MANCHESTER, NH – Emotions ran high Monday in a courtroom packed with relatives of a city man hacked to death with a machete wielded by a spurned lover in the summer of 2021 at a Bedford motel.
Theodore L. Luckey, 42, formerly of Asbury, N.J., pleaded guilty in Hillsborough County Superior Court Northern District to two counts of first-degree murder for killing the two men he had had intimate relationships with. He killed Nathan Cashman, 28, of Manchester, who died from more than 120 chopping wounds from a machete, in the lobby of the Country Inn and Suites in Bedford, and strangled David Hanford, 60, of Seaside Heights N.J., in a third-floor room at the same hotel.
Luckey told Judge N. William Delker he was taking full responsibility for his actions that day.
Hours after the hearing began, during which a prosecutor gave details of the murder, Delker sentenced Luckey to mandatory life in prison without the chance of parole. Cashman’s family members erupted in applause. Luckey, in turn, blew them a kiss as he was led out of the courtroom.
Prior to Luckey’s sentencing, family members spoke about Cashman who they described as a kind man. They called Luckey a monster, a scumbag and someone who should never have been born.
“You’re a coward for killing my cousin,” one woman yelled out as Luckey was taken out of the courtroom during a lunch break.
Eileen Cashman, Cashman’s grandmother, asked him, “Who do you think you are?” Her grandson’s death certificate indicated his cause of death was multiple machete wounds, she said. “That’s a very cruel man who does that.”
One cousin wished him “misery and unhappiness for the rest of his life” while another family member said he was a pathetic excuse for a human being.
“This world is better off without you in it because no one would miss you,” his father and aunt said in a joint statement that a victim/witness advocate read.
A statement from Hanford’s youngest son Zachary was also read. In it, he said he and his father did not have a close relationship but were working to rebuild it. He said his father did not deserve to die by Luckey strangling him to death with a belt.
According to the prosecution and Luckey, who spoke for more than an hour concerning his life and his relationship with Cashman, the two men met when they were incarcerated at the state prison in Berlin. Luckey was transferred from Asbury Park, where he was serving up to 15 years for a 2009 kidnapping of an elderly couple and criminal restraint, for tying Hanford to a bed in an Asbury Park hotel.
Cashman and Luckey had an intimate relationship while in prison and Luckey wanted to marry him.
Luckey, because of COVID-19 pandemic, was released early and returned to New Jersey where he said he was working 80 to 90 hours a week. Cashman, still imprisoned, called him daily asking for money which Luckey sent to his commissary and phone account.
Luckey’s mother, in a telephone call to the court, said her son was in love with Cashman.
When Cashman was about to be released in August, 2021, Luckey said he overnighted new red sneakers, which Cashman requested, pants and a red shirt to Cashman’s grandmother to bring to him to wear on his release.
When Cashman was released, Luckey picked him up after his mother’s memorial service (Amy Cashman died in July 2021) at the Dubuque Street sober house where he was staying and took him out with friends to the Puritan for a surprise birthday dinner.
“I am not a monster,” he said. He cared for Cashman, who struggled with drugs and whose nickname was “Bones,” because of his thinness, and said Cashman changed for the better because of him.
On Aug. 13, 2021, however, Cashman posted on social media that he was in a relationship with his former girlfriend. Luckey, the prosecutor said, after learning of the relationship became distraught and said he couldn’t function.
Three days later, he made plans to travel to New Hampshire and invited Hanford, with whom he had resumed an intimate relationship, to join him.
He bought a machete in Asbury Park to be “prepared for the worse,” according to the prosecution.
He and Hanford arrived at the motel on the afternoon of Aug. 21, 2021. Hanford was last seen alive at 2:09 p.m. going into Room 332 with Luckey. Luckey, under the guise of having sex, convinced Hanford to let him tie him to the bed. Luckey didn’t want him to escape that time, according to the prosecution.
Investigators later found Hanford face down on the bed, his legs and arms tied down and a belt around his neck. Layers of clear package tape were wrapped around his head and mouth.
Later that afternoon, Luckey left the hotel in Hanford’s car and went and picked up Cashman. They returned and went to Room 304. His girlfriend knew he was meeting Hanford and texted him. He answered her initially but later her texts went unacknowledged.
That was because Luckey was attacking Cashman with a machete. Cashman, a prosecutor said, was recorded bursting out of the hotel room and running down the hall. Luckey methodically followed him, striking him numerous times with the machete. Cashman continued to flee searching for help.
He pushed out a screen on the second floor and jumped out the window. Luckey pursued him down to the lobby where there were numerous guests including a family with a young child. He continued to strike Cashman, who had wounds all over his body and was bleeding profusely.
Cashman ran behind the front desk where an employee was on the phone to 911. Luckey continued to strike Cashman who was on the floor, pleading with him to stop and telling Luckey he loved him.
Luckey continued to hit him with the machete and only dropped the weapon when he knew he was dead.
Luckey then fled the scene in Hanford’s car, calling his mother to tell her what he had done. She called police. He turned up at the Bedford Fire Department, which is in the same complex as the police department, and he was taken into custody.
When police asked him why he killed Cashman, Luckey told them, “He left me. He lied to me.” He said he couldn’t function without him.
