Cold Case Files - REOPENED: A Desperate Housewife

Episode Date: August 15, 2024

A picture perfect marriage is shattered when the husband is shot and killed. But the woman who appears to be his grieving widow...soon becomes investigator's main suspect. SimpliSafe - Right now, get 20% off any new SimpliSafe system with Fast Protect Monitoring at SimpliSafe.com/COLDCASE There’s No Safe Like SimpliSafe. 

This guy was as cold and calculated as they come. Maybe we weren't going to get it solved. It was like the epitome of innocence that had been preyed upon. This is a case that has no evidence. We didn't have DNA. We didn't have fingerprints. Step inside the court of law with the new true crime podcast, American Justice. We realize we have four men who answered the same ad for a job on a farm. My brother Ralph went to interview and he was never seen again. A podcast that explores

impactful crimes and reveals how our justice system works. You have to consider that there are more possibilities than one. And sometimes how it doesn't. We have to find whoever this monster is. Go in depth into chilling cases and their conclusions in this new true crime series. You just have a pit in your stomach thinking how many people are we going to find? New episodes of American Justice are available every Wednesday, wherever you get your podcasts. Greg and Brenda Kirkley owned a shoe store in Corvallis, Oregon. Brenda handled the finances, and Greg took care of sales. Making it a true family business,

the couple's infant daughter was often present. On June 10, 1982, as the store was opening, Greg Kirkley was shot in the back. Brenda was hysterical, and the baby was laying unharmed in her bassinet. Was Greg killed by a stranger, or was it possible that the Kirkley's marriage wasn't as idyllic as it appeared? From A&E, this is Cold Case Files. I'm Brooke, and here's the sensational Bill Curtis with a classic case, A Desperate Housewife. Oh, please leave my mom and my husband. On a June morning, a woman calls 911.

An incomprehensible call. Milky shoe service. She hung up. Corvallis Police Officer Mary Eichler catches the call. The dispatcher came on and said that they have a call from Moki's shoe store, that there's some kind of disturbance, and there's a woman outside screaming. Eichler knows the store well. It's owned by her friends, Brenda and Greg Kirkley. Of course, I headed there because if you have a friend that's involved, you're going to go.

Outside, Eichler finds Brenda in hysterics. Inside, Brenda's infant daughter lies at a bassinet, unharmed. While the baby's father, Greg, lies on the floor, shot once in the back. I saw Greg on the floor, and I still can see Greg on the floor. And he was already looking really bad, very white, not good. Greg is later pronounced dead, and Mary Eichler finds herself asking a new widow what happened. She just said, a guy came into the store and he shot Greg.

He was described as an Indian, Middle Eastern Indian male, dressed in dark clothing, carrying a shotgun, and he ran down this alley, according to her. Captain Wilbur Hakema responds to the scene within minutes and assists in the search for Greg Kirkley's alleged attacker. If this person came out of this shoe shop and had run down the alley, this is the alley that would have been involved. This warehouse here on the left apparently was open. The people that were working in there saw nothing. The garbage cans were all checked. The rooftops were checked in case they had thrown the gun up on the roof. We had patrol cars circling the area.

No one saw anything. It was as if this person had just evaporated into thin air. Why did no one see anything? I mean, look at it even now. You know, you can see straight down through. Even those garbage cans wouldn't stop you from seeing somebody running. It just seemed like, you know, who's going to rob a shoe shop at opening in the morning, you know, because they probably would open with less than $100 and change.

And that didn't sound quite right. Questions about Brenda Kirkley's story begin circulating almost immediately. When the photo, the sketch came out, you know, I remember talking about how, doesn't it be strange it looks like Greg? Police question Brenda about the state of her marriage and get nowhere. That is, until Jim West talks to police.

I knew in my heart that she had killed her husband. West was Greg Kirkley's best friend. He knew the Kirkleys had their problems, especially when it came to Brenda's bookkeeping. And I recall him having conversations with Brenda and said, Brenda, what's going on here? These people are calling me and saying that we have outstanding accounts, but yet in your books it says they're paid.

And, of course, you would always say, well, I don't know what the mistake is. Obviously they've been paid. It's right there in the ledger. West suspected that Brenda was cooking the books. He tells police he was present the day Greg made an appointment with an attorney willing to assist in the forensic accounting. And I'll never forget the look on her face. It was just that of extreme guilt. I went home and I told my wife, I says, honey, it looks like there may be a divorce in the works after this because it's going to be uncovered what's happened to these funds. Instead of a divorce, Greg is found dead the next morning,

just hours before his appointment with the attorney. In my heart of hearts, I knew that she'd killed her husband. To me, there was no question about it. My concern was that she became very, very helpful. Captain Hockabunt tells his detectives not to get too cozy with their potential suspect. She wanted to talk to the detectives. She wanted to talk all the time,

and yet she did not want to take a polygraph exam. Everybody just would say, you know, is there any chance Brenda did it? Suspicion alone isn't enough to charge Brenda. Despite the small-town whispers, Mary Eichler finds it hard to believe her friend is a murderer. Here you have somebody that was around you all the time, was at a birthday party with your children, sitting there laughing,

and, you know, do you think that this person that you think is a nice person is going to turn around and shoot somebody right in the back the prospect of murder hangs heavy in the air and the town of corvallis grows very small for brenda kirkley eventually she remarries and moves away and her husband's case grows cold. Until one day, 18 years later, when a telephone rings. When people enter into a relationship, there's an implied trust, the feeling that they can share anything without judgment. There are even laws protecting spouses from testifying or being

testified against in court. But relationships aren't always permanent, and that protection information has a way of leaking out. What can I do for you or what? Let's start this thing over. I have a problem. Okay. I know what happened to Greg. Detective Sean Houck is working late one night, but he finds himself on the phone with the ex-husband of a possible killer. A gentleman by the name of Mick Pamplin introduced himself, said he was from Oklahoma, he was married to a lady by the name of Brenda, then Pamplin, formerly Brenda Kirkley.

It sounds like you have some pretty intimate details about what occurred that day, don't you? Well, I don't exactly know what occurred that day. And you know who was involved, don't you? Yes, I do. I'm all ears. As the call continued, he mentioned at one point that there was, that Brenda had shot Greg, that she disclosed this to him in Newport, Oregon in 1988. Was there anybody else involved? No, just her?

Yeah. She shot him? Yeah. Anytime anybody calls in, there's always a motive. So in this case, he's going through a divorce, or their divorce had already been completed. And so I knew that there was probably some issues there with Brenda. But yet, if he had information, it didn't mean that all of his information was going to be deceptive. I know it was a shotgun. I know it was a...

Did she say how many times? Did she say how many times? No, she didn't. Okay. He didn't stumble. He didn't create. He was very matter-of-fact, and only people who are actually in a situation or who've had a conversation with somebody would know those details. Houck learns the shotgun Brenda allegedly used is long gone. He has a few more phone conversations with McPamplin

before Brenda's ex offers up what could be Houck's magic bullet, literally. And as we're chatting, he mentions that Brenda had brought in some shotgun shells into the marriage. I'm like, okay, that's good to know. What's the origin of these shells? These came from Oregon. Okay.

Were they with her when you met her? Yes. Okay. He mentions that those shells, which were brought from Oregon into their marriage and then back to Oklahoma were still in his possession, and that he could freely send them to me. This is what Nick sent me from Oklahoma. These are the shells, and this is a box that Brenda brought into the marriage.

Houck asks the FBI lab to compare the lead from Brenda's shotgun shells with the lead found in Greg's body. This is going to be the wadding and a pellet taken from Greg's body, and these were taken from his body during the autopsy. The scientists believe that there was consistency between what was taken out of his body and what was in this unused shell. Unfortunately, consistent doesn't mean perfect match. Even worse, spousal privilege laws make Brenda's confession to Mick

during their marriage inadmissible in court. Detectives just don't have enough to arrest their suspect, and the case once again gets shelved. There were just a series of events and other priorities that prevented us from actively putting this on the front shelf.

It was looking more and more like Brenda Kirkley had murdered her first husband. And now husband number two knew all about it. Unfortunately for the detectives, spousal privilege prevented his statement from being entered into evidence. Three years later, however, investigators finally got a chance to sit down with Brenda Kirkley to discuss her first husband's murder. And this time, the one-time widow has a very different story to tell. After I came home and told them all about it, and shot him.

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SimpliSafe has been named best home security systems by U.S. News & World Report for five years running and the best customer service in home security by Newsweek. Protect your home this summer with 20% off any new SimpliSafe system when you sign up for fast protect monitoring. Just visit simplisafe.com slash cold case. That's simplisafe.com slash cold case. There's no safe like Simply Safe. Got some hit and runs. This one on center point. Looks like we're getting hit in South Town pretty well. And it is always helpful to go back and take a fresh look at some of these old cases. And we have some that go back over 50 years. In 2005, Lieutenant Tim Brewer begins holding cold case meetings. The team decides to reopen

the 1982 shotgun killing of Greg Kirkley. The Greg Kirkley homicide certainly was number one on the list. The investigation had taken a back seat to fresher cases. One person, however, remains at the top of the suspect list, Greg's wife and sole witness to the murder, Brenda. Some of the shotgun pellets were removed from

Greg Kirkley's body, had been examined and compared against shotgun pellets that had been in Brenda Duran's possession. Brenda's pellets were ruled consistent with those that killed Greg. While the ballistics testing doesn't provide conclusive evidence of guilt, it certainly bolsters detectives' confidence in their case. There's no doubt in my mind this is solvable. None. She did it. We knew it. We all knew it. Knowing it and proving it, however, are two different things. It was basically straight on shot right here.

Detective Sean Houck and Karen Staudter dig through the original reports and diagram the crime scene to show how Brenda might have killed Greg. The pictures poke holes in Brenda's story. Based on what she described in her handwritten statement, if the perpetrator turns and fires, he's going to basically hit this wall,

and there's going to be damage, major damage to all of these boxes, the other items on the other side of the shelf. However, nothing in the store was disturbed. There's just no way possible that he could have had that turning radius with the shotgun to then be able to shoot

and kill Greg. What's the likelihood mathematically of turning around, hearing somebody or seeing somebody firing and actually hitting him perfectly, where the first time you pull the trigger is going to kill them. It was a perfect shot. It was a staged shot. It was prepped to kill him. Another red flag, the Kirkley's financial records. In 1982, Brenda claimed the couple was in good financial shape. A review of the books, however, tells a different story. Essentially, she was robbing Peter to pay Paul. They were struggling, and she was basically in charge of all the financial pieces. And he wasn't aware, fully aware of what was transpiring

with their finances, with their personal finances, with their business finances. He was going to discover what was going on. He was going to see all this financial stuff that was happening, and he was going to be upset with her. And for whatever reason, she just didn't want to deal with that. To me, it looked like this was the beginning of a motive. The team has some good circumstantial evidence, but not enough to take before a jury. The only thing that could really help us in prosecuting the case

was to have a confession. To do that, detectives know they'll need a little help. We knew without a doubt that she did this, but then we needed to understand her to then know what sort of theme development we needed to use in order to encourage her to tell us the truth. She wasn't a psychopathic, kind of uncaring, sadistic killer. It wasn't that at all.

Dr. John Cochran is a forensic psychiatrist in Salem, Oregon. He is approached by Corvallis investigators who want to get inside the head of their suspect. What I came to was that she was a very dependent but depressed individual. She was a type of individual who would avoid confrontations. She was a type of individual who could be confrontations. She was a type of individual who could be easily intimidated by those in control.

Dr. Cochran tells detectives to hit Brenda hard with their evidence and not let up, no matter what. So, for example, if she were to fall on the floor and start crying or anything like this, you don't reach down and pat them on the back and say, hey, we're going to take a time out here for 15 minutes. I'm going to go get you a Coke. You don't do that. You just continue with whatever you need to do

because it's just an indication of their defense is breaking down and they're ready to give up whatever their story is. Dr. Cochran also recommends appealing to Brenda's emotions, something best accomplished by having another woman in the room. With both of them there, with Karen playing her part, she acts as a female support person in that sense. Investigators hope that one-two punch, a combination of hard facts and emotion,

will be enough to crack their suspect. On October 12, 2005, detectives Houck and Stauder arrive in Oklahoma, where local police ask Brenda to come downtown for a chat. What Brenda doesn't know, she's about to get up close and personal with the ghost of marriage past. She was stunned. She was. She was just taken back a little bit. And Sean started right in and said, I'm sure you know why we're here. We're not here to play any games. But the fact of the matter is, in 1982, you can hold on to this. And we started walking through, you know, the scenario, you know, the suspect that you said, you know, came in, the past, the money, this isn't plausible. We just kind of laid the foundation for, you know that we know.

And we just didn't leave her an out. Boom, boom, boom, right one after another with all the facts, you know, and she was absolutely realizing that we knew what we were talking about. Detectives follow Dr. Cochran's psychiatric script, hitting Brenda hard, backing her into a corner, and offering a female friend in the room, in the person of Detective Karen Stauder. I've seen this over and over and over. Are you ready to get this off your chest? I think Brenda was just sitting there, you know, thinking to herself, what do I do? I'm in a corner.

You know, they know basically that I did this. After just six minutes, Brenda begins to crack. My life was very difficult, is what she was telling us, and she couldn't handle it anymore. She built up all of this pressure within herself and in her mind, and the only option she thought she had was shitting him. She said she remembered that she walked over to him, gave him a hug, and said, I loved you, and then walked around, went and got the shotgun, and stood between the shelves there, set it up, and fired a shot and killed him.

Brenda says she shot Greg while the couple's infant daughter was asleep in the same room. Yeah, I was pretty surprised that as a mother that she would be willing to take the life of her husband with her young child just right there. Detectives have their confession when Brenda poses a question. She asked about the lead detective at the time in 1982 because he had been the one who had contact with her the most at the time in 1982 because he had been the one who had contact with her the most at the time. Detectives learned that Brenda and a Corvallis detective had a short-lived affair. They had had a relationship.

It happened immediately after the crime, and it didn't last very long. The discovery of the love affair leaves one question regarding the original investigation forever unanswered. To ask did that compromise the case, I mean really the only people that know that are Brenda Duran and the detective assigned to the case. But obviously if a detective develops a personal relationship with someone involved in an event like this, I could see where potentially you could lose some objectivity. Brenda is arrested for her husband's murder and extradited back to Oregon, where she eventually pleads guilty to manslaughter

and receives a sentence of nine years. You have these pictures of a friend that's gone. For Mary Eichler, one of the first officers to respond to Greg Kirkley's murder 24 years earlier, the questions surrounding her former friend and now convicted killer are almost too much to bear. We were just starting to get really close when he was killed, so we didn't have the time to really have all the relationship

we should have been able to have. And now a whole family is just, like, destroyed forever. And that's really a shame. Detectives are human. We all are. It was improper for a detective to have a relationship with the widow of a murder victim, especially when he was actively investigating the crime. It obviously affected the detective's objectivity.

But did that affair make Brenda Kirkley more or less guilty? She pled guilty to manslaughter, also known as a crime of passion, for shooting her husband in the back. I'll let you decide if shooting someone from behind qualifies as a crime of passion, or if an improper relationship validates the plea she took, or really, if there's any justice in this case at all. Cold Case Files, the podcast, is hosted by Brooke Giddings, Thank you. The Cold Case Files TV series was produced by Curtis Productions and is hosted by Bill Curtis. Check out more Cold Case Files at AETV.com. Or learn more about cases like this one by visiting the A&E Real Crime blog at AETV.com slash realcrime. It's summertime, and with Pluto TV's Summer of Cinema, the streaming is easy.

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