ANTHONY MATTIE is a dark-eyed, broad-shouldered man of quiet enthusiasms and emphatic hand gestures. He speaks with pride about his three decades on the Colorado State Patrol and, at 54, just as warmly about his pending retirement. Any suggestion that his investigation of the Breedlove case was skewed is met with a patient but passionate response. "Our job isn't to choose sides," he says. "It seems like the Breedloves are saying, 'Let's find facts to support what our belief is.' "

Mattie denies that the altercation with Magie had any influence on the investigation, calling the fight "just an unnecessary delay." It certainly wasn't the only distraction Mattie faced that morning. After calling 911, Rael and Ross returned to the scene about a half-hour

"This is a bad road," says John Rael, whose son Joseph was driving the truck that hit and killed Breedlove. "These bikers, they don't care. They go right in front of people." In his opinion, the unacknowledged victim in this situation is Joseph himself.

after the accident with their employer, a local woman named Sandy DeNinno. But at first the authorities didn't know they were waiting inside her vehicle to be interviewed, and reports that the driver had taken off sent a trooper shooting down Highway 12 in search of a possible hit-and-run.

As more RAAM people arrived, Mattie realized this would be a high-profile case, but he also had to keep the traffic moving. With the body in the eastbound lane awaiting the coroner, that meant opening the westbound lane—and compromising the presumed "debris path" of the collision. Charting where objects end up in relation to one another is crucial to figuring out how an accident like this unfolded. Although the troopers photographed the scene and spray-painted the locations of a few pieces of evidence, other items had been moved before they arrived—including the broken remains of Breedlove's bike and, of course, the truck itself.

Even so, after taking photos and measurements, interviewing Rael and Ross, and turning the body over to the local coroner, the troopers thought they had a pretty clear idea of what had happened. Rael was driving down the ten-mile stretch from Weston to Stonewall, where he and Ross did odd jobs for DeNinno. Rael was behind the wheel, despite his age and lack of a license, because Ross had taken painkillers for an injured foot. They were heading west on 12, traveling approximately 55 miles an hour in a 60-mile-per-hour zone. Breedlove was heading east when—"for unknown reasons," the accident report states—he crossed into the westbound lane. Rael said he hit the brakes and steered right, leaving a skid that stretched more than 100 feet. The bike collided with the front driver's-side corner of the truck, hurling Breedlove into the windshield and knocking him back into his own lane.

"It was just one of those unfortunate things that happen," Mattie says. "I don't know how else to explain it."

Other locals, though, have heaped the blame on race planners, Breedlove's crew, and anyone else who thought putting a solo rider on Highway 12 was a good idea. Joseph Rael's father, John Rael, has lived beside Highway 12 all his life. He says it's crazy for RAAM riders not to have a car following them at all times, what with the trucks, the occasional rockslide, and other hazards.

"This is a bad road," he told me during a phone conversation this spring. "The big trucks don't slow down, and these bikers—they don't care. They go right in front of people or they're in the middle of the road half the time. This guy was left alone. There was nobody with him to see if something was wrong with him."

John, who says he's unemployed and has been on disability for the past ten years, has not let his son speak to journalists. He claims that Joseph, now 17, is an unacknowledged victim in the case, and that interviews would simply retraumatize him. "It's a screwed-up situation," he says. "He quit school. I don't know what to do. He won't talk about it. He's been in a lot of fights. Caught drinking. It's just been ongoing, back and forth to the courts."

From John's point of view, things could hardly be more unfair. First, this bicyclist comes hurtling at your kid. The boy tries to get out of the way, but the bike just keeps coming. The man dies. Your kid has that to deal with. And then court. And then the biker's family, who sends private investigators to talk to your neighbors, ask questions all over the place. Why? Because they want it to be your kid's fault. They don't believe him or the kid he was with. Or the state troopers.

For their part, the Breedloves found the official story unconvincing on several counts, starting with the description of their guy losing control of his bike. Why would Breedlove, a famously cautious and fit rider, a man who dressed like a human traffic cone, be weaving in the wrong lane?

"I don't believe it," Bill Breedlove says simply. "To say that he just drifts over to the other lane, on a perfectly sunny morning, for no reason, when his crew saw him 15 minutes earlier and he was fine—none of it adds up."

Once he read the autopsy report and talked to Las Animas County coroner Robert Bukovac, Bill completely dismissed the stories about Bob weaving for several hundred feet. Pathologists routinely look for other health factors that may have contributed to a death, and the autopsy found no evidence of an aneurysm or a heart attack; in fact, Bob's heart was in exceptional shape for a man in his fifties. A standard drug screen turned up only a trace of caffeine. Bukovac says he doesn't know what caused the collision, but he considers a dizzy spell, seizure, or other medical emergency highly unlikely—almost as unlikely as a cyclist riding uphill while passed out.

"It's hard for me to believe this gentleman was able to balance a bike and pedal if he was unconscious," he says.

At first the Breedloves were hopeful the autopsy results would prompt a closer look at the crash. But they say they received little additional information about the investigation in the weeks that followed and little assistance from Laurel Byrnes, the assigned prosecutor.

"She refused to meet with the family, she refused to talk to me about additional facts we might have, and she refused to postpone the kid's arraignment so we could get some more facts on the table," says Shawn Gillum, the Breedloves' Denver-based attorney. "Her whole attitude was completely dismissive."

Byrnes, who's since left to work in a larger jurisdiction, says her office provided Gillum with copies of all relevant records. She adds that the case was one of dozens of traffic offenses she was handling on a daily basis in an understaffed office.

The Breedloves' frustration boiled over when they learned how the case had been settled. Joseph Rael was issued a ticket for driving while his privileges were suspended and for driving without a valid license or insurance. At a September 2005 court hearing, he pleaded guilty to a single charge of not having a license and was sentenced to six months' unsupervised probation and 24 hours of community service. He was fined $35; with court costs and other fees, the total penalty came to less than $200. Bob Breedlove's name isn't even mentioned in the transcript of the three-minute hearing that took place. The district attorney's office didn't tell the judge, Bruce Billings, that the case involved a fatality.