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[Music] [Applause] % [Music] welcome to True Crime garage wherever you are whatever you are doing thanks
00:01:45
for listening I'm your host Nick and with me as always is a man that sings the songs that make John mayor's panties
00:01:51
drop he is the captain thank you thank you thank you it's good to be seen and it's good to see you thanks for
00:01:57
listening and thanks for telling a friend [Music] today we are drinking Fat Tire Belgian
00:02:06
white ale by New Belgium Brewing Company garage grade 3 and 3/4 bottle caps out of five Fat Tire Belgian white ale is a
00:02:14
wit beer you know Captain we've been looking to pick something that's a little more readily available so many of
00:02:20
the beers on True Crime garage are only available in certain locals I'm not saying that you can get this one
00:02:27
everywhere but this is a great beer to try and you should be able to find it with just a little beer sleo thing yeah
00:02:33
it's uh one of my favorite go-to beers 5.2% ABV and you can certainly taste the hints of orange and coriander and this
00:02:41
great beer was brought to us by these fine folks right here first up we have Alexandra in the Bronx and her name was
00:02:48
Alesandra next we have Brandy in Auburn California and heading back to the east coast we say thank you to Jesse and
00:02:55
Nikki in stouton Massachusetts and from the Sunshine State we have an from Palm Harbor Florida and we want to send a
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shout out to Christopher from Maryville California Captain Christopher had a lot
00:03:06
of nice things to say lots of compliments about the old garage music well don't thank me thank the alcohol
00:03:12
and last but not least we want to give a shout out to Bryce and pman Washington so thank you to everybody for filling up
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the fridge for this week's show if you want to help us out with next week's show go to True Crim garage.com and
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click on the Donate button we have a few we like your jib shirts left if you want
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to check those out go to True Crime garage and click on the store Page all right
00:03:32
Captain that's enough of the business everybody gather around grab a chair grab a beer let's talk some true
00:03:46
[Music] [Applause] crime [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause]
00:04:16
[Music] [Applause] [Music] n Wednesday January 4th 1984 Aurora Colorado in the middle of the night
00:04:38
someone managed to enter the home of James and Kimberly hobbins child a young married
00:04:44
couple they were both asleep when a homicidal maniac crept into their bedroom the Intruder is dressed in dark
00:04:53
clothing there are no lights on in their bedroom and no light coming from the hallway as as he entered the room he
00:05:00
could feel his pulse start to speed up the adrenaline in him escalating it was almost as if he could
00:05:08
feel the blood flowing from his chest to his arms and legs and then down to his feet and
00:05:16
hands his breathing became louder with each step as he slowly stepped one foot at a time until he was at the side of
00:05:24
James and Kimberly's bed he has been thinking about this for a long time and now the time has finally
00:05:33
come he was prepared and ready for what was about to happen but the married couple sleeping in the bed were
00:05:40
not the Intruder looked down at the sleeping man James's head resting on a pillow the intruder with his weapon
00:05:49
heavy in his right hand slowly raised the weapon high above his head and as fast as he could with as much might as
00:05:57
he could muster he brought his fist down smashing the weapon into the center of James's
00:06:02
skull James is not moving but the force of the object hitting the Man created an
00:06:08
earthquake effect on the bed and the Tremors awaken Kimberly as she lifts her head from her
00:06:14
Slumber she opens her eyes the Intruder bends over placing one hand on the bed to sturdy himself and again he lifts the
00:06:23
heavy weapon high above his head and as fast as he could before Kimberly could turn and look at him he smashes in her
00:06:30
head with some kind of heavy object knocking her unconscious both James and Kimberly were hit multiple times before
00:06:38
the Intruder left their home somehow they both survived James and Kimberly suffered terrible head injuries due to
00:06:47
this attack neither could offer much of an explanation of who could have done this to them or why but what we do know
00:06:55
is sometime in the middle of the night on January 4th 1984 the terror had just [Music]
00:07:06
[Applause] [Music] [Applause] begun in the fall of 1983 50-year-old Patricia Smith from Nebraska she moved to Green
00:07:38
Mountain Village Town Homes located in Lakewood Colorado she was helping out her daughter Patricia's daughter Sherry
00:07:46
lton was only 29 years old Sher was recently divorced and had moved with her two children from rural Oshkosh Nebraska
00:07:56
to Lakewood as well Patricia was a loving mother and grandmother uh and moving in with them to help them out to
00:08:05
help them adjust from the divorce and being relocated over 3 hours away to Lakewood Patricia even though she was
00:08:13
moving in with her daughter she was happily married her husband Oliver had a government job in the state of Nebraska
00:08:21
and would have to remain there Oliver would often make the long drive to visit his wife daughter and Grand kids on most
00:08:30
of the weekends Patricia her daughter Sherry and the grandkids this is 6-year-old
00:08:36
Amber and 4-year-old Joe they rented a town home at 12610 West Bayard Avenue in Lakewood
00:08:45
Lakewood is just a short drive about 8 Miles Southwest of Denver Colorado and Sherry considered her mother Patricia to
00:08:53
be her best friend yeah Patricia was doing her best to brighten the lives of her family members during this this very
00:08:59
tough time for them and this to me Captain I think was this wasn't going to be a shortterm Arrangement mhm um it you
00:09:07
know Patricia was going to stay there as long as it took to get them settled in but it actually sounds to me Captain
00:09:14
like the plan may have been for Patricia's husband Oliver to eventually move out to Colorado to join the rest of
00:09:22
the family right so they could be closer to their grandkids yeah this would this
00:09:26
would be either after his contract was up with his government state job or maybe upon
00:09:33
retirement the two had a farm uh Patricia and her husband had a farm out in Nebraska so obviously this would
00:09:40
require selling the farm as well but Patricia started up her own business after having moved to Lakewood Colorado
00:09:48
she had a home interior design business the family had established a daily routine for the school and work
00:09:56
days the two ladies would get the kids ready in the morning and get in Patricia's car and leave the house each
00:10:04
morning they would first take Amber to school for kindergarten then take Joe to church uh this is where he he attended a
00:10:13
daycare center that was set up at the church right and then they would continue on and Patricia would drop her
00:10:19
daughter Sherry off at a bus station on 6th Avenue Sherry used public transportation to get to and from her
00:10:27
job Patricia would continue on and go to work in the evening when both ladies were done working for the day Patricia
00:10:36
would then meet Sherry at the bus station and then they would go get the kids so pretty much the evening routine
00:10:43
was the reverse order of the morning routine yeah let's let's talk about Tuesday January 10th
00:10:50
1984 yeah cuz that evening didn't go it didn't work out as usual you know Sherry
00:10:56
the daughter she arrived her bus arrived red at the station dropped her off but her mother who was always there waiting
00:11:03
to pick her up uh she was not there on this day her mother and the car were nowhere in sight right Sherry waited
00:11:12
around for a bit and then started to get nervous no matter where her mother was Sherry still needed to get her kids to
00:11:20
go pick up her kids so she used the pay phone and she started making phone calls
00:11:26
she tried to call the town home where they lived and there was no answer after several tries to the town home she then
00:11:34
called a friend the friend took her daughter from the school to the daycare she called her cousin and her
00:11:42
cousin picked her up at the bus station and from there they went to pick up the child uh the children from the daycare
00:11:50
center and they drove back to their town home well when they arrived at the scene
00:11:56
uh in front of the house immediately this the scene felt strange to Sherry keep in mind by now it's it's dark out
00:12:04
and it's evening time the first thing that Sher noticed was her mother's car was parked in the driveway was parked
00:12:11
out in front of the town home yeah now there were no outside lights on so you know how when there's no lights on if
00:12:18
there are any lights on inside the home if there's no lights outside but there's
00:12:23
lights inside the home you can pretty much see everything you know right away yeah well Sherry could see lights
00:12:30
changing color and flickering coming from the upstairs bedroom window yeah and most people like once it starts
00:12:37
getting dark they turn on the outside lights right mhm I like to keep everything dark and wear night vision
00:12:43
goggles I feel like it gives me the advantage well the lights that were flickering they're coming from sher's
00:12:50
Mother's bedroom window okay so other than the odd thing of no lights it appears sher's mother Patricia was at
00:12:58
the home home by now when you say flickering I mean is this like turning on and off or no a Flicker and I'm glad
00:13:08
you asked that the the TV is on in the upstairs one of the upstairs rooms and so when you see the lights changing and
00:13:15
flickering it's just the TV yeah that's always a kind of a creepy look mhm by this time it's about uh a little after
00:13:23
6:15 p.m. uh of course the alarming thing here Captain is if Patricia was already at the home by this time why had
00:13:30
she not picked up her daughter from the bus or at the very least picked up the phone when her daughter had tried
00:13:36
calling her several times yeah Sherry and the kids got out of the car and they walked to the front door the door was
00:13:43
locked Sherry started to get her keys out the kids stepped in front of her both wanting to be the first to get
00:13:49
inside out of the cold Colorado winter evening Sher unlocked the door and Amber her daughter pushed past her and little
00:13:58
Joe and and ran inside unfortunately little Amber was the first to find her grand her grandmother on the
00:14:06
floor and an image in her own words that she said would never leave her mind 50-year-old Patricia was lying on the
00:14:14
floor near a sofa just about 4T from the front door she was lying on top of a Winnie the Pooh comforter the comforter
00:14:23
was slightly folded so that part of it covered Patricia's head her hands arms were crossed over her chest even to
00:14:32
little Amber's untrained eye it was clear that her grandmother had been killed and posed as if she were lying in
00:14:40
a casket left near the front door right where the next person to come in the home would immediately find her patri
00:14:49
Patricia's jeans were pulled down nearly to her ankles her boots were still on and she was wearing a sweater there was
00:14:57
a large amount of blood on Patricia's face and around her head someone had left a hammer lying on the floor next to
00:15:06
her Sherry immediately gathered the children and took them next door to the neighbor's home the neighbor man ran
00:15:15
back to the town home and saw Patricia's dead body and upon this he returned to his home to call
00:15:24
911 the police were quick to respond uh the family remained at the neighbor's home while the police searched the crime
00:15:32
scene for Clues I'm guessing with a a killer on the loose and a murder scene they may have gone to stay with the with
00:15:42
other family members you know they had uh in the Denver area the homicide investigation was pretty thorough the
00:15:51
they quickly determined that Patricia had been raped during the attack there was no sign of forced entry into the
00:15:58
home and they figured out that she had been killed between the hours of 100 p.m. and
00:16:05
300 p.m. however the initial report was that she had been killed between the hours of 300 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. well
00:16:13
also this is 84 so a lot of people are not locking their doors uh especially during the day maybe maybe more people
00:16:21
would lock their doors at night but it was it was less likely or more likely that people would have unlock doors back
00:16:29
in ' 884 than now so let's talk about real quick the the no sign of forced entry as you're as you're getting
00:16:37
towards there um couple scenarios there are two scenarios to talk about here Patricia was on her her lunch break okay
00:16:48
um and this is what the police were able to determine that she had gone to a Wendy's uh restaurant to pick up lunch
00:16:57
for herself mhm she had returned home and she was attacked as she opened her front door this was the police Theory um
00:17:07
the problem with this police theory is there's evidence to suggest that Patricia was actually home for some time
00:17:14
before the attack took place right first of all remember we talked about the TV being on upstairs her body was found
00:17:22
near the front door on the main level of the Town Hall all right so she gets her
00:17:27
Wendy's goes home she's going to maybe watch a little daytime TV while she eats her lunch and then
00:17:36
knock knock knock on the door she answers the door the attack happens there well right and and that's what I'm
00:17:43
pointing out here at the very least she couldn't have been attacked as she was opening the door because she had to have
00:17:49
enough time to get in the home go upstairs turn on the TV at the very least yeah and the and if she had food
00:17:56
and she was attacked when she was going in when there'll be food everywhere mhm okay and you you hint to something there
00:18:03
very important because the family had their own Theory the family suggested that Patricia who had grown up and
00:18:10
recently lived in a small town before moving to the larger City of Lakewood they said they think that the killer
00:18:17
knocked on the door thinking Patricia was just a trusting person and probably would have not have hesitated to open
00:18:25
the door letting the killer in and he attacked her immediately uh as upon her opening the
00:18:32
door again right and again this would not be uncommon for 1984 I don't think it would be that uncommon for today you
00:18:42
know you're at home during the day somebody knocks on your door there's so many of these solicitors how many people
00:18:48
are opening up the door for just whoever you know I actually have a problem with
00:18:53
both the the initial police Theory and the family's Theory okay and like I said the TV being on points to me that she
00:19:01
probably was not attacked as soon as she had opened the front door the problem I
00:19:06
have with her when she's going inside the house when she's going first going into the home and and here's why so the
00:19:11
police later find a receipt for the Wendy's food that she picked up upstairs so we know she went there this wasn't a
00:19:19
TV that was left on from the morning time this was a TV that was turned on unless the killer for some reason
00:19:25
decided to take the receipt to her fast food upstairs and put it in her bedroom the the food I believe was found up
00:19:32
there as well it sounds to me I don't know it sounds to me like she didn't sit down and consume much of this meal
00:19:39
before she was interrupted right here's the thing that makes me believe that she
00:19:43
did not answer the door and this makes this makes the no sign of forced entry very tricky because
00:19:50
we're saying she she may not have been attacked Upon returning home and she herself didn't open the door Patricia
00:19:57
wore a wig mhm the wig was found upstairs and you know I don't want to I don't want to receive any crappy email
00:20:07
for this but here's here's my guess okay send Nick crappy emails if here's my guess if I wore a
00:20:13
wig uh somebody knocks on my door I'm going to put on my wig before I go answer the door does that sound like a
00:20:19
fair statement I thought you did wear a wig you should see the these locks man this is my real hair not my real color
00:20:28
Madison Reed thank you no but um that's just a guess I'm just guessing there maybe that's not true 100% of the time
00:20:35
all of the time but I'm going I'm going off the assumption that if I were wearing a wig somebody knocks on the
00:20:42
door I would probably put the wig on before going downstairs to open up the door all right so your theory is that
00:20:50
she gets food she goes inside the house she goes upstairs to watch TV while she's going to eat her lunch mhm and the
00:20:57
Intruder comes in the doors unlocked mhm yeah that makes the most sense to me yeah yeah and well and and like I said
00:21:06
it's just the idea that sometimes when when break-ins happen and they go there's no Force no side of force entry
00:21:14
sometimes people just don't lock the door it happens well and I also want to talk about real quick Captain why the um
00:21:23
well real quick though sorry but to me this points as an individual if she didn't have have if she didn't consume
00:21:30
much of her meal mhm that this is not just some random attack where he just picked this house for no reason or he
00:21:38
was just riding by on his bike and sees this lady in the window watching TV I think this was probably somebody that
00:21:45
saw her getting the food um you know fancied her on some level and Then followed her back to her place mhm and
00:21:55
probably you know studied the scene little bit just kind of figure out is she by herself or there other people in
00:22:03
the house right and and and I think they kind of got the feeling the attacker had
00:22:09
this um the feeling that no it's just her you know and he just went in well the other thing too is if you're
00:22:16
watching from the outside depending on how light it was out that day um you may you may be able to observe the town home
00:22:24
and see that from the windows even if the shades are cloth that there's likely no lights on in the home right and if
00:22:31
she returns home and you're watching her as you said and you see boom a light turn on as soon as she walks in the
00:22:38
front door boom a light turn on in the upstairs bedroom you can ass you might one might assume she's the only person
00:22:44
in the home that there was nobody there before she returned the other evidence Captain the autopsy showed that the
00:22:50
cause of death was several very hard and violent hits to her head um this of course consistent with the hand Hammer
00:22:58
that was found lying next to her as the most likely murder weapon whoever killed
00:23:05
the woman had removed two diamond rings from her fingers and removed a gold necklace that was around her neck
00:23:14
nothing else was stolen from the home in fact the killer didn't even check the rest of the home this is according to
00:23:21
the police to see if there were other valuables that he could take evidence of a sexual assault was collected from the
00:23:29
body one thing that her daughter Sherry would point out in a later interview was
00:23:35
that there were no defensive wounds on Patricia's hands and arms this suggesting that she was knocked out by
00:23:44
one or more blows to the head before the sexual assault took place let's get back
00:23:49
to the case of the rora hammered Slayer after this quick beer break [Music] this show is sponsored by better help do
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[Music] [Applause] [Music] today all right we're back cheers mates cheers Captain stay safe out there it's
00:26:17
uh it's all snowy where we're at so hopefully it's uh warmer wherever you are all right so in our timeline of the
00:26:25
hammer Slayer we have the first attack and that is of the couple yeah so that is James and Kimberly hobbins child that
00:26:33
were attacked in the middle of the night inside their home on January 4th 1984 but they survived yes and then we have
00:26:42
the second attack which is going to be of Patricia Smith and she unfortunately did not survive correct later that same
00:26:51
day January 10th by now it's evening time the attack and murder of Patricia Smith took place in Lakewood now I know
00:26:59
this is the same day but this next part of the story is going to take us back to
00:27:03
Aurora Colorado remember from the first trailer the first attack took place in the middle of the night in Aurora so
00:27:10
Aurora is just about 15 miles from Lakewood give or take depending on how far west in Lakewood you are and how far
00:27:18
east you would be in Aurora I don't have an address for Donna Dixon so we will just have to use the 15 M dist as
00:27:28
something to keep in mind an aurora 28-year-old flight attendant Donna Dixon who worked for Frontier
00:27:36
Airlines uh she is driving home she pulled into her driveway and parked her car in her
00:27:44
garage as she got out of her car she was attacked she was struck in the head something very hard smashed into her
00:27:54
left temple she dropped to the ground her attacker pulled and stripped her clothes off of her Donna was sexually
00:28:03
assaulted on the concrete garage floor after the attacker fled the scene Donna Dixon was left bloodied very badly
00:28:14
beaten and unconscious her attacker had left her there to bleed out or to succumb to her head injuries and die
00:28:21
there on the cold concrete floor eventually Donna and the Bloody scene were discovered a call was placed for an
00:28:29
ambulance to transport her to the nearest hospital MH Donna was in a coma uh but somehow she survived the brutal
00:28:39
assault but because of the severity of her injuries Donna spent weeks relearning how to
00:28:46
talk which was important here Captain because the police were hoping that she could tell them who had attacked her
00:28:53
right uh later when Donna Dixon would describe the attack she says that the attacker bashed in her head with a
00:29:01
sledgehammer and beat her head against the wheel well another curious thing though is that that same article that
00:29:08
same news article where the crime reporter had asked Donna to describe the attack and give her insights into the
00:29:15
case there's a troubling phrase in there where it is stated Donna's attacker or attackers had used a sledgehammer to
00:29:25
attack her and why is that a troubling phrase well I it's not so much that that in particular is super troubling it's
00:29:33
that a lot of people over the years have looked at the you know now we've discussed three different attacks three
00:29:40
separate attacks and a lot of people have looked through the details of those attacks to determine if in fact they are
00:29:47
all connected if they were all committed by the same perpetrator so some people have pointed out through the years that
00:29:55
well while a hammer what what we would believe to be a traditional Hammer was left next to the body of Patricia Smith
00:30:04
and then we had this next account the third attack where uh we have the victim describing a sledgehammer and I think
00:30:11
there's a couple things there to consider first of all if a traditional Hammer was used to kill Patricia Smith
00:30:16
and was left at the scene right well then the attacker just hours later would would not have that same weapon to use
00:30:24
on his next victim mhm now where says the word Sledgehammer I don't think we're looking at or thinking about the
00:30:31
same thing that you and I would consider a traditional Sledgehammer with the long
00:30:36
handle I'm thinking that we're probably talking about something that is just um right it's still short Hammer correct
00:30:42
you can have a short Hammer Sledgehammer I mean I watched Property Brothers before and but here's one thing that I
00:30:49
want to point out to the listeners when when thinking about if these attacks are
00:30:54
connected and if in fact the details of these different uh attacks could lead one to believe that or take you away
00:31:04
from believing that with Donna Dixon in that news article uh there where she gives this account years later of how
00:31:13
the attack went down she is giving you information that was provided to her by the police okay
00:31:22
where she says that she was hit in the head with the sledgehammer and pulled to to the ground and then her head was
00:31:29
bashed against the wheel well this information didn't come from her witnessing this attack she actually had
00:31:37
no memory of the attack at all um other than getting out of her car basically for Donna Dixon she got out of her car
00:31:46
and then she woke up many days later in the hospital right and that's as far as she remembers and and I know me and I'm
00:31:54
sure a lot of people out there the same way that would have happened to me me the first thing I'm asking the police is
00:31:59
one who did this why did they do this and describe the attack to me as the evidence points out to you because I
00:32:05
want to know what happened to me right it's probably a crazy fan that you made mad that's probably what would happen
00:32:12
well and I'm sure that she's able to give this account because the police are relaying what they can see from evidence
00:32:19
to to to tell her you know hey you were attacked immediately as soon as you got out of your car right you were attacked
00:32:24
in your garage and we can tell by Blood you left on the wheel well that your head struck that wheel well at least
00:32:31
once if not multiple times well I mean I guess the bright side of this is that she does not remember the attack and
00:32:39
that she doesn't have those memories that would haunt her right right and it was a long recovery but she would make a
00:32:45
full recovery and go on to live a a normal life not affected by those injuries many years later and one
00:32:53
question that has come up time and time again regarding this this case regarding
00:32:58
the hammer Slayer case is people have always been curious why the police would move the reported time of death
00:33:06
regarding Patricia Smith remember early on it was reported that she was killed sometime between 3 and 5:00 p.m. but
00:33:15
then later reported that she was actually killed between 1 and 300 p.m. now the police the reason why this
00:33:22
remains a question Captain is the police offer no information or no insight as to
00:33:27
why they changed that time frame mhm I think here if we look at the events of that day and if we look into the lives
00:33:37
of these of the victims involved that we can probably piece together why they made that change make some inferences
00:33:44
here and what I think I would point out is what did what do we know about Patrica Smith well we know that she is
00:33:53
living at that town home with the sole purpose of helping her daughter and her grandkids we talked about their daily
00:34:00
routine during the work week well their daily routine was to get up drop off the
00:34:06
kids and then drop off the her daughter at the bus station for her to go off to work so what inference can we make from
00:34:13
that is that their workday Patricia Smith's workday and her daughter sher's workday is based more off of the kids
00:34:22
schedule what time they need to arrive to school and what time they need to be picked up after school yeah so we know
00:34:30
that her body was discovered around 6:15 p.m. that night my guess is that 300 p.m. around 300 p.m. was the first time
00:34:40
that she was known to be missing she was not where she was supposed to be meaning
00:34:45
she had not picked up her daughter she wasn't waiting at the bus station phone calls are made to the town home where we
00:34:51
know she's ultimately found dead later so one can assume that they came up with the idea of 3 to 5 being that she was
00:35:00
unaccounted for starting at 300 p.m. and she's found by 6:00 p.m. dead and we know that it we had to have some time
00:35:07
for the attack to actually occur and for the attacker to flee the scene so you come up with that three to five marker
00:35:15
right yeah I think I think it makes more sense to take a look at her receipt to see if there's a Time on it you know
00:35:23
that would be the starting point wouldn't it well and I think that where you are exactly right my friend because
00:35:29
now later they're going to tell you that the attack probably most likely occurred
00:35:34
between the hours of 1 p.m. and 300 p.m. MH okay well why would that move we have
00:35:39
to again look at the victim and what that person was doing that day and like you said they found a receipt did it did
00:35:46
it have a time stamp on it it would have had a time stamp on it yes this information was not released to the
00:35:51
public you mean the the time was not released correct time stamp but what we can the inference we can make from what
00:35:59
police did release stating that we believe she returned home on her lunch break MH meaning that there that
00:36:06
timestamp is going to point them more towards a traditional lunch hour time MH um and then we know that she would have
00:36:14
had to have been killed or most likely would have had to have been killed before 3 p.m. because that's when she is
00:36:19
now unaccounted for so if you take a look at that receipt as you had pointed out and the receipt says 12:30 12:45
00:36:28
1250 and we know that she's not accounted for starting at 300 p.m. then it's looking like this attack occurred
00:36:36
sometime between the hours of 1 to 3 my guess is that they had not discovered that receipt upon releasing that initial
00:36:44
information yeah possibly and then what like you said depending on what that time stamp is let's say it is uh 12:30
00:36:51
then she has this travel time to get back to her house and and again with the reports it's stating that well she
00:36:58
didn't consume much of this food so unless she was interrupted with a phone call which would have phone records of
00:37:05
that um if there wasn't something uh hindering her or being a hindrance is that even the right word yeah let's go
00:37:14
with that let's go with that word but for whatever reason she has her food and she
00:37:21
didn't she didn't eat all the food you know so you would assume that that the attack happened pretty quickly once she
00:37:28
returned home some other things though here Captain is that they after these attacks they started rounding up um
00:37:37
construction workers and home builders in the area and I mean the area of Aurora and Lakewood right apparently
00:37:44
both of these neighborhoods um in both of these cities were I mean it was a housing boom for both of these cities
00:37:52
during this time period of of late 83 early 84 so there's a lot of homes being built and a lot of houses going up
00:38:00
everywhere yeah and their thought was the weapon is commonly used tool and construction yes but the tough thing
00:38:09
about this tool is it's not this is also a household object you know most houses
00:38:15
have uh a hammer and then the question becomes is the is this person showing up without a hammer and finding one at the
00:38:24
scene or is he brining a hammer with them well that's you bring up an interesting point because first off in
00:38:31
the Patricia Smith murder the hammer was left meaning that when they state that the hammer was left that means that
00:38:38
they've shown it to the people the remaining people that lived at that home and said was this Hammer here before
00:38:45
this event happened yeah and to the you know the accounts they're getting from these these people the family members of
00:38:52
Patricia Smith are no that's not that was not in this house prior to this attack then in the situation with Donna
00:38:59
Dixon I don't think that we have a hammer that was left or a sledg hammer that was left at the scene there's no
00:39:07
report of that M um one thing I wondered though with them rounding up all of the
00:39:12
construction workers and the home builders and this might sound this might sound silly but sometimes it's these
00:39:18
silly little things that can solve a case or at least give you a decent lead all right let's hear your little silly
00:39:24
idea okay so we know that at at least one hammer was left at a crime scene on January 10th yeah I would be curious to
00:39:33
know if there were any if they if they spent time looking at Hammer purchases on the 11th or the 10th or the 12th or
00:39:41
the 13th and the only reason why I'm pointing that out is obviously like you had said a common tool used by
00:39:47
construction workers and and home builders is in fact a hammer um or you know anybody in that a similar trade
00:39:55
right but my thing is if the perpetrator at least left one hammer at a crime scene is there a chance he needs to
00:40:03
replace that I I mean here's what I'm getting at if you have a you have an area like Lakewood or Aurora and there's
00:40:11
these attacks going on and it's fairly well known that the weapon used in the murder was a hammer that was left there
00:40:20
and then two days later you and I are at a sight we're working together in some form of uh you know we're Craftsmen or
00:40:27
we're we're Builders or something of that nature yeah I'd be the foreman yeah you would be the boss and I'd say hey
00:40:34
Foreman uh captain and I'd say go fetch me that concrete you mule and and I would go I would I I'll fetch you the
00:40:42
concrete but do you have a hammer I can borrow and you'd go Nick uh I'm tired of
00:40:48
you showing up without your tools let me try Nick I'm tired of you showing up here you got got a future you got some
00:40:56
real skills natural gifted but you can't can't show up empty-handed my my friend
00:41:02
you need to show up with your tools I'm just getting at would it be a little uh suspicious if if all of a sudden one of
00:41:09
these guys is showing up without that very common Tool uh yeah but look if there's let's say there's a 100
00:41:16
construction sites that probably happens every day it might happen every day but
00:41:20
where I'm going is to the hardware stores and looking to see hey has anybody purchased hammer in the in the
00:41:27
past 24 48 72 hours I don't think that your idea is that silly but I think you would want to take it one step further
00:41:35
if there is some kind of evidence uh based on the autopsy that it was a different kind of hammer not the
00:41:41
traditional Hammer you know that maybe you should look into was there multiple purchases was there a purchase of an uh
00:41:50
the traditional hammer and then one of the smaller Sledgehammer I think if you could find that because those were the
00:41:56
same day those purchases might have been made at the same time mhm um but it's also P it's also possible that um
00:42:05
whoever this nut job is going around attacking people with a hammer is you know let's say he's living
00:42:13
with his mom his father has passed away but his father was into construction these could be tools that you know that
00:42:20
that would be another question that was not reported was the hammer that was left
00:42:26
what what kind of condition was this in was this a 10-year-old Hammer yeah did it look purchased recently or yeah
00:42:34
that's a good that's a good insight there well and and the reason why I wondered that is because I personally
00:42:39
probably own I don't know five six different hammers right me I would say I owned minimum three maybe four or five
00:42:48
and yeah and there's a you know they all vary in age you know and I have a couple
00:42:54
older hammers that I probably should throw away but you know sentimental value Grand grandfather's hammer or
00:43:00
whatever MH so um I I don't know that that's one thing I'd like to know is this a new Hammer you know uh and and
00:43:09
then then you're again they probably did this if it was a new Hammer if it was a
00:43:15
new Hammer they probably were checking local hardware stores right uh and and like I said though I also think it would
00:43:21
be worth checking in case this person needed to replace it immediately for their occupation if if they believe that
00:43:28
now the other thing though is we got to keep in mind we've not even determined that these three attacks are actually
00:43:35
connected yet it's looking that way there are similarities that would have you believe there are there's no sign of
00:43:42
forced entry into Patricia Smith's home there's no sign of forced entry into the
00:43:46
hobbins child's home right um we also and then we have Donna Dixon who's attacked outside of her home in her
00:43:53
garage but there was a fourth attack and I want to start off by saying this you know when when you do a very simple
00:44:00
Google search of this case uh and you can look it up in under several different tags yeah um that's that was
00:44:08
the hardest thing about this case yeah you could look it up under the title we chose the Aurora Hammer Slayer um I've
00:44:14
also seen it called Colorado Hammerman uh or any of the many many different tags given to these cold cases you will
00:44:23
get about one of three three different articles reporting the fourth attack uh so what we have done for this this
00:44:32
portion is sort of compiled those three uh more popular articles regarding the fourth attack to to tell to tell you the
00:44:40
details uh of that fourth attack and in relation to uh the next part of our Cold
00:44:45
Case investigation because there are plenty of questions in this case but I think let's go through this fourth
00:44:51
attack first and get to those questions after but before we do the fourth attack
00:44:56
ATT we have to take you back a bit to tell you about a man named Bruce Bennett uh Bruce married his high school
00:45:03
sweetheart Deb um they were they were young they were actually just out of high school when they got married after
00:45:10
they married Bruce joined the Navy he was there he served uh four years stationed at Pearl Harbor from 1976 to
00:45:19
1980 uh Bruce was a sonar analyst after the Navy Bruce was enrolled in college and he was training or trained as an air
00:45:28
traffic controller Bruce's family owned a family run furniture store and Bruce was working there however he was excited
00:45:38
for a possible future career as an air traffic controller now Bruce Bennett and his wife Deborah Bennett they both
00:45:45
enjoyed living uh what others would later describe as a quiet life the two along with their small children we have
00:45:53
7-year-old Melissa and 3-year-old van Nessa they had moved to a nice home in the
00:46:00
16300 block of East Center Drive in aora Colorado Bruce and Deborah are uh pretty
00:46:08
young themselves Bruce is is 27 and his wife is 26 mhm they moved there over the
00:46:14
course of the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend in 1983 where we left off in our case so
00:46:21
far is January 10th 1984 well we're going to move forward to January 15th 1984 this is a Sunday
00:46:30
Melissa the Bennett's 7-year-old daughter she's going to be turning 8 years old later in the week so the
00:46:38
Bennetts are going to celebrate Melissa's birthday on that Sunday so they had some other family members over
00:46:44
that day to join in the celebration so you know sometime on Sunday evening things are winding down people have to
00:46:52
work in the morning so their guests are starting to leave I can't say for certain here what time
00:46:58
the last guest or guest left but I do have something in my notes Here suggesting that the last guest were
00:47:05
leaving around 9:00 maybe as early as 9:00 or as late as 10: p.m. Bruce and Deborah they cleaned up the party and
00:47:14
put the children to bed sometime during the night a cat burgler entered the home
00:47:21
armed with a knife and a hammer trying to steal cats a noise must have awoken Bruce and upon which he went to
00:47:30
investigate the noise Bruce encountered the Intruder on the stairs to the home and immediately a fight ensued yeah from
00:47:39
the way it looks this was was quite the fight we have an intruder here with a weapon and Bruce presumably unarmed uh
00:47:47
regardless of how unfair this fight is this this would be what I can say is Bruce did the best
00:47:55
to he could to protect his family well you said the Intruder had a hammer and a knife correct yeah he he Bruce did the
00:48:03
best he could to protect his family he he had been slashed uh he was slashed several times in this attack he was hit
00:48:09
over the head with the hammer um but yet even though he had all these injuries he
00:48:16
rep repeatedly crawled the stairs up the stairs covered in blood trying to save and protect his family however he was
00:48:24
unsuc uccessful the Intruder went to the master bedroom and he pummeled and sexually assaulted the 26-year-old
00:48:34
Deborah leaving her head bashed in next he walked the hall to 7-year-old Melissa's room where he did the same and
00:48:43
then he walked into the youngest girl's room Vanessa and repeatedly hit her in the head and face with a blunt object
00:48:50
presumably a hammer and fast forward and ahead a little bit to January 16 at 10:00 a.m. it's going to be the
00:48:58
discovery of the bodies yeah and this happens because Bruce has not shown up for work yet and as we said it's a
00:49:05
family-owned business so one of the people that works there not sure maybe if if she's the owner of the company but
00:49:12
this is Bruce's mother constant and like others I'm sure at the store was just at the Bennett residence
00:49:21
the day before for the birthday party and it's not like Bruce to miss work certainly without notifying someone so
00:49:27
constant tries calling the house several times and with no luck she decides to go
00:49:32
to the Bennett house later she would say that she was afraid of something like uh
00:49:37
Co poisoning um right yeah so that maybe you know maybe the whole family had fallen asleep for forever because of Co
00:49:44
poisoning so she makes the drive and Bruce's Body was discovered that morning by his own mother Constance Bennett who
00:49:53
immediately called police now the Bennett house was a horrible scene as you can imagine and and these attacks
00:50:02
that took place I mean the the house and the rooms were so bloody and the the victims so badly beaten and constant
00:50:10
having arrived at a home to see the unimaginable well she failed to notice something very important that out of all
00:50:17
the Death that had taken place in those dark early morning hours death had missed the little three-year-old girl
00:50:24
Vanessa yeah Bennett didn't know that Vanessa had had survived the attack until a paramedic
00:50:31
rushed out of the house cradling The Battered little girl in his arms she was in very bad shape uh but she was rushed
00:50:39
off to the hospital the other three family members of the of the Bennett family Bruce Deborah and Melissa sadly
00:50:48
were killed that night and pronounced dead at the crime scene Bruce was found on the stairs Deborah in her her bedroom
00:50:56
and Melissa in her bedroom Melissa go ahead I was just going to say I mean it's it's just so so sad I mean
00:51:04
one you know you applaud Bruce for trying you know to save his family and his little girls and then I think just
00:51:12
sometimes when it's uh when there are kids involved in an attack like this it just seems
00:51:18
like H you know like this one just feels different than the other attacks well it's a it's a lot to it's really a lot
00:51:27
to take in all at once there and but but then now we have this you know very young victim that's alive that maybe
00:51:36
they could give us some information yes and that's that's what we're hoping Vanessa had skull fractures to both
00:51:44
sides of her head um her jaw was shattered which ended up sending Jagged bones into her windpipe um and I and I
00:51:52
don't say that to paint a horrible picture for you I only say that to try toate well I only say that to try to
00:52:00
describe how right vicious it was you're yeah whoever did this has to be a [ __ ] monster well and the thing here
00:52:08
is Captain I point that out because I believe that whoever did this didn't know that the girl was still alive I
00:52:15
think that she probably looked so bad after he had attacked her that he believed that she was dead um a massive
00:52:23
investigation had begun obviously uh this produced very little leads uh regarding the house itself the early
00:52:31
reports indicated the following that there again was no signs of forced entry into the home there was also no obvious
00:52:39
motive for the killings for the police nothing was taken taken from the house except for a knife used to slash Bruce
00:52:48
and a purse uh belonging to Deborah which was scattered the the contents of the purse were scattered in the front
00:52:55
yard outside and the purse was left in the front yard as well and you'd think with all these attacks happening that
00:53:01
people would start locking their doors not saying that they didn't lock their doors just because there's no sign of
00:53:07
force entry right doesn't mean that somebody doesn't know how to pick a lock right doesn't know how to get you know I
00:53:15
could break into a lot of homes and you wouldn't know that I actually broke in there like there wouldn't be any sign of
00:53:21
that I probably shouldn't have said that out loud no you should of of regarding Bruce uh the early report stated that he
00:53:29
had been cut and slashed numerous times and struck in the head with a hammer the
00:53:33
district the I'm sorry the deputy district attorney had this to say quote it was quite clear he had fought with
00:53:41
the Intruder it's apparent he had struggled with his attacker in more than one location and on more than one floor
00:53:49
of the house he had numerous this is this is this is is where you like it's sad because you're you're sad that Bruce
00:53:59
um didn't survive the attack right but you're you're in a way kind of proud of him yeah uh because because you know why
00:54:07
cuz [ __ ] the Intruder you know well and this is this is from the deputy District
00:54:13
Attorney's mouth you know she says that that Bruce had numerous injuries that could have killed him that's how that's
00:54:20
how hard he fought and how badly he was hurt during the course of that fight and
00:54:25
he wouldn't stop fighting it's going to sound a little silly but this you get attacked right and then it's time to you
00:54:33
know you're down on the ground you got to make a decision right are you going to get up right you're going to fight
00:54:39
you're going to keep fighting you have your wife there you have your your children MH and I bet he pulled one of
00:54:45
the Hulk Hogan moves you know where he started waving his finger up well round two you know and and yeah did he did he
00:54:55
stop him no but like I said that Intruder you know had his hands full and and like you said it's it's a weird
00:55:04
thing to I guess say that you're proud of them but I you know I don't know what else to call it
00:55:10
you mean yeah it it's it it sounds weird to say that but I I mean there's no other way to put it for me okay so let's
00:55:17
talk about this because I said that we took kind of you know three newspaper articles uh of the more of the immediate
00:55:24
ones that will pull up when you go to look into this case and kind of smash them together to present the whole thing
00:55:30
to you as far as the fourth attack and the murders of the Bennett family go um and I want to point out a couple things
00:55:38
here because many armchair detectives many web sluther have taken a look at this case over the years and tried to
00:55:45
figure out a lot of things about this case regarding the details about you know we've always heard the devils in
00:55:52
the details so that's why we pour through the details and try to see if we can gain anything or learn anything
00:55:58
about the potential attacker or attackers that committed these crimes I want to First address one thing it has
00:56:06
been it has been brought up several times over the years that potentially if if all four of these
00:56:15
attacks are in fact connected that the killer was escalating meaning that he he chose to bring a
00:56:23
knife and a Hammer with him to the fourth attack where on the first second and third there's no evidence of a knife
00:56:30
being present but later in that story we hear that the knife was probably taken from the Bennett family home and then it
00:56:40
was the bloody knife was found out in front of their home was thrown down near the purse in the front yard yeah when we
00:56:47
try to figure out this person this this attacker and if in fact they were escalating I I would suggest maybe not
00:56:56
because it doesn't appear that this attacker brought the knife with him it it appears that he in fact took the
00:57:03
knife from the Bennett home and used it during the attack my guess is that he went looking for the knife that he had
00:57:11
encountered Bruce he had this fight with Bruce he probably hit Bruce in the head
00:57:17
multiple times with the weapon he brought with him the hammer and when Bruce kept getting up at
00:57:24
some point this attacker believed that his own weapon was failing him yeah and that he went looking for the knife and
00:57:31
decided he needed to use a different a different weapon a different method to kill the man that's trying to stop him
00:57:38
inside the home that he's entered and we know this because Bruce's Bruce's throat was Slash so
00:57:46
ultimately he he used a different method to to kill Bruce however we heard the uh
00:57:52
Deputy Deputy district attorney stating Bruce had suffered many injuries that would have killed most people yeah so
00:57:59
where I say that people of question was this this attack or this Intruder escalating I would guess I would say no
00:58:07
and for the simple fact that I think that this was an unplanned portion of this guy's attack you know we saw the
00:58:14
previous scenes where there was no knife used but he also left all of those victims in a manner which I believe he
00:58:22
thought they were all dead when he left there and I think he broke into the home
00:58:26
with the intention of killing who was ever inside and doing whatever he wanted while he was in there um but I don't see
00:58:33
escalation here I think that it's just happen stance that those people survived and thankfully they survived but don't
00:58:40
you think that with some of these attacks there it suggests that he would be casing uh the house or casing
00:58:47
whatever situation he's going into um you know we talked about that earlier where you know you could have
00:58:54
watch Patricia Smith's home from the outside and judging by whether she turned on lights and there were no
00:59:00
lights on before that that would indicate that she was in fact alone the problem I have with that is if
00:59:07
that were the case he could he could essentially do this in each one of these attacks you know Donna Dixon was by
00:59:14
herself so maybe he followed her in her car saw her driving home decided to start following her and then he he Blitz
00:59:23
attacked her as soon as she got out of her car he could have parked near her and just ran up and started attacking
00:59:29
her in her garage knowing that she either was alone or if there was somebody inside the home they would have
00:59:36
he would have a few minutes to gain control of the situation yeah you could have potentially followed Patricia Smith
00:59:43
home and and figured out if she was in fact home alone or not these other two cases the the females not by themselves
00:59:52
you know if in fact that that was his goal we know that that there was rape involved in several of these cases um if
01:00:00
if you're trying to get a female alone that was not the case with the hobbins child attack or the case in the Bennett
01:00:07
house so therefore that tells me one thing or one of two things either um he's casing the houses as you
01:00:17
suggested and maybe the whether there's a man present or not does not affect his
01:00:22
determination of going into the home right and my that's what my argument would be is that to me it's a clear sign
01:00:30
of escalation if the person cased the house and knew that it wasn't even just two
01:00:38
people in the house but there were four but there the four and that there were children involved and that you know
01:00:45
wouldn't that be by definition escalating it it it would be but then you have the other situation um part two
01:00:52
of my answer would be maybe he's not watching the houses and does not care who or what is inside yeah that he's
01:00:59
just going to go in and take over the scene and leave a horrible horrible bloody mess when he's
01:01:05
done let's talk about questions here because one thing that we've tasked our selves with with this case because this
01:01:11
is a you know this is a fascinating Cold Case and there I've I've come across many common questions that people have
01:01:20
come up with within the first few years after these attack had happened now we said Cold Case so you need to keep in
01:01:28
mind it's cold for a reason there were these four attacks that may or may not be linked but there were no more attacks
01:01:35
that we can find that were similar that could be linked to this so the questions
01:01:41
that we've tasked ourselves with answering and we're going to have to do this in the next episode because we're
01:01:45
getting a little little lengthy here today but um that's what she said of the of the the first question is this it's
01:01:53
not clear if all four of the January attacks are connected so we'll try to answer that one tomorrow um also because
01:02:01
there were no signs of forced entry into the homes how did the Intruder get into
01:02:05
the Bennett home or the other homes did the killer know his victims and if not did he how did he choose these
01:02:14
particular people or houses also what was the motive for these attacks or killings why was
01:02:21
Patricia killed during the day and the Bennetts killed overnight and then also as we had
01:02:28
already stated the killings ended with the Bennett family murders why did the did the Killer die or did he just stop
01:02:35
killing or maybe he moved to another state so we're going to do some additional digging and see if we can
01:02:42
answer these questions for [Applause] you thanks for listening thanks for subscribing and thank you for telling a
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