“Yeah, I think he does,” Debrah conceded. “His attorney told me that even if they could get the rape charges thrown out, he’s probably lookin’ at two to ten for assault.”
“Who is Mongo?” Richardson asked. Eerebout had said this friend of Luther’s had threatened him by showing a photograph of a dead girl. Sounded like bullshit to him, but he had to check it out.
“He’s a guy Tom did time with. His name is Chuck, um, I don’t know his last name. The time he done was over assault.”
“What does Chuck look like? Chuck’s important to me right now,” Richardson said.
“He’s real stocky, but not a tall guy, probably not even as tall as Tom. About mid-thirties.”
She remembered his name would have been in Luther’s little black telephone book—good news to Richardson, who had copied the pages before handing it back to Luther.
There were two other guys he was interested in but knew only by their nicknames. Mortho, the drug dealer who supposedly told Luther that Cher had been killed because she was a snitch. And Southy, who Eerebout had claimed was involved in the murder.
“Mortho is supposedly a real heavy guy, probably an older guy,” Debrah said. “I’ve never seen him, and I don’t remember his name.”
“Okay, what about Southy’s real name?”
“Um, Dennis something or other?”
Richardson made the connection. “Healey?” he asked.
Snider said she thought that sounded correct.
Suddenly, Richardson felt tired. “This is dragging on and on,” he said. “Luther started taking this girl to the mountains too, but she got away.” Deb commiserated. “The amazing thing is that the story Tom told me is the same story he told about the girl in Summit County. That she had ripped him off for some drugs and that’s why he beat her up and raped her.”
“I don’t understand how, knowing everything you know about Luther,” Richardson asked, “how you put up with this?”
Snider paused. “I don’t know either,” she said at last. “I wonder if I’m crazy. It’s terrible. But it’s because with him is the only time I’ve ever felt loved in my life.”
Richardson understood. In a way, she was another victim of Thomas Luther. But there were a lot of people suffering because of him. “Cher’s family is going insane,” he said. “I don’t blame them because they know she’s been killed, and there’s something about burial whether you’re Christian or not. It’s been almost two years.”
There was silence so Richardson, thinking he had touched on too raw a nerve, told Snider he would talk to the West Virginia State Police and see if they could leave out the part about her telling them of Luther’s guns. “You may still have to testify about what he told you about the rape,” Richardson said, “but you could always claim the police came to you for that and not the other way around.”
Snider was obviously relieved. She volunteered that Luther was offering $5,000 to Bobby Jo Jones if she would disappear. Other rumors, she said, were that if Jones didn’t take the money, someone else might, to shut her up forever. “I’m just concerned, you know,” she told Richardson.
“Oh hey, I hear ya,” he replied. “I’d be concerned, too. I told you all along that your life’s in danger. All you can do is be honest with me, Deb, and if something comes up or you need some help up there, then give me a holler.”
On the afternoon of October 4, 1994, Richardson drove to the Buena Vista correctional facility where nearly ten years earlier Luther had given his “I am the lion” interview, and where Byron Eerebout was presently incarcerated. Inside, he was shown the list of people who had visited Byron. Tiffany. Babe. Byron’s new attorney, Leslie Hansen. And Jerald “Skip” Eerebout.
Probably reminding him to keep his mouth shut or else, Richardson thought of the last entry. A good ol’ father-to-son chat.
Before driving to Buena Vista, Richardson talked to Deputy District Attorney Dennis Hall about prosecuting a bodyless homicide. Hall had indeed found a single case where it had been done successfully, “but there’s dozens where it hasn’t worked.”
The danger, of course, was that if they prosecuted Luther for Elder’s death without her body, and he was acquitted, they wouldn’t be able to try him again if her body was found later. Richardson called the family and told them about the option and its pitfalls. One drawback from the family’s point of view was if they went to trial the search for her body would end; her grave might never be discovered. “Don’t do it unless there’s no other way,” Earl Elder said and Rhonda Edwards subsequently agreed.
Richardson and Hall decided to wait at least until after the hunting season and the snows had melted. Hunters didn’t always stay to the regular paths and were often the ones who stumbled upon remains left in the wilds. And they still hoped that Eerebout might talk.
Byron had no idea Richardson was coming. It had been sixty days—the FBI’s magic number. A taste of prison life, the violence, the rapes, the day after day boredom, but not enough time to adjust or make new friends. There were also only a few days left of the 120-day period the judge had by law to reconsider the sentence he had handed down.
“Just pull him out of his cell and bring him here,” Richardson told the guards who ushered him into a stark white interview room. “Don’t tell him what for.” He figured if Eerebout knew who wanted to talk to him, he’d resist coming.
A few minutes later, the door opened and Byron half-walked, half was shoved in. The door slammed shut again behind him as he pulled up short, seeing Richardson. “What the fuck are you doing here?” he spat. His blue eyes glared.
Richardson looked the young man over. It appeared prison had put a few miles on him; he looked pale and, under the hostility, nervous. “Have a seat,” he said politely, gesturing to the seat across the table from the chair he was sitting in.
Eerebout just stood where he had stopped. He began to curse, but Richardson cut him off. Now his eyes were dark and his voice sharp and angry. “Sit down and shut the fuck up,” he snarled. The younger man swallowed hard and complied.
Richardson leaned across the table locking his eyes on Eerebout’s. “We’re fixing to indict,” he said. “We know what happened and who was involved, and anyone who doesn’t cooperate is gonna go down.”
It was a lie. He believed Luther was the killer and that Byron, and probably his brother J.D., were involved. But they didn’t have a body or much else. They weren’t remotely close to indicting anyone. The only thing working for him now was that Byron was under stress and Byron didn’t know what he did or did not have.
“You hear about Luther?” Richardson asked.
“Yeah.”
“Okay. This is what it’s comin’ down to. It’s nut-cutting time in the Cher Elder case. Period. You got one hundred twenty days for reconsideration of your sentencing, which doesn’t give you but a couple of days.”
“Right.” Eerebout wrinkled his brow beneath his short, red hair as if keeping up with Richardson’s logic was a challenge.
“Your case is on appeal, along with about three-fourths of the inmate population in this prison.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“You’re doing twenty-four, a lot of it mandatory before you’re eligible for parole in ...”
Byron finished it for him. “2005.”
So, Richardson thought, he’s got it all figured out, counting the years that he’ll be staring at walls and barbed wire, watching his young wife grow old in the visiting room—if she stuck around. “Elder is coming to a climax, big fucking time,” he said. “The offer that we presented to you during the pretrial was for information on the location of the body.”
Eerebout licked his lips nervously, but still tried to maintain the hardened criminal pose. Richardson didn’t want to get his back up anymore. He changed his tone.
“I need your help,” he said, as if asking an old friend for a favor. “Luther is pretty much burned. He picked up a female hitchhiker, raped her, broke her jaw, broke her shoulder,
was taking her to the mountains when she bailed out of the car and got away. Well, you know what we’ve been doing in the mountains.”
Eerebout nodded but didn’t say anything. So Richardson continued. “I will tell you right now, the Cher Elder case is a death penalty case,” he said. “That’s a hell of a lot more than the year 2005. And anybody who doesn’t cooperate in this investigation is going down with Tom Luther.”
Eerebout mumbled something about not being involved. But Richardson interrupted and put his hand up to silence him. “I ain’t askin’,” he said. “I’m flat out telling you that you can live on false hopes that your appeal will go through. You can pick whatever wisp of hope there is out there and then live day to day on that. But I’m telling you that yours is one of another million in the court of appeals.”
Eerebout shook his head. He complained that if he said anything, well, he’d been getting death threats from Mongo and Southy, who he’d seen before his sentencing in the Jefferson County Jail.
Richardson shrugged. “You got more problems than whatever they’re sayin,’ ” he said. “What if people, and I’m not telling you who, start implicating you in Cher’s murder, guess who’s going to go down? You know Cher was killed that night, there’s no doubt.” It was like playing poker with a weak hand, but he wanted to see if Eerebout would call his bluff.
Byron nodded. “Okay.”
The bluff was working. Richardson tried to keep the excitement out of his voice. “I need the body. I need cooperation,” he said. Again, he spoke like they were friends. “Me and you have always tried to get along and talk.”
Eerebout brightened. Yeah, that was the way he saw it, too.
“It’s always the legal system and the attorneys that block gettin’ anything done,” Richardson added.
“I got ya.”
“In my opinion, if we were minus attorneys,” Richardson continued, “you wouldn’t have ended up with what you got. We offered you a hell of a deal, a simple second degree assault. If you had given me a straight fucking story the first time—but you haven’t been straight with me, you’ve tried to fuck with me, you’ve tried to fuck with the system. You listened to your lawyers and others tellin’ you to keep your mouth shut and look where they’re tellin’ you this from—the fucking inside of the walls down here in the joint.”
Richardson formed a circle on the table with his hands. “What I want is the whole pie. I want to sit down and let’s just clean this up right now. We may go to court without the body, and if we go to court without the body.... Let’s use this same pie, here’s Thomas Luther and here’s the other people—” Richardson brought his hands together, “—the whole pie is going down.”
Byron stared at the demolished “pie.” “I wasn’t involved—” he began to protest again, but Richardson waved it off.
“I’m tellin’ you right now,” he said, “somebody’s talkin’ and burning your ass big time. They’re telling you one thing, but it’s coming out a whole different side of their mouth when they’re talking to us. I’ve got so much shit on this case, Byron, this case is eight binders.” The part about the binders was true, but the rest was still a bluff.
Eerebout tried to be a tough guy and stick to his alibi. “You forget about Gina Jones? You confirmed that I was with her on that night, right? And I was there the morning that [Cher] disappeared, right? There you go. You can just drop my name out of all this bullshit and get off my back about somebody runnin’ their mouth.”
Richardson looked at him for a moment without saying anything. Then he exploded. “Jesus Christ!” he yelled, slamming a fist on the table. Byron jumped. “She was your girlfriend, buddy. I mean it’s one thing to get rid of a girl and find another girl, but she didn’t deserve to die over this shit! And you know that!”
Alarmed, Eerebout looked toward the door and shook his head. “I didn’t say or do anything. I just left and that was it,” he said. Then he added, as if suddenly saddened by his next thought. “I didn’t know about Tom.”
Finally, Richardson thought, a little remorse. Time to draw it out even more. “Let me tell you what he did,” he said standing and beginning to pace. “There was a series of homicides in Summit County. The third one lived, identified him, but not before he inserted a claw hammer vaginally and anally, practically cut off her finger, strangled her, beat her, dumped her in the mountains.
“I promise ya, that’s what happened to Cher. I guarantee ya she was sexually assaulted, strangled, beat to death, and buried. Then he goes up to West Virginia and, what’d I just tell ya, he fuckin’ picks up another girl, strangles her, sexually assaults her and the only reason she’s alive, and he’s where he’s at, is ’cause she got away.
“And that,” Richardson, angrily pointing a finger in Eerebout’s face, “is the fuck that did Cher Elder. Period.”
Suddenly, the detective felt spent. He sat down, tired of all the lying punks and petty criminals who thought they were living some Jesse James fantasy. Protecting themselves and each other, like there was some bond among criminals while the body of an innocent young woman lay in an unknown grave far from her family. He sighed. “You just got wrapped up in the wrong goddam football team, bud. You don’t need to go down because of Thomas Luther. Two fucking years ago I told you that you were going down for Thomas Luther. Why are you protecting him?”
Richardson didn’t give Eerebout a chance to answer. He was on automatic now, trying to make sense of something that made no sense. “Did you ever meet her dad? Didn’t you know her little sister? Well, her brother and sister are seeing a psychiatrist. The grandmother is eighty some years old and having a mental breakdown. The mother—she looks like shit, and I’ll tell you why she looks like shit—because the whole family knows that Cher was killed, but they can’t bury her. And that is driving them up a wall with the false hope that she’s alive. There is no way, and you know that, and I’ve had to tell the family that.
“Let’s get Cher back home or at least buried so that her parents and family can put this behind them. When he was in prison, Luther bragged that the next girl wasn’t gonna live and the cops weren’t gonna find her. That’s the kind of asshole that you’re protecting.”
Richardson found himself out of words. He’d tried to reach this young asshole, but whatever remorse Eerebout had been feeling a minute before, it was gone. He was back to looking out for number one. He wanted a deal—out of prison and into a community corrections program.
He sneered at Richardson. “If I sit there and tell you what you need to know it makes you look good, ‘Oh, Detective Richardson, he’s top line, he solved the Cher Elder case, blah, blah, boom.’ Detective Richardson. His name is everywhere. He’s got everything. But I have to come back here. And my wife is still out there.”
Eerebout looked at the white walls of the interview room. “I hate this place. It’s not a place for me.” If the detective wanted to know where Cher was buried, he had better figure out a way to get J.D. back from Chicago where his father was keeping him under wraps. “And guess what? We could go on a little road trip.”
“Can you and J.D. take me to the body?” Richardson asked.
“Yes.” But he was going to have to make a deal first or the detective might as well tell Cher’s family that he was unwilling to work something out to bring her home.
“Well, at least I know what Tom Luther is,” Richardson said.
“So do I,” Eerebout replied, standing up. “And so does my mom.”
Leaving Buena Vista, Scott Richardson drove down from the mountains to the state penitentiary in Canon City. The road wound through ancient hills, the bones of an older mountain range, dotted here and there with ranch houses and cattle grazing in high country meadows. He regretted that he wasn’t on his Harley; after talking to Eerebout, he could have used the fresh air.
The day before, an attorney called to say that a client, Rick Hampton, wanted to see him again. Richardson had talked to Hampton a year earlier, when the convict had told h
im that Luther had killed Cher and buried her in the mountains.
It wasn’t long before he found himself sitting in another prison interview room with a convict. Only this one didn’t want anything in return. Hampton said he was angry about Luther’s latest sexual assault case in West Virginia; he might be a criminal, but he didn’t think much of a guy who went around raping women.
“I want to cooperate,” he said and handed over a letter he had received from Debrah Snider in January, nearly nine months earlier.
Richardson read the letter. “I spent Christmas with him and his family,” Snider had written, “but our relationship isn’t doing as well as I wish it were. I know you know of the special problem I bring into our relationship, but Tom also has created his own set of problems for us.
“His involvement with that girl that disappeared was bad enough, but he chose to continue to run around with people he had been locked up with who were involved with drugs and other illegal activities. I can’t condone behavior like that. If I’m asked a question by a cop regarding something illegal, I’m going to tell the cop the truth ... that made us incompatible concerning his behavior.”
That was essentially all Hampton had. However, he said he would wear a wire and go visit Luther if it would help the case. Richardson said he’d have to get back to him.
Exhausted, Richardson returned to the office. It was night and it would have been nice to go home and see the boys and Sabrina, who had entered the third trimester of her pregnancy. But there was so much to do. He had located Chuck “Mongo” Kreiner with the help of Luther’s little black book and he planned to go talk to him this next morning. He was also hoping to hear from Eerebout’s attorney, Leslie Hansen, so they could begin negotiations for his information.
Just then the telephone rang. It was one of the twins. “Please, Daddy, please come home. We never get to see you.”
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