Lust Killer (15 page)

He called Salem attorney Dale Drake and asked for an appointment the following day—May 27. When he faced Drake in his office, Jerry Brudos said, "I'm having some problems with the police. I'd like you to investigate and find out. I'll pay you for checking into it."

Drake refused the retainer, telling Brudos not to worry about money for the moment. He would stand by to represent him if, indeed, Brudos did have "police trouble."

The police were having a bit of trouble of their own, or, rather, were walking a very delicate path to be sure that they did not blow a case that was not yet fully formed. They did not yet have their damning physical evidence. They could not arrest Brudos for murder and hope to win a conviction. They wanted no pegs a defense team could hang their hats on. Rather, they wanted to give Brudos enough rope to hang himself, and that meant it was prudent to let him stay free where they could watch his movements. But there was danger there; if he should panic and bolt, they might lose him. They had an ace in the hole: the Liane Brumley case. If an arrest seemed essential, they could get a warrant on that case.

And so, when Brudos pulled out to head down the I-5 freeway to his job in Halsey south of Corvallis, a sneaker car was behind him. When he returned home, he was followed. For the next few days there was not a moment when Jerry Brudos was free of surveillance—subtle, but always there.

Beyond the fear that he might cut and run, there was the possibility that he might harm still another girl; the dangerous time period between the twenty-second and the end of the month was only at the halfway point. If they had the right man, and if they let him slip away from their observation, more tragedy might result.

But Jerry Brudos appeared to be following ordinary everyday patterns. He went to work. He came home, and he seemed to stay home in the evenings. On occasion, the family car pulled out and they saw that it was driven by a small dark-haired woman—Brudos' wife. She seemed unaware that something cataclysmic was happening in her world.

On Wednesday, May 28, at ten minutes to eight, a search warrant was served on the two vehicles available to Jerry Brudos. Brudos signed a Miranda Rights Card with a bland expression on his face. If he was getting more and more nervous, he didn't show it. His green station wagon proved to be spotless. It had been thoroughly washed both inside and out. In fact, it was
damp
inside.

Brudos smiled and said, "I took it through a fifty-cent car wash, and my little boy accidentally rolled down a window."

Jerry Frazier found Jerry Brudos almost too calm.

Later, Brudos would confide in Frazier, "I don't think you got anything out of the car. There's something, but I can't put my finger on it. There is kind of a link missing, having to do with the car. But I wasn't worried about it. I just felt like I wasn't involved. There was no doubt in my mind, until you compared the ropes. If I knew you were going to do that, I would have gotten rid of the rope." (But would he? Hadn't he so much as
offered
the knot to Jerry Frazier, almost begged him to take it into evidence?)

Stovall, Frazier, Greg Ginther, and Lieutenants "Manny" Boyes and Robert Pinnick of the Oregon State Police Crime Lab searched and processed the 1964 Karmann Ghia, too, and took away almost infinitesimal fragments of evidence.

During the long evening, Jerry Brudos called his attorney three times, but let the searchers continue.

On Friday evening, May 30, 1969, Jim Stovall and Gene Daugherty left Salem for Corvallis, armed with a Marion County District Court Arrest Warrant charging Jerry Brudos with Assault While Armed with a Dangerous Weapon (in the Liane Brumley case). It was 5:05 p.m.

Before they could reach their destination, the stakeout team radioed that the Brudos family had left Corvallis, and was heading north on the I-5 freeway. Jerry Brudos was behind the wheel of the 1963 green Comet station wagon, Oregon License 7P-5777, when they left Corvallis, but enroute they changed drivers, and Darcie took the wheel while Jerry lay in the back seat. But they weren't headed home; Darcie drove right through Salem, and continued north toward Portland.

The waiting was over. Daugherty and Stovall could not risk letting Jerry Brudos escape into the metropolitan area of Portland—or perhaps even farther north into Washington State and then 250 miles to the Canadian border. The two detectives fell in behind the state police "sneaker" cars trailing the green station wagon.

There could be no more holding back and watching. The first car behind the Brudos vehicle pulled nearer and the trooper flicked on the revolving red light. Darcie Brudos saw it and eased into the slow lane, coming to a stop on the shoulder.

It was 7:28 p.m. Daugherty approached from one side, and Stovall and B. J. Miller from the other. They saw the worried-looking woman behind the wheel, the little boy and girl in the front seat. Darcie Brudos reached for her driver's license and started to ask what she had done wrong. Daugherty shook his head slightly and shone his flashlight into the back seat.

Jerry Brudos was there, hidden under a blanket.

"You're under arrest. Get out of the car, please."

With Brudos blinking his eyes in the glare of the phalanx of state police cars, Daugherty read him his rights from a Miranda card.

And then Daugherty and Stovall transported Jerry Brudos to the Salem City Police Station where he was booked, photographed, and committed to jail.

Stovall snapped a picture of the big man in the plaid shirt with his own Leica, catching the image of the man they'd searched for so long. Here, he believed, was the face of the man that fit the list he'd made.

But as Brudos stripped to change into jail coveralls, his clothing no longer resembled a typical Oregon working man's. Jerry Brudos was wearing women's sheer panties. He looked up to see Stovall and Daugherty exchange glances.

Brudos reddened, and explained, "I have sensitive skin. "

The detectives said nothing.

Jerry Frazier searched Jerry Brudos' wallet as the prisoner was booked. Tucked deep in one of the leather folds, he found a tiny photograph of a nude woman, a rectangle measuring one inch by one and a half inches. It looked as though it was a Polaroid that had been trimmed from its original size. The head and feet were missing. Frazier could just make out a Sears Craftsman tool chest behind the girl. He placed it in a glassine envelope and put a property tag on it: #2017.

Who was the girl in the picture? Frazier wondered if she was still alive—whoever she was.

Darcie Brudos' nightmare had begun; she had no idea what was happening. She had watched as her husband was handcuffed and placed in the back seat of a police car. She had quieted her sobbing children, and then she had turned around and followed the police caravan back to Salem.

Darcie waited while her husband was booked into jail. When she finally had a moment to talk to him, she begged, "Jerry, what is it?"

"It's nothing," he said shortly. "They're charging me with carrying a concealed weapon."

"But
why
?"

He turned away. Darcie watched Jerry disappear behind a steel door, and then she took her children home.