Thomas Edward Luther: A Killer In Colorado

Thomas Edward Luther

Survivor Heather Smith Callahan

On this day in 1982, a 21-year-old woman named Mary Brown accepted a ride from a man in the ski town of Breckenridge, Colorado. Upon entering the man's vehicle, she was raped and severely beaten with a claw hammer. Her attacker, Thomas Edward Luther, was traced through his truck and arrested.

Thomas Edward Luther was born June 23, 1957, in Hardwick, Vermont, the eldest of five children. According to Luther, he was subjected to extreme verbal and physical abuse at the hands of his mother. By age 9, he had started drinking and by age 12, he was using drugs. It was also at age 12, Luther claimed, that he began having sex with an aunt.

After his arrest for the assault on Mary Brown, he told psychiatrists that he attacked her because she resembled his abusive mother. He told a fellow inmate that "the next girl won't live. They'll never find her body."

Thomas Edward Luther was released from prison in 1993 and shortly thereafter a 20-year-old woman named Cher Elder went missing. She had last been seen leaving a Central City, Colorado, casino accompanied by Luther. At around the same time, another woman in the area, 21-year-old Heather Smith, was the victim of a vicious knife attack. She had advertised a used car for sale and was attacked as she was showing the car to a man pretending to be a potential buyer. She survived the brutal stabbing.

After Cher Elder's disappearance and the knife attack, Thomas Edward Luther fled to West Virginia, where he was convicted in 1994 of raping and beating a hitchhiker. After his conviction, he was sent back to Colorado, where he was the main suspect in Cher Elder's going missing. In 1995, Cher Elder's body was found. She had been shot three times in the back of the head, but officials could not determine if she had been sexually assaulted due to decomposition.

Heather Smith, the survivor of the 1993 knife attack, saw Thomas Edward Luther's photograph in the Denver Post and was able to identify him as her attacker, leading to his conviction for that crime. While in prison and awaiting trial for Cher Elder's murder, Luther wrote to an ex-girlfriend. One of his letters said "Strange, isn't it, that I am what I detest in a human being. It wasn't sex at all. It was assault and anger, pure meanest [sic] from a subconscious level. I can't deal with the lack of self-control I have. I guess I really am dangerous if I can hurt people like this."

During the 1996 trial of Thomas Edward Luther for the murder of Cher Elder, the judge refused to allow Luther's letters and his previous rape convictions to be entered into evidence. Luther's defense argued that Luther had engaged in consensual sex with Cher Elder and that someone else had killed her. Jurors did not believe Luther's account, but due to a lack of physical evidence, one juror refused to vote guilty on first-degree murder charges. Thomas Edward Luther was convicted of second-degree murder and sentenced to 48 years in prison. He was sentenced to another 50 years in prison for the attack on Heather Smith. While Luther has only been convicted of one murder, he remains a suspect in the 1982 murders of two hitchhikers, Bobbie Jo Oberholtzer, 29, and Annette Schnee, 21.

Heather Smith has since married and is the mother of three children. She works with other survivors of trauma at the Denver Center for Trauma and Resilience. Her memoir, A Drop of Rain, was published in 2018.

Related Reading:

‘Monster’ brutally raped and killed women for over a decade


Reunion Brings Victim, Officer Together 25 Years Later