Lou Kilzer, a Pulitzer Prize-winning Denver Post reporter and editor who spent decades uncovering corruption and misinformation, died Wednesday in Colorado Springs. He was 73.
Kilzer’s career spanned newsrooms across the country and world, including stints at the Fort Collins Triangle Review, Rocky Mountain News, The Denver Post, Minneapolis Star Tribune, Korea JoongAng Daily and Pittsburgh Tribune-Review.
He was most recently a novelist and investigative consultant for The Colorado Springs Gazette.
“He was very much a reporter’s reporter, a journalist’s journalist,” said Henry Dubroff, former Denver Post business editor.
Former Post reporter Robert Kowalski was close friends with Kilzer for nearly 40 years, starting when Kowalski joined the Post in 1986 and Kilzer quickly became his mentor.
A shoe-leather reporter who loved combing through records at city hall or the courthouse, Kilzer was known for a “Columbo” approach to interviews, modeling the 1970s television detective’s style of knowing far more about a topic than he let on, Kowalski said.
“His legacy will certainly be as one of the finest and most accomplished investigative reporters and editors in the country, without question,” he said.
Kilzer won the 1986 Pulitzer Prize for public service alongside Post reporters Diana Griego and Norman Udevitz for their series on missing children, which debunked the idea that most missing children are abducted by strangers and found that the majority are runaways or involved in custody disputes.
Kilzer won his second Pulitzer at the Minneapolis Star Tribune in 1990 for investigative reporting with reporter Chris Ison for uncovering a network of local citizens with links to the St. Paul Fire Department who profited financially from fires.
Kilzer worked at the Post as a reporter and assistant city editor from 1983 to 1987, returning as investigations editor from 1994 to 1996.
Kilzer was staunchly devoted to the truth, introducing Kowalski and other reporters to line-by-line edits during Kilzer’s time as investigations editor.
Kilzer would require reporters to go through every line of a story and prove, through interview transcripts or other documentation, the facts they contained. The process took weeks, Kowalski said.
Kilzer was understated and relatively quiet, Kowalski said, while still uniquely capable of homing in on the core of any issue.
“As low-key as he was, he had a real powerful sense of outrage at wrongdoing, and I think that motivated him,” he said.
Louis Charles Kilzer was born on Feb. 10, 1951, in Cody, Wyoming, to Robert and Marjorie Ann (Harkins) Kilzer.
Lou Kilzer graduated cum laude from Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in philosophy in 1973. He married his wife, Elizabeth Kovacs, in front of a justice of the peace in Laramie, Wyoming, in 1975.
Outside of the newsroom, Kilzer could be found traveling to Costa Rica, Moscow and Seoul. He wrote two nonfiction books about World War II and co-authored a two-book mystery thriller series.
He is survived by his wife, Elizabeth Kovacs, son Alex and daughter Xanthe.
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