McCormick told the Bulletin that he was concerned that the killer, or killers, along with anyone with information, were all entering the “end stages” of their lives and needed to come forward for their own sakes: “I truly believe that personal anguish or guilt of this nature is not something with which one should live a life or take to the grave. If you know something, give it up. If not now, when?”
In Pennsylvania, the body of the young woman who had been beaten, strangled, raped, and then left in the woods, back in December 1993, has not been identified. All we still know is that she was a transient often seen hitchhiking near the construction site where Luther worked during that time.
Blood found on her sweater matched Luther’s blood type, but further DNA testing was never completed. Les Freehling, the Pennsylvania state trooper looking into the case in the late 1990s, told Detective Scott Richardson that with Luther sentenced to prison for the rest of his life, Pennsylvania law enforcement was reluctant to spend the money for testing and the investigation necessary to pursue another conviction. The trooper has since retired.
However, Pennsylvania law enforcement authorities regularly revisit the case of Karen Denise Wells, the twenty-four-year-old single mother who disappeared in April 1994 from Middlesex Township, also near the construction site where Luther worked at that time. Wells, who was generally called Denise, lived in Oklahoma. She was in town to visit an old friend and left her suitcase and other belongings in a motel. The car she rented was found out of gas and stopped in a lane on a wooded country road, the driver’s-side and passenger-side doors open. There was no sign of a struggle, but the car had been driven for more than six hundred miles that couldn’t be accounted for.
“Basically, we’re looking for any type of information we can get on this case,” State Trooper Karl Schmidhamer said. “Persons of interest” in Wells’s disappearance have been interviewed through the years, the state trooper said, but he added that they didn’t have enough evidence to name a suspect at this time or at any time.
Wells’s son, a toddler when she disappeared, was raised by her mother, Deorma Wells, who recently pleaded in the media for closure. “I know and feel in my heart, as a mother, there is someone out there that knows something,” she said. “Please come forward for Denise’s son ... and yourself so you do not have to live with the guilt any longer.”
It’s unlikely that Luther, even if guilty of one or more of these other murders, would confess to these crimes. By nature, someone with his diagnosis of antisocial personality disorder lacks a conscience. However, authorities and family members of the slain hope that whoever committed the crimes did say something to someone, or there was a witness, who will decide to come forward.
For this update, the author has been unable to locate Deb Snyder, who was Tom Luther’s prison pen pal when he was incarcerated for the Brown sexual assault, then his girlfriend when he got out, and finally testified against him in the Cher Elder case. In a letter the author received a few years after Luther’s convictions, she said she had continued trying to contact Luther, hoping that he would “forgive” her for testifying against him. She said she hoped that he would allow her to visit him in prison, but up to that time he had ignored her pleas.
A year or two after Luther’s conviction for Cher’s murder, the victim’s father, Earl, and stepmother, Claudette, came home to find an odd message on their telephone from Deb Snyder, whom they’d never met. “She just said how sorry she was,” Earl said, “but we never heard from her again.”
Detective Scott Richardson left the Lakewood Police Department and returned to Texas, where he worked for a time in law enforcement before taking up ranching. He now drives big rig trucks hauling supplies to remote oil rigs in Louisiana and Texas.
Deputy District Attorney Dennis Hall, who successfully prosecuted Luther for Cher’s murder, left the Jefferson County District Attorney’s Office upon being appointed a district court judge.
Diane France, the forensic anthropologist who led the NecroSearch International team, which worked with Richardson to recover Cher Elder’s body, still works in the field of identifying human remains. Her work since that time has included assisting in the identification of remains of the September 11, 2001, World Trade Center victims. NecroSearch International continues to assist law enforcement agencies in locating clandestine graves.
After Luther’s conviction for attempting to murder her, Heather Smith volunteered with the Denver Center for Crime Victims (DCCV), which had supported her in her hours of need. However, deciding a change of scenery was necessary to move beyond the trauma, Heather moved to Chicago, took a job with an IT company, and became head of the sales division. She also met and married her husband; they now have three young sons.
“Just like that night when I made a conscious decision to live,” she told the author in May 2012, “I made a conscious decision not to be a victim anymore. It’s tough. Some people want you to remain ‘the victim,’ because it’s easier for them to deal with, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life as that person who was afraid of everything. Instead, I chose to focus on the good things in my life, instead of one bad person—he’s not important. To be honest, I think I’ve led a pretty charmed life—to have gone through what I did and to be where I am now.”
In 2006, Heather appeared on Oprah Winfrey’s show as a member of the studio audience during a “Pay It Forward” segment. Each member of the audience was given a check for $1,000 to use for someone else. Heather returned to Denver and through the DCCV met a woman who had been shot in the face by her boyfriend and needed reconstructive facial surgery. Along with the $1,000 check from the Oprah Show, she gave the woman another $2,600 toward her medical bills. In 2007, she established Heidi’s Hope Fund, to assist victims of violent crimes. She named the organization after her German shepherd, which she credits with helping her get past her fears.
Heather has since left the IT company and plans on starting another foundation to assist crime victims. She also plans to write a book of her own about her experiences, especially the effort to move on with her life.
Moving on is easier said than done for many victims of men like Thomas Luther. “There’s no such thing as closure,” said Cher Elder’s father, Earl. Speaking to the author in November 2012, he said that while time had eased the pain of Cher’s murder, her death hadn’t become some distant memory. “I think about her every day,” he said. “You learn to hate holidays and birthdays.” Nor had it tempered his hatred for Luther. “I try not to think of that guy.”
Soon after Cher’s murder, Earl began attending local meetings of the National Organization of Parents Of Murdered Children (POMC), a nonprofit advocacy group that provides “support and assistance to all survivors of homicide victims, while working to create a world free of murder.”
“I went down there seeking people who knew how I felt, because nobody else did,” Earl recalled. “You don’t really want to hear the positive things, like ‘Life goes on.’ The only people who understand that are people who have gone through it, or are going through it themselves.”
However, he found more satisfaction working with Victims Outreach Information (VOI), an advocacy group formed in 1986 to assist victims of crime in Jefferson County, Colorado. Its mission is to “promote the healing of people impacted by crime and trauma. Our hope is that people impacted by crime and trauma lead healthy, productive, and inspired lives.”
Among the many outreach services that the nonprofit agency provides, VOI used donations to build a “Courage Garden” in a secluded spot at the Jefferson County Courthouse. “It’s a peaceful setting for families of victims involved in trials to get away from everything that’s going on in court for a little bit,” said Earl Elder, who served as the group’s president and is currently on the advisory board. “I like doing something for people who are going through what I went through. There is nothing you can say that makes it better, but at least you understand what it’s like, and they can relate to that.�
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Earl often visits the pretty clearing in the woods where Luther buried Cher’s body. Now there’s a permanent marker and plaque dedicated to Cher, and somebody hauled a bench up the hill. Over the years visitors have left flowers, stuffed animals, and small notes of remembrance and prayer. Every December, Cher’s father makes the drive from Golden to the highway pull-off, just past Empire, to place a small, decorated Christmas tree.
“It’s a way, I guess, of keeping her alive,” he said, “letting her know I’m still thinking of her. Sometimes I don’t have time to stop when I go by, but I tap my heart. It’s a peaceful place.”
Cher’s mother, Rhonda Edwards, said she continues to grieve for her lost daughter twenty years after her death, but it is not as constant. “There are times I can’t talk about it,” she said, “but I go in and out. Certain times of year are harder than others. And things will pop up, or you’ll see something and think, ‘Cher would have done that,’ but it’s mostly good things. I try not to dwell on the bad. I don’t dwell on Luther, as long as I know he’s behind bars. Someday he’ll pay, when the good Lord wants him to, but that’s not my concern.”
In the fifteen or so years since I wrote Monster, I’ve written a number of other true-crime books, but this one always stuck with me. Some of that was on account of it being my first—the book that launched my career. But there was something about this one, its basic story of good versus evil—with good triumphing—that made it special to me.
As a newspaper reporter for many years, often covering the criminal justice system, I was used to seeing the ripple effect of violent crime, particularly murder, on the victims and their families and friends. In Monster, I became more aware of its impact on the people further out in the widening circles—those in law enforcement, like Scott Richardson and Diane France—and even true-crime readers. I’d like to close this addendum with an anecdote about one of those.
Several years after Monster’s publication, I was on my way one morning to ski at Winter Park and was on the highway that passes through Empire. I’ve never been able to pass the turnoff without reflecting on what happened to a young woman unfortunate enough to become the prey of an evil man.
When I have looked up at that hill, I have thought about the pile of stones Luther placed on her body—hiding Cher from her family for two years, until Richardson found her with the help of NecroSearch. I have frequently visited the clearing myself, have sat on the bench, and have allowed the peace of the place, now washed of evil, to come to me.
On this morning I did not plan to stop; but just as I was coming up on the turnout, I noticed a woman struggling up the hill through nearly knee-high snow. Although it was a bright blue-sky Colorado winter day and fairly warm, she was not at all dressed for the occasion. In fact, she was wearing a dress beneath her down coat and a pair of fashionable boots.
Then I noticed that she was carrying a book; it looked like my book. So I stopped and surprised/shocked her by introducing myself and asking what she was doing, wading through the snow, with a copy of Monster, though it was pretty obvious. Somewhat sheepishly she told me that she and her family were on vacation in Colorado. She explained that she’d been so moved by the story—particularly Detective Scott Richardson’s efforts to find Cher’s body and bring her killer to justice—that while her family was skiing, she decided to try to locate the clandestine grave and pray there for Cher.
When there’s no snow, the trail is not difficult to locate; visitors have worn a path and even placed small stones along the way. However, in the snow it’s more difficult, so I helped her up the hill to the clearing. The woman stood quietly for a few minutes, taking in the beauty of that beautiful Colorado morning beneath bright blue skies, as she contemplated the sadness. Then she looked at me and asked, “So ... do you hang out here all the time, waiting for people to come by?”
The woman asked her question innocently and in all seriousness, but then we both laughed. The image of a true-crime writer lurking in the woods, waiting for the occasional reader to arrive, was funny—even if the story behind it was not.
As I thought about it later, it came to me that maybe the best way to deal with the darkness men like Thomas Luther bring to the world is to laugh and smile and go on living and loving. That is how they lose their power over us.
Some names have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals connected to this story.
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