Born in Glenwood Springs, she'd actually graduated from Purdy High School in Purdy, Missouri, a small town of poultry farmers and factory workers. It was while in Purdy that Cher got what should have been, in a world free from monsters, her fifteen minutes of fame.
Back then Purdy was making national, even international, headlines for its century-old ban on school dances and the battle being waged between town youths and the religious prudes who ran the school board. In September 1989, Cher and several of her high school friends were gathered at the local Hamburger Heaven when a reporter from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch caught up to them and asked about the controversy.
"I don't know what the big deal is," said Cher, a seventeen-year-old senior at the time. "You can't get pregnant by dancing." Six months later, Newsday ran its own story about the dance ban, complete with a photograph of Cher and her friends discussing their upcoming, private senior prom.
By March 1993, Cher had moved to Colorado with her family and was working as a waitress at the Holiday Inn in Golden. But she had plans for bigger things: On April 1 she would start business college. She was so excited that on Saturday, March 27, she laid out all her schoolbooks and supplies like a kindergartner getting ready for that first day.
That night she went to Bryon's house and found him with another woman, Gina. She got angry. And when Bryon and the woman left with friends to go drink at a Lakewood bar, Cher remained behind with her anger and an old cellmate of Byron's stepfather, Jerald "Skip" Eerebout.
A man named Thomas Edward Luther.
Luther was a good listener and not bad-looking for an old man of 35. He was well-groomed, his brown hair touched with gray after ten years in the joint. He hadn't been out long, just since January 5.
Luther offered to drive Cher to Central City to visit her friend who worked in a casino, maybe do a little partying to forget the pain Byron had caused. She accepted.
At the casino, they gambled and socialized. Drank a few beers. Everyone thought they were just a couple of friends out having a good time. The cameras that, unknown to Luther, run continuously in the casinos to catch cheaters caught the two of them together. That film provides the last image of Cher. Laughing and pulling the handle of the slot machines, she had no idea she was about to make the newspapers again.
After the two closed the place, they got back in Luther's car. And they drove off into the night.
Two days later, Cher Elder's father discovered her neatly arranged school supplies and reported her missing to the Lakewood police on March 31.
end of part 2
