Club Q shooting suspect Anderson Lee Aldrich’s violent tendencies forced terrified relatives into a “virtual prison,” and last year he began building untraceable ghost guns at home using a 3D printer, according to court filings unsealed late Thursday.
Aldrich, 22, has been charged with 305 counts of first-degree murder, attempted murder, and bias crimes for a Nov. 19 massacre that left five dead and nearly two dozen wounded. Aldrich’s lawyers say he identifies as non-binary. However, Aldrich is listed as male in police booking records, and The Daily Beast reviewed text messages sent by Aldrich’s mother the day of the shooting in which she refers to them using male pronouns.
On June 18, 2021, Aldrich was arrested after a standoff with police at their mother’s home in Colorado Springs, during which they allegedly held her hostage and threatened to blow up the building.
Aldrich was upset that his grandparents, who lived just down the street, were moving to Florida. The grandparents had “been living in fear due to Anderson’s recent homicidal threats towards them and others,” states a police affidavit from the case, which was part of a new tranche of Club Q-related documents released last night by the Colorado Judicial Branch.
That day, Pamela Pullen, Aldrich’s grandmother, told police Aldrich pointed a Glock handgun at her and Aldrich’s grandfather and said, “You guys die today, and I'm taking you with me. I'm loaded and ready.” She claimed Aldrich told her that the move to Florida would “interfere with his plans to conduct a mass shooting and bombing,” according to the affidavit.
Aldrich, who the affidavit says was “chugging vodka” during the incident, showed Pullen “a box with chemicals in it and stated it was a bomb… powerful enough to blow up a police department and a federal building,” the affidavit alleges, adding that the two “begged for their lives and promised Anderson they wouldn’t move.” Aldrich’s mom and grandparents managed to flee to safety, and Aldrich eventually surrendered to a SWAT team outside. Cops later discovered “items consistent with bomb making materials” in the basement, the affidavit states.A few months later, Aldrich’s uncle sent a Colorado judge a letter, which was included in Thursday night’s document dump.
In it, Robert Pullen Jr. pleaded with the judge to keep Aldrich behind bars, saying he is “certain that if Anderson is freed that he will hurt or murder my brother and his wife.”