A Love Triangle Ended in a Double Murder at Denver’s Brown Palace Hotel in 1911

Colorado’s Brown Palace Hotel, a Denver landmark since 1892, has a lot of history.

One of the unfortunate events that took place in the hotel involved a wealthy woman, a love triangle, and double murder.

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Who Was Colorado’s Isabel Springer?

In 1907, Denver attorney, banker, and businessman John W. Springer married Isabel Patterson Folck, a woman 20 years his junior who had divorced her first husband just days earlier.

The Highlands Ranch Historical Society has described her as “a beautiful, audacious young woman who developed an addiction to nightlife, narcotics, and adventure.

John’s business kept him on the road, often leaving Isabel alone at his ranch south of Denver, the property that’s now the Highlands Ranch Mansion.

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Isabel missed city nightlife, so John rented her a suite at the Brown Palace Hotel where she could stay after evenings out.

She was also juggling two affairs: one with Tony von Phul, a St. Louis man she’d been involved with before her marriage, and another with Harold Francis Henwood, one of her husband’s business partners.

It did not end well.

A Double Murder at Colorado’s Brown Palace Hotel

In May 1911, Isabel wrote von Phul asking him to come to Denver, and he arrived on May 23. That same day, she told Henwood she wanted to end things with von Phul.

The problem: von Phul was threatening to show her husband the love letters she’d written him if she did.

The next night, May 24, Henwood confronted von Phul in the hotel’s Marble Bar and opened fire, killing him. A stray bullet also killed George Copeland, an innocent bystander.

John filed for divorce the next day. One condition was that Isabel leave Denver for good, and she was on an eastbound train as soon as the murder trial wrapped up.

Henwood claimed he’d done it to save the Springers’ marriage. He was convicted and sent to prison, and John Springer later persuaded the governor to pardon him in 1922.

Henwood ended up back behind bars after threatening a woman who wouldn’t marry him, and he died in prison in Cañon City in 1929. Isabel died in a Chicago charity ward in 1917.