This Feels Criminal: A True Crime Podcast (Formerly Killer Queens)

Castle Rock v. Gonzales: Do Police Have a Duty to Protect You? | Part 2

September 17, 2026

AI Summary

5 min read

Castle Rock v. Gonzales: Do Police Have a Duty to Protect You? | Part 2

At 3:20 AM on June 23, 1999, Simon Gonzalez pulled up to the Castle Rock Police Department and opened fire with a 9mm handgun he had purchased hours earlier. Police returned fire and killed him. When they searched the cap of his truck, they found the bodies of his three daughters—Rebecca, Catherine, and Leslie—whom he had killed earlier that evening. Jessica Gonzalez, their mother, had spent the previous eight hours desperately trying to get the same police department to enforce a restraining order against him. She learned what happened not from law enforcement, but from Simon's girlfriend, who called to say she'd heard the shooting over the phone. When Jessica drove to the station, police detained and questioned her for roughly 12 hours without telling her whether her daughters were alive. She was officially informed around 8 AM that Simon had killed the girls before driving to the station. Her family learned about the tragedy from local media before police ever contacted them.

The Police Department's Response

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What you'll learn

1 (03:20) **Simon Opens Fire on the Police Station** - Simon Gonzalez drives to the Castle Rock police station and opens fire, is killed by return fire, and the bodies of his three daughters are found in his truck.
2 (07:09) **Police Response and Jessica's Ordeal** - Jessica is detained and questioned for 12 hours, not told her daughters are dead, and learns the news from media before her family.
3 (09:26) **Chief Lane's Public Statement** - Chief Tony Lane claims "nobody dropped the ball" and that the department had no indication of violence, despite the restraining order and multiple prior reports.
4 (11:20) **Evidence the Police Ignored** - The hosts list the numerous warning signs the Castle Rock PD had on file, including the restraining order, prior reports, and a mental health call six days before.
5 (14:10) **Jurisdiction as a False Barrier** - Chief Lane concedes that calling Denver Police about the amusement park was a "judgment call," not a hard barrier.
6 (15:00) **Jessica's Treatment After the Murders** - Jessica was never given an official time, date, or place of death for her daughters, and the family was prevented from viewing the bodies for six days.
7 (17:33) **Jessica Sues the Town of Castle Rock** - Jessica sues under Federal Civil Rights Law, arguing the restraining order's "shall" language gave her a legal right to enforcement and that failing to enforce it violated her 14th Amendment due process rights.

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Guests on this episode

Clarence Thomas

Show Notes

TW: Child Murder
Part 2 picks up exactly where we left Jessica. What happened that night — and everything she did afterward — would take her all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court and raise a question most people assume they already know the answer to: do police actually have to protect you, even when you have a court order in hand?

Nikita — an attorney herself — takes us through how the Court got there, what the justices actually decided, and the reasoning behind a ruling that still shapes what we expect from police today.

Then we widen the lens. We put Jessica's case next to Gabby Petito's, ask why an anonymous bomb threat can trigger more urgency than a documented, named danger, and come back to the question at the heart of this entire arc: when no one can know for certain what someone will do, who ends up paying for that uncertainty?

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