more than $9,000 on gun purchases from at least 56 dealers between September 2020 and the Nov. 19, 2022, attack, according to new evidence cited by prosecutors.

Aldrich escapes death penalty through agreement

By pleading guilty to 50 counts of hate crimes and weapons offenses, Aldrich was able to avoid the death penalty through the sentence agreement and instead receive multiple life sentences in addition to a 190-year prison sentence.

U.S. District Judge Charlotte Sweeney, the first openly gay federal judge in Colorado, accepted the confession on June 18.

The Associated Press contributed to this article.