Smith worked as a bookkeeper at her father’s company, had numerous girlfriends with whom she regularly frequented nightclubs on Friday and Saturday evenings, and was pleased to receive the admiring looks of men attracted to her green eyes, shoulder-length chestnut hair, and trim, athletic body.
All of her friends thought Heather led a charmed life. She could have almost any man she wanted. She owned a pretty little Victorian home in an older but well-kept Denver neighborhood. She always seemed so strong, so self-confident. Few knew that much of it was an act.
Most of her friends were unaware of her battle with her self-image that had resulted in bulimia, an eating disorder characterized by excessive overeating followed by self-induced vomiting. It had begun when she was 14 years old. Her swimming coach had scolded her for not doing better at a national competition. She had swum well enough to move into the higher echelons of her sport, but it wasn’t good enough for him. Like many teenaged girls, she was already struggling with her self-image. With her coach’s words still ringing in her ears, her esteem plummeted. That night she went to an all-you-can-eat buffet with the team, gorged herself, and then walked into the restroom where she stuck a finger down her throat to throw up.
Thirteen years later, she was still dealing with the same insecurities, although she had beat the bulimia after a half-dozen years of counseling. She managed to hide from her fears by playing the role everyone expected of her: Princess of the Ball. The outside world saw brave, strong, independent Heather.
No one guessed that behind the flashing smile and outward elan, was still a little girl afraid of monsters who lurked in the dark. She did not like sleeping in a house alone and would often start awake at the slightest sounds, trembling in the darkness and wishing that she could call for her mother, sure that she could hear someone breathing in the shadows.
There was only one problem her friends were aware of—her ex-boyfriend Jason. She and Jason had dated for four years. She had been attracted to his dark good looks, his air of mystery, and his moody artist persona (he painted but destroyed his works almost as soon as they were complete, which was so, she thought, romantic). He once told her that he had friends who “were into revenge,” but he didn’t elaborate. She had liked that little bit of outlaw in him. At first. But, always jealous and possessive, Jason had grown increasingly abusive.
One dark night after an argument, he ordered her out of his car in a downtown Denver alley. She had to plead in tears for him not to leave and let her back into the car. Another time when she threatened to leave him, he held a gun to his head and said, “Now you know what I have to live with every day.” Frightened for him and herself, she had agreed to stay in the relationship.
Once he held her hostage in her kitchen while he systematically shredded a newspaper with a knife. Another time at a Lakewood bar he threw a dart into her leg. “To see how you’d react,” he’d said laughing. That had ended it for a time, but he had begged her to take him back, turning on the charm, sending flowers and notes brimming with apologies.
The relationship was off and on more often than a light switch. In between, she dated other men, nice guys who adored her. But nice guys were boring, and she’d soon go back to Jason.
In January 1991, during one of the on-again periods, she made the mistake of borrowing $7,000 from him to help purchase her home. They talked about marriage, but the relationship ended for good a short time later.
Now, a year and a half later, he was demanding his money back. He followed her to her place of work and to bars where he would stare at her from the other side of the room through her circle of friends. He called and made threats. “I have nothing left to lose,” he told her in March.
Later that same month, about the same time that Cher Elder disappeared, Heather told two friends about the threats. “If anything ever happens to me,” she said, recalling the image of her ex-boyfriend holding a gun to his head, “give Jason’s name to the police.” She didn’t know much about what he was doing these days but had heard from mutual friends that he was living over in Lakewood, hanging out in bars and pool rooms, describing her to one and all as “the bitch who used me.”
In April, Heather Smith decided to sell her car, a sporty little Ford hatchback, to pay Jason. She regretted ever taking the money, but she had wanted the house. It felt solid and safe, surrounded by a nice mix of neighbors, young and old, who in the evenings often strolled the sidewalks beneath the ancient elm trees lining the street.
She ran an advertisement in the newspaper that Sunday, April 11, 1993, and then again the following day. It failed to generate a single call. She was watching the snowflakes and rain turn the street in from of her house black with moisture and contemplating whether she should drop her asking price, when the telephone rang.
“Is the car still for sale?” a man asked.
“Yes,” she answered tentatively. It was eight o’clock and dark outside. She also was feeling a little under the weather and hoped he didn’t want to come see it that evening.
He asked about the color of the car and the price, which she thought odd because both items were mentioned in the ad. When he asked if he could come see it, she told him she wasn’t up to it and would prefer to wait until the following day. But he was insistent. “It has to be tonight,” he said.
Smith gave in. This had been the only response to her ad and she had to sell the car. He wanted her address.
“What direction will you be coming from?” she asked as she gave him instructions on how to find her house.
“From downtown. I’ll be about an hour.”
The telephone went dead before she could ask why it would take an hour for a ten-minute drive.
Heather was a little uneasy about the man coming over. She decided she’d go talk to her next-door neighbor, Rebecca Hascall and let her know what was going on.
At Rebecca’s, the two women talked for a half hour until Heather saw a man through the large picture window. He walked down the sidewalk before turning to go up the path to her house. “That must be him,” she said as she went out the front door. “I’ll be back in five minutes.”
The man was standing on her front porch when she approached. “You here to see the car?” she asked. She had slowed as she got close. He was dressed in a green jacket and blue jeans. What she could see of his hair beneath a blue baseball cap and the half-light of her porch light appeared sandy brown, or perhaps graying, and curly.
He seemed like a normal guy, nothing dangerous. In fact, he was pretty good-looking for a middle-aged man, about six feet tall and muscular, with piercing blue eyes behind a pair of silver, square-rimmed glasses that didn’t seem to quite go with his face. He had a nice smile with even white teeth.
There was, however, something peculiar about his nose, she thought. It was long and thin and his nostrils didn’t flare out. She noticed things like that. She also noted that he had a little roll of fat beneath his chin on an otherwise nearly rectangular head framed by a short beard and moustache.
The man pointed to her car parked at the curb across the street and asked, “Is that it?”
Smith thought he looked more like the four-wheeler or truck type and wondered why he wanted her little sports car. “You looking for yourself or a wife or girlfriend?” she asked.
“Myself.” It was obvious that he wasn’t going to volunteer any information as he started walking toward the car.
“You can look at it,” she said, suddenly uncomfortable. “But I’m not going to drive anywhere tonight.”
The man ignored her. She shrugged and followed. He was an odd character, she decided. But she felt safe in her neighborhood, and Rebecca would be looking out for her if she didn’t return soon.
Heather went around to the driver’s side and got in. The man opened the passenger door and sat down. Deciding that she was being overly cautious, she put the key in the ignition switch and started the car. She showed him that the radio worked and the carefully kept maintenance records. She waite
d for him to ask questions, but he didn’t. He just kept running his fingers along the dash. She noticed that he had thick fingers, like he worked with his hands.
“The only things wrong with it are a few cosmetic items,” she said. “A piece of plastic is missing under the hatchback.”
As though on cue, he said, “I want to look at the back,” and opened the door. Heather was just as happy to get out of the enclosed space with him. She turned off the ignition, walked to the rear, and opened the hatchback.
She was leaning into the car to show him where a piece of plastic had broken off when she felt a heavy blow to the back of her neck. Her first thought was that the man wanted to rape her and had struck her with a club. She shoved herself up and away from the car, reaching with her right hand for her neck. She was surprised to feel the rush of warm blood and a gap in her neck into which she pressed her fingers.
“Rebecca! Rebecca!” she screamed, surprised even in her terror by the strength of her voice. Stunned, she didn’t feel her assailant strike again... and again... and again... and again. She stumbled to her left, barely managing to catch herself as she collapsed over onto her stomach.
Time passed in a blur. She remembered the man bending over her like a vampire, a shadow, a monster. Then Rebecca was running toward her, screaming her name. The shadow drew back and was gone. “Call 911. I’m bleeding,” she told Rebecca who turned and ran back to her house.
The world came sharply back into focus. It was as if she was more aware than at anytime in her life. As she struggled to breathe, she could feel air passing in and out of a wound in her back and realized that her lung had been punctured.
Snow kept falling, striking the wet street and making little ripples which danced in the light from the street lamp above as she lay with her face on the ground. She noticed that the reflection from the ripples was turning pink, tinted by the blood that was spreading in a pool from her body.
Just as suddenly, she was somewhere else, talking to her mother about a school project she had done as a senior in high school. The subject was after-death experiences, and her mother was relating how, shortly after the birth of Heather’s younger brother, she had gone through just such an ordeal. “I was on the operating table and had been pronounced clinically dead,” her mother said. “I was floating above my body, and then I began moving toward a bright white light.
“There was a voice in the light. It asked me, ‘Are you ready?’ I wanted to go to the light, but then I remembered that I had three small children who needed me. So I asked to go back. I made a decision to live.”
A decision to live. Her mother’s voice echoed in her mind. Heather Smith also wanted to live. It wasn’t fair to die so young at the hands of a stranger. She hadn’t done anything wrong. I want to live, she told the pink ripples. I want to live.
Rebecca returned and began applying pressure to her wounds. The police arrived, followed a moment later by an ambulance. The paramedics assessed the situation and did what they refer to as a “scoop and go,” not trying to stabilize her at the scene—there wasn’t time—but throwing her into the ambulance and racing to the city’s hospital, Denver General.
Heather, who had given a quick description of her attacker to the first police officer on the scene, kept talking in the ambulance as a paramedic tried to get an intravenous line into her neck. She had lost a lot of blood and needed the fluids as quickly as possible. She thought that if she just kept talking, she couldn’t die. She talked about the attack. About how much she wanted to live. She told the paramedic her blood type and tried to tell him how to contact her parents. Exasperated because she kept moving as she talked, the paramedic finally ordered her to, “Just shut up!”
Heather had never had much in the way of a strong religious belief. But she found herself locked in an earnest internal conversation. This can’t be the way my life is supposed to end. I want to live. Please God, I want to live.
Heather and the ambulance were gone. In shock, Rebecca tried her best to answer a police officer’s questions. Her friend had an ex-boyfriend who had been making threats. No, she had never seen him or a picture of him. His name was Jason. Heather said it wasn’t him. The man who attacked Heather wore a green jacket, blue jeans, and a blue baseball cap. But it was dark when she saw him, and she had been afraid.
Finally, the police officer let her leave to go to the hospital. She was covered with blood and looked like a victim herself. She didn’t notice, she was so wracked by guilt. She had let Heather go out into the dark to meet a strange man. She hadn’t known what to do as her friend lay bleeding on the street.
“I held the wrong places,” she cried to emergency room personnel who rushed up to her. They looked at her quizzically.
“You may have saved her life,” a nurse said. Cops and paramedics tried to console her. They didn’t know how many times they had come on similar situations only to find the would-be rescuers had fainted or panicked.
Heather’s family and friends were gathering in the waiting room. Her youngest brother, Trig, had been pried from his sister’s side so the doctors could work. The other brother, Schyler, was already on his way to an airport in California. Hascall’s boyfriend met her at the hospital. No one was saying much, or even crying. They were too stunned. Such things happened. But to Heather? Never.
Rebecca was persuaded to go home and shower. As soon as she could, she rushed back to the hospital, arriving just as a nurse came out of the intensive care unit. The news wasn’t good. The doctors didn’t think Heather was going to make it. She’d lost too much blood, and her injuries were too severe. “If anybody wants to say goodbye, now would be the time,” the nurse said and left.
When it was her turn, Rebecca went in to where Heather lay beneath a heavy warming pad. Her friend’s beautiful face was so swollen that her head seemed as big as her shoulders. Heather’s eyes were open but rolled back until all that showed was white.
Rebecca grabbed her hand. “You’re doing great, Heather,” she said. The guilt welled up again and she felt at a loss for words. “Keep fighting,” she said weakly. She tried to recall the Heather she knew, the princess of the ball, surrounded by admiring men.
“Hey,” she said trying to smile. “One of the cops was pretty cute... just your type.”
To her everlasting joy, Heather squeezed her hand. Rebecca burst into tears. Heather wasn’t going to die.
Heather held her hand that night for ten minutes before she would let go. The next day, Rebecca went in to see her, and she was awake. Weak but alive.
“I’m so sorry, Heather. I should have never let you go out there by yourself.”
Heather smiled and shook her head. “You saved my life,” she whispered. Rebecca burst into tears again.
With his first blow to the back of her neck, Heather Smith’s attacker had cut her vertebral artery, one of four that supplies blood to the brain. He had also stabbed her once in the middle of the back and then three more times, several inches apart, in a line down the right side of her back. One of those had punctured her lung, another had struck her liver, lacerating one of that organ’s major veins. By the time Heather Smith arrived in the emergency room, she had lost two-thirds of her blood.
Dr. Bob Read was home sleeping when Smith was attacked. As the attending trauma surgeon at Denver General, his work tended to occur in the dead of night—car accidents, shootings, knifings, assaults. He grabbed a few hours sleep when he could get it.
The telephone call woke him up. Paramedics were bringing in a young woman with serious stab wounds. The young woman was unusual in that most stabbing victims were either dead at the scene or their wounds could be stabilized before they even got to the hospital. She was neither. This sounded like everything was going to have to go exactly right or she would die. He told the hospital to call again when she arrived and began throwing on his clothes.
The second call came as he was getting ready to head out the door. The young woman had just been brought to the emergency room
. Read received the third call in his car. They were desperately pumping blood and other fluids into the girl. He met the team of resident surgeons just as they were lifting her onto the operating table.
Work in an emergency room long enough and a surgeon gets a feel for a patient’s will to live. This girl was way off the scale as far as Read could tell. She had regained consciousness and was insisting that they had to save her.
He had noticed the gathering family as he arrived and saw how the cops, paramedics, and even the nurses lingered about. He hated to admit it, unsure if he was exhibiting some bias he didn’t want to believe in, but this young woman was different. She didn’t belong there.
Most patients brought into the inner-city hospital’s ER for stabbing or gunshot wounds were right off the streets, usually intoxicated or high on something, and probably involved in some sort of criminal activity. Prostitution. Drugs. Robbery. It was no surprise to anyone in the ER when a drug dealer or a gang member came in full of holes. It was expected.
However, this young woman had been savagely stabbed and left to die outside of her own home on a quiet street not far from where many in the emergency room that night, including Read, lived. It was a nice neighborhood and she looked like a nice girl. No needle tracks. No evidence of drugs or alcohol in her blood. She was someone everyone in the ER could identify with.
“One of our own,” he would later say. “It was a shock to realize as we were working to save her life that this could have happened to any one of us.”
The less-experienced doctors wanted to devote the first order of business to the most obvious wound on her neck. But Read had taken a quick look and decided that whatever damage had been done there, it was not life threatening once the bleeding had been stanched. Instead, he decided to open her up, essentially splitting her from collarbone to navel.
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