Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Lust Killer” Pt 1: Jerry Brudos

Episode Date: March 2, 2020

He developed an obsession with women's clothing from a young age—a fetish which would eventually turn violent. As a teenager, Jerry Brudos started attacking young women… just to steal their shoes. But when footwear wasn't enough to satiate his desires, Brudos graduated from thief to kidnapper. And eventually, murderer. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. A beloved 75-year-old man washing up getting ready for bed is brutally beaten and killed. Despite an exhaustive investigation, the killer avoids arrest and then strikes again. I'm Global News crime reporter Nancy Hicks. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcasts this year, but they're not crime beat. Search for and follow the award-winning podcast Crime Beat on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and wherever you find your favorite podcasts. Due to the graphic nature of this killer's crimes, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder and assault that some people may find offensive.

We advise extreme caution for children under 13. It was a cold and rainy January night in 1968 in Aloha, Oregon, a suburb just outside of Portland. Linda Slauson, a pretty 19-year-old woman, made her way up a dimly lit street, weighed down by the heavy carrying case in her hand. She had come to Aloha from Rochester, Minnesota, looking for sunshine and an easy West Coast lifestyle. Instead, she found endless days of gloomy weather and a dead-end job selling encyclopedias. Exasperated, Linda paused under a street lamp and reached into her purse, looking for the slip of paper bearing the address of a potential customer.

Then a drop of rain smeared the ink. Was it 1541? or 1451, all of the houses on the tidy suburban street looked the same. Just as she was about to give up and head home, Linda spotted a man. He was tall and broad. Standing in a yard, a few houses down, he waved. Unlikely that it was her intended customer, but Linda didn't care. She wanted out of the rain. The man invited Linda inside and led her down to a basement workshop, His wife and children were upstairs, he explained.

They could be quite noisy, and he wanted to chat somewhere quiet, where they wouldn't be disturbed. Linda hesitated. The man was big, but looked harmless, and he seemed intent on buying a set of encyclopedias. Money was tight. One sale could cover her rent. And in any event, the man's family was just within shouting distance. Linda descended the creaky basement stairs behind him. Never to emerge again.

At least not in one piece. Hi, I'm Greg Polson. This is serial killers, a podcast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today we're digging into the story of Jerry Brutus, a murderer, sadist, and fetishist, whose horrific crimes shocked a peaceful corner of the Pacific Northwest. I'm here with my co-host.

I'm host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals for free on Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. To stream serial killers for free on Spotify, just open the app and type

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Jerry Brutus, also called The Shoe Fetish Slayer, killed at least four women in the state of Oregon. Between 1968 and 1969, he's best known for wearing his victim's high heels and undergarments after doing away with their bodies. This week will cover Brutus' early life. His progression from petty thief to sexual sadist and his first kill. Next week we'll delve into his other murders and the trail of evidence that eventually placed Brutus behind bars for the rest of his life. Jerry Brutus was born Jerome Henry Brutus in Webster, South Dakota in 1939. The Great Depression had decimated the labor market of rural, sparsely industrialized places like Webster, In a desperate search for opportunity, Brutus' father, Henry, moved his wife and two sons to the Willamette Valley region of Oregon, the industrial heart of the state.

This was an unstable time for the Brutus's. Though the Depression had officially ended, jobs remained scarce. As Henry Brutus sought work, the family bounced from town to town throughout the valley. Henry Brutus often worked two or more jobs to keep his family afloat. This meant leaving his two boys almost exclusively in the care of his wife, who was purported to have had quite a temper. Eileen Brutus favored her eldest son, Larry, to her youngest, Jerry. Already having a perfect son, Larry, Eileen had desperately wanted a little girl. Because Jerry was born a boy, she resented him for it.

He grew up hated by his mother for something entirely beyond his control. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for this show. According to criminologist Scott Bonn, serial killers are sometimes compelled to commit murder by a deep fear of rejection. This often springs from the relationship most central to their life from a young age, their relationship with their mother.

Someone who experiences maternal rejection as a child may grow into an adult who actively seeks to destroy those that remind him of his mother, effectively eliminating such women before they have the opportunity to dismiss him. But Jerry Brutus' relationship with his mother is only part of a far more complex portrait of a future serial killer. At the core of Brutus's drive to kill was an early fascination with women's, clothing and accessories, particularly high-heeled shoes and undergarments. When he was five years old, Brutus was playing in a dump near his home and came across a pair of discarded patent leather heels. He brought the heels home and wore them around the house.

When Eileen discovered this new habit, she berated Brutus mercilessly and ordered him to throw out the shoes. But this ban transformed high-heeled shoes from an everyday object to a forbidden. taboo. It only made the shoes that much more tempting to Brutus. Rather than discard the heels, he hid them and wore them in secret. Eventually, Eileen caught her son in his continued cross-dressing, and she flew into a rage. She rebuked Brutus viciously and forced him to watch as she burned the shoes. According to journalist Lars Larson, one of the few individuals to interview Jerry Brutus in prison, Brutus internalized this incident as a message of very strong disapproval

from his mother. He learned that wearing high heels as a boy was wrong and dirty. Again, Eileen's reaction only fueled the boy's fixation. Footwear and its association with his mother's rage would eventually serve as the basis for Brutus's developing sexuality. Not long after Eileen Brutus burned her son's first pair of heels, Jerry Brutus sought to replace them. One day, as a young family friend napped with a pair of heels on, Brutus tried to pull them off of her feet. When she awoke, she was startled to see the small boy at her feet,

attempting to pry away her shoes. Kicking him aside, she ordered him to leave the room, marking in his mind another significant moment of rejection involving shoes. Later, when Brutus was a teenager, a teenager, the family moved to Grants Pass, Oregon. Their new neighbors had a number of daughters, and Brutus often snuck into the girls' bedrooms to play with their clothing. His fetish grew to include bras, underwear, girdles, and other feminine intimates. And soon, Brutus wanted access to women's clothes and shoes all the time. So he began to steal them, often from neighbors' clothing lines.

Eventually, he amassed a substantial stash, which he kept carefully hidden from the watchful eye of his mother. It's important to note that the act of wearing clothes and accessories typically associated with the opposite sex is not in and of itself wrong, or indicative of a criminal or ill mind. Humans have part part of so-called cross-dressing for centuries, as part of theatrical productions, or as part of drag queen culture, which is itself considered. considered a form of performance art. Likewise, it is important to understand the difference between cross-dressing and transgenderism. Cross-dressing strictly refers to the behavior of wearing clothes associated with the opposite sex.

However, a transgender individual is someone whose personal gender identity does not correspond with their sex at birth. There's no evidence that Jerry Brutus was transgender and his behavior shouldn't be conflated with other culturally permissive forms of cross-exam. forms of cross-dressing. Around the time, Brutus started practicing his own devious form of cross-dressing, he also began concocting sexually violent fantasies. The victim was always young and female, and the basis for these fantasies was always the same. He dreamt of trapping a young woman in an underground tunnel or pit. Unable to escape, she would be forced to do as Brutus pleased.

Brutus's dark fantasies persisted throughout his developmental phase. developmental phase, eventually he was unable to resist his darker impulses and committed his first violent crime in 1955 at age 16. He had stolen the undergarments of an 18-year-old neighbor girl, the object of some of his first perverse fantasies. One day he approached her and claimed that he was working with the police to catch the thief. Brutus then invited her to discuss the details at his house, making sure to choose a night when he knew the rest of his family would be out. When the girl arrived, Brutus called from upstairs, telling her to let herself in and join him on the second floor. Following the sound of his voice, she proceeded to Brutus' bedroom.

Inside, a tall, masked figure jumped out at her, wielding a knife and demanded, take off your clothes or I'll cut you. The girl wasn't fooled. She knew who the masked man was. Even as a teenager, Brutus was large, cutting a distinctive and identifiable silhouette. Trembling, she did as she was told and stripped. Once the girl was entirely naked, Brutus produced a camera, commanding her to pose as he took pictures. When the role of film was spent, the masked Brutus left the scene. The girl quickly dressed and flew down the stairs. There, she was. she encountered Brutus again. This time, however, he was unmasked and bewildered, acting as if he had only

just entered the house. Brutus claimed he'd been locked in the barn behind the house by a stranger, and had only just managed to free himself. He asked the girl if she had seen anyone hanging around the property. Terrified, she silently shook her head and fled. The girl eventually reported the incident to the police, but not for several more. months. Until that time, Brutus believed that his first attempt at enacting his dark fantasies was a runaway success. It gave him the courage to try again and to escalate his violent acts. Coming up, Jerry Brutus develops his M.O. and goes on the prowl. You tell yourself, no one wants your college-era band tease, but on Deep Hop, people are searching for

exactly what you've got. You once paid a small fortune for them at merch stands. Now, a teenager who calls them vintage will offer that same small fortune back. Sell them easily on Deepop. Just snap a few photos and we'll take care of the rest. Who knew your questionable music taste will be a money-making machine? Your style can make you cash. Start selling on Deepop where taste recognizes taste. Now back to the story. By April of 1956, 17-year-old. year old Jerry Brutus had developed into a budding criminal. A few months after attacking his neighbor, Brutus came across a teenage girl who needed a ride. He lured her into his car, then began talking to her as if they knew each other and she had intended to meet him

for a date. His behavior was unexpected, bizarre, and threatening. The experience grew all the more frightening when Brutus sped his car further and further away from town. As the girl began to panic, he eventually pulled into the driveway of an abandoned farm. Then, without saying a word, he dragged the girl from the car and savagely beat her, tearing at her clothes. Her screams caught the attention of a couple driving by. Out the car window, they spotted the hulking Brutus bent over the girl's crumpled form and swerved the vehicle into the overgrown farmyard, blocking Brutus's exit. As they stepped out of their vehicle to confront him, Brutus told the couple the girl had fallen

out of the car while he was driving. He explained away her screams as a hysterical reaction to the shock of the fall. The girl shook her head but was unable to speak through the pain. The couple was skeptical. Brutus changed tactics, telling them he had come upon the girl as another man was attacking her. She'd been fighting him off when Brutus arrived, at which point the man took off into the fields behind the farm.

The couple suspected Brutus was lying. He had changed his story so quickly and so drastically. Unconvinced, they escorted both Brutus and the girl back to their own nearby farmhouse, where they called the Oregon State Police. Once in custody, Brutus admitted that he had beaten the girl himself. He told officers he wanted to frighten her into removing her clothes and posing for pictures. He claimed to have been unexpectedly overcome by a combination of youthful libido and his own hot temper. But when police searched Brutus' car, they found camera equipment stowed away in the trunk. This was unmistakably a premeditated act.

When they searched Brutus' bedroom, police discovered his stash of photographs, pictures of women's underwear and shoes, and nude photos of his neighbor. Brutus claimed he hadn't taken the photos another boy had and forced Brutus to develop them. The police, however, weren't convinced. Officers arrested him for assault and battery. At 17, Brutus still qualified as a minor, despite the violence of his crimes. He was shortly referred to the Polk County Juvenile Department. But a psychiatric examiner with the juvenile department determined Brutus had problems

that went far beyond those typical of teenage children. delinquency. He wasn't just a troublemaker. There was something deeply troubling about the young man. The examiner ordered Brutus committed to the Oregon State Hospital Psychiatric Ward, so they could perhaps try to treat the mental malady that plagued the young man. The psychiatrists were initially puzzled by the stark contrast between Brutus's soft-spoken personality and the vicious nature of his crimes. According to author Anne Ruhl, who profiled Brutus in her book, lust killer, a state psychiatrist even commented on how normal Brutus seemed to be. They wrote,

The boy does not appear to be grossly, mentally ill. He comes into the interview situation and sits down in dejected fashion to talk with great embarrassment about his difficulty. This difficulty, the psychiatrist mentioned, was Brutus' shoe obsession. He was ultimately diagnosed with what doctors termed adjustment reaction of adolescence, with sexual deviation and fetishism. Fetishistic disorder is defined as an intense sexual attraction to inanimate objects or body parts,

not traditionally known to serve sexual functions. According to Anil Agrawal, a doctor of forensic medicine, and an expert in parapheria, or abnormal sexual desires, the disorder may arise from sexual imprinting, the moment when humans learn to recognize sexually desirable traits. When a child is imprinted with an incorrect concept of an object's purpose, a subsequent fetishistic disorder can arise. It's not hard to see how Jerry Brutus's first frightening yet titillating experience with high-heeled shoes could have birthed his own specific fetish.

Despite this diagnosis, doctors at the Oregon State Hospital determined that Brutus was not a lost cause. After only a few short months of treatment, he was released. He returned to high school that fall, this time in the town of Carvales, Oregon, just south of the state capital of Salem. In high school, Brutus excelled in non-traditional electives, such as stagecraft and electronics. Unfortunately, his soft-spoken personality made him an outcast with no regular friends. He occasionally tried to strike up conversation with female classmates, but they've found his awkward demeanor off-putting, if not pitiable. In the spring of 1957, at the age of 18, Brutus graduated from high school at the bottom of his class. He then enrolled at Oregon State

University for a time, before switching to the local vocational school in Salem. In 1959, at 20 years old, Brutus enlisted in the U.S. Army where he was sent to Fort Ord, California, and Fort Gordon, Georgia, for basic duty. training. Because he was skilled in electronics and communications, Brutus was eventually assigned to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. Yet throughout all these moments of life, Brutus's dark sexual compulsions still lingered. Brutus confided some of his twisted fantasies to an army psychiatrist, Captain Theodore J. Barry. Shocked and disgusted by what he heard, Barry determined Brutus unfit to serve. He was discharged and forced to be.

to return to Oregon to live with his mother in 1960. Eileen Brutus was entirely displeased to see her adult son return home. Rather than allow him to sleep under her roof, she reportedly forced him to sleep in the shed behind the main house. This emotional torment likely had a substantial impact on Brutus' mental state, and before long, he was back to his old habits. He began stealing women's underwear and heels. he also returned to assaulting women.

One evening, shortly after moving back home, Brutus went into Salem on an errand. There he saw a pretty young woman walking to her workplace. Excited by her bright, all-red outfit, Brutus followed her. His movement was fast, but quiet. And in the blink of an eye, he grasped her neck and began to squeeze. He held fast until she fell to the ground. ground, half conscious.

Once she lay helplessly on the ground, Brutus stole her shoes and ran away. Upon his escape, Brutus reveled in how easily he overpowered the young woman, the fragility of her neck in his powerful grip. Shortly afterwards, he tried to recreate the thrill and attacked another woman in Portland. This woman fought back viciously, but Bruton. still managed to escape the encounter with one of her shoes. Back in his dark little shed, Brutus slept with the stolen shoes. He ruminated on the power he'd held over their former owners.

This made him feel strong, even under the hawkish gaze of this antagonistic mother. When not hunting victims, 21-year-old Brutus kept up appearances. He passed the FCC's commercial radio operator test with a licensed in hand, he found work as an operating engineer with one of Corvallis's radio stations. Brutus liked his job. He was good at it. He fit in with the other station staff, something previously unfamiliar to him. But Brutus longed for female companionship, albeit a specific kind. He yearned for someone he could control indefinitely, a capped woman. A friend at the radio

station set Brutus up on a date. She was young and pretty and went by Darcy. Darcy was 17 when she met 23-year-old Brutus. She had big eyes and dark hair. She was attractive and dated frequently, but what was most important to Brutus was that she was a good girl, quiet and soft-spoken and obedient to her parents. Darcy was rarely one to question authority. She was exactly what Brutus was looking for. When they first met, Darcy was not impressed with him. Though tall and broad, Brutus was average-looking and already had thinning hair in his early 20s. But Darcy was nothing, if not compliant. An older man had asked her out, so she felt obligated to accept. Luckily for Brutus, he chose a swimming hole for their first date. Darcy loved to swim. She was also

surprised at Brutus's sense of humor. He joked and made him. He joked and made him. He made a swimming. He was her laugh. And soon enough, the 17-year-old girl reconsidered her preconceived notions about her big, awkward date. Unlike his perception of other women, Brutus found Darcy entirely unthreatening. She listened to him, laughed at his jokes, and made him feel important. Whereas women his own age hadn't found Brutus appealing. Darcy, being six years as junior, was more easily impressed. After all, Brutus was a working man out of school. He may have seemed like an attractive alternative to her sheltered life under her parent's roof. Darcy's parents, however, weren't fond of the strange young man their daughter was

dating, but this only added to Brutus's appeal. The shy and obedient teen was now itching to rebel, and Brutus was all too happy to help. He made it easy. Brutus put Darcy on a pedestal. He was tender and chivalrous, holding doors open and lavishing her with compliments and flowers. The young lovers spent all their time together, despite protests from Darcy's parents. Determined to cement their relationship, they hatched a plan. If Darcy were to become pregnant, they theorized, the two would be allowed to marry. It worked. In 1962, Darcy became pregnant. The couple was married within six weeks of the announcement. Bruton, was 24, Darcy wasn't quite yet 18.

Brutus felt he had secured Darcy's lifelong commitment for better or worse. Coming up, Jerry Brutus spirals deeper into his twisted obsessions, while Darcy turns a blind eye. Yamava Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars.

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Instant room upgrade. Stop taking bad travel advice. Start comparing hundreds of sites with kayak and get your trip right. Kayak, got that right. Now back to the story. In the early 60s, 24-year-old Jerry Brutos fell in love with then-17-year-old Darcy to quiet her parents. parents' rejections to the relationship, the young lovers conspired to have a child, forcing

a shotgun wedding. Sexually, the couple's relationship largely catered to Brutus' tastes. Because Darcy was sexually inexperienced before meeting her husband, she thought there was little wrong with his insistence on taking nude pictures of her. Brutus was relentless, expending role after role of film, building a veritable library of his wife's naked body. The photos were one thing, but some of Brutus' other sexual proclivities caused Darcy more concern.

He would occasionally direct her to ride their daughter's tricycle in the nude while he took photos. Sometimes he even pulled a nylon stocking over her face during intercourse. And through it all, Brutus insisted Darcy wear patent leather heels during sex. Though she was compliant, none of these requests made Darcy particularly happy. Yet Brutus assured her this was simply what husbands and wives did for each other. She knew no better. For Darcy, outside of the bedroom, the first few years of their marriage were domestic bliss. She had felt taken care of, despite Brutus's inability to hold down a job.

When one fell through, he always seemed to find another radio station to take him on. Despite having an obedient, kept woman at home, Brutus went back to prowling the streets, opportunistically stealing ladies' undergarments from clotheslines. With Darcy busy caring for baby Megan, she didn't notice that her husband was spending more and more time out of the house at night. As Brutus' secret life grew more intense, that same urgency seeped deeper into his marriage.

Brutus demanded that Darcy, wear high heels all the time, even when doing household chores. She went along with his wishes, even though the shoes made her feet, knees, and back hurt, but her patience was wearing thin. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, Darcy may have tolerated this home environment for a number of reasons. Many victims of spousal abuse believe that the toxic dynamic they experience every day is normal, and as we previously established, Brutus was able to easily convince Darcy that his sexual demands were typical to most marriages. And the heavy expectations placed on wives at the time would have kept Darcy from considering any alternative.

According to family lawyer Wendy L. Patrick, social pressures highly discouraged divorce in the 1960s. These pressures meant women endured more stringent expectations to maintain traditional family structures. And so Darcy put up with Brutus' sexual demands, as well as the family's itinerant lifestyle. Because Brutus was chronically incapable of holding down a job, he had moved Darcy and Megan repeatedly from town to town in search of work. By the time his second child, a boy, was born in 1967, the family had relocated more than 20 times around the Willamette Valley. Brutus was only 28. In many ways, this was reflective of Brutus' own unstable upbringing, but this wasn't the only pattern from his childhood that he repeated,

though he was not outwardly cruel or derisive of his eldest, Megan, like his mother had been to him. Brutus was distant with his children, perhaps mimicking the attitude of his own absent father. And while Brutus drifted from his children, Darcy, now in her early 20, began to distance herself from Brutus, emotionally and sexually. As a more fully realized adult woman, Darcy had grown quietly suspicious of her husband's sexual appetites.

This tormented Brutus. He even claimed to suffer from migraines and self-described blackouts whenever he sensed Darcy's affections waning. This insecurity triggered more nighttime prowls and more thefts of women's underwear. and shoes. Each transgression was a band-aid, soothing Brutus' anxieties, penned up rage and purported migraines, but only temporarily. In a bid to recapture Darcy's attention, Brutus left photos of himself wearing stolen women's

clothes throughout the house. But when Darcy found the pictures, she threw them away and never asked her husband to explain. Darcy wanted no part of her husband's after dark activities, but couldn't bring herself to face her increasingly troubling reality. Instead, she retreated into her motherly duties with absolute tunnel vision. According to psychotherapist and relationship expert Dr. Carl Alasko, emotionally driven desires can sometimes override our perception of reality. Wanting to believe something is true or not true can supplant a human. more rational considerations. Here, Darcy may have been so overcome by her desire for a normal family life that she would not let herself confront her husband's obsessions if she refused

to deal with Brutus' fetishes. In her mind, they weren't real. But Darcy's denial couldn't change the reality of her husband's impulses, and Brutus was chasing his fantasies with greater and greater ferocity. In 1967, Brutus found himself alone in downtown Portland. There, he spotted a young woman wearing a particularly alluring pair of heels. Initially, Brutus wanted to knock her down then and there, in broad daylight, and flee with the shoes. But he restrained himself. Instead, he followed the woman for hours just out of sight.

When she returned to her apartment building, Brutus noted which window was hers. He waited until he could be sure the woman was asleep, then broke into her apartment to rifle through her closet, hunting for the pair of shoes he had spotted earlier. But the woman woke up. She saw a hulking, dark figure kneeling on her bedroom floor. Before she could scream, Brutus had already leapt across the room to her bedside. Afraid she might register his face and be able to identify him to police, he wrapped his hands around her nose. neck and choked her. The woman's body went limp. Excited once again by the feeling of absolute power he wielded over the woman's unconscious form, Brutus sexually assaulted her. When he finished, he took the shoes he had come for and left. It signaled a new phase of Brutus's sexual sadism. He wanted to take something

more than just physical possessions from his prey. His awful crimes would only escalate further after an accident at work further damaged his impulse control. While working as an electrician at a radio station in Corvallus, 28-year-old Brutus accidentally connected a live wire to a terminal, sending 480 volts of electricity up his arm and through his chest. The force of the jolt was so strong that it reportedly picked Brutus up and threw him across the room. A smaller man may have been killed, but Brutus, miraculously survived.

Though the accident was life-threatening, he was never seen by a doctor. Despite Darcy's insistence, he refused to be examined, perhaps recalling his negative experience being examined by Captain Barry in the army. Exposure to significant amounts of electrical energy can cause brain injury. In fact, studies have linked this form of trauma to a kind of acquired sociopathy or psychopathy. Dr. Ryan Darby, an assistant professor of neurology at Vanderbilt University Medical Center in Tennessee, has found a link between lesions and other long-term injuries to the brain and an increased risk of criminal behavior.

This is particularly likely when an injury occurs along the brain's moral decision-making network, which includes the prefrontal cortex, the posterior cingulate, and angular gyrus. Together, these regions govern impulse control and value-based decision-making. Injuries along this pathway can also inhibit empathy, thus decreasing a brain-injured person's capacity for remorse. Brutus already lacked sufficient empathy to stop himself from assaulting and raping women. The Electroshock likely only made it worse. After the accident, Brutus circled ever closer to the theme at the core of all his dark. sexual fantasies, a subterranean lair in which he could keep young women captive, entirely

subject to his will. Though Brutus sometimes imagined his wife as one of his captive women, he never hurt Darcy. She was spared the fate that befell Brutus' first victim. 28-year-old Brutus met 19-year-old encyclopedia saleswoman Linda Slosson on the street outside his house. He asked her inside and led her to the basement, the one area of the house he forbade his family from entering. According to author and rule, Brutus told Linda, I'm really interested in buying some encyclopedias. The basement was dark and Linda was apprehensive, but as soon as she

heard those words, Linda perked up. She felt more at ease with the prospect of a sale on the table, recalling Brutus's mention of a daughter, she attempted to upsell him a set of children's books also produced by her publisher. As she bent to retrieve a set of promotional pamphlets from her carrying case, Brutus offered to turn the basement light on. He quickly shifted behind her. The next thing Linda felt was an immense blow

against the side of her head. She fell to the floor unconscious. Brutus had struck Linda with a wooden two-by-four. With quiet haste, he dropped the plank and bent down to check her vitals. Detecting slight stirrings of life, Brutus began to squeeze her neck. He felt her bones crack beneath his brute force. He only let go when he was sure she was dead. He heard footsteps overhead.

In the excitement of his first kill, Brutus had forgotten that his mother was upstairs, babysitting the kids while Darcy was out. He had to get rid of them fast. He dashed upstairs, shoving a $5 bill in his mother's hand. He instructed her to take the children out to dinner. According to Anne Rule, he then demanded she knock on the floor when she returned. He did not want to be interrupted.

Once alone, Brutus returned to his basement shop of horrors. He immediately stripped Linda's corpse and was delighted to find she was wearing a pair of bright red underwear. He then used Slosson's body like a doll, posing her and dressing her up in his collection of purloined women's clothes, undergarments, and shoes. But he knew he couldn't keep the body indefinitely. The basement freezer was too small to store a full corpse. Brutus proceeded to cut off Linda Slosson's left foot, a more manageable-sized trophy, and a model for his pressure. collection of high heels he could enjoy for days and weeks to come. Once his family was asleep, Brutus slipped out of the house with Slosson's footless corpse

and drove north. By 2 a.m., he'd arrived at the St. John Bridge, crossing the Willamette River into Portland. Pretending to have a flat tire, Bruton set up a jack under the rear bumper. Cars passed, but no one thought twice of the man rummaging in the trunk of a stalled vehicle by the side of the bridge. When the coast was clear, he tied Linda's body to a heavy engine part, carried her to the bridge rail, and dropped her into the rushing water below. Utterly remorseless, Brutus packed up the jack, got back in the car, and returned home to his sleeping family.

Darcy was none the wiser that her husband, had just committed his first murder. Days later, at the Encyclopedia publisher, where Linda worked, her colleagues assumed she quit. After all, selling encyclopedias wasn't a lucrative enterprise, and salespeople had a tendency to come and go. It wasn't until her own family raised the alarm that the Portland police began investigating Linda's disappearance.

As Linda's body lay at the bottom of the Willamette River, her foot sat frostbitten. in Jerry Brutus's basement freezer. But when he grew tired of using it to model shoes, it followed the rest of her body into the water. Though he had tired of Linda's body, the thrill of killing her lingered. Jerry Brutus had successfully carried out his first kill,

and he had no intention of stopping at one. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. For more information on Jerry Bruton, Amongst the many sources we used, we found the book, Lustkiller by Anne Rule, extremely helpful to our research. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals for free on Spotify. Not only does Spotify already have all of your favorite music, but now Spotify is making it easy for you to enjoy all of your favorite parcast originals, like serial killers, for free from your phone, desktop, or smart speaker.

To stream serial killers on Spotify, just open the app and take it. type serial killers in the search bar. Several of you have asked how to help the show, and if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. And don't forget to follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. We'll see you next time. Have a killer week. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler and is a Parcast Studios original.

Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design, and, and sound design. by Juan Borda, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Freddie Beckley. This episode of serial killers was written by Jake Flanagan, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon, and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. Want to hear something spooky. Some monster, it reminded me of Bigfoot. Monsters Among Us is a weekly podcast featuring true stories of the paranormal. One of the boys started to exhibit demonic possession.

Stories straight from the witnesses' mouths themselves. Something very snakelight lifted its head out of the water. Hosted by me, your guide, Derek Hayes. Somehow I lost eight whole hours. Listen now on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.