Monster (19 page)

She said she had lost her faith in God. “People who hurt other people can be forgiven for their mistakes. If they get to go to heaven, then I want the opportunity to donate my part of forever to them because I don’t want to be anywhere forever with them. My interest in sex just died again. I love you, Debrah.”

Luther responded by chastising her. He reminded her she talked about suicide and swearing off sex whenever something bad happened. He’d prefer she wrote to Judge Hart to tell him her family understood the situation.

“We both are going to get out of our prisons someday.... I’ll throw my life away for you. I’ll kill for you. But you’re going to have to tuff [sic] it out and wait for me.”

Debrah settled down and followed up on his request to write to Hart, assuring him of her family’s acceptance of Tom. Then she took it a step further; she also asked her husband, Dennis, and 14-year-old son, John, to write as well.

Dear Judge Hart,

My name is Dennis. My wife Debrah Snider has a relationship that she is very serious about with a Mr. Thomas E. Luther who is in the Colorado correctional facility.

Debrah asked me to write and tell you that I know about this relationship, because she told me that there was a concern about letting Mr. Luther go before his sentence is up because Debrah is married.

Debrah and I have had some very rough times with our marriage in the last five years. Debrah and I came to an understanding that we would try just being friends and stay together for economic advantages rather than for mutual affection. This agreement did not work out for either of us.

Debrah and I have a small acreage that we have built up over the last fifteen years that she is afraid of losing. I told her to find someone else and I would leave. I believe this marriage will end, even if Debrah did not find somebody else to share her life with.

Sincerely, Dennis Syzinski.

Dear Judge presiding Tom’s case,

I’m hearing that you aren’t letting Tom out. Now why is that?

I’m Debrah Snider’s son John. You know my mom’s the one that Tom is seeing. I have talked to Tom over the phone and saw him in some pictures. I know what crime he committed and how bad it was. Wait before you say anything! You should know that people can change and he has had something like 15 years to change.

My mom and he are really close. If my mom is having a really bad day and Tom calls, it’s like rain to sunshine in half a second.

My parents have never been real close and being separated I think would make us all happy.

Thank you, John.”

Dear Judge Hart,

“I wish I could write you with the honesty of my fourteen-year-old son—untainted by the knowledge of the price of honesty; unhumbled by the appreciation of the power of your position, your ability to give orders that can affect the happiness of so many people who are now involved in Tom’s case.

My children have grown up in a war zone. I did my best to love my husband and attempted therapy numerous times with him, only to have him leave therapy with the interpretation that he was ‘getting screwed.’ Our relationship has been functional at best.

I am grateful to my husband for staying to help keep me from losing my place and all that I have.... My husband hates the place, my animals, all my hopes and dreams, and was grateful for the possibility of someone rescuing him from his burden. I think for a moment that he was more disappointed by the denial of Tom’s release than I was.

Tom has a niece and nephew whose lives are out of control and who are already involved in the abuse of chemicals at a very young age. He has asked me if I would help with these kids because their mother (his sister) is not able to control them due to her own chemical abuse. I’d be glad to help with these kids, but I can not do it alone. If Tom and I are able to do anything to help these kids, we need to begin now.

I hope you will be able to give us all something more concrete than just the false hopes of this last year. Tom is a good man and our being able to begin a life together will have a positive effect on me and my family (including my husband whom I can then give the divorce he has wanted for years).

No one except those directly involved know what’s best for their lives.... I hope you will allow Tom and me to make the decisions that will affect our lives and the lives of the people we love, and that you will make the one decision that will affect Tom’s life and my life that only you can make—the decision to let him go.

Sincerely, Debrah Snider

Even though Debrah was cooperating, Luther soon had another worry. His mother wrote to say she wanted to come visit him and attend a hearing in October before Judge Hart.

It would be the first time he had seen her since the late 1970s, he wrote to Debrah, and he wasn’t sure if he was ready yet. “I’ve always hated my mother and kept my whole life from her.

“She feels guilty in some way for me being in here for the crime I committed.... I’m not sure I could control my tears and pain for her not being able to mother me when I needed her when I was young and in adolescence.”

Actually, Luther may have been more worried about what his mother might tell his girlfriend. But, despite her son’s misgivings, Betty Luther flew to Colorado in October. Debrah Snider picked her up at the airport, and Betty stayed with her and her family in La Porte where they had plenty of opportunity to talk.

The result was an angry letter from Debrah to Luther. He had lied to her again! For one thing, he was five years younger than she was. And his mother had never even heard of a former wife or children. “What else have you lied about?” she demanded.

When Luther wrote back he noted that he was angry with his mother for “telling my secrets.” “I would have done it myself if I thought you could have handled it. I love you, Debrah, more than I’ve ever loved any woman. I would wash dishes in a restaurant if I could just be with you and share your life.”

The age difference was easily explainable. He’d never dated women his own age because they weren’t mature enough for him. He claimed Debrah was the closest in age of any woman he’d ever loved.

As for his story about the children, he just hadn’t told her the whole truth. He said he’d met a girl in New York when he was 14 years old and out on his own. “Bernadette” was a junkie with two children—Glen and Glenda—from Colorado Springs. She’d moved to Vermont with him, but he’d kept her and her children a secret from his family.

Bernadette, he said, prostituted herself for drugs and often left the children in his care. They had called him dad. The little girl was deaf and he’d hold her and they’d cry together because they were both so empty. Bernadette’s mother had written to tell him they were killed on a motorcycle.

“I’m sorry Debrah that I haven’t always been truthful—that I’ve been misleading and straight out lied to you. When I first started seeing you, I never expected that we would fall in love and that after you learned about what I was in here for you would still consider a relationship with me.... When I get out, you can ask anything, and I will tell you the truth.”

However, he went on, why did she have to know
everything
he had lied about? He suggested that she had some deep-seated psychological problem. He reminded her that Chance’s father had lied to her and that it was probably old scars from that relationship that drove her to dig things out that might hurt their relationship. He told her to quit dwelling on the past and enjoy the future. After a couple of years, he would share his “pain, denials, and secrets.”

Any tears he shed for his lost children when he wrote the letter would have been crocodile tears. It was just another lie, and Debrah even saw it as such. It didn’t matter. She knew that her lover was an obviously troubled man. That he would be a liar was no surprise; men had lied to her for her entire life. It’s just the way they were.

Debrah believed that he did love her, his letters practically oozed romance and eternal togetherness. She knew that he needed her. He had even said he would kill for her—not that she wanted to encourage that kind of talk, but it was the sort of thing a dragon-slayer might say ... even an imperfect one. She began to call his lies “Tom Luther stories”—tall tales to build up his ego.

Someday,
she thought,
I’ll hold him to his promise to tell me all of his secrets. Someday, I’ll make him tell the truth.

Someday would never come.

Fate is a tightrope walker. A slip one way and events tumble out in one pattern, a slip another way and an entirely different future unfolds. If Luther had served the remaining two years of his sentence, certain individuals may have been spared tragedy, but perhaps only to have it visited on others at a later date with altogether different consequences.

In November, Hart relented and set a release date for Thomas Edward Luther of January 14, 1993. “With good time,” Luther wrote Debrah excitedly, “I should be out by December 25.... I want to spend the first few weeks doing nothing but cuddling with you in bed.... Now, I need to write Skip and Mongo and tell them the good news.”

Home for Christmas. To Debrah, it had to be a sign from God.

Now that he was really getting out, Debrah Snider and Luther went through a period of trying to sort out their feelings. It was one thing to imagine a future, quite another to have the future staring them in the face.

Luther wrote that for some reason he was staying in his cell as much as possible. It was where he felt safest. When he left, his neck got sore from tension and he felt panicky. He claimed to be experiencing anxiety attacks.

He admitted “being afraid” of freedom. He wished there was a way he could start with a few day passes and retreat at night to the safety of his cell.

Debrah cautioned him that she wouldn’t start enjoying sex right off the bat. He’d have to be slow and patient with her. Psychologist Sigmund Freud would have had a field day interpreting what it meant when, during this time, Debrah tried to castrate an ornery bull she owned and ended up killing the beast.

The march of time toward Luther’s impending release had the pair alternating between frequent spats and giddy highs—such as his suggestion that they send Judge Hart a Christmas card. They would be married by then. He thought the judge would get a kick out of getting a card from Mr. and Mrs. Tom Luther.

Luther wasn’t happy that Dennis Syznski was still around. He was not going to live in some cage on a mountain at Debrah’s beck and call until she decided if he could take Syznski’s place.

She was still upset that he apparently intended to pursue a life of crime, despite his assurance to make Judge Hart “proud.” He talked about robbing banks so that he could buy her a ranch in New Mexico while he pursued his marijuana project. She didn’t want to stay around to see him mess up again. She wrote that she was considering moving to Alaska.

To which he responded by accusing her of trying to hold him back, “just because I don’t want to be a financial burden to you. ... I’d like to lay my hands on some real cash. But knowing you, you would throw a fit and try to put that stupid suicide trip on me, which pisses me off and makes me feel guilty.”

Reality was getting to be too much, he wrote, he didn’t want to talk about him getting a job or treatment for awhile. “Let’s talk about our first litter of puppies. Or having our first horse foal. Let’s talk about our first walk to your water hole. Hand in hand. Two kids in love. Full of passion.... I love you so much, Deb. I’m going to marry you some day.”

In mid-December, just two weeks from his release date, Luther couldn’t take the pressure anymore. Complaining about stale crackers in the prison cafeteria, he started throwing food, was taken to a segregation cell and charged with attempting to start a riot. He tried to explain the incident to Debrah as refusing to “kiss ass,” and that he’d still “beat the paperwork” regarding the cafeteria incident and get out as scheduled, but she didn’t believe it.

On December 17, she wrote him a letter complaining about his lack of self-control, which he immediately marked up with his own comments and sent back.

“I feel like our relationship has regressed about 730 days,” she wrote. “Last year when you did this I thought it would kill me, this year it doesn’t hurt nearly as much. In fact, it only hurts slightly more than it did in 1990.

“I know that you are not dumb. But there are people who choose not to be involved with criminal activity and I am one of those people. I don’t know what makes you think you should be special and not have to struggle like the rest of us ordinary people. This one thing that you want to do is illegal. You are choosing to make everyone who ever questioned my involvement with you right.”

Alarmed and angry that she was discussing his plan so openly, Luther wrote in the margin: “They read the mail, and I said I’ll give it up!”

Debrah’s letter continued, “I wish you luck and I know now that I can’t ever make you happy. You want things that ordinary people can’t have, and I’m an ordinary person.... Dennis is not going anywhere. He told me that you would take off, and he was right. He may cause me unhappiness from time to time, but he is reliable.”

Luther responded, “Fuck Dennis. You want him, keep him. You’ll wake up someday.”

“Those wonderful endorphin filled moments that we spent together in the visiting room,” she continued, “are just memories that will soon be painful memories because I can’t have the dreams we talked about, that I gambled my life on.

“I don’t believe you will ever come back. If you are successful, you’ll have enough money to buy yourself any place you want and you won’t need to come back to hated Colorado. You won’t need sexually inhibited me who believes in the system you hate.