Dawn of Terror: Sixteen Days in January

By Stephen Conner

In January of 1984, an emerging, but still quiet, sleepy, bedroom community will be rudely awakened to the to the cruel realities of passionate, indiscriminate and incomprehensible violence. This book is a historical recap of the events that occurred during a brief period of time. It will span three states and thirty - six years, bef

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stephen W. Conner
• Release date: Apr 25, 2022
• ISBN: 9781685158514

Book preview

CHAPTER ONE:

THE EVENT

T

he morning of January 16, 1984, was the aurora of another winter day in Colorado. Ordinary. Bright, sunny, bitter cold. Boring. A Monday like every other Monday in winter. It sucked. If there is anything to dislike about Colorado, it is how cold it can get in the winter. Though it only happens occasionally, when an Arctic cold front drifts into Colorado, it seems to find a way to park itself in the Denver metropolitan area. This event then becomes more despised when one, by virtue of their employ, must work in it. The chilly and tedious on this day, however, would soon enough give way to the fervor of anguished desperation. Most everyone had wound down from the Christmas and New Year’s celebrations the weeks preceding. Some had headed back to work after being traumatized by the United States Post Office – delivering credit card statements (yes, autopay / online billing had yet to be discovered), reflecting the cost of said weeklong merrymaking. The mind does the calculation on how long one would have to work into the new year before breaking even for what was spent on Black Friday specials.

Approximately four years earlier, Paul McCartney was incarcerated in the Tokyo Narcotics Detention Center for possessing a mere half pound of marijuana. In the end he spent ten days in lockup before being expelled by authorities in Japan. Consequently the remainder of his tour (with Wings, not the Beatles) was canceled. Just another band on the run. But unlike the judge, Paul held no grudge and returned at a later time to perform before audiences in the island nation. As sort of an anniversary celebration, one may argue, Paul McCartney was again arrested for the same thing. Today, January 16, 1984. This time he was with his wife, Linda, while they were in Barbados. A few hundred dollars in fines and they were free to go. Perchance this progressive, forward-thinking musician believed that someday the possession and use of marijuana would no longer brand him a criminal. Perhaps. Just not today. No doubt about it, however. This is a very talented and inspired musical icon. Certainly the favorite of many a rock groupie from back in the day.

Ah, but I digress. Today we are in Colorado, barely two weeks into this new year. Marijuana was decades away from being legalized. This morning, something was different. Insignificant at first but peculiar nonetheless. Unnoticed by most but something that would grab headlines and plunge the city into the depths of panic and fear never before experienced. The gripping cold might have prevented the goddess of the dawn from rising early on this morning. Even so, I do not know what kind of protection she could have possibly afforded. The innocence Aurora had once enjoyed for so long would be forever altered and perhaps eternally lost. With the sun reflecting off a blanket of powdered snow, it had been mistaken for beauty and warmth. The subfreezing temperatures would, however, supply a frigid bite of reality. Such would be the case on this particular day.

Today something was amiss. Someone failed to show up for work. Someone was noticed more for their absence than their presence. In most instances this was no cause for panic. The couple were usually very punctual, and this matter could be settled with a simple telephone call. But this was different. The call had been placed to those missing, but no one had answered Amounting to something unusual and perhaps perplexing, but not yet crossing the threshold of alarming. A concerned parent or a fellow employee – someone should go to check in on the missing members of the business. That someone would be both. Constance Connie Bennett, the mother of Bruce Bennett, the missing employee. She decided that she would be the one to drive to her son’s house to determine why he and his wife, Debra, were not at work and not answering the telephone. And why not? She knew the way. She had been there before, as recently as the previous evening.

Upon arriving at the residence, an eerie sensation began to creep over her. The garage door was open. Why? Bruce’s truck was parked where it had been the previous evening. Odd, she thought. Everything was as it had been the previous evening, the way she recalled seeing it upon departure from the home. That previous evening wherein family members had gathered in Bruce and Debra’s quiet, new suburban home in Aurora for a happy occasion. They had joined together with relatives in an early celebration of Melissa’s eighth birthday, a milestone, as it turned out, she would never reach. She recalled that Bruce did say that he was going to 7-Eleven to pick up some milk after everyone left the birthday party. Did he go and simply neglect to close the garage door upon his return? Her thoughts and the interpretation of them wrestled with each other. There was conflict, but what to make of it? Now confusion was giving way to apprehension as she approached the open garage door. Scattered clues began to raise the anxiety level. An object caught her attention as she made her way to the entryway of the garage. She glanced over and observed Debra’s purse discarded on the icy winter ground near the driveway. The contents had been littered about. Her mind was racing as she attempted to decipher these additional clues. The still unclear message was beginning to set off alarms in her mind. What is happening? Having never experienced such conflict, a confused but determined Connie forged on nonetheless.

This same brain giving her messages that she could not quite interpret could not have prepared her for what her eyes would sear forever into her soul. She entered the house through the garage door and then went into the kitchen. Not too much had changed from the previous evening. A momentary sigh of relief? If so, it was to be short-lived. A few steps into the kitchen, and the world as she knew it would forever be transformed. The happiness enjoyed mere hours earlier would forever be erased by the terror her eyes now beheld. There, from the kitchen, she could see her son (one of three) prostrate on the floor at the bottom of the stairs leading to the second floor of the home. Her mind told her at once what her heart would take too long to accept.

The second floor. The level of the residence holding the bedrooms. The peaceful sanctuary of most homes, devoted to rest, a place to sleep and dream of a future. Below that sanctuary now lay the motionless body of her son. Clad only in undershorts. Bloodstained. This would be the threshold to the hell that lay only a few dozen feet up the stairs. Connie would not explore the residence any further. Who could blame her? She certainly could not comprehend what had happened. Mere hours earlier there had been a celebration in this home. A festive occasion to commemorate the passage of time, the dawn of which had yet to be realized by her granddaughter Melissa. This was now in utter contrast to what had greeted her within this same home. She was frozen in this terrifying reality, the eternity of mere moments. The thoughts in her mind whirled like a dust devil darting across the Eastern Plains, now grappling with what her next move should be. She attempted to elicit some type of response from Bruce, but there was none.

Connie’s thoughts shifted to a must-call-for-help mode. The police. The paramedics. Surely they could help and make sense of all this. No convenience of cellular telephones then. Connie was forced to make the call from the telephone in the kitchen, mere feet from where the body of her son lay, cold and still. Her heart was racing as she tried to communicate with the police dispatcher the horror that her mind was still trying to comprehend. Her 911 call did not immediately identify the address from which the call originated. Again, this was 1984. The call did reach its destination at the Aurora Police Department. It alerted the call taker to a possible emergency, but the caller had to provide the location or the address of that crisis. The enhanced 911 system would not be phased in until many years later. Nowadays even cellular telephone 911 calls can be geographically mapped to within feet of where the call is being placed. But in Connie’s case, she had to supply the address information.

What? The address? She knew it. Of course she did. She had been there often enough. None of those times was she required to recall the numbers, however. The stress and panic blocked her ability to recall those vital numerals. She was forced to leave the residence momentarily to obtain the numbers affixed to the side of the house and provide those to the police dispatcher. She then went back inside and relived the horror she had briefly escaped. Even so, she did exactly that. Upon reentering the home, she gave the much-needed information to the call taker. Connie clung to the phone now, talking, waiting with desperate impatience, anticipating the arrival of the help she urgently needed. It was not known how much time had elapsed between Connie’s arriving at the house and her placing the 911 call. In the official police reports, the time of the call was recorded as 10:28 a.m.

Aurora Fire Department personnel were first to arrive. No waiting for the arrival of police to declare a safe scene (protocols that were instituted in the twenty-first century). They entered into the horrific scene, triaging the wounded and assessing their needs. Highly trained, professional, and yet seemingly programmed in what to do and how to do it. They carried their tasks out with resolve. The arrival of uniformed officers soon followed. The first car on scene was manned by one of only a handful of female officers employed by the Aurora Police Department (APD) at the time. She entered the house in the same manner as Connie had. She observed that Connie was seated in a chair next to the refrigerator. She was inconsolable, tormented by the developing scenario she had introduced herself to and had no control over. She was crossing the chasm between what her mind now knew was probably true of her son and the rest of the family and what her heart at some point had accept. The officer took note but could make little effort to console. She walked away from Connie toward the staircase. It was then that it became abundantly clear to her why this yet-to-be-identified middle-aged woman was sobbing uncontrollably. The officer’s report would reflect in vivid detail the description of what she observed—the male at the bottom of the stairs, on his back, multiple injuries to the head and neck, the carpet infused with what was once his life’s blood. Looking past the reason for Connie’s obvious anguish, the officer then explored the rest of the house. This surreal scene unfolded like a freakish nightmare from some horror film. She would the description of the carnage that was before her on a small notepad. She would later elaborate on what she saw in greater detail and the actions she took in a report she would author from her notes.

She watched helplessly as a small child, later determined to be Vanessa, was being whisked past her. Vanessa was initially transported to the local hospital by ambulance and ultimately flown by helicopter to Children’s Hospital in Denver. Children’s. The premier child medical care facility in the region was then located near downtown Denver. (A hospital that I would become quite familiar with, almost a year to the day after this event. A hospital that would save the life of my own daughter, then only two weeks old.) The sole uniformed officer in a frenzied setting, she was forced to detach herself from the emotions that might draw her into the chaos that was feeding upon her world at that moment. She needed additional cars at once and made that need known to her dispatcher, all the while attempting to maintain what was remaining of her professional demeanor. Pandemonium that could influence her ability to make controlled, effective decisions. Maintaining her focus, she also called for a supervisor, crime scene investigators, and detectives. She was more than likely operating on autopilot and adrenaline, a necessary cocktail for crisis situations. She was then informed by paramedics that there were three dead in the house and the child who had been removed from the residence was barely clinging to life. It was crucial that she carefully documented everything that she heard and saw.

It was later learned that the paramedic who discovered Vanessa and carried her past the officer to a waiting ambulance, though not known to me at the time, would become a friend years later. We would meet up in a church service in Parker (unincorporated), Colorado, a few years after the event. We had barely a passing conversation on what he experienced that day. Rick was to be the first to encounter the lifeless body of Melissa on the floor of the bedroom she shared with Vanessa. He would be the one to determine that Melissa had not survived the encounter. He also examined Vanessa and realized that there was still life in her small body. It was just one of those things that we did not talk about much.

In less than twenty minutes, the neighborhood was flooded with more officers, crime scene investigators (CSIs), supervisors, detectives, and finally the media. It did not take long for all to realize that this still-evolving crime scene would expose them to something never before experienced and that it would impact them for a lifetime. The neighborhood came alive but not in a way anyone anticipated, cared for, or welcomed. The detectives. The elite of the law enforcement professional who would be expected by this modest suburban community to explain what happened, why it happened, and who was responsible. Fascinating thing is, this coterie of sleuths expected the same of themselves.

The Bennett family: Melissa, 7; Bruce, 27; Debra, 26; and Vanessa, 3 (Aurora Police handout from family photograph)

The mind was racing. The pace frenzied. Somehow this bizarre nightmare had to slow down! The yellow crime scene tape was up. The scene protected by uniformed officers. Finally the adrenaline was assimilated into the system, and the deceleration process began. The pace began to slow, as did the breathing and heart rate of the responders. Connie was escorted from the residence and then driven to the headquarters office for an interview. Surely some valuable facts would be obtained from her. (Often detectives expect pristine details to be forthcoming from a traumatized victim. That attitude has changed somewhat over the years.) While she was there, investigators were attempting to piece together what had taken place. The detective to be assigned this case had to be seasoned and well qualified. One with at least some degree of investigative experience at probing a multiple – victim, homicide event. If there was such a detective and he raised his hand, it was never acknowledged. Instead, a detective with no more than a few months’ experience was given the case. Really? Was that a good idea? Perhaps the decision makers at the time felt that the investigation was not that daunting of a task. Perchance they expected a rapid resolution to the investigation. A failure would not reflect poorly on the inexperience of the detective assigned. Who knows. A conflict. Been there. This was later confirmed with the original detective over coffee one morning. He had recently been transferred from the Burglary Unit to Crimes Against Persons, which at that time handled homicide cases. The Bennett case was his first homicide scene. I just had to smile and shake my head.

This is the kind of case that no detective wants and yet every detective wants at the same time. Even so it would be an investigation that would draw in detectives throughout the metropolitan area, thereby providing the needed expertise for the task. The novice detective would mature quickly and would most