Suspect’S Drinking Focus Of Testimony Henry Luke’S Mother Tells Of 1996 Incident

Alice Todahl fought back tears Friday as she testified about her son’s drinking.

Todahl told a jury how Henry Luke, 42, came home drunk the night of Dec. 3, 1996.

She said Luke was so drunk she would not let him in the home where she and an elderly couple she cared for were staying.

Luke beat on the home’s door before going into the garage to sleep, Todahl said in court.

When Luke drinks, “he knows I will not let him in the house,” she said.

Kootenai County prosecutors allege Luke beat a 82-year-old woman at her home and left a pair of work gloves with his name on them at the scene.

A jury convicted him of the crime in 1997, but the Idaho Supreme Court reversed the conviction. A Kootenai County judge ruled Luke could stand trial again.

In the fourth day of testimony, defense attorneys laid out their case hoping to show their client didn’t beat Dorothy Kjera in December 1996. Family members found Kjera lying in a pool of blood.

Todahl said Luke left clothes in the washer the night after he had come home drunk. She checked the pockets of the clothes before turning on the washer, she said in court.

Those clothes didn’t seem out of the ordinary, she said.

“I never seen any blood on him. I would have noticed,” she said.

Prosecutors pointed to the fact that Todahl identified the gloves found in Kjera’s home as her son’s.

Todahl said Luke did not wear those gloves Dec. 3. In fact, they had been missing, she said.

During cross-examination, Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman said she never brought up that fact to police before. He also noted that Todahl had volunteered information to detectives who were interviewing her Dec. 4.

Coeur d’Alene police Lt. Don Jiran told Todahl they were interviewing Luke about an attack on a woman.

Todahl admitted she asked Jiran, “Was it an elderly lady?”

Luke, a convicted sex offender, pleaded guilty in 1994 to battery of a 73-year-old woman.

In that incident, Luke walked into the open door of that woman’s apartment, sat on her lap and held onto her wrists.

He told her, “I want a kiss,” according to police reports.

The woman told police she knew Luke through her ex-roommate who used to date him.

Defense attorneys also submitted previous testimony by an elderly woman who said she saw Luke the night of Dec. 3, 1996.

In previous statements, Neva Phillips said Luke rang the doorbell to her home about 7 that night.

Luke, who had done yard work for her before, had been drinking heavily, Phillips said in her statement.

She had been playing cards with two friends. She let him in and gave him coffee and cookies and let him take a nap, she said.

Luke did not have any blood on him nor look disheveled, she said in her statements.