A Nevada judge on Tuesday ordered extradition to Colorado for a suspect in a 34-year-old cold case that involved a killing spree where four people were bludgeoned to death with a hammer.
Alexander Christopher Ewing, 58, had been fighting extradition to face charges in connection with a string of brutal hammer attacks in the winter of 1984 that terrorized Front Range residents. He can appeal the judge’s ruling, according to a Carson City, Nev., court clerk.
Ewing was linked to the crimes in July through a DNA match. He is suspected of breaking into metro area homes and bludgeoning three members of an Aurora family and a Lakewood woman to death with hammers.
Ewing appeared at 3:30 p.m. before Judge James Wilson in a Carson City courtroom for the extradition hearing.
Ewing, who has been incarcerated at Northern Nevada Correctional Center in Carson City since 1985 on a 40-year attempted murder conviction, has been fighting extradition to avoid two Colorado trials for sexual assault, robbery and murder charges.
Ewing was charged Aug. 13 in Jefferson County District Court with murder and sexual assault in a skull-crushing attack on Patricia Louise Smith, 50, in Lakewood on Jan. 10, 1984.
Ewing also has been named in an Arapahoe County arrest warrant as a suspect in connection with the Jan. 16, 1984, deaths of Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter Melissa. The three Bennetts were bludgeoned to death with a hammer, leaving then-3-year-old Vanessa, who suffered severe facial injuries, as the sole survivor in the family. The warrant lists 18 crimes, including murder, attempted murder and sexual assault.
The killings went unsolved for 34 years until Nevada entered Ewing’s DNA in a national crime database. In July, the Colorado Bureau of Investigation, during a nightly database scan, matched Ewing’s DNA to DNA samples taken from the Smith and Bennett crime scenes.
On Aug. 10, prosecutors in the two Colorado jurisdictions initiated extradition proceedings.
Arizona criminal records showed that Ewing left Colorado within days after the hammer attack on the Bennetts.
Twelve days later, Ewing picked up a 25-pound granite slab and entered an unlocked door to a Kingman, Ariz., home. He carried the granite into a bedroom and immediately began pummeling a man in the head. The man survived even though he required 100 stitches to close his head wounds. Police caught Ewing hiding near the home under a bush, according to an arrest warrant affidavit.
Arizona prosecutors charged Ewing with attempted murder in the attack. Kingman officials sent Ewing to a Washington County jail in Utah to await trial as part of an interstate contract because of jail overcrowding in Kingman.
On Aug. 9, 1984, Ewing was being transported back to Arizona for a court hearing along with several other inmates when he escaped during a restroom break on the outskirts of Henderson, Nev.
That night, wielding an ax handle, he entered the unlocked home of Christopher and Nancy Barry at 739 Racetrack St. and chased Nancy, who was screaming, into the bedroom she shared with her husband. Upon entering the home, Ewing began pummeling Christopher Barry with the ax handle. Both survived with broken bones. Christopher Barry ended up in a coma with head fractures.
Detectives who have pursued a suspect in the serial attacks have described the killer as a predator with a “thirst for violence.”
