Colorado's top prison official last week rejected a prominent Saudi inmate's request to be transferred to his native country.
Just over a week later, Colorado Department of Corrections Executive Director Tom Clements was shot dead when he answered his front door.
Now, officials are investigating a possible link between Clements' murder and his refusal to let Homaidan al-Turki serve the rest of his sentence in Saudi Arabia, ABC 7 News reports, citing an anonymous source close to the investigation.
Al-Turki, a former doctoral candidate in linguistics at the University of Colorado, got 28 years in prison in 2006 for essentially enslaving his 24-year-old Indonesian nanny and then raping her, the Denver Post reported at the time.
Prison officials had cleared his transfer to a Saudi prison, but Clements stepped in on March 11 to keep him in the Colorado prison because he didn't want to go through sex offender rehab, according to ABC 7.
Al-Turki has maintained his innocence, contending his prosecution was part of retribution against Muslims after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, CBS Denver has reported.
While investigators are looking into a possible al-Turki connection, investigators still haven't found "any trace" of Clements' killer, The New York Times reported.
Colorado Gov. John Hickenlooper has called Clements' murder "an act of intimidation" against a man who had tried to reform the state's prisons, The Times reported.
Please follow Law & Order on Twitter and Facebook.
Join the conversation about this story »
