Man Left Gloves Behind, Prosecutor Says Jurors Hear Details Of Attack That Nearly Killed Elderly Woman

Richard Nielsen knew something was wrong as soon as he pulled up to his mother-in-law’s downtown Coeur d’Alene home.

The floodlight normally illuminating Dorothy Kjera’s back yard was off, and her back door was unlocked.

Not typical for the security-conscious 82-year-old woman, Nielsen said.

After he stepped through the back door, Nielsen heard Kjera calling out faintly for her daughter, Janis.

“Janis, is that you? Somebody tried to kill me,” Nielsen recalled Kjera saying.

Nielsen continued inside and discovered Kjera lying in a blood-splattered living room. She was half-naked and so severely beaten that one of her eyes had come out of its socket.

Broken pieces of a lamp and a crystal candy dish were scattered around the room.

“She was cut wide open,” Nielsen testified in court Tuesday. “You can’t believe the amount of blood.”

Kootenai County prosecutors say the man who attacked Kjera on the afternoon of Dec. 3, 1996, was Henry W. Luke, a registered sex offender who had previously battered a 73-year-old woman.

The assailant left a pair of work gloves on top of a footstool in Kjera’s home. Written inside the gloves was the name “Luke,” Deputy Prosecutor Rick Baughman said.

“He left his calling card,” Baughman said in opening statements Tuesday. “He did what he did and left without his gloves.”

Baughman said Luke later confessed to attacking Kjera, who was mentally alert and living independently before the attack.

She now is living in a convalescent home in a wheelchair, family members said in court.

Luke has been charged with second-degree attempted murder and is standing trial a second time.

In 1997, a jury convicted the 42-year-old Coeur d’Alene man of second-degree attempted murder by torture. A judge sentenced him to 15 years in prison.

Luke appealed.

Earlier this year, the Idaho Supreme Court reversed Luke’s conviction, saying there is no such crime as second-degree attempted murder by torture in Idaho.

A Kootenai County judge ruled in June that Luke could stand trial again.

Defense attorneys argue that Luke did not voluntarily confess to the crime.

Chief Public Defender John Adams said Luke is “borderline retarded,” and police badgered him into confessing.

That night, Kjera first identified a handyman who helped clear snow off her porch a few days earlier as the attacker, Adams said.

Police investigated the man’s involvement, but after the man’s family produced an alibi, investigators dropped it, Adams said.

That man had taken a bath that evening and washed his clothes, Adams said.

The police did not test the clothes or the man’s truck for evidence, he said.

“Forensic evidence, false confessions and alibis are what this case is all about,” Adams said in opening statements.

No forensic evidence points to Luke committing the crime, he said.

Kjera said her attacker tried to rape her but ended up fondling her, Adams said.

The attacker then beat her with his fists, a lamp, a crystal candlestick holder and a candy dish lid.

“This was a crime of rage,” Adams said, noting that blood was found on the ceiling, drapes, furniture and floor.

Luke’s fingerprints were not found in the home, Adams said.

When police questioned Luke, he had no bruising or evidence that he had used his hands to beat anyone, Adams said.

Luke’s clothes, shoes and the car he slept in the night of the crime were all turned over to the police.

“Not one single drop of blood” was found, Adams said. “Not one single bit of evidence.”

Luke had been drinking heavily that day and was at a friend’s house, where he watched television and slept during the time of the crime, Adams said.

Kjera told police the man who assaulted her did not smell of alcohol, he said.

The trial is expected to last at least five days.