Monster (80 page)

Under Jackson’s guidance, Heather recounted in vivid detail the events of April 12, 1993, and the man who attacked her, including what he was wearing and his workingman’s hands. She said she had seen those hands again in a police photograph in which Luther was holding up a name plaque.

Jackson asked that Luther hold up his hands. Cleaver objected but was overruled by Judge Spriggs. Luther held up his hands with a smirk on his face.

“Are those the hands of the man who attacked you?” Jackson asked.

Smith had not yet looked at Luther and still didn’t make eye contact when she looked at his hands. “Yes,” she said.

“And is that the man who attacked you?” Jackson asked.

Heather Smith raised her gaze and looked into Luther’s cold, blue eyes. His smile seemed to be mocking her. “Yes,” she said, raising her hand and pointing. “I’m certain it’s him.”

As Jackson continued to ask her follow-up questions, Heather could hear Luther cursing her under his breath. “Bitch. Fuckin’ whore.” Two rows away, Heather’s mother could even hear him. But if Judge Spriggs noticed, he did not give any indication.

Then Cleaver went on the attack. Wasn’t it true she had misidentified other potential suspects? Wasn’t it true the man she said attacked her had blond hair and a full beard? Isn’t it true she was so desperate to find the man who attacked her, she picked Cleaver’s client out of a newspaper story?

But Smith stuck to her guns. The other men were just possibilities she had wanted Scott to check out. She’d said the man had light hair and it was mostly covered by a baseball cap. And she’d described him as having a well-groomed or new beard; the composite sketch gave the impression of a fuller beard. And no, since the day she had seen Luther’s photograph in the newspaper, she knew she’d found her attacker.

Cleaver returned to the same questions so often without getting anywhere that Spriggs directed her to move on. And in the end, Heather was the one holding her head up while Cleaver plopped back in her chair angry and frustrated as the prosecution rested its case.

The third day of the trial started poorly for the defense. Cleaver had subpoenaed Richardson. She believed she could get him to testify that he had never known Luther to have a beard or silver glasses.

What she didn’t know was that Richardson had been told by Matt Marlar about Luther showing up in a disguise that included a beard. And he’d noted the silver, square-rimmed glasses on Luther’s kitchen table when they first met.

Cleaver tried to interview him before the trial, but he said he would only respond to the subpoena. The morning of the third day, she caught him on his way to the courtroom.

“Can I ask you a few questions before you go in?” Cleaver said.

“Swear me in on the witness stand and you can ask all you want,” he replied.

Cleaver looked at him angrily. “You can get out of here,” she said. “We won’t be calling you.”

The defense lawyer did call Smith’s old boyfriend Jason to testify that Heather was prone to exaggeration, including her account about the incident in which he held a gun to his head. The defense attorney’s tone was mocking, with a lot of eye-rolling thrown in.

On cross-examination, Jackson asked Jason about the time when he threw a dart into Heather’s leg. “I suppose that was exaggerated?” Jackson asked.

Jason blushed. “It was an accident.”

“An accident? How could it have been an accident when the dartboard was the other direction?” To that, Jason had no explanation.

Cleaver called a man who had been Luther’s co-worker at the janitorial service in April 1993. He said they always worked as a team and there was never a day when he went to work that Luther wasn’t also there, including the night of April 12. Cleaver introduced a time card that showed Luther had punched in.

But the card never showed him punching back out. And Jackson was able to show that several days the week before the attack, Luther had not shown up for work. In fact, there was no supervisor who could say that Luther stayed at work the night Heather Smith was attacked.

The closing arguments were short and sweet. Jackson noted that Heather had plenty of time to study her attacker under normal conditions and had made a positive identification. Luther’s alibi, he said, didn’t wash.

Cleaver again went back to portraying Smith as a desperate woman, tormented by the violence done to her, seeking closure by convicting Tom Luther after being shown a photograph in the newspaper “by her psychiatrist.” She stressed the last three words.

Judge Spriggs then left the bench to go over the evidence in the quiet of his chambers. He said he expected to render a verdict after noon. With nothing else to do, Heather and her mother went to lunch and arrived back at the courthouse just as it was announced that the judge had reached a decision.

Smith took a seat with her family three rows behind and to the side of Luther so that she could just see his profile. The judge entered and sat down, shuffling through his papers for what seemed like an eternity.

When he began to speak, it immediately didn’t sound good, and Smith felt her heart sink. “Initially, I want to point out that this court is acutely aware that sometimes persons are unjustly convicted as a result of good-faith, but mistaken, eyewitness identification,” the judge said. “In fact, it’s the one single factor most likely to lead to unjust conviction in a given case.”

Oh no,
Heather thought,
he’s trying to make me feel better, but he believes Cleaver.
Her mother seemed to sense Heather’s fears, or was perhaps thinking the same way, and squeezed her daughter’s hand.

“I have, in the past,” the judge continued, “had some personal experience with situations like this one many years ago, when a person was in prison for some period of time as a result of erroneous eyewitness identification by a deputy sheriff.

“More recently, a few years ago I recall a case where the young lady was stabbed to death after getting off a bus. A young suspect was arrested who fit the description of the eyewitness and who was a resident of a nearby halfway house, and who gave a statement to the police admitting that he was on the bus and he got off at that stop, but denied any participation in the killing. The man was identified by two eyewitnesses at a preliminary hearing, bound over for trial, and fortunately, most fortunately for him, the actual perpetrator subsequently confessed to a roommate, who was kind enough to call the police and tell them the situation, thereby exonerating the person who had been improperly identified and ultimately leading to the conviction of the true perpetrators.

“So I’m anything but blind to the possibility of inaccurate, or mistaken, eyewitness identification testimony.”

Luther and Cleaver looked at each other and smiled. Heather saw it and tears sprang to her eyes. But then the judge’s tone began to change.

“Having listened carefully to the testimony of the witnesses in this case and having had occasion to judge and assess their credibility, the court makes the following findings of fact,” the judge said.

“The court has spent some time comparing the sketch of attacker with the photograph of the defendant. I have seen a fair number of these police sketches over the years, and frankly, in my experience at least, this is about as good as it gets.”

Spriggs noted that the glasses brought by Debrah Snider matched those described by Heather Smith. He also noted that Snider had described the green jacket “as a nylon windbreaker,” exactly as had Smith.

“In assessing the credibility of this testimony, and the court notes first of all, Ms. Smith is an exceptionally detailed historian, unlike many crime victims called upon to give a description of someone, or make an eyewitness identification.”

Again, tears welled up in Heather’s eyes, but this time they were tears of happiness. For the rest of her life, she would remember the judge’s description of her as an exceptional historian.
He believes me!
she rejoiced.
He believes me!

Cleaver’s smile had turned to a frown. Luther glared briefly at her.

Spriggs noted that Heather had a long time to observe her attacker. And that from what he could see for himself, Luther matched her description of the attacker. Same size. Same build. The eyes, nose, chin, and particularly his hands.

The discrepancy about the beard, he said, could be explained several ways. One being that Luther had a heavy beard; even shaved it stood out against his pale skin. The other lay in Debrah Snider’s testimony about how he would go several days without shaving when out on his forays.

Luther’s evidence of an alibi—his co-worker—“is wholly unpersuasive,” Spriggs said. “The court concludes beyond a reasonable doubt that Mr. Luther is, in fact, the perpetrator of these offenses.”

Heather Smith began crying as Spriggs announced that Luther was “guilty as charged.” After all the years, she was vindicated.

Stunned, Cleaver spoke briefly with Luther then asked that her client be sentenced immediately.

“All right,” Spriggs nodded. “Mr. Luther come up here to the podium with your counsel, please.” When the two were standing before him, the judge asked, “Mr. Luther, is there any statement you would like to make to the court on behalf of mitigation of your defense?”

Luther nodded. “Yes, sir. I hope that Ms. Smith is happy she has gotten someone convicted of this crime she suffered. I’m sorry for her and I’m sorry for her family that suffered through all of her pains, but I will say this, I’m not the man that attacked this woman. I’m not the guy that did it.”

It didn’t matter to Heather. Luther had said the same thing every time he got caught.
I’m not the guy who did it.
Or it was blown out of proportion. But Luther no longer mattered to her.

The judge then turned to the prosecutor. “Mr. Jackson, what is the People’s position?”

Jackson replied, “The People ask the court to give Mr. Luther the maximum sentence.”

“All right,” the judge said. “In light of the nature of this crime, which is almost inexplicable, it appears to be without motive, other than plain old vexation. I don’t know what triggered this, what would cause someone to answer an ad in the paper, look up a total stranger, converse with them for ten or fifteen minutes, and then for absolutely no reason whatsoever, try to hack them to death with a knife. But that’s certainly more of a problem for psychiatrists than for judges. I certainly don’t pretend to understand this, and I strongly suspect the perpetrator doesn’t understand it either.

“In any event, it’s clear to this court, Mr. Luther, for whatever reasons, you’re a serious menace to the public, and I don’t think I have really any choice in this matter but to give you every day the law allows.

“So it will be the judgment of the court that the defendant is remanded with all convenient speed to the custody of the Department of Corrections, to be confined in an institution for a period of fifty years on count one and fifty years on count two.”

Even those in the courtroom hoping to see Luther get his just desserts hadn’t expected this. Fifty years! Using the habitual offender provisions, Spriggs had given Luther more than he got for murdering Cher Elder. He remanded Luther to the Colorado Department of Corrections.

Cleaver glumly noted that Luther had to return to West Virginia to serve his sentence there first.

“I understand that,” Spriggs said. “And I understand that he has a substantial sentence out of Jefferson County.”

“Actually, less time than you gave him here, judge,” Cleaver said, not quite managing to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

The judge arched his eyebrow and replied dryly, “I know that, too. The judge out there gave him every day the law allows, and I gave him every day the law allowed. And I did so, and don’t mind saying it, because it’s my intention this man never be released, and that he remain in prison until the day he dies.”

Luther was immediately surrounded by deputies. Turning back to where Heather Smith’s family and friends were congratulating her, he dropped the polite act he’d played during his trial. With the mask off, his face screwed up in hate as he snarled, “At least I get to go back to where I don’t have to be nice anymore.”

Epilogue

July 1998—Denver, Colorado

In the spring of 1998, Thomas Edward Luther’s conviction for the murder of Cher Elder was upheld by the Colorado Court of Appeals. He claimed he didn’t get a fair trial. The court said otherwise.

Luther once complained to Debrah Snider that he always gets blamed for more than he does. But if he is not a serial killer, and merely a self-professed “angry motherfucker” with a heart “half good, half bad,” and a twice-convicted brutal sexual predator, as well as your run-of-the-mill murderer, then he is certainly dogged by the horrible coincidence that wherever he goes, young women are sexually assaulted in the same manner, disappear, and die. Their bodies are left to rot faceless and nameless in remote wooded areas.

Following Luther’s trail, one comes upon a number of police agencies, even friends, who wonder if he is the killer of some young woman in their jurisdiction. Sometimes, it has been too long, the trail too cold to ever know the truth, unless somewhere down the line there is a confession.

In Vermont, police officials can only speculate about the young woman from Stowe who disappeared and died in the woods two decades ago, at a time when Luther was reported to have lived in the ski resort town. And even his former friends in Hardwick still worry about the blond hitchhiker he showed up with in the fall of 1993 after leaving Colorado. He said she left for West Virginia the day before he did; they wonder if she ever left at all.

In Pennsylvania, Les Freehling of the state patrol believes that Luther is his prime suspect for the attacks on two women in his area. The woman whose body was discovered Dec. 10, 1993—beaten, strangled, raped vaginally and anally—has still not been identified. She, like thousands of others across the country, remains a Jane Doe. However, Freehling says, his investigation has revealed that she was a transient often seen hitchhiking near the construction site where Luther and his brother-in-law, Randy Foster, worked during that time.