by Ann Rule
The engine turned over immediately.
The other keys did not work in Jan Whitney's McMinnville apartment. But the probers learned that Jan had lived previously in an apartment building near Portland State University. They had to hurry; even then, the buildings were being torn down to make way for a freeway. They located Jan's old apartment and found it had not yet been slated for the wrecking ball. Just in time. Two of the keys they had found worked. One opened the main entrance to the apartment building, and the other opened the apartment door to the unit where she had lived. They removed the locks, and those mechanisms, along with Jan Whitney's car, became three more items listed in the growing inventory of physical evidence.
Ned Rawls, Jerry Brudos' friend who had worked on cars with him for years, came to the state crime lab. Before he was shown the engine head that had been tied to Karen Sprinker's body, Rawls described to Lieutenant Pinnick a General Motors head that he had worked on with Brudos in early 1969. Several valves had been bad on the part, and Rawls remembered which of them had needed to be reground. To the nonmechanically minded, an engine head is an engine head; to Ned Rawls such parts were highly individual units. He told Pinnick where each flaw would be if this was the head that he and Brudos had worked on, which Brudos had kept at his house on Center Street.
Pinnick noted Rawls's specific descriptions. And then the two men went to where the engine head in question was stored. When the grease covering was wiped away, every single specific detail was present.
It was another piece of physical evidence that was well-nigh irrefutable.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Salem attorney George Rhoten, one of the finest legal minds in Oregon, had joined the Brudos defense team when Jerome Henry Brudos was arraigned on June 4, 1969. He was still charged with only one murder, Karen Sprinker's, but charges in the Whitney and Salee cases were filed within a week.
Rhoten and Dale Drake had seen "the picture." A defense team composed of F. Lee Baily, Percy Foreman, Melvin Belli, and Clarence Darrow himself could not have formulated a defense on the basis of total innocence after seeing that.
Nor did Rhoten and Drake try. When Judge Sloper said, "You are charged with first-degree murder in the death of Karen Elena Sprinker. How do you plead?" Jerry Brudos answered, "Not guilty, and not guilty by reason of insanity."
Was Jerry Brudos insane, and insane under the law? According to the M'Naghten Rule, the legal guideline in most states in America, a defendant must be proved to have been unable to determine the nature and consequences of his act at the time of the commission of the crime. In layman's terms, had Jerry Brudos known the difference between right and wrong when he killed his victims?
Since no psychiatrist has ever been present to observe a killer at the time of his crimes, psychiatric evaluation must be done sometime after those crimes. The doctors' value judgments must be done then in retrospect, an imprecise and iffy method—but the only way possible.
One basic rule of thumb used by a prosecuting attorney to convince a jury that a defendant was not insane during the crime is to show that he made efforts to cover up his crimes and to escape arrest. The only shoo-in for mental commitment rather than prison is the killer who is found babbling nonsense next to the corpse of his victim.
That doesn't happen often.
Jerry Brudos made elaborate preparations before his crimes, plotted them with cruel cleverness, and hid his guilt deftly thereafter. And still, the details of his crimes were so perverse that it was hard for some to believe he was, indeed, sane.
The teenage Jerry Brudos had been dismissed from an Oregon state hospital on the supposition that he only needed "to grow up." Well, he had grown up, and during all those years his perversions had multiplied and grown to grotesque proportions. Now seven different psychiatrists would interview Brudos separately and present their conclusions to the court. Drs. George R. Suckow, Gerhard Haugen, Roger Smith, Guy Parvaresh, Ivor Campbell, Colin Slade, and Howard Dewey examined the defendant individually.
They observed a man who was agitated and tense now; Brudos could not sit still for an interview, but rose frequently to stride around the interview room. He often stared at objects in the room with intense scrutiny. His fingernails were bitten to the quick.
Brudos characterized himself as a loner, and yet he seemed quite affable and talkative. He spoke with grandiosity and immaturity, and peppered his conversation with unnecessary detail, avoiding issues.
On an emotional level of response, he seemed quite normal—except when he talked of the deaths of his victims. He showed no emotion at all then. No remorse. He recited his litany of murder time and time again for each psychiatrist and each psychologist, and they all saw it—he was not sorry his victims were dead. Their lives were negligible to him.
Brudos described himself to one of the doctors: "I'm a friendly person who would give you the shirt off my back if you ask for it." And yet, a few minutes later in the examination, the defendant said: "I act the way I do because everybody takes advantage of me."
He had difficulty correlating dates in his past life with events, perhaps blocking out a childhood that had been miserable. Brudos' dislike of his mother was apparent to all the men who examined him. He loved women's clothing, but he declared he had never worn his mother's clothing—had never even thought of it. Her shoes were ugly. She favored his brother … always. She always made him take second place.
Jerry Brudos' hatred for his mother seemed to color all his thinking, and examiners detected a secondary hatred for all women—except Darcie.
"She won't dress up like other women do, and that makes me feel sorry for myself," he said with tears in his eyes. "But that's the only thing wrong with her."
Jerry Brudos cried—yes—but he cried for himself. When he talked of killing the four young women, his voice was flat and precise:
" … I stuffed the black bra with paper—because she was bleeding so much and I didn't want to get blood in my car."
" … her breasts had pale pink nipples and they didn't show up well so I didn't take any pictures. I couldn't get a good cast of them, so I threw them away. Then I threw her in the river."
"I had sex with her and strangled her at the same time with the postal strap."
Hours-long interviews during which Jerry Brudos cried for himself, and for his wife—but never for his victims.
Asked to describe the sort of person he was, Jerry Brudos put forward some thoughts:
"I don't like to be told what to do. I live in a world full of people, but I feel all alone. I don't know if I knew right from wrong at the time of the deaths of those girls, but I know I didn't think about it. The thing that bothers me most right now is that I'm stuck here and that means I can't maneuver or work things out for myself. Before this, I could always control things and plot out what moves I wanted to make."
Jerry asked for treatment in a hospital. He felt sure he could become a useful member of society and raise his own children. …
It was obvious, however, that Brudos had never before sought out treatment for his mental problems; he had given the idea lip service only when he was trapped.
Jerry Brudos was given an electroencephalograph to determine if his bizarre fantasies were the result of brain damage, and he tested normal in brain function. He tested above average in intelligence and cognitive thinking.
He was not insane under the law. Not one of the seven doctors found him to be psychotic. They deemed him fully able to participate in his defense.
Dr. Guy Parvaresh summed up his evaluation of Jerry Brudos in a letter to Brudos' attorneys:
In psychiatric examination, he was obviously anxious, agitated, and depressed. He cried frequently, saying he was sick and that he could not have help. Throughout the detailed discussion of the crimes, he appeared very preoccupied, emotionally detached, and quite certain that "These things had to be done." There was a prevailing impression throughout the interview that basically this man had been threatened all his life with h
is emotional and physical existence—so much so that he has developed a well-organized paranoid thinking in that at no time after he began to get involved with a crime would he have doubt as to whether or not he should proceed. "There was no doubt they [the murders] had to be done whether I wanted it or not."
In general, I did not find any evidence of a psychotic process or evidence of perceptual disturbances. His cognitive processes are well-maintained, and he is able to give details of past and recent events. Based on clinical assessment, his intellectual capacity is above average. He shows poor and faulty social judgment and certainly has no insight into his basic emotional problems. It is my clinical opinion that Mr. Brudos understands the nature of the charges against him and can assist in his own defense. This man has a paranoid disorder and his behavior is a product of this disorder. Despite this, I believe he can differentiate between what is morally and socially right and wrong. A review of his past and the current examination make me believe this man is a menace to himself and society.
Dr. George R. Suckow, examining Jerry Brudos for the state, said virtually the same things in slightly different words:
Overall, this man describes a history going back to childhood of progressively increasing assaults upon young females, starting with fetishism for shoes and undergarments in very early childhood. One is reminded of the person who writes bad checks and does not get caught and then continues, getting worse and worse because no one draws a line showing him where appropriate behavior begins. At the point where he first came to Oregon State Hospital, essentially a line was drawn and for several years, if Mr. Brudos is to be believed, he reverted to fetishism only—but he ultimately began to progress and require increasingly bizarre things for sexual gratification. Interestingly, his sexual relationship with his wife, by his report, deteriorated over the past two years until recently it has simply been a mechanical act on her part at his insistence and not particularly satisfying to either.
Running throughout is a consistent thread of hostility toward his mother, which generalizes to most women—but apparently not his wife at an overt level. On all three occasions that Mr. Brudos has requested psychiatric help, he has been in difficulty with the law. It is interesting that in the intervals between, when no one is after him, he does not require help. Though he does describe some rather elaborate fantasies of a sadistic nature toward women in particular, none of these is extensive enough or involved enough to qualify in my opinion as being delusions, since he clearly understands that they are not real, and even will discuss them in terms of how impractical they are.
In my opinion, Mr. Brudos has been aware of the nature and consequences of his actions on each and everyone [crime] of which we spoke, and further he has been aware that they were wrong in the view of others.
In my opinion, his diagnosis is 301.7, Antisocial Personality, manifested by fetishism, transvestism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and, especially, sadism. It is further my opinion that he is an extremely dangerous person to young females when not in confinement and, finally, it is my opinion that he shows little evidence of treatability, if any, for his personality disorder.
In the convoluted medicalese of the psychiatrist, Jerome Henry Brudos was quite sane, and eminently dangerous.
In the language of the man on the street, he was a monster. He would always be a monster.
Darcie Brudos never went back to live in the house on Center Street. Emotionally, she could not bear to; after reading the papers and seeing the story of her husband's alleged crimes featured on the news channels from Portland, she could not imagine living in the house again. It was a moot point anyway, because she was almost out of money and couldn't pay the rent.
She was led through the police barrier and allowed to pack her clothes and the children's, to pick up a few toys. Almost everything else had been seized for evidence, even her records. Everything. She was told that she could have some of the things later—if they proved to have no importance in the case.
Darcie and the children went first to her parents' home in Corvallis, but there wasn't much room there. Her parents agreed to care for Megan and Jason, and Darcie moved in with a cousin.
She talked to the psychiatrists, trying to answer their questions. "He was always sensitive," she told them. "And he was strange. I was afraid of him."
"Why were you afraid?"
"Because I was all he had, and if I crossed him, I didn't know what he would do."
She answered questions about her sex life, her perceptions of what Jerry had been doing. And always she remained in shock—unable to assimilate the horror of it all. She had not known.
She had not known.
Jerry wanted her to visit him all the time. He wanted the children to visit. She went to see him, and he seemed the same—but nothing was the same, and nothing would ever be the same again. She didn't know what the police had found in Jerry's workshop, and he wouldn't tell her anything about it. But it had to be something or they wouldn't have charged him with killing Karen Sprinker and the other girls.
Darcie had nightmares, and woke with her nightgown soaked with perspiration. Her daytime thoughts weren't much better. The papers were saying that young women had been murdered in Jerry's workshop. She could avoid visiting him for only a week or so, but then he called and was so insistent that she come. She went, but she wouldn't take Megan, no matter how he argued about it.
She wrote him a letter:
I'll be seeing you today in about four hours. Sweetheart, I hope you will forgive me for not bringing the kids today. Please understand, because it is tearing me apart, but I really feel I'm right. Megan knows what happened, but she doesn't understand. She gets tears in her eyes every time she talks about you.
Darcie Brudos
Darcie had always been easily swayed by her husband's arguments. He had controlled her life for almost eight years, telling her what to do and where to go. He did not seem angry with her that she'd failed to burn the things in his shop—maybe he didn't know. It was still very, very difficult for her to turn her back on him.
Like all the other victims, Darcie was shocked by the suddenness of the disaster that had befallen her. She too kept thinking: "This can't be happening to me."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
On June 26, 1969, the subpoenas went out for a preliminary hearing before Jerry Brudos stood trial. The trial would be a long one, according to rumor. There were more charges now, and more victims listed. The initial list of potential witnesses included: Dr. Robert Paschko, the Salem dentist who had identified Karen Sprinker's body from dental X rays; Salem policemen Lieutenant Elwood "Hap" Hewitt, Sergeant Jim Stovall, and Detective Jerry Frazier; state policemen Lieutenant Gene Daugherty, Sergeant William Freel; Dr. William Brady, State Board of Health—the medical examiner; and Dr. Lucas Sprinker, Karen Sprinker's father. In addition, Ned Rawls's name was on the roster—Jerry Brudos' friend who had stumbled unaware into the middle of Brudos' first murder, and been turned away with a hurried lie about nitroglycerin.
Rawls had told Stovall and Daugherty about the trips to junkyards with Brudos to buy auto parts. He had also mentioned how strong Jerry Brudos was. "He could take all the weight of a three-hundred-pound freezer and never sweat. I'm strong, but his strength exceeds anything I've ever seen."
The witness list was growing longer, and Brudos' attorneys, George Rhoten and Dale Drake, foresaw a terrible macabre circus in court. They had their psychiatrists' evaluations and the reports of the state's psychiatrists. They knew that the insanity plea would not hold up; Jerome Brudos had been adjudged sane within M'Naghten's parameters. They did not relish such a trial—either for their client or for the victims' families, who would have to go through the ordeal.
Jerry Brudos had talked quite openly with Rhoten and Drake, going over the murders, albeit a trifle less specifically than he had with Jim Stovall and the psychiatric evaluators. They were convinced almost from the beginning that their client was guilty of murder. He had told them so himself.
Now, toward the end of June 1969, Rhoten and Drake found themselves between a rock and a hard place. Not a single psychiatrist or psychologist could testify that Jerry Brudos was insane at the time of his crimes—or at present. Whatever basis there might have been for an insanity defense had crumbled as the psychiatric reports came in.
The defense attorneys had a client whose burgeoning ego made him resistant to suggestion. And still they had to counsel him that he must now change his plea to one of guilty—or risk being flayed in court with the specific revelations of what he had done. If the details of his crimes came out in open court, he would be vilified by the media.