Monster

by Steve Jackson

  Potter soon moved from Colorado. She told the young woman friend who had been sleeping in the trailer the morning Tom Luther was arrested that if he got out of prison and came looking for her to say that she had left with no forwarding address.

  During the last part of 1982, Luther was examined by two more forensic psychologists—one for the defense and one for the prosecution. With each interview, his story changed subtly. His intentions had been misunderstood. The girl attacked him. He was just trying to calm her down. Each psychologist had a different prognosis on Luther’s rehabilitation, but they all agreed that without it, he would remain violently explosive around women.

  In October, Luther spoke with Robert E. Pelc, who had been retained by Nearen, in the Adams County Jail. Much of the information discussed earlier with Firestone was repeated during this evaluation, including more about his mother’s “highly unpredictable and violent” mood swings, “the source of much of his childhood distress.”

  In his report, Pelc noted that Luther had begun drinking at 9 years old and by the time he dropped out of school after the ninth grade, the boy had a serious drinking problem. “He is now a regular consumer of alcohol ... describing drinking binges that last from 90 to 100 days.”

  Drug use had begun at the age of 12. He claimed to have used hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline more than 100 times. But he had stopped using them because, he told Pelc, “They are just too hard on me. I would be burned out for days after doing them. My mind couldn’t take it. It was no fun anymore. I was getting paranoid and schizophrenic worrying about the cops.” He had since taken to cocaine, using as much as seven grams a week by the time of his arrest.

  Living with Potter was causing a lot of stress, “as she was unemployed and used his money to support her horses.” Luther described his former girlfriend as clinging, “with considerable financial, social, and emotional dependence on him which was quite frustrating to Mr. Luther.”

  “I wanted out of that relationship but felt stuck. I didn’t want to hurt her,” Luther told him.

  Luther denied striking Mary Brown with the hammer or that he actually pushed the handle into her or masturbated during the attack. “He further denied any loss of consciousness, although he remembered noting blood, ‘and then came to my senses. I must be sick.’ ”

  During the interview, Pelc noted that Luther’s behavior ranged from calm, quiet responses to “more vocal expressions of anger.”

  “His emotional state was capable of rapid change. He accepted some responsibility for his actions ... although he feels that the exact details have been exaggerated and that others are attempting to persecute him.”

  Pelc found that Luther’s cognitive functioning—that is, his perception, memory, and judgment—was normal and that he had above average intelligence. “Clinically, he presents signs of some psychological dysfunction ... although nothing to suggest the presence of psychotic behavior.

  “Instead, it is more likely that Mr. Luther at times feels isolated, alienated and misunderstood by others. He may harbor strong feelings of inferiority and insecurity. These feelings could become manifest in various long-standing physical complaints. However, they could also become evident in impulsive acts of resentment and hostility.”

  At one point during the examination, Pelc gave Luther a test in which he was supposed to fill in the blanks. One’s temper is

  ... “UNPREDICTABLE,” Luther wrote. Aggression is ... “AN ACT OF BEING TENCE (sic).” Pelc surmised that Luther’s addiction to drugs and alcohol was a means of “self-medicating” the tension he felt.

  “Under certain conditions—high distress and some provocation—” Pelc reported, “he might be expected to respond with an inappropriate, intense anger which lacks control.

  “The frustration of searching for the victim’s destination could have served as a trigger for explosive and violent behavior.”

  Pelc determined that there was “an absence of a planned, specific intent to commit these acts.” However, it was also his opinion that Luther was aware of his activities and that he acted knowingly.

  Luther, the psychologist reported, was in need of long-term intensive psychotherapy. “From this process, he might be able to reconcile earlier events of his life, establish a firmer sense of personal identity, and make a better adjustment in the future.”

  Pelc’s evaluation was followed in December by an examination by Dr. Jeffrey Metzner, a psychiatrist with the Colorado State Hospital in Pueblo on behalf of the prosecution. Again, the examination began with Luther’s recounting of his troubled childhood before moving on to the assault for which he was arrested.

  “Mr. Luther states that his mother,” Metzner wrote in his report, “is now putting on a show for everybody ‘that she cares ... but she’s not capable of loving or caring about anybody else.’ ”

  This time, Luther’s account of the attack was more heated, especially after he described getting hit in the head with the hammer and pummeling Mary Brown with his fists. “I was hollering ‘bitch,’ ‘slut’ ... I dared her to hit me again with the hammer. I said I would make her drive the hammer up her ass.

  “I remember saying something about her wanting to get raped. I can’t remember clearly ... it was like a blackout state for a few minutes.”

  Luther said he began to “snap out of it” while straddling Brown with his hands around her throat. “She was crying and there was blood on the window. She was begging me not to kill her. I remember thinking that I was getting sick and demented.

  “I don’t remember telling her to take her clothes off, but I do remember telling her to put her pants on.

  “She wanted to know where I was going to take her and whether I was going to kill her. I kept reassuring her. I wondered what I should do. I hoped that maybe I would not get into trouble, but I had given her my name and address. I just told her to get out and drove back home.”

  Luther told Metzner that when he got back to the trailer, he thought about committing suicide. Then he considered cleaning the blood off the windows of his truck. “But I was real tired and just went to bed.”

  Metzner noted that Luther said he was willing to take the blame for the assault, but only “if I did it.” He knew he had punched Brown, but was “unclear about his participation in the other allegations.” He now said he didn’t remember whether he beat or raped his victim with the hammer.

  Luther denied raping other women in the past or physically abusing former girlfriends. Sex with Potter, he said, was satisfactory, although he also masturbated daily.

  Metzner noted that Luther apparently had no history of firesetting behavior, cruelty to animals, or enuresis—“involuntary bed-wetting”—during childhood. (While that might seem a strange combination of factors to the layman, a large branch of forensic psychiatry believes that such behavior, known as “the triad,” taken in total is a redflag of a potential serial killer. Any one factor alone, especially bed-wetting, is no cause for alarm, but statistics have indicated a strong correlation when all three are present.)

  “I am not very optimistic regarding his long-term prognosis due to the nature and chronicity of his problems,” Metzner wrote in his report. “But he is not suffering from mental disease or defect which renders him incapable of understanding the nature and course of the proceedings against him or assisting his defense. He is legally competent to proceed.

  “It is also my professional opinion that Mr. Luther was capable of distinguishing right from wrong with respect to these acts and had not suffered such an impairment of mind to destroy the willpower and render him incapable of choosing the right and refraining from doing the wrong.”

  At the conclusion of their reports, both Pelc and Metzner concluded that Luther suffered from mixed personality disorders. “With,” Metzner added, “explosive and antisocial features.”

  It was an important distinction. Insane people don’t know the difference between right and wrong. But a serial killer with an antisocial personality disorder k
nows the difference. He simply doesn’t care.

  As 1983 arrived and then moved toward Luther’s oft-postponed trial date in April, he increasingly played the part of the “crazy” inmate. He got into fights with smaller inmates with little provocation; he threw food, set trash can fires, and constantly challenged the authority of his jailers, although always when there was little physical risk to himself. At one point, he demanded to be allowed to make an obscene telephone call to First Lady Nancy Reagan.

  The jailers’ reports indicated that they saw his tantrums as attempts to bolster his insanity defense. They took pains to note that despite his offbeat antics, he always seemed coherent and the incidents well-planned.

  Still, there was no doubt that he was suffering from depression and anxiety attacks. His jailers believed that Luther had himself been raped by three prisoners in the Arapahoe County Jail. His jail records included a lengthy list of sometimes daily ingestion of prescription drugs such as Valium for his nerves and lithium, a powerful anti-depressant.

  Luther was back in the Summit County Jail at 1:30 A.M. on February I when he started yelling for guards to bring him a new mattress blanket and, curiously, Band-aids. The guard arrived to discover that Luther had cut his wrists and then, using his own blood, neatly written in big block letters: “FUCK YOU!”, “COCKSUCKER” and “THE DA KNOWS I DID NOT RAPE HER.” The cuts weren’t life-threatening, and the act was seen as a stunt geared at his insanity defense rather than a legitimate suicide attempt.

  Luther often complained of various ailments from migraine headaches to indigestion. In early March, he demanded to be taken to a doctor. But when he arrived and saw that the physician was Dr. Bachman, who had testified against him at pre-trial hearings (“The worst beating I had ever seen.”), Luther refused treatment.

  Instead he began ranting as the deputy accompanying him took hold of his arm. “I wouldn’t let him diagnose a hemorrhoid.”

  He spat at Bachman. “I can’t stand your fuckin’ guts. I would rather punch your fuckin’ face in than look at you. You are just lucky that I have these fuckin’ cuffs on.”

  If found insane, Luther would have been committed to the state psychiatric hospital until such time, possibly a very short time if he was clever, as the doctors there deemed he was no longer a threat. But the tantrums and the changing stories he told the psychiatrists did him little good.

  On April 5, 1983, his insanity trial began, more than a year after the attack on Mary Brown. Three days later, after only a few hours of deliberation, the jury found him to be sane at the time of the offense and competent to assist in his defense at a criminal trial.

  Luther, who by attempting to use the insanity defense had admitted the crime to the psychologists, now was allowed to change his plea to “not guilty”. A new trial date was set for July 11.

  As disappointed as Luther was at the result of his first trial, Mary Brown was ecstatic. The defense attorney had managed to keep her from testifying about the most gruesome and violent aspects of the attack, contending that such emotional information would unfairly inflame the jury against his client. And the deputy district attorney, of which there had been several handling the case at different times in the past year, had done little to battle Nearen’s arguments.

  But in July, thanks to the jury, she would get her day in court. She would take back her life from Thomas Edward Luther. Or so she believed.

  On May 18, 1983, Summit County inmate Troy Browning, a tall, skinny 22-year-old accused of having sexually assaulted a 16-year-old girl he picked up at a bus station, sidled up to a guard. In a low voice, he asked if a meeting could be arranged with a representative of the district attorney’s office. Tom Luther, he said, had asked him to arrange for the murder of Mary Brown.

  A deputy district attorney came to the jail the next day and, after Browning was taken from his cell using a fabricated excuse so as not to identify him as a snitch, they met secretly. Browning related how ten days earlier, Luther had asked to speak with him away from the other inmates.

  Browning was due to have a bond hearing near the end of May and had let other inmates know that he expected to be released before his trial. Luther saw it as an opportunity. Apparently because Browning was charged with a similar crime, Luther thought “a deal” could be worked out.

  “He wants me to kill the witness in his case,” Browning to the prosecutor. Luther had suggested that he shoot Mary Brown from a distance with a hunting rifle. “Then he says he’ll sit back and laugh at the cops because they won’t be able to convict him and will have to let him go.

  “In exchange, he said that when he’s released, he’ll kill the victim in my case.”

  Browning said Luther had resented Mary Brown’s “snob” attitude towards him and raped her to humiliate her. “He said he drove on her with the hammer and was guilty of the charges against him.... He also said he had a gun in a holster behind the seat and had pulled it out and drawn a bead on her spine when she had her back to him. He didn’t shoot because there were too many people living in that area.”

  “It seemed worth talkin’ about,” Browning said, but he put Luther off. Then he decided against it, but Luther had approached him several more times. “And he said if I took this to the DA, he’d see to it that I was killed, too.”

  The deputy district attorney asked if Browning would be willing to wear a hidden microphone and try to get Luther to talk again. Browning replied that he was “shaky” about the idea. If he got caught, Luther’s reaction would be swift and violent, and Browning would have a “snitch jacket” following him to prison, which could be deadly. But at last he agreed.

  The next day, Browning was summoned to the Summit County Courthouse as if to attend a hearing on his case. In the men’s room, he was stripped to his shorts and a microphone was taped to him by a detective. With the tape machine turned on, Browning affirmed that he had not been coerced or promised anything in return for his cooperation.

  Fifteen minutes later, Browning was back in the jail trying to wake Tom Luther, who was napping in his cell. “Hey Tom. Tom. Tom. I hate to bother you right now, man,” he said as the deputy in another part of the jail recorded the conversation. “I hate to bother you right now. Okay?”

  There was the sound of rustling as Luther woke up. “I gotta get the details,” Browning said. “I’ll be going to court here pretty quick, and then they’ll be taking me out of the county as soon as court’s over with.”

  “Okay,” Luther replied. “She’s five foot, four inches in height. Dark hair, dark eyes, weighs a hundred and ten pounds. Acts real skittish and scared when she’s around strangers—a little weird—like a crazy woman.”

  “Okay,” Browning responded. “Now what is it you’re gonna want done?”

  At that point, Luther said nothing. He just pointed his finger to his head like it was the barrel of a gun and his thumb the hammer. Browning knew he needed to get Luther to say more so he asked, “Yeah, but how? If she’s skittish around strangers, how?”

  Luther, sounding exasperated, said, “Just sit back in a fuckin’ hole somewhere and blow her fuckin’ head off. Then get the hell out of there. That’d do just fine.”

  “Okay,” Browning said. “If I do this then we still got our deal?”

  “For your arrest?” Luther asked. “Oh yeah. Guaranteed. Definitely. That was the deal that was made.”

  Browning wondered if he had enough and decided to press further. “What do you think would be the easiest way?”

  Luther pulled out a piece of paper and wrote the address of a mortgage company where Brown worked during the day near downtown Denver. Or, he said, Browning could get her new home address. He knew through his spies that Mary had recently moved out of the home of a friend.

  “The best thing to do is call up the Department of Motor Vehicles when you get out of here, you know, and say that you found an abandoned car,” Luther explained. “Say that it ain’t got no license plates on it but you found a couple names on some papers
and want to check them out.

  “One is Frank Brown, that’s her father, and check Mary Brown. Since she moved out, she’s probably got a brand new license with her new home address right on it.”

  “Just go there?” Browning asked. “Should I go to her house?”

  Luther said Browning could follow Mary from her home to work and decide where the best opportunity to kill her would be. “All right,” Browning agreed. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Luther smiled and nodded. “Then I’ll call you up as soon as I get on that black top.”

  A few minutes later, Browning was back with the detective. “I think I got more than enough for what you need,” the inmate said. And he did indeed. The next day, a charge of conspiracy to commit murder was added to the other charges Luther faced: two counts of attempted murder, two counts of first degree assault, second degree sexual assault, and kidnapping.

  The prosecution now had an airtight case. Luther’s confessions to the psychiatrists for the insanity trial couldn’t be used, but the state had a living witness who could point to her attacker in court and describe the horrific nature of the assault to a jury. The prosecutor also had Luther’s own statements to the arresting officers, and his statements made to other inmates, including Browning, that he had committed the rape and that he had considered killing her that night with a gun. There wasn’t a jury in the land who wouldn’t have convicted him as charged.

  But on June 23, 1983, the deputy district attorney, who had only assumed the case a few weeks earlier, announced a plea agreement to the press. Luther had agreed to first degree assault and second degree sexual assault in exchange for the other charges from February 13 being dropped.

  It was a done deal before Mary Brown even heard about it. She was outraged when told. It was bad enough that Luther had only been charged with second degree sexual assault, rather than first degree (because, according to Colorado law, he had used a “foreign instrument” rather than his body). Now she felt betrayed.