Monster (33 page)

Luther shrugged. What happened to Cher was not his fault. What he had done, he had done out of self-protection. Did she want him to go to prison for it?

“I don’t believe that she was killed because she was an informant,” Debrah said. “Did Skip pay you to kill her for Byron?”

Instead of answering her directly, Luther said, “Well, if you were in trouble and someone was going to put you away, I’d do anything to prevent it.”

Angry now, he wouldn’t talk to her anymore and insisted that she stay in the car when they arrived at the public defender’s office. When he came back out, he said, “They told me you’d be my greatest threat. You know that I buried her.” It was an accusation.

“That’s not true,” she said quietly. “I love you and will stand by you.”

Her answer seemed to satisfy him for the moment. He knew she had already talked to the police and apparently not given him up. But that night, as she was cooking dinner, the conversation again turned to Cher.

“Cher Elder was a vindictive bitch who was going to snitch on Byron,” Luther said. “She deserved what she got.”

His tone made Debrah shiver. She thought about her attempts to turn him into the police for the marijuana and stolen tools.

“Tom, no one deserves to die,” she said as evenly as she could. “I talked to the cops. That makes me a snitch.... So who’s gonna kill me?”

Debrah knew she was walking on dangerous ground, but she was angry and dealing with a conscience that would not shut up. It. Vindictive bitch. Where was the man she had fallen in love with? This Tom was always making himself out to be the victim. Not Mary. Not Cher. It was always the girls’ fault they got hurt.

She looked up when he didn’t answer. He was staring at her with those angry blue eyes.

Chapter Fourteen

Early May 1993—Lakewood, Colorado

The technicians in the crime lab hadn’t found much of anything in Luther’s car, except the “vomit” stain. However, there was one important fact about the stain: it was directly behind the driver’s seat. When the seat was laid back, as Luther had claimed it was during sex with Elder, there was no way the stain could have reached that spot. The seat prevented it. It made more sense that she had been laid on the backseat and then thrown up, or bled.

There was little other evidence—just some dirt, light-tan in color in the back. The dirt wouldn’t be of any use unless Richardson could find the grave and compare it against the soil there. But he wasn’t about to tell Luther that; he wanted him to think that the forensic lab was finding all sorts of things. And he also had no intention of returning the car right away... just to aggravate Luther.

In the meantime, there were a million small bits of information to run down. He called up Sgt. Josey and asked him to check with Luther’s former employer about any missing shovels.

Byron Eerebout contacted Richardson’s partner, Heylin, and said that Cher had called him at his old number at the army base. Heylin had checked it out; somebody claiming to be “Byron’s girlfriend” had called but not left a name.

Richardson also talked to Babe and asked why the boys had lied about knowing Tom Luther. “Because they were tryin’ to protect him, knowing his background and all,” she replied. “Nobody feels Tom is guilty of anything, and especially not me.”

A meeting had been arranged between the detective and the boys who, their mother said, would be accompanied by her and an attorney. The day of the meeting, Richardson called and canceled. “The boys had their chance to tell the truth,” he told Babe. “We have their statements and if we need anything else, we’ll holler.” The Eerebouts knew that he knew they had lied to him; he wanted that hanging over their heads.

On May 12, Richardson contacted the FBI’s Behavioral Sciences unit—the agency had specialists in serial killers and he wanted their opinion on Luther. The agents listened and looked at what he had so far and came up with a profile. The suspect’s modus operandi could have changed with experience, they said. And if the attack had not been planned ahead, he might use any weapon available.

They cautioned that Luther wasn’t the type to confess. However, working on his paranoia might reap rewards. The stakeouts and isolation efforts were a good start, they said. Make him think that the cops had something on him and were just working to put all their ducks in a row. It might worry him enough to go check out the grave.

The FBI evaluation reaffirmed Richardson’s own game plan. He had copied the pages from the little black book in Luther’s car and used the numbers in it to contact Luther’s friends. Whenever he talked to Debrah Snider, Richardson casually mentioned that if Tom had buried Cher, coyotes or dogs were likely to dig up the body.

A few days after he talked to the FBI agents, Richardson received a telephone call from Gina Jones, who told him about a recent conversation she had with Byron Eerebout. During the conversation, she said, she asked her former boyfriend why he had lied to the police about Elder. “He said, ‘I didn’t lie. I don’t know what the hell you’re talkin’ about.’ I said, ‘Well, you know, the police just came here and they questioned me and I couldn’t lie....’ ”

Jones said she could hear J.D. yelling in the background. “Then I heard Byron tell J.D., ‘No, she can lie to me, but she can’t fuckin’ lie to the cops. She can just fuckin’ only tell the truth to the cops,’ ” Gina said. “He told me never to call back there again.”

“Do you think he had somethin’ to do with her death?” Richardson asked.

“I don’t think Byron would,” she replied. She didn’t like him much, but he wasn’t a killer.

“Do you think Thomas killed her?” Richardson continued.

“Honestly?” she replied. “Yeah.”

“Okay, I do, too.”

It was just his opinion, one he couldn’t prove, but a few days later, there was an unexpected bit of information that further reinforced his belief. It happened at a meeting of Denver-area police agencies on sex crimes. In attendance was Dr. John Macdonald, a noted forensic psychiatrist.

Macdonald was officially retired but still went on the occasional rides with his friends with the Denver police department, who kept his desk reserved for him out of respect and fondness. The psychiatrist had retained a particular interest in sex crimes and frequently attended these meetings. He was listening to Richardson present his case when the detective mentioned a prior crime in which his suspect had brutally raped a young woman in Summit County with a hammer. Macdonald suddenly recalled the young man he had interviewed many years earlier in the Buena Vista prison.

“I believe I once talked to Mr. Luther,” he told Richardson after the meeting. “I think I have it on videotape. I’ll try to find it for you.”

Macdonald found the tape and had it delivered to the Lakewood Police Department. There Richardson watched and listened to a younger Tom Luther describe the girl he had attacked, and imagined what happened to Cher.

“She was very friendly, saying how nice I was for driving her,” Luther said.

In his mind, Richardson heard Cher thank Luther for giving her a shoulder to cry on. For being so nice and taking her to see her friend Karen in Central City.

“She remind you of your mother?” a detective asked.

Luther had laughed on the video, setting Richardson’s teeth on edge. “Yeah. She did remind me of my mom... when she started screamin’.”

Richardson wondered about Luther’s mother. Was she a key to this case?

“I didn’t get real violent with the young lady until she started screaming,” Luther said on the video. “Mostly that was out of fear, I believe, just my paranoia of the cops: ‘Oh my God, they’re gonna catch me with coke in my pocket and pot under my seat.’ ”

So, Richardson thought, he’d rather kill than face arrest. His attention was brought back to the television screen when Macdonald asked Luther what had triggered the rage.

“I don’t know what triggered it,” Luther shrugged. “I guess it got to a point where I just didn’t want to have control or didn’t feel I should have control or—” Richardson recalled Snider’s fears that her lover had lost control that night. “—I was completely in a rage. I should have left. But I needed to overpower the area. It was my domain. I’m the lion. This is my kingdom that you’re in right now.”

Richardson turned off the video seething with anger. So this asshole saw himself as a predator. He was no lion, he was a mad dog who attacked small, defenseless women who trusted him. He didn’t want to get caught by the police, so he tried to silence his potential accusers—forever.

Later, Richardson called Macdonald to see if there was anything else he could tell him about Luther. The psychiatrist recalled that Luther’s victim in Summit County, Mary, had physically resembled his mother, whom he claimed had abused him as a child. A pretty, petite woman with dark hair worn to her shoulders.

Richardson remembered that among the photographs he had collected of Cher Elder, there was one in which her dark hair was shoulder-length. She had it cut shortly before she disappeared, according to her friends, but after she had been introduced to Luther.

“He feels sexually inadequate,” Macdonald continued. “And is very bitter toward the police. Be careful.”

With the video still fresh in his mind, Richardson found it difficult to contain his feelings when Luther called Thursday, May 13, wanting his car. “Probably tomorrow,” he replied. “Hopin’ we’ll get it done tomorrow. What stalled us is we got some body fluids and stuff like that, some forensic things, that we had to call the state lab in on. So it took a little longer than expected.”

There was silence, then Luther responded, “Well, you knew that stuff was there ’cause I told you it was there.”

Richardson tried to sound cocky. “Yeah, so I’ll give you a call as soon as it’s done. You’ll be the first to know.” He hung up the telephone convinced that Luther was close to the point where he would make a move.

Over the next couple of days, he made sure to mention the coyotes again to Snider and that the state crime lab was still working on the car. It was a gamble. Luther might just decide to run. But the FBI profile and his own instincts told Richardson that “the lion” would return to his kill.

On May 18, Richardson got the call from Debrah Snider that he had been hoping for: Luther was on the move. She said he’d told her that he needed to go for a hike in the mountains to clear his mind. Then he’d called J.D. Eerebout and said, “I think it’s time for a road trip. Pick me up at twelve-thirty. I need you to drive me to a couple of places.”

Luther threw a few things and a sleeping bag into a backpack, Debrah said. Then he’d asked to borrow her truck so that he could get money from an ATM machine. Her horse trailer was attached to the truck, but he insisted that there wasn’t time to unhitch it. He got behind the wheel.

“He was driving like a madman,” Snider said. He swerved across lanes of traffic, the tires squealing and the trailer tipping dangerously from side to side. He honked and shouted at other drivers, and when a woman wouldn’t let him cut into her lane, it really set him off.

“You fuckin’ bitch,” he screamed out the window at the startled woman. “Get off the road!”

Debrah had seen him angry before, but not like this. His eyes truly resembled those of the wounded bull on her poster. Afraid that he’d turn her trailer over, she demanded that he stop and let her drive. “I said, ‘You’re too angry.’ ”

Luther slammed on the brakes in the middle of traffic and jumped out. He grabbed the backpack that was in the bed of the truck and took off without looking back.

Snider tried to find J.D. at the highway exit where Luther asked to be picked up so that J.D. would know where to look for his friend. But the boy wasn’t there yet. That’s when she went to a telephone booth and called Richardson.

“I think he’s going to the grave,” she said.

“You think he’s goin’ to move the body?” Richardson asked.

“At least, you know, bury it better or somethin,’ ” she replied.

“Okay,” Richardson said, “just go ahead and tell me why you think that.”

Snider realized that she had all but conceded that she knew Luther had buried Elder. The fact was, that morning he told her he wanted to place rocks on the grave to keep animals from digging up the body. But how could she explain without becoming a witness against Tom? “Well, I just do,” she told Richardson. “I mean, I can’t tell ya why. I don’t know why, I just.. I just do.”

Luther was real angry, she said. “He’s tired of you jackin’ him around. He says that if somebody was to take and, uh, kill your wife and family, it’d teach you a lesson.”

There was a pause, then Richardson asked what sort of weapons he was carrying. Nothing that she knew of, Debrah responded, but he might stop at the Eerebouts, and they probably had guns.

“Do you feel safe?” Richardson asked.

Debrah sighed. Again, she appreciated the detective’s concern. But what did it matter if Tom was gone? “I don’t value my life a whole lot, Mr. Richardson,” she said.

“You think he’s gonna try to kill ya?”

“I don’t.... I don’t know,” Snider replied. She wanted to cry. How could it have come to this, that the man she loved could conceivably want her dead? She didn’t want to believe it. “I don’t think I’m in that much danger, but this man’s real paranoid.”

“What do you think he’s gonna do if a cop stops him?” Richardson asked.

“If he has somethin’, he would kill ’em.”

“You think he’d kill ’em?”

“Absolutely.”

“Without a doubt?”

“Without a doubt.... ’Cause he hates cops.”

“Do you think he buried her up there?” Richardson asked.

“I don’t know if he buried her at all,” she lied, but she was damned if she’d be a witness against Tom. “You know, I don’t know if he did this. I think it’s a possibility.”

“Do you think he’s capable of killin’ her?”

She paused. In this case, the truth could not be used against Luther in court, but it might help Richardson. “Yeah, I do,” she said. “I think he’s capable of killin’ her.”

“Why is he makin’ these threats against my family?” Richardson asked. “Why is he so stuck on me?”