After a time in Boulder, she spent the last years of her life in Denver, where she lived in a shack with an African American, Andrew Lyles. Her mother had begged her to return to Boulder, but she refused. On July 5, 1898, neighbors reported that Lyles severely beat Anna. Lyles and another man living at the house, John C. Motley, were arrested and charged with Anna's murder. But the autopsy report cites an internal abscess, pneumonia, and alcoholism as the cause of death, not the beating. Lyles, meanwhile, was immediately rearrested for criminal assault on a six-year-old girl. A year after the divorce, Sam Speas married Ellen O'Leary, who worked at the Pacific Hotel, since the Como Eating House and Bed and Breakfast. Their three sons also became railroad engineers. Speas' granddaughter, Margaret Coel, wrote a book on his life, "Goin' Railroading". Anna Blythe Speas is buried in an unmarked grave in Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. On May 13, 2011, Marshal Adolph Cook was inducted into the National Law Enforcement Memorial in Washington, D.C. Earlier in 1999, he was inducted into the Colorado Law Enforcement Memorial. He is the only law enforcement officer from Park County to qualify for the posthumous honors. In 2012, the journalist Laura King Van Dusen of Como, who writes for "The Flume", the newspaper in Fairplay, won first place for "Best Feature Story" from the Colorado Press Association. for her article on Anna Blythe Speas.