Nearly 11 months after 51-year-old gay Dallas resident Ronald Shumway disappeared, authorities in Los Angeles on Thursday arrested a former tenant in connection with his death.
U.S. marshals apprehended Christopher Brian Colbert, 43, who faces charges of tampering with a governmental record, securing a document by deception and money-laundering.
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Dallas police say Colbert posed as Shumway and sold his house following his disappearance in April. In September, authorities found human remains encased in concrete in Shumway’s backyard. It took six months to identify those remains as belonging to Shumway, before a warrant for Colbert’s arrest was issued in February.
In addition to altering Shumway’s driver’s license and forging his signature to sell the house, Colbert allegedly ran up $40,000 in purchases on the dead man’s credit card. Colbert even posed as his landlord on Facebook, posting that he’d moved to Austin after finding his “midnight cowboy,” who was teaching him to ride a horse named “Snuffy.”
Colbert, who has not been charged with Shumway’s murder, is being held on $300,000 bond in Los Angeles, where he awaits extradition to Dallas.
