1984 hammer killer was no “criminal mastermind”
Former FBI profiler Ron Walker was on the case 34 years ago
The so-called hammer killer who fatally bludgeoned a Lakewood grandmother and three members of an Aurora family in the winter of 1984 had started off as a burglar and evolved into a predator who crept into homes primarily to satiate his thirst for violence, says a former FBI profiler.
“He’s not some criminal mastermind. He’s a punk. He’s a psycho. He’s not looking for a particular victim. He’s looking for people,” said Ron Walker, a retired FBI agent who profiled the perpetrator of what would become one of the most baffling series of cold case murders in metro Denver history. Walker is now a nationally recognized consultant for law enforcement on pattern crimes.
In retrospect, Walker said he believes a suspect profile he wrote 34 years ago closely matches the life of a man now suspected of being the hammer killer — Alexander Christopher Ewing, 57, an inmate at Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City. Ewing is serving a 40-year prison term for two counts of attempted murder.
Ewing was charged Aug. 13 in Jefferson County District Court with murder and sexual assault in the skull-crushing attack on Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984. Ewing was recently named in an 18-count case and charged with murder, attempted murder and sexual assault in the deaths of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa. Only then-3-year-old Vanessa survived, but with severe facial injuries.
Nevada entered Ewing’s DNA into an FBI database in May. Colorado Bureau of Investigation crime analysts soon confirmed the match. On Aug. 10, prosecutors in the two Colorado jurisdictions initiated extradition proceedings.
Court records paint a picture of Ewing that matches many characteristics
Walker predicted fewer than two weeks after the 1984 attacks at the Bennett home.
FBI’s vaunted pattern crime unit
On Jan. 24, 1984, Walker arrived in Colorado in the aftermath of a series of hammer attacks as one of the early members of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit.
Walker spent two weeks interviewing Aurora and Lakewood detectives and reading police and forensic reports during a period of time pre-dating DNA analysis.
He came to believe that not only was the hammer killer responsible for the four high-publicity murders of the Bennett family members and Smith but also three survivors who were beaten in their homes in “blitz attacks.”
The first hammer attack happened on Jan. 4, 1984 in Aurora. A man slipped inside an Aurora home while an elderly couple were sleeping and began pummeling them in the head with a hammer. James and Kimberly Haubenschild were both gravely injured. James Haubenschild suffered a fractured skull and his wife had a concussion. Both survived.
Five days later on Jan. 9, 1984, a flight attendant parked her car in the garage of her Aurora home. A man bludgeoned her with a hammer and knocked her unconscious. Evidence indicated that she was sexually assaulted.
Although Ewing has not been charged with the attacks on the Haubenschilds and Dixon, Walker said his FBI profile grouped them together with the later fatal attacks.
Walker found similarities in each of the four attacks. In each case, the attacker stole cash or items easy to convert into cash while leaving much more valuable items, including diamond rings, credit cards, TVs, radios and checkbooks.
Walker’s profile described the attacker as an unsophisticated burglar without the skills common to prolific burglars who specialize in identity theft or the sources to pawn upper-end possessions such as guns and TVs into more money.
“He doesn’t have a way to fence jewelry,” Walker concluded.
He wrote in his profile that the suspect would have a criminal record for trespassing, burglary and car theft in which cash was his primary target. His profile recommended police scour criminal records for cat burglaries. It could be that a fingerprint left on a door or window in a non-violent burglary could lead investigators to the killer.
By no means was the hammer killer sophisticated enough to pick locks or use glass cutters to enter homes. Instead he went to areas he was familiar with and went from home to home trying door knobs. If windows and doors were locked at one home, he immediately went on to the next residence.
“He was very juvenile in his approach. How does he gain entry into homes? He walks down the street and jiggles doors,” Walker concluded. His profile recommended detectives look for a very young man in his early to mid-20s, he said.
Walker recommended that police fingerprint every doorknob and window in the neighborhoods where the attacks happened. The suspect likely went down a row of homes until he found an open door.
That meant the killer was not a stalker, who watched a neighborhood for hours, days or weeks until he knew all the habits of his victims, Walker said. Instead, he was a minimally skilled prowler who randomly targeted homes in areas where he had familiarity, either because he lived or worked nearby. All four home invasions in the Denver area were along an east to west corridor, within a few blocks of Hampden Avenue, he said.
Most importantly, Walker predicted the attacker’s background would include acts of violence, whether he was the victim or perpetrator. It could be that he was the victim of child abuse. Another possible scenario was that he had been beaten up or chased away by a physically-larger homeowner during a home burglary. It’s possible the homeowner never reported the confrontation to police, he added.
This would teach the burglar to enter homes with protection, Walker said. The weapons chosen also said something about the killer. The burglar apparently didn’t have the resources to buy a gun. Instead, he used a weapon readily available to him that he was familiar with. From then on he would be armed when he entered homes because he wouldn’t know what he was going to find when he got inside.
Walker recommended in his profile that police interview every contractor currently involved in a construction project along the Hampden Avenue corridor. There were many at the time. It was a booming area of residential growth. He suggested police ask whether an employee had an unexplained absence on the days when the attacks happened. Or had any workers abandon their job altogether.
Over time, the killer evolved from someone who opened car or home doors only to steal change or money from wallets or purses to someone whose primary interest was finding a victim to attack. He was driven by rage, Walker said. His victims were vicarious targets of that intense anger, much like road rage perpetrators who take out their frustration on random motorists on the highway, he said.
Walker predicted the suspect would have a drug or alcohol problem and few friends.
Walker emphasized that the hammer killer would not stop until he was arrested or dead. He would continue committing blitzstyle burglaries in which he immediately attacked homeowners upon entering an unlocked home.
He said it was highly likely the suspect had moved out of state and that authorities hadn’t made a match.
Case goes cold
Months, years and decades went by without an arrest in the Bennett and Smith murders.
Even when DNA testing became a powerful tool and Lakewood and Aurora police entered the DNA the suspect left behind — primarily in the form of semen — there were no matches to a specific person.
It wasn’t until May — five years after Nevada passed a new law requiring that all offenders in the state be DNA tested — that Ewing was swabbed for DNA.
One day after Ewing’s DNA was entered into the FBI national DNA database, investigators at the Colorado Bureau of Investigation matched his DNA with the suspect in the hammer murders.
Ewing’s criminal record mirrored Walker’s 34-yearold FBI profile in telling ways. Ewing was a construction worker, in his early 20s and lived in Denver at the time of the crimes. He had arrests for trespassing, burglary and car theft, randomly selected homes, entered through windows or doors, didn’t use a gun and stole cash or things that could be easily converted in to cash. He had been convicted of two blitz-style attacks and did not stop until he was arrested.
Ewing, a Sacramento native, had been arrested on a charge of burglary in California in 1979. Also in 1979, he was arrested for burglary in Florida. The same year, he was arrested on charges of grand theft and burglary in Arizona. In 1980, Ewing was arrested for burglary in California. In 1981, California authorities issued a fugitive arrest warrant against him. In 1982, California officials charged him with criminal trespass and burglary.
Arizona criminal records would show that Ewing left Colorado within days after the last of the series of hammer attacks against the Bennetts.
Twelve days later, Ewing picked up a 25-pound granite slab and entered an unlocked door to a Kingman, Ariz., home. He carried the granite into a bedroom and immediately began pummeling a man in the head. The man survived even though he required 100 sutures to close his head wounds. Police caught Ewing hiding near the home under a bush, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Arizona prosecutors charged Ewing with attempted murder in the attack. Kingman officials sent Ewing to a Washington County jail in Utah to await trial as part of an interstate contract because of jail overcrowding in Kingman.
On Aug. 9, 1984, Ewing was being transported back to Arizona for a court hearing along with several other inmates when he escaped during a restroom break on the outskirts of Henderson, Nev.
That night, wielding an ax handle, he entered the unlocked home of Christopher and Nancy Barry at 739 Racetrack St. and chased Nancy, who was screaming, into the bedroom she shared with her husband. Upon entering the home, Ewing began pummeling Christopher Barry with the ax handle. Both survived with broken bones. Christopher Barry ended up in a coma.
In July, two months after Ewing was matched through DNA to the hammer killer, Aurora detectives Steve Conner and Michael Prince were on a plane to Nevada.
When they interviewed Ewing in the Nevada Department of Corrections’ Inspector General’s office in Carson City, Ewing confirmed that he was in the Denver area in January 1984. While he was in Colorado, Ewing said he worked a variety of jobs, mostly construction, including plumbing work. When asked why he left Colorado, Ewing said it just got too cold, the affidavit says.
The next day, Conner interviewed Ewing again in prison for about 30 minutes. He showed Ewing six black-and-white pictures of victims of unsolved Colorado murders including a photograph of Patricia Smith. Ewing said he didn’t recognize Smith or any of the other people. Conner showed him a color picture of Smith and Ewing said he didn’t recognize her.
Conner then showed Ewing a picture of Smith lying on the floor of her Lakewood town home after she had been murdered.
“He jumped back in his chair staring at the photo. Alex Ewing appeared shocked and when confronted abut his DNA being found at the scene of her murder, he said, ‘There’s got to be a mistake,’ ” the affidavit says.
Ewing didn’t offer Conner any explanation of how his DNA showed up on the victim’s body and said he thought he needed to speak with an attorney, the affidavit said.
Walker said he is not surprised that it took so long to crack the Colorado hammer attacks, even though Ewing was in prison for 34 years.
After a pattern of four hammer attacks, Colorado investigators were searching for similar attacks. But Ewing had discarded the bloodied hammers he used for weapons in Lakewood and Aurora.
While he was on the run from the state, he likely didn’t have the money to buy a hammer so he selected weapons of opportunity, a slab of granite and an ax handle, Walker said.