DNA ties inmate to ’80s slayings
The murders were as inexplicable as they were gruesome: separate killings six days apart in 1984 near Denver that claimed the lives of four people, including a mother and father and their 7-year-old daughter.
The father suffered 16 blows to the top of his head with a hammer and his throat had been cut, according to court documents. The daughter’s and mother’s skulls were fractured and the daughter had been sexually assaulted. Another daughter, who was 3, was also sexually assaulted and survived blunt-force injuries. Police officers found her next to a teddy bear in a bloody bed.
In the other murder, a 50-year-old woman was eating a Wendy’s hamburger at home when an attacker wielding a hammer struck her 17 times in the head, court records say. She too was sexually assaulted.
The killings haunted the police officers who responded to the scenes, the authorities would later say, and for decades detectives in the two communities where the murders occurred, Aurora and Lakewood, Colo., pursued leads and developed theories. Some of them retired or died, but the search for answers eluded them — until last month.
On Friday, the officials said that the DNA profile of a man in a Nevada prison on unrelated attempted murder charges matched with evidence found at the Colorado murder scenes.
At a news conference to announce the break in the cases, Peter Weir, the district attorney for the 1st Judicial District in Colorado, said: “Justice in this case has been delayed. I am confident that justice is not going to be denied.”
An arrest warrant has been issued for the inmate, Alexander C. Ewing, 57, and the authorities will seek to extradite him to Colorado, where he faces murder, sexual assault, burglary and related charges in connection with the four killings.
Court papers tell a story of what appear to be random home invasions with unclear motives.
The 50-year-old woman who was killed, Patricia Smith of Lakewood, was found wearing a ring with a gold coin. In the killings of the family — Bruce Bennett, 27; his wife, Deborah Bennett, 26; and their 7-year-old daughter — there appeared to be minimal ransacking. While investigators recognized similarities between the murders from the start, technology then was limited. It was not until 2010 that a DNA link was established between the two cases.
Ewing has an extensive criminal history in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada of attempted murders, burglary and escape.
In Arizona, he was charged in 1984 with breaking into a man’s home and beating him on the head with a 25-pound slab of granite, according to court records. The man survived.
While he was being held on those charges and transported, Ewing escaped in Nevada and attacked a couple with a wooden ax handle, according to court records. The Arizona case was dismissed after he was convicted in Nevada and sentenced to eight to 40 years.
The break in the Colorado slayings began after Nevada in 2013 mandated the collection of DNA samples from all inmates convicted of felonies.