{"id":25895,"date":"2024-08-31T13:00:00","date_gmt":"2024-08-31T19:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/top-colorado-gop-leader-reports-death-threats-to-law-enforcement\/"},"modified":"2024-08-31T19:00:00","modified_gmt":"2024-08-31T19:00:00","slug":"top-colorado-gop-leader-reports-death-threats-to-law-enforcement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/top-colorado-gop-leader-reports-death-threats-to-law-enforcement\/","title":{"rendered":"Top Colorado GOP leader reports death threats to law enforcement"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Hope
Hope Scheppelman, right, secretary of the La Plata County Republican Central Committee and vice chair of the Colorado Republican Party, said the process of adopting a proposed bylaw amendment that would, in effect, remove her from her county board position is not being pursued in accordance with state law or the county party\u2019s own rules. (Reuben M. Schafir\/Durango Herald file)<\/span>cca<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

Hope Scheppelman, who was elected vice chair of the Colorado Republican Party in August 2023, has received death threats and other forms of harassment by phone starting in late July, Scheppelman reported to the La Plata County Sheriff\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

The harassing calls began July 22 and continued periodically until at least until Aug. 10, according to what Scheppelman told a sheriff\u2019s deputy on Aug. 12. The deputy documented information from Scheppelman in an incident report obtained by Newsline.<\/p>\n

\u201cThreats have been made against Hope\u2019s life and her husband\u2019s life,\u201d the report says. \u201cInitially, the harassing phone calls were name calling and telling Hope to jump off a bridge.\u201d<\/p>\n

A caller at one point \u201cbegan to identify things on Hope\u2019s property.\u201d Scheppelman, a Bayfield resident, told the deputy she tracked the phone number of one of the calls to Miami.<\/p>\n

Scheppelman said that the calls came from two different people named Betsy and that one was named Betsy Freedom, according to the report.<\/p>\n

The La Plata deputy reported that an attempt to tie the source of the harassment to a Durango resident, who has a name that\u2019s similar to the other Betsy who Scheppelman identified, did not lead to a suspect.<\/p>\n

Scheppelman told Newsline on Friday that \u201cthere is an investigation going on\u201d related to Betsy Freedom.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy life has been threatened and my family\u2019s life has been threatened by this individual,\u201d Scheppelman said. She declined to speak further about the matter, citing the investigation.<\/p>\n

Scheppelman is embroiled in a leadership dispute with s0me members of the Colorado Republican Party. A vote by the party\u2019s central committee Saturday ousted her from leadership \u2013 along with the chair, former state Rep. Dave Williams, and secretary, Anna Ferguson \u2013 and installed new leaders. The two factions both say they\u2019re the legitimate leaders of the party, and the results of a lawsuit over the opposing claims, as well as guidance from the Republican National Committee, is expected to settle the matter.<\/p>\n

The actual identity of Betsy Freedom has been a recent topic of speculation among Scheppelman opponents. A Betsy Freedom from Pueblo on Facebook, whose political interests appear to align with Scheppelman\u2019s, in a recent post used first-person language to describe performing the duties of the vice chair of the Colorado GOP.<\/p>\n

Scheppelman posted on Facebook that Freedom \u201cimpersonated\u201d her.<\/p>\n

Newsline sent Betsy Freedom a message on Facebook but had not received a response by the time of publication. No Betsy Freedom is registered to vote in Colorado, and a Betsy Freedom in Pueblo did not emerge in a search of other public records.<\/p>\n

To read more stories from Colorado Newsline, visit www.coloradonewsline.com<\/em><\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Scheppelman says investigation is ongoing in La Plata County case<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":25896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[731,120,28,475,1231],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-25895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","tag-bayfield","tag-colorado","tag-headlines","tag-la-plata-county-colorado","tag-pine-river-times"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25895","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25895"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25895\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/25896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25895"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=25895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}