Police: Woman was held hostage for weeks

Suspect is her former boyfriend; police say he repeatedly assaulted her and threatened to kill her

Greeley police say a woman was held hostage by 45-year-old Anthony Griego for almost two months and was repeatedly sexually and physically assaulted by him during her captivity.

The woman escaped just before noon on March 6, running from Griego’s house in the 500 block of 14th Avenue and shouting to a passing motorist that she needed help because he was going to kill her.

She was bleeding from left ear.

When a police vehicle pulled in, the woman ran to the officer.

Police looked for Griego until Sunday, when he was arrested after a standoff in the 2700 block of Seventh Avenue on suspicion of a host of charges, including second-degree kidnapping and sexual assault.

He was booked into the Weld County Jail.

According to an affidavit for his arrest, Griego is the woman’s ex-boyfriend. During their relationship, he was physically and emotionally abusive, she said, would often hit and kick her.

The relationship ended in October 2016 with an assault so serious it resulted in criminal charges.

That case is still working its way through the court system, according to the affidavit.

After the breakup, the two didn’t have contact with each other until December, when Griego began sending the woman messages on Facebook, she said.

She felt bad, she told police, because he said he wanted to apologize. She agreed to meet him at Bittersweet Park on Jan. 19 to talk..

They sat in his car and later went for a drive, durher ing which Griego asked the woman to change her statement about the domestic-violence case.

“It was the ‘least she could do’ because she took his life away from him and she owed him,” the affidavit states.

The woman soon realized they were headed to the house where Griego lived with his parents, the affidavit says.

When they got to the house, she tried to escape when he got out of the car to open a gate. But he yelled at her to get back in “or she would get it worse.”

She told police she looked for someone to help her, but there was no one around.

When the two went inand side, the woman said, they encountered Griego’s mother, who asked why she was there. Griego, who stood behind his ex-girlfriend, then said she would leave when he wanted her to leave.

He then took her downstairs to his bedroom, she told police, and began to strangle her, something he would do 11 or 12 times over the next seven weeks, she later told police.

She said she blacked out on multiple occasions.

“She said (Griego) said he was going to kill her, and he couldn’t wait to watch the life leave her body,” the report states.