Judge orders extradition of alleged serial killer to Colo.

A Nevada judge on Tuesday ordered extradition to Colorado for a suspect in a 34-year-old cold case that involved a killing spree in which four people were bludgeoned to death with a hammer.

Alexander Christopher Ewing, 58, had been fighting extradition to face charges in connection with a string of brutal hammer attacks in the winter of 1984 that terrorized Front Range residents. He can appeal the judge’s ruling, according to a Carson City, Nev., court clerk.

Ewing was linked to the crimes in July through a DNA match. He is suspected of breaking into metro area homes and bludgeoning three members of an Aurora family and a Lakewood woman to death with hammers.

Ewing appeared at 3:30 p.m. before Judge James Wilson in a Carson City courtroom for the extradition hearing.

Ewing, who has been incarcerated at the Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City on a 40year attempted murder conviction since 1985, has been fighting extradition to avoid two Colorado trials for sexual assault, robbery and murder charges.

Ewing was charged Aug. 13 in Jefferson County District Court with murder and sexual assault in a skullcrushing attack on Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984.

Ewing also has been named in an Arapahoe County arrest warrant as a suspect in connection with the Jan. 16, 1984, deaths of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa. The three Bennetts were bludgeoned to death with a hammer, leaving then-3-year-old Vanessa, who suffered severe facial injuries, as the sole survivor in the family. The warrant lists 18 crimes, including murder, attempted murder and sexual assault.

The killings went unsolved for 34 years until Nevada entered Ewing’s DNA in a national crime database. In July, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, during a nightly database scan, matched Ewing’s DNA to DNA samples taken from the Smith and Bennett crime scenes.

On Aug. 10, prosecutors in the two Colorado jurisdictions initiated extradition proceedings.

Arizona criminal records showed that Ewing left Colorado within days after the hammer attack on 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 stitches to close his head wounds. Police caught Ewing hiding near the home under a bush, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.