because we kids wanted to be with him. She never could say, ‘I love you.’ We never got along.”
Luther related one incident as a boy when he came home with a jackknife he had purchased at a store. “She thought I stole it and started beating my head against the stove trying to get me to admit it.” She had finally taken him, bruised and bleeding, to the store where the owner backed Tom’s story. “She just shrugged and said I could have stole it.”
Luther said he left home at 12 to get away from his mother but returned two years later, having fared no better in the outside world. The death of his father at age 47, when Tom was 17, was a significant loss in his life and there had been no reason to remain in Vermont.
The morning of the attack on Mary Brown, Luther told the psychologist, he made love to his girlfriend, but they had later argued and he left to cool off by dealing drugs and drinking at a local bar. He described himself as drunk and “spacy from the cocaine” when the bar closed.
The offer of a ride to Brown was an attempt to do a good deed, Luther told Firestone. It went bad after it was apparent that she was lost and asked him to take her to a police station. He only wanted to talk about her options when, “I turned off my truck and asked, ‘What now?’ But she panicked and started kicking. She broke my windshield.”
Luther said he was trying to calm her by holding her down on the floor of the truck when she found the hammer and struck him in the head. “She was raving mad ... screaming rape. I punched her in the head three or four times.
“I was angry so I made her take her clothes off.” Luther said he wanted to teach Brown a lesson because she had unjustly accused him of rape. “Everything happened so quick,” he said. “I have a bad temper, especially when I’ve been drinking.
“I went home real upset and began to cry.”
Luther said he wasn’t thinking clearly after he let Brown go. “I was trying to figure out why I did those things. I was confused.”
“Her hair, the girl’s,” Luther had stammered, “her hair looked like my mother’s when she was younger, the way they both wore it.”
In his subsequent report, Firestone wrote that Luther had the capacity to know what he was doing when he made his comments to the police and allowed them to seize evidence without a warrant on the morning of February 13, 1982. However, even though blood tests taken within minutes after his arrest revealed no traces of cocaine, Firestone apparently accepted Luther’s claim that he was under the drug’s effects.
“There is a good possibility that, under the influence of cocaine and alcohol, the subject disassociated and acted out many repressed angers which were primarily attached to his relationship with his mother.”
On June 18, 1982, Mary Brown was standing in the hallway of the Summit County courthouse waiting for a pre-trial hearing when she noticed a pretty, dark-haired woman approaching.
Physically, most of the apparent injuries from the attack had healed. She no longer had to wear the neck brace for her broken vertebra, the grotesque swelling and bruising of her face was gone, and time had eased the pain where she had been raped with the hammer handle. However, she’d been left with partial hearing loss in one ear, nerve damage to the muscles around her neck, migraine headaches, and nerve damage to the finger that had been broken.
However, the major hurdle she faced was psychological, which was every bit, if not more, debilitating. For months after the attack, Brown had tried to blot it out of her mind. She was strong; she told herself that she could get through it. But instead of getting better, she got worse as repressed memories ate at her subconscious.
The formerly outgoing young woman was terrorized by the mere presence of men. She had been unable to go back to her boyfriend. Even as the weeks turned into months, she was cautious and timid when introduced
Luther related one incident as a boy when he came home with a jackknife he had purchased at a store. “She thought I stole it and started beating my head against the stove trying to get me to admit it.” She had finally taken him, bruised and bleeding, to the store where the owner backed Tom’s story. “She just shrugged and said I could have stole it.”
Luther said he left home at 12 to get away from his mother but returned two years later, having fared no better in the outside world. The death of his father at age 47, when Tom was 17, was a significant loss in his life and there had been no reason to remain in Vermont.
The morning of the attack on Mary Brown, Luther told the psychologist, he made love to his girlfriend, but they had later argued and he left to cool off by dealing drugs and drinking at a local bar. He described himself as drunk and “spacy from the cocaine” when the bar closed.
The offer of a ride to Brown was an attempt to do a good deed, Luther told Firestone. It went bad after it was apparent that she was lost and asked him to take her to a police station. He only wanted to talk about her options when, “I turned off my truck and asked, ‘What now?’ But she panicked and started kicking. She broke my windshield.”
Luther said he was trying to calm her by holding her down on the floor of the truck when she found the hammer and struck him in the head. “She was raving mad ... screaming rape. I punched her in the head three or four times.
“I was angry so I made her take her clothes off.” Luther said he wanted to teach Brown a lesson because she had unjustly accused him of rape. “Everything happened so quick,” he said. “I have a bad temper, especially when I’ve been drinking.
“I went home real upset and began to cry.”
Luther said he wasn’t thinking clearly after he let Brown go. “I was trying to figure out why I did those things. I was confused.”
“Her hair, the girl’s,” Luther had stammered, “her hair looked like my mother’s when she was younger, the way they both wore it.”
In his subsequent report, Firestone wrote that Luther had the capacity to know what he was doing when he made his comments to the police and allowed them to seize evidence without a warrant on the morning of February 13, 1982. However, even though blood tests taken within minutes after his arrest revealed no traces of cocaine, Firestone apparently accepted Luther’s claim that he was under the drug’s effects.
“There is a good possibility that, under the influence of cocaine and alcohol, the subject disassociated and acted out many repressed angers which were primarily attached to his relationship with his mother.”
On June 18, 1982, Mary Brown was standing in the hallway of the Summit County courthouse waiting for a pre-trial hearing when she noticed a pretty, dark-haired woman approaching.
Physically, most of the apparent injuries from the attack had healed. She no longer had to wear the neck brace for her broken vertebra, the grotesque swelling and bruising of her face was gone, and time had eased the pain where she had been raped with the hammer handle. However, she’d been left with partial hearing loss in one ear, nerve damage to the muscles around her neck, migraine headaches, and nerve damage to the finger that had been broken.
However, the major hurdle she faced was psychological, which was every bit, if not more, debilitating. For months after the attack, Brown had tried to blot it out of her mind. She was strong; she told herself that she could get through it. But instead of getting better, she got worse as repressed memories ate at her subconscious.
The formerly outgoing young woman was terrorized by the mere presence of men. She had been unable to go back to her boyfriend. Even as the weeks turned into months, she was cautious and timid when introduced
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