Lust Killer

  "Yes, sir."

  Darcie watched as piece after piece of evidence was introduced, identified by Pinnick, and accepted. Here in the courtroom, it all seemed to have a macabre air—although some of the items were quite familiar to her: the blue shag rug (that Jerry had said he needed to keep his feet warm in the workshop), his tool chest, the vise, a gas can, a green plastic wastebasket, a reloading device for ammunition, his rock tumbler, a blue wooden box and a gray metal kitchen stool. She had seen all those things on the rare occasion that he allowed her into the workshop. She was not sure what they might possibly have to do with his crimes.

  For the rest of the day, the morass of evidence grew, and as it grew, Darcie began to feel physically ill.

  There were the shoes—she had seen none of them. The women's low shoes with laces she had never seen before. Were they Karen Sprinker's? The prosecution said they had been. And all of the others. Where had he gotten them, and how had he kept them so secret from her?

  All the things the police had found in the attic. Gortmaker lifted packages from a huge box, packages to be opened to show that they contained so many brassieres … and girdles. Jerry had obviously stolen these things, and she had had no idea.

  Her attorneys had warned Darcie that there would be terrible pictures, and now they were handed to Lieutenant Pinnick for identification, passed to the defense table for Darcie's perusal, and then given to the jury. She was afraid she was going to vomit.

  She saw the hanging body of a woman who hung as still as death from a hook in Jerry's workshop, her face covered with a black hood. The next girl, who had to be Karen Sprinker—she recognized her face from newspaper stories—gazed into the camera with an awful kind of fear in her eyes. She wore only panties and shiny black pumps, and she stood on Jerry's blue rug. …

  There was a black notebook—she had never seen it before—and it held pages of pictures of naked female torsos. The women photographed had no heads; they had been snipped from the photos. Why? To avoid identification? Or as a symbolic gesture of violence? Darcie studied the headless nude photos and wondered who they were—or who they had been.

  There were pictures of Jerry. Jerry dressed grotesquely in women's underclothing—wearing a black slip, stockings, and high heels. She had seen him like this, but she had put it out of her mind.

  And then the worst picture of all. The dead girl hanging from the ceiling by the rope around her neck. And Jerry. Her husband's face was there, too; he had leaned too far over the mirror on the floor, photographing himself along with the dead woman when he snapped this terrible picture.

  Darcie looked up at the jury and saw that their faces were gray and sickened as they passed the pictures down the line. She saw a woman look at one of the pictures, shut her eyes against the image, and swallow hard.

  What else would they show? Darcie knew she was living in a nightmare now. How could she have been in the same house with Jerry and not have realized how sick he was? How could she convince anyone that she had not known?

  She opened her eyes and saw that Lieutenant Pinnick was holding up the breast paperweight that Jerry had explained away so blithely. Now she could see it for what it was. A life model of a full female breast, almost five inches across.

  "Where was this mold located?" District Attorney Gortmaker asked.

  "In the home."

  "In the home?"

  "Yes, sir. It was on a shelf above the fireplace."

  Darcie felt the jurors' eyes turn toward her. She knew they were wondering how she could have avoided seeing this exhibit. She bent her head toward the yellow legal pad Mr. Burt had given her. He had told her she could take notes if she liked—but it was really only something to do with her hands when she could no longer bear the stares and whispers.

  When the long day in court was finally over, the clerk's desk was piled with the evidence. Not against Jerry—not really now—because Jerry was in prison.

  She was the one on trial.

  Darcie Brudos had seen Edna Beecham's name on the state's witness list, and she'd been confused by it. She could not imagine what Edna Beecham might have to say. Edna Beecham was a friend, although not a close friend. Just a talkative, slightly gossipy woman who'd been pleasant over coffee.

  Edna Beecham would not look at her now; she seemed too eager to plunge into her testimony. So eager, in fact, that Judge Hay had to caution the witness to slow down and tell only those things that were responsive to the questions Gortmaker posed to her.

  "Please tell the jury what you remember of March 27, 1969."

  "I was at my sister's house that day."

  "Can you point out on the map behind you where your sister's home is located, please."

  Edna Beecham took the pointer and indicated a house whose yard touched the Brudos garage.

  "Mark it with an X if you will, Mrs. Beecham."

  Darcie waited while Edna Beecham made a careful cross on the map and then took her seat again.

  "What time was it that you were visiting your sister?"

  "All day. I was visiting from over in Bend. I was looking out the dining-room window about one-thirty P.M. I saw Mr. Brudos. He was pushing something—someone—with a blanket around them from the garage toward the kitchen door. The kitchen door was open. There were three cement steps that went up to the porch … it's a kind of cement platform there. Mrs. Brudos was standing there on the porch part …"

  Darcie's mouth fell open in shock, and she turned to whisper to Mr. Burt, but he only shook his head slightly. Mrs. Beecham was still talking.

  " … The girl tried to jerk away. But Mrs. Brudos helped Mr. Brudos push the person in the blanket into the house."

  Edna Beecham spoke with conviction. She had seen what she had seen, and she seemed anxious to tell it all. She was adamant that she had seen the Brudoses—both of them—struggling to get the blanket-wrapped form into their house.

  It was finally time for cross-examination from the defense. Charlie Burt rose easily and walked toward Mrs. Beecham with a disarming smile. She smiled back nervously.

  "Mrs. Beecham … you say that you saw Mr. Brudos push someone from the garage to the kitchen door?"

  "Yes."

  She got up from her witness chair and demonstrated. "She was pushed up against Mr. Brudos' chest. He had his arms around the girl's body in front. The girl had a gag in her mouth—"

  "Oh? She had an adhesive-tape gag?"

  "I didn't say adhesive tape—"

  "If she had—as you said—a blanket over her head, how could you see the gag?"

  "There was an opening there. I saw the gag."

  "What color was the blanket?"

  "I don't know."

  "Are you color blind?"

  "No … but I don't know. The blanket had a binding on it."

  "What color was the binding?"

  "I don't know."

  "The binding is stitching around the edge?"

  "No … no, it's material."

  "How do you know the blanket-covered figure was a girl?"

  "I could tell by the outline. I could see the legs and the shoes."

  "What color were the shoes?"

  "I don't know."

  "Were they red?"

  "I do not know. I do know her nylons were cocoa beige."

  Sound rippled through the gallery; the woman's memory was oddly selective.

  "What was Mr. Brudos wearing?"

  "I don't know."

  "How is it, Mrs. Beecham, that you could see the Brudos home so clearly, given that there is a tall evergreen hedge between that property and your sister's property?"

  The witness had been fingering a rosary in her lap throughout her testimony. Now she threw up her left hand dramatically and cried, "As God is above, I saw it!"

  "Mrs. Beecham," Burt said quietly. "If you saw Mr. Brudos, assisted by Mrs. Brudos—saw them forcing a young woman with … cocoa-beige stockings, and wrapped in a blanket whose color you can not now recall—if you saw them forcing her into th
eir home, why didn't you call the police?"

  "My sister asked me not to."

  "I see. Your sister asked you not to. Did you tell anyone else?"

  "My husband."

  Burt allowed Mrs. Beecham's time lapse in calling the police to sink into the jury's minds before he gathered photographs of views of the Brudos home taken from the witness's sister's home.

  "These pictures were taken from your sister's dining-room window," he said. "This doesn't appear to be a good vantage point."

  Mrs. Beecham studied the pictures and looked up. "This picture doesn't look right to me."

  "Wasn't there something that cut your view of the Brudos house off—something in the way?"

  "Nothing cut my view. I was up high. Yes, there was this cedar hedge and trees—but I saw everything."

  "Did you see the back door of the Brudos home?"

  "I'm getting mixed up about the door," she answered. "I could see the cement platform—I couldn't see the kitchen door."

  "How about in this angle," Burt asked, handing her another picture taken from her sister's home.

  Mrs. Beecham grew more confident. "Branches were not on the trees—I mean, leaves—and I saw the door close. I just don't know much about trees."

  "Do you know that evergreen trees—such as cedar—do not lose their leaves?"

  "Yes," she said shortly. "I know that much."

  "But you say you saw the incident clearly through the cedar hedge?"

  "I saw it."

  "When did you reconstruct your … view for the Salem police?"

  "Last month."

  Jim Stovall listened to Edna Beecham on the stand, just as he had listened to her when he had traveled to Bend, Oregon, at the request of the district attorney's office. Her story had not entirely convinced him then, and it didn't now. "But," he recalls, "when you testify before a grand jury, nobody asks your own opinion; they only ask about what witnesses told you."

  Burt's cross-examination of Edna Beecham had shown the woman's confusion and pointed out that she had done nothing whatsoever after allegedly seeing something that demanded action. She simply could not have seen what she said she had.

  Darcie felt slightly better.

  But she felt worse again when the next prosecution witness was called: Megan Brudos.

  Megan entered the courtroom slowly, a tiny figure all dressed in blue with her coat over her arm. She seemed on the edge of tears, but she walked bravely to the witness stand.

  She looked up at District Attorney Gortmaker and waited for him to question her. He asked her name again, asked a few casual questions to help her relax, and then he began the hard questions.

  "Megan, did your mommy and daddy tell you not to tell anybody what happened in the workshop?"

  "I … can't remember."

  "Did you hear crying coming from the workshop a couple of times that day-that day last March?"

  "I can't remember."

  "Did you meet a girl about the time of spring vacation named Karen that your daddy took into the workshop while your mother was home?"

  "Yes."

  The courtroom buzzed again, and Darcie shook her head slightly.

  "While Karen was there, did your mother go into the workshop and start crying—and then come out of the workshop and go into the bedroom and lie on the bed and cry?"

  "I can't remember."

  Darcie had cried so many times over the past months. She had tried not to, tried not to let the children know how desperate and sad she felt. Megan had seen her cry. But Megan could never have seen her cry under the circumstances Gortmaker had described.

  "Isn't it true, Megan," the district attorney continued, "that Mommy didn't like to help Daddy when the girls were in the workshop because your daddy wanted to take pictures of them and your mommy didn't want him to?"

  "I don't know."

  Gortmaker gave it up. As a witness for the prosecution, Megan Brudos had emerged, instead, as a very sad, very confused little girl.

  Charlie Burt asked only two questions on cross-examination.

  "Megan, did Sergeant Stovall show you some pictures of girls—big girls—and did he ask you if you knew any of them, if you recognized them?"

  "Yes."

  "The girl we're asking about, the girl named Karen, was in those pictures. Did you tell Sergeant Stovall that you had seen her?"

  "No. By the looks of them, I didn't know anyone in those pictures."

  The prosecution's presentation was over finally, and it was Charlie Burt's turn to attempt to prove to the jury that Darcie Brudos was in no way connected to her husband's crimes.

  Her brother-in-law, Larry, was asked to describe Jerry Brudos' character. "He is aggressive … overbearing to the point of violence—at least to me and to our parents."

  "Who was the dominant partner in the marriage of your brother and Darcie Brudos?" Burt asked.

  "I don't think there's any doubt about that. My brother was."

  Ned Rawls told the jury of Jerry Brudos' sheer physical strength. He told of Jerry Brudos lifting engine heads and other heavy automobile parts with ease.

  "Did Jerry Brudos show you anything when you visited his home on the twenty-ninth of March this year?"

  "He showed me photographs of women—nude women's figures."

  "What did the women look like?"

  "I couldn't tell you. The faces had been snipped out of the photos."

  "Did you see anything else on that night that seemed a little strange to you?"

  "The breast molds. Lead or something shaped like a woman's breast. He said a friend had asked him to make a paperweight shaped like a breast."

  "Did he say who the friend was?"

  "No, sir."

  Ned Rawls's wife, Lois, was the next witness.

  "Mrs. Rawls," Burt asked, "did you have a conversation with Mrs. Edna Beecham in the corridor outside the grand-jury hearing room this past month?"

  "Yes, sir."

  "What did she say to you?"

  "She said she'd seen Jerry and Darcie with a woman with long dark hair who had a blanket wrapped around her. She said they were pushing her on the back porch."

  "Did she tell you how she could see the woman's long dark hair when she had a blanket over her head?"

  "No, she didn't."

  Darcie Brudos' girlfriends Sherrie, Doris, and Ginny Barron—all sisters-in-law—testified that during the months of February and March 1969 Darcie had spent at least four days a week in their homes, from early morning until just before supper. During that period, Jerry Brudos had telephoned frequently to check on Darcie's whereabouts.

  "She was never allowed to go home without calling him first," Sherrie Barron testified. "She couldn't just walk in on him."

  None of them, however, was prepared to swear that Darcie had been with them all day on March 27. It had been a weekday, like any other weekday. There had been no reason at the time to mark it as special.

  Charlie Burt called a surprise witness: Dr. Ivor Campbell, one of the psychiatrists who had examined Jerry Brudos. He had also spent hours interviewing Darcie Brudos.

  Dr. Campbell characterized Darcie Brudos as essentially a normal woman, hardly a dangerous person—and highly unlikely to be motivated to kill another human being.

  "Would it, then, Dr. Campbell," Burt asked, "be easy for someone like Jerry Brudos to dominate the defendant—to push her around and make her afraid to even come into her own home without permission?"

  "It would."

  "How many times have you testified in court, Dr. Campbell?"

  "I would say perhaps sixty-five hundred times."

  "You examined Jerome Henry Brudos?"

  "I did."

  "How would you compare Jerry Brudos to other individuals—patients—you may have testified about?"

  "I could not."

  "You could not?"

  "No, sir."

  "Why is that?"

  "My examination of Jerome Brudos indicated a subject whose mental disturbanc
es were so bizarre … so bizarre that a psychiatrist might just possibly expect to see one personality like his in an entire lifetime of practice."

  "One in a lifetime … ?"

  "And perhaps not then."

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  In television productions of murder trials, the accused invariably takes the witness stand in his own defense. In life, it is the exception rather than the rule. If a defendant testifies, he is automatically vulnerable to cross-examination by the prosecution. Most defense attorneys choose not to give the state that opportunity. Tactically, the choice involved in putting the defendant on the stand is something of a toss-up. If the defendant does not testify, there is sometimes the feeling that he has something to hide. A jury may deduce that silence is an admission of guilt. If a defendant has a prior record of offenses, these can be elicited during cross-examination. But Darcie Brudos had no record at all. Charlie Burt chose to have Darcie testify. It was the best way he could demonstrate her personality—this frightened, passive small woman who had convinced him that she was totally innocent.

  The courtroom was packed on Thursday, September 30; the word was that she would be on the stand, and everyone wanted to hear what she had to say for herself.

  Darcie had agreed to testify, just as she had earlier agreed to go for broke—refusing to plead guilty to lesser charges. She was innocent, and she had chosen to risk a guilty verdict rather than live the rest of her life with a cloud of suspicion around her.

  Guilt by association has marred the lives of many women who loved evil men. Darcie studied the women on the jury and wondered if they knew everything about the men in their lives. Would they believe that men could have secret lives, dark sides of themselves that their women might never imagine? It was an unsettling thought, a thought most women would reject.

  For the first time now, she faced the gallery. She knew the questions would be intimate. She would have to tell this sea of strangers about things that she had discussed with no one else—ever.

  Charlie Burt smiled at her, and she trusted him. If anyone could help her, he could.

  "Darcie, did you have anything to do with bringing anyone into your home on March 27, 1969?"

  "No."

  "Did you ever have anything to do with aiding your husband in killing anyone?"