DENVER – To most people in the nation, the three men who brutally gunned down Cortez police officer Dale Claxton last month are cop-killers.

But to some sympathizers of the militia movement, they are freedom fighters who are being referred to honorifically as "The Colorado 3."

Since the May 29 shooting, hundreds of messages have been posted on various Internet "bulletin boards," either touting the killing that sparked a massive manhunt or condemning it.

"There’s nothing wrong with wasting cops," Tom Alciere of Nashua, N.H., wrote in response to messages about the Cortez shooting. "They go around threatening innocent, random people at gun point, and they whine about it when one of us humans kills a cop."

In a computerized search of messages related to the shooting, some writers have offered a few theories of their own, ranging from a medical experiment gone awry to the whole thing being orchestrated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation as a way to discredit militia groups.

Alciere, who has posted hundreds of anti-law enforcement messages on the Internet, writes in another message that the FBI is responsible for the Cortez shooting just like it was involved in the April 19, 1995, bombing of the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City, which killed 168 people.

One of the few people who posted his views in cyberspace to actually identify himself by name – most people use anonymous online "handles"

Alciere said police officers deserve what they get because they choose to work in law enforcement.

"Anything to pin some blame on the militia and make it look like militia are the enemy, right?"

Not everyone writing online agreed, however.

Though most of his message can’t be repeated in a family newspaper, Keith Jensen of Ogden, Utah, admonished those who promote such ideas.

"You people are (expletive) in the head if you think that you should kill cops," he writes. "Sure there are the few that are (expletive), but do they not keep the world a little bit safe to live in?"

"The police are just foot soldiers in this unjust system," someone wrote anonymously under the name International Artist Guild. "They commonly abuse their power, however, there are still a ton of good cops out there and I hate to think of a nut shooting one of them."

Other than supporting or condemning the shooting, others had some unique theories of their own.

In a "Dear Concerned Citizens" letter posted on a militia bulletin board, USCMike1 anonymously proposes that the three men – Alan "Monte" Pilon, Jason Wayne McVean or Robert Matthew Mason – actually were fleeing "ghoulish mad scientists" and their mind-control medical experiments.