Lust Killer

  She remembered the sight of Jerry dressed up in the bra and girdle, the photograph of him grinning, wearing the black lace slip and high heels, and the ones of Jerry lying on the bed in female lingerie.

  Maybe that was it. Maybe that was against the law, and someone had found out.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Brudos wanted to talk again.

  Jim Stovall stacked his notes carefully in an outer office and walked into the interview room. Jerry looked a little tired, but he wanted to continue their discussion. He was more anxious now to ferret out what the police knew.

  "How would you know if I did it?"

  "What exactly are you talking about, Jerry?"

  "The girls. If you thought I killed those girls, how would you know anything if I didn't tell you?"

  "Certain things we know. Certain things you know. … "

  "What kind of things?"

  Stovall was silent for a moment, and then he said slowly, "Well, for instance, if it ever came to pass that you know something about clothing … "

  "Like what clothing?"

  "Items of clothing found … items that seemed out of place."

  "My clothing?"

  "No. "

  "Clothing that was out of place?"

  "Yes. "

  The answer popped out of the suspect's mouth swiftly—a slip, or deliberate? "You must mean the bra … "

  Stovall kept his own breathing steady and forced himself to continue casually doodling on his scratch pad. The answer was right, an answer that no one but Karen Sprinker's killer would know. That black longline bra with six hooks and eyes had been described to Karen's mother. And Mrs. Sprinker was positive that Karen had never had such a garment. It was too big, and totally different from Karen's own bras.

  Stovall would not pounce on the throwaway remark. If he did, Brudos might retreat and say nothing more. He would wait and let it drift back into the conversation later. He nodded slightly and went on to other areas. Brudos wanted to talk; he wanted to tell it all, but it had to be drawn out slowly.

  They talked about the girl in the dorm in Corvallis; that was known to the police, and Brudos knew that. She was just "someone to talk to," and not his type.

  What was his type?

  "Women who dress nicely and wear high-heeled shoes. I like shoes."

  Stovall agreed. "They look better than sneakers or flat heels, don't they?"

  Brudos nodded enthusiastically. "A lot better. I try to get my wife to wear high heels all the time, but she says they hurt her back."

  It was clear that talk of shoes excited Brudos and that he assumed that the detective had put no importance on the mention of the bra. "I collect shoes."

  "Where would you get shoes? You mean you buy them?"

  Brudos shook his head impatiently. "No … no. I take them from women."

  "How would something like that be accomplished?"

  "My lawyer doesn't want me to talk to you, you know."

  Stovall nodded, and waited. He could see that a wall of lawyers wasn't going to stop Brudos from bragging.

  "There was this one girl in Portland. Back a couple of years ago—maybe 1967. She lived out on South East Pine Street. I was working at Qeco-Osborne Electric Company then, and I was just driving around one day and I saw her. She was wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes. I guess I fell in love with her shoes. I started to follow her, and I noted the address of the apartment where she lived. I went back later—maybe it was early in the morning. It was dark. I didn't want her; I wanted her shoes."

  "How would you get in to take her shoes?"

  "I took off the window screen—it was already loose. I was only trying to get her shoes when she woke up and started to move. I had to choke her so she couldn't see me. She was wearing a two-piece pajama outfit. I unbuttoned the top and took off the bottoms and had sex with her. She was okay. She woke up when I finished, and I grabbed three pairs of her shoes—and a black bra—and left."

  "Did you take anything else?" He seemed surprised. He was not a thief. He only took underwear and shoes. "No, nothing else."

  "That's how you collect your underwear and shoes?"

  "Sometimes I find them on the clotheslines. Sometimes I have to go inside and steal them."

  "Was that the black bra we were talking about—is that where you got it?"

  "No, that was different. The one we were talking about was wide." Brudos held his hands six to eight inches apart to demonstrate. "It caught my attention on a clothesline in Portland a couple of years ago, and I took it."

  "And you saved it—kept it someplace?"

  "Yes. With the others."

  Brudos apparently felt quite safe. They had talked of such a minor thing as stealing underwear from clotheslines, and he had explained away the rape in Portland as only something that happened almost "accidentally" as part of his "collecting."

  Stovall had been careful not to evince shock or express judgment on any of the activities. The whole story of the long black bra would be more threatening to the prisoner, and he let it wait for the moment.

  "While you were living in Portland, did anything else happen?"

  "You mean the girl with the encyclopedias?"

  Bingo. "Yes. Her name was Linda."

  "She came to my house and I was out in the yard. I thought she was a boy at first—her hair was so short. She said she had an appointment with somebody at our house. I took her around to the rear door and into the basement and told her I wanted to buy the books."

  Stovall waited. "Was anyone else home?"

  "I told her we had company, but we didn't. My mother was upstairs with my little girl. She sat on a stool in the basement workshop trying to talk me into buying the encyclopedias. …

  "I walked around behind her. There was a two-by-four about four feet long there. I hit her with it and she fell off the stool. She was unconscious. Then I choked her and she died."

  Jerry Brudos had just admitted his first murder. Jim Stovall accepted it calmly, and Brudos continued describing the death of Linda Slawson.

  "My wife was out, but my mother was there. I went upstairs and told her to get some hamburgers. I went back downstairs, and then I heard this friend of mine from Corvallis calling out to me."

  "What was his name?"

  "Ned Rawls. I went out the back door again and around to the front. I told him I was making nitroglycerin in the basement and I couldn't talk, and he went away. I went back to the basement and took the girl out from where I hid her under the stairs."

  "Do you remember what she was wearing?"

  It had happened eighteen months earlier. Stovall knew that if the woman could be found, there would be nothing left but her clothing and her bones. A specific description of clothing or jewelry would be important.

  "Her outer clothes? No. She had a blue brassiere, slip, and girdle—and red panties. I dressed her and undressed her, like she was a big doll. I tried on some of my other things—from my collection.

  "I couldn't keep her there. There was my mother and my wife, and they would have found out."

  "So what did you do?"

  "Early in the morning, about two A.M., I loaded her into the car and took her to a bridge over the Willamette. I took the jack out of the car so it would look like I had a flat, and I threw her over."

  "She was never found."

  "No. I didn't think she would be. I weighted the body down."

  "With what?"

  Brudos paused for a moment. If he answered, he would be really getting into it. And then he answered: "With the head of a car engine."

  "Is there anything else you want to say about Linda Slawson?"

  "I cut her foot off."

  "You cut her foot off? When was that?"

  "Just before I threw her over. I couldn't keep her, but that was a small part I could save. I had a hacksaw and I cut her left foot off-because I'm right-handed. I took it home and put it in the freezer and used it for a photography model and to try shoes on."

  "
Do you still have it?"

  Brudos shook his head. "I couldn't. The women might have found it. After a while, I weighted it down too and threw it in the river."

  "Do you remember anything else about that girl? That would be Linda Slawson."

  "She had a ring. A class ring from some school back east. A Catholic school, I think."

  "She was not afraid of you?"

  "No. She was just sitting there trying to sell me books, and then she didn't see me with the board. After I hit her, she was unconscious."

  The floodgates were open, but there were three more cases—possibly others—to be got through. Jerry Brudos' demeanor had changed as he told of his crimes. He was cockier and more confident now. He had pulled off abductions that had baffled hundreds of police officers, and he seemed proud to be able to lay out the details of his plans.

  It would be a long, long day.

  "You know, Jerry, we're attempting to find out what happened to Jan Whitney. We found her car near the I-5, but we never did find her. Would you know what happened to her? It would have taken a lot of planning, I would think, to make a woman just disappear like that."

  Brudos smiled slightly.

  "Did you ever know Jan Whitney?"

  "Not really."

  "You encountered her in some way. Would that be it?"

  Brudos said nothing. The time sequence was closer; it was almost as if Linda Slawson's murder was not as threatening because it was so far back in his memory. But Jan Whitney had been missing only six months.

  "That's a long time back—back to last year," Stovall said. "A person could forget."

  That annoyed Brudos, apparently. "I remember."

  "You were living in Salem last November, weren't you? Were you working then?"

  "I was working in Lebanon."

  "That day Jan Whitney disappeared was a Tuesday. You worked that day?"

  "Yes. … Her car was broken down on the freeway. I saw it on my way home that night."

  "What color was it?"

  "It was a red-and-white Nash Rambler. It was sitting on the shoulder about two miles south of Albany. She was standing there, and two guys. Two hippie guys."

  That was a surprise to Jim Stovall. Jan Whitney hadn't been alone! If two men had been with her, they certainly hadn't come forward to aid in the investigation. But Brudos seemed adamant that there were two young men with her.

  "She was there with two other individuals? What did they look like?"

  Brudos shrugged. "Hippies. They all look alike. Long hair. Young. Jeans and headbands. Kids."

  "Were they with her, or had they come along?"

  "I gathered that she'd given them a ride, and her car broke down and they didn't know how to fix it. I offered to fix her car, but I didn't have my tools with me. I gave the three of them a ride to Salem and let the hippies off at an on-ramp so they could go on north."

  "She was willing to go on with you?"

  "Sure. I said I'd take her back and fix her car. I drove to my house on Center Street and pulled into my garage. I told her to wait there in the car while I told my wife I was going back to fix her car, and she did. I told her my tools were in the house.

  "My wife wasn't home. I came back and told the girl that I couldn't get into the house, that we'd have to wait a few minutes until my wife came home—made some excuse about where my wife was."

  "Did you expect your wife home in a few minutes?"

  Brudos shook his head. "Not for a couple of hours. She was over at her friend's house."

  "What did you do then?"

  "I got in my car and sat behind the girl. I said it was a funny thing to ask someone to close his eyes and try to explain how to tie a shoe. You know, without using your hands to show how, when you can't see."

  Brudos gestured with his hands, and Stovall saw that his fingernails were bitten to the quick, like a child's hands can be. It looked peculiar on a grown man.

  "And she did? She told you?"

  "She looked at me and started using her hands, and I told her that wasn't what I meant. That she had to turn her head around and look toward the front and tell me what to do without moving her hands. So she turned around, and she's saying, 'You take the right lace and you pass it over the left and underneath … ' and I took a mailman's leather strap I'd got from the house and made a loop over her head and pulled it tight around her throat. Then I opened the rear car door and put my end of the strap through it and closed it. She was pulled back and bent backward over the seat."

  "She was dead, then?" Stovall asked quietly.

  "She didn't move. She couldn't move. I went in the house to check to be sure my wife wasn't home, and she wasn't. I went back to the car, and she—the girl—was dead. I turned her around on the seat and had sex with her body from the rear."

  Jim Stovall had fully expected that the killer he had sought was a sexual psychopath. Jerry Brudos was not the first psychopath he had encountered, but he was the most monstrous. He was a sadist and a necrophile, his sexual desires fulfilled by engaging in erotic acts with women who were either unconscious or dead.

  Stovall felt sick; he could not betray his feelings or act on his natural desire to leave the room and get some fresh air. The process had begun. He was hearing what he had sought to hear when he began the dialogue two days ago. It seemed like two months.

  "Did you dispose of Jan Whitney's body? I would wonder how you managed that."

  "Not then. I took her into the workshop, and later I had sex with her again. I dressed her in some of my clothes collection and took pictures of her. I have a hook in my workshop, and I hoisted her up on a rope."

  "You couldn't keep her there forever."

  "No. I left her hanging there each day, and after work I would go out there and dress her and have sex with her. I was not sure what to do with her. I wanted something—something to keep."

  "You had pictures."

  "Something more. I thought I could make paperweights out of her breasts. I cut off her right breast and I was going to make a plastic mold and then I could make lead paperweights. I skinned out the breast and stretched the skin over a sawdust mound, and then I tacked the edges onto a board. I used plastic to make a mold, but it didn't work. I added too much hardener, and it didn't turn out like I wanted."

  Jim Stovall thought of the few killers in history whose fetishes had extended to mutilation and subsequent preservation of the bodies. It was a blessedly rare phenomenon. Until Brudos, Ed Gein of Wisconsin was the best known—and the little recluse who had hated his mother so much that he had killed her and other older women and made vests of their dried flesh. But Ed Gein had been a lifelong bachelor, absolutely ruled by his hated mother; this man had a wife, children, an education, and a brilliance in his work. And still he recounted the acting out of his terrible fantasies in a voice as commonplace as if he were describing how to rewire a lamp.

  Brudos' voice cut into Stovall's thoughts. "You guys almost caught me on Jan Whitney. I was scared to death."

  "What do you mean?"

  "The wife and I went to Portland around Thanksgiving, and I left the girl hanging in my shop. Some guy drove his car into my garage and left a hole in it. The police came out, and they wanted to get into the garage, but it was locked. That was close.

  "When I got home, I found their card and so I took the girl out of the workshop and put her in the pump house in the backyard and covered her with a sheet of plastic. Then I called the cops and they came out and checked my workshop. They never suspected anything, and there was this wide-open hole there. If they'd shone a light in, they maybe could have seen her hanging there. … "

  If only. If only. Those thoughts came up so often in a homicide investigation. If the victim had not gone where she had—if she had not somehow crossed the path of a killer ready to strike. If this had happened, then the tragedy would not have happened. For those who believe in fate, it is easier to fathom. If only Jan Whitney's body had been discovered in November 1968, then Brudos would have been st
opped. Then Karen Sprinker and Linda Salee would be alive.

  Stovall easily kept Brudos going on his monologue, so caught up was the prisoner in revealing his terrible scenario. "You did dispose of the body then?"

  "I threw her in a river. I weighted her down and threw her in a river. The water was very high."

  "Which river?"

  "The Willamette."

  "Where was that—at what point on the river?"

  "I don't care to say."

  "Was it in Portland?"

  "No."

  "Was it the Long Tom—and not the Willamette?"

  "I told you it was the Willamette. That's enough. It was a long time ago. It doesn't matter."

  Stovall wondered at Brudos' sudden reluctance; he would give the most minute and horrific details, and then balk at something that seemed simple. He seemed to believe that, without a body, he could not be convicted of killing Jan Whitney. He did not know that "corpus delecti" is not a human body at all, but rather "the body of the crime." He knew little of the law, obviously, despite his superior attitude.

  "Was it at Independence?"

  "I can't say."

  Stovall mentioned other bridges in the Salem area, but he thought Brudos' reaction to the suggestion of the bridge at Independence was the most telling. No body had been found there, and it might never be after six months without discovery.

  "Jan Whitney's car was not on the freeway when it was found. It was somewhere else."

  "I went back and moved it after I had her hoisted up in my shop. I tied it to mine with a tow bar and pulled it into the rest stop at Santiam. I was going to get rid of it entirely, but I saw three state police cars while I was towing it—two going south and one going north. I couldn't take the chance that one of them might stop me and ask about her car. So I just towed it into the Santiam rest stop, locked it, and left it."

  "What would you have used to weight Jan Whitney's body down? Whatever it was, it must have been effective."

  "Scrap iron. I had scrap iron out in the pumphouse."