Lust Killer

by Ann Rule

  The sun would be setting soon, and she knew if she didn't get help, she would be dead by the time the sun rose again. She screamed with all her might, and his fist crunched sickeningly into her nose.

  Fortunately, a couple from a farm down the road happened to be driving by just at that moment. The husband wrenched his steering wheel and turned quickly into the weed-choked yard. They saw the old car parked there, and the tall, heavy young man bent over someone on the ground beside it.

  "She fell out of the car," he explained, reaching out to help the sobbing girl up. "She's just hysterical because it scared her."

  The girl shook her head violently, trying to speak through her swollen mouth.

  The couple looked on doubtfully, and the boy shrugged his shoulders. "Well, actually, what happened was that some weirdo attacked her. I came driving by and I stopped to help. She was fighting him off when I came up, and he took off through the fields over there."

  This version didn't make any more impression on the couple than the first one, and they insisted on taking the girl—and Jerry Brudos, who went along quite meekly—back to their house, where they called the Oregon State Police.

  Faced with the police, Jerry Brudos admitted that he had beaten the girl himself. He said he'd wanted to frighten her enough to make her take off her clothes so he could take pictures of her. He denied ever doing such a thing before. He seemed baffled by the incident himself; he felt his temper had just gotten the best of him. But police found his camera equipment in the trunk of his car, and recognized premeditation before the attack.

  Jerry Brudos' victim was treated in a local Emergency Room and found to have extensive bruises and a badly broken nose.

  Investigators searching Jerry's room on the farm in Dallas, Oregon, came upon his cache of women's clothing and shoes. And they found photographs. Pictures of women's undergarments and shoes, and photos of a nude girl. Jerry had an excuse for this, too. He insisted the pictures had been taken by another boy, and that he had only developed them.

  "I had to … he said he'd beat me up if I didn't. …"

  Jerry Brudos was arrested for assault and battery. He was referred to Polk County Juvenile Department, which began a background investigation.

  Eileen Brudos was outraged, and Henry was stunned. There had never been anyone on either side of the family who showed signs of mental illness or violence. What in the world could be the matter with Jerry?

  A review of the case for which he was arrested, the presence of fetish items in his room, and a talk with the eighteen-year-old neighbor girl who now felt safe to come forward, convinced authorities that Jerry Brudos had deeper problems than the average juvenile delinquent.

  He was committed to Oregon State Hospital for evaluation and treatment in the spring of 1956.

  Jerry Brudos seemed humbled and meek as he talked to a procession of psychiatrists. He said he was a sophomore in high school. He liked sports but he didn't like rough competition. "I don't like to fight or to push people around, or be pushed around—so I don't go out for any of the teams."

  He gave his hobbies as working with radios, electronics, mechanics, and … photography. He had belonged to 4-H, Boy Scouts, and the Farmer's Union. The Jerry Brudos who sat in Oregon State Hospital seemed impossibly remote from a sadistic sex criminal. He blushed crimson when asked about his sex life—or rather his lack of sexual experience. He said he "suffered" from nocturnal emissions—"wet dreams"—about every two months. He tried to lead a clean life; he didn't drink. He didn't smoke.

  No, he had never had a sexual relationship with a girl. He had never even been out alone with a girl; sometimes, he had been in large groups where girls were present. Yes, he had taken the pictures of the neighbor girl and she had been the first naked woman he had ever seen.

  Doctors were a little puzzled, searching for a diagnosis. One psychiatrist wrote on April 16, 1956:

  "The boy does not appear to be grossly mentally ill. He comes shyly into the interview situation and sits down in dejected fashion to talk with great embarrassment about his difficulty. It is difficult for him to form any relationship with the examining physician although he does warm up slightly through the course of the interview. He is precisely oriented in all spheres; speech rate, thought rate, and psychomotor activities are within normal limits. Flow of thinking is relevant, logical, and coherent. He tends to be evasive on a basis of his acute embarrassment and is somewhat rambling and verbose in trying to tell his story. He appears to be somewhat depressed at the present time and his predominant mood would appear to be of depressed, dejected embarrassment. His affect is appropriate to thought content. There is no evidence of suicide, homicide, or destructive urges. He feels that he sometimes has trouble controlling his temper but that it has never got him into trouble except on this last occasion when he maintains that he cannot remember too clearly exactly what he did but was told that the girl received a broken nose. There is no evidence of hallucinations, delusions, or illusions. He denies any sense of fear except over what is going to happen to him, and he says he has some sense of guilt over having got into trouble but does not feel particularly guilty over having taken the photographs. … Intellectually, he is functioning well within the limits of his educational background. His insight and judgment are questionable; he feels that there must be something the matter with him and he hopes that he will be able to find out and have it cured here. …

  The provisional diagnosis of Jerry Brudos' problem was: "Adjustment reaction of adolescence with sexual deviation, fetishism."

  Jerry was not a full-time patient at the mental hospital. During the day, he was allowed to attend high school at North Salem High School. He moved among the other students as a nonentity, a tall, pudgy youth with raging acne.

  He was smart, probably brilliant, in mathematics and science, and yet no one remembers him. None of his teachers. None of his fellow students. Years later, one of his defense attorneys would realize with a start that he and Jerry had been in the same homeroom at North Salem High. But the lawyer could remember no more about Jerry Brudos in high school than anyone else could.

  When he became infamous, teachers and peers tried to remember Jerry. They still couldn't. He had moved through North Salem High and left no ripple behind. He was a loner. The odd duck, hurrying through the halls with his head bent. His after-school residence at the state hospital was kept secret. All anyone at North Salem High knew was that he never came to the football and basketball games and never showed up at the dances, where Elvis Presley's records of "Blue Suede Shoes" and "Heartbreak Hotel" played over and over.

  He belonged to another world.

  Jerry Brudos' fantasies, as black and horrific as they were, remained his own. When he stared at the pretty high school girls, at their clothing, and especially at their wonderful shoes, he did it covertly.

  At the mental hospital, Jerry talked often with the doctors. A second diagnosis was "borderline schizophrenic reaction" a handy catch-all diagnosis of the era.

  Jerry remained at the hospital for eight or nine months. Henry and Eileen Brudos were adamant that they didn't want him home until he was cured of whatever ailed him.

  But before a year had passed, he did come home to the family farm in Dallas. Jerry had not been missed much. Eileen had been working at a wool mill, and Henry worked the farm and had a job in town. Larry was doing well in college. Jerry was the only problem they had.

  In the end, the staff at Oregon State Hospital had determined that Jerry Brudos was not that far removed from normal. A bit immature, certainly, overly shy, and given to tall stories, but not particularly dangerous. When he left the hospital, he was advised to "grow up."

  Back in Corvallis, Jerry returned to high school. There were 202 students in his graduating class. He enrolled in audiovisual and stagecraft courses for his electives. It is somewhat ironic that this non-communicative youth should pick courses that dealt principally with communication, with reaching out and touching others through the r
adio or from the stage. What he could not seem to do in a face-to-face encounter, he apparently sought to do through the media. His goal was to obtain an FCC license so that he could be employed at a radio or television station.

  He was quite adept at electronics; he has been described by some who knew him as "brilliant" in that field, and, in the same breath, "lazy." He was skilled at electrical wiring, too, and he was a fair backyard mechanic.

  Jerry Brudos graduated 142nd in the class of 202, with a grade-point average of 2.1, just above a C. He attended Oregon State University for a short time, Salem Technical Vocational School for a while, and dabbled at a few other advanced schools.

  On March 9, 1959, Jerry joined the U.S. Army and was sent to Fort Ord, California, and subsequently to Fort Gordon, Georgia, for basic and advanced training in the Signal Corps. He eventually achieved the rank of E-2. With his skill and interest in communication and electronics, the Army might have been the perfect choice for him.

  But his obsessions had never left him.

  He became convinced that a Korean girl had come into the barracks one night and crawled into his bunk and tried to seduce him. "I didn't want her and I came up fighting and beat her badly."

  The dream woman returned on several occasions, and Jerry wondered that none of his barracks mates teased him about it. At length he decided that there was no real woman—that she was only a dream. No one complained of the noise that accompanied his beating of the woman. No one even noticed when she came in the night to tease and fondle him.

  Jerry worried that he hated the woman so much he wanted to beat her and kill her. He went to the Army chaplain, who referred him to Captain Theodore J. Barry, the staff psychiatrist. Dr. Barry determined that Jerry was not fit for the service because of his bizarre obsessions and recommended discharge for him under AR 635-208. On October 15, 1959, Jerry was discharged—disappointed and wondering why the Army should let him go for such a minor thing.

  Jerry Brudos, twenty years old now, returned to Corvallis, Oregon, after his discharge and moved into the two-bedroom house where his parents lived. He was allowed to live in the second bedroom; but then Larry came home from college. As always, Larry came first. He was given the extra bedroom, and Jerry was relegated to a shed on the property. He covered the windows so no one could peer in at him and "because I wanted to keep out the light."

  His old anger at his mother surged back. Larry had the good room; he had the shed.

  Both Mr. Brudos and Larry came to Jerry and advised him to give up trying to find favor in his mother's eyes. "She will never treat you well. She never has and she never will." They seemed sympathetic to him—but as impotent as he was in trying to change things.

  He stayed away from home as much as possible, and when he was on the Brudos property he sequestered himself in his darkened shack and tried to shut out the knowledge that his mother still seemed to be in control of his life.

  One evening, Jerry went over to Salem on an errand. He spotted a pretty young woman walking near the telephone office. She wore a bright red outfit, and he could not take his eyes off her. He followed her, excited by the scarlet clothing. She did not realize he was just behind her as she turned into the doorway of an apartment house. Only when she was in the dim, deserted foyer did she hear the soft footfall right behind her. She turned, frightened. She opened her mouth to speak, but before she could utter a sound, Jerry simply closed his hands around her neck and choked her until she fell to the floor, semiconscious. Jerry looked down at her, lying helpless there, and debated what he should do to her.

  She was lucky: he only stole her shoes.

  It happened again in Portland. The stalking of a woman who wore sexy shoes. Again, he choked his quarry, but this time the woman fought back and he managed to make off with only one shoe.

  Back in his shack, he slept with the shoes, remembering the power he'd had over their owners—if only for a short time. Somehow, this made him feel stronger now when he had to deal with his mother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Despite his disfavor at home, Jerry Brudos was functioning effectively in his chosen career goal. He obtained his FCC license and, with it, a job as an operating engineer at a Corvallis radio station. It gave him a modicum of self-esteem, and he seemed, at least outwardly, to be less of a loner. He had a skilled job—something that few men could qualify for. He bull-shitted with the station employees, and they accepted him.

  He was a big man. At six feet and 180 pounds, he had far outstripped his father's five feet, four inches.

  He was still a virgin.

  Jerry Brudos had an old car that he had fixed up, and he was eager to have a steady girl of his own. Although he distrusted women generally, he thought he might find a woman who would be perfect—someone who would be totally committed to him—and someone who would welcome him sexually whenever he wanted. Once he found her, he would keep her away from the rest of the world. She would belong to him alone.

  Jerry met his woman when he was almost twenty-three, met her through an unusual channel. Since he was not adept socially, he found it hard to meet women. There was a young boy who came into the station to watch Jerry work at his control panel, a kid who "bugged" Jerry with questions and with his constant visits.

  But the kid brought Darcie to him. One day Jerry asked the boy if he knew any girls that Jerry could date, and the boy, eager to please, introduced him to Darcie Metzler.

  Darcie would pay dearly in years to come for the romance that began as if it had come right out of a popular love song.

  Darcie was seventeen, a pretty, big-eyed young woman with thick dark hair, when she met Jerry Brudos. She was very quiet and shy, but not unpopular with boys. She dated frequently and went out with boys she describes as "good-looking." She had grown up in a family that was strictly dominated by her father, a man of Germanic extraction, and she was chafing to get out and be on her own. She was too submissive to rebel—she had never been the type to question authority, and she loved her parents. But she dreamed of having her own home, where she could make her own decisions.

  She was exactly the type of woman Jerry had been looking for.

  When the little boy brought Jerry to her house and introduced him for the first time, she wasn't very impressed. In fact, she didn't like him at all. His clothes were neither neat nor stylish. Her first view of him was of an average-looking man in rumpled, paint-spattered pants. She thought he could have dressed up a little when he was meeting her for the first time. He had thinning blond-red hair and a bit of a double chin; he certainly wasn't as attractive as the guys she usually dated.

  "I probably wouldn't have accepted a date with him at all—except that he asked me to go swimming, and I love to swim."

  For some reason—perhaps because she was so shy herself—Darcie didn't threaten Jerry or make him feel angry. She laughed at his jokes and made him feel good.

  "He was full of fun and full of jokes," she recalls. "I was so shy that I couldn't even get up in school to recite or answer questions, and he seemed so confident."

  It is quite possible that Jerry Brudos could not have impressed a woman of his own age so much, but Darcie Metzler was six years younger than he. She was impressed with his job and with him. She gave him the attention and admiration he'd never found before.

  He was very tender with her, demonstrating niceties of courtship that the teenage boys she knew didn't understand. He pulled out her chair for her, opened doors, bought small gifts and flowers. He put her "on a pedestal," and she liked that.

  And to ensure that she would be absolutely dazzled by Jerry, there was the fact that her parents didn't like him and said so. Nothing drives a girl quicker into a lover's arms than parental disapproval.

  Brudos didn't like his mother-in-law-to-be much better than he liked his own mother—which was not at all. He found her "stubborn and independent—like me." He didn't like Darcie's father, either. "He felt because he was older that he could decide what we would do, where we would go—a
ll of that."

  Jerry was very jealous of Darcie. Fiercely jealous. She was flattered by that in the beginning, considering jealousy to be part of true love. Since she was spending all of her time with Jerry anyway and had no interest in any other man, she felt protected by his possessiveness.

  In retrospect, after all the horror had been acted out and had almost destroyed her, Darcie believes that she never really loved Jerry Brudos. In 1962, she thought she did. "While my home life was a good one, there was this feeling that 'getting married' would be much better than listening to your parents."

  Brudos recalled their betrothal more pragmatically. "I wanted someone to sleep with, and she wanted out of her home."

  He had never had intercourse with a woman when he met Darcie, despite all of his erotic fantasies. That lack was remedied soon after they began dating. Apparently Darcie found him normal sexually—or perhaps she had nothing to compare his performance to. She did not know about his background of mental illness.

  She certainly did not know of his fetishism or of his rage toward women.

  Because her parents were so adamantly opposed to Jerry, the two lovers decided that if she were to become pregnant, they would be allowed to marry. Darcie proved to be instantly fertile, and they were married within six weeks.

  Darcie was thrilled with the event. She did not consider that theirs had been a "shotgun" wedding, because she had planned the pregnancy and because she felt she had a sensitive, successful husband.

  Jerry was relieved. He had been terrified that Darcie would meet his brother and would leave him in favor of Larry. Since Larry had usurped all good things from him so far, he was sure that he would take Darcie away too.