Richie Rose’s last words, “Mafia. Mafia. Mafia,” were a clue, but after a century, his murder is still unsolved. Still, the who-dunnit is no mystery. Rose, a young Denver cop became an enemy to 1920’s gangster bootleggers because he couldn’t be bribed. He was honored Monday a century after he was shot 21 times on the sidewalk where an Italian fruit market and deli once stood.

To generations of Denver’s Rose family, Richie Joseph Rose was an honest officer who stood up to organized crime organizations. Historians say that the Denver Mob killed him as a warning to other non-friendlies who wouldn’t play their game. In just one short year with the Denver Police Department, Rose had helped shut down several illegal liquor businesses during the city’s anti-booze era.

The 26 year-old rookie cop was the first gangster victim of the Prohibition era, stalked and killed by gunfire Oct. 31, 1922.

“They killed him because he refused to become a dirty cop. They tried to pay him off, but he wouldn’t take the payoffs,” his great niece Phyllis Rutherford said.

Added his great grandson, Jeff Rose of Denver, “He was approached several times by the Mob and asked to turn his head. He knew this was going on. He knew he had a target on his back. And he was gunned down right in front of his family.”

The irony that Rose was a full-blooded anti-Mob Italian is not lost on his great grandson.

“People who meet me ask me, ‘Hey are you connected? And I laugh, because for me I’m on the opposite end of the spectrum,” said Jeff Rose, 53. “My great grandfather had the conviction to see it through. I wish I could have known the guy,” he said.

Monday, the Denver Police Law Enforcement Museum solidified the Rose family legend with a solemn ceremony acknowledging his sacrifice in front of what is now a Chubby’s restaurant. Rutherford stood with her arms around her cousin, Nancy McLean and her aunt, Elwin “Winnie” Fluhrer, who is Richie Rose’s grandchild. Other greats and cousins spilled into the street at the heart of what was once known Denver’s Little Italy to hear speeches and watch as a yellow ribbon was draped across a large grainy black and white portrait showing a serious young man in a police cap.

A century ago in Denver’s Little Italy

Rose was already a father of four with one on the way the morning he started his everyday routine. He walked to his sister’s house for breakfast before his shift. Her home was across the street from his call box where he reported for daily duty.

After breakfast, he walked his rounds. When he crossed Kalamath and Lipan on West 38^th Ave., an unfamiliar car was driving toward him. Two men got out, gunned him down and sped away just as his brother-in-law arrived, shotgun in hand. “They heard the gunfire while they were sitting at the breakfast table,” said Jeff Rose.

The officer was still alive when his family carried his body to the house where he’d just said goodbye for the day.

“They took the breakfast dishes and slid them out onto the floor and put his body up on the kitchen table and proceeded to stick dish towels into his stomach to stop the bleeding,” said Jeff Rose, who grew up in Wheat Ridge and worked in the automotive service industry.

“The story was told to us through the years. I remember the picture of Aunt Carmella in her apron crying over his body,” said Rutherford.

Newspaper reports said that Rose’s execution-style murder was meant to send a message to other officers and the community that “if you rat us out, this is what will happen to you,” said Mike Hess, who is president of the Denver Police Law Enforcement Museum.

Rose was born in Denver, one of 21 children, but his parents’ fabled story preceded his own. His dad, Angelo Rosso, was a stable boy, who fell in love with an Italian princess named Mary Grace and stole her away from Naples to Colorado. Angelo Rose is buried with his son, Rich.

Mary Grace Rosso remarried and died years later, reportedly of shock, after her home was burglarized in a separate incident. She had been so heartbroken over Richie’s death, the story goes, she nailed a wooden cross to the pole he hid behind as his killers stalked him. A newspaper article about her tragic death said that she nailed the cross to the pole so that “every day the murderers will pass here and they will see the cross. It will chill their hearts with the fear of God.”

An organization which won’t let Coloradans forget

Since the inception of the Denver Police department in 1859, 77 of its officers have died in the line of duty. Hess said the Museum recently added two officers who died in 1918 during their duties responding to the Spanish Flu.

“We didn’t appreciate that those deaths would be considered active duty until the COVID Pandemic hit,” said Hess. So far, 43 officers have been honored.

Finding officers’ families after so long has been easier since the inception of Ancestry.com according to volunteer Bill Nagle, a retired Denver deputy chief.

Recently, a group of volunteers from the museum traveled to Beloit, Kansas to leave a memorial marker in the tiny town where officer John Spellman grew up. Spellman died in 1906, murdered while apprehending two suspects near where the Denver courthouse now stands. Spellman had an illustrious career. Hess said “he hunted Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, but he evidently didn’t round them up.”

Money to fund the museum comes from a wide variety of sources including various Colorado-based foundations, retired officer contributions and active officer payroll deductions out of officers’ paychecks. Hess said that around half of the force’s 1,600 people contribute $5-$50 dollars a month out of their individual paychecks.

The organization works with young people to expose them to law enforcement careers and to introduce them to real live cops to start conversations to understand the function of police.

“Most people get their view of what police do from television which is completely inaccurate. This gives kids the chance to understand the true function of law enforcement,” said Hess. “They are human beings, not TV stars.”

Of the recognition the museum does for fallen officers, Hess said, “This is a nice opportunity for us to give a more balanced account of the work that police officers do. There have been so many true heroes.”

The memorial is bittersweet — Jeff Rose knows solving his great grandfather’s 100 year old murder is a lost cause. Still, the recognition is a token of honor to the Rose family.

“In those days, the Mob came in to do those hits from other states like Kansas, and then went back without ever being found out. It would be nice if they ever caught and punished the people who murdered him, but as far as his legacy, he was a good Italian. My family did it right.”