John Jefferson
Top inset: Deka Simmons. Bottom inset: Daxcimo Ceja (Colorado Springs Police Department). Background: The location in Colorado where Ceja’s remains were found (KKTV).
A Colorado woman who prosecutors said had an obsession over child molesters will spend the rest of her life in prison for shooting a registered sex offender whose remains were found in a bag in a drainage ditch.
Deka Simmons, 40, was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole on Wednesday in the death of Daxcimo Ceja, 48. She was sentenced immediately after she was found guilty of first-degree murder and tampering with a body and physical evidence, prosecutors announced in a news release. She was also given an additional 24 years for tampering with a body and another three years for tampering with physical evidence, prosecutors said.
Prosecutor Sharon Flaherty said in closing arguments that Simmons killed Ceja because he was a registered sex offender who had a relationship with a 17-year-old girl when he was 25, the Colorado Springs Gazette reported. Ceja had a warrant out for his arrest for failing to register as a sex offender when he was killed, the newspaper reported.
“(Simmons) has an unrestrained hatred for anyone who would molest a child,” Flaherty said, calling it a “fixation” and “paranoia” for Simmons, the paper reported.
In court, Ceja’s parents, Karen and Barry Joseph Fancher, gave emotional victim-impact statements.
“(Ceja) was killed for something he did 24 years ago,” Karen Fancher said. “She won’t be on the street to hurt anyone else’s families like she has done her whole entire life.”
“Dax (Ceja) was a good person. He didn’t deserve to go out this way,” father Barry Fancher said.
Police had spoken with a witness who said Simmons shot Ceja in a garage, dismembered his body, and stored it in a freezer before transporting the remains in a van, the newspaper reported, citing court testimony from a police detective. Police linked Simmons to the murder through DNA from blood in the garage, the paper reported. She was charged with the murder in April 2022, prosecutors said.
But police did not find Ceja’s body until October 2023, after an anonymous tipster reported human remains in a bag in a drainage culvert, officials said.
She has an extensive criminal history that includes a conviction for being an accessory to the killing of a former fellow inmate in the El Paso County Jail and assault for stabbing her stepfather during a custody fight with him over her daughter, the Gazette reported.
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