Monster (81 page)

Neither has the body of Karen Denise Wells, who disappeared from Newport, Pennsylvania, in April 1994, ever been found. Just her car, five miles from where the other girl’s body was discovered, and her clothes in a motel. Luther was still working in the area and commuting to nearby Delray.

Another unhappy coincidence? Freehling notes that the coincidences stopped after Luther was arrested in September.

And then there was Debrah Snider’s recollection of the girl from the West Virginia campground, whose likeness appeared on the “missing” flyer on the post office wall. But with Luther in prison, apparently for the rest of his life, there has been no urgency to pursue the cases, though Freehling keeps them open and at hand. The task of comparing Luther’s blood DNA to the blood on the first victim’s sweater remains undone.

In Denver, homicide detectives are stymied in the case of the woman found sexually assaulted and stabbed in her apartment, and left under an American flag in June 1994. They have only a single, gray curly hair discovered on the body, and the word of a former Jefferson County inmate who claims Luther told him details about the murder only the killer should have known.

In Summit County, Colorado, the DNA test done on the blood found on Bobby Jo Oberholtzer’s mitten came back negative for Luther and his girlfriend, Sue Potter, although her blood type initially matched. Was Luther accompanied by someone else that night? Or was he not involved at all in the murders of Bobby Jo and Annette Schnee?

Detectives Richard Eaton and Charlie McCormick keep Luther on the short list of suspects and follow each lead as it appears. They have tried to trace a report that an airline stewardess in California, who sold Luther the truck he was driving in 1982 when he assaulted Mary Brown, was later found beaten to death. But so far, it remains a rumor.

In the meantime, Eaton is looking more closely at another convicted killer from Idaho, who was known for shooting his victims in the back. However, there is no evidence that other killer was ever in the state of Colorado.

Initially, Eaton was troubled that Bobby Jo and Annette were executed with a gun, while Luther attacked his other known victims, Mary Brown and Bobby Jo Jones, with a hammer and his hands. But then Luther was convicted of shooting Cher Elder.

Breckenridge is no longer a stranger to murders and other violent crime. It keeps Eaton too busy to devote much time to the murders of Bobby Jo and Annette. But he still pulls over whenever he reaches the summit of Hoosier Pass and also pauses by the small white cross beside the stream if other matters take him to Alma. “No one stops being a suspect until I got the guy who did it,” he says.

Although they’re not his cases and he keeps a discreet distance, Richardson remains convinced that Oberholtzer and Schnee are Luther’s work. He, like Freehling in Pennsylvania, points out that the murders, rare for the area back then, stopped when Luther was arrested.

“Luther is an opportunistic killer,” he says. “It’s only in television and the movies that a serial killer always kills the exact same way. Luther’d take a trashcan and shove it down your throat if that’s what he had. On the night Cher died, he just happened to have a gun in the car because numb-nuts, the Eerebout brothers, had given it to him a couple days before.”

There are other factors that continue to point the finger at Luther for the murders. He wasn’t working the day of or after the murders, though he told investigators that he was. He drove a truck similar to the truck the hitchhiking Breckenridge couple insisted having seen Bobby Jo in. And by his own accounts, he had access to several guns.

Sue Potter’s photograph was similar enough to the composite sketch of the dark-haired woman seen with Annette Schnee the night she disappeared that a judge in the state where she currently lives believed there was grounds to have her forced to give blood samples at a hospital. The blood on Bobby Jo’s mitten didn’t match. But does that exclude Sue Potter from having been with Luther and Annette at some point during that late afternoon?

Then there are Luther’s comments, which still haunt Sheriff Joe Morales. “Why do I do these things?”
What things? How many? When?
Morales wonders. “It won’t be over for me until he’s dead,” says the sheriff.

Mary Brown insists, as she has for several years, that she recalls Luther pointing a gun at her back during the assault. Her imagination? Or is it only a coincidence that several of Luther’s former jailmates, who Mary had no contact with, claim he said he intended to shoot her but feared waking the neighbors?

Unfortunately, after the passage of time and leads not pursued by the original investigators, there are more possibilities than proof. Did John Martin tell the deputy of Luther bragging about leaving a woman he had raped face down in a creek in May, before the body of Annette Schnee was found, or not until September?

If not until September, why did Luther assault him for being a snitch? And for that matter, why did Luther then try to arrange the murders of Martin and Sue Potter? Revenge, anger—or because he feared what they might say?

Tantalizing questions, but will there ever be answers? The last Eaton heard, Martin, who told him that he had terminal cancer, was released in 1996 from the New Jersey prison and living with his family. But he hasn’t been heard from since.

If a case can ever be made against Luther in Summit County, the prosecutor there may find it easier to get a judge to allow evidence of similar transactions. One of Cleaver’s arguments that swayed Judge Munch was that Luther didn’t use a gun on Mary Brown and Bobby Jo Jones and that he let them live. After Cher Elder, that argument no longers washes.

Extraordinary coincidences, if they are coincidences. But only the passage of time will determine if the fates of more young women can be tied to the brutal nature of Thomas Luther.

And what is the nature of Luther? Was he just the scorpion riding on the frog’s back? And can it be linked to his own recollections of having been molested by a male relative as a boy? The victim becoming the perpetrator, as Luther once wrote to Debrah Snider.

At various times in his “career,” Luther has been diagnosed as having personality disorders. The general public tends to think of personality disorders as some lesser, not so dangerous, and distant cousin of the diagnosis “insane.” An eccentric as opposed to a blood-crazed loony.

However, the person with the personality disorder may be more dangerous. For one thing, insanity is an illness that often can be mitigated or even cured through drugs or psychotherapy. Someone may even have a psychotic episode over a given period of time and then recover, never to experience it again.

It’s another story entirely with personality disorders, according to forensic psychiatrist John Macdonald. “Everyone has personality traits. It’s what makes people individuals. For instance, some people are outgoing, others are introverts. There is nothing wrong or dangerous about either, unless taken to extremes. Personality traits become disorders when they interfere with a person’s ability to function normally and legally within society.

“A man who obsessively cleans his desk for a few minutes before leaving from work each day may draw no attention from his colleagues, except perhaps being teased for being a ‘neatnik.’

“However, the man who spends hours after work going through various rituals so that his desk is spotless, and then explodes in rage if a single paperclip is found out of order, has a disabling personality disorder that is easily recognizable and may cost him his job.”

Unfortunately, personality disorders are as much a part of someone’s interior makeup as blue eyes and blond hair are part of their physical exterior. They can be covered up for a time, the way contact lenses or hair dye create temporary outward changes, but a personality disorder does not go away, says Macdonald.

“People who are insane most often suffer from delusions and hallucinations. They may tell acquaintances for months that some mysterious ‘they’ are invading his brain with radio waves. Then this person may kill to stop his ‘persecutors,’ who in reality may just be his unfortunate neighbor.

“Sometimes people do things that normal people think of as ‘crazy,’ such as killing someone for no apparent reason. However, the legal test for insanity in most states is whether the person knew at the time of the murder the difference between right and wrong, and whether the accused can assist their lawyer in their defense.

“People with personality disorders know the difference between right and wrong. They just don’t care, or they believe they’re right and society is wrong. They can assist with their defense. In fact, they tend to be above average in intelligence, which is why they can appear ‘normal’ when they want to, why these guys always seem to have wives and girlfriends who don’t have a clue who they’re living with. Ted Bundy was like that.

“These disorders generally become apparent by adolescence and remain for life, though the most extremes of the behavior tend to tone down with age.”

The Federal Bureau of Investigation defines a serial killer as someone who has killed three times in different incidents separated by time and distance. A mass murderer simply goes on a spree. Macdonald says it’s not the number that matters but the fact that once started, the serial killer will murder over and over until he is stopped.

Luther has been labeled at various times with different varieties of personality disorders. And several of them seem to fit him like a surgeon’s glove, such as narcissistic personality disorder, described by the handbook of forensic psychiatrists,
The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders IV,
as “having a grandiose sense of self-importance or uniqueness; preoccupation with fantasies of unlimited success; exhibitionistic need for constant attention and admiration; and characteristic disturbances in interpersonal relationships, such as feelings of entitlement, interpersonal exploitiveness, relationships that alternate between extremes of over-idealization and devaluation, and lack of empathy.

“Fantasies involve achieving unlimited ability, power, wealth, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love. In response to criticism, defeat, or disappointment, there is either a cool indifference or marked feelings of rage, inferiority, shame, humiliation, or emptiness.”

But the term usually applied to Luther has been sociopath, the most dangerous of the lot, because while the sociopath knows killing is wrong, and doesn’t care, it also is what makes him feel good or powerful. “And getting away with it only increases its pull,” says Macdonald. “Most serial killers are sexually motivated and sadistic. They get sexual pleasure out of causing pain, humiliation, and death.”

Three percent of American males and one percent of American females are believed to be sociopaths. According to the
DSM IV,
those with an antisocial personality disorder have a “history of continuous and chronic antisocial behavior in which the rights of others are violated.” They have an “inability to maintain enduring attachment to a sexual partner ... irritability and aggressiveness as indicated by repeated fights or assault ... impulsivity ... and a disregard for the truth.”

Sociopaths mimic real people, says Macdonald, and conform their behavior to get what they want. Serial killers—along with the childhood behavioral triad of firesetting, cruelty to animals, and bedwetting—were usually sexually abused as children and witnessed violence in the home.

“As abused children, they learned to disassociate themselves from their bodies. As adults, they disassociate themselves from their actions.”

J.D. Eerebout returned to Colorado after the trial and was arrested and sentenced to prison. He whined to Dennis Hall that his father wouldn’t let him return to Colorado for the trial. Byron Eerebout is serving the remainder of his sentence out of state in a community corrections program.

Dennis “Southy” Healey called Richardson a year after the trial. “I don’t want anything,” he said. “I just wanted you to know that I’m clean and I got a job.” Chuck “Mongo” Kreiner has also stayed out of trouble and is gainfully employed in a management position.

Richard “Mortho” Brazell died in 1997. Informed of the death, Richardson told the coroner to look for signs of a cocaine overdose. Mortho died, however, of natural causes.

Thomas Luther continues to haunt many more people than he ever physically hurt. The jurors in the Cher Elder trial still have not fully recovered and keep in touch, even if that has grown more sporadic over the intervening two years. Some no longer will talk about the case, but will chat again about family, work, and hobbies. Other still have nightmares and talk about the case obsessively.

“He preys on my mind, it’s an unclosed wound,” says Kate Stone, “and it will be until he dies in prison. Life will never again be so innocent. Colorado will never feel as safe as I once thought when I read stories about Los Angeles or New York.”

Heather Smith no longer dreams about Luther. But he continues to infect her life, and he wasn’t alone. Until late 1997, she struggled with the continued victimization this society imparts to people like her. Lawyers, insurance companies, doctors, and the hospital all fought over who was responsible for her medical bills, including the surgery for the undiagnosed broken neck. Her credit was ruined and her life put on hold while it all finally got sorted out in the fall of 1997.

“Sometimes it seems like I’ve been in a coma for four years,” she says. “I lost that part of my life, even after the trial, and I can never get it back again.” But the cracks in the vase are harder to see these days. She isn’t so self-conscious about the scar on her chest, and when she talks about Luther, it’s with disdain, not fear. He’s in prison and she helped put him there.

“I still get afraid, especially at night,” she says. “And I still don’t trust people, especially men, like I used to. But I can feel myself getting stronger all the time.”

Strong enough that she’s dating again and hoping to meet Prince Charming. However, she no longer feels she has to be the Princess of the Ball. That girl was short-sighted, self-absorbed. The woman is wiser, more interested in those things that last through all travails—love, friendship, family. She’s getting closer to being Heather again. “Only now, I’m the queen of the ball,” she laughs. Rebecca Hascall, married her boyfriend and has a child.