The Undertakers on Alleged Torchy's Killer Christian Gulzow: "I'll Slit Your Throat"

Christian Gulzow, the man arrested for the fatal stabbing of Brian Lucero in the parking lot of Torchy's Tacos on May 23, is described by two members of The Undertakers, a Denver metal band with which he was once associated, as obsessed with demons, weapons and musical fame that was beyond his ability. They also say that after ending their friendship with him, Gulzow reacted by unleashing violent warnings that are even more disturbing given the current allegations against him.

"He made multiple accounts on Facebook just to threaten me," reveals vocalist Zombgora Lilith. "He would say, 'I'll slit your throat' — threaten me, threaten my kids, threaten to go to some of our shows and shoot up everybody. It got to the point where I was going to get a restraining order. He's an awful person — an awful person."

Not that Zombgora and fellow Undertaker mainstay Boo the Ghost always felt that way about Gulzow.

"He lived across the street from me, and we pretty much grew up together here in Denver," Boo says. "We were best friends. We were like brothers. We used to drink and smoke pot, and when we started getting into music, doing rap music, we started a group."

That group was the Undertakers — but as time went on, Boo continues, "Chris had a son, and he had a girlfriend, and he started doing his own thing. So him and me lost contact for thirteen years."

During that period, the Undertakers evolved into a metal band with rap influences. "I got into the goth thing, which I wasn't into back when we were growing up," Boo notes.

Then, a couple of years ago, Boo stopped into a pizza restaurant and was surprised to discover that Gulzow worked there — and after that, "we started hanging out again," he recalls. "That's when Zombgora met him. She was already in the band, and he wanted to be a part of our show. So we let him get a taste of being on stage. He was kind of a stage prop, where he dressed as a devil and would dance around as we performed our music."

"He was obsessed with the devil, with demons, with the occult, stuff like that," Zombgora adds about Gulzow, who used the nickname Diablo. "And he's obsessed with weaponry, too. He's got a lot of issues."

In short order, Gulzow started pushing to do more for the Undertakers than simply act as a hype man. According to Boo, "He wanted to do music, but he's not a musician at all. Anything he did musically, I pretty much wrote it, or I would help him write it. He was trying to learn how to growl and do the screaming thing, like Zombgora does, and he really tried to be goth — really tried to be me. That's when he started wearing makeup and trying to express himself that way."

He also began to exhibit envy toward the main two Undertakers. "When we'd write songs, he'd want to get into it," Zombgora allows. "He'd always say, 'You act like it's all about you and Boo.' But it was about me and Boo. It's our band. He puts the rap into it, I put the metal feel into it, and we've been best friends for over a decade. But he got jealous and one thing led to another."

Gulzow wasn't exactly homeless, but he didn't usually have a fixed address. Zombgora and Boo say that when he wasn't staying with his mother or a neighbor, he'd crash on Boo's floor or with friends of the Undertakers from whom he'd sometimes steal — "which was embarrassing," Boo acknowledges.

As for how Gulzow made his own money, "he used to order knives off eBay that were really cheap and then try to sell them on Facebook for more," Boo says. "He was really into weapons and knives and things like that, and he always had a knife or spiked rings or spiked gloves or spiked boots — something that he could hurt someone with."

About a year ago, Gulzow finally wore out his welcome. He was made an administrator on the Undertakers' Facebook page, but Boo remembers that "he would mostly post things about himself, and not really about the band. So the band finally said, 'We've got to take him off.'"

How did Gulzow react to this decision? In Boo's words, "He got really mad. He started talking to other people we know and tried to make us look bad, saying he'd written all of our songs and tried to make it seem that the Undertakers wouldn't be where they are today if it wasn't for him. He was pretty much trying to take credit for everything."

At that point, Boo continues, "we kicked him out of the band and stopped hanging out with him. And that's when he started sending death threats to us and the people we know."

Online, Gulzow "would even make fake profiles as Boo the Ghost. He'd get an old picture of me for the profile picture and then, when we were promoting our shows on Facebook, he'd type on them that 'I'm going to be there and do this and that.' But we knew it was him, so we just ignored him, pretty much. We really didn't feed into his bullshit. We weren't going to stoop to his level, and just tried to stay away from him as much as we could."

Indeed, both Boo and Zombgora admit they thought Gulzow's threats were mainly for show. "I'd be going through my timeline on Facebook and I'd see a girl saying, 'This guy is threatening to kill me,' and I'd look and it would be Chris," Boo maintains. "And I'd be like, 'He won't do anything.' To me, it was all talk — because we knew him, I guess, but also because I'd seen him get beat up multiple times when we were younger. He'd always try to act tough, and then he'd get beat up."

Adds Zombgora: "I thought he was a joke."

The pair hadn't been in direct contact with Gulzow for about a year when the news broke about the May 23 killing.

"Zombgora walked in and said, 'Someone killed someone wearing spiked gloves and face paint,' and I automatically thought of Chris," Boo concedes. "It just came into my head — like, that sounds like him. I didn't think any more about it after that, but later on in the day, Chris Dellinger" — a local guitarist for the band Lola Black, as well as frontwoman Lola's husband — "gave me a call and said, 'Chris apparently killed someone last night.' So I started checking out stories online, and sure enough, they were talking about Chris. And I was like, 'Wow, what an idiot.'"

Boo makes a point of expressing his condolences to Lucero's friends and family. "It was so sad to see people posting stuff about him," he says. "I was like, 'He really didn't deserve that.'"

For her part, Zombgora remains surprised by the twists the various relationships have taken.

"There was a time when I considered Chris to be my brother, too," she says. "We would see him every day, and when we were getting ready to do our shows, we used to have a lot of fun. I never thought he'd be capable of doing this kind of thing to anybody."