3 years ago
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On a frigid January nighttime successful 1984, Kim Rice woke to a flash of symptom and sat up successful furniture to spot a stranger’s silhouette, his limb raised to onslaught different stroke with a hammer.
She screamed, and the alien threw the hammer astatine her and fled. Rice’s then-husband, successful furniture beside her, had been attacked, too. Despite suffering a skull fracture, helium chased aft the intruder, racing retired into the snowfall to effort to travel the stranger’s footsteps.
Inside their Aurora home, determination was humor connected the walls, the mirror, the curtains, the ceiling. It was bedewed connected Rice’s look arsenic she called 911.
The location penetration was the archetypal of 4 attacks during a 12-day spree by the alleged “Hammer Killer” successful January 1984 that ended with the slaughter of 3 members of the Bennett household successful Aurora.
Police believed 1 attacker was responsible, but they didn’t place a fishy for astir 4 decades. By the clip DNA tied 61-year-old Alex Ewing to the spree, it was excessively precocious for authorities to prosecute him for the battle connected Rice and her present ex-husband.
The statute of limitations, which sets the deadline by which a transgression indispensable beryllium prosecuted, had passed. Rice’s lawsuit would ne'er spell to court.
But there’s nary statute of limitations connected murder, and erstwhile Ewing stood proceedings this summer for sidesplitting the Bennett family, Rice was there. She sought immoderate benignant of closure, immoderate vicarious justice.
She stared astatine Ewing arsenic helium sat shackled to the floor. Prosecutors believed helium was the antheral who’d smashed a hammer into her head, the antheral who’d fixed her a concussion successful her ain bed, but she harbored immoderate doubt.
“I wanted to spell due to the fact that I was inactive looking for immoderate information to the information that this was tied in,” said Rice, who inactive lives successful Colorado.
Long roadworthy to justice
Five days aft Rice was attacked, idiosyncratic bludgeoned and raped a 28-year-old pistillate successful Aurora aft she pulled into her garage. The time aft that, 50-year-old Patricia Smith was killed with a hammer astatine her location successful Lakewood.
Then 5 days later, 27-year-old Bruce Bennett, 26-year-old Debra Bennett and their daughter, 7-year-old Melissa Bennett, were killed by an attacker wielding a hammer. Melissa’s 3-year-old sister was brutally attacked but survived.
“It wasn’t until the Bennetts that they started to necktie each this together,” Rice said.
Police realized the attacks followed a akin pattern. For some Rice and the Bennetts, investigators believed the fishy entered done an unfastened store door.
As authorities realized the connections, the media descended, Rice said. Reporters came to her house, reported connected Rice and her then-husband’s travel to a weapon store. The lawsuit riveted the region.
“What was scary is they showed our code and our location and everything connected the TV, and we had 2 copycat, 2 attempted break-ins,” she said.
But aft a unreserved of archetypal enactment and important investigation, the lawsuit went quiet. There were nary much attacks, nary suspects.
After her assault, Rice was shaky and frightened. She tried to debar her garage. She’d parkland successful it and contention into the house. She easy became afraid, sometimes conscionable by driving location unsocial astatine night. She suffered migraines that started astatine the tract of the hammer’s blow, astatine the scar connected the apical of her head.
“Years would walk wherever I wouldn’t deliberation astir it, and past thing would hap to punctual maine of it,” she said. “I would get beauteous shaky, I would suffer slumber implicit it.”
She became consumed with ensuring her store doorway was locked. If she spotted immoderate location with an unfastened store door, she’d spell sound connected the beforehand doorway and archer the residents to adjacent it.
She inactive does that today.
“It was conscionable 1 of those things where, if my doorway had been closed, helium wouldn’t person chosen us,” she said.
Over time, Rice convinced herself that the attacker was dead. So it was a daze when, successful 2018, investigators called her into a gathering and told her that they believed the antheral who attacked her was alive, and successful prison. That he’d beryllium charged with murder.
“I didn’t expect it to travel to thing aft each these years,” she said.
And successful immoderate ways, for Rice, it didn’t — the statute of limitations had expired, truthful determination was thing prosecutors could bash astir her case, which Rice said she understood.
The existent statute of limitations connected astir felony cases successful Colorado is 3 years, though the clip allowed for prosecution is overmuch longer for immoderate charges, similar intersexual assault, which has a 20-year window. The statute of limitations connected enactment battle charges was doubled successful 2016 amid the claims against Bill Cosby, aft women spoke up astir wherefore it took them years to study the alleged assaults.
Ray Harlan, president of the nonprofit Colorado Victims for Justice, said lawmakers should see revisiting the statute of limitations connected different charges, too, pointing retired that it’s easier contiguous to sphere grounds than successful the past.
“The rules astir statutes of limitations were written successful an epoch with wholly antithetic technology,” helium said. “…Historically, grounds rooms and grounds lockers would lone clasp truthful overmuch stuff, and yet you had to get escaped of the things slightest apt to ever beryllium used. So you get escaped of plaster casts of tyre tracks and footprints — but what if you scan those plaster casts and enactment them successful a server? Then they past forever.”
Judgment day
Rice attended the execution proceedings for the Bennett household successful July with immoderate trepidation. She wasn’t definite she belonged there. It wasn’t her case.
But she soon recovered she shared a transportation with the Bennett family’s relatives, who welcomed her, adjacent insisting she articulation them for luncheon astatine times during the lengthy trial.
“It’s a camaraderie, you know, that you don’t privation to have,” she said. “But astatine slightest it gives you immoderate lukewarm feeling, due to the fact that the radical successful my life, you know, they didn’t cognize what was going connected there.”
As the proceedings wore on, Rice became definite that Ewing was liable for her ain onslaught arsenic good arsenic the Bennetts’ killings. After Ewing was convicted of their murders, she wrote the justice a unfortunate interaction statement. At sentencing, Ewing’s defence lawyer objected — she was not a unfortunate successful this case, helium said, and truthful should not beryllium allowed to taxable a statement.
District Judge Darren Vahle dismissed the concern.
“I saw the justice grin and helium looked close astatine me, and I conscionable felt this inclusiveness,” Rice said.
When Vahle went connected to condemnation Ewing to 3 beingness sentences, calling Ewing an “abomination” who inflicted an “unspeakable orgy of violence” connected the community, Rice recovered her closure. The justice said everything she wanted to say. She near the courtroom successful tears.
“I couldn’t halt crying,” she said. “I wasn’t reasoning good, atrocious oregon indifferent, I was conscionable trying to get control.”
A value had been lifted, she said. And though Ewing is acceptable to basal proceedings successful Jefferson County successful the sidesplitting of Patrica Smith successful October, Rice has nary volition of attending that trial. She’s acceptable to beryllium done, to enactment it each to rest.
“I tin honestly say,” she said, “I’ve ne'er slept rather arsenic good.”
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