women.”
Another detective who contacted Summit County Taxi was told that Luther had been one of the company’s best drivers—prompt, reliable, and willing to work a lot of hours, rarely taking two days off in a row. If he sometimes acted like a know-it-all, the company president said, he was still well-liked by the other employees, including the women, who were “shocked” at the accusations against their former colleague. However, the man conceded after checking his records that Luther had not worked on January 6, the evening that Oberholtzer and Schnee disappeared, or on January 7.
However, the investigation centered on Bobby Jo’s husband, Jeff Oberholtzer. Police know that most murders are not committed by strangers, and there was information that pointed in Jeff’s direction.
Jeff had initially denied knowing Annette Schnee, but a witness had seen her in his truck in Breckenridge several months before her disappearance. After being shown a photograph of Annette, but without being told of the witness’s statement, Jeff Oberholtzer said that he hadn’t recognized the name but knew the face: he’d picked her up hitchhiking one day in Blue River and given her a ride to Frisco.
The witness’s information had drawn the police’s attention to Bobby Jo’s husband like crows to roadkill. Oberholtzer remained the prime suspect, but even there the police failed to thoroughly check out his story.
The mistakes went beyond the haphazard work of the detectives assigned to the cases. During Luther’s incarceration in the Summit County Jail, as well as several other jails to which he transferred as he awaited trial, he proved to be a talkative prisoner. In the coming months, a half-dozen inmates in different jails would come forward with information that Luther had implicated himself in a number of rapes and murders, including the Oberholtzer and Schnee cases.
On the afternoon of April 22, 1982, Dillon John Curtis, a 36-year-old small-time drug dealer, walked into the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. He had been Luther’s cellmate for about six weeks, he said, and had gained his trust. Now a free man, he was troubled.
“I got something to tell you about Luther and that girl what’s been missin.’ What’s her name? Schnee?” he said to a deputy.
Luther had told him that he’d been abused by his mother during childhood and had blamed the assault on Mary Brown on her. Curtis said he’d had a cousin who reminded him of Luther, a cousin who had started by raping and beating women, escalating the violence until he killed one.
“I don’t want that on my conscience, if he did these other girls,” Curtis explained. “And what he did to that girl with the hammer makes me sick.”
Luther had talked about an old, abandoned mine shaft near Frisco where a body could be hidden, Curtis said. The location was known only to Luther and his girlfriend, Sue Potter, who had discovered it while riding their horses.
Curtis said he knew more. If the police were interested, he would write them out a “ten-page” statement. But Curtis wasn’t asked to give that statement for more than ten years.
In May, an inmate named John Martin approached a deputy at the Summit County Jail and said he had information about Tom Luther. He would later claim his information regarded the murder of two women, one of whom Luther had left lying face down in a stream.
On the day before the Fourth of July 1982, an eleven-year-old boy was walking along a dead-end road that borders Sacramento Creek between the towns of Alma and Fairplay searching for a good place to fish. He was about two miles from where the creek intersects Highway 9.
Looking through a break in the brush that lined the creek, the boy saw the body of a woman ten feet below. She lay face down in the water. Annette Schnee had been found.
An autopsy revealed that Schnee had been shot once in the back with a hollowpoint bullet fired from a large caliber handgun—a .38 or
Another detective who contacted Summit County Taxi was told that Luther had been one of the company’s best drivers—prompt, reliable, and willing to work a lot of hours, rarely taking two days off in a row. If he sometimes acted like a know-it-all, the company president said, he was still well-liked by the other employees, including the women, who were “shocked” at the accusations against their former colleague. However, the man conceded after checking his records that Luther had not worked on January 6, the evening that Oberholtzer and Schnee disappeared, or on January 7.
However, the investigation centered on Bobby Jo’s husband, Jeff Oberholtzer. Police know that most murders are not committed by strangers, and there was information that pointed in Jeff’s direction.
Jeff had initially denied knowing Annette Schnee, but a witness had seen her in his truck in Breckenridge several months before her disappearance. After being shown a photograph of Annette, but without being told of the witness’s statement, Jeff Oberholtzer said that he hadn’t recognized the name but knew the face: he’d picked her up hitchhiking one day in Blue River and given her a ride to Frisco.
The witness’s information had drawn the police’s attention to Bobby Jo’s husband like crows to roadkill. Oberholtzer remained the prime suspect, but even there the police failed to thoroughly check out his story.
The mistakes went beyond the haphazard work of the detectives assigned to the cases. During Luther’s incarceration in the Summit County Jail, as well as several other jails to which he transferred as he awaited trial, he proved to be a talkative prisoner. In the coming months, a half-dozen inmates in different jails would come forward with information that Luther had implicated himself in a number of rapes and murders, including the Oberholtzer and Schnee cases.
On the afternoon of April 22, 1982, Dillon John Curtis, a 36-year-old small-time drug dealer, walked into the Summit County Sheriff’s Office. He had been Luther’s cellmate for about six weeks, he said, and had gained his trust. Now a free man, he was troubled.
“I got something to tell you about Luther and that girl what’s been missin.’ What’s her name? Schnee?” he said to a deputy.
Luther had told him that he’d been abused by his mother during childhood and had blamed the assault on Mary Brown on her. Curtis said he’d had a cousin who reminded him of Luther, a cousin who had started by raping and beating women, escalating the violence until he killed one.
“I don’t want that on my conscience, if he did these other girls,” Curtis explained. “And what he did to that girl with the hammer makes me sick.”
Luther had talked about an old, abandoned mine shaft near Frisco where a body could be hidden, Curtis said. The location was known only to Luther and his girlfriend, Sue Potter, who had discovered it while riding their horses.
Curtis said he knew more. If the police were interested, he would write them out a “ten-page” statement. But Curtis wasn’t asked to give that statement for more than ten years.
In May, an inmate named John Martin approached a deputy at the Summit County Jail and said he had information about Tom Luther. He would later claim his information regarded the murder of two women, one of whom Luther had left lying face down in a stream.
On the day before the Fourth of July 1982, an eleven-year-old boy was walking along a dead-end road that borders Sacramento Creek between the towns of Alma and Fairplay searching for a good place to fish. He was about two miles from where the creek intersects Highway 9.
Looking through a break in the brush that lined the creek, the boy saw the body of a woman ten feet below. She lay face down in the water. Annette Schnee had been found.
An autopsy revealed that Schnee had been shot once in the back with a hollowpoint bullet fired from a large caliber handgun—a .38 or
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