Who is Kenia Monge's killer and where is he now? Whereabouts of Travis Forbes explored ahead of Lifetime's #TextMeWhenYouGetHome

With Lifetime's #TextMeWhenYouGetHome set to broadcast on June 6, 2022, the show is ready to explore Kenia Monge and her murderer Travis Forbes in a case that dates back over a decade. On April 1, 2011, a 19-year-old girl was reported missing after she went partying with her other underage friends at a downtown Denver hotspot. She reportedly left her phone and purse behind as well.

Her parents took the case to the police the following day. A stranger named Travis Forbes allegedly had tried to contact her after she disappeared. He was also the last person to see her alive after reportedly giving her a lift to the gas station. Travis evaded police with an airtight alibi and his version of the story for months, before confessing to the assault and murder of Kenia Monge.

Forbes was sentenced to life in prison for the first-degree murder of Kenia Monge.

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How did Travis Forbes get caught and where is he now?

Travis Forbes was a local baker from Denver who managed to run into Monge on that particular night in downtown Denver. He offered to give her a lift in his van.

According to his version of the story, he picked Kenia up in his van to give her a lift home, but they stopped for cigarettes at Conoco gas station, where Kenia reportedly met a fellow smoker and wandered off with him. He maintained that this was the last he had seen of her.

Not fully convinced of the story, detectives searched the back of his van. They found a strong smell of bleach and a renewed interior, both of which were suspicious. They asked him to come for a polygraph test but he avoided it and remained free for months as there was no physical evidence tying him to the crime.

He also maintained that Monge wandered off with an Asian man, misdirecting the entire investigation. He also perhaps texted on Monge's phone to ward off suspicion.

Months later, however, he was taken into custody for another case of assault on a 30-year-old woman Lydia Tillman. He was at Fort Collins at the time.

According to reports, Denver Police Detective Nash Gurule, who strongly believed that Travis Forbes was the murderer they had been looking for, went down to Fort Collins in hopes of extracting a confession.

The 31-year-old suspect was allegedly "done running," and he confessed to the murder of Kenia Monge. In exchange for his testimony, he made a deal that he wants to carry out his sentence without being labeled as a s*x offender. He also managed to dodge the death penalty.

He told the authorities that he met Kenia in downtown Denver when she was visibly drunk. He offered to drop her home and she accepted. But after she passed out in the back of his van, he took advantage of it and assaulted her. When she woke up, she started hitting him and that escalated into a fight, ending in Travis strangling Kenia to death. In his confession, he said:

"She kinda came to and she realized that we had had s*x. And she started hitting me, and I started hitting her back … And then she started to scream,...And I strangled her, I strangled her, I strangled her. I killed her.”

"It was a mistake," Travis Forbes said during his trial, "I didn't plan it. I took a life."

After killing Kenia, he hid her body in a cooler that he wheeled into a freezer at the bakery where he worked. He buried the body almost 40 miles away from Denver. He led the authorities to the place where they retrieved the remains of Kenia Monge.

Travis Forbes was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for the murder of Kenia Monge. He also received an additional sentence of 48 years for the attempted murder of Lydia Tillman.

He is currently held at Colorado State Penitentiary, the home to the most disruptive, violent, and dangerous offenders in the state.

Lifetime's #TextMeWhenYouGetHome will cover the case in detail when it airs on June 6, 2022. Stay tuned for more updates.