Criminology - The Aurora Hammer Murders

Episode Date: October 25, 2020

In January 1984, a series of brutal attacks and murders occurred in the Aurora, Colorado area. These caused city-wide panic and remained unsolved for over 30 years until 2018 when DNA linked an incarcerated man to the crimes. Join Mike and Morf as they discuss this series of extremely horrific attacks and murders. Police noticed the similarities in the attacks and murders but had no idea who was behind them. It took advanced DNA testing and the use of genetic genealogy to lead the authorities to a man named Alex Christopher Ewing. You can help support the show at patreon.com/criminology An Emash Digital Production Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

If you love chilling mysteries, unsolved cases, and a touch of mom-style humor, Moms and Mysteries is the podcast you've been searching for. Hey guys, I'm Mandy. And I'm Melissa. Join us every Tuesday for Moms and Mysteries, your gateway to gripping, well-researched true-crime stories. Each week, we deep dive into a variety of mind-boggling cases as we shed light on everything from Heist to Who Donuts.

We're your go-to podcast for Mysteries with a Motherly Touch. Subscribe now to Moms and Mysteries wherever you get your podcast. Criminology is a true crime podcast that may contain discussion about violent or disturbing topics. Listener discretion is advised. Hello everyone and welcome to episode 132 of the criminology podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson. And this is Mike Morford. Mr. Mike Morford, what is going on with you?

I'm doing pretty good. Staying busy, but not bad all in all. Yeah. Yeah, same here. You know, you and I have been talking about COVID, the pandemic. I mean, everybody's been talking about it, right? I mean, what is a bigger subject in 2020? There isn't one. But to be honest with you, Morp, up until this last week, I didn't know a single person who had tested positive for COVID.

I don't know about you. It just, it really hadn't touched me personally. I'd seen all the stories on the news and on social media, but it hadn't touched me personally. But that all changed, you know, within the last week when my co-host, Mike Gibson on my other shows, he got pneumonia, went in, tested positive for COVID. So, you know, we're dealing with that. And it's just so tough on everybody. Yeah, I saw that. I was surprised to see it. And it's kind of it hits home. You're right. We don't know too many people, I think, in the true crime community anyways that have had it. And to hear that is just really scary. And I hope. Pete is doing better quickly. Yeah, yeah, me too. I mean, you know, I talk to him every day and I think it's

going to be a little while, but he's he's a fighter. Everybody knows that and he'll battle through it. You know, I echo what you said a couple times. You know, I really hope 2021 is a much better year. I don't know how it could be much worse. I've got my fingers crossed. Yeah, I've got a little bit of a countdown clock going on my mind how many days are left. And once that ball strikes on New years and we turn over to 2021, I'm going to hopefully be breathing a sigh of relief. Yeah, I don't know if it'll be a magic wand, but the year in general is it's got to be something to look forward to. Yeah, it's been, it's been pretty rough. It has. It has. Um, we have some great new Patreon supporters. So let's give us some shoutouts. We had Lisa Currah,

Kyle Laterno, Sarah Jones, Alexis Mixen, Gwen Lindy, Raysia Lannis, and Joe Farrar. So that's a lot of great new support. We really appreciate that. Yeah, thank you very much for that support. It goes a long way to help him put the show out. If there's anyone out there that would like to support the show, you can do so by going to patreon.com slash criminology. So the other thing about 2020, more of his, I,

I think everybody's getting to the point where they're done with being stuck in the house. You know, we've missed out on a lot of things this year. One of the things, unfortunately, that we missed out on was CrimeCon in Orlando. But CrimeCon is hosting an all virtual event on November 21st called CrimeCon house arrest. It's going to be filled with lots of great guests and content. If anyone out there wants to attend, and criminology listeners can save 10% on their passes by using promo code criminology 2020 at checkout when you go to crimecon.com.

I think it's going to be interesting. You and I teased it either last week or the week before. We still don't have all the details on it, but I think it'll be interesting for true crime fans. Yeah, I think right now people are just looking for any kind of outlet, and that's a little bit of taste of what we're used to. All right, buddy, all that out of the way. It's time to jump into this episode and I'll say right up front.

It's a pretty violent one. Some of the details may be hard for some to hear, but we have to discuss them to really demonstrate how brutal the crimes were and how dangerous the person was that committed these crimes. In January, 1984, a series of brutal attacks and murders. in the Aurora, Colorado area, caused citywide panic, and remained unsolved for over 30 years. That was until 2018 when DNA linked an incarcerated man to the crimes. The first of these attacks that we're going to discuss involves the Bennett family.

Bruce Allen Bennett was born on April 22, 1956, the middle child of five children. In 1960, his parents divorced, and his mother, Connie Bennett, who was then 30 years old, raised the children on her own for 15 years, working at the now-defunct telephone company Western Electric. In 1975, Connie met Ernest Large, who also had five children of his own, and the two married soon after. Because of their large, blended family, friends called them the Brady Bunch. Ernest's oldest daughter was Deborah Lynn Large. She was born on April 9th, 1957. Despite being step-siblings, Bruce and Deborah fell in love. Bruce joined the Navy and was stationed in San Diego for basic training and later stationed in Honolulu, Hawaii for four years.

On January 17, 1976, Deborah gave birth to the couple's first child, Melissa Marie. Bennett, Bruce and Deborah married that same year. In March 1980, Deborah gave birth to their second and last child, Vanessa Bennett. After Bruce's time in the Navy ended, the couple moved back to the Denver area and bought a split-level home on East Center Drive in Aurora. At the time, the neighborhood was new and only about a mile east of the Aurora Mall and close to elementary schools and parks, it was an ideal place to raise a family. Both Bruce and Deborah worked at a furniture store, owned by Connie Bennett's brother in lower downtown Denver.

Deborah handled the inventory paperwork. In addition to his work at the furniture store, Bruce was also a staff sergeant in the reserves at Buckley Air Guard base. Deborah loved to entertain guests in their home. She was outgoing and friendly to everyone. Bruce was quiet, but the type of person who would do anything for anyone in need of help. Their oldest daughter, 7-year-old Melissa, was an excellent student who cared about the kids in her classroom. On Sunday, January 16, 1984, the Bennett family had a small party that night to celebrate Melissa's 8th birthday the following day.

It was a cold winter night and temperature sank into the single digits and snow covered the ground. Connie Bennett left Bruce and Deborah's home at 9 p.m. As she was leaving, she noticed the garage door was open, but didn't really think much of it at the time. The next morning, Connie's brother's secretary at the furniture store called Connie. The secretary informed her that Bruce and Deborah had not made it into work, nor did they call in saying that they would be absent or late. This was very unusual for them. So Connie said she would drive to her son's home to check on. the family, when she arrived at the East Center drive home. She entered the Bennett house

and found her son Bruce Bennett lying dead in a pool of blood on the floor near the stairwell. Connie did not go any further into the house. Instead, she ran to call the police. When authorities arrived, they discovered a gory, bloody, and horrific scene. They found Bruce near the stairwell, lying on his back and clad only in his blood-soaked underwear. His body was covered in blood. He had numerous visible wounds to his head and body. He also had a superficial knife wound to his neck area. There were clumps of hair scattered on the floor around the body,

and bloody handprints covered the wall, staircase, and floor. Additional blood and blood spatter were found on the walls, the staircase railing, and the upstairs bedrooms and bathroom. The knife used in Bruce's attack was found outside in the snow, and police also recovered another knife from the bed. out of the family's pickup truck. Unfortunately, the carnage was not limited to just Bruce, lying near the stairwell when police made their way upstairs.

They found Deborah dead in the master bedroom. She was lying face down at the foot of the bed, naked from the waist up, clad only in a pair of white underwear, and partially wrapped in bedding. Her head was crusted with blood. and blood had pulled beneath her. Investigators found a pair of blue jeans and a wallet next to the bed. The contents of the wallet had been dumped onto the floor. The dresser drawers had been pulled out as if they had been ransacked and the contents were

disturbed. The night stand next to the bed also had all of its drawers pulled open. A human tooth was found on the floor next to the. the dresser. Horrifically, police found young Melissa Bennett, naked from the waist down with her legs spread and lying face up on the floor at the foot of two twin beds in the northeast bedroom. Her pajamas had been cut at the waist to expose her body, and a bloody discharge secreted from her vaginal area. Her arms and hands were raised above her head, with several visible cuts on the right palm of her hand. Police found three-year-old Vanessa on one of the twin beds.

which was soaked in blood. She was barely clinging to life with horrific injuries to her head, face, and jaw area. Blood spatter was found on the walls. And bedding was found on the floor between the two twin beds, soaked in blood,

with what appeared to be a bloody partial footprint. There's no doubt that this crime scene shocked the police. This was brutal. It was a merciless. attack on the Bennett family. And police knew that anyone that could do something like this to an entire family, including two young children, was a predator that they needed to find.

The immediate concern of investigators was getting the three-year-old medical care as soon as possible, and she was rushed to Children's Hospital, where she underwent two hours of emergency treatment and more than eight hours of surgery, including plastic surgery, to repair fractures of the skull, face, and upper and lower jaws and facial cuts. She was later put in a medically induced coma to monitor brain swelling caused by blows to the head with a blunt object. She had not been sexually assaulted. The bodies of the members of the Bennett family that didn't survive the attack were brought to the medical examiner's office. Arapaho County Coroner John Wood performed the autopsies on Bruce, Deborah,

and Melissa. The results showed multiple severe fractures to the head on each body caused by a blunt instrument. This blunt instrument was later determined to be a claw hammer. It was also determined that Deborah and Melissa had both been sexually assaulted. Police had very few clues to work with. And the murder weapon was never found. There were no signs of forced entry. Police theorized that the killer most likely entered the residence through the open garage door and surprised the victims. News of the violent attack on the well-liked family in a seemingly safe neighborhood, spread throughout the city and to other areas of Colorado. One week after the brutal murders, Bruce, Deborah, and Melissa Bennett were laid to rest. People began arriving at the mass at 9.30 a.m. Plain-closed police officers were

also there as a precaution and for surveillance. At just before 10 a.m., Buckley Air Guard base officers brought in the caskets as the mourners there remained in shock and saddened over the family's deaths. Vanessa Bennett was released from the hospital six weeks after the attacks. While in the hospital, her grandfather, Ernest Large, Connie's husband, took her a family portrait and told her what happened to her family. She would get a little emotional every few days, but most of the time was in good spirits, despite the horrific trauma she had endured. But obviously, her life would never be the same. Connie Bennett was named Vanessa's legal guardian. Vanessa celebrated her fourth birthday in March 1984 with about 40 friends and family members. Two police cars were parked on the street

outside. At her party, Vanessa showed little sign of the partial paralysis in her left arm and leg. However, her facial scars would remain forever. When there wasn't a question, A quick arrest in the Bennett family murder case. Residents in the Denver area began to panic. Gun sales and security alarm sales rose dramatically in the days following the killings. The community was worried that a predator was moving amongst them. And as investigators continued digging into the murders, police quickly realized that indeed a predator had been stalking. Denver's suburban neighborhoods. for weeks, and they connected the Bennett murders to other similar crimes that had occurred in

the preceding weeks. At 2.30am on January 4, 1984, 22-year-old James Hobbinschild, and his 21-year-old wife, Kimberly, were attacked and struck in the head with a hammer on their home on Maline Drive and Aurora. A man had entered their home through their open garage door. The hammer was later found on a dresser in the house. Thankfully, James and Kimberly survived the attack and told police that a man, who they thought was a black man, had attacked them. But because of a sudden and surprising attack, the couple wasn't able to give much more of a description. Five days later, on January 9th, 1984, 28-year-old airline attendant Donna Dixon, who is now Donna Holm, was attacked in her home's garage in the 100 block of South Eagle Circle.

After pulling into her garage, her attacker struck her in the left temple, tore her clothes off, and raped her on the garage floor. A hammer believed to be the weapon was found at the scene. The contents of Donna's purse were dumped onto the garage floor, so robbery was considered a possible motive for the attack. Donna survived this brutal assault, but it took weeks of hospitalization for her to recover. The very next day, January 19th, the Hammer Man struck again. 50-year-old Patricia Louise Smith had recently helped her daughter, Sherry Letton, and Sherry's two children relocate to the Denver area from Nebraska. Sherry was going through divorce at the time, and Patricia was helping her get back on her feet.

Patricia, Sherry, and Sherry's two children, six-year-old Amber, and four-year-old Joe lived together in a townhome in Denver's West. suburb Lakewood. Patricia, an interior designer, often traveled to Denver for work, so it was easy for her to set up a home office in Denver, where she worked and called on clients. To save on cost, Patricia drove Sherry to the park and ride in the Green Mountain area. From there, Sherry would take a bus to work and return to the park and ride afterward, where Patricia would pick her up. Then they would pick up the kids at daycare. On the morning of January 10th, Patricia took Sherry to the park and ride and Sherry went to work. Sherry talked to her mother that day,

which was the norm for mother and daughter because they spoke every day. When Sherry arrived at the park and ride after work, Patricia was not there to pick her up. So she called a cousin. The cousin picked her up and together they went to the daycare around 6 p.m. then drove to Patricia and Sherry's townhome. It was January. So by the time Sherry and the kids returned home around 615, it was dark outside. The entry door to the garage was open and Patricia's car was parked inside. Sherry looked up towards Patricia's bedroom window where she could see a television's flickering light. No other lights though were on in the home.

At that moment Sherry had a dreadful feeling. Sherry, along with her cousin and two children, walked into the town home. Sherry turned on the entryway light. About six feet from the door, Sherry saw her mother on the floor. Her face was covered with a Winnie the Pooh blanket. And because of that, Sherry and her kids couldn't see the horrific wounds to her head. But Sherry knew right away that her mother was dead. Immediately, all four ran next door to the neighbor's house and told the neighbor what happened.

the neighbor ran back over to check on Patricia, only to confirm she was in fact deceased. Then they called police. Patricia Smith had been raped and severely beaten to death and what detectives have called an extremely brutal murder. At the scene, detectives found potential evidence on the main floor and in the master bedroom upstairs. Blood and pieces of partially eaten hamburger were near the front door. just a few feet from Patricia's body. Police found Patricia's wig, Kent cigarettes, a leather jacket,

car keys, a carton of french fries, and a packet of ketchup on the bed. Nearby was a foil hamburger wrapper and a Wendy's to go bag with a receipt. Patricia had purchased the fast food at 1.10 p.m. that afternoon. The house largely seemed to be in order with no apparent signs of a disturbance or struggle.

Police theorized that Patricia's killer had surprised her after she returned home and dropped her personal belongings on her bed. And after he raped and murdered her, he dumped out her purse looking for cash and then fled the home. The brutal murder was barely mentioned in the local media the next day. But two days later, the murder was in the news again with a chilling new detail. Patricia Smith had been killed with repeated blows to the head with an auto body hammer. After her mother's brutal murder, Sherry was terrified. One night at home, she heard a noise, grabbed a knife and called the police. When Sherry told them she was Patricia Smith's daughter, they set up extra protection with a patrol around the home. After her mother's murder, Sherry had to come

home, two lights on in her home, and all of her closet doors had to be open. She was extremely cautious of strangers and she would not get close to her neighbors. And morph, to me, that's totally understandable that a shocking murder like the one we described would have long-lasting effects on family members. And that's exactly what happened here in Sherry's case. Police had no clue who Patricia's killer was. But after the Bennett family murders, they realized the four separate January attacks might be connected. The similarities between the cases were too strong to ignore. In each case, the garage doors were open, which is how the attacker entered the homes. A hammer was used in each attack, and the victim's purses were dumped out. All of the crime scenes were

within blocks from Alameda Avenue, which suggested to authorities that the killer might be moving down the bustling East-West Road, perhaps for work. Patricia lived on the opposite side of Denver from the victims in the other three cases. They all resided in Aurora. Still, her murder had to be connected to the others in the minds of investigators. While it would have made sense for Lakewood and Aurora detectives to coordinate their investigations, due to the strong similarities between their cases, they didn't. Instead, Lakewood investigated Patricia Smith's murder and Aurora investigated the other three.

no metro-wide task force was ever established. Detectives questioned those close to the victims, which included Patricia's husband and her son, her son's friends, and Sherry's estranged husband. Connie Bennett told nine news that she felt like the police suspected her immediate family for a long time. But investigators needed to rule out family first and foremost before going further in the investigation. Detectives ultimately concluded that no one from

the victim's families was involved in the attacks and murders. In 1989, a new detective on the Bennett case discovered that a comforter shared by Melissa and Vanessa had never been sent to a crime lab for testing, so he submitted it.

The test results revealed a blood type presumed to be from the killer, type A. Detective sent swatches of carpeting from the girl's bedroom, which had semen stains on them to a California lab. The testing of that evidence in 1990 yielded one DNA marker. By the 10-year anniversary of the attacks and killings, the statute of limitations had passed on the first two hammer attacks. Police shelved those cases permanently, and detectives focused solely on the murders.

And Morph, I'll be right up front with you, man. This is something I've always had a problem with. You know, the statute of limitations running out on certain types of crimes. And again, I don't know exactly where you draw the line. But to me, if you beat someone with a hammer so severely that there's no doubt in anyone's mind, you tried to kill them. And the police don't catch you within the first 10 years. You're just off scot-free.

I don't like it. Yeah, I think you and I have talked about this in a lot of different episodes. that we've done about some of these archaic laws and how short some of the statutes of limitation were, especially in the 70s. And I'm sure some of this has changed over the years, and I don't have all the facts in front of me. But, you know, if we're as outraged as we are, and I'm sure the listeners are outraged as well, imagine the out. In the suburbs of D.C., a woman fails to show up for work and is found brutally murdered.

I wonder what's emergency. We just walked in the door and there's blood in the foyer. For the next two decades, the case remained unsolved until new technology allowed investigators to do what had once been impossible. A new series from ABC Audio in 2020, blood and water. Listen now wherever you get your podcasts. Rage on the part of the victims and the victims' families. So you're saying, okay, 10 years is up, doesn't matter if we figure out who did this to you or not,

there's nothing we can do to them. Yeah, that's got to be very hard on those victims because, for all we know, they may have been looking over the shoulders for years or perhaps the rest of their life, worried that that same person might come back and attack them again. Detective Casey Williams worked on the Bennett case in 1998, 99, and 2009, and 2001, he and other detectives resubmitted evidence, which included pieces of the comforter and pieces of the carpeting beneath Melissa's body for more sophisticated DNA testing. They felt that CODIS or possibly NDIS might help them ID the killer.

According to the FBI's website, the combined DNA index system, or CODIS for short, is the FBI's program of support for criminal justice DNA databases, as well as the software used to run these databases. The National DNA Index System, or NDIS, is considered one part of CODIS on the national level containing the DNA profiles contributed by federal, state, and local participating forensic laboratories. There are two sets of DNA profiles and KOTUS. One said is from known offenders and arrestees, people behind bars for serious crimes. The other group is called forensic profiles. DNA profiles from evidence left behind like blood or semen that hasn't been linked to a specific person. Today in Kodas, there are more than

17.6 million profiles of known offenders and arrestees and nearly. 1 million more unidentified genetic fingerprints from crime scenes. Colorado investigators discovered a piece of evidence that had DNA on it. Although what that evidence was hasn't been disclosed. A full DNA profile was developed from it and it was entered into the DNA databases but didn't produce a match. That DNA profile led to Detective Williams in the spring of 2002 to draft an arrest warrant for the unidentified man who killed the Bennetts and severely injured Vanessa. The warrant listed 17 separate charges, starting with six counts of first-degree murder. Three counts alleging the slings of Bruce, Deborah, and Melissa

were premeditated, and three alleging they were killed during the commission of another felony. A judge signed the warrant the next day. While the DNA profile was an absolute identification of the killer, investigators still had no name, and they didn't know if the same man had killed Peteria Smith. Seven years passed, and in 2009, Lakewood detectives launched new testing in Patricia's case of a piece of carpet taken from underneath her body that had semen on it. The findings resulted in a press conference that brought Connie Bennett's and Patricia Smith's families together. Authorities revealed that a DNA match was established between both homicides,

and that as suspected, the same killer was involved in both crimes. However, the new information did not lead to a suspect, and there were no witnesses in the homicide. In 2015, a law enforcement official on the condition of anonymity released details to the Denver Post that he believed should have been publicly shared years before as part of the effort to find the killer. The man was referring to additional evidence found in the Bennett

case. According to the Denver Post, when the unknown killer lifted Little Melissa's blood-soaked body from her bed, letters embroidered on the killer's shirt were transferred in blood onto Melissa's pajama top. Investigators believe the blurred letters likely identified the killer's name or the place of employment. The prosecutor and cold case detectives opposed the release of the evidence and would not confirm nor deny information on it. Arv Brandt, who had been investigating the Bennett case since 1984, said it could hurt the case more than it could help it. The reason police did not release it was because it was not conclusive evidence. There were two different interpretations of what the letter stated, one by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and another by the Royal Canadian Mounted Police or RCMP.

Kirk Mitchell of the Denver Post wrote in 2015 that the Arizona Lab concluded the letters were R-I-C-H-A-R. But the RCMP indicated the letters most likely spelled out P-E-T-A-W-C. There were at least two gaps in the name or business tag because of a fold in Melissa's pajama top, making some of the letters unreadable. In 2016, Detective Connor packaged up the DNA profile, the one that had been listed in the current warrant, and sent it off the Parabon Nanolabs in Reston, Virginia. Using DNA phenotyping,

the prediction of physical appearance from DNA, Parabon created a computer 3D sketch of the Hammer Killer. It showed an ordinary young Caucasian male with brown hair and blue eyes and of Western Northern European descent, instead of a dark-skinned or black male, as was described by victims in one of the attacks. Authorities received about 50 tip calls based on the Parabon release, and they eliminated some suspects after obtaining their DNA for comparison. But many investigators quietly wondered if the killer was deceased after so long. Aurora police sought the help of Colleen Fitzpatrick, a genealogist, and the founder of

identifiers international, which offers YDNA and autosomal DNA investigative genetic genealogy services to law enforcement agencies and medical examiners for cold case work. We had Colleen on Criminology in season four. She's known as the founder of modern forensic genealogy and has worked hundreds of cold case homicides for law enforcement using genetic genealogy analysis. Colleen used genetic genealogy to find distant relatives based on DNA that would lead them to the unknown suspect. So for example, on genealogy sites like Ancestry.com or Jedmatch, people can upload their DNA profiles to try and locate lost relatives.

Investigators build a family tree and they look for people who could be suspects. Of course, this kind of work. would come to the forefront of crime fighting in April 2018, when the Golden State Killer Joseph DeAngelo was identified using this technique. Y DNA is from a chromosome that belongs only to men. Colleen Fitzgerald's role in the Hammer Murders was to compare the Y DNA and the Hammer Murders to the genetic genealogy databases. Police knew their killer was male because of the semen.

So right away, searchers eliminated women as possible. suspects. One method used to create a genetic profile is STR analysis, short tandem repeat. Colleen searched in the databases for people that might be related to the killer. She was able to come up with a surname Ewing as possibly being the last name of the killer. Kevin Vaughn, an investigative journalist for Denver's 9 News, had been covering the hammer murders for a few years. He took the Ewing name and went to Colorado's prison records. There, he found a man with that name who was arrested a few months after the Bennett murders and had been in prison ever since. Vaughn searched for records on the man's crimes, but found nothing at the courthouse or at the Denver

Police Department. Finally, the DA office in Denver found a case file in offsite storage. And it was just a few days later that Vaughn received 29 pages of documents on a CD, the man he had found had sexually assaulted a woman using a tire iron as a weapon and had also taken a separate woman hostage. The question for Kevin was whether this man's DNA would be in any of the criminal databases. Well, it turned out that this man had been tested and his profile was uploaded to Codas, but the man was not the hammer killer. This was a big letdown for the reporter and for investigators. Then in the late morning of August 7, 2018, Kevin Vaughn received a phone call from one of his sources, who told him something was happening in the hammer cases. That's all the source said and wouldn't reveal any more

information. Vaughn and his boss each checked their sources and discovered that the police were looking at a man in another state with criminal cases in Arizona and Nevada. Investigators tried questioning this man, but he wouldn't talk. Authorities had obtained a warrant to take his DNA, and when they tested it, his DNA was a match. They had found the hammer killer at last. In the mid-1990s, Nevada legislation called for mandatory DNA collection of inmates, but it only applied to new convicts. Then in 2013, a new bill made Nevada's law retroactive, but officials in Nevada's Department of Corrections neglected it for over three years.

It wasn't until pressure from Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Mastow that testing began. But it took 18 months to get this man's DNA tested. Kevin Vaughn performed the Nevada prison search using the last name Ewing. He found a Christopher Ewing, born in 1960, he was a good possibility because he would have been in his 20s in 1984. Christopher Ewing had been in prison since at least 1989.

After Vaughn made a few phone calls, he learned that Christopher had been behind bars since 1984. Vaughn was excited. He felt that he had sleut out the killer's name, which police weren't sharing. Vaughn called Connie Bennett. It was his first time speaking with her. He asked Connie about the new developments in the case. but she hadn't been told anything at that time, but she was supposed to meet at the DA's office. Vaughn had enough information for a news story on the new developments and wrote it up for Nine News,

the only news outlet to cover it, and the station aired it later that day. Less than 15 minutes later, the police sent out a press release suggesting nine news was misguided or wrong. That's when Kevin Vaughn discovered that, Christopher Ewing was Alex Christopher Ewing, who was arrested for an attack in Kingman, Arizona, 11 days after the Bennett murders. Ewing was accused of breaking into the home of Roy Williams and beating him over the head

with a football-sized rock. Because of overcrowding at the jail in Kingman, Ewing was held for a time at a Utah detention center. On August 9, 1984, Ewing was on a night, 1984. Ewing was en route from Utah to Kingman, Arizona, for a court hearing. When he escaped from two Arizona deputies at a gas station in Henderson, Nevada. The deputy stopped to allow the inmates a bathroom break. That's when he made his move. Ewing was on the lamb for two days.

During those two days, he broke into an unlocked home in Henderson and savagely beat Nancy Berry and her husband Chris with a pickax handle. Chris suffered permanent injuries from the attack and passed away from King's. cancer in 2011. Nancy sustained fractures to both hands as she tried to fend off blows from Ewing. She also had a severe head injury that required surgery. Their two children were unharmed in the attack. Ewing was arrested, charged, and convicted in 1985 of two counts of attempted murder, burglary, and escape. He was sentenced to 110 years behind bars, and he's been in the Nevada prison system under Christopher Ewing. Ewing, it turned out, has a

a criminal history dating back to 1979 with other arrest in California and Florida. At 10 a.m. on August 10th, 2018, representatives from Aurora and Lakewood, the 18th Judicial District Attorney's Office, the First Judicial District Attorney's Office, and the Colorado Bureau of Investigation held a news conference. They announced that a computer program had matched Uing's DNA to DNA left at the Bennett home. Authorities learned that he had been in Colorado in 1983 and early 1984. He had obtained a driver's license and an apartment in the Capitol Hill area. Ewing worked various construction jobs to earn money. Aurora and Lakewood detectives went to Nevada to interview him. When police told him his genetic fingerprint matched to the Patricia

Smith crime scene, he said there had to be a mistake, but then he refused to answer any additional questions. Armed with a warrant, investigators swabbed the inside of Ewing's mouth to obtain their own DNA samples. Those samples were later confirmed to be a match for the killer. Alexander Christopher Ewing was charged with four counts of first-degree murder and two counts of committing a crime of violence in the murder of Patricia Smith. One of the murder accounts accused Ewing of killing Patricia after deliberation. Each of the three other murder counts alleged that he killed Patricia while committing another crime, robbery, burglary, and sexual assault. According to nine news, under Colorado's felony murder rule,

a person can be charged with first-degree murder for killing a person in the commission of another crime. The two counts of committing a crime of violence are both sentence enhancers. At that point, Arapaho County prosecutors had not charged Ewing in the Bennett case, but they still had the 2002 arrest warrant that listed the 17 separate charges we mentioned earlier in the episode. In December 2018, a Georgia ordered Alex Christopher Ewing to be extradited to Colorado to face charges in the hammer murders, but Ewing fought extradition for a year and a half until late February 2020. He made his first court appearance in Colorado

in Arapaho County on March 2nd. In June 2020, a judge said there was sufficient evidence to send Ewing to trial in the Patricia Smith case after defense attorneys questioned the state of physical evidence linking Ewing to Patricia's murder. On September 1st, 2020, Ewing was back in court in Jefferson County where Judge Russell set his bail at one

million dollars. In Arapahoe County, Ewing faces six counts of first-degree murder in the Bennett killings, one for each of the victims, alleging he killed them after deliberation, and one for each of the victims alleging he killed them while committing another felony. Additionally, Ewing has his unfinished sentence in Nevada. He was scheduled to return to court on October 8th in Arapahoe County, and November 6th, in Jefferson County. But more if we just really couldn't find any information on how the October 8th hearing went or if it happened at all.

It's quite possible that it was postponed due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Lawyers on both sides have been in a long-running dispute over Ewing since July 2018. And his defense attorney has repeatedly delayed hearings for one. reason or another. He also appealed Ewing's extradition to Colorado, but it's unclear when the court will rule on it. No trial date has been set. In 2019, Kevin Vaughn of Nine News created and recorded a five-episode podcast called Blame, The Fear All These Years, where he covered the hammer attacks and murders. As we mentioned earlier, after the brutal murders of her family, Vanessa Bennett was raised by her grandmother, Connie Bennett. Doctors were unsure in 1984 if Vanessa would live a normal

life. Due to the injuries she sustained, she had been in a coma and her jaws had been wired shut. She had tubes in her nose to eat and she had some paralysis. Vanessa had braces on her legs and went through physical therapy. She had to relearn basically how to do everything. Doctors thought at the time that she most likely would be in a wheelchair for the rest of her life. But she's not. Vanessa has damage to the frontal lobes of her brain, which regulate emotions, impulse control, judgment, and problem solved. At the age of 13, Vanessa took piano and dance lessons and played the trumpet in the school band. She still had the shunt, surgeons placed in her head to drain fluid, and she was,

was a little weak on her left side. Connie tried to make life as normal as possible for Vanessa, but Vanessa longed for a normal family life like her friends had. Connie spoiled Vanessa and took her on trips to Costa Rica and Italy. During her school years, Vanessa was severely bullied by kids at her school. They often called her Scarface and Hammerhead. In high school, Vanessa skipped classes. She turned to drugs, ran away from home, and ended up spending time in both a psychiatric facility and a group home. She had years of bad relationships and drug addiction. She ran with the wrong crowd, but they never judged her. This was all information that Vanessa gave to Kevin Vaughn for his podcast. She also told Kevin that Ewing killed the person she could have become.

when he killed her family. Today, Vanessa is 40 years old and lives in Tucson. She is a recovering drug addict. Connie Bennett is in her 80s and still resides in the Denver area. Even though there has been an arrest in her family's murders, Connie said she would never have closure. Every single day, she thinks about her son, daughter-in-law, and oldest granddaughter. So more if we said it right up front, This was a series of brutal cases that were dubbed the hammer killings, the hammer murders. They went unsolved for a long time. And you and I see a number of cases like this. It's tragic all the way around, especially when, you know, you think about Vanessa

losing her immediate family, living with the not only physical injuries, but the, emotional, the mental agony that we know came along with what happened because she laid it all out for Kevin Vaughn in his podcast. It seems to me that police have a person in custody in Christopher Ewing that is going to have a hard time getting out of the charges he faces in these murders. based on the evidence that we know they have. And I'm sure they have even more that they haven't disclosed. And he hasn't been found guilty in a court of law for these crimes yet. But if we look at the things he has been found guilty of,

we see a pattern of entering people's homes, attacking them, bludgeoning them. And if he's found guilty, it's just going to continue that pattern and show that he was this kind of person that did this over, a long period of time. Well, there's no doubt that he's a bad guy. You look at the crimes that he's already been convicted for. This is a bad guy. And, you know, you mentioned the pattern.

So he has the pattern that demonstrates, there's no doubt he's capable of committing the hammer murders. Law enforcement has a DNA match. You would think it's a slam dunk. I don't like to say things are a slum. slam dunk because there's always something that can crop up, something that can go wrong. I mean, part of this case is that we're going to have to wait and see because who knows when his trial is actually going to happen. It's one that we're going to have to keep an eye on.

One thing, this case had a lot of shades of the Golden State Killer in it. We talked about some of the forensic stuff, the genealogy that was used to track this guy down. and we saw that in the Golden State killer case. And as in that case, Joseph DiAngelo was a similar killer sneaking to people's houses and bludging them. And I don't know about you, but to me, that's one of the most disturbing ways to kill someone, to beat them to death like that.

I think it takes an especially deranged individual to do that. I would agree with you. And I would also throw in the element that it's happening in your own home, right? That place where you're supposed to feel safe. You should feel safe. You should be safe. And to think that, you know, somebody violates that safety by breaking in and then they murder you. That's scary. That should be scary to everyone. Thanks goes out to Debbie Buck at True CrimeDiva.com for writing and research assistants in this episode. As always, if you love the show, but you haven't done it yet go out give us a five-star rating you can leave a review if you want but keep telling your friends about the podcast that word of mouth goes a long way and it doesn't cost a thing if you'd like to find us on social media we're on twitter with the handle at criminology pod you can also find us on facebook by searching for criminology podcast or by joining our facebook discussion group criminology podcast discussion and fans so that's it

for the case of the Aurora Hammer murders, extremely violent cases, all of them. And there's no definitive ending at this point in time. But I think more if you would agree, the signs look good that law enforcement have the right individual, the correct individual. He's innocent until proven guilty, but it seems like the evidence is,

stacked up against them. Yeah, a lot to watch and see where the case goes. Morph and I will be back with all of you next Saturday night with a brand new episode of criminology. So until then, for Mike and Morph. We'll talk to you next week. Take care, everyone. Security program on spreadsheets, new regulations piling up, and audit dread. It's time for Vanta. Vanta automates security and compliance, brings evidence into one place, and cuts audit prep by 82%. Less manual work, Clear visibility, bastard deals. Zero chaos. Call it compliance or call it calm appliance.

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