Alex Christopher Ewing, the man accused of bludgeoning four victims to death with a hammer three decades ago, has arrived in Colorado, where he will face charges in the cold case killings.

The Nevada Supreme Court last week denied Ewing’s motion to stay in Nevada, where he’s been held since 1985 on an attempted-murder conviction.

Ewing is being held at the Arapahoe County Detention Center, with an advisement hearing scheduled for Monday, Vikki Migoya, spokeswoman for the 18th Judicial District Attorney’1`s Office, said via email.

The brutal 1984 murders shook the region, the investigative trail going cold for decades. On Jan. 10, 1984, Patricia Smith was raped and killed in her Lakewood apartment. Six days later, Bruce and Patricia Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa were found dead in Aurora.

In August 2018, 34 years after the murders, DNA evidence on two pieces of carpet and a little girl’s bed comforter connected Ewing to the scene of the crimes.

The cold case is the latest in a growing list of serious crimes now being checked out in a new light as DNA evidence gives investigators previously untapped resources.

A man suspected of using a hammer to bludgeon four people to death in Colorado was advised Tuesday of the charges he faces more than three decades after the alleged crimes.

Alexander Christopher Ewing, also known as the Hammer Killer, appeared in Jefferson County District Court where he was read the six felony charges he faces there, including four counts of first-degree murder in connection to the killing of 50-year-old Patricia Smith. Ewing is also facing murder charges in Arapahoe County District Court in connection with the deaths of 27-year-old Bruce Bennett, his wife, 26-year-old Debra Bennet and their daughter, Melissa, 7.

Ewing appeared in a red jail uniform, with his hands shackled. A small man starting to bald, Ewing spoke only briefly in single-word answers to questions from the judge.

Smith’s family members sat in the front row and wiped away tears as Jefferson County Chief Deputy District Attorney Bob Weiner read through the charges Ewing faced.

Ewing, 59, had been imprisoned in Nevada since 1985 on an attempted murder conviction and fought his extradition to Colorado.

Investigators could not connect Ewing to the four 1984 Colorado killings until 2018 when DNA evidence tied him to the crimes. Colorado investigators had submitted DNA found at the scenes to a national database years ago, but the samples didn’t match anything until Nevada officials uploaded a sample from Ewing in the summer of 2018.

Ewing is suspected of raping and killing Smith in her Lakewood apartment and, six days later, killing the Bennetts in Aurora. The Bennett’s youngest daughter, Vanessa, who was 3 years old at the time, survived.

Ewing is eligible for the death penalty in both Colorado cases, though neither district attorney has made a decision whether to pursue it.

Colorado lawmakers last month passed a bill abolishing the death penalty, but the ban would only affect cases filed on or after July 1. The governor has yet to sign the bill, though he is expected to do so.

Ewing’s public defender, Katherine Spengler, argued multiple times during the court hearing Tuesday that Ewing should not face the death penalty because Colorado’s capital punishment law is unconstitutional. Prosecutors do not have to decide whether to pursue execution until after Ewing is arraigned.

Ewing’s preliminary hearing — where a judge will determine whether there is enough evidence to let the case continue in court — is scheduled for May 22.

TAMPA, Fla. — A Florida sheriff is asking for new leads in the disappearance of the former husband of a big cat sanctuary owner featured in the new Netflix series “Tiger King.”

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister posted on his personal Twitter account Monday that the popularity of the seven-part documentary made it a good time to ask for new leads in the 1997 disappearance of Jack “Don” Lewis. He was married to Carole Baskin, who runs Big Cat Rescue near Tampa.

Lewis went missing shortly before a planned business trip to Costa Rica, investigators said shortly after his disappearance. His van was found near a Pasco County airport. Deputies searched the wildlife sanctuary he ran with his wife, but he was never found in Florida nor Costa Rica.

“Tiger King” tells the story of an Oklahoma zookeeper named Joseph Maldonado-Passage, also known as “Joe Exotic,” who was sentenced to 22 years in federal prison this year after being convicted in an unsuccessful murder-for-hire plot against Baskin. He was upset that Baskin, an outspoken critic of him and his zoo, won a million-dollar civil judgment against him.

The documentary extensively covered Maldonado-Passage’s repeated accusations that Baskin killed her husband and possibly fed him to her tigers. Baskin has never been charged with any crime and released a statement refuting the accusations made in the series.

“Tiger King” quickly became Netfix’s top show following its March 20 release. The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office confirmed last week that the Lewis case is still active and open.

Advances in DNA technology allowed Jefferson County investigators to crack a 56-year-old cold case and identify a suspect in the killing of a teenage girl in her tent at a Girl Scouts camp.

Margaret “Peggy” Beck, 16, was sexually assaulted and strangled on Aug. 18, 1963, in her tent at the Flying G Ranch Girl Scouts Camp near Deckers, where she was a counselor. She was sleeping alone because her tentmate had gone to the infirmary. Although the nearest tent was 75 feet away, nobody interviewed by police recalled hearing or seeing anything.

Law enforcement collected scrapings from under Beck’s fingernails and submitted them for DNA testing, according to previous Denver Post reporting. Investigators created a DNA profile from the evidence in 2007 and submitted it to a national database, according to the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office. A more comprehensive profile was created in June 2019, and investigators were able to identify the suspect through genealogical research.

Colorado law enforcement have solved several other cold cases using similar tactics, including the 1981 killing of a teenage hitchhiker and the 1980 stabbing of a college student.

Jefferson County Sheriff’s Office officials are scheduled to identify Beck’s suspected killer at a news conference Thursday morning.

The Boulder County Sheriff’s Office said DNA evidence has identified a man who died in 2019 as the person who likely raped and murdered a 23-year-old Denver woman in 1970.

According to a release, Betty Lee Jones was found dead on March 9, 1970, by two Colorado Department of Transportation workers down an embankment on Colo. 128 near the Boulder and Jefferson county border.

Investigators said Jones, a mother of two, had been bound, sexually assaulted, strangled and shot.

Jones was last seen alive at her home in Denver the day before her body was found following an argument with her husband. Witnesses said Jones left the home and tried to flag down cars, eventually getting into a blue sedan.

The case was reopened in 2006 and DNA evidence found on Jones’ body was submitted to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, but it did not match any profiles in a national database or any known suspects, including Jones’ husband.

In 2019, the DNA was provided to a private lab, Bode Technologies, which was able to use genealogy to develop a family tree and narrow the suspect down to a Denver family.

A member of the family, Paul Leroy Martin, was found to have died in June 2019. His body was exhumed, and his DNA matched that of the profile found on Jones’ body.

Martin had no known link to Jones, but Martin’s family believed he drove a blue sedan.

“In addition to our sincere thanks to CBI, the FBI, and all the contributing scientists and investigators, I would like to personally thank Detective Steve Ainsworth for his diligent work and tenacity for solving this very cold case, which was so brutally committed,” Boulder Sheriff Joe Pelle said in a statement. “Steve has a long career, much of it dedicated to cold cases, and he does a wonderful job for these victims and their families.”

A probable cause statement was submitted to the Boulder County District Attorney’s Office on May 26, and a murder charge would have been filed had Martin been alive today.

“Every cold case homicide represents a tragic and unexplained loss,” Boulder County District Attorney Michael Dougherty said in a statement. “These victims deserve justice. Their families deserve answers and some form of closure, but the investigative trail has gone cold — unless and until someone like Detective Steve Ainsworth takes it up. Detective Ainsworth did an outstanding job working this case over many years. Today’s announcement by the Sheriff’s Office is the culmination of years of hard work by Steve Ainsworth and the investigative team.

“Because of their tireless efforts and perseverance as well as the recent advances in DNA analysis, if he were alive today, Paul Martin would be charged and prosecuted by the District Attorney’s Office for the tragic murder of Betty Jones. “

A young woman whose body was found in 1993 near a makeshift camp in the forest of Douglas County has finally been identified, the sheriff’s office announced Thursday. Now, the search for the person or people responsible for her death has reignited.

At a press conference at the Justice Center in Castle Rock on Thursday morning, Douglas County Sheriff Tony Spurlock said he was a deputy when her remains were first found and now, as a sheriff, considered it an honor to say her name out loud to the public: Rebecca Ann Redeker, known to her family as Becky.

On June 15, 1993, deputies were called out to the Rainbow Creek Falls area in the Pike San Isabel National Forest between Woodland Park and Deckers about a body found in the woods, according to the sheriff’s office. When deputies arrived, they found the body of a young woman and a makeshift campsite. Spurlock said investigators believe the woman had died within 72 hours of deputies finding her.

Detectives attempted to identify the woman and despite an extensive crime scene, they were unable to for years and the case went cold, Spurlock said.

In July 2020, Douglas County Det. Shannon Jenson received information that led to a positive identification, with the help of Douglas County Sheriff’s Office partner United Data Connect, Inc. The details about that piece of information remains under investigation.

Read the full story from our partner at thedenverchannel.com.

Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke said he will make a “major announcement” at 3 p.m. Tuesday in the 1984 cold-case disappearance and death of 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews.

The girl disappeared in 1984 in a case that captivated the region, drew national attention and baffled investigators for more than three decades.

On July 24, 2019, her remains were found in a rural field in Weld County. The following month, authorities announced a grand jury would investigate her death.

Jonelle was dropped off at her Greeley home on Dec. 20, 1984 after singing Christmas carols at a nursing home. She went inside, took off her shoes, turned on the TV and flipped on a space heater.  She answered the phone and took a message for her father, scrawling a note.

And then she was gone.

The now 35-year-long investigation into Jonelle’s disappearance began at about 9:30 p.m. that night, when her father came home to find the house lights on and the TV on — but Jonelle gone. He called police right away.

Over the years, the case took many turns. Immediately, authorities found footprints around the house. The friend and her father who dropped Jonelle off at her home that night told police they’d noticed the garage door had been open.

Thousands of missing person posters were printed, a $5,000 reward was offered. More than 600 volunteers searched 4,000 square miles in Weld County. In March of 1985, President Ronald Reagan mentioned the case during a speech about missing children.

Ten years after Jonelle disappeared, her family had her declared legally dead. In 1997, the girl’s birth mother — Jonelle had been adopted at one month old — contacted Jonelle’s parents and asked about reconnecting with the girl, unaware she’d been missing for 15 years.

In September 2019, a former candidate for Idaho governor said he was under investigation in the 12-year-old’s killing. Steve Pankey claimed he was shocked when authorities searched his home, and said he cooperated with them, giving his DNA and a polygraph test.

The man accused of bludgeoning four people to death in Colorado with a hammer in 1984 will not face the death penalty.

Alexander Ewing, 60, instead faces life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years for each of the first-degree murder counts he is charged with. Ewing is accused of killing 50-year-old Patricia Louise Smith in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984, and then killing Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa six days later in Aurora. The couple’s 3-year-old daughter survived the attack.

The killings were two in a spree of hammer attacks in the area that rattled residents and went unsolved for more than three decades, with the suspect dubbed the “Hammer Killer.”

Ewing was arrested in August 1984 and sentenced to 40 years in prison for two attempted murders in Nevada, but he was not connected to the Colorado killings until 2018, when his DNA was matched to DNA at the crime scenes. He was in prison when he was charged with the Colorado killings.

Although Colorado abolished the death penalty this year, defendants who were charged before July 1 are still eligible for capital punishment, although experts told the Denver Post a death sentence at this point would be a largely symbolic move.

First Judicial District Attorney Peter Weir in August declared that he would not seek the death penalty against Ewing in Smith’s killing, saying in a court filing that it was “not a lawful sentencing option” because of a lack of aggravating factors necessary to warrant a death sentence.

In the 18th Judicial District, where Ewing faces the charges related to the slaying of the Bennett family, Chief Judge Michelle Amico ruled Friday that Ewing could not face the death penalty.

In her ruling, Amico found that the state’s 1984 death penalty statute violated the Colorado constitution and was therefore invalid. Ewing’s case falls under the 1984 law because of when the crimes occurred, she wrote in the 21-page order.

Ewing appeared in court in Arapahoe County Monday and pleaded not guilty to killing the Bennetts. A trial date was tentatively set for mid-April. A date for trial in Jefferson County has not yet been set.

Forty-seven years ago on this day, a Colorado State Patrol trooper was shot to death in his patrol car — and the killer was never caught.

Denver police on Sunday called for anyone with information about the killing of Trooper Thomas Carpenter to come forward as the department’s cold case unit still works to solve the case.

Carpenter, 31, was shot on Dec. 27, 1973, after he apparently was kidnapped by two men who’d been with a stopped car along the side of U.S. 36 near Broadway.

Thomas spotted the car and pulled up to it sometime before 10 a.m., but did not make a radio report that he was pulling over. He either intended to help a stranded motorist or he saw something suspicious.

The vehicle on the side of the road turned out to have been stolen. Witnesses later told investigators they saw Carpenter driving his patrol vehicle with two men in the back, one white, one Black.

At 9:58 a.m., Carpenter was dispatched to a crash at East 58th Avenue and Interstate 25, but told the dispatcher that he was at Interstate 70 and Havana Street at the time — several miles away from the area he was supposed to patrol.

Six minutes later, the dispatcher called again, and Carpenter tersely responded that he was on his way.

Not long after that, he was found shot to death in his car, parked behind an apartment complex at 13870 Albrook Drive in Montbello. He’d been shot in the head from behind. Witnesses said they’d seen two men running from the car.

No arrests were ever made in his killing. His gun was found two years later in a ditch in New Mexico.

Carpenter was a married father of three who had been a state trooper for about five years when he was killed. He was a religious man who did not drink alcohol, and was well-regarded by his colleagues.

“Thomas Carpenter was a devoted husband, father and trooper,” said Col. Matthew Packard, chief of the Colorado State Patrol. “Someone must know something about the murder of Trooper Carpenter. We are pleading that anyone with information, even if it seems insignificant, to please call the Denver police so that the family can receive closure in this case.”

I am a lifelong conservative Republican whose faith in the criminal justice system was shattered by my near-death experience with it. I came within nine days of being sent to the gas chamber for a crime I did not commit.

You could say I’m living proof of why people should not trust their government with the death penalty.

My nightmare started in 1974 when three friends and I were falsely accused of sexually mutilating and killing a student at the University of New Mexico. We were all sentenced to death in 1974.

The state had no proof — no weapon, no forensic evidence — just poorly run lie detector tests on all four of us and an alleged witness. Even when that witness later recanted, the judge refused to grant us a new trial.

It was only after the real killer confessed that we were exonerated, and that happened in the nick of time. My execution had been scheduled, and the assistant warden had asked what I wanted for my last meal.

How could this happen?

This was an abuse of government power, and it happens more often than you might think. In our case the main witness had been coerced to lie at the trial. Also, the murder weapon — nowhere to be seen during the trial — was later found inside the local sheriff’s safe. It had been hidden from the defense and traced to a law enforcement officer who ended up confessing.

Yet our story is not unique. We are among 173 people nationwide to be freed from death sentences because of wrongful convictions.

Although the Trump administration resumed federal executions, there has been a trend of conservative Republicans at the state level rethinking the death penalty. They do so because they believe in limited government, fiscal responsibility and the value of human life.

As Republican State Sen. Owen Hill of Denver put it, “It is against the natural order for one created in the image of God to willfully take the life of another created in the image of God.”

There are also powerful financial arguments. The death penalty costs far more money than its alternatives such as life without parole, according to numerous studies in many states over a lot of years. In fact, death penalty trials, and there are always two — one to determine guilt or innocence and one to decide a sentence — have caused some municipalities to almost go bankrupt, while others have been forced to pass tax increases.

The death penalty is just another wasteful, big government program. The 25 states that still have the death penalty — eight of them in the West — are wasting resources that could be used to make communities safer by solving cold cases or providing more tools to law enforcement.

Take Wyoming as one example. Since the state passed its death penalty law in 1977, Wyoming has carried out one execution, and today it does not have a single death row inmate. However, the state continues to spend at least $750,000 each year on a capital defense fund to train attorneys to handle death penalty cases that rarely ever come to them. It is no wonder that the overwhelmingly Republican Wyoming legislature came just a few votes shy of repealing the death penalty in 2019, and hopes are high they will finish the job this year.

New Mexico, where I was sentenced to death, repealed the sentence in 2009, and last year, Colorado ended capital punishment, thanks to three GOP state senators who made the crucial difference. In fact, no state west of Texas has held an execution in more than 10 years, and 2020 was another record low for new death sentences with only six total in all Western states. That’s down from a high of 72 death sentences in the West in 1982.

Another encouraging sign of change has just arrived with the filing of a death penalty repeal bill in the U.S. Congress, albeit a Democratic proposal with no GOP sponsors, yet.

As someone who barely survived an encounter with the criminal justice system, I call upon all who share my values to get rid of the death penalty once and for all.

And that last meal? It was going to be macaroni and cheese, just like my mother used to make. After I was released from death row I sometimes ate mac and cheese three times a day.

Ron Keine is a contributor to Writers on the Range, writersontherange.org, a nonprofit dedicated to spurring lively conversation about the West. He is a member of the board of directors of Witness to Innocence, a small nonprofit working to end the death penalty.

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A Colorado man is in custody in connection to the 1982 deaths of two young women near Breckenridge.

Alan Lee Phillips, 70, of Dumont, was arrested for investigation on murder charges in the killings of Annette Schnee, 21, and Barbara “Bobbi Jo” Oberholtzer, 29, who went missing Jan. 6, 1982.

Court records said Phillips also faces charges of kidnapping and assault with a deadly weapon in each case. The offense date on Phillips’ case matches the date Schnee and Oberholtzer went missing, and the Park County Combined Court confirmed that Schnee and Oberholtzer are listed as the victims.

Phillips’ arrest marks one step toward closure for the families of Oberholtzer and Schnee, 39 years after they died.

The two women had no apparent connection to each other, but both worked in Breckenridge and were believed to be hitchhiking home when they disappeared.

Read the full story here.

A lifetime ago on a Sunday night, Connie Bennett taught her 7-year-old granddaughter to pick out a melody on a chord organ, an early birthday gift she’d nabbed from a thrift store for the girl, who’d turn 8 in two days.

Melissa Bennett seemed to enjoy the instrument, and when Connie headed home around 9 p.m. that night, she thought she’d visit again and give more lessons if Melissa stayed interested.

But after Connie left that night, someone armed with a hammer entered the family’s Aurora home and killed Melissa, her mother Debra Bennett, 26, and her father Bruce Bennett, 27. The family’s youngest daughter, 3-year-old Vanessa Bennett, was brutally attacked but survived.

Connie discovered her son’s body the next morning, on Jan. 16, 1984. The day before Melissa’s birthday.

“Thirty-seven-and-a-half years ago,” Connie, now 87, said Wednesday. “But it doesn’t seem like that long ago, because it’s so vivid in my mind.”

Now, nearly four decades after the family’s slaying — part of a spree of attacks by the so-called “Hammer Killer” during a 12-day span that spread fear across the Denver region — a suspect is finally being brought to trial.

Alex Ewing, 60, was charged with first-degree murder in the Bennett family killing in 2018, after his DNA was matched to genetic material collected from the crime scenes at the Bennetts’ home.

His DNA also was found in the Lakewood home of Patricia Smith, 50, who was killed six days earlier. That separate case is set for trial in October.

Ewing’s trial in the Bennett killings will begin Friday in Douglas County with jury selection; opening statements are expected Tuesday. Ewing, who fought extradition to Colorado, has pleaded not guilty and is represented by public defenders; their office did not return a request for comment Thursday.

Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney John Kellner declined to comment on the upcoming trial.

For Connie, who expects to testify about discovering her son’s body, the trial offers a chance to find some peace after a lifetime of struggling with the fallout from the killings.

“At least we’ll know who it was, and it will be over,” she said. “All I want in my older years is some peace and quiet and some tranquility of some kind.”

“A lot of nightmares”

The Bennetts were dressed for bed when they were attacked.

Investigators allege Ewing entered the home, perhaps through an open garage door, and killed Bruce, who he encountered just outside the master bedroom, perhaps because Bruce had gotten up to investigate a noise, or to chase Ewing out of the bedroom.

A blood trail led from the hallway outside the bedroom to the downstairs living room, where Bruce’s body was found.

Debra was attacked in bed. She was pushed or fell to the bedroom floor, and died there. Both parents were bludgeoned with a hammer, and the attacker also used a knife. Bloody bootprints were found throughout the house.

Melissa was killed and sexually assaulted in the bedroom she shared with her sister. Vanessa was found in bed, clinging to life beside a blood-soaked teddy bear. She was hospitalized in a coma with serious facial injuries that left her paralyzed on her left side, Connie said.

“It’s affected her in so many ways, not only physically but emotionally,” Connie said. “It made it very difficult for her to lead a normal life… She doesn’t really remember anything about the initial attack, but over the years she had a lot of nightmares.”

The family’s slaying was part of a string of hammer attacks in January 1984 that former Aurora police Chief Nick Metz said “shocked the conscience of our community.”

In addition to the fatal attack on the Bennetts and Smith, a 28-year-old woman was bludgeoned nearly to death and sexually assaulted after she pulled into her Aurora garage on Jan. 9, 1984. Days earlier, on Jan. 4, 1984, someone slipped inside an Aurora home and used a hammer to beat a couple, who both survived.

By the time the Bennetts were killed days later, authorities believed one attacker was responsible for the spree, and they went to great lengths to secure evidence in the killings. They cut out a section of concrete floor to preserve a shoeprint. They collected a piece of carpet from under Melissa’s body, and a comforter on the girl’s bed. Those pieces of evidence would turn out to hold the key to an arrest — but not until years later, when DNA technology improved.

Connie raised Vanessa after the killings, and for years feared the killer would come back. She installed an alarm system. Looked sideways at people in the grocery store. Asked one of her surviving sons to move in with her. She declined to talk to TV news reporters or put Vanessa’s picture on the news.

“From ‘84, all those years, it was very difficult not knowing who it was,” she said. “…It makes you feel afraid all the time.”

“DNA, that’s a miracle”

As it turns out, Ewing was imprisoned just months after the killings, after he beat a couple nearly to death with an ax handle in Nevada in August 1984 and was sentenced to 40 years in prison for attempted murder. He could have been eligible for parole this year, if DNA had not connected him to the Colorado killings.

In 2001, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation was able to establish a DNA profile from semen collected from the carpet and comforter in the Bennett sisters’ bedroom.

But investigators didn’t find a match until 2018, when Ewing’s DNA was uploaded into a national database, five years after Nevada enacted a state law that required mandatory DNA collection for people convicted of certain crimes.

His DNA almost immediately matched with the evidence in the Colorado killings.

“When it’s a random attack like that, it’s difficult to tie anyone to it,” Connie said. “DNA, that’s a miracle. To me, it just means that there is a God.”

She still struggles to speak about the details of the attack, and chokes up when she thinks of the assault and murder of Melissa, whom she said was a “sweet little girl.” Debra was a family-focused woman who enjoyed spending time with her aunts in Lakewood, Connie said. She was more outgoing than her husband, Bruce, a Navy veteran who was quieter and easygoing.

“I just want to get it done and get a resolution on this,” Connie said. “There is nothing that can change anything. But I think there has to be some kind of justice. It’s not really, fully justice. It isn’t. Because they’re gone. And you can’t bring them back.”

One person could not have carried out the 1984 slaying of an Aurora family singlehandedly, a defense attorney for suspect Alex Ewing argued during opening statements in his murder trial Tuesday in Arapahoe County.

Ewing, 60, is standing trial for first-degree murder in the 1984 killings of the Bennett family, including parents Debra, 26, and Bruce, 27, as well as their 7-year-old daughter Melissa, who was also raped. The family’s youngest child, 3-year-old Vanessa Bennett, was severely attacked but survived.

Prosecutors allege Ewing used a hammer and a knife to slay the family, brutally bludgeoning his victims throughout the house. But public defender Stephen McCrohan said the evidence in the case — including fingerprints found in the home that don’t belong to Ewing or the family — points to more than one attacker.

McCrohan argued that the evidence of multiple attackers meant investigators ignored key evidence that points to another person, and said that undermines the prosecution’s entire case.

“One person really couldn’t have done this,” McCrohan said. “Not to say Alex Ewing and someone else did this, but to say that this simplistic version that the prosecution needs you to believe doesn’t even match what their own crime scene says.”

During his opening statements, 18th Judicial District Attorney John Kellner focused on two key pieces of evidence that tie Ewing to the case — DNA collected from a comforter and carpet at the crime scene matched with Ewing’s DNA, he told the jury.

“What that evidence will establish beyond a reasonable doubt is that this defendant is guilty of the murders of Bruce and Debra Bennett, and he is guilty of the violent rape and murder of 7-year-old Melissa Bennett,” he said. “We will ask you at the conclusion of this case to return a verdict that supports the truth, is supported by the evidence and the law: Find this defendant guilty of each and every single charge.”

The attack on the Bennett family on the night of Jan. 15, 1984, was one of a spree of similar attacks by what the so-called “Hammer Killer” in the Denver region during a 12-day span that raised alarm across the metro area. Also killed in the spree was 50-year-old Patricia Smith, who was attacked with a hammer on Jan. 10, 1984, at her Lakewood home.

Ewing is also charged with Smith’s murder, and that case is set for trial in October.

Investigators found Ewing’s DNA at both crime scenes, Kellner said Tuesday. McCrohan said that another person’s DNA was found on the handle of the hammer used to killed Smith, as well as on her clothing. He went on to suggest that authorities stopped testing evidence in the Bennett case for DNA after authorities found that evidence in the Smith case.

“All of these things could have been tested, should have been tested — weren’t tested,” he said.

In addition to the fatal attack on the Bennetts and Smith, a 28-year-old woman was bludgeoned nearly to death and sexually assaulted after she pulled into her Aurora garage on Jan. 9, 1984. Days earlier, on Jan. 4, 1984, someone slipped inside an Aurora home and used a hammer to beat a couple, who both survived.

Ewing has not been charged in connection with those cases.

An Arapahoe County jury on Friday found Alex Ewing guilty of murder in the horrific 1984 killings of a 7-year-old girl and her parents in Aurora — an emotional moment of justice nearly 40 years in the making.

The guilty verdicts on six all counts, which came after the jury had reached an initial impasse Thursday, is the culmination of a 37-year odyssey for the Bennett family, and another example of new DNA evidence reviving a cold case from decades ago.

“A weight was lifted off today,” an emotional Connie Bennett said after the verdict. The mother of Bruce Bennett, 27, and grandmother of 7-year-old Melissa Bennett — all killed in the 1984 home invasion, along with Debra Bennett, 26 — the 87-year-old admitted she’s “very happy it’s all over.”

“We’ve been waiting a long time for this,” Bennett said.

Ewing, 60, was charged with three counts of first-degree murder and three counts of felony murder in the Bennett family’s slaying, one in a string of seemingly random attacks across metro Denver that terrified residents during a two-week span in early 1984.

The perpetrator of the grisly crimes became known as the “Hammer Killer.”

Bennett is scheduled to be sentenced Aug. 17 to life in prison with the possibility of parole in 20 years.

Prosecutors allege Ewing used a hammer and a knife to kill Debra and Bruce Bennett, and their daughter, who also was raped. The couple’ss youngest daughter, 3-year-old Vanessa Bennett, was severely injured but survived the Aurora home invasion.

After the guilty verdict came down, family members hugged in the courtroom, tears streaming down some of their faces.

Eighteenth Judicial District Attorney John Kellner has been working on this case since he was part of the nascent cold case unit eight years ago.

“When we first looked at it, we thought that it was likely that the killer was long gone,” he said. “And we didn’t have much hope then. But science and progress keeps marching on.”

Authorities were stumped for decades by the horrific killings, but DNA evidence in 2018 blew the case open. Investigators were able to match Ewing to semen collected from the carpet and comforter in the Bennett sisters’ bedroom, giving prosecutors a key piece of evidence as they levied charges and tried this case.

“I hope that this case is a testament to all those who have lost someone, and are waiting and hoping,” Kellner said after the verdict.

Prior to the verdict being read, Ewing’s attorneys attempted to have the case declared a mistrial, arguing Friday that the jurors were coerced by being forced to deliberate a second straight day after reaching an impasse Thursday evening.

The judge, however, denied the request.

During closing arguments, Ewing’s attorneys argued that one person could not have carried out this crime, and that the prosecution’s evidence had been tainted over the years.

Ewing already was serving a 40-year sentence in Nevada for attempted murder after beating a couple nearly to death with an ax handle in August 1984, just months after the Bennets were found dead in Aurora.

He was extradited to Colorado after the Nevada Supreme Court ruled the move was warranted.

Ewing also stands trial in October in the killing of 50-year-old Patricia Smith, who was attacked at her Lakewood home with a hammer six days before Bennett slayings.

On a frigid January night in 1984, Kim Rice woke to a flash of pain and sat up in bed to see a stranger’s silhouette, his arm raised to strike another blow with a hammer.

She screamed, and the stranger threw the hammer at her and fled. Rice’s then-husband, in bed beside her, had been attacked, too. Despite suffering a skull fracture, he chased after the intruder, racing out into the snow to try to follow the stranger’s footsteps.

Inside their Aurora home, there was blood on the walls, the mirror, the curtains, the ceiling. It was wet on Rice’s face as she called 911.

The home invasion was the first of four attacks during a 12-day spree by the so-called “Hammer Killer” in January 1984 that ended with the slaughter of three members of the Bennett family in Aurora.

Police believed one attacker was responsible, but they didn’t identify a suspect for nearly four decades. By the time DNA tied 61-year-old Alex Ewing to the spree, it was too late for authorities to prosecute him for the assault on Rice and her now ex-husband.

The statute of limitations, which sets the deadline by which a crime must be prosecuted, had passed. Rice’s case would never go to court.

But there’s no statute of limitations on murder, and when Ewing stood trial this summer for killing the Bennett family, Rice was there. She sought some sort of closure, some vicarious justice.

She stared at Ewing as he sat shackled to the floor. Prosecutors believed he was the man who’d smashed a hammer into her head, the man who’d given her a concussion in her own bed, but she harbored some doubt.

“I wanted to go because I was still looking for some truth to the fact that this was tied in,” said Rice, who still lives in Colorado.

Long road to justice

Five days after Rice was attacked, someone bludgeoned and raped a 28-year-old woman in Aurora after she pulled into her garage. The day after that, 50-year-old Patricia Smith was killed with a hammer at her home in Lakewood.

Then five days later, 27-year-old Bruce Bennett, 26-year-old Debra Bennett and their daughter, 7-year-old Melissa Bennett, were killed by an attacker wielding a hammer. Melissa’s 3-year-old sister was brutally attacked but survived.

“It wasn’t until the Bennetts that they started to tie all this together,” Rice said.

Police realized the attacks followed a similar pattern. For both Rice and the Bennetts, investigators believed the suspect entered through an open garage door.

As authorities realized the connections, the media descended, Rice said. Reporters came to her house, reported on Rice and her then-husband’s trip to a gun store. The case riveted the region.

“What was scary is they showed our address and our house and everything on the TV, and we had two copycat, two attempted break-ins,” she said.

But after a rush of initial activity and significant investigation, the case went quiet. There were no more attacks, no suspects.

After her assault, Rice was shaky and frightened. She tried to avoid her garage. She’d park in it and race into the house. She easily became afraid, sometimes just by driving home alone at night. She suffered migraines that started at the site of the hammer’s blow, at the scar on the top of her head.

“Years would pass where I wouldn’t think about it, and then something would happen to remind me of it,” she said. “I would get pretty shaky, I would lose sleep over it.”

She became consumed with ensuring her garage door was locked. If she spotted any home with an open garage door, she’d go knock on the front door and tell the residents to close it.

She still does that today.

“It was just one of those things where, if my door had been closed, he wouldn’t have chosen us,” she said.

Over time, Rice convinced herself that the attacker was dead. So it was a shock when, in 2018, investigators called her into a meeting and told her that they believed the man who attacked her was alive, and in prison. That he’d be charged with murder.

“I didn’t expect it to come to anything after all these years,” she said.

And in some ways, for Rice, it didn’t — the statute of limitations had expired, so there was nothing prosecutors could do about her case, which Rice said she understood.

The current statute of limitations on most felony cases in Colorado is three years, although the time allowed for prosecution is much longer for some charges, like sexual assault, which has a 20-year window. The statute of limitations on sex assault charges was doubled in 2016 amid the claims against Bill Cosby, after women spoke up about why it took them years to report the alleged assaults.

Ray Harlan, chairman of the nonprofit Colorado Victims for Justice, said lawmakers should consider revisiting the statute of limitations on other charges, too, pointing out that it’s easier today to preserve evidence than in the past.

“The rules about statutes of limitations were written in an era with totally different technology,” he said. “…Historically, evidence rooms and evidence lockers would only hold so much stuff, and eventually you had to get rid of the things least likely to ever be used. So you get rid of plaster casts of tire tracks and footprints — but what if you scan those plaster casts and put them in a server? Then they last forever.”

Judgment day

Rice attended the murder trial for the Bennett family in July with some trepidation. She wasn’t sure she belonged there. It wasn’t her case.

But she soon found she shared a connection with the Bennett family’s relatives, who welcomed her, even insisting she join them for lunch at times during the lengthy trial.

“It’s a camaraderie, you know, that you don’t want to have,” she said. “But at least it gives you some warm feeling, because the people in my life, you know, they didn’t know what was going on there.”

As the trial wore on, Rice became certain that Ewing was responsible for her own attack as well as the Bennetts’ killings. After Ewing was convicted of their murders, she wrote the judge a victim impact statement. At sentencing, Ewing’s defense attorney objected — she was not a victim in this case, he said, and so should not be allowed to submit a statement.

District Judge Darren Vahle dismissed the concern.

“I saw the judge smile and he looked right at me, and I just felt this inclusiveness,” Rice said.

When Vahle went on to sentence Ewing to three life sentences, calling Ewing an “abomination” who inflicted an “unspeakable orgy of violence” on the community, Rice found her closure. The judge said everything she wanted to say. She left the courtroom in tears.

“I couldn’t stop crying,” she said. “I wasn’t thinking good, bad or indifferent, I was just trying to get control.”

A weight had been lifted, she said. And although Ewing is set to stand trial in Jefferson County in the killing of Patrica Smith in October, Rice has no intention of attending that trial. She’s ready to be done, to put it all to rest.

“I can honestly say,” she said, “I’ve never slept quite as good.”

The Idaho man accused of kidnapping and killing 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews in 1984 will stand trial this month on murder charges almost four decades after the girl disappeared from her Greeley home and was never seen alive again.

The five-week murder trial for Steven Pankey, 70, begins with jury selection Wednesday, 37 years after Jonelle’s mysterious disappearance gripped the region. Pankey is accused of forcing Jonelle from her home at gunpoint on Dec. 20, 1984, and then killing her.

He was charged with first-degree murder in 2020, following the discovery of Jonelle’s body and decades of bizarre behavior on his part that led authorities to suspect him in the killing. Over the years, he claimed to have knowledge of the crime and he repeatedly inserted himself into the investigation, according to an indictment filed against him.

Jonelle disappeared five days before Christmas in 1984, after she returned home from singing carols at a nursing home as part of a middle school choir concert. She got a ride home from a friend’s parent, arrived to an empty house and went inside around 8:30 p.m. She took off her shoes and turned on the TV. She switched on a space heater and answered the phone, jotting down a message for her father.

When Jonelle’s father arrived home about an hour later — he’d been out watching Jonelle’s sister’s high school basketball game — the house’s lights and TV were on and Jonelle’s stockings were on the couch. Everything looked normal, except Jonelle was gone.

Although there were no signs of a struggle, police quickly suspected foul play. They discovered footprints in the snow around the family’s home. Massive searches were organized for Jonelle. A $5,000 reward for her return was offered and detectives followed thousands of leads, even as time passed and hope faded that she’d be found alive. Jonelle’s photo was put on flyers and sent to 4,000 stores across the country. President Ronald Reagan mentioned her during a speech about missing children in 1985.

Still, Jonelle’s body was not found until 2019, when construction crews discovered the girl’s remains buried in a rural area of Weld County — she was wearing the same clothes she’d disappeared in and had been shot in the forehead.

Pankey lived two miles away from Jonelle around the time she went missing, and about 10 miles from the spot her body was eventually found. He attended the same church as her family and was known to watch children at her middle school as they walked home from school, according to the indictment.

Just two days after Jonelle disappeared, Pankey took a surprise road trip to California. On the drive home, he listened to the radio obsessively for news on Jonelle, his ex-wife told authorities. Then he “started digging” in the backyard, and a couple days later, a car on his property “burst into flames,” and Pankey got rid of the vehicle, according to the indictment.

Pankey knew that a rake had been used to obscure footprints at the crime scene, according to the indictment, and that information was never revealed to the public. Authorities have not indicated a motive for the attack and have not said if Jonelle was sexually assaulted.

As early as 1999, Pankey sought out immunity deals with law enforcement in exchange for revealing information he had on the killing, wrote letters to police outlining his alibi and wrote filings in court cases that discussed Jonelle, according to the indictment.

He became an official person of interest in the case in 2018, and in 2019 Pankey went public with that fact, telling the Idaho Statesman newspaper he was cooperating and innocent.

Pankey twice ran unsuccessfully for governor of Idaho, as a Constitution Party candidate in 2014 and again as a Republican in the 2018 primary.

His trial is expected to last into early November.

Steven Pankey’s decades-long fixation on the 1984 disappearance of Greeley’s 12-year-old Jonelle Matthews is at the center of the murder case against him.

Whether that fixation is evidence of guilt or merely a true-crime obsession will be decided by a Weld County jury at the end of an approximately five-week trial that began with opening statements Wednesday.

Pankey, 70, is charged with first-degree murder and kidnapping in Jonelle’s death. The girl disappeared while she was briefly home alone on Dec. 20, 1984. Her body was not discovered until 2019; she’d been shot in the forehead and buried in a remote, sandy field.

There is no DNA evidence in the case, Weld County District Attorney Michael Rourke told the jury during opening statements.

“What you will hear,” he said, “is the type of evidence older than time itself. Statements. Statements by the defendant himself. Statements and behavior that will lead you to one conclusion — that he is the individual we have been looking for for 35 years.”

But Pankey’s defense attorney, Anthony Viorst, said Pankey had nothing to do with Jonelle’s killing and theorized to the jury that another man whose mother lived across the street from the Matthews family carried out the killing.

Viorst said Pankey became obsessed with Jonelle’s case because he is a “true crime junkie,” and that he involved himself in the investigation out of an inflated sense of self-importance. Pankey lives with Asperger syndrome, which changes the way he processes information, Viorst said. He called Pankey “a little crazy” and said he tells ”white lies.”

Aside from Jonelle’s case, Pankey previously claimed to be involved in a separate murder in the 1970s, Viorst said, but he was not involved and someone else was convicted of the crime.

“Steve Pankey is a busy body,” Viorst said. “He gets into people’s business. I’m not here to say that’s a great quality, but that’s who he is. He gets in the middle of things. And when it comes to these true crime situations, he’s particularly interested and he gets particularly involved.”

Pankey was home with his family when Jonelle went missing, Viorst said, and he did not own a gun at the time. But starting just weeks after the disappearance, Pankey for years claimed to have information about the case and sought immunity in exchange for sharing that information with police.

The day after Jonelle disappeared, Pankey took his then-wife and child on a surprise road trip to California to visit family. On the drive back, he listened to the radio obsessively for information about the girl’s case, Rourke said. When they arrived home, he drove his wife to a grocery store, asked her to pick up the last few days’ newspapers, and then had her read aloud, in the car, all of the stories about Jonelle. Over the next few days, he dug in his front yard and a car on his property burst into flames, Rourke said.

Within weeks, Pankey went to the FBI, claimed he was a minister (he was not) and said he’d learned information about the killing through a pastoral confession. The FBI dismissed the claims as unimportant, Rourke said. But it was the start of a decades-long obsession for Pankey.

Data downloaded from Pankey’s electronic devices shows he conducted thousands of online searches on Jonelle’s case. In August 2019, a month after Jonelle’s body was discovered, he clicked on a news article that noted there was no DNA in the case, Rourke said.

“Two days later he voluntarily picks up the phone and says, ‘I want to voluntarily give my DNA’ — after he knows there is no DNA in this case.”

Viorst told the jury that a man named Norris Drake was the actual killer of Jonelle. Drake’s mother lived across the street from the family, and he’d visited for dinner on the night Jonelle disappeared, Viorst said. He said a witness described Drake leaving his mother’s house around the time Jonelle was home alone, and not returning until early the next morning.

Drake was known to have a sexual interest in young girls, Viorst said, suggesting that Drake lured Jonelle out of her house — perhaps gaining her trust by saying he was the son of her neighbor — and then killed her. Drake, who is dead, was never charged with Jonelle’s kidnapping or murder.

Jonelle’s father, Jim Matthews, was the first witness to take the stand Wednesday. He described his daughter, who was adopted, as an outgoing girl.

“Strong-willed, (she) liked the attention, had lots of friends,” he said. “If Jonelle was in the room, you knew she was in the room. And (she was) very proud of her Latino background. And just a very lively young lady.”

One day in and Alex Ewing’s second trial in connection with a series of brutal 1984 hammer attacks is already over.

A Jefferson County judge on Wednesday morning declared a mistrial after granting a defense motion requesting Ewing undergo a competency evaluation, Colorado’s state court administrators tweeted. The defense’s motion is sealed so it’s not clear what triggered the request, officials said.

A competency evaluation is a mental health assessment to determine how much defendants understand about the charges against them and their court proceedings.

Ewing, 61, was standing trial in Colorado for the second time since August, this time in connection with the brutal killing of 50-year-old Patricia Smith in her Lakewood home 37 years ago. Ewing was found guilty in August in the slayings of three members of the Bennett family in Aurora, which also took place in 1984.

An Arapahoe County judge in August sentenced Ewing to three consecutive life sentences.

During opening statements Tuesday, prosecutors harped on numerous similarities between the Bennett killings and Smith’s death, arguing that the crimes — which came six days apart — could only have been committed by the same person.

Ewing’s defense attorney countered that evidence had been contaminated over the years and that some of the DNA evidence didn’t match Ewing.

Stan Garnett, Boulder County’s former district attorney, said in an ideal world, competency evaluations take place long before a jury is seated for a trial and witnesses are lined up to testify. But mental health issues can develop at any time, he said.

“You’d have to imagine something pretty significant happened to cause competency to occur,” Garnett said.

People v. Ewing: The Court has granted the defense motion for a competency evaluation. A mistrial has been declared.

— CO Courts (@CoCourts) October 20, 2021

A cold case victim, known for 37 years as Horseshoe Harriet, of a serial killer in Alaska has been positively identified as a Colorado native.

Robin Pelkey, who was born in 1963, was identified in September as a victim of serial killer Robert Hansen, the Alaska Department of Public Safety announced on Friday.

Pelkey was 19 at the time of her murder and no record was found reporting her missing, according to an ADPS news release. Records do reflect that Pelkey was living in Anchorage in the early 1980s when Hansen was raping and murdering women.

Before positive DNA genealogy identification, Pelkey was known as Horsehoe Harriet because her unidentified body was found near Horseshoe Lake north of Anchorage, according to Alaska Public Media.

Hansen was arrested in October 1983 by Alaska State Troopers. In February 1984, Hansen pleaded guilty to four murders. He eventually admitted to murdering 17 women, the release said, and he accompanied investigators on helicopter flights to point out grave sites.

“I would like to thank all of the troopers, investigators, and analysts that have diligently worked on this case over the last 37 years. Without their hard work and tenacity, the identity of Ms. Pelkey may have never been known,” said Commissioner James Cockrell in the ADPS release.

Hansen died on Aug. 21, 2014, in an Anchorage hospital at age 75. He was serving a 461-year prison sentence at the time of his death, according to The Washington Post.

Pelkey’s surviving family “requested that they not be contacted directly while they come to grips with this heartbreaking news,” according to the release. A new grave marker identifying Pelkey’s final resting place in Anchorage Memorial Park Cemetery has been purchased.

GREELEY — Jurors started deliberating Tuesday in the trial of a former longshot Idaho gubernatorial candidate charged with murder in the death of a 12-year-old Colorado girl who disappeared in 1984.

Suspect Steve Pankey was a neighbor of Jonelle Matthews and her family when she vanished after being dropped off at her empty home by a family friend after performing at a Christmas concert in Greeley.

Pankey emerged as person of interest in the case three decades later — shortly before Jonelle’s body was found in 2019 — after claiming to have information about what happened to her, allegedly knowing details that had not been made public and asking for immunity from prosecution.

Pankey is a paranoid true crime junkie who took an interest in the case, as well as other slayings, and testified to lying to investigators about having information about it, his lawyer, Anthony Viorst, told jurors during closing arguments.

Despite being dishonest and behaving like a “jerk” to his ex-wife, Angela Hicks, and others, Pankey did not kill the girl, Viorst said.

“Jerk? Guilty as charged. Murderer? Not guilty,” said Viorst, who said Pankey was diagnosed with Asperger syndrome, which Viorst previously said causes Pankey to process information differently and get involved in matters, especially true crime cases, to prove his “self importance.”

Lacking physical evidence, the prosecution relied heavily on testimony from Hicks, who said that Pankey unexpectedly announced the night that Jonelle disappeared that they were leaving to visit family in California early the next day.

Pankey on the return trip home insisted on listening to news reports about the girl’s disappearance on the radio and instead of heading directly home after the long trip drove past it to buy newspapers with stories about the case, Assistant District Attorney Robb Miller told jurors during closing arguments.

“Don’t let this self-proclaimed master manipulator manipulate you,” said Miller.

Viorst discounted Hicks’ testimony, saying she only started talking with authorities about Pankey’s suspected involvement in 1999, when she sought a divorce. Viorst also tried to generate reasonable doubt about his client’s involvement by raising the possibility of an alternate suspect.

Pankey took the stand last week, delivering sometimes rambling testimony. He said he pretended to know information about the case out of bitterness for police and because of his former church and former employer, both of which he wanted investigated.

He spoke about being bullied for being bisexual and his hatred of racist police officers from his time working on an ambulance in California. In one example, he spoke about withholding treatment from an injured sheriff’s deputy who was crying in pain because of his view of police.

Prosecutors said Pankey kept up to date on the case throughout the years even as he moved his family to several states before settling in Idaho where he ran unsuccessfully as a Constitution Party candidate for Idaho governor in 2014 and in the Republican gubernatorial primary in 2018, the year that authorities said he was named as a person of interest in the girl’s death.

Jonelle was considered missing until workers digging a pipeline in a rural area near Greeley in July 2019 discovered human remains matching her dental records.

Her death was then ruled a homicide. She died from a single gunshot wound to the head, prosecutors said.

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