Why does John Hickenlooper want to keep the findings secret of a $40,000 investigation he ordered to review the case of murdered Colorado Corrections chief Tom Clements?

No one even knew about this secret investigation into potential co-conspirators of the chief’s assassination carried out by parolee Even Ebel in 2013.

But the report was completed more than a year ago and kept very hush, hush, until the Colorado Springs Gazette revealed the detail here.

The newspaper’s attempt to obtain the secret report were blocked by lawyers for Gov. Jared Polis and the Colorado Corrections Department.

But they sure found out a lot of information even without the actual findings, including the former governor’s role in ordering the report.

The previously undisclosed hiring by the state of Kevin Knierim, a private investigator with the Englewood-based digital forensics and investigative firm Cyopsis, indicates those in the upper echelons of state government, including Hickenlooper, worried additional perpetrators might have escaped justice in one of the most notorious murders in Colorado history.

“Here’s the deal: If this investigation found nothing, why wouldn’t they release it to the public?” asked retired El Paso County sheriff’s detective Mark Pfoff, who wrote the majority of the search warrants in the investigation into the slaying of Clements. “One must assume that they found something that requires them to continue the cover-up.”

Poor Hick just can’t stay out of trouble. 

We’ll keep PeakNation updated on this cover-up as it unfolds.