Read Lust Killer Page 18


  Three months—to the day—had passed since Jerry Brudos had seized Karen Sprinker in the store parking lot. Starting with no clues at all, Jim Stovall and Gene Daugherty—the whole investigation team—had found the killer, arrested him, and now saw him sentenced for his crimes, the near-impossible accomplished in ninety days.

  "Jerome Henry Brudos, in case number 67640, in which you have pled guilty to the first-degree murder of Karen Elena Sprinker, it is the judgment of this Court that you be committed to the custody of the Corrections Division of the Oregon State Board of Control for an indeterminate period of time, the maximum of which is the balance of your natural life.

  "In connection with case number 67698, in which you have entered a plea of guilty to first-degree murder in the death of one Jan Susan Whitney, it is the judgment of the Court that you be committed to the custody of the Corrections Division of the Oregon State Board of Control for an indeterminate period of time, the maximum of which shall be the balance of your natural life. It will be the further order of the Court that the sentence shall run consecutively to the sentence just previously imposed in case number 67640."

  One more.

  "In connection with indictment number 67700, the indictment to which you have just entered a plea of guilty to first-degree murder of one Linda Dawn Salee, it will be the judgment of the Court that you be committed to the custody of the Corrections Division of the Oregon State Board of Control for an indeterminate period of time, the maximum of which is the balance of your natural life. This sentence shall run consecutively to the sentences just imposed in cases numbered 67698 and 67640.

  "That will be all. You are remanded to the custody of the warden of the Oregon State Penitentiary.

  "Court will be in recess."

  It seemed to be over. The expected circus of horror in the courtroom stopped before it began. Jerome Henry Brudos had three life sentences. Of course, "life" does not mean life, actual life, when it is a word in a prison sentence. With good behavior, a lifer in Oregon can expect to be out in about twelve years. Jerry Brudos worked, however, under the burden of three consecutive life sentences. If he were to serve them all—even with good-behavior credits—he could not hope to be free for thirty-six years. He would be sixty-six years old at least if, and when, he ever got out.

  Brudos had a new address: 2605 State Street—the Oregon State Penitentiary. He had become Number 33284.

  He thought a lot about his situation, and the more he thought about it, the more unfair it seemed.

  Hell, it had always been that way. People pushed him around and took advantage of him. It wasn't fair.

  It wasn't fair at all.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Darcie Brudos still lived with her cousin; she was dependent on her relatives financially and embarrassed about it. Her husband was in prison—apparently forever—and that seemed to be the only way it could have ended. Her children remained with her parents, and what possessions she still owned were scattered, some of them in police custody.

  On July 1, Darcie Brudos did something she had sworn she would never do: she applied for welfare. She was found to be eligible immediately for an aid-to-dependent- children grant, and Darcie and the youngsters set up a home again. She attempted to look at the future with some optimism, but it was heavy work to do so. Her life—since she had met Jerry—seemed to have progressed in a steady series of descending steps. When she had thought that things could not get worse, they always had gotten worse. It was something of a relief for her to know that Jerry was in prison. She believed now that he had done what they had accused him of, but she still could not dwell on it.

  It made her too frightened.

  Jerry's surprise guilty pleas had caught the press off guard, and they had reacted out of some frustration—printing every detail they could ferret out. Everybody seemed to know about him and about what he had done. She knew that she would divorce him as soon as she could, and that she would change her name—perhaps even move far away where no one had ever heard of Jerry Brudos.

  But not right away. The children were too upset, and she had no confidence that she could make a life for them away from her family.

  Hers was the common plight of a woman who has never been without a man to tell her what to do. Certainly she had chafed under the restrictions of her father and then her husband, but she had never had the fortitude to defy either of them. Alone now, she moved through her days tentatively. When she was strong enough, she would get a job, and then the divorce, and then the name change. …

  If Darcie Brudos felt disbelief and shock, so did the public. Armed with the printed details of Jerry Brudos' crimes that had been gleaned by the somewhat disappointed media, bereft of the expected trial, the public had a field day whispering about Darcie Brudos. It seemed inconceivable that any woman could be so submissive and unaware that her husband could have carried on a series of killings in their own home without her knowledge. The rumormongers were busy.

  The general consensus of the public was that Jerry and Darcie Brudos had surely engaged in kinky sex—sex that eventually demanded the presence of other women to fulfill their bizarre scenarios. After all, breast molds and women's underwear had been discovered right in the Brudos home. What woman could have ignored those items? What decent woman would have put up with it without asking questions?

  The words and insinuations became almost palpable entities, and rumors and tips flooded the Salem Police Department and the Oregon Children's Protection offices.

  The public had not had its full revenge on Jerry Brudos; he had pleaded guilty without a trial, and he had somehow robbed the public. There was the prevailing feeling that the whole story had not been revealed, that something was being held back.

  Jim Stovall had never felt that Darcie Brudos had any guilty knowledge of her husband's crimes. He had talked to the man for days, and he had seen a kind of gentleness in Brudos toward his wife—an almost protective sense. The man was devious and cruel, but he had also seemed to hold Darcie, however neurotically, above the rest of the world. Stovall doubted that she could have played any part at all in the acting out of her husband's fantasies. His impression of Darcie was that she was truly naive, frightened … and innocent.

  He had seen, of course, the nude photos of Darcie that Jerry had kept—and he saw that she appeared to wear the same black patent-leather shoes that Karen Sprinker had worn in her last pictures. He did not believe that indicated she had guilty knowledge.

  Others did not agree with him.

  Mrs. Edna Beecham was convinced that she had important information to tell the police. The more she thought about it, the more she knew she must go to someone and tell her story.

  Edna Beecham's sister lived in the house that abutted the Brudos garage, and Mrs. Beecham visited her sister often. She had occasionally had coffee with Darcie Brudos—and she'd liked her well enough. Then.

  But Edna Beecham became convinced she had seen something on the afternoon of March 27. It became quite clear in her mind. She talked it over with her sister, and she talked about it with other friends, and they all urged her to go to the police.

  And she did.

  "I saw something," she began. "I saw something on the afternoon of March 27—about one-thirty P.M. I have to tell … "

  Life was going to continue to get worse for Darcie Brudos.

  On July 17, Jim Stovall and Detective B. J. Miller, accompanied by Salem police Detective Marilyn Dezsofi, drove to Corvallis. Their destination was the home of Darcie Brudos' parents; the grandparents had had custody of Megan, now seven, and Jason, twenty-three months old for several weeks. Now the youngsters were to be placed, at least temporarily, under the custody of the Oregon State Childrens' Services Division.

  Jim Stovall carried Jason to the car and Megan took Marilyn Dezsofi's hand. It was a sad errand for the detectives, "but necessary. Darcie Brudos had now become the focal point of an ongoing investigation.

  Megan Brudos was a smart little girl, and Dezs
ofi was astounded when the child commented matter-of-factly, "My daddy killed three … I mean, five women."

  Dezsofi, Miller, and Stovall said nothing, and Megan continued to chatter. "I don't like policemen very well—they came and got my Daddy and put him in that place. Are you policemen?"

  Dezsofi nodded.

  "Was that man one of them that got my daddy?" she asked, pointing to Jim Stovall. Stovall nodded slightly.

  Apparently, conversation about the case had not been soft-pedaled around Megan by her mother and grandparents. "My daddy's sick in the head," Megan confided. "He was sick in the head when he was a little boy and he got sicker and now he is so sick, he will never get well. My mom says we're going to have to change our last name."

  Megan babbled quite freely to Dezsofi on the way to a foster home in Jefferson. "You know, my brother is too young to know what Daddy did!"

  The little girl said that she knew many secrets, and she might tell them later.

  But she didn't. The next time the detectives talked with her she blurted, "I forgot all my secrets."

  It would always be questionable how much Megan truly knew, and how much of her knowledge had come from overhearing bits and pieces of conversation. She did not recognize pictures of any of the victims, and she laughed out loud when Dezsofi asked her if her father ever put on ladies' shoes for fun.

  "Daddy wear women's shoes?" she chortled, as if the idea was absolutely ridiculous.

  In the end, Jim Stovall was convinced that Megan had no valuable information. Further, he didn't want to subject the youngster to detailed questioning on matters concerning her father's crimes. Her life would be difficult enough from here on.

  Darcie Brudos was stunned almost to inaction when her children were placed in foster care, and she asked Salem attorneys Charles Burt and Richard Seideman to represent her. She was not sure why her children had been taken from her.

  Early on the morning of August 7, the reason was quite clear. Richard Seideman called Darcie and told her that she was being charged with first-degree murder, i.e., aiding and abetting Jerome Brudos in the murder of Karen Sprinker. "You will be arraigned in half an hour."

  The wait was not half an hour, but four hours long, and Darcie left the arraignment to walk the gauntlet past the strobe lights of cameras. Reporters described her in print later as "emotionless," "calm," and "stolid." In reality, she had been too numb to react. She moved through her weeks in jail in a kind of dream. This was the worst thing, the thing that had been waiting for her all along … but something she had never dreamed in her worst nightmares might happen.

  The burden of the state was predictable. To prove that Darcie Brudos was guilty of aiding and abetting her husband in the death of Karen Sprinker, the case against Brudos himself must be presented. All the evidence would have to be brought out, all the ugliness paraded before a jury. Whatever the final verdict, the decision would be something of a legal landmark.

  It began—this final ordeal—in September 1969.

  Since he had presided over Jerry Brudos' hearings, Judge Sloper disqualified himself and Judge Hay would preside. The opposing attorneys were well-matched, perhaps the most outstanding criminal lawyers in Marion County. For the state, Gary D. Gortmaker, tall, confident, his prematurely silver hair perfectly cut—an almost constant winner in court. For the defense, Charlie Burt. Burt is a man of short stature, slightly crippled by a childhood bout with polio, somewhat irascible, gruffness hiding his innate kindness. Both men were in their early forties.

  The courtroom had 125 seats for spectators, and there were hundreds of would-be observers waiting outside the locked doors each morning, all vying for a seat. Spectators' purses and packages were searched before they were allowed into the courtroom; threats against Darcie Brudos' life had been voiced.

  Those who were lucky enough to get a seat would not budge, even during recesses. They watched Darcie Brudos, and commented in stage whispers that she did not "look like a murderess." She did not; in her white blouse and neat dark suit, her short hair tousled, she looked very young and very frightened. She was much thinner than she was when Jerry was arrested. The pounds she'd fought for years had slid away with the tension of the past four months.

  She was only twenty-four, a very young twenty-four. She could hear them talking behind her. She heard muffled laughter and a constant undertone of conversation, as if the gallery believed she could not hear their comments.

  "If anybody dies, just prop him up—and keep your seat. We don't want to miss anything."

  She saw a hugely pregnant woman who seemed about ready to deliver, and thought how uncomfortable she must be sitting all day on a hard courtroom bench. And then the woman said, "I hope I have the baby over the weekend so I can be back here by Monday morning. … "

  She saw the armed deputies leaning against the back wall, and realized with a shock that they were there to protect her from the possibility of attack by someone who had already judged her and found her guilty.

  The first panel of prospective jurors—forty in all—was exhausted by noon of the first day of jury selection; they had all read about the "Brudos case," and they had all formed opinions as to her guilt or innocence. It would take two and a half days to select a jury. Eight women and four men. And then she wondered. It was such a toss-up. She knew women could judge another woman far more harshly than men did. Would they understand? Would they believe her?

  It was time to begin. District Attorney Gortmaker rose to make his opening remarks to the jury. Gortmaker assured the jury that he would prove that Darcie Brudos had helped her husband when he'd killed Karen Sprinker. He said he would produce an eyewitness who had seen Darcie assist Brudos in forcing a person wrapped in a blanket into their home. …

  Charlie Burt spoke next. He stressed that Darcie had had no reason at all to aid her husband. He pointed out that Darcie had refused to destroy evidence, had actually saved physical evidence for the police to find. "This is hardly the act of a woman trying to protect herself!"

  On the first morning of the trial, Megan Brudos was called into the courtroom so that Judge Hay could determine if she would be a competent witness. A witness against her mother. … Darcie had not seen her daughter for over two months. Seeing Megan walk timidly into the courtroom was almost more than she could bear. Megan was only seven years old; she seemed so frail, thinner than she had been, and quite frightened.

  The testimony of a child under ten in a court of law is always suspect. Some children are mature enough to relate facts accurately; others are not. Judge Hay leaned toward Megan and smiled as he spoke softly to her.

  "What is your name?"

  "Megan."

  "What do you think happens when you don't tell the truth?"

  "You get in trouble."

  "Do you believe in God?"

  "Yes."

  "How are your marks in school?"

  "I got some bad marks. … "

  "But some good ones too?"

  "Yes, they balance out."

  "Do you think you could answer questions honestly—if someone should ask you in this courtroom?"

  "Yes."

  Both the defense and prosecution declined to question Megan at this time. The child looked around the courtroom for the first time, and she saw her mother. She began to cry.

  And so did Darcie.

  Megan was led from the room—but she had been accepted as a potential witness against her mother.

  On Thursday morning, September 25, the prosecution's case began in earnest. Lieutenant Robert W. 190 Ann Rule Pinnick of the state crime lab took the stand to identify clothing removed from Karen Sprinker's body.

  "Were there articles of clothing that you removed from the body of the deceased?" Gortmaker asked.

  "I removed from the badly decomposed body of Karen Sprinker … white panties, a black long-line bra, a green skirt … a green sweater."

  The courtroom was very quiet as Pinnick broke the seal on the bags holding the clothing, and there wa
s a concurrent odor that insinuated itself into the close air. (When Darcie Brudos' trial was over, the courtroom would retain the stench, a stench removed only by having all the benches stripped and revarnished.)

  Each garment was displayed after Pinnick identified his own initials on the labels of the bags that held them.

  "Did you find anything inside the strapless brassiere?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What was that?"

  "Brown—or tan—paper towels had been stuffed into the cups."

  "When the body was examined—on autopsy—were the breasts intact?"

  "They were not. They were absent."

  There was no carnival atmosphere now. There were only shocked gasps, and Darcie felt the force of eyes staring behind her.

  She had not known. This she had not known.

  Burt and Seideman had tried to warn Darcie what the physical evidence would be like; she had listened and nodded, but she had not foreseen how awful it really was. The defense team had tried to keep the evidence out of trial, but all two thousand pieces of it were allowed, trundled into the courtroom by deputies before each session.

  Lieutenant Pinnick described the manner in which Karen Sprinker's body was weighted down with an engine head from a Chevrolet, the mass of it attached with nylon rope—microscopically identical in class and characteristic with the nylon rope taken from Jerry Brudos' workshop.

  "Did you form an opinion on whether the victim had been undressed … or redressed?"

  "Yes, sir. She apparently had been. The black brassiere was not hers."

  "Did you go to 3123 Center Street on June 3, 1969, to participate in a search of the premises?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "And did you seize certain items of evidentiary value from those premises?"