Cold Case Files - Deadly Divorce

Episode Date: March 26, 2024

After his mother goes to meet up with his ex-step father and doesn’t make it home, a Colorado teen fears the worst. Despite his suspicions from the outset, it takes Brett Ludwig 24 years and a blood donation to finally help police catch his mother’s murderer.  Sponsors: Prolon: Go to Prolonlife.com/coldcase right now for 10% off your 5 day nutrition program. Rosetta Stone: Cold Case Files listeners can get Rosetta Stone’s lifetime membership for 50% off when you go to RosettaStone.com/coldcase ZocDoc: Check out Zocdoc.com/CCF and download the Zocdoc app for free! 

Every day of your life you think about it. Every time they found a body, I thought, is that mom's? You feel that if justice is not done, then she died for nothing. Doesn't matter how many years, you still need that. It was like my head spread and this horrible darkness left. From A&E, this is Cold Case Files, the podcast. August 16th, 1974. It's Friday night in a Denver suburb. Brett Ludwig is 15 years old and plans to spend the evening watching TV with his mother, Dorothy Britt. Then, at 10 p.m., Dorothy receives a phone call.

She tells Brett that plans have changed, and she's going out. Although she doesn't tell her son who was on the line, Brett believes that his mother has agreed to meet her ex-husband, Larry Britt, a man Dorothy had divorced two months earlier after an abusive three-year marriage, a man Brett Ludwig had hoped was out of their lives for good. Larry was a brutal drunk, is how I would put it. And he, their relationship was one of beatings through bouts of drinking, all-night drinking, and all-day drinking, and more drinking, and more beatings. Later that night, Brett hears Larry Britt's custom pickup truck outside his bedroom window. So it made a very distinctive sound, and I knew it was his truck.

So I knew she was meeting with him. He had cajoled her into one last drink or something. At 9 a.m. the next morning, Brett wakes to find that his mother has not come home. The teenager is concerned. His mom has never stayed out all night and never missed a day of work. At 9.30, the phone rings.

It's Larry Britt on the line, asking if Dorothy's at home. I immediately knew then and there that something terrible had happened. And I accused him then, what did you do? And he said nothing. The boy doesn't believe Britt. He calls his older sister, Susie Kruminga, and tells her their mother is missing. She, too, believes that something is very wrong. That just wasn't in her character. Plus, with Larry's temperament and the way their relationship had been since the onset, you almost knew something was wrong. The siblings place a call to the Lakewood Police Department.

A police officer takes a missing persons report, but tells them that nothing can be done for 72 hours. Three days later, there is still no sign of Dorothy Britt, and the missing person's report is handed over to Lakewood police detective Phil Anderson. When Anderson arrives at Dorothy Britt's home, the first person he speaks with is her son, Rhett. I don't remember my exact words, but I was vehement and adamant that this was not a missing persons case, that something had happened. I implored them as much as a 15 year old kid can with long hair. Oh, he was, he was convinced. He was convinced. There was no doubt in his mind, I don't think ever any doubt in his mind that I don't think ever any doubt in his mind,

that Larry had done something to his mother. After talking to family members, investigators begin to retrace Dorothy Britt's movements on the night she disappeared. Detective Clarence Shelley finds her way to a bar called the Front Range Inn, a place that Larry and Dorothy frequented while they were married. There were employees at the bar that had seen both Larry and Dorothy at the bar that previous night. They were there until closing time, 2 o'clock it was determined later, and two or three of the employees had actually seen them. One bartender tells police he saw the couple drive away in Larry Britt's pickup, making Britt the last person seen with Dorothy before she disappeared.

When police question Larry Britt, the suspect says he never saw Dorothy that night. Detectives obtain a search warrant for his truck. To the naked eye, the pickup appears to have been scrubbed clean, but detectives don't stop at the surface. They strip the vehicle, looking for areas that may have been overlooked by someone cleaning up a crime scene. While we were searching the vehicle, we discovered a large quantity of blood underneath and on the back of the seat on his pickup truck. Detectives

send samples of the blood to the crime lab in 1974 before DNA technology. Forensic testing is able to determine that the blood is human and it is the same type as Dorothy Britt's. When his story is challenged, however, Britt doesn't waver. Absolute denial in terms of contact with Dorothy or knowing what would have happened to her, why she wasn't home. Detectives believe their suspect is lying and undertake a body search. They start at Larry Britt's place of work, a construction site, and future home of the Chatfield Dam and Reservoir, where Britt operates a front-end loader. They were still in the process of digging up the gravel to actually build the dam.

So there was refuse pits all around for the unused gravel and it was huge. It's hard to describe how big it is. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack. Lakewood police dig at the site but turn up nothing. Even without a body, detectives want to move on their suspect. They take their case to the local DA and ask him to charge Britt with murder. At the time, the DA was a very aggressive prosecutor and was willing to take the risk, challenged the law, which at the time pretty much said you have to have a body in order to have a conviction. On August 29, 1974, Larry Britt is arrested and charged with first-degree murder. Two months later, the accused stands before a judge clutching hard at an alibi

in the form of a woman he married just days before the hearing, a woman named Betty Curley. Betty came in and indicated that he was at her apartment and had been there prior to 12.30 the evening before and had been there all night long until nine o'clock the next morning and we couldn't shake her brit's alibi throws a wrinkle in the case but the biggest problem for the prosecution lies in the fact that the victim's body has not been found the judge decides the case against brit is not strong enough to go to trial the judge judge, I think, pretty much believed that he had did it, but as a matter of law determined that we didn't prove our case because we

couldn't establish the fact that a death had occurred. Larry Britt walks out of the courthouse a free man, while Dorothy Britt's family is sentenced to two decades of anguish as the investigation into their mother's disappearance grows cold. I knew he had killed her. And I knew he had done it brutally, as he had beat us repeatedly. And I knew the police were not going to catch him, at least after they had surged and arrested him and then had to let him go. And I wanted to kill him, for sure. I wanted exact revenge for my mom and myself. Are you tired of fasting or cleanses that leave you hungry and exhausted instead of rejuvenated

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Go to ZocDoc.com slash CCF and download the ZocDoc app for free. Then find and book a top-rated doctor today. That's Z-O-C-D-O-C.com slash CCF. ZocDoc.com slash CCF. On August 16, 1974, Dorothy Britt said goodnight to her 15-year-old son, Brett, and went out for the evening. Later that night, she was seen in a bar with her ex-husband, Larry Britt. Then she simply vanished. At the time, police believed that Larry Britt had murdered Dorothy. The body, however, never surfaced, and Britt's wife at the time, Betty, provided the suspect with an alibi.

25 years later, Clarine Shelley is a division chief with the Lakewood PD. At the time of the disappearance, Shelley was a rookie cop and worked the case. Now, she decides to reopen it and begins by checking on the state of marital bliss between Larry Britt and his alibi, wife Betty. I have to honestly tell you, and I've laughed with the other investigators about this, I either dreamed that I had a conversation or I had a conversation with someone who said, by the way, did you know that Betty divorced Larry Britt? Shelly asks Detective Phil Tenney to track down the former Mrs. Britt and question her again about her ex-husband

and more specifically, his alibi. In February 1999, Phil Tenney tracks Betty Britt to an assisted living facility in Central California. Not very good health. A smoker, a drinker for her entire life. She was on oxygen, using a walker, in her early 70s. But when I found her, she was very willing to talk to me. Now, what it said in the reports, Betty, was that Larry had left your place

and didn't say where he was going. She, during the initial investigation, told investigators that Larry Britt had been at her house from about 12.30 on the night in question on and had left her home at about 9 o'clock the next morning. If that story is true, it discredits several witnesses who saw Larry and Dorothy together after 2 a.m. on August 17, 1974,

the day she disappeared, and corroborates Larry Britt's contention that he never saw Dorothy at all that evening. Tenney questions Betty about the time that Britt came home. And then he said Larry came home and passed out on the couch. Yeah, he came in the morning. He came in the morning. Remember about what time? It was getting light.

It was getting light? Okay. Now, in the first report, you said that Larry got home about 12.30 at night. But today you remember that he got home when it was getting light out that morning? Came over, yeah. Came over when it was getting light out. Betty now claims it was getting light out by the time Larry Britt returned to her house in the early morning hours of August 17th, leaving Britt ample time to kill his ex and dispose of her body.

The new statement devastates the suspect's alibi and throws the entire investigation into a new light. It was absolutely huge. I don't know that we could have justified putting the resources into doing any more had it not been for that. It kind of ignited the case that had been laying dormant for 25 years.

Everybody got a little more excited about it, and then we started examining the evidence. Tenney calls up the evidence boxes from archives and begins to mine them for clues. He comes across several small plastic bags containing samples of blood collected from Larry Britt's truck in 1974. Because the blood had not been refrigerated, it had dried and reduced to copper flakes. Tenney sends the sample to forensics, and a few weeks later, he gets the bad news. The blood is too degraded for standard nuclear DNA blood typing. The lab, however, offers up a second possibility,

a new frontier in forensic DNA research called mitochondrial DNA testing. It involves the extraction of DNA, not from the nucleus of the cell, but from the bits of genetic code found at the mitochondria. Dr. Terry Melton is one of a handful of criminalists first in this technique. Mitochondrial DNA tends to be very abundant in old and degraded materials,

whereas you can normally not do a nuclear DNA test, which is the kind that's done in most laboratories around the United States. Mitochondrial DNA testing is a great alternative for those cases. Phil Tenney sends his samples to Dr. Melton, who is able to extract a genetic code from the bits of blood found in the back seat of Larry Britt's truck. Then, a second problem arises. Without the victim's body, there is no sample to test against the unknown profile. Here again, mitochondrial DNA offers hope. Unlike nuclear DNA, mitochondrial DNA is passed on, unchanged, from mother to son. We needed to look at a maternal relative of hers. That is, somebody who would be expected to have

exactly her same mitochondrial DNA profile. And that would be her son, who's inherited precisely her mitochondrial DNA type from her. Brett Ludwig is Dorothy Britt's son. For 25 years, he has believed that Larry Britt killed his mother. Now, he rolls up his sleeve and provides a vial full of blood in the hopes of proving exactly that. There's going to be a lot of pain involved. It wasn't the prick of a needle that was going to be the pain.

It was going to be emotional pain. It was going to be emotional. But never any hesitation. Dr. Melton takes Brett's blood, extracts a genetic profile, and compares it to the unknown DNA found in Larry Britt's truck. And what we found was that those blood flakes that came from Larry Britt's truck had the same mitochondrial DNA type as that of Brett Ludwig. The consequences of the match would be to say, well, who could have been in that truck? Who was the maternal relative of Brett Ludwig?

And from that, the conclusion might be that it was Dorothy Britt. After 25 years, cold case detectives have the pieces they need to charge Larry Britt with murder, even without having the actual body of the victim. The case law had changed dramatically in the interim 25 years. There had been several successful bodiless homicide convictions. It was a concern, obviously, but not too much of a stumbling block as it was back in 1974.

Oh, it was great. It was great because we knew that was the piece we needed in order to get the arrest warrant for Larry. Learning a new language has always been hard for me. It's difficult to find the time,

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Listen to the I Survived podcast to hear how tragedy turns into triumph. There's a point where your mind kind of takes over and you find out you're a lot stronger than you are. I Survived is available now, wherever you get your podcasts. In July of 1999, detectives present their case to the DA's office. Five months later, a grand jury issues an indictment for murder against Larry Britt. November 5th, 1999. On a New England morning, detectives from Colorado come knocking on Larry Britt's door. They place him under arrest for his ex-wife's murder. The 59-year-old man still has nothing to say for himself.

He made it very clear that he did not want to talk to us and would only talk to an attorney. So we never got a chance to really interview Larry. With Britt back in Colorado, Deputy DA Dana Easter gears up for trial. Although confident in her case, Easter knows that without a body, conviction on a murder charge is far from a sure thing. When Larry Britt's lawyer broaches the subject of a possible deal, Easter strongly considers, but not before talking it over with Dorothy Britt's family. We explained what the downside of going to trial was.

We cared an awful lot about what they wanted and what they felt and how they felt about going through the trial. The family's overriding concern is that Larry Britt never walked the earth as a free man ever again. They also want to finally know what Britt did to their mother. And so we made that deal that he had to be interviewed by the best polygrapher that I know, and that he had to pass a polygraph on those issues

before we would give him the deal. In January, Larry Britt is strapped into a polygraph machine and finally tells police the why and how of Dorothy's murder. She was arguing with him. He got upset. There was no remorse. He was a very matter-of-fact interview. They were arguing. He got mad, so he shot her. It was, in his mind, it was that simple. Britt goes on

to tell Tenney what police have suspected since 1974, that he buried her body in a gravel pit at the construction site of the Chatfield Dam and Reservoir. On January 22, 2001, Britt pleads guilty to the reduced charge of manslaughter and is sentenced to 25 years in prison.

So it was a definite, he was going to jail. And, you know, at his age and his state of health, you know, a time when you should be able to look towards retirement or, you know, at least enjoy the few years of your life. He's going through, I imagine, a harsh acclimation. So there's a measure of justice. Is it the full measure? I think not. For Dorothy Britt's daughter, Susie, after 26 years of not knowing, closure becomes more important than revenge. Even though it doesn't change anything, but it lifts that burden from you. So you can close it.

So you can say, bye mom. I know where you are now. Because of the size of the Chatfield Reservoir reservoir no attempt has been made to recover dorothy brit's body there are however plans to drain part of the lake which perhaps will give cold case detectives a chance to dig and finally restore dorothy brit's body to her loved ones I love you. coldcase files at anetv.com. Chog, Anchorman, The Legend of Ron Burgundy, or Mean Girls won't cost you a thing, because everything is free. All you have to do is download the app, which, by the way, is also free. Pluto TV. Stream now. Pay never.