A string of brutal hammer attacks stretching from a Green Mountain townhouse to the Aurora home of a young family over the span of 12 days in January 1984 terrified residents across the Denver area and sent law enforcement on a frantic search for the ruthless killer.
The unidentified suspect had such an overpowering lust for violence that investigators believed he couldn’t even stop himself from breaking into homes and bludgeoning people until he was caught. Aurora Police Chief Nick Metz said the case “shocked the conscience of our community.”
As decades passed, detectives concluded the killer had moved out of the Denver area and was likely repeating his crimes in another state. His particular taste for savagery had detectives looking for similar hammer attacks across the country.
It wasn’t until a Nevada inmate serving 40 years on two counts of attempted murder for beating a Henderson, Nev., couple nearly to death with an ax handle, that detectives believed their theory might be right. A positive DNA match gave them hope they might have finally found the alleged killer after an exhaustive and tireless 34-year search.
Now detectives, crime annalists and prosecutors in two Colorado counties and Henderson are working to build a case against 57-year-old inmate Alex Christopher Ewing. Inmate number 20866 has been incarcerated at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center medium security prison in Carson City since 1985 — a year after the Denver-area slayings.
The murders etched traumatic memories into the minds of detectives and prosecutors trying for 34 years to solve the crimes.
It also permanently damaged dozens of family members and a few surviving victims of the attacks, including the grandchildren of a 50-year-old Lakewood woman, found partially unclothed and bloodied in a surreal pose reminiscent of a sleeping vampire in a coffin with her arms crossed over her chest.
Patricia Louise Smith, a devoted grandmother, had uncharacteristically failed to pick up 6-year-old Amber Reese and 4-year-old Joe Reese that afternoon — Jan. 10, 1984 — and take them to a home she shared with her daughter, Chery Lettin, and the grandchildren.
At 6:15 p.m., Lettin unlocked the front door to their home and Amber ran into the room to find her grandmother lying on a Winnie the Pooh blanket about three to four feet from the entrance with a pool of blood around her head. There was a hammer lying on the floor beside her body.
The killer took Smith’s gold necklace and two diamond rings, but he didn’t ransack the house for other valuables that were left behind, Lettin said. An autopsy revealed that the cause of death was several severe blows to the head. The finding was consistent with hammer strikes. Smith had been sexually assaulted.
Lacking defensive wounds on her mother’s hands and arms, Lettin told The Denver Post that she believed the sexual assault may have happened after Smith was knocked unconscious. There were no fingerprints found in the home that identified a viable suspect.
Aurora detectives at the time recognized many similarities to two recent home invasions in which a hammer had been used.
Six days earlier — on Jan. 4, 1984 — a man sneaked into an Aurora home and used a hammer to beat James and Kimberly Haubenschild. James Haubenschild suffered a fractured skull, and his wife had a concussion. Both survived. On the same day, a man using a hammer attacked flight attendant Donna Dixon in the garage of her Aurora home, leaving her in a coma. Dixon survived.
Smith’s murder wouldn’t be the last fatal hammer attack that winter. The next assault would be the most vicious and deadly of them all. Blood spatter, spray and smears would be found up a staircase and in two bedrooms at 16387 E. Center St. in Aurora.
Wielding a hammer and a knife from the Bennett’s kitchen, the killer first encountered 27-year-old Bruce Bennett on the ground floor after the father of two young girls apparently went downstairs to find out what was causing noise. Blood marks suggest that the first confrontation between Bennett and his killer was at the landing of the stairs. The killer struck him again and again, leaving deep gashes on his arms and body. Blood splattered and smeared up and down the staircase marked the fatal battle.
Bennett collapsed on the stairs covered in blood. An autopsy report concluded that any number of his wounds were potentially fatal.
The killer entered the master bedroom, where he stabbed, raped and bludgeoned 26-year-old Debra Bennett. Then he went into the bedroom shared by the Bennett children, Melissa, 7, and Vanessa, 3. He raped and killed Melissa and bludgeoned Vanessa, shattering numerous bones in her face.
The next morning, Constance Bennett checked on her son after he failed to show up for work and discovered his body first. Only Vanessa survived. But her injuries were very grave. The toddler’s jaw was crushed. Jagged bones pierced her windpipe.
The killer had not taken anything from the home except the bloody knife used to slit Bruce Bennett’s neck and a purse, which was discarded in the front yard. The contents of the purse were strewn across the snow.
Bruce Bennett had worked at a family furniture store and aspired to become an air traffic controller. He had been a Navy sonar analyst in the 1970s. Debra was a stay-at-home mother. The night before the deadly home invasion — a Sunday — several family members got together and had a birthday party for Melissa, who was a few days from turning 8.
Then as quickly as they began, the hammer attacks that had been happening every few days suddenly stopped.
An investigation in which more than 500 people were questioned never uncovered any leads that could have solved the case. The killer seemed to be a phantom. Police went to great lengths to solve the case, removing part of the concrete garage floor to preserve a shoe print. A laser was used to get fingerprints from inside the home.
“It was a blitz attack for no reason,” retired Aurora police Detective Marvin Brandt has said. He investigated the case as a homicide detective from 1984 until he retired from the Aurora Police Department in 2002.
In 2002, Aurora detectives sent DNA collected at the Bennett house linked to the killer to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation for testing. The same year, then-District Attorney Jim Peters obtained a John Doe arrest warrant in the Bennett killings based on the DNA. Peters charged John Doe with 18 counts, including three counts of first-degree murder, two counts of sexual assault, first-degree assault, two counts of sexual assault on a child and burglary.
In 2010, a Lakewood cold case detective submitted DNA in the Smith homicide case in hopes of comparing it to DNA collected in the Bennett murders. Colorado Bureau of Corrections forensic scientists found a link.
Several months after the Aurora murders and rapes, Ewing allegedly broke into a Kingman, Ariz., home and pummeled a man in the head with a large rock, according to a March 1, 1985, article in the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Ewing was transferred out of state to another jail while he was awaiting trial.
On Aug. 9, 1984, Ewing was in a Mojave County, Ariz., jail van riding through Henderson, Nev., to Kingman for a hearing. The van stopped at a Texaco gas station, where inmates were unchained for a restroom break. Ewing, who was wearing an orange jail jumpsuit, allegedly ran into a Kmart and changed into shorts, the Review-Journal reported in a series of articles about the case.
That night Ewing, armed with an ax handle, allegedly sneaked through the open back door of a home at 739 Racktrack Road. Christopher Barry, then 34, and his wife Nancy, then 24, were asleep. Nancy got out of bed and went downstairs to prepare a bottle for their baby, who was crying. When she saw Ewing in the house, she ran to her bedroom screaming. As Christopher Barry awoke, Ewing allegedly began beating him with an ax handle, the Las Vegas newspaper reported.
Christopher Barry was knocked unconscious and remained in a coma for a week with severe head injuries. Nancy tried to block the blows to her husband. In the process, both her wrists and an arm were broken. When she tried to call 911, Ewing allegedly chased her under the bed and beat her in the head until she acted like she was dead, the Review-Journal reported.
A massive helicopter and foot search ensued for Ewing, who fled on foot toward Lake Mead. National Park Service rangers arrested Ewing two days after his escape.
An 8th District Court jury sentenced Ewing to 40 years in prison on March 1, 1985, according to Clark County District Court records.
Staff writer Noelle Phillips contributed to this report.
