00:00:05
NARRATOR: In January 1968, 19-year-old encyclopedia saleswoman Linda Slawson arrived on the doorstep of a family
00:00:14
home in Portland, Oregon. She was invited in by a seemingly kind stranger, but she would never leave.
00:00:22
While his children played above, the man of the house strangled Linda to death, before severing her foot
00:00:29
and dumping her body in a nearby river. ROD ENGLERT: And then he put her foot in a freezer
00:00:35
and would put shoes on this foot. NARRATOR: The depraved killer was local electrician,
00:00:42
Jerry Brudos. The 28-year-old appeared to be an upright family man, but he was keeping a dark secret very close to home.
00:00:52
LARS LARSON: If you can imagine, a man who would capture women while his wife and his two
00:00:57
small children are in the house. She's making dinner, and he's in the garage torturing a woman.
00:01:03
NARRATOR: Brudos killed four young women in the cruelest of circumstances before defiling their bodies
00:01:09
for his own twisted pleasure. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Brudos is intent on only one thing--
00:01:14
his own gratification at its most extreme. And that is one of the things that makes him
00:01:20
the most horrifying of killers. NARRATOR: The perverted desires of Jerry Brudos had erupted, turning him into one of the "World's Most
00:01:29
Evil Killers." [THEME MUSIC] In June 1969, Jerry Brudos was given three life sentences for murder.
00:01:58
Over a 15-month period, he abducted, raped, killed, and desecrated the bodies of four young women in Oregon.
00:02:07
The 30-year-old could not suppress his unhealthy desire for high-heel shoes. Rod Englert is a crime scene analyst
00:02:18
who visited Brudos' infamous kill room and spent time speaking with the sadistic killer.
00:02:25
ROD ENGLERT: I talked to him about what went through his mind, what was he thinking about
00:02:31
prior to picking up a victim? He would drive for hours at a time, all over looking for what he had in his mind
00:02:39
is that perfect victim walking in front of him. Because in his mind when he saw that, it had to have something.
00:02:47
What was it that it had to have? High-heel shoes. NARRATOR: Portland journalist and radio
00:02:54
talk show host, Lars Larson, also interviewed Brudos in prison. All of these women who were Brudos' victims
00:03:03
were women that all of us could imagine as wives, mothers, sisters, daughters. And they were simply disappearing
00:03:12
like a puff of smoke, and that made it particularly terrifying for the community.
00:03:17
Because they didn't know if the next day, it wouldn't be a member of their family
00:03:21
who was taken in this way. NARRATOR: Despite being incarcerated for over 35 years,
00:03:27
Brudos never showed any remorse for his horrendous crimes. ROD ENGLERT: The big question--
00:03:34
Jerry, if you got out today, would you not do it again? And there was a blank stare.
00:03:40
He just nodded like that. That's all he did. He would do it again. LARS LARSON: There was apparently no conscience.
00:03:49
There was apparently no remorse. Yeah, he was the personification of evil. NARRATOR: This killer story begins
00:03:57
in Webster, South Dakota. Jerome Brudos was born on the 31st of January 1939. The second son of Henry and Eileen, young Jerry
00:04:08
had a difficult upbringing. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Eileen, his mother, was rather solid figure.
00:04:14
And she really favored his elder brother, Larry. I think that was to color a great deal
00:04:23
of Jerry Brudos' childhood. An unaffectionate mother, a fairly remote father, so you've got this sort of runt-of-the-litter
00:04:33
concept of Brudos' childhood. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And the family were quite nomadic.
00:04:38
They moved around a lot. So Brudos didn't really get the chance to develop those stable peer relationships
00:04:45
that were really important to becoming who we are. NARRATOR: It was at a young age that Brudos first
00:04:51
discovered the fetish that would define him. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When Brudos was five,
00:04:57
he was just allowed to go and roam about and do what he wanted to do. So he was in a junkyard one day and he
00:05:03
came across a pair of quite elaborate, shiny, high-heeled shoes. And he would have been fascinated
00:05:09
by them, because his mother dressed very conservatively. These weren't the kind of shoes that he
00:05:14
would have seen her wearing. So they were-- they were something quite intriguing
00:05:19
GEOFFREY WANSELL: And develops what one almost call it an excitement about them,
00:05:24
and indeed takes them home. His mother is very, very disapproving. And indeed so disapproving, she burns them.
00:05:33
Now, that is the genesis in my mind of what turned Jerry Brudos into a shoe fetishist.
00:05:40
That single moment completely altered the trajectory of the rest of his life. NARRATOR: As the family settled in Oregon in the early 1950s,
00:05:52
the now teenage Brudos' fascination with women's shoes took a more sinister turn.
00:06:00
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: The obsession which started off with shoes then expanded to women's underwear.
00:06:05
And he would steal women's underwear, and he would wear it, and he would play with it.
00:06:10
And I think he starts to experience feelings of comfort and feelings of arousal.
00:06:15
So these are things, I think, that are quite kind of confusing for him but quite intriguing
00:06:20
at the same time. ROD ENGLERT: Brudos collected his high heels and underwear, the thefts of them, from clothes lines,
00:06:29
sneaking through neighborhoods. This was a challenge to him. And it's not about the sex, it's about power,
00:06:36
what can I get away with? NARRATOR: Brudos' next twisted plan was to photograph a naked girl.
00:06:43
Aged 17, he lured one of his neighbors into his house and threatened her with a knife.
00:06:51
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When she'd taken her clothes off under his orders, he took photographs of her.
00:06:56
And I think at this point, he hadn't thought much beyond taking photographs, but he knows
00:07:01
that he can control women. He knows he can get them to do what he wants them to do.
00:07:05
And this sets a really dangerous precedent. NARRATOR: The girl didn't report Brudos to the police, which
00:07:12
only spurred him on further. Eight months later, he escalated the intensity of his attacks.
00:07:20
He persuades a 17-year-old girl to get into his car on the pretext of giving her a lift home.
00:07:27
He doesn't give her a lift home. He takes to a remote spot and beats her, assaults her,
00:07:33
brutally, because she refuses to take off all her clothes for him and let him photograph her.
00:07:41
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: This is somebody who's been fantasizing about the-- the control that he has over women.
00:07:46
This is somebody who's been able to get women to do what he wants before. And now, he's got somebody who is not playing ball,
00:07:53
and he doesn't like it. So this violent reaction, it's not particularly surprising one to me.
00:08:00
NARRATOR: This time, Brudos didn't get away with it. A couple overheard the assault taking place
00:08:06
and called the police. In the spring of 1956, instead of facing a prison sentence,
00:08:13
Brudos was committed to Oregon State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It's concluded that he's
00:08:20
having what was described as an aberrant adolescence, a sexual deviation with fetishism.
00:08:29
It's also suggested that there may be an element of schizophrenia in his condition.
00:08:38
ROD ENGLERT: It was mentioned at the time that he couldn't be rehabilitated, that he had a sociopathic issue that couldn't be rehabilitated.
00:08:49
GEOFFREY WANSELL: But what you have now is the beginnings of a full-scale sexual predator.
00:08:55
If you like, the genesis from the cocoon is beginning to emerge. NARRATOR: Brudos spent his days at school and his nights
00:09:03
in the hospital. Despite the reports suggesting he could not be rehabilitated, the 17-year-old was released after just nine months
00:09:13
in December 1956. LARS LARSON: After he left school, Brudos, he did do a short stint in the military,
00:09:20
but then he became a commercial electrician and began to-- to do wiring jobs. NARRATOR: By 1963, the 24-year-old
00:09:30
was working for a local radio station in Corvallis, Oregon. It was there he met his wife, 17-year-old Darcie.
00:09:40
GEOFFREY WANSELL: They begin a relationship, get married, and have the first child.
00:09:45
Brudos hasn't really changed. What he wants Darcie to do is to do all the housework naked,
00:09:55
or only wearing underwear, or only wearing a pair of high-heel shoes. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And that is typical
00:10:00
of an abusive situation. It's typical of coercive control. He's got this much younger woman who is completely
00:10:08
kind of under his command. And when he orders her to walk around naked at home, or wearing lingerie, she does it.
00:10:18
Because, I think, he has got such kind of influence over her in this relationship.
00:10:25
NARRATOR: By 1967, the couple had welcomed a second child into the world, and Darcie had refused to continue
00:10:33
dressing up for her husband. Jerry Brudos would have to go looking for his thrills
00:10:39
elsewhere. GEOFFREY WANSELL: In May 1967, he's been stalking a woman, and he breaks into her house when she's asleep.
00:10:48
Now he's really there to steal her underwear. But sadly, she wakes up while he's in the midst of stealing,
00:10:57
and he attacks her, rapes her, and flees. It's the action of a man who has lost control of his own capacities.
00:11:09
On the surface, hard-working family man, underneath a cauldron of sexual desire,
00:11:18
a fetish of the desire to hurt women. NARRATOR: In April 1969, Oregon State police
00:11:26
were searching for four missing young women who'd vanished over a 15-month period.
00:11:32
The latest girl to go missing was secretary and part-time student, Linda Salee. Becky New was just 10 years old when
00:11:41
her big sister disappeared. BECKY NEW: She was 22, and she was like a second mom, babysat me, took me to "Mary Poppins,"
00:11:55
you know? That kind of stuff. Of course we had our moments. [CHUCKLES] I was kind of a brat, but she was always good to me.
00:12:08
NARRATOR: On the 23rd of April 1969, Linda headed out to a shopping mall in Portland.
00:12:16
BECKY NEW: The last time I saw my sister Linda, she was going to Lloyd Center and get like a birthday present
00:12:24
for her boyfriend or fiance. And that's all I remember. And she didn't come back.
00:12:32
NARRATOR: Linda Salee didn't arrive at her boyfriend's birthday party or for work the following day.
00:12:39
Her worried parents dialed 911. BECKY NEW: As far as I know, they called the police
00:12:45
as soon as they could. I, that night, had a dream that she was in a meadow. And she was happy.
00:12:57
[SNIFFS] And, uh, I kept having that dream, over and over, and, uh, it's just weird.
00:13:06
She just disappeared. NARRATOR: Linda had become the fourth girl to go missing in the Portland area in just over a year.
00:13:19
LARS LARSON: I think people were terrorized at the time. Because they knew that there was somebody taking young women
00:13:24
off the street in positions where it's not somebody who goes to a remote area late at night
00:13:32
and is involved in some other activity that might put them greatly at risk. These were women from the community who were just
00:13:40
going about their daily lives. NARRATOR: On the 10th of May 1969, 17 days after Linda's disappearance,
00:13:52
authorities were alerted when two fishermen made a grisly discovery in the Long Tom River.
00:14:00
BECKY NEW: The first news that we heard was when they found a body in the-- in the river,
00:14:06
and then, we kinda was wondering if it was her, and turned out it was. NARRATOR: The police didn't know it yet,
00:14:18
but Linda's killer was a 30-year-old local electrician named Jerry Brudos. On the 23rd of April, Linda Salee
00:14:27
had been walking back to her car at the Lloyd Center Shopping Mall, with her arms filled with birthday
00:14:34
presents for her boyfriend. Brudos approached the 22-year-old, claiming to be a security officer.
00:14:42
He accused Linda of shoplifting, sat her down in his car, and drove her away. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Linda was taken back to the garage,
00:14:51
the killing ground. But Brudos doesn't immediately kill her. He keeps her in the garage and goes
00:14:56
to have supper with his family. And then, returns to the garage and strangles her.
00:15:04
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: I think that process of switching from murderer to family man eating dinner,
00:15:09
and then, back again, is-- it's one that many of us struggle to understand. Because when we hurt other people,
00:15:15
we-- we feel bad about it. We feel guilty. But Brudos doesn't. He doesn't have that-- that conscience.
00:15:21
He doesn't have that empathy. He is literally able to just put one part of his life down
00:15:26
and go and see to another one. So it is very chilling. It is very, very difficult to comprehend,
00:15:32
but that's what's going on there. NARRATOR: Brudos had been abducting and killing
00:15:37
women for 15 months. Linda Salee had become his fourth victim. BECKY NEW: First, he tied her up and kept her for a while.
00:15:47
And she happened to get away, or almost got out of her restraints. And he happened to come back into the garage and caught her,
00:15:58
and she fought like hell, but it wasn't enough. She was just like my height, and he's like six foot,
00:16:06
so it wasn't much of a-- I mean, she tried. She tried like heck, but it didn't--
00:16:15
I wish it had. NARRATOR: Brudos strangled Linda with a strap of a postal bag and raped the 22-year-old as she lay dying.
00:16:28
The 30-year-old shoe fetishist had taken his obsession to deadly extremes. ROD ENGLERT: She crossed his path, he saw shoes,
00:16:37
and he has to have her. And that was his modus operandi. NARRATOR: Linda Salee's post-mortem revealed
00:16:45
that not only had she been strangled by the killer, but her lifeless body had been experimented on.
00:16:52
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: After he killed Linda, he violates her body in a whole new way.
00:16:58
So he puts hypodermic syringes at the sides of her ribs and attaches electrical nodes to them,
00:17:05
and tries to get her body kind of reanimated, essentially. This doesn't work. It fails.
00:17:11
All that happens is that he burns her skin. But for me, this says that-- that Brudos is an offender
00:17:16
who will constantly be trying to improve and refine his offenses. And he's an incredibly dangerous man at this point.
00:17:28
NARRATOR: Linda's murder still affects her family over 50 years on. BECKY NEW: My mom, she never got over it.
00:17:39
Never. And she used to call me Linda once in a while, by accident. And she missed her.
00:17:47
And you can't talk about it much without crying, even after all these years. He took my sister away from me.
00:17:57
I had no sister anymore. Now, it's hard. That was really hard. NARRATOR: Jerry Brudos had begun his murderous career
00:18:10
15 months earlier in January 1968, when an encyclopedia saleswoman turned up at the former home of the dangerous predator in Portland.
00:18:22
GEOFFREY WANSELL: Linda Slawson knocks on the door of Jerry Brudos. Perfectly conventional family scene-- his mother's there
00:18:31
and the two children, his wife Darcie's out at work, and on his front doorstep, presents a 19-year-old.
00:18:39
Well I don't think Jerry Brudos could believe his good luck. NARRATOR: Brudos feigned an interest in the encyclopedias
00:18:46
and invited Linda into the basement of his house. GEOFFREY WANSELL: There must have
00:18:51
been a moment in which Linda thought to herself, this is very strange. But, without warning, he hits her over the head with a plank,
00:19:00
making her unconscious. Then he strangles her. Remember, he can hear the footsteps of his children
00:19:08
above him. He strangled a woman he's never met before in the basement of his own house.
00:19:15
NARRATOR: Brudos spent hours dressing and undressing Linda's body. By 2:00 AM, he realized he would have to dispose of her,
00:19:24
but wanted to keep a memento of his first kill. The perverted shoe fetishist decided to saw off her foot.
00:19:32
LARS LARSON: He wanted that foot to be kept because he couldn't keep the whole body, but he would
00:19:37
keep the foot in a freezer and that allowed him to relive the sexual fantasy of seeing
00:19:42
this woman's foot in a shoe. Even though for any normal person, seeing a severed amputated foot would be disgusting
00:19:52
on its face, for Jerry Brudos, this was a sexual fantasy of his. This was something that--
00:20:01
that couldn't fight back against him. NARRATOR: Brudos tied the rest of Linda's body
00:20:08
to an engine head and threw it into the Willamette River. 10 months later, he would claim a second victim.
00:20:17
In November 1968, Brudos drove past a broken-down vehicle. 22-year-old Jan Whitney had been driving
00:20:25
to the University of Oregon three days before Thanksgiving. GEOFFREY WANSELL: Why don't you come with me, you know, just
00:20:32
pop into the house, and I'll-- I'll come straight back to the car and fix it up.
00:20:36
Away you go, you'll be fine. Well, why would Jan think that particularly worrying?
00:20:42
He was upright enough kind of character. He didn't have a hook or a claw, or he didn't wear a devil's mask.
00:20:48
He was just an ordinary bloke in Oregon. ROD ENGLERT: And he was able to, while she was in the car,
00:20:55
he would've got into the backseat and put that strap over her neck from behind, and then closed the ends of the strap into the rear door.
00:21:03
And then in his home, he took her into his garage. And then, also had sex with her.
00:21:10
He's a necrophiliac-- uh, intercourse with the dead. GEOFFREY WANSELL: And it really--
00:21:17
he's like a-- a cat with a mouse. It's as if he's playing with the body of this poor, dead young woman.
00:21:28
NARRATOR: For days, Brudos left Jan Whitney hanging in the garage workshop of his new family home
00:21:34
in Salem, Oregon, regularly changing her clothes and defiling her body. GEOFFREY WANSELL: It is like an element of fiction.
00:21:43
Just out of the blue sudden killing. Why should you expect it? Innocent, young woman driving to the University of Oregon,
00:21:51
you don't expect to come across somebody who's gonna strangle you in front of the car.
00:21:55
But of course, that's not Brudos' point, really. Brudos' point is the body-- it's the body that he wants.
00:22:03
NARRATOR: Brudos removed Jan's breasts before weighing her body down and dumping
00:22:08
her in the Willamette River. She would not be discovered until eight months later
00:22:13
in July 1969. The killer then towed Jan's car away from his home. GEOFFREY WANSELL: He's not gonna leave her car
00:22:22
at the side of the road. So once he's had his way with the body, he goes back and moves the car from the side
00:22:31
of the road to a service station so nobody's gonna miss it. Indeed, he locks it up.
00:22:37
Brudos is covering his tracks. NARRATOR: In just 10 months, Jerry Brudos had taken the lives of two women.
00:22:45
But his lust for high heels and murder was about to intensify even further. The 30-year-old shoe fetishist had killed Linda Slawson
00:22:55
and Jan Whitney in 1968. And by March 1969, he was ready to strike again. He comes across a 19-year-old Karen Sprinker in the car park
00:23:09
of Oregon State University. He has a pistol, and he abducts her, forces her into his car at gunpoint.
00:23:19
NARRATOR: Brudos kept Karen detained in the garage workshop of the family home in Salem that he shared
00:23:25
with his wife and two children. He raped the college freshman before reaching for his camera.
00:23:33
ROD ENGLERT: There's pictures that he took of her, and she's standing in the nude, in his garage,
00:23:39
and she has a look of somewhat of approval on her face, and that's called fear paralysis.
00:23:46
In other words, she knew she was in trouble. He told me that she did everything that she could--
00:23:51
don't shoot me. Please, don't shoot me. NARRATOR: Brudos put a rope around Karen's neck
00:23:58
and hanged her until she was dead. But not before he took pleasure in seeing her struggle.
00:24:05
ROD ENGLERT: He had an eye hook. An eye hook is like a round device in the ceiling-- that
00:24:10
screws into the ceiling, and the cable would go into that-- the hook would go into that.
00:24:15
And hang down, and then he would put that around their neck, and then jack it up and he would ask her.
00:24:22
He said, OK, does that hurt? Does that hurt? And he got off on the fact that, [HEELS TAPPING] in her heels,
00:24:29
those high-heel shoes were kicking the side and the back of his wall. He smiled when he talked about it.
00:24:37
Women to him are expendable. Women to him are no more than a piece of gum that you're tired of and you-- you throw away.
00:24:46
NARRATOR: After sexually violating Karen's lifeless body, Brudos continued to defile her.
00:24:53
ROD ENGLERT: Karen Sprinker's breasts were cut off. And they were cut off so that he could make a mold.
00:25:02
These individuals, serial murderers, like to keep souvenirs. And it was not about the sex.
00:25:10
It's just like keeping something to remember by, keeping something so that he can relive this
00:25:19
again, until the next victim. GEOFFREY WANSELL: This is a man utterly out of control, fulfilling every dark fantasy that he ever had.
00:25:30
He's mutilating a young woman he's abducted, killed, and he's using her body as though it
00:25:37
were a toy, a plaything. It's very hard to imagine the worst kind of depravity than that.
00:25:45
NARRATOR: After taking the life of Karen Sprinker, Brudos didn't wait long before hunting for his next victim.
00:25:53
On the 21st of April 1969, 24-year-old secretary Sharon Wood was on her usual Monday morning trip to work.
00:26:03
SHARON WOOD: So it was beautiful spring day. It was one of those days in April, a rare Portland day
00:26:08
where you didn't need a coat. And I, um, had dropped my children off at the sitter.
00:26:15
And then, I went to work, and I worked all day. And when I couldn't find my keys after a day of work,
00:26:22
I asked my work study student, Alex, if he could just cover for me. I was gonna run down to that garage and see,
00:26:29
maybe I'd left my keys in the car. NARRATOR: Not only could Sharon not find her car keys,
00:26:36
she'd forgotten the whereabouts she'd parked. SHARON WOOD: So here I am, not knowing for sure where I'm
00:26:43
going because I can't remember what floor I'm supposed to be on. As I'm changing my mind about--
00:26:50
oh, I'm down here. No, I'm upstairs. No, I'm down here. No, I'm upstairs. So I'm turning, my body's turning,
00:26:58
and suddenly, I realized, there's somebody behind me, and they're turning every time I turn.
00:27:06
I haven't seen this person, I just feel this presence. And then, I feel a tap on my shoulder.
00:27:14
And what I remember is, him saying, ma'am-- and he said something like, you, too?
00:27:22
Like he's lost, too. So I was off like a shot. Like, I'm going for the daylight.
00:27:29
And then, he pulled a gun and pointed the gun at me and said, if you don't scream, I won't shoot you.
00:27:40
NARRATOR: Despite the order to comply, Sharon's instincts were to stand up to Jerry Brudos.
00:27:47
SHARON WOOD: I just started screaming. I start backing up. He came at me. And then, he got his arm around my neck
00:27:55
and somehow, his thumb got in my mouth, and I bit down. So hard. And then, I didn't even know I had, what you call,
00:28:07
fear paralysis? That's when your jaw locks, and you just can't move. And he's much bigger than I am.
00:28:15
I always call him an army tank of a man. He was kind of scary-looking. But there we were, and I am biting, and I cannot let go.
00:28:24
And we were going around, and around, and around. NARRATOR: As the tussle continued,
00:28:30
the sound of a nearby car starting and a flash of headlights, startled both Sharon and Brudos.
00:28:38
SHARON WOOD: He grabbed my hair. I had very long hair. And he pulled me backwards, and he beat my head
00:28:46
against the concrete until my jaw would relax, because it would not relax. That was it.
00:28:54
He jumped up, ran off, and then I'm laying there dazed. And then he comes back up to retrieve his gun.
00:29:03
And, uh, when he comes back, I think, oh, no. He's gonna shoot me. NARRATOR: But Luckily for the 24-year-old,
00:29:11
Brudos grabbed his gun and ran. Sharon was left completely stunned. SHARON WOOD: I felt like I'd just been hit by a tsunami.
00:29:20
It was over very quickly. I'd no idea what had happened to me. I assumed I was dead.
00:29:27
And, um, I just was so sad I-- I am never gonna see my children again. But you don't really have time to think about it.
00:29:34
It's like throwing a match on kerosene. You know, it just goes off, and you're there,
00:29:41
and you're fighting the fire to save your life. You have no other feelings, or no other thoughts,
00:29:48
but surviving. NARRATOR: Just two days after the attack on Sharon Wood, Jerry Brudos murdered
00:29:56
his fourth victim, Linda Salee. The 30-year-old electrician had perfected his method of hiding
00:30:04
bodies by tying them to heavy engine parts before throwing them into local rivers.
00:30:11
LARS LARSON: Those seem to be his favorite dumping sites, because he knew that if he took a body to a river
00:30:18
and could make it stay underwater for a period of time-- maybe not indefinitely, but for a period
00:30:24
of time, that it would be very difficult for that body to be discovered. NARRATOR: On the 12th of May 1969,
00:30:32
just 48 hours after Linda Salee had been discovered, divers searching for evidence in the Long Tom River
00:30:40
found the body of Karen Sprinker. Detectives decided to question students in Callahan Hall at the University of Oregon
00:30:49
where Karen had been living. It just so happened, at the same time, Jerry Brudos had changed his MO.
00:30:57
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Brudos is becoming incredibly bold, incredibly confident in his offending,
00:31:02
at this point in time. So he starts phoning up the dorm rooms of a local university
00:31:08
and asking to-- to speak to a woman of a particular name, and he-- he just makes the name up.
00:31:13
But he knows that this is going to be a way of actually getting to talk to young women.
00:31:19
And when he does this, he asks them out on dates. NARRATOR: One student agreed to go for a drink with Brudos,
00:31:27
but she'd remember the date for all the wrong reasons. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: When he's in the car with her
00:31:33
and they're-- they're driving, he says, well, how-- how did you know that-- that I wouldn't marry
00:31:38
you and-- and dump you in the river? And-- and then, she was really taken aback by this.
00:31:43
Because, you know, people can make those kind of comments, how did you know that you could trust me?
00:31:48
But this was incredibly specific. And I think it-- it was that specificity that caused
00:31:53
her to contact the police. NARRATOR: The girl arranged a second date. But when Brudos arrived, it was the police
00:32:01
who were waiting for him. Detectives questioned the 30-year-old electrician. They had no reason to arrest him,
00:32:08
but decided to keep Brudos under surveillance. Armed with a photograph of Brudos,
00:32:14
detectives went to visit women who'd been attacked over the past 15 months in the Portland area.
00:32:21
One of those was 24-year-old Sharon Wood. SHARON WOOD: So, they came out to my mother's house
00:32:27
and they had, I guess you'd call 'em, mug shot? So I was looking through the book,
00:32:32
and so I was able to identify him in that book. NARRATOR: Sharon wasn't the only person to identify Brudos.
00:32:40
A 15-year-old girl who'd been attacked on the 22nd of April 1969, the day after Sharon and the day before Linda Salee's
00:32:50
murder, also picked him out. SHARON WOOD: He's very distinctive-looking. He had a sandy, really short hair,
00:32:57
what I call eyes-- blue eyes, and this kind of really heavy-lidded little eyes. But he was a regular guy.
00:33:05
He was an electrician. He was married. He had two kids. I mean, who knew? NARRATOR: On the 30th of May 1969,
00:33:14
detectives made the decision to arrest Jerry Brudos. But when they tracked him down to the home of a friend
00:33:21
in Corvallis, Oregon, he and his entire family were nowhere to be found. Investigators were going to charge him with assault,
00:33:30
but they were certain he was also responsible for at least two murders-- Karen Sprinker and Linda Salee, whose bodies had been
00:33:38
found in the Long Tom River. ROD ENGLERT: Number one, they are all tied the same way.
00:33:44
Number two, they all had engine parts attached to their bodies. And number three, there were parts on the body
00:33:51
that-- that led back to Brudos' home. So all of that indicated that this is the act of one person.
00:34:00
The odds of it being two people doing the same kind of thing doesn't fit. It's like a fingerprint, you know.
00:34:07
This is the work of one individual. NARRATOR: When the police finally intercepted Brudos'
00:34:14
car, his wife Darcie was behind the wheel with her two children next to her. The 30-year-old killer was hiding
00:34:21
under a sheet in the back. After three days of questioning, Brudos finally told detectives,
00:34:28
in gruesome detail, how he'd killed three women in the workshop of his family home,
00:34:33
and one in the basement of his previous home. GEOFFREY WANSELL: And on the 3rd of June 1969,
00:34:39
Brudos confesses to the killings. He could hardly not. Because to be honest, he knew that once the police
00:34:46
searched his house and his garage, there was no going back. ELIZABETH YARDLEY: And this is because he
00:34:53
is proud of what he's done. He's committed all of these murders. He's caused so much harm, so much trauma,
00:34:59
and he wants credit for it. But we have to be really cautious, because he's telling a story.
00:35:04
He's telling a story that he wants other people to hear, so it won't be 100% truthful.
00:35:10
There will be elements that we will never know in terms of what these victims experienced.
00:35:15
But this was the narrative that he wanted to stick. NARRATOR: During the confession, Brudos also admitted
00:35:23
to the attempted abductions of Sharon Wood and a 15-year-old girl. Detectives began a search of his home.
00:35:32
ROD ENGLERT: Once he was arrested, items were found in his residence, such as the car keys and the apartment
00:35:40
key that belonged to Whitney. What was he doing in possession of something-- of somebody he never knew?
00:35:46
He never had contact with? NARRATOR: The car key fit the lock of Jan Whitney's car
00:35:51
that Brudos had abandoned after killing her seven months previously. Investigators also searched the 30-year-old's workshop,
00:36:00
the area of his Salem home that had been turned into his kill room. ROD ENGLERT: Numerous photographs were found there,
00:36:07
fell back behind a workbench, because he's trying to hide all of this stuff. In one of the photographs itself was, uh,
00:36:16
the one of Karen Sprinker, where she's in the nude. Very beautiful young girl. Her hair was long, she's very lithe,
00:36:25
and she has on high-heel shoes, and she's standing there with the look like-- whatever, it's blank.
00:36:34
NARRATOR: Police unearthed piles of lady's underwear, and in Brudos' attic, they found 40 pairs of high-heeled shoes.
00:36:42
Amongst the pictures in his workshop was one that chillingly revealed the killer's face.
00:36:50
ROD ENGLERT: He could look into the mirror, and then he could see the reflection
00:36:54
from her groin area-- area-- of vaginal area, into the mirror. So he took a picture of it.
00:37:01
Well, he also took a picture of himself. So you can actually see, it's actually Jerry Brudos.
00:37:08
And that photograph was big, as far as a piece of evidence. LARS LARSON: I think Jerome Brudos took those pictures
00:37:18
because it aroused him. And I think that having tortured a woman, he wanted to be able to go back and relive the torture,
00:37:26
even though to camouflage his murders, he had to dispose of the body parts and dispose of these young women in the most horrific way.
00:37:35
But having those photos allowed him to go back and look at the photos and relive the experience
00:37:42
of torturing these women. NARRATOR: In June 1969, Jerry Brudos was arraigned for the murders of Jan Whitney, Karen
00:37:51
Sprinker, and Linda Salee. Despite his confession, there was not enough evidence
00:37:57
to charge him with the killing of his first victim, Linda Slawson. Her body has never been found.
00:38:04
ELIZABETH YARDLEY: Brudos' initially plea was not guilty by reason of insanity. And I think this is-- this is quite a sophisticated thing
00:38:12
that he does. I think he has that understanding of his own deviance, of his own perversions.
00:38:18
He knows that people are gonna look at his crimes and go, this guy's bonkers. He's crazy.
00:38:22
So I think this is an attempt to try and secure a good outcome for himself. GEOFFREY WANSELL: And then a little later,
00:38:30
he changed his plea to guilty. Because I think that the evidence was so overwhelming that there was little else that he could
00:38:41
do. NARRATOR: On the 27th of June 1969, Jerry Brudos was given three life sentences.
00:38:51
He would never be free again. 23 years later in 1992, radio reporter Lars Larson
00:39:00
was given the opportunity to interview the 53-year-old killer. LARS LARSON: They put us in a small room
00:39:07
with a desk in it that was used as an overflow office, and they said, OK, go ahead.
00:39:12
Do the interview. So we were face-to-face with him for a little over two hours. And it-- and it was creepy.
00:39:19
Very, very creepy. NARRATOR: Lars found Brudos to be unremarkable, yet extremely callous.
00:39:27
LARS LARSON: And the funny thing is, if you had passed him on the street-- he had a big round face, and he was kind of a heavyset guy,
00:39:34
but he's big powerful guy, but he would have struck you as just Joe average. Just an average-looking guy.
00:39:41
Nothing really all that distinguishing about him. But his affect was very strange.
00:39:47
He would laugh about things that were completely inappropriate. He's talking about murdering, dismembering, and then dumping
00:39:55
the bodies of young women attached to a piece of iron into a river to rot like a piece of garbage.
00:40:02
And while he's talking about this, he's laughing about things. ROD ENGLERT: He loves talking about his cases.
00:40:09
But he's also crafty enough to hide some that he may not wanna talk about. That being maybe, for him, even over the top.
00:40:17
In my personal opinion, I have no facts or basis to know that he has other victims,
00:40:22
but I know he tried others, and there may be some. Maybe. NARRATOR: Brudos was twice refused parole
00:40:29
in 1977 and 1999, much to the relief of the people whose lives he ruined. BECKY NEW: I got mad when I got older.
00:40:41
I was in junior high. We had prisoners from the Oregon State Penitentiary come and talk to the kids.
00:40:53
I asked, do you know Jerome Henry Brudos? And they said, yeah, why? And I go, because he killed my sister.
00:41:01
And you tell him, he'll never get out of prison alive. It just came out. I couldn't hold it in anymore.
00:41:10
And I figured, that's the closest I'm gonna get to being able to talk to him. And so I did.
00:41:32
SHARON WOOD: My hope in talking about this is that somebody, somewhere, just might hear how important it is to be aware
00:41:41
of your circumstances. And I'm still very sad about it. Very sad that there are the parents of those girls who will
00:41:49
never get to be grandparents. I have 11 grandchildren and a great grandson. And that would never be the experience
00:41:59
of those young women's family. They-- they didn't get to have those things. NARRATOR: Jerry Brudos became the longest serving
00:42:08
inmate in the state of Oregon. He spent 37 years in prison before he died of liver cancer
00:42:15
in March 2006, at the age of 67. Those who had the opportunity to speak to him never saw any signs of redemption.
00:42:27
ROD ENGLERT: I asked Brudos about the remorse that he had for the victims. He had no remorse, whatsoever.
00:42:32
They were just-- they were expendable to him. LARS LARSON: Brudos hated women. To make them feel terrified while they were still alive,
00:42:41
to take their life and then to take parts of them off, and then to keep them as sexual trophies,
00:42:48
he clearly hated women with a passion. But it also sexually excited him that he could hurt women.
00:42:56
NARRATOR: Brudos was a sexual predator who preyed not only on the women who happened to cross his path,
00:43:02
but on the shoes they wore. His fetishism spiraled out of control and led to the most horrific murders--
00:43:10
to kill four young women and gruesomely desecrate their bodies for no other reason
00:43:16
than his own self-gratification makes Jerry Brudos one of the "World's Most Evil Killers."
00:43:23
[MUSIC PLAYING]