Lust Killer (30 page)

Like all lust killers, Jerry Brudos was fascinated with the investigation. He saved newspaper clippings to gloat over, secure that he was smarter than the cops in this deadly game. He was alarmed when police investigated the hole left in his garage after the accident, and yet smug that they could have come so close and still not caught him. When Stovall questioned Brudos, it was Brudos who asked so eagerly, "How can you tell? How can you figure out that I did anything?"

He was still very confident at that point.

Jerry Brudos is Caucasian, and so were all his victims. It is almost unheard-of for a lust killer to cross racial lines. Since his hatred of women appears to stem from women in his own life—a mother, a wife, a sister—he tends to attack within his own race. The victims may resemble physically the women who have rejected him, or, as in Brudos' case, they may be the very antithesis. Eileen Brudos had always worn plain clothing, dull flat-heeled shoes, and little makeup. Her son grew up to kill pretty women who wore pretty clothing. Unlike Brudos, Ted Bundy, alleged to have murdered thirty-six young women, chose victims who were beautiful and who resembled the lost fiancée who had rejected him. Whether the lust killer chooses opposites or doubles for his hate object, he
does
invariably choose victims who fit his particular victim profile.

Few lust killers begin by actually murdering. It is a slow but constantly accelerating process—a juggernaut of perversion, if you will. Many begin with voyeurism: "Peeping Toms." Some are exposers. It is a fallacy that such offenses are not dangerous and will not progress. There is always the constant need for more stimulus, more excitement. Jerry Brudos began by stealing shoes, moving on to the theft of women's undergarments. He was a voyeur. When the theft of lingerie from clotheslines was not enough, he actually entered homes to steal his treasures. Here too was an added excitement. William Heirens, the seventeen-year-old premed student convicted of the mutilation murder of six-year-old Suzanne Degnan in Chicago in the 1940s, and other sex killings, related to arresting officers that he achieved sexual climax only when he crossed over the windowsill of a home where he went to steal undergarments. That his crimes accelerated fatally is well documented. (Heirens, over fifty today, is still in prison.)

Jerry Brudos found that the theft of shoes and bras and panties was not enough to fill the void in his self-esteem, not enough to quiet his anxiety and rage. And so he raped. When that was no longer enough, he killed and mutilated his victims.

And if he had not been caught …?

The question must always be "Why?" What happens to change a chubby-cheeked, freckled five-year-old into a monster? If there were clearly definitive answers, it might be simpler to explain. But there are certain factors which seem to be present in the history of almost all lust killers.

With the complete records available on Jerry Brudos' past, the reader can easily see the correlations between his case and the accepted profile put together by experts.

Special agents Hazelwood and Douglas offer their opinion based on their studies of scores of cases:

What set of circumstances creates the individual who becomes the lust murderer? . . . It is generally accepted that the foundation of the personality is formed within the first few years of life. While extreme stress, frequent narcotic use, or alcohol abuse can cause personality disorganization in later life, it is the early years that are critical to the personality structure and development.

Seldom does the lust murder come from an environment of love and understanding. It is more likely that he was an abused or neglected child who experienced a great deal of conflict in his early life and was unable to develop and use adequate coping devices. Had he been able to do so, he would have withstood the stresses placed on him and developed normally in early childhood. …

These stresses, frustrations, and subsequent anxieties, along with the inability to cope with them, may lead the individual to withdraw from the society which he perceives as hostile and threatening. Through the internalization process, he becomes secluded and isolated from others. … This type possesses a poor self-image and secretly rejects the society which he feels rejects him.

Family and associates would describe him as a nice quiet person who keeps to himself, but who never quite realized his potential. During adolescence, he may have engaged in voyeuristic activities or the theft of feminine clothing. Such activities serve as a substitute for his inability to approach a woman sexually in a mature and confident manner.

The individual designated as the organized nonsocial type harbors similar feelings of hostility, but elects not to withdraw and internalize his hostility. Rather, he overtly expresses it through aggressive and seemingly senseless acts against society. Typically, he begins to demonstrate his hostility as he passes through puberty and into adolescence. He would be described as a troublemaker and manipulator of people, concerned only with himself. …

Jerry Brudos falls somewhere between the two types. He was a quiet youngster—as far as anyone knew—until his attacks on the two teenage girls, attacks that landed him in the Oregon State Hospital. Would adequate treatment at that time have worked? Perhaps. But he did not receive intensive treatment; he was viewed only as a sissy, lazy, and told he needed to grow up.

It is likely that it was far too late at that point anyway; his fantasies were already formed and they would never leave him.

Have they left him now? After eighteen years in prison? That too is extremely doubtful. The mold was formed so early. Like Kenneth Bianchi (the alleged "Hillside Strangler"), Edward Kemper (Northern California's "Chainsaw Murderer-Coed Killer"), and Wisconsin's infamous Edward Gein, Jerome Brudos is the product of a home with a strong, controlling mother, and with a weak (or absent) father figure (although these men cannot all be considered lust killers).

Jerry Brudos hates women. He has almost always hated women. And, in all likelihood, he will continue to hate women. Like Delilah's hold over Samson, women weaken Jerry Brudos and make him afraid. He can control them only by obliterating them.

Brudos and Bundy and Bianchi and Long and Kemper and the many others who came out of the shadows to kill, and who were finally caught, are in prison. There are other prowlers who are still free. There is virtually no way to spot this kind of danger until it strikes. Women can protect themselves by being constantly aware, by avoiding lonely places.

While there is no sure means of escaping from the control of the lust murderer, fighting him presents the only possible avenue of escape.

Fight
. The lust killer is a coward who counts upon his chosen victim to be passive. If his quarry screams and kicks and fights, she may escape with her life. But, if she allows him to take her away to his isolated killing place, thinking that she can reason with him, she will surely die.

Because he has no mercy in him.

No one who encountered Jerry Brudos has ever forgotten him. The detectives who tracked him and finally caught him will never forget him.

Jim Stovall rose to the rank of Lieutenant, and helped solve dozens of homicide cases long after Brudos was in prison. He retired from the Salem Police Department in the mid eighties, and divides his time between living and skiing in Colorado and his home in Salem. He still studies the criminal mind, and the ever-more-scientific methods devised to track and trap murderers.

Jerry Frazier moved from the Salem Police Department to the Marion County District Attorney's Office where he works as an investigator. Not too long ago, he found himself stopping in front of the
shake
house on Center Street. He talked to the current tenants, who admitted that they would never have moved in—had they known the house's history. No, there were no ghosts; it was just the idea.

 "They had a lot of turnover of renters," Frazier recalls. "The place always had people moving in or moving out. That day, I walked into that garage after so many years. The dividers were gone, but the
feeling
—a kind of chill—was still there. Just as much as the day Jerry Brudos offered me that rope knot that was eventually going to help convict him."

In April of 1984, I was presenting a seminar to the Oregon Writers Colony at Gearhart, Oregon, on the Pacific Ocean. Using slides, I moved through the lives of the serial killers I had written about. When I had finished speaking, I looked up to see an attractive red-haired woman standing in front of me. If it is possible to be that color, she was pale gray-green. She looked, literally, as if she had seen a ghost.

"Are you all right?" I asked.

"I was the one … who got away," she murmured. "I was the one he called the 'blonde bitch.' "

"You're in my book," I said. " Have you read it?"

She shook her head. "After I got away, I found out that he was arrested for murder—but something stopped me from reading about it. I didn't want to know what he'd done. I didn't want to know how close I'd come … I guess I didn't want to know the details."

Understandable, after what she had been through. The woman was Sharon Wood, alive and well fifteen years after her terrifying few minutes with Jerry Brudos.

However, after our chance meeting in the lodge on the Oregon beach, Sharon Wood felt a pressing need to find out more about the man who had tried to destroy her life. She asked, as she had asked herself right after the attack, "Why am
I
alive … while the others are dead?"

She thought of her twins born in 1970, Dori and Christopher, children who would never have been born if she hadn't escaped from Jerry Brudos. And, in doing so, Sharon Wood could not help but think of the children that Karen Sprinker, Jan Whitney, Linda Slawson, and Linda Salee might have had. Of the years they might have had.

Wood, a free-lance writer and photographer herself by 1984, was compelled to learn more about Brudos—this man whose story she had avoided for so many years. She sent away to the Portland Police Department for the follow-up report on her own case, and she visited the Oregon State Penitentiary and interviewed the warden's assistant.

She found that the prison staff considered Jerry Brudos "a model prisoner," and that he was one of the small percentage allowed to work in the hobby shop. Sharon stood in front of the window displaying Brudos' key fobs, and she felt her spine tighten. One was stamped "Portland State Vikings": Portland State is the college where Brudos attacked her; and another was stamped with a camera.

Grateful that he had never had the opportunity to take his ghastly pictures of her, she paid one dollar and bought the leather fob with the camera on it.

Today, Sharon Wood works to help other women learn self-defense. She wholeheartedly supports the Portland Police Department's "Womenstrength" program. It is easy to see that Sharon feels an obligation to victims, and that she is grateful that she was allowed to live out her life.

Although Jerry Brudos is not likely to get out of prison until he is a very old man, there are other killers who thus far have avoided being newsworthy. They are just as dangerous—and they have never been caught; they are still prowling. Their philosophy on the value of a human life can be summed up, just as Jerry Brudos' was, in a short anecdote told by a detective who met him sometime after his arrest.

Jim Byrnes, a Marion County detective at the time of Brudos' arrest in 1969, and now a private investigator, recalls a conversation with Jerry Brudos.

"He liked strawberry milkshakes, and I'd take them to him to try to get him to talk. I wanted to get at how he really felt. One day, I asked him, 'Do you feel some remorse, Jerry? Do you feel sorry for your victims—for the girls who died?'

"There was a half piece of white paper on the table between us, and he picked it up, crumpled it in his fist, and threw the ball of paper on the floor. 'That much,' he said. 'I care about those girls as much as I care about that piece of wadded-up paper. …' "

THE END

Ann Rule and her daughter, author Leslie Rule.
(Photo by Glenn Scott)

Ann Rule Bio

Ann Rule is regarded by many as the foremost true crime writer in America, and the author responsible for the genre as it exists today. She came to her career with a solid background in law enforcement and the criminal justice system. Both her grandfather and her uncle were Michigan sheriffs, her cousin was a Prosecuting Attorney, and another uncle was the Medical Examiner.

She is a former Seattle Policewoman, former caseworker for the Washington State Department of Public Assistance, and a former student intern at the Oregon State Training School for Girls.

Ann has been a full-time true crime writer since 1969. Over the past 30 years, she has published 33 books and 1400 articles, mostly on criminal cases. Ann has a BA from the University of Washington in Creative Writing, with minors in Psychology, Criminology and Penology. She has completed courses in Crime Scene Investigation, Police Administration, Crime Scene Photography and Arrest, Search, and Seizure, earning her an Associates Degree from Highline Community College. She also has a Master’s Degree in Compassionate Letters from Willamette University.