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.”
