Is the man who attacked you on the night of April 12, 1993, in this courtroom?” Heather Smith hesitated for a moment before taking her eyes off Denver Deputy District Attorney Doug Jackson. Everything she had been through in the past three years–the pain, the nightmares, the self-doubts–hinged on this…

The skeletons of two large greenhouses stand at the back of Roy Obluda’s property. “I’ve been a little slow tearing them down,” he says. “Reluctant, I guess.” When they are gone, so will be the last physical reminder of 36 years in the flower business. Thirty-six years of growing carnations…

Students left out in the cold when Barnes Business College closed its doors last August may find their student loans forgiven by the state. Colorado taxpayers may not be so forgiving: Since the school’s owner declared bankruptcy, they’re the ones who will have to foot the bill. According to C…

Tom Anthony has a dream: of lozenge-shaped, four-person vehicles that cruise an elevated rail on demand, delivering passengers around the metro area at 30 mph or taking them up into the mountains and out to Denver International Airport at four times that speed. Suddenly, cars are unnecessary. Parks bloom where…

Walter Plywaski placed the blue yarmulke on his head. A Jew by ethnicity but an atheist by choice, he rarely wore the symbol of faith. But it seemed important now, as he stood near a mass burial site for Jews murdered at what had once been the Riederloh “punishment” camp…

If Colorado experiences an increase in the number of prisoners on death row, the condemned may have convicted killer Thomas Luther and a recalcitrant juror to thank. Eleven of the jurors who in February convicted Luther for the 1983 murder of Cher Elder stood together this past Friday, many of…

With layoffs looming, AT&T has been offering courses for employees exploring second careers–including “floraculture” instruction in the company’s own cafeteria. The course, given by a local occupational school, was represented as a state-approved program taught by licensed instructors and promised to deliver a diploma and good job prospects in the…

The 1995 green Camaro Z28 roared out of the dark hills at 95 miles an hour, barreling east on Interstate 70 toward the coming sunrise. Behind it flashed the blue and red lights of an Idaho Springs police cruiser. The officer had noticed a young man and woman standing by…

After Byron Powers’s slip, the court wasn’t going to chance Debrah Snider making the same mistake when the prosecution called her to the stand. Debrah had met Luther in 1990 when she was a nurse working at the state hospital in Pueblo and he was a prison inmate. She’d worked…

The pen moved across the page as though guided by someone else’s hand, leaving fragmented thoughts and raw emotions. Sometimes it seemed that writing was the only thing that kept her sane. Rhonda Edwards had filled several notebooks with such bits and pieces since her daughter, Cher Elder, had disappeared…

Megan Ross shifted uncomfortably in her seat. She was growing impatient and leaned over to peek into the basket on the floor by her side. Someone was droning on about the status of anonymous AIDS testing. More of the same old, same old…as the agenda of these meetings of the…

part 1 of 2 Debrah Snider dozed fitfully on the couch, imprisoned by a dream. She was back in Colorado, on the side of a mountain, on the run with Tom Luther, the man she loved. The man she wanted to spend the rest of her life with. The man…

part 2 of 2 On April 20, Debrah came home from work and found Tom pacing about in her kitchen. Over the preceding weeks, she’d heard him make a number of calls to his mother and sisters, all insisting that he was being made a scapegoat for the disappearance of…

Anti-abortion crusader Ken Scott wants to save everyone else’s unborn children. He just doesn’t pay to support those he fathered personally. For years the twice-married, twice-divorced proponent of family values has been a fixture at the anti-abortion protests outside the Planned Parenthood clinic at 20th and Vine. At the same…

part 2 of 2 The distance from Lakewood to Empire is less than fifty miles. But it must have seemed like a thousand to Detective Scott Richardson on February 23, 1995, when he, another detective, Byron Powers and Powers’s attorney headed up I-70 to find Cher Elder’s grave. Thomas Luther…

part 1 of 2 Last week in Westword: In March 1995, Heather Smith recognized a mug shot in the newspaper as the man who had stabbed her five times outside her home near Washington Park two years earlier. The man’s name was Thomas Edward Luther. Luther, 37, had been convicted…

Photos by Heather Weiser part 1 of 3 The little girl forced herself to remain still as death. Otherwise he, the thing that waited in the dark of her bedroom, would pounce. She lay in the exact middle of the mattress, beyond reach of any hands coming from under the…

part 3 of 3 In March 1993, Heather Smith was 27 years old and working at her father’s company. She had many girlfriends and welcomed admiring looks from men attracted to her face and a body that had once made her a nationally ranked swimmer. Her friends thought Heather led…

part 2 of 3 When the call went out at a little after 4 a.m.–female brutally raped and assaulted in Silverthorne by white male driving green or dark-colored pickup truck–police officers from across Summit County began to converge on the scene. Among them was deputy Joe Morales, who was asked…

On the morning of October 1, 1992, Tina Knox, a 29-year-old aerobics instructor, gave birth to a healthy baby boy at Littleton Hospital. Twenty-four hours later Tina was dead, killed by a rare but treatable condition related to her pregnancy. Three years later, Tina’s son, Preston, is a toddler; her…

Pprominent Denver company exploits American Indians by using their images to sell buffalo products, according to the country’s biggest Indian newspaper. But Will McFarlane, president of the Denver Buffalo Company, which has a restaurant and sells other buffalo items such as decorative skulls, says he has nothing to apologize for…

part 1 of 2 It’s early Saturday, just after 7 a.m. on a crisp autumn day. The ash and locust trees that line the sidewalks around 20th Avenue and Vine Street are bright with change. The elderly bungalows behind the trees look no different from those in many older, well-kept…