Lust Killer (28 page)

A Freudian slip? Or only the man's view of
himself
as a "helpless victim who cannot fight back"?

Judge Val Sloper had taken exquisite pains to be sure that Jerry Brudos had understood what he was pleading guilty to—but a year in prison had clouded Brudos' memory. Now he was claiming complete innocence of the crimes.

During the arguments before the Court of Appeals [sic] upon another facit of this case, it was broght out that the Circuit Court Judge ordered the defendant's attorneys to Look at the psudo evidance compiled. That was on a Friday and the defendant was to go to trial the following monday and yet One attorney had not even bothered to look at the evidance. When the defendant requested to see the evidance he was told by his Attorneys "Oh no you don't get to see the evidance." The defendant has since found out why. There is photographs that were manifactured to make it appear Like the defendant was guilty of the Crime and the prosecution could not afford to Allow the defendant to see these phony pictures. They then proceeded to Threatnen the defendant's Life along with repurcussions which would be effected upon his wife and children.

Marion County in That respect makes the Communiust Countrys and their methods Look Like Mickey Mouse Culb, for the defendant has the prrof and yet the Marion County Courts are concerned about a conviction only and could care Less that the Victim of this whole thing is in fact innosent. It can be seen from Exibit 2, Clearly shows that this is in fact the truth yet everybody says, "I sincerly doubit that it happened," yet nobody bothered to check. A plain and simple fact. There is a multitude of witnesses and evidence to substaciate this along with his personal testimony.

Brudos' "Exibit 2" was a statement purportedly made by a fellow prisoner alleging that Brudos had been treated unfairly, and repeating Brudos' feeling that he had been poisoned in jail! The statement mentioned that Brudos' bedding had been removed during the day and returned only at night. Since the prisoner had threatened suicide, it was a prudent move on the part of the jail staff. Brudos was fed separately from the other prisoners; it was for his own protection. In the Marion County jail, there might well have been other inmates who would have delighted in poisoning him, if the opportunity arose. It was hardly information that was new to the courts. Nor was it a legally sound basis for a new trial.

Brudos wound up his "mandanus" writ with an emotional paragraph:

The really teriable part is that the defendant/petitioner is in fact innocent of The Charges, yet the prosecution did have such a Lever against the defendant they got confessions for Cases that they didn't even have boddies for. Such threats were used that they could obtain such confessions yet the defense attorneys did not even question that. If One Court, Just One would have retained It's impartiality and had attempted to seek the truth and Justice it whould have been exposed, but Marion County Judicial system is so far out upon a Limb they fear of sawing it off Them self, there fore "we" says the Court "Will do nothing without an order stating we must, then we will have to try to get around that then."

The petitioner/defendant does therefore pray this Honorable Court will issue this writ of Mandanus and start to instill some form of Justice in the County that the State Capitol is in and this type of Decay can only spreed if not checked now.

Did Jerry Brudos believe his own arguments? Perhaps.

Perhaps he only wanted out.

The "confessions" had been made by Brudos himself. Yes, he had confessed to killing Linda Slawson and Jan Whitney, knowing that their bodies had not been found. He had chosen to brag about the murders to Jim Stovall.

In the late summer of 1970, the lack of those victims' bodies was a moot point—at least in the case of Jan Whitney. Picnickers along the Willamette River at a spot somewhat below the Independence Bridge saw what they took to be a lamb's carcass caught up in branches near the shore.

It was not a lamb; it was all that was left of Jan Whitney, her body surfacing so many months after she had had the terrible misfortune of meeting Jerome Henry Brudos. Identification was possible only through dental records. Cause of death could no longer be determined.

Brudos was a frequent patient in the prison infirmary. The records are cryptic, and give no details.

On January 1, 1971 , he was treated for "rectal bleeding." Perhaps he suffered from hemorrhoids; possibly there were other reasons.

He had lost his battle to recover his property so that he might carry on his occupation. Since he was serving three life terms back-to-back, it was doubtful that his services as an electrician would be soon available to citizens in the Salem area.

A small ad appeared in the Salem
Capital
Journal
and the Salem
Statesman
on March 23, 1971:

Sheriff's Sale—March 27, 1971, 1 P.M. Marion County Shops, 5155 Silverton Rd. N.E., Craftsman Roll Cabinet and Tools, Electric Hand Tools, Rifle Re-Loading Equipment, Antique Telephone Insulators, Scuba Diving Equipment, Many Miscellaneous Items. Terms: Cash.

Sales were brisk. The gear taken from Jerry Brudos' grisly workshop netted the state of Oregon something over eleven hundred dollars. The citizens of the state would have to pay for the rest of Jerry Brudos' legal procedures through their taxes.

There were others who attempted to obtain Jerry Brudos' property. His mother, Eileen, asserted that it was all rightfully hers—since she had lent him so much money, by her own reckoning—that had never been repaid. Ned Rawls and another friend asked for some of Brudos' tools and guns, and Darcie too laid claim to the gear left behind.

All of them were denied. Darcie's claims against the estate had already been satisfied when she signed a receipt for certain items: a movie screen, a camera, lawn chairs, throw rugs not used in evidence, a box fan, two blankets, a box of slides, miscellaneous personal papers, and a BB gun.

These were to be her assets, along with some furniture and clothes—very little after eight years of marriage.

Jerry Brudos continued to suffer "accidents" in prison. In 1971 his neck was broken, fractured at the fifth cervical bone, "C-5." He refused to say just how it had been broken, and it is not explained in his medical records beyond the terse "Fracture at C-5. Patient placed in body cast, healed in an acceptable position."

Brudos frequently complained of migraine headaches, palpitations, depression, and myriad other symptoms. He was treated with Meritene and Ritalin and various combinations of drugs to alleviate his headaches.

He remained a pariah among his fellow prisoners.

He kept up his filing of notices of appeal. In 1972 the basis of his appeal was bizarre; he contended that the dead girl in one picture was not Karen Sprinker at all (detectives had asked Dr. Sprinker to look only at the facial portion of the picture to save him further pain). Brudos said he had been convicted for killing someone unknown. With almost unthinkable gall, Brudos wanted to subpoena Karen Sprinker's father. He wanted to force Dr. Sprinker to study the grotesque pictures of his daughter, and then he submitted that he, Brudos, could prove that the girl portrayed was not Karen, but a stranger, a woman who was a willing subject he'd photographed years before!

Blessedly for the grieving family, the appeal was denied.

By December 1974 Jerry Brudos had seized upon an entirely new theory, a theory somewhat supported by a psychologist he had been seeing in prison. Brudos had always avoided any responsibility for his crimes; now he had a handle on something that he felt would explain all of it. The psychologist had suggested that Brudos was hypoglycemic. That is, that he had low blood sugar, a condition blamed—rightly or wrongly—for many of modern man's physical and emotional problems.

Not all the prison psychological staff agreed with the diagnosis of hypoglycemia, however. In an evaluation done on December 11, 1974, one doctor wrote of Brudos:

I see Mr. Brudos as a paranoid personality without any real evidence of thought disorder or a psychotic process. He is able to conform his behavior to his environment, and is functioning very efficiently and without difficulty. He is quite an intelligent individual, and, coupled with his paranoia, he is a problem in management. He had a very good relationship in therapy with Dr. B., but the benefit of this relationship was that Dr. B. thought the basic difficulty was that of a physical disease—mainly hypoglycemia. And in this way, Mr. Brudos could escape the responsibility for the heinous crimes. With the present mental status of Mr. Brudos, I see him as a potentially very dangerous individual were he to be released into the community. This situation will continue unless he has intensive and prolonged psychotherapy—not group therapy—but at the present time this does not seem realistic with the shortage of available trained personnel. I strongly recommend there be no change in the current situation concerning Mr. Brudos.

Brudos would not let go of the "hypoglycemic" diagnosis; he saw it as his ticket out of prison and his vindication. In a hearing in October 1976 he submitted this theory to the court. He had "fired" a succession of court-appointed attorneys, but his new lawyer asked for time so that famed Dr. Lendon Smith, "The Children's Doctor" of television note, could submit a letter on his evaluation of Jerry Brudos' condition.

Smith is highly respected in the pediatric field, a man of great humor and skill. Surprisingly to those who watch him on television, he also has a background in working with psychotic prisoners and soldiers as a psychiatrist in the late forties. He espouses the theory that poor nutrition often contributes to antisocial behavior.

Smith wrote on November 1, 1976:

… Violence, headaches, drowsiness, allergies, hyperactivity, irrational and even psychotic behavior may all be due to low blood sugar; the thinking part of the brain simply cannot respond rationally to the environment when it is deprived of energy.

There is no doubt that Mr. Brudos had hypoglycemia in 1973. The log of his daily jail activities can allow for no doubt that he was hypoglycemic in June 1969. People have a potential or proclivity to hypoglycemia and they will become hypoglycemic when their diet is rich in carbohydrate. I am aware of the high-carbohydrate diet in prisons.

I am sure his hypoglycemia was activated by the diet he received in jail in June 1969.

And so Jerry Brudos now blamed all of his crimes—if he should admit guilt—and his confession in June, 1969 on a diet too high in carbohydrates and sugar!

The appeals court took a dim view of the "too many candy bars and mashed potatoes" theory. Jerry Brudos remained in prison.

In toto, 1976 had not been Brudos' best year. Darcie had obtained an order forbidding her children to visit their father in prison, nor did she want them to correspond with him. She was still afraid of him—for herself, and especially for the children's emotional wellbeing.

Jerry had also lost his phone privileges—after still another extended hearing. A female employee in the warden's office reported that Brudos had phoned her and told her that "she was cute," instructing her to come to a window so that he could see her better. When this was documented, the prisoner's access to the phone was taken away.

Jerry was becoming angry … and frightened. He felt always that someone stalked him, someone inside the prison. His fellow cons had never warmed to him. He had regained the weight he'd lost initially, but he sensed the hatred all around him. He complained, "Sometimes, it appears as though the penitentiary is just bent on trying point-blankly to get me killed."

Not the penitentiary staff certainly. Whatever their private feelings, their mandate was only to keep Brudos away from the public. The prisoners themselves? That was another matter entirely.

The last appeal of record filed in the Oregon State Supreme Court's dusty archives notes the date: May 25, 1977. By 1977, several infamous serial killers had emerged to replace Jerry Brudos in the headlines. Ted Bundy had allegedly murdered young women in Washington, Oregon, Utah, and Colorado, and was currently in the Utah State Prison. In the same prison at Point of the Mountain, Gary Gilmore had faced a firing squad, but only after generating enough newsprint to encircle the world if placed end to end. There was Juan Corona in California. Crime was in the news, and television talk shows were rife with discussions of the efficacy of the death penalty.

Jerry Brudos based this last appeal on a rather convoluted theory. Since
his
alleged crimes were so heinous, and since one of his own attorneys had once compared his crimes to those of Jack the Ripper and the Boston Strangler, he now put forth the premise that media coverage equated recent heinous and sensational crimes with his own. His paranoia had expanded. While he had formerly felt that the prison staff and population were against him, he now insisted that the entire state of Oregon was plotting against him, and that his life was in danger. His next point seemed diametrically opposed to his protestations that he feared for his life. "The extraordinary security measures taken to protect me in prison make the courts unable to be objective on my appeals … "

And he reiterated that his hypoglycemic condition in 1969 had made him unable to plead with a clear and unconfused mind.

Again, Jerry Brudos was denied a new trial.

Outside, the world has gone on without Jerry Brudos. His mother, Eileen Brudos, the mother he claimed to detest, died in 1971. Darcie Brudos has a new name and a new life. Her children are almost grown now. The Sprinkers, the Salees, the Slawsons, and the Whitneys have picked up the pieces of their shattered lives. Lt. Gene Daugherty rose to the position of Deputy Superintendent of the Oregon State Police before his retirement in 1980. Jim Stovall is a lieutenant now in charge of Patrol units for the Salem police department. The horror has diminished with the passage of time, but will never fade entirely.