Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “The Lust Killer” Pt. 2: Jerry Brudos

Episode Date: March 5, 2020

In many ways, Jerry Brudos wasn't in it for the kill—he was in it for the body. Between 1968 and 1969, he dressed his victims up and posed them, like living dolls. After killing them, he continued to defile and manipulate the bodies, keeping trophies for himself. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

This episode is brought to you by ZipRecruiter. Whether you're hiring for a role or searching for a killer, the hunt can be exhausting. When detectives looked and searched to find any kind of evidence to find the person they were looking for, like Jack the Ripper, the Golden State Killer, the unit bomber, it's tedious work to find what you're looking for. So, if you're hiring, I've got news for you.

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And now, you can try it for free at ZipRecruiter.com slash killers. That's ZipRecruiter. Meet your match on ZipRecruiter. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the Lonely Hearts Killers, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. These are infamous criminal duels. But you don't need to break any laws to find your perfect business partner because you have Shopify. It's the commerce platform that can help you with literally everything, website design, marketing, shipping, and more. So start your business today with the best partner, Shopify, and get that. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com slash killers. That's shopify.com slash killers. 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 Hixed. You might listen to a lot of true crime podcast 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, necrophilia, and assault that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Saturday, May 10, 1969. It was a good day for fishing.

Though the sky was gray and pregnant with forthcoming rain, snowmelt from the mountain, swelled Oregon's Longtime River with oxygen-rich water. It was the perfect condition for fish, ripe for the catch. A lone angler stood in the cold, muddy water, searching for a spot to drop his line. As his gaze traveled down the river, his eye caught something unusual. A shadow just beneath the surface. Something large, bigger than a fish, too bright to be a log or rock. It bobbed and twisted in the current, as if caught along the riverbed.

Curious, the fisherman laid his pole on the bank. He wanted a closer look, but the current was too strong for him to safely wade much deeper. He spotted a tree leaning out over the river just above the strange shape. He carefully inched out onto the branch, peering into the murky water. What he saw made him recoil with horror and disgust. It was a woman, pale as a ghost, with fine hair fanning out into the current. Her skin was graying, modeled and bloated. She had clearly been dead for quite some time.

It looked like a corpse had been weighted to the river bottom with a piece of heavy machinery. The fishermen knew this was something more sinister than a slip and fall. But what he didn't know was that this woman's fate was part of something bigger. She was one of a number of known victims of a prolific serial murderer. Jerry Brutus, and soon more bodies would surface in waterways across Oregon. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson. This is Serial Killers, a parkast original. Every Monday, we dive into the minds and madness of serial killers. Today, we're continuing our look into the life of Jerry Brutus, who murdered at least four women in northwestern Oregon between 1968 and 1969. I'm here with my co-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 serial killers in the search bar. At Parcast, we're grateful for you, our listeners. You allow us to do what we love. Let us know how we're doing. Reach out on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast and Twitter at Parcast Network. Last week, we covered the early life of Jerry Brutus. We explored why he developed a violent fetish for women's clothes and shoes, his initial run-in with the law, and his first kill.

This week will follow Brutus' evolution into a full-fledged serial killer, the notorious shoe fetish slayer of the Willamette Valley. To the outside observer, 29-year-old Jerry Brutus was an ordinary family man. He lived in a quiet suburban town near Portland, Oregon, with his wife Darcy and two children. Brutus worked as an operating engineer at a number of local radio stations. But beneath this unassuming exterior was a demonic mind. Brutus harbored dark fantasies of capturing young women, detaining them underground, and eventually killing them. After their murder, he imagined using their corpses as life-sized dolls.

he could dress and accessorize for his own pleasure. This fixation had been with Brutus since he was a child, when he started stealing women's shoes and undergarments from family friends and neighbors. His obsession later caused him to assault women. After he attacked a neighbor, Brutus reportedly spent time in a psychiatric ward where he eventually learned to better control his impulses.

He would still indulge them, but he became skilled at hiding his dark proclatured. even as they festered and grew. Then, in January of 1968, Brutus' twisted fantasies came to a head when he committed his first murder. He lured Linda Slauson, a young encyclopedia saleswoman, into the basement of his home, and strangled her to death. Afterward, Brutus disposed of Linda's body in Oregon's Willamette River,

but he did keep a trophy, her severed foot, foot, which he used to model his collection of stolen, high-heeled shoes. 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. Thanks, Greg. According to researchers from the University of Bologna, of all objects associated with the human body, shoes are by far the most fetishized.

In fact, 64% of subjects reported a second to... sexual preference to shoes as compared to similar objects. Heels in particular are considered desirable. This is likely a result of the sexual connotations attached to high-heeled shoes in popular culture. It's likely that Brutus did harbor a diagnosable shoe fetish. However, psychiatry does not conflate fetishism with sexual violence. In fact, some scholars actively discourage the diagnosis of fetishism as a disorder,

arguing that it unfairly stigmatizes private sexual preferences. Jerry Brutus, however, was an exception. His fixation on women's clothing and shoes was likely an extension of his inherent desire to dominate his victims, to take their most basic possessions, their clothing, and to control what they wore even in death, just as he did with Linda Slosson.

When Brutus tired of enacting his fetish on Linda's severed foot, He tied it to a weight and tossed it into the Willamette River. But as the last memento of his kill sunk into the water's depths, Brutus' dark urges resurfaced. Linda Slosson's murder had only wet his appetite. Just a few months later in 1968, Brutus found his next victim in Jan Susan Whitney, a 23-year-old student at the University of Oregon.

Whitney was tall and slim, a pretty brunette with blue eyes. Her friends remembered her as a trusting person, perhaps to a fault. She was known to sometimes pick up hitchhikers along her long, 100-mile commute from her home in McMinville to the university. And Tuesday, November 26th, was no different. That day, Whitney had just finished visiting

with some friends and classmates in Eugene before heading north on the I-5 for McMinville. But somewhere along that stretch of highway, the young woman vanished. When Whitney failed to make it home, her friends and family panicked. Their worries immediately culminated into one question. Who did she pick up? Just a few days later, police searched her apartment, noting that mail and papers had piled up on her doorstep. Whitney's car was later found abandoned an arrest-stop parking lot just east of the I-5. The red and white Rambler showed no signs of damage and was even locked.

On the inside, police found no blood and no sign of struggle. A forensic analysis of the Rambler showed a minor mechanical issue that might have kept the car from starting. But aside from that irregularity, authorities were stumped. It seemed as though Jan Whitney had gotten out of her car and vanished into thin air. But soon, police received a tip in the form of an anonymous letter. It was postmarked from Albany, Oregon, where the vehicle was recovered and sealed in a plain envelope. Inside, the letter was written in tidy print, as though the author was trying to

disguise their handwriting. They claimed to have been at the rest stop where witness car was abandoned and indicated that they witnessed her disappearance. Lieutenant Robert White of the state police turned to the public, imploring the informant to come forward, but no one did. Soon, White, realized that the information could have been discerned from newspaper reports at the time. But still, something about the letter peaked at the lieutenant's interest. It's possible that Brutus wrote the letter himself. Certain perpetrators do tend to seek out notoriety by anonymously contacting others. A deeply felt need for admiration often will lead killers to reach out to the individuals who they believe will truly recognize the genius in their

handiwork, the detectives investigating their crimes. Though it was never conclusively proven, whether Brutus was, in fact, the letter writer, he was certainly Jan Whitney's killer. Brutus had stumbled upon Whitney's stalled Rambler while out for a drive on the I-5. He pulled over to help, but quickly saw she wasn't alone. Two other men who Brutus later described as hippies were also in the car. Brutus told police, I gather that she'd given them a ride, and her car broke down and they didn't know how to fix it. Brutus offered to repair the car himself. He just needed to go home to fetch his tools. All three agreed to ride with him to Salem. Once they arrived, he let the two men off at the side of

the road. Then he and Whitney drove to his house, where he told her he'd grab the tools and return to fix the stalled Rambler. When they pulled up to the house, Brutus told Whitney to wait in the car while he went to get the items he needed. A few minutes later, he came back, saying his wife wasn't home and the house was locked. They would have to wait a few minutes for her to return. Brutus slid into the back seat directly behind Whitney and made small talk. They even played a game. Whitney tried to explain to Brutus how to tie a pair of shoes using only her words, no demonstration. Halfway through her explanation, Brutus took a leather strap and looped it around Whitney's neck from behind. He yanked her violently backward over the car seat,

throttling her to death. Brutus then dragged Whitney's lifeless body into his basement workshop, where he reportedly had sex with her corpse. This was a new deviation for Brutus. He had previously experienced sexual arousal from assaulting, raping, and eventually killing live women. He had even exacted some pleasure from dressing up and posing their corpses. But up to this point, he had not engaged sexually with any of his victims post-mortem. Necrophilia is commonly understood to involve sexual relations with or attractions to corpses. According to Catherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology, malignant necrophilia can arise out of a craving for absolute control. A dead body cannot fight back. It cannot resist.

Over the course of Brutus' criminal life, we observe an intensifying need to exert power over his victims. When treating live women like dolls proved insufficiently satiating, he progressed to killing them first. He could exact total uncontested dominance over his victims once life had left their limbs. Once Brutus finished violating Whitney's body, he propped her up, dressed her in his collection of women's wear, and took photographs. Afterward, Brutus removed one of Whitney's breasts. He used the breast to form a plastic mold from which he hoped to cast a lead paperweight, but he never could get the resin recipe quite right. Frustrated, he disposed of Whitney's corpse in his signature way, anchoring it to a piece of heavy machinery and dropping it into it.

a river. Long after she was killed, police continued to investigate the disappearance of Jan Whitney. To Lieutenant Robert White, the nature of her disappearance seemed to point to something much more sinister. And then, his worst fears were confirmed. Another girl went missing. Coming up, Jerry Brutus perfects his murderous impulses. Kayak gets my flight, hotel, and rental car right. So I can tune out travel advice that's just Plain wrong. Bro, Skycoin, way better than points. Never fly during a Scorpio full moon.

Just tell the manager you'll sue. 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 spring of 1969, 19-year-old Karen Sprinker had returned from school

to spend a pre-term vacation at her parents' home in Salem, Oregon. But on March 27th, she disappeared without a trace. Like Jan Whitney, Brutus's second known victim, Sprinker, was pretty and tall with dark hair. The Oregon State freshman came from an affluent home. Her father was a prominent veterinarian, and a proclivity for science ran in the family genes. Sprinker intended to go to medical school after completing her undergrad. She was last seen en route to the Meyer and Frank Department story. in Salem, where she planned to meet her mother for lunch in the store's restaurant. When she failed to arrive, her parents launched their own amateur search.

They checked local hospitals, the university, and called her friends, all to no avail. Eventually, the worried couple notified police. Officers eventually located Karen Sprinker's car parked on the roof of the Meyer and Frank parking garage. Like with Jan Whitney, the vehicle was locked and showed. no signs of damage. Puzzled, police placed an announcement in Salem area newspapers. It included a photo of Karen Sprinker alongside text reading, have you seen this girl? Two high school students in Salem saw Karen's photo in the newspaper. As they read that she'd been

abducted from the Meyer and Frank garage, they were reminded of a strange encounter they recently had there and informed police. The girls were returning to their vehicle after a shopping trip. when they noticed a very tall woman lurking in the shadows. She was dressed formally in heels and a dress and was anxiously tugging at her girdle and nylons. As the girls drove up the garage's exit ramp, they got a closer look. The odd, tall woman wasn't a woman at all,

but a large man dressed in ladies' clothing. Sprinker wasn't Brutus' intended victim. Earlier that morning, he was driving around downtown, when he spotted a particularly alluring woman in a miniskirt and a pair of heels. Grudos followed her to the department store, but unable to find her, he returned to the parking garage, dejected. His plans were foiled. But just as he was about to get into his own car, he saw Karen Sprinker. Her outfit wasn't ideal, a dull green sweater with a matching skirt and an unimpressive pair of shoes, but she was pretty with dark hair.

hair, which Brutus liked. He had developed a taste for brunettes. He scanned the garage. It was deserted. The opportunity was too perfect to pass up. As Sprinker made her way through the dark garage, Brutus began to follow, walking a short distance behind her. Then as he reached for the door leading to an exit staircase, Brutus placed a meaty hand on her shoulder. Surprised, Sprinker spun around and came face to face with Brutus and what she believed to be a gun. It was actually a toy pistol, but Brutus told Sprinker not to scream or he would hurt her. She was immediately compliant. She repeatedly reassured him that she would stay quiet if he didn't hurt her. Brutus liked that. A delectable sense of power coursed through his veins.

He had Sprinker's delicate life in his powerful hands. And he had Sprinker's delicate life in his powerful hands. he relished it. He escorted Sprinker to his own vehicle and drove her to his house. When they arrived, the house was empty. Just how he liked it. Darcy Brutus had been spending more and more time outside the home with the kids. After finding photos of her husband dressed in women's clothing, she dealt with his increasing eccentricities by minimizing their time together, slipping away at any opportunity she could find. Home alone, Brutus led Sprinker into his basement workshop at gunpoint, where he proceeded to rape her. Afterward, he forced her to dress up in his collection of women's garments and shoes and took pictures.

Brutus was in his element. He had a human doll, the perfect plaything, imprisoned in a subterranean torture chamber totally at his mercy. His fantasies had come to full fruition. When he had finished toying with Sprinker, he tied her hands behind her back and placed a rope around her neck. He then attached it to a hoist fixed to the basement ceiling. He asked Sprinker if the rope was too tight. She said yes. He was glad. He gave the rope three swift pulls, lifting Karen Sprinker from the ground.

She kicked and struggled at her binds until the life left her body. As with Jan Whitney, Brutus then violated her corpse. He did this repeatedly over the course of several hours, even after Darcy and the children returned home. Hours later, he reportedly went upstairs for dinner before returning to the basement to defile Sprinker's corpse at least one more time. He then removed both of her breasts. That night, as Darcy and the children slept, Brutus came to her. carried Sprinker's body out of the basement and drove to a bridge spanning the Long Tom River between Corvales and Eugene.

By the time he arrived, it was after 2 a.m. He tied a spare cylinder engine part to Sprinker's corpse, carried her to the edge of the bridge, and dropped her into the swiftly moving water below. By this point, Brutus' criminal signature was solidified. Criminologist Scott Bond defines the signature as a pattern of behavior that's not necessarily required to commit a particular crime, but one that serves the psychological or pathological needs of the criminal. In serial killing, signatures tend to remain the same across offenses. They emerge from an offender's core fantasies, which are often developed long before their first kill. By age 30, Brutus's signature rarely deviated from the

same script. He kidnapped a young woman, detained her in his basement. raped her, and then dressed and posed her for photographs. Afterward, he would almost always kill her, rape her corpse, and manipulate the body like a doll. Finally, he removed a flesh trophy and disposed of the remains in a local river. But not every attempted kill when, according to Brutus' plan. One afternoon in April of 1969,

Brutus was prowling the campus of Portland State University, when he noticed a young woman. 24-year-old Sharon Wood. She was leaving the history department where she worked as a secretary. Wood had a lot on her mind that day. The mother of two was set to divorce her husband of seven years.

At the same time, she was also battling a middle ear infection, as well as adjusting to newly prescribed contact lenses. Her hearing that day was not at its best. Her vision was blurry, and her thoughts were occupied. Little did Brutus know, that he'd spotted Wood at her most vulnerable.

Brutus, the consummate predator, perhaps sensed her disorientation. He followed Wood from a short distance, plotting his move. It was broad daylight on a crowded college campus, after all. He had to be smart. As Wood walked to a staff parking structure tucked away in a corner of the university property, the crowds thinned. Students siphoned off into various buildings, as afternoon lectures began. Door slammed left and right. Voices died.

Suddenly, Wood was alone, or so she thought. Wood sensed a prickling on the back of her neck. She had a vague sense of being followed. Instinct told her to avoid the parking structure's dark, deserted stairway. Instead, she took a sharp turn toward a well-lit ground-level entrance. She picked up speed, while her gut churned, with an unnamed nervous energy. Mere steps from the garage entrance,

she felt a heavy tap on her shoulder. She turned her head to face the penetrating stare of Jerry Brutus. Later, she told Anne Ruhl, author of the book, Lust Killer, I could sense the evil and I knew I was going to die. Brutus stuck to his script, brandishing his toy pistol,

he instructed Wood not to scream, or he'd shoot. But Wood refused to play Brutus' game. At the top of her lungs, she screamed. No. Wood began to back away, but Brutus lunged for her, pulling the petite woman into a half-Nelson and dragging her to the ground. Her head locked between his arms. Wood kicked and screamed, fighting for her life. When Brutus put a hand over her mouth to muffle her, she bit down as hard as she could, drawing. blood. In a panic, her jaw fastened. Even as Brutus yowled in pain, she would not release his hand. Brutus grabbed Wood by the hair, and then, with his hand still caught between her teeth, he slammed her head against the concrete. He proceeded to beat the woman with savage veracity. Even as her skull was pummeled, Wood clamped her jaw tightly down on Brutus' hand.

As Wood's already blurred vision began to cloud, she saw a car approach from the corner of her eye. Only then did her jaw muscles spasm, releasing Brutus's bloodied hand from her teeth. Immediately, Brutus picked up the toy gun and fled the scene. Wood realized her attacker's motive had changed mid-fight. Brutus was no longer interested in abducting her. He was more concerned with freeing himself from

the vice grip of her jaw. Soon, police arrived on the scene, not realizing the connection between this assault and the women who'd been reported missing months earlier. Sharon Wood was bruised and battered, but alive. She was one of Brutus's few failed abductions. But if anything, it was his failure to subdue Sharon that drove him to quickly find another victim to take her place. The very next day, a fifth.

A 15-year-old identified as Gloria Jean Smith was walking along some railroad tracks near her home in Salem when Brutus lunged from the shadows. The girl was saved by her own lightning-fast reflexes. As soon as she saw the hulking man, she shrieked and ran for help, escaping by the skin of her teeth. Now foiled twice, Brutus's desire to kill came to a full boil. On April 23rd, 22-year-old Linda Saly drove to the nearby Lloyd Center Mall to shop for her boyfriend's birthday gift. Petite, pretty, and driving a bright red Volkswagen bug, she immediately caught Brutus' attention. So, as she parked her bug on the sixth floor of the mall's parking garage and walked inside to do her shopping, Brutus waited inside the garage for her to return, his typical hideout.

But this time, Brutus had a brand new game, and Linda Saly would play along. Coming up, Jerry Brutus claims his fourth victim. Now back to the story. By 1969, Jerry Brutus had murdered three young women in Oregon's Willamette Valley, Linda Slosson, Jan Whitney, and Karen Sprinker. But when his attempts to abduct his fourth victim failed twice, he was. determined to make his next murder count. Soon, Brutus found his next victim, 22-year-old Linda Sainley, in the parking garage of a local mall. And as Saly went inside to shop for a gift

for her boyfriend's birthday, Brutus waited for her to return. Later, as she walked to her car, her arms full of bags, Brutus approached her, but this time he tried a slightly different tactic. Instead of his usual toy gun, he brandished a phony security badge and told Saly that he was taking her into custody under suspicion of shoplifting. Despite her assurances that she hadn't stolen anything and had the sales receipts to prove it, Brutus insisted she accompanied him to a Portland police station. Saly went willingly and followed him to his car. According to Brutus, she asked no questions, even as they drove well beyond the Portland city limits and into Salem. Authority can be a powerful influence.

in compelling submission. In his famed experiments on obedience and control, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram found that humans are likely to go to great lengths to appease authoritative figures. Even when a directive goes against an individual's better instincts or moral compass, Milgram discovered that most subjects are still likely to follow orders anyway. In this case, it comes as no surprise that Linda Saly would so readily trust a man, putting himself forward as a civil authority, even though he didn't drive an official vehicle.

And even when they drove well beyond Portland's city limits into Salem, Saly didn't voice her doubts. When Brutus pulled up to his suburban home and entered the garage, Saly still said nothing. For Brutus, his plan couldn't have been going more swimmingly, until suddenly it wasn't. Darcy, whom he had believed to be out with the children, ambled onto the front porch as Brutus walked out of the garage.

He held up a hand to Saly, still in the car, warning her not to move or make a sound. Brutus later claimed that Darcy couldn't see Saly, so he simply ordered his wife back into the house. But when Darcy complained that dinner was already ready, Brutus relented. He assured Darcy that he'd be there momentarily, then he returned to the car and bound Saly with some row.

Brutus left Saly alone in the car while he ate. During this time, she reportedly did not try to escape. And after Brutus finished supper, Darcy left for the evening. While their regular babysitter came over to watch the children, the sitter never bothered Brutus when he locked himself in his workshop. Thus, he was able to sneak Saly into the basement where he throttled her with the same leather strap he used to kill Jan Whitney. It was at this point that Sayley reportedly began to fight back. She was an athlete, a regular swimmer, and though Petitin's stature, powerfully built. But Brutus's brute strength eventually won out, and Saly asphyxiated. Brutus proceeded to have sex with her corpse, but he was enraged that the seemingly quiet and compliant young woman had decided to resist him.

He wanted to punish her defiance. Brutus hung Saly's body from a hoist in the basement ceiling and stripped off the rest of her clothes. Then he inserted two needles into each side of a rib cage. Finally, the skilled electrician attached two electric leads to the needles and plugged them into an outlet. Brutus hoped to see Saly's corpse convulse with electricity. But to his disappointment, the experiment only lightly singed her flesh. Brutus kept Saly's body for a day and a night to have sex with, though this time he didn't take a trophy.

He reportedly did not like the shape of her breasts. When Brutus was finished, he tied yet another engine part to Linda Saly's body and watched as it dropped, sinking into the depths of the Long Tom River. But little did Brutus know that soon Linda Saly's body would float. Two weeks after the murder of Linda Saly, her body found its way to the river's surface

where it was discovered by a fisherman floating in the Long Tom River. And just two days later, Karen Sprinker's corpse was found 50 feet away. Her breasts cut out, the cavities filled with brown paper towels. When Lieutenant Jim Stoval heard news of the two bodies recovered from the Long Tom, he and a deputy raced to the scene. There, he observed undeniable similarities between the two dead women. Both were weighed down with engine parts, and both were around the same age and physique. Autopsies revealed yet another connection.

Both Sprinker and Saly shared a cause of death, traumatic asphyxiation. Taking into account these parallels, as well as the missing women in the region, Stovall began to connect the dots. He suspected that Linda Slossin and Jan Whitney had suffered. the same fate as Sprinker and Saly, and something in his gut told him even more bodies were floating undiscovered in Oregon's waterways. Suddenly it dawned on Stovall. He had a serial killer on his hands. Stoval, an Oregon State Police Lieutenant Gene Darty, agreed to co-lead an investigation into these killings and began by overseeing the dredging of the Long Tom River. But after several

days, the search was suspended. There were no more bodies to be found in that part of the valley. So they continued elsewhere. As the investigation waged on, Jerry Brutus followed the discovery of bodies through local newspapers. He reveled in the fact that he'd baffled the authorities. He felt totally in control now, a feeling he'd been chasing his entire life. Writing this sensation, Brutus became bolder. And in In May of 1969, he began phoning dorm rooms at Oregon State University. Placing random calls to some of the female dormitories on campus, Brutus tried to solicit dates. He told the girls that answered that he was a Vietnam vet, hoping the lie would impress

them into accepting. It actually worked. Miraculously, the awkward Brutus was able to arrange several blind dates through this cold-calling method. some were more suspicious than others. One co-ed contacted Lieutenant Daugherty after she'd been on a date with Brutus. She told him she met the self-proclaimed war veteran in the lounge of her dormitory where they talked about her studies. She didn't recall the conversation to be particularly sparkling.

But one bizarre interaction haunted her. The young woman told Daugherty that at some point during the date, Brutus reached over and placed a hand on her shoulder. He began to massage it and, quite strangely, demanded that she pretend to be sad. Then he reportedly told her to think of the two girls found in the Long Tom River. He said that was an awful thing that happened to them. And if that weren't eerie enough, before saying goodbye, Brutus reportedly asked the woman why she had agreed to meet him.

How did you know I would bring you back home and not take you to the river and strangle you. Investigators were shocked. Could this be the killer they were looking for? Daugherty asked the student what the man looked like and she described him for the lieutenant. Tall, close to six feet, heavy but not fat. Soft around the middle with reddish-blond thinning hair.

He was pale and covered in freckles. Dardy took down the details and then urged the student to phone the person police if she ever heard from him again. Brutus's freckles would be his downfall. When informed of Doherty's conversation with the student at Oregon State, Jim Stoval was reminded of something, the attempted abduction of Gloria Jean Smith. After Brutus tried to grab Smith from the train tracks, the 15-year-old had immediately

phoned the police. Smith described her assailant as large, nearly six feet, and freckley. Suddenly, after months without a lead, the police had a convincing profile. Police instructed Brutus's would-be college date to call them if the freckled man ever contacted her again. Sure enough, on May 25, 1969, the young woman got a call back. She immediately recognized Brutus's halting, hesitant voice and willed herself to stay calm. He asked her out that night for a Coca-Cola and a little little. conversation.

The student told Brutus she wasn't immediately available. She needed to wash her hair, but she could meet him in the dormitory lounge in 45 minutes. He agreed. She hung up the phone and immediately dialed the police. The Oregon State PD flew into action. Plain clothes officers positioned themselves in the dorm lounge and waited. Soon, a man matching the description arrived, tall, hulking, at least 30 years old. Jerry Brutus was unfazed when the officers approached him,

and when they began asking questions, he delivered his answers calmly. He lived in Salem and had just come by the university after mowing a friend's nearby lawn. They were out of town, and Brutus was just dropping in to check the college out. The police knew he was lying about his reason for being there, but they had no legal basis to arrest him, but now they had his name. Investigators dug up Brutus' history of institutionalization. They discovered he had a history of sexual violence toward women, as far back as adolescence.

As they continued to review Brutus' record, they found more and more coincidences. As police dove into public records, they found that Brutus either had lived or worked near the locations where the missing women were last seen during the times they had disappeared. The circumstantial evidence was enough to justify a visit to Brutus' home for some follow-up questions. While there, Salem Police Detective Jerry Frazier got a glimpse inside Brutus' garage and spotted a bit of rope. The knots were distinctive. It looked as though they might match ligature marks left on some of the victim's bodies. Still, police lacked enough physical evidence to arrest Brutus for the murders. In an ideal world, they could tail him for a while and wait for him to.

to slip up, but time was of the essence. Brutus knew detectives were sniffing around. He could run at any moment. On May 28, 1969, at a last-ditch effort to find evidence that might point to the murders, police served search warrants on Brutus' two vehicles. Because Brutus had the interior scrubbed, they were unable to pull substantial evidence,

but it was enough to spook him. Two days later, on May 30th, A team staking out the Brutus residents informed Stoval and Daugherty that the entire family had left their home and were heading north on the I-5 freeway. Coincidentally, earlier that day, the two lieutenants had secured an arrest warrant for Brutus's assault of Gloria Jean Smith. Stoval and Doherty had to act fast. They couldn't lose Brutus over the border into Washington State, or even worse, Canada. State troopers put out an APB on the Brutus' vehicle, and later that evening they located the family on the I-5. When police pulled the car over, Darcy Brutus was behind the wheel.

Her children seated in the back. Brutus, at first blush, was nowhere to be seen. But as Dardy shined his flashlight into the rear of the car, he saw a large mass hidden beneath the blanket. He said to the cowering Brutus, you're under arrest. Get out of the car. When Brutus was booked into Salem County Jail, he was stripped. Guards were shocked to find, under his ordinary work clothes, he was wearing a pair of sheer women's undergarments.

Brutus explained he needed special underwear due to sensitive skin. Detectives were speechless. Stoval deployed a good cop approach as he interrogated Brutus, starting small, getting him to talk about the type of women he was attroupes. attracted to and his interest in women's shoes. From there, they progressed to conversations about Brutus' childhood and his first petty thefts. Lulled into a sense of security, the confessions came flooding out of Brutus' mouth. Seemingly, out of nowhere, he confessed to hitting Linda Slossin over the head while she tried to sell him a set of encyclopedias.

And over the course of several hours, Brutus confessed to the murders of Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker and Linda Saly. On June 4th, 1969, 30-year-old Brutus was arraigned for the murder of Karen Sprinker, to which he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was subsequently examined by a team of state psychiatrists. They determined he possessed an above-average IQ and deemed him sane. However, they diagnosed Brutus as an antisocial personality, manifested by fetishism, transvestism, exhibitionism, voyeurism, and especially sadism.

Just weeks later, on June 27th, Brutus was charged with the first-degree murders of Jan Whitney, Linda Sainley, and Karen Sprinker, and ultimately he was handed three consecutive life sentences. Prison life for Brutus was not easy. Aside from being cut off from his family on the outside, he was not popular on the inside. He was reportedly assaulted. both physically and sexually by fellow inmates multiple times between 1969 and 1971. Up until 1977, his attorneys fought hard to reverse his conviction in state appellate courts. Brutus' final appeal was rejected on May 25, 1977. When 60-year-old Brutus was finally up for parole, he was denied due to the seriousness of his crimes.

Seven years later, on March 28, 2006, Jerry Brutus died in prison from a particularly aggressive case of liver cancer. He was 67. At the time of his death, he was the longest serving inmate in the Oregon Department of Corrections. Brutus's persona would live on in infamy as an analytical subject of FBI agent Johnny Douglas, largely credited as the father of criminal profiling. And his story will forever serve as a cautionary tale of what can happen when taboo meets violent fantasy. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers.

We'll be back next week with a new episode. For more information on Jerry Brutus, amongst the many sources we used, we found Lust Killer by Anne Rule extremely helpful to our research. You can find more episodes of serial killers and all other Parcast originals free on Spotify.

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serial killers in the search bar. 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 studio's original. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Juan Borda,

with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Carly Madden, and Aaron Larson. This episode of Serial Killers was written by Jake Flanagan, with writing assistance by Abigail Cannon and stars Greg Polson and Vanessa Richardson. Yama Vah Resort and Casino at San Manuel is California's number one entertainment destination for today's superstars. Catch the Jonas Brothers return to the Yamava Theater stage on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric Church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at Yamavat Theater.com. Only at Yamava Resort and Casino celebrating its 40th anniversary.

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