1984 hammer murders: Survivor, grandmother struggling with fallout
October 27, 2018
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5:01Now Playing1984 hammer murders: Survivor, grandmother struggling with fallout
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as posted by the channelThe brutality is hard to imagine – on Jan. 16, 1984, a madman slipped into an Aurora home and mercilessly beat a young couple and their two daughters with a claw hammer.
He also sexually assaulted the two girls.
Bruce and Debra Bennett and their 7-year-old daughter, Melissa, all died. Only 3-year-old Vanessa, her head caved in and her jaw shattered, survived.
Connie Bennett, Bruce Bennett’s mother, discovered the grisly scene. She’d gone to the home after Bruce and Debra Bennett had failed to show up at work.
Nearly 35 years later, both women are left with the residual pain.
For Connie, now 85 years old, the images from that morning are seared into her memory. There is never a day that she doesn’t think about it.
For Vanessa, there are physical difficulties in addition to the grief of having grown up without her parents and sister. She has struggled with post-traumatic stress disorder, bi-polar disorder and other problems, including drug addiction.
And both women are also struggling with something else – financial difficulties.
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