Dark Downeast - The Murder of Pearl Bruns (Maine)

Episode Date: December 7, 2020

MAINE MURDER, 1991: On August 11, 1991, Bill and Pearl stood in their kitchen, each taking verbal jabs at the other in another argument over money. As the shouting got louder, Bill grabbed his keys and slammed the door on his way out of the house.When he got home hours later, the house was quiet. Pearl was gone. “Probably run off with one of her ex-husband’s,” Bill thought. He crawled into bed and didn’t give his wife a second thought.At least, that’s what he told police on August 14, 1991, two days later, when Pearl Bruns’ daughter Elaine reported her mother missing.This is the story of a missing mother and a daughter's unrelenting search for answers, ending with a gruesome discovery much closer to home than investigators could've imagined. View source material and photos for this episode at darkdowneast.com/pearlbrunsFollow @darkdowneast on Instagram, Facebook, and TikTokTo suggest a case visit darkdowneast.com/submit-caseDark Downeast is an audiochuck and Kylie Media production hosted by Kylie Low.

This is what's buried beneath the case of Pearl Bruns. Her fingers ached from another long day at the fish processing and packing plant. She wondered again to herself if the distinctive scent of raw and rotting fish would ever fully wash out of her hair. But where she was headed, it didn't really matter. Everyone was nose-blind to the smell anyway. After work, like always, 41-year-old Pearl Smith walked up the pier and towards Commercial Street on Portland's working waterfront, turning onto the brick sidewalk and making her way into her favorite bar. It was the 1980s, and Portland and the Old Port were very different than you might know them today.

Portland was a local city, locals like Pearl, who made their living in the fishing industry alongside so many others. Though I don't know for sure, I imagine Pearl's favorite bar to be $3 Dewey's, a staple in the Old Port even to this day. In the 1980s, it was located on 4th Street, not Commercial Street where it is now. In a 2015 piece by Olivia Gunn for Portland Monthly titled 1980s Redux, she wrote, Cheesy maybe, but it was the place where everybody knew your name, and if no one knew your address, they could send your post to Dewey's. Pearl slid up to the bar, and with a knowing nod, the bartender placed a glass of her usual in front of her. Stools filled up around Pearl, other men and women salty from a day's work. Among them was a man named William Bruns.

He introduced himself to Pearl as Bill. Bill was 13 years older than Pearl, but she found common ground with him. She, a fish packer, and he owned a fish hauling company, and he drove that fish from Maine up to Montreal and to New York. They both enjoyed their time at the bar, and they'd also seen their fair share of struggles in love. Bill recently divorced his third wife. Pearl had been married and divorced five times. In 1986, Pearl became Bill's fourth wife. By all accounts, their first few years of marriage were good ones. They lived in a one-story ranch-style home on Broadway in South Portland.

They continued their work packing and transporting fish, and in 1991, when Bill wasn't on the road, they'd meet for lunch at Becky's diner. Nothing finer. But their ritual lunches at Becky's couldn't fix the cracks forming in their marriage. The booze-filled fights escalated. Money was tight and a constant wedge in their relationship. And Pearl was known to take off for days at a time, staying with friends in Old Orchard Beach just to get some space from Bill. The decline of her sixth marriage was weighing on her. She was drinking more, and she confided in friends that she was depressed and she and Bill were fighting constantly. She told her friend Deanna Sear one night, There's one thing I want you to know. If anything should ever happen to me,

tell them Bill did it. On August 11, 1991, Bill and Pearl stood in the kitchen of their South Portland home in another argument over money. As the shouting got louder, Bill grabbed his keys and slammed the door behind him on his way out of the house. He'd be on his own for dinner that night. He peeled off in search of Chinese food. When he got home hours later, the house was quiet. Pearl was gone. Probably run off with one of her ex-husbands, Bill thought.

He crawled into bed and didn't give his wife a second thought. At least, that's what he told police on August 14, 1991, three days later, when Pearl Bruns' daughter, Elaine, reported her mother missing. Elaine Woodward is Pearl's daughter from a previous marriage. She told forensic files that her mother was very loving, very caring, everybody's best friend. She'd never let you down. That's why when Pearl didn't show for a family get-together that she was looking forward to, it raised a red flag for Elaine.

Elaine went to the home her mother and stepfather shared, and her concern only heightened when she noticed the most recent newspaper in the house was from Sunday, August 11th, the last day she saw her mom. My mother used to buy a newspaper every morning, Elaine told Bangor Daily News, and it was Tuesday. Even stranger was that Pearl's beloved black Cadillac Fleetwood was still in the garage. Her classic Vacationland vanity license plate read Pearl B. But if the car was there, how did Pearl B leave? Where did she go without that car she loved to drive? Elaine called the police to file a missing person report. She carefully recited the details to the South Portland police. My mother didn't show for a family event. Her car is still home. I haven't heard from her since Sunday, August 11th, and we usually talk several times a day. The following day, Bill Bruns called

South Portland police himself to also report his wife missing. As I've learned through speaking with investigators, missing persons cases start with interviewing those closest to the person missing. They had Pearl Bruns' daughter's report, so now to have a conversation with her husband, Bill. Detective Linda Barker was assigned to the case. She met Bill at the Bruns' home to hear what he had to say about his missing wife.

They'd had an argument, Bill admitted to Detective Barker. He recounted the details. They yelled about money, he left for Chinese food, and when he came back, she was gone. Detective Barker asked why Bill hadn't reported Pearl missing when she didn't come home the next day, or even two days later. Bill seemed to reason that with her history of taking off for friends' houses and staying for days at a time, it wasn't unusual that Pearl was gone. Bill also mentioned her previous marriages, the many husbands Pearl left in her wake. He painted a picture of a wife capable of straying. While at the house, Barker took note of the other details investigators noticed. Sitting on the bed was a suitcase with Pearl's name inscribed near the handle.

There was a reddish-brown smear on the side. The blue carpet in the living room was dingy and stained, showing years of wear, and some spots appeared to be damp. And then there was the Cadillac in the garage, its driver nowhere to be seen. Detective Barker took the case to her senior, South Portland Police Chief Robert Schwartz. The name Bill Bruns popped off the pages of the report. Chief Schwartz had known Bill for 20 years. In the weeks following the initial missing person report filed by Elaine Woodward, detectives turned over every stone in search of Pearl.

Detective Barker's husband was also a police officer in South Portland, and the duo tag-teamed the investigation. She worked the Bruns case during the day, and her husband Reed Barker tracked down leads at night. As reported by the Portland Press-Herald, Detective Barker said the investigation was intensive, going so far as to connect with the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the RCMP, to determine if Pearl had crossed the border into Canada. But days turned into weeks, and Elaine still saw no sign of her mother. As police continued to investigate the disappearance as a missing persons case,

Elaine had other suspicions. Her mother wouldn't have just run off, cutting out her entire family in the process. Elaine and Pearl were close, and Pearl loved her granddaughter. If she was gone for this long without any contact, she wasn't just missing. Elaine thought she was gone for this long without any contact, she wasn't just missing. Elaine thought she was dead.

Two and a half hours northwest of Portland, in Carroll, New Hampshire, a hiker set off to explore the trails of Crawford Notch in the White Mountains. It was September 28, 1991, and the foliage was exceptionally vibrant that day. But a swatch of a different color caught the hiker's eye, just feet off the side of the road, on top of a pile of freshly fallen leaves and pine needles. It was a woman's cloth purse, and inside, the hiker found a checkbook, several loose diamonds, and a Maine State driver's license. The smiling face in the ID photo belonged to Pearl Bruns. Carroll, New Hampshire police alerted South Portland detectives of the discovery and shipped the purse to the main station. Meanwhile, New Hampshire State Police joined the investigation, surveying the area where the hiker found Pearl's purse. That particular spot in the White Mountains was associated with another case from a year prior. At the time, that case was still unsolved. But other than that location

connection, investigators turned up nothing. A dog specially trained to find human remains never alerted his handler. Nothing indicated that Pearl was ever in the Carroll, New Hampshire woods. What was strange, though, is that the purse wasn't concealed at all. Whoever dropped it there, or threw it to the side of the road, wasn't trying to hide anything. Actually, investigators later remarked that it appeared whoever put Pearl's purse there wanted it to be found. Even with that strange discovery of Pearl's purse, the case remained a missing person investigation. In an article in the Bangor Daily News, Elaine criticized the South Portland response to the investigation. She said, quote, I felt like the police were brushing me off

when I knew so many things were wrong, unquote. Elaine confronted South Portland Police Chief Robert Schwartz about the investigation, why they weren't doing more to find answers in the strange disappearance of her mother, why no one would believe that her mother wasn't missing, but dead. Elaine told the BDN that Schwartz said the mere fact someone is missing does not mean there is any foul play. In early November, nearly three months after Pearl was reported missing, Elaine had had enough. According to an article by Royal Ford in the Boston Globe, anonymous members of Pearl's family contacted the main attorney general's office, pleading for the state to get involved. Now I'm going to assume the anonymous family member was Elaine because

this woman clearly had no intentions of her mother's case getting pushed to the side and dismissed. After reviewing the details, Pearl Bruns' disappearance was upgraded from a missing person to possible homicide. On Thursday, November 21, 1991, state and local police stepped onto the Bruns' property with a search warrant in hand. Investigators pulled that half-packed suitcase from the closet with a blood stain and smear on the side. It looked like someone had hastily wiped it away, and it was just the start of a trail of blood. With the help of luminol, a substance that reacts with the iron and hemoglobin, detectives photographed a trail of previously scrubbed

away blood in the kitchen, on the walls, footprints through the hallway, splatters and spots on each stair tread leading to the basement, and the evidence of a long, narrow puddle of blood on the gravel basement floor. Detective Linda Barker only noticed one area where blood wasn't obvious. The blue living room carpet. Instead of the worn old fibers she saw in her first visit, it looked brand new. She looked over at Bill and asked when he got the new carpet installed. Bill insisted that it was the same carpet.

He just vacuumed. Later, witnesses would say they saw Bill bring a carpet shampooer and steamer into the house. He probably picked it up at Hannaford. Whatever was on the carpet, Bill wanted to steam it out. From what I've read about this major search of the Bruns' home, Bill was there. He watched police photograph and swab and collect samples around his home. According to an affidavit obtained by the Boston Globe, a detective asked Bill Bruns what he would do if he were in their shoes and found blood on nearly every surface of

the home where a missing woman was last known to be alive. I'd look at the evidence, transporting it to the state crime lab for testing. Even with what seemed like damning proof that something terrible happened in that home, Elaine was told they had nothing. An officer saying to her, With a trail of blood like that, without a pool of blood or a body at the end of the trail, the blood means absolutely nothing. Yes, a body. It's not a murder without a body. Although one detective said the blood spatter meant nothing, it was enough evidence for a subsequent affidavit allowing for another search of the Bruns' home.

Meanwhile, other pieces of the puzzle were starting to come into place. The purse tossed haphazardly on the side of a New Hampshire road? Although police were later criticized for lack of action surrounding that clue, it was noted that the location of the purse corresponded to a route often traveled by Bill Bruns for work as he hauled fish to Canada and New York. Investigators had all the more reason to look at the husband. On New Year's Eve 1991, detectives from the Maine State Police returned to the South Portland home, this time with shovels in hand. They bagged soil samples from the basement along with other evidence. State Police spokesperson Steve McCausland didn't say much about what the search uncovered. It wasn't Pearl, that's for certain, but it was enough to obtain a third

search warrant. A few days later, on the first weekend of 1992, police returned again, accompanied by a trained search dog. They spent nearly seven hours around the Bruns' home, braving brutal January snow and ice conditions. As the search moved inside, the search dog caught a scent. The dog led investigators down to the basement, and as that good pup sniffed along the perimeter of the 500 square foot space, he paused and alerted, indicating a spot in the corner of the basement near a crawl space. Parts of the basement had a gravel floor, which is not uncommon for older homes in Maine. And so with the shovels from the earlier search, investigators stomped the iron spade into the earth. But as they dug pits in the floor of the

cellar, the small-scale excavation revealed nothing. They had the blood evidence and the cadaver-sniffing dog's clue, but digging up the entire basement by hand wasn't an option. Short of tearing down the house and bringing in heavy equipment, they didn't have many options for excavating the floor. If the basement had secrets to reveal, they needed a different method. But they wouldn't find that different method for nine more months. In the fall of 1992, investigators contacted Harding ESE, an environmental engineering consulting firm in Portland. The firm was in possession of a special type of powerful radar, one that was typically used to find buried storage tanks in open fields.

State Police Spokesperson Steve McCausland told the Bangor Daily News, quote, this is a very sophisticated radar unit that is used by engineering firms to detect density, similar to a fish finder in water, except this unit is used on land, unquote. The fourth search of the Bruns home on September 11, 1992, with that sophisticated new radar, would become the final search of the Bruns home. Elaine stood by as the investigative team prepared for the basement search. She told news reporters, quote, I'm afraid that they're going to find something, but I'm also hoping that they will so it will be over with, so we'll have some answers, unquote. The radar worked by sending high-frequency radio waves into the ground. The information was translated to printed

black and white charts with various waves and open white space when density changed. Using it to find a body would be challenging. Humans are made of fatty tissue and water. Our bodies don't conduct radio waves very well. But again, the courts weren't likely to grant any permission to bulldoze the entire house in the search for Pearl Bruns, so it was worth the long shot. As they ran the radar over the floor, they had a hit. The radar detected something three feet below the ground. But upon digging in the first area, all they uncovered was rust-colored oxidized sand.

There was still more floor to scan, and so they continued to sweep the surface of the basement terrain. Moments later, they had another hit. Inside the crawlspace area of the basement, where that search dog had previously alerted, a long, narrow white blotch appeared on the printed radar scans. Something below the surface, about three feet down, was absorbing the radio waves. Again, they began digging. Meanwhile, Bill Bruns was upstairs. He had just gotten home from work and was enjoying some spaghetti for dinner. As he twirled pasta around his fork, investigators slowly but surely dug into the

earth below. And there beneath the dirt lay the badly decomposed body of Pearl Bruns. She was wrapped in two black trash bags bound with tape. Her feet and wrists were tied. She was still wearing her sneakers with pink shoelaces and her watch with her name engraved on the face. There are some crime scene photos out in the world if you want to see them. As much as I appreciate true crime stories, crime scene photos aren't my thing, but I saw them unintentionally during my research for

this case. They're really upsetting. But finally, after over a year of searching, they found their pearl. When detectives returned from the basement and approached Bill at his dinner table, he looked up at them almost dubiously. When they told Bill he was under arrest for murder, he replied with a furrowed brow, that's a pretty strong word, to which the detectives responded, Bill, that's a pretty strong smell. Bill asked if he could finish his dinner.

Bill Bruns was arrested and held without bail at Cumberland County Jail as he awaited arraignment the next week. Simultaneously, Pearl's body was moved to the medical examiner for a complete autopsy. As reported by the Bingor Daily News on September 14, 1992. Chief Deputy Medical Examiner Kristen Sweeney determined that Pearl Bruns died from blood loss from fractures to the nose and left side of her face. The injuries and the corresponding blood spatter found in other parts of the house indicated that the injuries were likely caused by a fist. Pearl was punched multiple times. She bled out and died in her own home. Then, someone wrapped her in trash bags and buried her in the basement. That someone, prosecutors believed, was Bill Bruns. But even as he was indicted for murder, Bill maintained his innocence. Bill was in limbo with an attorney as he awaited trial. At first, he said he'd be hiring

his own. He told the judge he could handle it, but then he changed his tune, asking for a court- appointed attorney, a request that the judge initially denied. Months later, he was eventually appointed an attorney and awaited his trial. This dragged out the resolution to the case. He remained at Cumberland County Jail for the rest of 1992, 1993, and the beginning of 1994, before surprisingly, the state presented William Bruns with a plea agreement. On April 4, 1994, the day his trial for the murder of his wife was set to begin, Bill Bruns pleaded guilty to manslaughter, a lesser charge punishable by up to 40 years in prison. His defense attorney told the Bangor Daily News, quote,

he was indicted for murder and today both sides agreed that the most likely outcome of the case was a manslaughter conviction. So the state agreed to dismiss the murder charge and he agreed to the manslaughter, unquote. Now one of my pet peeves about other true crime podcasts is that they often assume everyone knows the difference between charges as if we're all law enforcement or attorneys or have steel trap memories for legal language and I'm none of those things and I appreciate the refresher course so let me just quickly clear this up. Murder in Maine and many other places has varying degrees of charges. According to Maine's criminal code, a person is guilty of murder if the person a. intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another human being b. engages in conduct that manifests a depraved indifference to the value of human life

and that in fact causes the death of another human being, or C, intentionally or knowingly causes another human being to commit suicide by the use of force, duress, or deception. And then we have manslaughter. A person is guilty of manslaughter if that person, A, recklessly or with criminal negligence causes the death of another human being or B. Intentionally or knowingly causes the death of another human being under circumstances that do not constitute murder because the person causes the death while under the influence of extreme anger or extreme fear brought about by adequate provocation. So there's that question of adequate provocation. What does that mean?

Well, according to the Maine Criminal Code, provocation is adequate if a. it is not induced by the person and b. it is reasonable for the person to react to the provocation with extreme anger or extreme fear, provided that evidence demonstrating only that the person has a tendency towards extreme anger or extreme fear is not sufficient, in and of itself, to establish the reasonableness of the person's reaction. The fact that the person causes the death while under the influence of extreme anger or extreme fear brought about

by adequate provocation constitutes a mitigating circumstance, reducing murder to manslaughter and need not be proved in any prosecution initiated under this subsection. So that's still a lot of legal language. But here we are to assume that the circumstantial evidence that led to the discovery of Pearl Bruns' body in the basement crawlspace of their South Portland home wasn't enough to prove that Bill intentionally or knowingly caused her death, that he engaged in conduct that manifested a depraved indifference to the value of human life leading to Pearl's death. None of that could be proven. Instead, it's assumed by this reduced manslaughter charge that Bill could have been provoked, that the argument escalated, and he swung at her face without knowing or intention of killing her. Okay, fine. Maybe that's what the pieces of the investigation that are unknown to me revealed. Maybe prosecutors knew the case wouldn't hold up, and without stronger forensic evidence to bolster the circumstantial evidence, they risked Bill Bruns being acquitted at his murder trial, serving no time at all.

All of that considered, this guy still wrapped up his dead wife in trash bags and buried her in the basement. He was sleeping above her corpse for 13 months, eating meals in the house, going about his life, letting investigators search high and low for his missing wife, all while knowing she was right where he left her. But manslaughter, that was the conviction. In 1994, Bill Bruns was sentenced to 15 years in prison. And if you're doing the math real quick, that means his slated release date was in 2009. But with good behavior, according to the Catching Killers blog,

he was released in 2002, just eight years later. In the years following the gruesome discovery in that South Portland basement, the South Portland Police Department faced scrutiny and criticism for their early handling of the case. With the police chief's connection to Bill Bruns knowing him for years, it left people to wonder if that impacted the investigation. Even when the earliest bloodstains were discovered during that very first visit to the Bruns' home, it remained a missing persons case. State investigators commented that those should have raised suspicions sooner, that Bill should have been investigated sooner. But Chief Schwartz

was quick to defend and even echo the version of events that Bill told detect been investigated sooner. But Chief Schwartz was quick to defend and even echo the version of events that Bill told detectives early on. He told the Bangor Daily News, quote, If you look at this logically, you've got a woman who has divorced a few times, a woman with alcohol problems. She has left before. She has another daughter in Florida. Who's to say she wasn't just leaving him? They had money problems, unquote. Reporter Christine Young said in an episode of Forensic Files that she'd interviewed that police chief during the early days of the investigation. She asked Chief Schwartz about the husband, to which he responded,

Nah, I've known him for 20 years. It couldn't have been him. which he responded, Despite all that, an independent third party reviewed the investigation and it was determined that South Portland police handled the case properly. However, Attorney General Michael Carpenter told the Bangor Daily News that policies surrounding when missing persons cases should be turned over to the state would be revised. I wanted to note that on April 29, 1994, a few weeks after Bill Bruns was convicted of manslaughter, South Portland Police Chief Robert Schwartz was suspended for one week without pay, along with two other police supervisors, for subjecting a female detective to discrimination. She'd been

denied training, removed from a case over false rumors, and given an unsafe car to drive. That female detective was Linda Barker. She was the detective assigned to the Pearl Bruns investigation. Now there's still a piece of this story I haven't told you about. The medical examiner uncovered something else during the autopsy, something that no one knew while Pearl was still alive. At the time of her death at the hands of her husband, Pearl Bruns had cancer. It was terminal, and she would have only had six months to live.

Elaine had already lost her mother, and instead of the news coming as more pain, she chuckled to herself. She told Forensic Files, quote, If he had just been patient, my mother would have died of natural causes anyway, and he wouldn't be sitting in jail. I just see it as my mother getting the last laugh on him." Unquote. Thank you for listening to Dark Down East. And thank you to my sources for this episode, including Bangor Daily News articles credited to the Associated Press from November 23, 1991 through October 1, 1994, Forensic Files Season 6, Episode 2, titled Missing Pearl,

two Boston Globe articles by Royal Ford published November 27, 1991 and September 15, 1992, a Portland Press Herald article by Sean Murphy published March 19, 2020, and a piece in Portland Monthly by Olivia Gunn, titled 1980s Redux, published October 2015. Sources for this case and others, including links to all individual articles, are listed in the show notes at darkdowneast.com so you can do some more reading and digging of your own. Subscribing and reviewing Dark Down East is free. It not only supports this show, it is the best way to ensure you never miss an episode of Maine and New England's true crime stories. Thank you for supporting this show and for allowing me to do what I do.

I am honored to use this platform for the families and friends who have lost their loved ones and for those who are still searching for answers in cold, missing persons and murder cases. I'm not about to let those names, those stories, those manors get lost with time. I'm Kylie Lowe, and this is Dark Down East.