Lust Killer

by Ann Rule

  "No."

  "How long had you known your husband when you married him?"

  "Three months."

  "What kind of marriage was it in the beginning?"

  She could sense the gallery listening. This would be the "good stuff"—a soap opera right before their eyes. "I considered it a very good marriage—at first."

  "How long were you married before trouble developed?"

  "Three or four years."

  "What caused the trouble?"

  "There were a lot of things. He wasn't working all the time and we seemed to quarrel about so many things."

  "Going back to the time you lived in Salem, how were you getting along?"

  "Not very good."

  "How much did you stay home?"

  "Not very often. I didn't enjoy being home when my husband was there."

  "What was causing the quarrels with your husband?"

  "Different things he wanted me to do … and his not working."

  "Were there times he would be sick?"

  "Several times he would have what he called migraine headaches. He couldn't stand much noise. The headaches put him in a very bad mood."

  "You say you quarreled about things he wanted you to do. Could you tell us what some of those things were?"

  She knew that she had to tell it all. Mr. Burt had explained that the prosecution would bring all those embarrassing things out—that her own lawyer could defuse the impact if he asked her first. "I … I objected to having Jerry take pictures of me …when I was naked."

  Darcie heard a buzzing in the courtroom, a few muffled gasps of disapproval.

  "Why did you go along with this … this picture-taking?"

  "He was my husband. He developed his own film and he said he would destroy the pictures after he finished with them."

  "Were there other things you argued about?"

  "He wanted me to wear high heels all the time. I have back problems, and it was very uncomfortable for me to do that."

  "Did you ever see your husband wearing women's clothing?"

  "Yes."

  "Could you tell us about that?"

  "I was … kidding him about being overweight. He went into another room, and when he came back he was wearing a girdle and a brassiere and he asked me if he looked thinner."

  Darcie looked down at her hands, and the way Jerry had looked in that outfit flashed back across her mind.

  "Did you think it was a joke?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you have any feelings about your husband's mental condition—that maybe something might be wrong?"

  "Yes. Just a feeling—but I'd felt something was wrong for the past few years."

  "Did you suspect your husband of killing anyone?" Burt asked bluntly.

  "No! No, I did not."

  "Darcie, can you tell the jury a little of what your home life was like—during the time you were living in Salem?"

  "Yes. I—"

  "Were you afraid of your husband?" "He was—is—very large, and he's very, very strong. He kind of dominated everything that went on. He had rules … "

  "Rules? For instance … "

  "I was not allowed to go out to Jerry's workshop in the garage. The freezer was out there. I was not allowed to go out to get food from the freezer. If I wanted something for dinner, I had to call Jerry on the intercom and tell him to bring it in. He explained that he had all kinds of photographic equipment out there and I might ruin his pictures if I came into the workshop without warning him."

  "When you were away, where did you go?"

  "I went to my friends' homes—to the Barrons' houses."

  "What happened when you wanted to come home?"

  "I had to call my husband and tell him I was on the way."

  "Why was that?"

  "I don't know. I was just supposed to call. He called my friends too, to see where I was—to check and see if I was with them."

  "Did you ever ask him why he did this?"

  "Yes, once I did."

  "What did he say?"

  "He kind of laughed, and he said he wanted to be sure that he got the blonde out of the house before I got home."

  There was a sharp gasp in the courtroom. It was too close to the truth.

  "Did you think he was joking?"

  "Yes, I did."

  "Darcie, do you remember finding pictures of women—nude women—in your husband's workshop?"

  "Yes. I went out to do the laundry—I had permission—and I asked my husband about some pictures that I saw in a developing tray. He said they weren't his—that they belonged to some college kid he was doing a favor for."

  "Do you remember seeing a breast mold?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you ask your husband what it was?"

  "Yes. He said he was making a paperweight."

  "Did you believe him?"

  "Yes. I had no reason not to."

  "Did you ever find other pictures—pictures of your husband wearing women's clothing?"

  "Yes."

  "Did you take those pictures? Did you ever take pictures of your husband when he was dressed like that?"

  "No I did not."

  "Do you know whether he had a camera that could be set to take a photo of himself?"

  "He had a thirty-five-millimeter he got in Korea, or from Korea."

  "Did you ever see him use it?"

  "He took a picture of all of us—Jerry, my son, my daughter, and me—by a 'Leaving California' sign once."

  "Darcie," Burt said, "did you receive a phone call from your husband on the night he was arrested—on May 30?"

  "Yes, he called me from the jail."

  "What did he want you to do?"

  "He asked me to go out to his workshop and destroy a box of photographs and a box of women's clothing I'd find there."

  "Did you?"

  "No, sir. I called Mr. Drake, instead. He told me that it would be illegal for me to destroy something that might be evidence."

  "What did you do with those things?"

  "The police came in and took them later."

  "Did you ever go into the attic of your home?"

  "No, sir."

  "Why was that?"

  "Jerry said there were mice … and things like that up there. I'm terrified of mice."

  "Darcie Brudos … if you suspected that people were being killed in your home, what would you have done?"

  "I would have moved out … I would have left him."

  "How do you feel about your husband now?"

  "I feel he is a very sick person. I'm afraid to be with him … alone."

  Darcie Brudos would now have to establish some manner of alibi for her time on the twenty-seventh of March. For the average person, recall of events on what has seemed to be an ordinary day some months previous is a difficult—if not impossible—task. Businesses keep calendars; housewives seldom do. How can one remember what happened on a weekday? Darcie had gone over her days again and again, and she had narrowed down her activities on that Thursday, only because the day had been somewhat unusual. She followed Charlie Burt's instructions to relate what she remembered of the twenty-seventh to the jury.

  "That day was a Thursday. I had been at Ginny Barron's from about nine or nine-thirty. I had planned to stay all day, but Jerry called about two and suggested that we drive to Corvallis to see my parents. I went home, and I think we left for Corvallis about three. But when we got to my parents', Jerry just dropped us off and said he had to see friends and would be back for supper. He didn't come back for supper at all. I remember that because my mother had fixed extra food for him, and he didn't even come or call to say he'd be late. He finally showed up around nine—and he had one of his bad migraine headaches."

  If Darcie Brudos was telling the truth about that last day of Karen Sprinker's life, it appeared that Jerry Brudos had arranged to have his family far away from their home while he violated his victim's body. Only later, long after midnight, had he secreted the body in his station wagon and driv
en back to the Long Tom to dispose of it.

  On cross-examination, District Attorney Gortmaker questioned the defendant closely about the cameras the family had owned. There had been several—two movie cameras and three still cameras. The delayed-timing mechanism had not been found in Brudos' workshop, and Gortmaker suggested that Darcie—and not Jerry—had taken the gruesome picture of Karen's body which showed Brudos' face.

  Darcie had no idea how the delayed-timing mechanism worked. But she was firm in her response to suggestions that she had been the person behind the camera when those terrible pictures were taken.

  Gortmaker picked up some glossy eight-by-tens of different pairs of shoes, including the black patent-leather pumps.

  "Mrs. Brudos, can you identify these shoes? Are they yours?"

  "No."

  It was over—for the moment. Darcie Brudos left the witness stand.

  Charlie Burt called her parents to the stand. They were quite sure of the date that Jerry Brudos had driven his family to Corvallis. They could not swear to it.

  The next defense witness was Harry Nordstrom, a man who said he had known Edna Beecham for seventeen years.

  "Mr. Nordstrom," Burt asked, "were you ever in a position to hear a conversation between Mrs. Beecham and her sister—a conversation regarding something Mrs. Beecham had seen from her sister's dining-room window?"

  "Yes, sir. On two occasions."

  "What did Mrs. Beecham say?"

  "She was trying to convince her sister that she had seen Jerry Brudos force a struggling girl into their home—the Brudos home."

  "How did she say that was accomplished?"

  "One time she said that Jerry carried the girl in—and once she said she saw him lead her in."

  "Carried?"

  "Yes."

  "And the next time, she had changed her recall. She said led in?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "Mr. Nordstrom, based on your acquaintance with Mrs. Beecham—for seventeen years—how would you estimate Mrs. Beecham's reputation for telling the truth?"

  Nordstrom paused, and then he answered softly. '''She tells the truth … as she knows it."

  Burt had pretty well eliminated the state's prize witness as credible. He still had to attack the prosecution's contention that Jerry Brudos could not have had the strength to carry a weighted body from his station wagon to the bridge rail over the Long Tom River—that two people would have had to be present to carry out such a feat.

  The combined weight of Karen Sprinker's body and the engine head had been 179 pounds, the weight of an average man. A deadweight. In this context, a macabre term.

  Burt called a private investigator who had been hired by the defense to carry out witnessed experiments, and introduced photographs showing that a station wagon like the Brudos' could be backed to within four inches of the bridge rail over the Long Tom.

  "Did you carry a weight—weighing 179 pounds—from that station wagon to the bridge rail?" Burt asked the detective.

  "I did, several times."

  "Without assistance from another person?"

  "No, sir. I carried the weight alone."

  The jury had heard that Jerry Brudos was strong enough to hold back the weight of a freezer weighing between three and four hundred pounds. It seemed clear that he could have handled a weighted body with some ease.

  The defense rested its case.

  But District Attorney Gortmaker had something more, something to bring back on rebuttal.

  The nude pictures of Darcie Brudos.

  Long before, Darcie had feared that technicians in a photo lab might have seen some of the pictures Jerry had taken of her. He had promised her that he had destroyed all those photos. But he had not. He had hoarded them, just as he'd kept all of his other pictures. Now they were introduced into evidence, and Darcie was humiliated to see them passed down the rows of jurors. Her nakedness exposed to the people who would judge her.

  Gortmaker pointed out that Darcie wore high patent-leather pumps in the photos—pumps that seemed identical to those apparent in the pictures of Karen Sprinker. It had been such a long time ago. She had not remembered those shoes. She felt the jury looking at her—glancing at the pictures of her naked body, posing for what she had thought were totally private photos.

  Now it looked as if she had lied about the shoes. She had told the district attorney that she did not recognize any of the shoes recovered in the search of Jerry's workshop. But they were there on her own feet in the dozens of slides and photos. She had told the truth as she remembered it.

  She had not lied—but it looked as if she had.

  The time had come for final arguments. Whichever way it went, the ordeal of the trial was almost over.

  On Thursday, October 2, Gary Gortmaker spoke for the prosecution. Darcie heard herself portrayed as a monstrous woman, a woman who had willingly helped her husband torture and kill a helpless girl. A woman who had then accompanied her husband when he disposed of the body. She was depicted as morally loose, someone who posed for photographs that verged on pornographic. She listened, and thought that the D.A. might well be talking about another woman entirely, someone she had never met—and certainly someone she herself would despise.

  And she felt trickles of hate aimed from somewhere behind her, and knew. There were those in the gallery who still believed that she was guilty of all these things.

  Mr. Burt had told her that each side would have to pull out all the stops, that she must let the legal rhetoric wash over her and not heed it, not allow it to damage her.

  But it did.

  The words would not wash over her; instead, they penetrated her fragile facade like acid eroding whatever self-esteem she had left. She would never escape them, no matter how far she went. She thought of the little childhood rhyme: "Sticks and stones … but words will never hurt me."

  And all she could think of was how much words could hurt.

  When it was over, Charlie Burt rose and walked to the jury rail.

  "Lizzie Borden took an ax,

  and gave her father forty whacks.

  And when she saw what she had done,

  She gave her mother forty-one. … "

  The poem hung on the air.

  "Lizzie Borden was acquitted of both those murders, ladies and gentlemen. Everyone connected with that old case is long dead—the judge, the jury, the lawyers, the defendant. Yet the poem remains—known to every schoolchild. Why? Because the public seizes upon the gruesome and the bizarre. Lizzie Borden has been convicted of those crimes by history and folklore."

  Burt did not have to equate Jerome Henry Brudos' crimes with the horror of the Borden massacre. It was obvious; there had never been a more gruesome crime in Oregon crime annals than those committed by Jerry Brudos. Burt reminded the jury of the terrible photographs of Brudos' victims, photographs that could not help but revolt anyone who gazed upon them.

  "Does the state want the truth … or does the state want a conviction? Is Darcie Brudos being prosecuted … or is she being persecuted? She was married—is still married—to this man. Does that automatically make her guilty by association?"

  Burt pointed out again that Darcie had preserved evidence. He took the picture of Jerry Brudos simpering in the black lace slip and handed it to the jury. He took the other picture—the worst picture—of Jerry Brudos staring at his victim's hanging corpse, and held it out for them to see again.

  "This is the face of a madman—a monster who inadvertently took his own picture. Do not convict Darcie Brudos because she is married to a madman.

  "Take Edna Beecham out of the case … and it crumbles like a house of cards. If you believe Edna Beecham, convict. If you do not, acquit."

  It was 4:09 P.M. on that bleak October afternoon when Judge Hay finished giving his final instructions and the jury retired to debate their verdict. Darcie was returned to her jail cell to wait. Charlie Burt had told her it might be hours—or it might be days before the jury signaled that they had made their jud
gment.

  The jail matrons were kind to her; they had always been kind to her. Now they brought her two aspirin and a glass of milk. She had never taken tranquilizers, and she would not now. But she was afraid—more afraid than she had been throughout the trial. There were no more words to be said. Whatever would be would be.

  Five o'clock. Six o'clock.

  At 7:59 P.M. she heard a matron approaching her cell, and she looked up.

  "The jury's back. They're waiting for you."

  Judge Hay turned to the jury foreman. "Have you reached a verdict?"

  "We have, your Honor."

  "And how do you find?"

  Darcie tried to control her trembling as she faced the jury. She could not read their faces.

  "Not guilty."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  In the Oregon State Penitentiary, Prisoner 33284 was now dealing with his peers. No, that would be a faulty term; Jerry Brudos' fellow prisoners would never accept him as one of their kind. They were not constrained by the law as the detectives, lawyers, and prosecutors had been. Despite his protestations that he had been treated badly after his arrest, he had been treated with eminent fairness.

  Now he was in prison.

  There are social hierarchies in prison that are just as clearly defined or even more clearly defined than those in other communities. The vast majority of prisoners are basically decent men who have, admittedly, broken laws—but who believe in the sanctity of human life and in the protection of women and children. The upper echelons in prison society are reserved for the "brains"—the safecrackers who can "see" with their fingers, the crafty con men, the bunco artists who are charming and devious and who can sweet-talk anyone out of anything, and, of course, the "paperhangers," the forgers and counterfeiters.

  Brains count inside the walls; the smart cons are the jailhouse lawyers who can give advice on how to get out, or at least how to maneuver for favors inside. They are the elite.

  Jerry Brudos was smart, but his crimes had been such that they obliterated any claim he might have had to join those respected for their intelligence.

  The social ladder in the joint works on down, then, based on abilities that have no meaning in the outside world. Bank robbers are considered clever if they have managed to get away with a few such crimes before they were apprehended. Burglars are above robbers—"cat burglars" getting the nod. Sheer physical strength is important. If you have no important contacts on the outside, and you're not that brilliant, you can dominate in prison just by being muscular.