In October 1941, 73-year-old Philip Peters was found beaten to death inside his West Highland home, a case that left Denver police without a clear suspect or obvious way the killer had entered or escaped. Peters was alone while his wife recovered from a broken hip in the hospital. The investigation would eventually reveal that the answer was much closer — and much stranger — than detectives expected.
The case has resurfaced in a Tuesday feature from Westword, which revisits how the locked-house killing became one of Denver’s most bizarre historical crime stories. The suspect was Theodore Coneys, a homeless drifter who had known Peters years earlier. The crucial detail was not how Coneys escaped, but where he had been hiding all along.
Peters Was Attacked While Home Alone
According to the Denver Public Library, Peters was a retired Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad worker, musician, and member of the Denver Guitar Club. While his wife was hospitalized, Peters discovered Coneys raiding the refrigerator, and Coneys attacked him with a cast-iron stove shaker.
Law Week Colorado reports that the scene showed no obvious forced entry, while money left inside the home made a straightforward robbery theory less convincing. Investigators were left with a brutal killing, a bloodied weapon and no clear explanation for how the attacker had come and gone.
The Killer Was Still Inside The House
After Peters’ widow returned home, she and a housekeeper began noticing missing food, strange noises and objects that seemed to move on their own. As the Denver Gazette recounts, the house was eventually left vacant, but neighbors continued reporting odd activity and foul smells.
In July 1942, officers watching the property heard movement upstairs and saw a pair of legs disappearing through a small ceiling opening. They pulled Coneys down from the attic, where he had apparently been living for months in a space measuring just 27 inches high and 57 inches wide, according to Westword.
How Denver’s “Spider-Man” Name Stuck
The cramped hideout was filled with collected waste, and an officer sent inside became sick from the smell. The Denver Public Library says Officer Fred Zarnow remarked that “a man would have to be a spider” to endure the space, giving newspapers the hook they needed for Coneys’ grim nickname.
Coneys was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison in October 1942. He died at the state penitentiary in Cañon City in 1967, but the case remains one of Denver’s most enduring true-crime legends — less superhero origin story than a locked-room nightmare with a ceiling panel.
