Free Monster by Steve Jackson Page B

Sue Potter, and John Martin dead. Killing Mary made a certain amount of twisted sense; without her testimony, he couldn’t be convicted. Maybe he wanted Potter murdered out of jealousy or a feeling of betrayal for dumping him and taking his money—or was it because she knew something that might incriminate him?
    But why try to pay to have Martin killed? Unless he had told the old snitch something that could hurt him someday.
     
     
    A week later, the detective who interviewed Montoya met with Sue Potter. She was now living with another man but refused to disclose his name or where she was working. It was evident she didn’t trust anybody involved with the Luther case and now wanted nothing to do with her old boyfriend.
    The detective told her that he had information that Luther was trying to have her killed and that she had gotten rid of several guns for him. “That’s bullshit,” she responded. “The only guns we had were my service revolver and a .22 rifle.”
    “Luther’s claiming that he killed two girls,” the detective continued.
    “I have no information about that,” Potter said. “I don’t know what he did when he went out by himself ... that was one of the problems we were having—he wouldn’t take me with him.”
    The detective asked again about the guns and threatened that if Luther was tied to murder and she had disposed of the guns, she could be charged with being an accessory. Potter was incensed. “There were no other guns!” she yelled.
    What about the threats to kill her? the detective asked.
    Potter shrugged. “He’s crazy. He’s probably capable of it,” she said. Then she thought again. “I don’t think he’d do it.” Her lips were tight, angry, but the detective thought that her eyes looked frightened.
    Potter soon moved from Colorado. She told the young woman friend who had been sleeping in the trailer the morning Tom Luther was arrested that if he got out of prison and came looking for her to say that she had left with no forwarding address.
     
     
    During the last part of 1982, Luther was examined by two more forensic psychologists—one for the defense and one for the prosecution. With each interview, his story changed subtly. His intentions had been misunderstood. The girl attacked him. He was just trying to calm her down. Each psychologist had a different prognosis on Luther’s rehabilitation, but they all agreed that without it, he would remain violently explosive around women.
    In October, Luther spoke with Robert E. Pelc, who had been retained by Nearen, in the Adams County Jail. Much of the information discussed earlier with Firestone was repeated during this evaluation, including more about his mother’s “highly unpredictable and violent” mood swings, “the source of much of his childhood distress.”
    In his report, Pelc noted that Luther had begun drinking at 9 years old and by the time he dropped out of school after the ninth grade, the boy had a serious drinking problem. “He is now a regular consumer of alcohol ... describing drinking binges that last from 90 to 100 days.”
    Drug use had begun at the age of 12. He claimed to have used hallucinogens such as LSD and mescaline more than 100 times. But he had stopped using them because, he told Pelc, “They are just too hard on me. I would be burned out for days after doing them. My mind couldn’t take it. It was no fun anymore. I was getting paranoid and schizophrenic worrying about the cops.” He had since taken to cocaine, using as much as seven grams a week by the time of his arrest.
    Living with Potter was causing a lot of stress, “as she was unemployed and used his money to support her horses.” Luther described his former girlfriend as clinging, “with considerable financial, social, and emotional dependence on him which was quite frustrating to Mr. Luther.”
    “I wanted out of that relationship but felt stuck. I didn’t want to hurt her,” Luther told him.
    Luther denied striking Mary