Earl Elder and Rhonda Edwards have launched their own campaign to get a late bill introduced at the legislature, one that would change the law requiring a unanimous jury verdict for a first-degree murder conviction.
"When it comes to deciding the death penalty, then yes, I think it should be unanimous," Earl says. "But last time I looked, we were a democracy where the majority still rules. Eleven said he was guilty of first-degree murder, but they had to give in to the one...Where's the justice in that?
"It's affected all of our lives," he says of Cher's death. "I can't tell you how Jacob [her half-brother] feels, he won't discuss it...Beth was cheated out of her childhood. At a time when ideally the worst thing she should have had to worry about was who was going to take her to the prom, she was wondering if her sister would ever be found."
After the trial, Rhonda returned to Cher's grave and said she was sorry. She feels that somehow she let her daughter down. "But maybe if we can get the law changed," she says, "her death will have meant something. Now, I've got to find a way to go on."
In her diary, Rhonda wrote, "I see his face and I see Satan...I see miracle stories everyday on TV...I wish my daughter had had a miracle."
Debrah Snider arrived back in West Virginia to find her cabin ransacked. Lamps and photographs had been knocked from a table in the living room. In the kitchen, a radio and toaster were on the floor.
Retribution, she thought, for what I did in Colorado. But by whom? Luther's family was in denial about his guilt, and his sister and brother-in-law lived in the area...did they consider her a traitor? Or could it have been one of Luther's friends? Were they still around?
It turned out the vandal was a squirrel. But Debrah knew she would never get over her fear.
She also knew she would never get over her love for Tom Luther.
"I'm glad he didn't get the death penalty," she says. "That would have been too hard. Remember, Jesus took the murderer with him to heaven, not the thief, because he asked for forgiveness. I hope Tom will someday ask for forgiveness. I'm still angry at him for what he did to those girls. And I'm sorry...but I still love him."
In his office, Richardson looks at a photograph of Cher taken when she was three years old. Rhonda sent it to him in 1993 with the notation, "All I want for Christmas is to find her."
It bothers him to have come so close to putting his enemy away forever. He has his own doubts about the death penalty, he says, but if there was ever a person who deserved it, Luther fit the bill.
Now he is someone else's problem. On April 5, Luther will be sentenced for Cher's murder--and could receive up to 48 years. In May, he will go on trial for the assault of Heather Smith. Luther is also a suspect in the unsolved 1982 murders of two young Summit County women, and police agencies in several other parts of the country where Luther is known to have lived are investigating whether he is linked to murders or missing women there.
Richardson's frustrations with the lone holdout juror are tempered by the realization that the verdict could have gone much worse. "It really is pretty incredible that we were able to get second-degree murder without any physical evidence or witnesses to the murder," he concedes.
"Dennis Hall did an amazing job of putting all the pieces together so the jury could understand...I'd go to trial against the Devil with Dennis Hall."
Richardson pauses to think about what he just said, then laughs. "I guess we just did."
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