Authors: Ann Rule
Lust Killer (23 page)
"No, your Honor, I wasn't. That's something that didn't come up in the discussion."
"All right, that's good. Would that make a difference to you in expressing a desire to withdraw your plea of not guilty and enter another plea at this time?"
"No, your Honor."
"Has anybody threatened or coerced or intimidated you in any manner at all, in order to coerce you to ask the court's permission to change your plea from not guilty to guilty?"
"No, sir."
"Has anybody promised you anything by way of reward or leniency by the court or anything of that nature to induce you to plead guilty?"
"No, sir."
"Are you aware that under your plea of not guilty, you have a right to require the State of Oregon to establish your guilt to the satisfaction of twelve jurors beyond a reasonable doubt of the truth of the allegations of each of these indictments, or you would be entitled to have the indictments dismissed?"
"Yes, sir."
"Are you also aware that you have a right to remain absolutely silent concerning these charges, and that you cannot be compelled to be a witness in any of the three cases against yourself?"
"Yes, sir."
"And are you also aware of the further right that you have to compel the State to produce here in open court, in the event of a trial, the persons who testified against you, and to face your accuser face to face?"
"Yes, sir."
Judge Sloper picked up a copy of the document entitled "Petition to enter plea of guilty" and went over it paragraph by paragraph with Jerry Brudos. It was the guilty plea in the first case—in the death of Karen Sprinker. It too reduced horror to a few paragraphs, executed in perfect legalese.
Judge Sloper read the third paragraph to Brudos:
"The third paragraph states that, 'I have received a copy of the indictment, being called upon to enter a plea. I am able to read and write and I have read the indictment and I have discussed it with my lawyer. I fully understand every charge made against me. The following is the name of the offense: Murder in the first degree. The elements of the above crime are: That I, Jerome Henry Brudos, on or about the twenty-seventh day of March 1969, in the county of Marion, state of Oregon, purposely and with deliberate and premeditated malice did kill one Karen Elena Sprinker, by strangling and smothering her to death."
Judge Sloper asked a few more questions; just to be sure that Jerry Brudos understood what he was pleading guilty to. "Why is that you want to plead guilty to these indictments?"
"Well, your Honor, I did it."
"Now, by your plea of guilty and by your saying, 'I did it,' tell me exactly what it is that you did in connection with this indictment, and one Karen Elena Sprinker. "
"I abducted her and strangled her to death."
"Did you do this with a deliberate plan in mind?"
"That I don't honestly have an answer for, your Honor."
"Maybe I could define 'deliberate' a little bit for you. You have told me that you killed Karen Elena Sprinker by strangling her and smothering her, after you had abducted her. How long was she in your company—or custody—before you did the act as alleged in the indictment?"
"About an hour."
"And during that time that she was in your custody, a period of an hour, did you during that period of time make up your mind and plan how you were going to strangle or smother her?" Sloper asked.
"No, sir, there was no plan to strangle or smother her—"
Judge Sloper appeared startled at Brudos' bland denial of what he might have had in his mind during the time he kept Karen Sprinker captive. Sloper's words burst out. "There was no
what
?"
"—no plan to strangle or smother her."
Sloper continued his questions, his voice once again free of emotional emphasis. "How did you do the act?"
"Strangled her with a rope."
"Where had you abducted Miss Sprinker?"
"From the Fred Meyer … er … the Meier and Frank parking lot."
It continued, the same phrases, the legal rituals to be gone through—only this time for Jan Susan Whitney.
"In connection with indictment number 67698, Mr. Brudos, wherein it is alleged that on the twenty-sixth day of November 1968, in Marion County, Oregon, that you purposely and with deliberate and premeditated malice feloniously killed one Jan Susan Whitney by strangling and smothering said Jan Susan Whitney to death, is it your desire to enter a plea of guilty at this time?"
"Yes, sir."
"And why do you want to plead guilty to this indictment?"
"Because I did do it."
"Can you tell me how you did it?"
"With a leather strap … strangled her to death."
"Was this after you had first abducted her?"
"Yes, sir."
"And how long was she in your company or custody before you strangled or smothered her?"
"About twenty minutes."
"How did you strangle or smother her with a leather strap?"
"I had a slipknot on it and I put it around her neck and yanked it tight."
"Was that act, then, deliberate?"
"I really don't know. It just happened."
"In connection with indictment number 67700 … you are accused of the crime of first-degree murder of one Linda Dawn Salee. … Is it your desire to enter a plea of guilty to that indictment at this time?"
"Yes, sir."
"And why do you want to plead guilty to that indictment?"
"Because I did do it."
"And how did you do that?"
"With a leather strap."
"Perhaps if you would give me a little more detail rather than by saying 'with a leather strap,' I could—"
"I had a leather strap with a knot in it and I just put it around her throat and pulled it tight."
"How long was she in your company or custody before the strangulation?"
"About an hour."
"Did you kill Linda Dawn Salee with deliberation and premeditation?"
"Yes, sir."
Brudos' definite answer the third time this question was posed puzzled Judge Sloper a little. The defendant had waffled on deliberation with Karen and Jan—but then Judge Sloper could not have known how angry Jerry Brudos had been with Linda Salee because she fought him to save her life.
"Is there any difference, so far as your deliberate and premeditated acts are concerned, between Linda Dawn Salee, than there was with Jan Susan Whitney?"
"Pardon?" Brudos was puzzled now.
"Is there any difference in the deliberation or the premeditation that was in your mind at the time you strangled Linda Dawn Salee than there was when you strangled Jan Susan Whitney?"
"No, sir."
"One final question, Mr. Brudos. Are you stating to me at this time, in each of these cases, that you did the acts alleged, with deliberation and with premeditated malice?"
"Yes, sir."
Jerry Brudos had now pleaded guilty to killing Karen and Jan and Linda Salee (charges in the death of Linda Slawson, if initiated, would have to come from another jurisdiction, Multnomah County). The confessed killer had the right by law to have sentencing delayed for forty-eight hours. He asked that the waiting period be waived and that his sentence be read immediately.
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.
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.
