Monster (14 page)

So she was surprised when she received a letter back from him in May. “I surely don’t recognize myself as being such a ‘charming person that women are frequently enchanted by me.’ I’m very flattered that you thought so.”

Debrah had asked him to tell her about himself. He started with a lie, saying he had been born in Quebec, Canada, and raised on a farm in Vermont. Everything else was exactly what he must have known would appeal to her: he liked the outdoors and working with animals; he wanted a quiet, simple life and gardens. He also told her that he would be getting out at the end of June.

“I liked you also. I remembered your long hair. You’re really kinda cute and well built. What do you want with a convict?” He signed the letter, “Best wishes, Tom.”

In his next letter, Luther described himself as her “knight in shining smiles” who was writing to tell her she wasn’t the only lonely soul in town. Both images struck emotional chords in Debrah.

It broke her heart when he wrote about how his father had died “without getting to see any of his children grow up.” There was no mention of an abusive mother, only of a woman who had a really tough time when her husband passed away but had kept a chin-up attitude, telling her children crying was for sissies.

In mid-June he wrote to tell her that he’d been “dogged” by the parole board and his release pushed back to January 1991. It was also the first time he had ever mentioned the crime that got him sent to prison, although not the official version.

“You see, I was sent here in February of ’82 for an assault,” he wrote. “I hope you aren’t disappointed that I seem to be this assaultive person. I will tell you this, I have learned my lessons. This standing your ground shit is for fools and muscle heads which I am not anymore.”

Debrah took that to mean that he had gotten into a fight with some other man. Standing his ground. Well, she wasn’t the sort who could like a man who wouldn’t stick up for himself or, she thought, someone he loved, even if it meant prison. When she wrote him back, she said she thought he’d received an unfair sentence; she’d heard of people who had done less time for murder.

She liked him even more when he replied that he accepted his punishment. After all, he said, he’d assaulted somebody with a hammer—over a drug deal gone awry.

All he wanted when he got out of prison, he said, was to leave Colorado for the green hills of Vermont. He would buy a small home on a few acres of land so he could grow beef cattle, have a few horses, fish, and be able to eat out of the garden.

Of course, much of what he wrote wasn’t true. He fed her lies about the horses he’d owned, including a colt he’d supposedly raised since birth but had to sell after his arrest.

Luther seemed just a lonely man who’d made a mistake and paid for it dearly. He was sensitive and open, sharing confidences about his own failed relationships and his yearning for that “one good woman” to spend the rest of his life with.

Debrah found herself telling him about her problems with Dennis, and men in general. She didn’t trust them, she said. But nevertheless, she was also lonely and “looking for a knight in shining armor ... a dragon-slayer ... who will wrap his arms around me and keep me safe.”

Luther sympathized. He didn’t want to take sides, he wrote, but Dennis seemed overbearing and not very understanding. But he was careful not to squeeze too much as he wound himself closer to her heart.

“I too have been lonely and unloved for many years,” he wrote. “I have been locked up for 8½ years and really miss being hugged and kissed and told sweet things.” The last few years had been particularly tough, he said. “It would be nice to have a love affair going without it being based on the physical act of making love.”

Each of his, at this point weekly, letters edged a little closer to her fragile psyche. She was a good-looking woman, he wrote after she sent him a photograph. Maybe he could visit her place someday and spend a little time with her? They could take moonlight walks down quiet, country roads ... just holding hands and talking.

Debrah found herself wondering what it would be like to be wrapped up in his arms and “just plain cuddling,” as he’d called it. He was so romantic and careful not to mention desiring sex with her, although as he grew bolder, he dropped hints—such as how all his former girlfriends had found him to be a “fantastic lover.”

Debrah worried, but not too much, that she might be falling in love. It was a nice feeling; she certainly no longer thought about suicide and her depression had lifted—jolted only occasionally when hoped-for letters from him didn’t arrive when expected.

Luther was even good to his mother. He said he telephoned her every Sunday. “Boy, I don’t know what I would do without Ma. I guess I’ve learned why men can turn into Ma-ma’s boys.”

He was worried that his mother, who had survived several bouts with cancer, wouldn’t tell him if she was really sick. She thought he might try a prison break in order to see her, so she wouldn’t tell him the worst. “I keep telling her I’m not doing 8 1/2 years to mess it up again. I can’t do another stretch.”

About the only thing that disturbed Debrah Snider about her pen pal was that he seemed to have a lot of anger toward authorities. He told her he hated cops and prison guards. He even asked her to stop using return address stickers that she had received from Mothers Against Drunk Driving on her letters. He felt they had pushed some irresponsible legislation that was ruining good people by sending them to prison.

Debrah responded that she didn’t think his resentment toward the police and other authority figures was good for his rehabilitation. He quickly wrote back that he didn’t hate all cops, just those who had misled him or lied about him. She thought that was understandable.

In August, she decided that maybe it wouldn’t hurt to give into his requests that she actually visit him in the prison. She drove down only to have more misgivings as she approached “The Walls,” as the inmates referred to the maximum security Colorado Territorial Prison in Canon City. The concertina wire and towers with rifle-toting guards in plain view reminded her of what the men behind those walls were like. But then, Tom was also inside.

“You must have been eating something,” he said, walking up to her in the visiting room. Before she could react, he wiped a bit of mustard from the side of her mouth. He was so gentle about it, she didn’t know how to respond.

They talked for the next four hours, mostly about her—every—thing from her troubled marriage to her animals. When it was time for Debrah to leave, they stood facing each other. Suddenly, Tom reached out and pulled her to him, briefly kissing her on the cheek.

Debrah flushed angrily. He’d had no right to do that. She left quickly without looking back. She swore she was never coming back. This had gone too far. But as the miles to Fort Collins passed, her anger dissipated.

After all, they were friends weren’t they? In fact, in the few short months they had been writing, he knew more about her and had provided more thoughtful suggestions than any counselor ever had. In their correspondence, he’d never made her feel ashamed of her lack of sexuality or stated that he even thought of her that way.

Debrah reached up and touched the place on her cheek he had kissed. She smiled. Yes, she thought, Tom was one heck of a nice guy.

The letter she received from him a few days later read like it had been written by a nervous teenager, which she thought was cute. “When I kissed you on the cheek, your skin felt so soft it made me wonder if your lips were even softer. Don’t get mad. It’s just been so long for me.”

As she read, Debrah imagined what kissing his lips would be like. He seemed so vulnerable when he wrote that he wasn’t sure if he was ready to take on the world outside “The Walls” without someone at his side. The whole world seems to be getting very violent and complex.

After that she visited him nearly every week, driving the nearly 200 miles to Canon City from Fort Collins. Between visits, she wrote letters and spent hours on the telephone with him. He was always interested in what she was doing, counseling her about her troubles, making suggestions about animal husbandry.

Before meeting Tom, Debrah didn’t even own a dress. Now she bought two at his request. He wanted other inmates to see that he had a woman friend “with a real cute figure.”

One of the dresses she modeled for Dennis. He had been amazingly accepting of his wife’s developing friendship with a convict. In a way, he was relieved. A “responsible guy,” he could never conceive of running out on his wife and sons, leaving them to handle the ranch work as best they could. But he was disappointed with his marriage and lonely, too. If some other guy was to come along and take his place with Debrah, well, he wouldn’t fight it.

Still, sometimes he felt pangs of jealousy. Maybe if Debrah had ever reached out to him the way she did this Tom Luther, it might have worked out. He felt one of those pangs when she modeled the dress she had purchased for her next visit.

It was a southwestern-style dress that hugged her figure, made out of a red-dyed buckskin material with fringes and a large silver belt buckle. “It looks like your bathrobe,” Dennis said.

Hurt and suddenly self-conscious, she almost threw the dress away. But she summoned her courage and wore it to see Luther. He positively gushed over how beautiful she looked. “Sexy ... if you don’t mind me saying so,” he said. “I have to say, you really turn me on.” He allowed his eyes to wander over her body, stopping here and there. And for once in her life, Debrah didn’t mind.

In September, for the first time, he wrote using the words, “I love you.... You are my only pal in the whole wide world.” For Debrah it was a sign. Yes, she wrote back, she loved him, too.

His only flaw remained his temper, especially when it came to female authorities. There was one counselor of some sort at the prison named Gloria Greene who particularly got to him.

When Debrah next went to visit, she told him she didn’t like him talking like that about women. It offended her, even if it was true. And she wanted him to stop referring to police officers with such hatred. No matter what “lies” they’d told about him, he had to learn to forgive and move on.

Sometimes Tom accepted her criticism. His anger, he said, had been his source of energy for so long he couldn’t always control it. But other times, he didn’t take it so well.

Now that he knew how dependent she was on his letters and visits, he sometimes withheld himself to “punish” her. He wouldn’t write and asked her not to write to him; or, he might remove her name from his visiting list without telling her. She’d show up at the prison, only to leave in tears when told she couldn’t see him.

He’d wait for a little time to pass and then “forgive” her, carefully explaining her transgressions. With each episode, he set the hook a little deeper. He was, as others had noted, skilled at manipulation.

There was a lot about Thomas Luther that Debrah Snider was unaware of besides the crime for which he had been convicted. He had turned into something of a jailhouse lawyer who kept prison and court officials busy answering, at taxpayer expense, frivolous writs and lawsuits, both on his own case and those of other inmates, as well complaints about conditions at the prison.

Luther’s intelligence and willingness to use the law library on behalf of others earned him a certain amount of safety in prison. And he had continued to explain his crime to other inmates as an assault on a woman who had ripped him off in a drug deal. He didn’t mention that it was a sexual assault, and sometimes he even left off the detail that the victim was a woman.

Luther adapted well to prison life. He made friends, including two young inmates, Charles “Mongo” Kreiner, who was in for assaulting a man, and Dennis “Southy” Healey, a petty thief and small-time drug dealer, as well as an older drug dealer named Richard “Mortho” Brazell. But his best friend was Jerald “Skip” Eerebout, who was doing time for attempted murder. They would all figure prominently in events still far in the future.

Like most inmates, Luther blamed the law and his victim for his imprisonment. It had been a mistake, he said, to let Brown go. “The next one will not live,” he told Mongo. “I’ll bury her in the mountains and they’ll never find her body.”

The thorn in Luther’s side was Gloria Greene, the director of the Corrections Department’s sex offenders programs. In 1985, he’d completed the first phase of the program, mostly an introductory course that hadn’t required much participation. In 1986, however, he discovered that the second phase, under the direction of Greene, was much more difficult. Inmates were required to participate in discussion groups and were confronted about their crimes and their views about women.

At first, Luther simply refused to speak. Then he grew increasingly resentful and belligerent toward Greene and other women counselors who pushed him. He began making veiled threats.

Finally, Greene kicked him out of the program and wrote a damaging report that marked him as a poor candidate for rehabilitation. In the years that followed, as the parole board continued to turn down his efforts for an early release, he realized he’d made a mistake. But Greene wouldn’t let him back into the program. He swore to other inmates that someday if he got the chance, he would rape and kill Greene.