Joseph Koenig is a killer from Colorado who was found guilty of murder in the death of Alexa Bartell.
According to court documents Joseph Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak were throwing rocks off an overpass at moving vehicles. One of the huge rocks would go through the windshield of Alexas Bartell causing a crash that would kill the woman.
The three teen killers would be arrested and charged with murder. Karol-Chik and Kwak would end up signing plea deals and agreed to testify against Joseph Koenig. Koenig lawyers attempted to blame Karol-Chik on throwing the rock that would kill Alexa Bartell however the jury believed that Koenig was responsible
All three teen killers will be sentenced at a later date
Joseph Koenig Case
Jurors have delivered a guilty verdict for first-degree murder for Joseph Koenig, the Colorado man accused of throwing a rock through the windshield of Alexa Bartell’s moving vehicle, killing her. Deliberations began Thursday, with the jury returning the verdict less than two hours after returning to deliberate on Friday morning.
Koenig was charged with first-degree murder in Bartell’s death, as well as nine additional criminal counts of attempted first-degree murder for allegedly throwing rocks at other vehicles. There were also three counts of second-degree assault and six counts of attempted second-degree assault for a total of 19 counts.
The jury returned guilty verdicts on all charges, although some were downgraded to lesser charges, including one count of attempted first-degree murder that was downgraded to attempted second-degree murder. Two counts of attempted first-degree murder were downgraded to attempted reckless manslaughter, and another count was downgraded to reckless endangerment.
All counts of second-degree assault were downgraded to third-degree assault. Some of the counts of attempted second-degree assault were downgraded to attempted third-degree assault.
Witnesses testified last week, sharing their experiences that night as they became victims of the rock-throwing attacks.
Two co-defendants, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak, pleaded guilty last year for their roles in the 2023 attack. Last week, both men testified against Koenig as part of their plea agreements. Both claimed that it was Koenig who threw the rock that killed Bartell. The defense questioned Karol-Chik’s testimony, pointing to previous interviews where he claimed Kwak had thrown the last rock of the night.
Koenig did not testify. Instead, his defense called behavioral health researcher and Temple University professor Laurence Steinberg to the stand. The defense stressed that Koenig wasn’t fully aware of the consequences of his actions. Steinberg was cross-examined for several hours as District Attorney Katharine Decker sought to establish that adolescents are capable of impulse control and logical reasoning.
Koenig’s trial, initially scheduled to begin last summer, was delayed for a court-ordered evaluation after his attorneys raised concerns about an ADHD diagnosis.
Closing arguments were heard Thursday morning. The defense asserted that what Koenig did was manslaughter, not murder.
“Did he make a lot of bad decisions? Yes. Knowingly and intentionally,” one prosecutor said
Koenig’s defense didn’t argue that he didn’t commit a crime but pleaded that the jury find him guilty of a reckless manslaughter charge.
“You’re right. What Joe Koenig did was a crime. He is guilty. We’re asking you to find him guilty of what he did.”
Sentencing for Joseph Koenig has been scheduled for 8:30 a.m. on June 3. Victims and their families are expected to speak at the sentencing.
Sentencing hearings for Karol-Chik and Kwak have been scheduled for next week, May 1 and May 2, respectively, after the verdict in Koenig’s trial.
Zachary Kwak Photos
Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik Photos
Joseph Koenig News
A jury Friday found a man accused of killing a Jefferson County woman by throwing a rock through her windshield in 2023 guilty of first-degree murder.
Joseph Koenig, 20, was on trial in the death of 20-year-old Alexa Bartell, along with several other crimes related to a weekslong rock-throwing spree.
The jury reached its verdict after deliberating for about seven hours, capping a 10-day trial in First Judicial District Court. First-degree murder carries a mandatory life sentence in Colorado.
The jury also found Koenig guilty on six attempted first-degree murder charges and attempted assault charges.
All three defendants in the case — Joseph Koenig, Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik and Zachary Kwak — were 18 at the time of the crimes. Both Karol-Chik and Kwak took plea deals and testified during Koenig’s trial.
Joseph Koenig’s sentencing hearing was scheduled for June 3.
During her closing argument Thursday, Jefferson County Chief Deputy District Attorney Katharine Decker focused on three areas for the jury: frequent, focused and fatal. She recounted how Koenig and his friends went on repeated rock-throwing sprees over the course of several weeks, improving their aim through repetition.
“The defendant’s attacks were frequent, over and over and over …” she said, repeating the phrase. “The targets were focused, and all were on the driver’s side.”
On the night of Bartell’s death, Joseph Koenig was driving when he grabbed a 9-pound rock from the dashboard, sped up to at least 80 mph and then threw the rock “like a shot put out” out of the driver’s side window and into her windshield.
The rock slammed into Bartell’s head, killing her instantly and causing the car to veer off the road, down an embankment and through a fence before it came to a rest.
“You have the pictures of what that rock did to her,” Decker told jurors.
After the attack, a smiling Joseph Koenig “whooped” in excitement, then turned around at least twice to check on the crashed car.
That showed Joseph Koenig was “damn well aware” that rocks hurled from a car posed a “grave risk” of killing someone, satisfying the elements of first-degree murder, Decker said.
Under the law, Joseph Koenig can be convicted of murder regardless of whether the jury believes he threw the rock himself or was only complicit in the attacks, she said.
Defense attorney Martin Stuart said the evidence showed Koenig was not guilty of first-degree never believed his actions would harm anyone.
“What was going on in his head — what was his mental state? That’s what this case is about,” he said.
The night Bartell was killed, the three men were driving around and egging each other on through a series of escalating rock attacks, some at parked cars and some at passing motorists, according to Stuart’s account. But not until Bartell’s car veered from the road did they believe anyone had been injured.
“It never entered their minds that they were going to hurt let alone kill anybody,” Stuart said.
Stuart said even a court-appointed expert found that Koenig’s borderline personality disorder affected both his impulse control and his judgment, arguing his actions therefore fell short of the “culpable mental state” for murder.
Instead, the defense urged the jury to convict Koenig of manslaughter, a lesser offense that applies when someone “consciously disregards” a substantial and unjustifiable risk their actions could result in a death. Manslaughter normally carries a potential sentence of up to three years in prison.
“What Joe Koenig and those other two kids did were crimes,” Stuart said. “We’re asking you to find him guilty of what he did.”
Karol-Chik pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and attempted first-degree murder and faces between 35 and 72 years in prison. Kwak pleaded guilty to assault and attempted assault and faces between 20 and 32 years in prison.
Both are scheduled to be sentenced in early May
Nicholas “Mitch” Karol-Chik Sentencing
A Colorado man who pleaded guilty to the murder of a 20-year-old woman who died after having a large rock hurled at her car was sentenced on Thursday, May 1.
Nicholas Karol-Chik, 20, was sentenced to 45 years in prison after pleading guilty to charges of murder in the second degree, criminal attempt to commit murder and a crime of violence enhancement to the murder charge.
Those charges all stem from the death of Alexa Bartell, who died on April 19, 2023, when a large rock was hurled through the window of her car.
Karol-Chik agreed to those pleas as part of a deal with prosecutors that also required him to testify at the trial of his co-defendant, Joseph Koenig, in exchange for a reduced sentence.
Karol-Chik was called to testify twice in court during the trial. Prosecutors with the First Judicial District Attorney’s Office (FJDAO) said at the hearing on Thursday that he had fulfilled the requirements of his deal.
The judge sentenced Karol-Chik to 45 years in prison on the murder charge with the crime of violence enhancement and 24 years on the criminal attempt to commit murder charge, according to a release from the FJDAO. The release also says that those sentences will run concurrently as a combined sentence of 45 years, followed by five years of parole on the murder charge and three years on the criminal attempt charge.
“I will forever have to live with the fact that my desire to impress people that I thought were friends caused this tragedy,” Karol-Chik said during the hearing on Thursday, per the release.
Karol-Chik testified at trial that on the night of Bartell’s murder, he provided Joseph Koenig with the nine-pound rock that fatally struck the victim.
The two men, along with co-defendant Zachary Kwak, then drove by the wreck and took photos of the scene without ever checking on Bartell, according to a probable cause affidavit filed in the case.
Kwak was the first to take a plea deal in the case, followed soon after by Karol-Chik in May 2024.
Joseph Koenig, who was responsible for throwing the fatal rock, was convicted of first-degree murder with an enhancing count of extreme indifference last week, which carries a mandatory sentence of life in prison without the possibility of parole.
https://people.com/alexa-bartell-rock-car-colorado-murder-prison-sentence-11726839
Joseph Koenig Links
Jury Reads Joseph Koenig’s Verdict | Rock-Throwing Murder Trial