Richard Talley

Richard Talley, 56, and the company he founded in 2001 were under investigation by state insurance regulators at the time of his death. Before coming to Colorado, Talley was a former regional financial officer at Drexel Burnham Lambert in Chicago, where he met his wife, Cheryl, a vice president at the company. The two married in 1989. Talley had formed a number of companies, some now defunct, according to the Colorado secretary of state's office. Among them: American Escrow, Clear Title, Clear Creek Financial Holdings, Swift Basin, Sumar, American Real Estate Services, and the American Alliance of Real Estate Professionals. In addition to its headquarters in the Peakview Tower near Fiddler's Green Amphitheatre in the Denver Tech Center, American Title has offices in Pueblo, Brighton, Boulder, Westminster, Lakewood, Wheat Ridge and Fort Collins. Talley's 1989 wedding announcement in the Chicago Tribune noted he was a graduate of the University of Miami and had a graduate degree from Northwestern University's Kellogg Graduate School of Management.