Defendant Identifies Work Gloves Jury Watches Video Of Luke Made The Day After Beating

When a police detective pulled out two work gloves from a brown paper sack, Henry Luke immediately recognized them.

“Those are mine. They used to have my name on them,” Luke told the Coeur d’Alene police officer in a December 1996 interrogation.

“Where did you find them?”

Those tan leather work gloves with the name “Luke” handwritten in black pen were the calling card that led police to Luke, Kootenai County Prosecutors say.

Luke is charged with second-degree attempted murder after he allegedly beat an 82-year-old woman so severely that one of her eyes came out of its socket.

A jury convicted Luke of seconddegree attempted murder by torture in 1997, believing he attacked Dorothy Kjera the night of Dec. 3, 1996.

But Luke appealed. The Idaho Supreme Court reversed his conviction earlier this year, saying there is no such crime as second-degree murder by torture in Idaho.

A 1st District Court judge ruled this summer that Luke could stand trial again.

In the third day of testimony in the new trial against Luke, a jury of nine women and five men watched a 30-minute videotape of Luke’s confession to police on Dec. 4, 1996.

Police asked Luke where he had been the day of Dec. 3.

Luke told them he had shoveled snow from about 9 a.m. to 1 p.m., then went drinking at a downtown bar until 9 p.m.

He said he walked home drunk.

Luke, a convicted sex offender who had previously battered a 73-year-old woman, told police he had a drinking problem.

“I get violent. I get crazy,” he said in the interview. “Sometimes when I drink, something goes wrong (in his brain).”

When police asked him about beating Kjera, he said he didn’t remember anything about the night.

Defense attorneys said Luke was badgered into confessing by police, who supplied the information about Kjera’s beating to Luke.

Family members discovered Kjera lying in her living room. She was soaked in blood, half-naked with her nose and jaw broken.