Cold Case Files: Lone Survivor of Her Family's Brutal Murder Gets Justice 37 YEARS Later | A&E

on a frigid monday morning outside denver connie large bennett gets a disturbing phone call about her son bruce and his wife deborah connie's brother called her because bruce and debbie hadn't shown up for work that morning bruce and debbie worked for bruce's uncle they were the regional distributors of basset furniture and so they tried calling several times and didn't get an answer connie and deborah's brother larry had just seen the couple and their two young daughters melissa and vanessa the night before it was a celebration of melissa's birthday she was uh turning eight i remember

the kids laughing and playing and you know it was festive debbie made it special connie was worried that something had happened in the home so she raced over to the house nothing prepared her for what she was going to find inside they led me from the garage into the kitchen as i entered i looked to my right on the floor i saw the body of bruce bennett bruce was struck about the head and face with a hammer and i also observed that his throat had been cut we then entered the master bedroom and there on

the bed i saw a female that bludgeoned was death they took me into a girl's bedroom i observed the body of melissa bennett seven years old melissa was also struck with the hammer and she'd been sexually assaulted [Music] every person who set foot in this crime scene and they'd get pale they'd choke up it was a level brutality that was really unheard of i was disgusted i felt very bad for her that she had gone through this [Music] the brutal attack has left three dead but there is a glimmer of hope i was advised at

that time that when the fire rescue got to the scene that vanessa who was three years old was found between the wall and the bed she was clinging to life when the firemen came in they immediately grabbed her they rushed her outside to the hospital and did everything they could to save her life can you tell me your first memory of being in the hospital i remember the sticky things on my chest the things that that check your heart rate i don't remember if i asked more than once hey where's my parents i i would

assume that i would as any child would um but i don't remember actually being told hey your parents are dead i'm pretty sure i got the picture detectives turned to the last people who saw the bennetts alive the guests at melissa's birthday party connie bennett that would have been the mother of bruce bennett couldn't figure out why this had happened to her family she said the birthday party took place the evening before connie was there and then connie's two sons richard and daniel they had cake and they finally folded up around nine o'clock i wasn't

there that late i know because i was i had to travel the next day richard told tani make sure you tell bruce that the garage door is open and have him close it she said she did but bruce for some reason didn't do it and the door was left open it was an easy mark and i believe that's why he went in we never found the hammer that was used to commit the homicide but there was a knife next to the driveway which was in in the snow and that was used to cut bruce bennett's

throat crime scene investigators are unable to pull a usable fingerprint off the knife in melissa and vanessa's bedroom csi discovers another crucial piece of evidence investigators at the time found semen actually on the carpet that was underneath melissa and then we also found on a comforter that was covering her body there was also semen on that we wanted dna done on those items if they could do it but we're talking about the mid-80s our state crime lab cbi said they weren't capable of doing it yet january 10 1984 is when patricia smith was attacked in

her home in lakewood patricia was sexually assaulted on the floor bludgeoned around the head with a hammer [Music] vanessa's head was bandaged and her face you know had multiple bandages on her face and she was being spoken to by a therapist and he was trying to ask her what had gone on i remember there was a time when i was younger and some like people were asking about what did he look like i don't remember anything nothing once he started asking her about what had gone on she became very very agitated and did they just

stopped the interview detectives hit a dead end they have no eyewitnesses and the physical evidence they have can't lead them to the killer [Music] eleven years later the colorado bureau of investigation is finally equipped to extract dna profiles cbi found dna which only one person out of 18 million could have deposited that dna they said if you get this person that's the person that did your crime right there none of this dna that came off these items coincide with anything from the family nobody in the family was involved in this murder [Music] unable to id

a suspect through dna databases chief deputy d.a kellner and detective connor team up with dr colleen fitzpatrick a genetic genealogist she would go into open databases that had the uh dna information from like 23andme or ancestry.com and she would just start mining different areas looking for close matches to the dna that she had detective gunner shares the killer's dna profile with dr fitzpatrick she goes i'll be back to you in a few days and it was less than a week and she called back and told me she gave me the last name of ewing that

name had never appeared on any of the reports that i could find and then on july 10th 2018 at about 9 15 in the evening i received a call from my boss they got a coda sit on the bennet case i go from where and he goes some inmate out in nevada i got a phone call from steve connor he says you won't believe it we know who our suspect is he's been in prison since august of 1984. i said what's his name the individual's name was on alex ewing investigators pour over 58 year old

alex ewing's criminal record they discover he'd been arrested just 12 days after the bennetts were murdered not long after the bennett family murders ewing popped up on the radar in kingman arizona where he allegedly bludgeoned a man with a rock he bludgeoned nearly to death two people with an axe handle he was captured in nevada and he was ultimately convicted of that attack for attempted murder okay i'll jump right in looking at several cases in aurora wherein people are attacked in their homes the evidence we have leads to you directly to you i mean this

is just crazy man i think you know what i'm talking about i can tell about where you're looking at me i'm thinking about what you said i'm like damn thinking i need to talk to an attorney or somebody ewing was charged with first-degree murder of the bennett family bruce debra and melissa bennett prosecutors are unable to try ewing for the two hammer attacks in which the victims survived because colorado law in 1984 assigned a mere three-year time limit to file attempted murder charges we ultimately decided from the statute limitations perspective that we couldn't go forward

with these other cases prosecutors can charge ewing with the lakewood murder the district attorney for the first judicial district in jefferson county charged with mr ewing has alleged he also committed the first-degree murder of patricia smith from just a few days earlier in 1984 [Music] alex ewing pleads not guilty to four counts of first-degree murder the bennett case is first to go to trial ewing's motivation for committing this crime was absolute blood lust for violence when i heard count number one come back as guilty i knew the next counts would be guilty as well the

jury convicts alex ewing on all three counts of murder the judge was particularly succinct calling it an abomination and sentenced him in colorado to three consecutive life sentences [Music] ewing is still awaiting trial for the murder of patricia smith [Music]