Monster (64 page)

It was Eaton’s turn to nod. It had taken a long time to work his way back to what was essentially the beginning.

In May, Eaton, with the help of the Colorado Bureau of Investigations, found Luther’s old girlfriend, Sue Potter. She was living a thousand miles away in another state with her husband. And she was still afraid of Tom Luther.

“I don’t want to talk about him,” she said when he reached her on the phone. “Even if he is facing charges, I know how the system works and he could get out.” Potter said she hadn’t talked to Luther since his conviction in 1983.

A few days later, Eaton talked to the detective, since retired, who had submitted Potter’s service revolver for testing. “Sure, I knew the test was negative,” the retired cop said. “Guess we must have lost the results.”

Eaton was curious why the detectives at the time had dropped Luther as a suspect in the murders of Barbara “Bobby Jo” Oberholtzer and Annette Schnee. “Because,” the retired detective shrugged, “we couldn’t determine he was around here at the time of the murders.”

It was nonsense. Luther had a 1978 arrest record for a simple assault in Summit County. And he’d told investigators that he had been living with Potter in Frisco since 1981. Eaton found Luther’s work record with the taxi cab company which showed he didn’t work the day of the murders or the day after. His predecessors simply hadn’t done a thorough enough job.

They apparently hadn’t paid any attention to claims of other Summit County Jail inmates like Martin, who Eaton had finally tracked to the New Jersey prison where he was serving time for embezzlement.

Luther picked him out his first day in jail, Martin told Eaton, “because I was wearing a Colorado penitentiary uniform. I was already in the joint. But they brought me to Summit County on another charge. Luther must have thought I’d make a good ally ’cause I told him I was in for assaulting a cop.”

Trying to impress the older inmate, Luther liked to brag. The second night, he told Martin that he had “beat and fucked” a girl with a hammer and now she was afraid for her life and wouldn’t testify. “He was confident he wouldn’t be convicted.”

“He said he got off on hurting women—that it was better than drugs or booze. ‘Fuck them and then kill them,’ that’s what he said. He said he had assaulted a lot of women and killed a few. He thought he was a real ladies’ man. Said he could always talk to them and make them feel safe. He said, ‘They drop their defenses and I have them at my mercy.’ ”

Martin claimed that Luther boasted about killing a woman he met in a Breckenridge bar after she declined his advances. “Buried her in the woods by a stream. Thirty, forty miles over a mountain away from Breckenridge.”

Except for the part about meeting her in a bar, Eaton wondered, recalling the image of Annette lying facedown in a stream, if Luther was talking about the Schnee homicide.

Luther, Martin continued, talked often about killing two Summit County women. “A ‘sweet young thing’ named Ann or Anna and a second older one who put up a hell of a fight. The second woman’s name was ... Babs ... or Jackie O.” Martin scrunched his face trying to remember, then he brightened. The second woman’s name was similar to a female judge who had once sentenced him in Pennsylvania, Barbara Obelinas.

Martin said Luther claimed to have killed the younger woman first, then drove the older woman around for awhile before killing her, too. Luther, he said, also claimed to have killed a woman at a Vermont ski area.

“He doesn’t think of himself as a bad person,” Martin said.

“He was usually doing drugs or drinkin’ when the violent urges came over him.”

Martin said that in May 1982, he took his information to a Summit County deputy at the jail but was told there were no unsolved murders or missing women that fit his description. He offered to wear a wire, Martin said, but nothing came of it.

Eaton was thinking. He had a note written by a former deputy at the jail regarding Martin’s information. But consistent with the sloppiness that defined the whole investigation at that time, the note was not dated. And that was significant because Annette Schnee’s body wasn’t found until that July.

In September 1982, Martin said, he was back at the Summit County Jail for another hearing when he ran into Luther again. This time, Luther wasn’t friendly—word was out that Martin was a snitch.

When Luther saw him, he walked over and grabbed Martin. “He said, ‘I’m going to kill you just like those girls,’ ” Martin told Eaton. “I yelled for help and was rescued by a deputy.”

When he was returned to the penitentiary, Martin said, he was locked up in maximum security. “They said there was a contract out on my life.” He was later released from prison for his testimony against another inmate in a Pueblo murder trial.

Eaton left the New Jersey prison excited, but cautious, about Martin’s recollections. Inmates were always trying to strike a deal in exchange for information, he reminded himself. They were born liars, and the Oberholtzer and Schnee cases had gotten a lot of publicity. But the part about Luther attacking Martin in September had been documented, as was his being placed in protective custody because of an alleged hit planned by Luther.

Why would Luther have wanted to kill Martin unless something he’d told the older inmate could hurt him? From what he had been able to ascertain, Martin and Montoya had never met. Yet their stories were amazingly similar. As were the recollections of Troy Browning, who had proved that Luther thought nothing of killing witnesses to protect himself.

Luther supposedly told all three that he had killed other women and dumped their bodies in the woods, which was also what Dillon John Curtis had said in his interview. Martin and Montoya also claimed that Luther considered shooting Mary Brown before deciding against it because he thought a shot might be heard.

Before leaving for Colorado, Eaton contacted Special Agent Bruce Kammerman of the FBI in New York, whom Martin claimed to have helped with several cases. “How reliable is Martin?” Eaton asked the agent.

“Outstanding,” Kammerman said. “Unbelievable.”

Apparently, Martin had a real knack for winning the confidence of his fellow inmates and getting them to brag about their crimes. He’d helped the feds solve a series of bank and armored car robberies in New Jersey. “And he just put a killer away for the state.”

“Heck,” Kammerman said and laughed, “for all the help he’s been to us, I’d let him marry my daughter.”

Southy Healey told Richardson that he wasn’t concerned that Luther was trying to pin the murder on him. “Luther’s the one that fucked her, he is the one that killed her, he is the one that buried her, and your physical evidence will prove all of that,” he said.

The ballistics report on the .22-caliber Healey was carrying following his arrest came back from the CBI. It was not the gun used to killed Cher Elder.

The crime lab had also narrowed the possible murder weapon down to just three models from the markings on the largest bullet fragment from Elder’s skull. One of the three was a .22 Baretta, the same weapon stolen from the Evergreen 7-Eleven.

In the meantime, Richardson began contacting people Luther knew in Vermont. If Luther was convicted of first degree murder and faced the death penalty phase of the trial, these people might be called upon by either side to testify for or against his character. He had to know what they would say.

One of the first he reached was Rick Gutzman, a former boyfriend of Luther’s mother.

“She was always defending her kids. They could do no wrong,” Gutzman said. “I didn’t know Tom very well, he was in prison most of the time I was with his mother.”

Gutzman was unaware of the West Virginia conviction and the murder charges in Colorado. “I’m not surprised,” he said. “I don’t know why they ever let him out. He always had a big chip on his shoulder. He was a big-partier, into drugs, and a real ‘sweet-talker.’ ”

Sometime in the fall of 1993, Luther arrived in Vermont with a girl, Gutzman recalled. “No, it wasn’t Deb Snider,” he said in answer to the detective’s next question. “But I don’t remember her name.”

Richardson also talked to Luther’s brother, William, who was reluctant to say anything. They’d had a good family life, he said, but all the kids had gone their separate ways as adults. He knew Tom had been arrested in West Virginia, “but I never heard the outcome, and he never said nothin’ about a missin’ girl in Colorado.”

After a minute, William decided he wasn’t going to answer anymore questions. But just as he was beginning to hang up, he blurted out, “If he done what you say he has, he should pay for it.”

It took several attempts for Richardson to reach Luther’s mother, Betty. When he did, she also didn’t want to talk. “I love him and don’t believe that he did these things,” she said. “Thomas told me you are a very smart man and an intelligent investigator. I’m only hoping and praying that you turn up something in his favor.”

Tommy had visited her several times after his release from prison, she said, but never mentioned he was a suspect in a Colorado case until after his arrest. “I don’t want to talk about him,” she repeated. “He was always a nice boy. His troubles began when he got involved with drugs. But I love him very much.”

Richardson then talked to Police Chief Leslie Dimick of the Hardwick, Vermont, police department. Dimick said he grew up with Tom Luther and knew most of the family.

“He was a pretty normal kid,” Dimick said. “I do remember his brother, William, shot a woman with a shotgun and his sister, Becky had some trouble over the years. She was married to a guy up here, had a couple of children, left him, then she married some other guy, and had another kid.

“Anything else?” Richardson asked.

Well, Dimick said, there was some talk about Tom Luther being involved in an unsolved homicide over in Stowe, Vermont, a ski resort town. Way back in the 1970s, a girl came up missing and then what was left of her body was found in the woods. They knew Luther had worked at Stowe about the same period of time. He’d gone on to Southern California after that, but that was as far as it went.

A female friend of Luther’s from Vermont, called Richardson, having heard that he was asking questions about Tom’s past relationships. She remembered when Luther was much younger, before he’d left Vermont, he had a girlfriend who called her several times complaining that he had “gotten rough with her. She’d say stuff like, ‘Tom’s acting crazy and abusive.’ ”

Richardson’s attention was soon directed to another part of the country when Detective Eaton called and gave him Sue Potter’s telephone number. She, too, was reluctant to talk but answered a few questions.

No, she said, she didn’t have any “flex” cuffs of the sort found on Bobby Jo Oberholtzer. Yes, Tom had a strong sex drive, “but nothing weird.”

“He was always gone a lot,” she said. “He came and went pretty much as he pleased. I knew the good side of Thomas, not the other side.”

Then she clammed up. “I don’t need that guy or his twisted mind,” she said. “He don’t need to be out to get me hurt. All he has to do on the inside is contact someone on the outside.”

In late July, Luther appeared in Jefferson County District Court before Judge Christopher Munch. With him was defense attorney Lauren Cleaver. Formally apprised of the charges, he stood and entered his plea: “Not guilty.”

Afterward, Richardson met with Debrah Snider outside the courtroom. She had recently moved back to Colorado, although she wasn’t sure she was going to stay until the trial, which was scheduled for late fall.

Tom, she said, planned to stick to his story that Cher was killed during a drug deal set up by Byron and Southy. “He still can’t figure out how Byron knew how to find the grave,” she said. “He says he only told him the general area where she was buried.”

Snider was angry. She’d talked to Deputy District Attorney Dennis Hall who told her she wouldn’t be allowed in the courtroom during the trial. And on the other side, some of Tom’s friends were trying to persuade her to stay out of it all together.

“I’m sick and tired of tryin’ to do the right thing,” she said.

“You know I got nothing to gain by testifying against Tom, except keeping the only thing I ever kept in my life, and that’s the truth. But I could sure end all my problems and keep the man I love, if I testified that I lied to you.”

“You know we recorded all of our conversations,” Richardson reminded her.

“Yeah, I know,” she replied. “Don’t worry, I’ll tell the truth.”

Debrah felt like a piece of cloth being ripped in two directions. She was either going to have to betray Tom or the truth. And this time, if she chose the latter, it could cost him his life.

Luther seemed just as torn in his letters to her. Even when the defense team received some of the investigation reports from the prosecution and he learned exactly what Debrah’s role had been, he still signed his letters, “Love, Tom.”

Until the last one, the one he sent just after he pleaded not guilty. “I hope you’re as lonely and hurt and full of pain as me. ... Why couldn’t you believe I loved you?”

When Debrah Snider returned to Colorado she drove Luther’s blue Geo Metro, which she turned over to Richardson for further testing.

“Thomas told me that he did not want my name on the title in case he got caught doing something illegal in the car,” she said. “You know, we only bought the car ten days before Cher was killed.”

After he pleaded not guilty, and before the last letter, he’d called. “He’s not happy with me,” she said sarcastically. “He says that every time we had a fight, I gave you information and that his lawyers are going to use that to attack me in court. They’re goin’ to say that I’m just a vindictive bitch.”

Luther had even called her mother. “Tell Debrah she got what she wanted,” he’d said. “I’m going to just lie down and go to sleep.”

Snider said Luther was trying to convince her that he injured his hands the week after Elder disappeared. “But I know when it was,” she said. “I got back from my trip and he was in bed.”