DENVER — Longtime journalist Ward Lucas, who was an investigative reporter and anchor at 9NEWS for more than 30 years until his retirement in 2009, died Sunday at age 75.
Lucas was known by his colleagues as a quick-witted truth seeker with a passion for words, and he mentored many young journalists.
Born in Kyoto, Japan, Lucas began his broadcast career in 1974 at KIRO-TV in Seattle and came to Denver two years later to begin a decades-long career at 9NEWS. His more than 40 years of investigative journalism included covering the DB Cooper hijacking and the Ted Bundy murders.
In 1977, he tried to persuade the 9NEWS news director to fly him to Aspen after Bundy’s escape from the Pitkin County courthouse. At the time, the news director didn’t think it was a national enough story, so Lucas hired a pilot to fly him and a photographer to Aspen to cover the story.
"The news director didn’t know until I started broadcasting from Aspen about the escape from the jail there, the Pitkin County courthouse," Lucas said during an interview with Tom Green in 2019, when Netflix released a documentary on the case. Lucas was featured in the documentary.
> Below: Ward Lucas talks about his coverage of the Ted Bundy murders and his role in a Netflix documentary:
Lucas won more than 70 awards for his work, including 11 Emmys. He was inducted into the Heartland Emmys Silver Circle in 2008 and Broadcast Pioneers of Colorado in 2018.
After leaving 9NEWS, he wrote three books: "Neighbors at War! The Creepy Case Against Your Homeowner's Association," "Sometimes Ya Gotta Ride the Elephant" and "The Wacky World of a Recovering Army Brat Family."
He served on the board of the Alzheimer's Association from 1996 to 2002. Lucas' father, who served during World War II and endured severe head injuries from a Nazi bazooka, lived with Alzheimer's disease for more than a decade before his death.
He spoke about his father's battle with Alzheimer's and what he was up to after leaving 9NEWS in 2019:
