Monster (46 page)

“I’m sorry,” Luther said, getting in the driver’s side. “I’ll take you to the hospital to get help.” But when they reached the intersection where Luther should have turned to take her to the hospital, he continued driving straight ahead. “Where are we going?” Jones cried.

“I’ve changed my mind,” he said. The strange quiet that had come over him was almost more frightening than the snarling animal he had been just a few minutes earlier. “I’m taking you back to my cabin.”

Jones pictured the cabin in the forest.
He’s going to kill me,
she thought wildly.
He’s going to bury me somewhere out there and nobody will ever know what happened
.

Luther approached another intersection. There was a stop sign, but it was clear he wasn’t going to stop. However, he did slow down to check for oncoming traffic. Bobby Jo seized the moment to grab the door handle and tumbled out onto the highway.

She heard Luther slam on the brakes behind her, but even with her broken jaw and shoulder shouting with pain, she was already up and running into the woods near the road. Terrified as she crashed through the underbrush, she listened for footsteps following her. She hadn’t heard Luther’s car speeding off.

Bobby Jo Jones reached a clearing that led to a road across which she could see a rural grocery store. Her clothes in tatters, her face bloody and disfigured, she ran into the store screaming for help.

After Jones escaped, Luther drove in a panic to the campground where Debrah Snider lived in her van. She wasn’t around. He took a set of clean clothes from his backpack. Then he removed his blood- and dirt-stained clothes and changed. He threw the soiled garments into the river that flowed near the campground.

Continuing on to his sister’s house, Luther told his brother-in-law, Randy Foster, that he had beat up a woman because of a drug deal gone awry. Knowing Luther’s past, Foster asked if he had also raped the woman.

“No,” Luther said. “I swear I didn’t. But I think I hurt her real bad.” He paced around the room. “What is ailing me? I don’t know what causes this to happen,” he said, echoing the statement he made to Deputy Morales in Summit County more than twelve years earlier.

The next morning, Snider was asleep in her van when she was awakened by knocking on the van door. Her pleasure at seeing Tom, however, evaporated when she caught the wild, hunted look on his face. He pointed to his car, which she could see was loaded with what appeared to be all of his possessions.

“I’m heading out,” he said.

“Why?”

“Richardson showed up at work. I took off,” he said.

“Are you sure?” she asked. “Maybe he wasn’t there to arrest you.”

Luther started to say something, then stopped. His head hung. “I can’t tell you that lie,” he said, looking up. “I did it again. I beat someone up, a black guy and, uh, then there was a girl who jumped in and, well, I think I beat her up pretty bad.”

There was a party, he explained. He’d arranged to get some drugs but the black guy ripped him off.

“Did you rape her?” Debrah asked angrily dismissing the character of the “black guy.”

“I tried to get her to suck me,” he responded. “I said, ‘You like black dick so much, how about tryin’ white. But I couldn’t get it up.”

It was another Tom Luther story. Snider knew it. It wasn’t even a new one. Girl tries to rip him off in a drug deal, girl assaulted—it was essentially the same story he had tried to pass off for his attack on Mary Brown in 1982.

“Richardson will be coming,” Luther said and turned to leave.

“Don’t go,” Snider implored. She was sure he had raped this girl and part of her wanted him to stay and face the consequences. Another part of her was afraid that this time if he left, she would never see him again.

Now Debrah understood how Sue Potter must have felt that night when he came back to her in Frisco after assaulting Mary Brown. All those years, Debrah had thought that Potter was weak or crazy, knowing Tom for what he was but taking him, blood and all, into her bed. She must have loved him, too, Debrah thought.

“I won’t lie for you, Tom,” she said grabbing his hand and pulling him into her van and into her arms. “But maybe it isn’t as bad as you think.”

Bobby Jo Jones was admitted to the hospital with a dislocated shoulder, a broken jaw, and a broken nose. Her face was swollen and bruised where Luther had struck her; the marks left by his fingers around her neck stood out like rope burns. But two days after the assault, she was able to lead State Police Trooper Jeff Phillips to Luther’s cabin. Luther wasn’t in.

On August 27, Phillips, a young enthusiastic rookie, called the cabin. Debrah Snider answered. “He’s not here,” she said. He’d gone to Vermont, but she expected him back in a few days.

Actually, Luther had not gone that far. He hung around the area, checking newspapers to see if the crime had been reported. It didn’t make the newspapers, and he was starting to feel the danger had passed. He had returned briefly to his cabin when he got a telephone call from Jones on August 30. He was unaware that the conversation was being recorded by Phillips.

Jones played it cool, saying she had left her keys in his car and needed them. Then she mentioned that she had a lot of medical bills because of what he’d done.

“Well,” he replied. “I guess I got to own up to it, part of my responsibility in this.”

“I just don’t know why you did it,” Bobby Jo said.

Luther sighed. “Yeah, I ... you know, I’m a fucking idiot when it comes to that.”

“You beat the hell out of me,” Jones continued.

There was silence. Then Luther said, “So what do you want me to do? What do you need?”

“Tom, why did you rape me?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you go around raping and beating up women?”

“No, I don’t. I’m sorry ... I can’t handle chemicals,” he said alluding to the cocaine. “But it’s no excuse.”

Jones asked if Luther had any diseases she should be worried about. He assured her that he was “clean as a whistle” and besides, he had not sexually climaxed inside of her. “This wasn’t a fun thing, you know,” he added.

So what was it, she wanted to know, “A mistake?”

“It was more than a mistake. You can’t believe how sorry I am,” Luther said. He offered to help her any way he could, if she just wouldn’t tell the police. “I know it isn’t enough—” he started to say.

Bobby Jo interrupted. “No, it isn’t. I’ve never been through so much pain and terror in my goddamn life.” Then she slammed the telephone down.

The next day, Trooper Phillips staked out Luther’s cabin. It was his day off, but he wanted to take this rapist down.

It so happened that about the same time, his supervisor was having breakfast with Sergeant Burkhart. “So whatcha got going?” Burkhart asked after a bit.

“We’re sittin’ on this guy’s place who raped a gal and beat the holy hell out of her,” the supervisor answered. “My guy’s on his day off, but you know rookies, all gung-ho for his first big-time collar. We’re lookin’ for a white guy ... drives a blue Geo Metro.”

Burkhart nearly choked on his coffee. “What’s the suspect’s name?”

“Tom Luther. Why ... what’s the—”

Burkhart quickly explained. Richardson warned him that Luther would attack again. Now they had a rookie cop trying to take down a suspected serial killer who was armed with a shotgun and hated cops.

Patrol cars were dispatched to back up Phillips. They ran into Luther first as he was driving down the road toward his cabin. He was with a woman named Pam, who they later found out had just gotten out of prison herself.

“He’s been with me the whole time,” she swore as Luther was handcuffed. “We’re friends.”

It took some time for Scott Richardson to learn of Luther’s arrest. He was taking a much-needed vacation with Sabrina, hunting in Alaska.

Although Richardson had Byron Eerebout in prison and there was a chance he would talk, it was only a chance. And without Byron giving up Cher’s body, he doubted he would ever make a case against Luther.

The case was taking an enormous toll on Richardson and his family. He had lost twenty pounds and missed out on the past eighteen months of the twins’ life. He was pushing his marriage to the edge. So by August, he knew he needed to get as far away from the case as possible and a hunting trip to Alaska seemed like the perfect thing.

Chapter Twenty

September 15, 1994—Lakewood, Colorado

“He was taking her out to the woods when she got away.”

It was his first day back from vacation, and Richardson was on the telephone talking to Sgt. Burkhart, who had called from West Virginia. Richardson wasn’t surprised that Luther had attacked again, he’d expected it; he was only sorry that he hadn’t been able to stop him before it happened.

“We got him on tape, confessing,” Burkhart said. “I don’t think he’ll be walking away from this one.”

“Good work,” Richardson said. At least he knew where Luther would be for awhile; off the streets, no other women would be in danger.

It wasn’t long before Debrah Snider called. She was worried that Luther would find out that she had told the West Virginia State Police about his guns.

“I’m feeling really bad,” she said. “Including the thing with Cher, this is the second time that I’ve reported him for something that was minor, and shortly after I report him, he does something major. I don’t know if he did anything with Cher, but he’s certainly involved in it and now he’s at least attempted rape and beaten a girl here.”

Richardson asked if she’d talked to the West Virginia state police about her concerns. “I’m afraid to talk to them concerning this case because I do know some information about this, and I don’t want to give it to them,” she replied. “I think they have plenty. They recorded him, you know, talking to this girl. They don’t need anything that I know.”

“Yeah? What is it you know that they don’t know?” Richardson asked.

“I know he told me he did it. And I don’t want to have to be a witness. They don’t need me—he told his brother-in-law that he did it. He went to his Randy’s house that night, you know, in a panic, because I guess he had smoked some crack and that’s what preceded this event, and whenever the crack wore off and he came to his senses, then he panicked and went and told his brother-in-law.”

Richardson wanted to know what her feelings regarding the Cher Elder case were now, in light of the recent attack? “My feelings on Cher is—you know two people that could have did it, Tom and Byron, and we know she’s dead. Now, the day I got back after Cher disappeared, Tom’s hands were sore, all of his body was sore. It seems awfully strange that he was in that shape the day that Cher disappeared if Byron killed her.”

Richardson didn’t think Byron had killed Cher and said so. Maybe he had moved her car after the fact, maybe he was involved in some other way, but as bad as he was, he wasn’t the sort to murder his girlfriend and bury her body.

“What’s the rumor since we put Byron down?” Richardson asked. “Have you talked to his mom about Cher?”

“They don’t talk about it,” Snider said. “Tom still doesn’t talk about it. He has some concern that you guys would pressure Byron into implicating him, once he was in prison. Or that he would tell on himself, which would implicate Tom.”

Richardson noted that if Eerebout served his full sentence, he’d be fifty years old before he got out. “Byron’s got some problems. I imagine Luther’s got some problems now, too?”

“Yeah, I think he does,” Debrah conceded. “His attorney told me that even if they could get the rape charges thrown out, he’s probably lookin’ at two to ten for assault.”

“Who is Mongo?” Richardson asked. Eerebout had said this friend of Luther’s had threatened him by showing a photograph of a dead girl. Sounded like bullshit to him, but he had to check it out.

“He’s a guy Tom did time with. His name is Chuck, um, I don’t know his last name. The time he done was over assault.”

“What does Chuck look like? Chuck’s important to me right now,” Richardson said.

“He’s real stocky, but not a tall guy, probably not even as tall as Tom. About mid-thirties.”

She remembered his name would have been in Luther’s little black telephone book—good news to Richardson, who had copied the pages before handing it back to Luther.

There were two other guys he was interested in but knew only by their nicknames. Mortho, the drug dealer who supposedly told Luther that Cher had been killed because she was a snitch. And Southy, who Eerebout had claimed was involved in the murder.

“Mortho is supposedly a real heavy guy, probably an older guy,” Debrah said. “I’ve never seen him, and I don’t remember his name.”

“Okay, what about Southy’s real name?”

“Um, Dennis something or other?”

Richardson made the connection. “Healey?” he asked.

Snider said she thought that sounded correct.

Suddenly, Richardson felt tired. “This is dragging on and on,” he said. “Luther started taking this girl to the mountains too, but she got away.” Deb commiserated. “The amazing thing is that the story Tom told me is the same story he told about the girl in Summit County. That she had ripped him off for some drugs and that’s why he beat her up and raped her.”

“I don’t understand how, knowing everything you know about Luther,” Richardson asked, “how you put up with this?”

Snider paused. “I don’t know either,” she said at last. “I wonder if I’m crazy. It’s terrible. But it’s because with him is the only time I’ve ever felt loved in my life.”

Richardson understood. In a way, she was another victim of Thomas Luther. But there were a lot of people suffering because of him. “Cher’s family is going insane,” he said. “I don’t blame them because they know she’s been killed, and there’s something about burial whether you’re Christian or not. It’s been almost two years.”

There was silence so Richardson, thinking he had touched on too raw a nerve, told Snider he would talk to the West Virginia State Police and see if they could leave out the part about her telling them of Luther’s guns. “You may still have to testify about what he told you about the rape,” Richardson said, “but you could always claim the police came to you for that and not the other way around.”