Serial Killer Documentary： Robert Browne

Serial Killer Documentary： Robert Browne

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:16):
Robert Charles Brown, serving time for rip and murder in Colorado,
made headlines once again in July two thousand and six
when he claimed to have killed forty eight other people, which,
if true, would make him America's most prolific known serial killer. However,
there were skeptics when his total proved to surpass by

(00:37):
one the record set a couple of years before by
a Green River killer, Gary Ridgeway. Brown's confession provoked skepticism.
Was he telling the truth or just seeking attention by
one upping the current king of the hill. The truth
can be difficult to establish, especially given the events that
led up to his unexpected revelation. In nineteen ninety five,

(00:59):
Brown pleaded guilty to the nineteen ninety one murder in
Colorado of thirteen year old Heather Dawn Church. Five years later,
he initiated a correspondence of cryptic notes to Texas prosecutors
that suggested more victims. The score is U one, the
other team forty eight. He dropped a few clues, but

(01:19):
seemed to want them to figure it out. A cold
case squad got involved, and eventually Brown declared he'd been
killing since nineteen seventy. In nine different states. On a
crude map, he showed seventeen in Louisiana, nine in Colorado,
seven in Texas, five in Arkansas, three in Mississippi, two
in New Mexico, two in Oklahoma, two in California, and

(01:43):
one in Washington State. He'd used a knife, a screwdriver,
an ice pick, and just as hands. He'd dumped victims
everywhere in lakes, rivers and gullies. Some he'd even cut up.
Even so, confessing in corroborating one's claims are two different things,
and if Brown is exaggerating, he wouldn't be the first.

(02:06):
Claiming higher numbers of victims, especially from prison, has become
a regular pastime for serial killers since the late nineteen eighties.
To consider the motives Brown might have for such exaggerated claims,
we need to lay out a bit of history, both
his and that of prison culture. It began with the
disappearance of young Heather Dawn Church. While evidently not Brown's

(02:30):
first victim, this was the one that stopped him. Mike
and Diane Church moved to a remote piece of property
outside Colorado Springs in Ebert, Colorado. A person would have
had to have gone well out of his way to
find their home and abduct one of their children, so
it seems fairly clear at once this was a local crime.

(02:50):
Heather thirteen, was one of four siblings, and she enjoyed
playing outside. Responsible and studious, she gave her parents no
cause to worry. She was even enrolled in a program
for gifted students. Eventually, Mike and Diane separated, and Mike
moved into an apartment that left Diane alone with the
kids at the remote homestead, but she said she did

(03:13):
not feel unsafe there. Nevertheless, when the separation came to
look like divorce, the house went on the market. Her
neighbor up the road was Robert Charles Brown, thirty eight,
living in a trailer with his fifth wife on property
used for a tree nursery. Diane didn't know them, but
apparently Brown had grown aware of her, or at least

(03:34):
of her home. On September seventeenth, nineteen ninety one, Diane's
world caved in. She had taken two of her boys
to a boy Scout meeting that evening at the local
Mormon church, leaving Heather to babysit her five year old brother.
Diane called at eight thirty pm to make sure everything
was okay, meaning to tell Heather to close a window
in the master bedroom she'd seen open, but she forgot.

(03:58):
When Diane returned after the meeting, she noticed that the
house was dark and a sliding door unlocked. At first,
these details didn't alarm her, but to her shock, Heather
was not in a room or anywhere else in the house.
Diane called every one of whom she could think, including Mike,
but no one knew where the girl could be. She

(04:19):
called the sheriff's office and someone came right over, but
a search and rescue crew could not be sent out
until daylight. The crew combed through the woods and knocked
at every neighbor's door. Diane remembered the open window in
the master bedroom. They examined the windows, bent screen which
appeared to have been forced, and a latent fingerprint examiner
dusted for Prince. She managed to identify and lift a

(04:42):
good one so that if they found the person who'd
bent the frame, they could make a match. Searchers came
on too Brown's property, and while he was helpful, he
refused access to a specific building, saying it was securely locked.
They accepted that the authorities believed they were looking for
a wandering child, not a potential kidnap victim, and Brown

(05:04):
seemed quiet and unassuming, just another neighbor. There was no
reason to suspect him. Many people were questioned, and the
lifted print was sent to the Colorado Bureau of Investigation
as well as to the FBI, but no match turned
up from their computer databases of convicted offenders. At the time,
though this type of search was limited, the databases from

(05:27):
all the states had not yet been hooked into the
automated fingerprint identification system, so if a match had come
in from another state, the chance of identifying him with
this print was low. Heather wasn't found in the initial searches,
and it was two years before someone chanced to cross
her remains along Lower Rampart Range Road, where other homicide

(05:48):
victims had been recovered from time to time. A scrap
metal collector found a human skull the still intact set
of teeth identified it at once as the remains of
Heather Dawn Church. Her body had been due to about
thirty miles from her home. The hope for her safe
return one day had been dashed for good. To identify
the perpetrator of this crime, the difficulty lay in gathering evidence.

(06:12):
Two years after the kidnapping, retrieving a skull from among
a heap of junk meant there would be little, if
anything in the way of trace evidence. By this time,
many men had been questioned as suspects, including Mike Church.
Fathers are always initial suspects in the abduction of a child,
especially during a period of separation, but no one had

(06:32):
been implicated. America's Most Wanted had devoted part of an
episode to the case without producing fruitful leads. Yet, even
the discovery that the girl had been killed and her
body dumped nearby failed to advance the investigation, so the
case went cold. In nineteen ninety five, Louce Smit, who
would later become famous as an independent investigator in the

(06:54):
John Bennett Ramsay case, was a captain of the county's
detective force. He set to work on the case file,
creating a timeline and looking for possible clues that others
had missed. He reinterviewed certain people and looked at the
burglaries in the area at the time. He also checked
and rechecked alibis. It was painstaking work, but he was

(07:15):
known for his persistence. This was often the way a
good detective broke cases that others had given up as
a lost cause. A lab worker suggested rerunning the lone fingerprint.
It was always possible that the perpetrator had been picked
up for another offense, and this print was now in
the automated system. Some cold case cops ran unmatched prints

(07:37):
every day for years on the hope that finally, on
this day, the perpetrator had been arrested on some other charge.
This kind of dogged devotion had paid off several times,
helping to generate more interest in other cold cases. Smith
made up a package with a blown up image of
the print to send out to fifty two jurisdictions. Two

(07:57):
months later, in March, he received good news from Louisiana,
a match to a man convicted for burglary and car
theft in that state. The man they were looking for
lived within half a mile of the churches, Robert Charles Brown.
It was disheartening to have been that close to the perpetrator,
even to have searched his property, and yet to have

(08:17):
missed him. But nonetheless he was still there. Despite his
protests of innocence, Detectives brought Brown in for questioning. First,
they wanted to know if he'd ever done work on
the church's home to eliminate this possible reason why his
finger print would be at the scene, He denied it.
When he learned about their evidence, he insisted they run

(08:39):
the print again. He was certain it was a mistake,
but the print was good and it was his. At
his arraignment, he pleaded not guilty. The investigators had little
else and they knew a case for kidnap and murder
would be difficult to make, but they got to work
looking into his background. To their surprise, two months later,

(09:00):
Brown changed his plea to guilty. According to his story,
he had entered the home through a window and Heather
had surprised him. He strangled her there in the house
and took her body out to dump it in a
remote location. For this murder, he received life in prison.
Smith believed Brown had made this unexpected admission because investigators

(09:20):
were looking into the disappearance of another woman. She'd been
his neighbor in Louisiana, and if extradited to face trial
for her death, he could face the death penalty. Since
he was now behind bars, there seemed little reason to
continue to investigate, especially outside their jurisdiction. It was Brown
himself who revived interest, but five years later, once more

(09:44):
it took the work of cold case detectives to open
it up. Many cold case squads were formed during the
nineteen nineties as the result of a drop in the
number of violent crimes since nineteen sixty, As the US
murder rate had steadily risen, police departments had added personnel.
The increase in violent crime was accompanied by a higher
percentage of stranger homicides, the most difficult to solve and

(10:07):
the most demanding of resources. It seemed that things would
only get worse, but in the middle of the nineteen nineties,
the murder rate declined. Police departments now had surplus resources
and they could return to older cases to give them
more attention. With dramatic new developments and forensic science and technology,
especially DNA analysis and more extensive computer databases, the solution

(10:31):
to some cold cases looked imminent. A new breed of
detectives trained in these scientific resources and technologies took to
the field and began working out how to put these
advances to work for investigative purposes. They also cared a
lot about solving these older crimes. Over the past decade,
the cold case units around the country had cleared hundreds

(10:52):
of backlogged cases, putting offenders behind bars who'd believed they'd
escaped detection. In addition, many innocent people who did not
belong in prison were exonerated and freed. But these investigators
can't take on every cold case. To prioritize, case selection
involves consideration of various solvable factors, former witnesses ready to talk,

(11:15):
a new suspect, or new technology not tried before. Key
evidence must be preserved and available for testing. Biological evidence
can be tested for DNA profiles, and fingerprints can be
entered into databases that receive more new prints every day.
Cold case detectives have access to the FBI's National Center
for the Analysis of Violent Crime, the US Marshal Service,

(11:38):
Military Investigative Services, organized groups of retired professionals and crime
investigation volunteer groups that offer unique services. The science of
cold cases involves more than just the latest technologies available
for solving older unsolved cases. It's also about historic incidents
and inventions that have helped to develop specific areas of

(11:59):
irrelevant discipl like ballistics or toxicology, or have gained ground
in court for an increasingly sophisticated approach to crime investigation.
Among these cold case squads was the one in the
Colorado Springs area that focused on Brown, Lou Smitt, now retired,
Charlie Hess, former FBI and CIA, and Scott Fischer, a

(12:21):
crime photographer and retired publisher. They were dubbed the Apple
Dumpling Gang. Smid and Hess met weekly to discuss unsolved crime,
and Hess took up correspondences with convicted felons to see
if he could get more out of them. One of
them was Charles Robert Brown, but only after Brown had
already reached out. In two thousand, Brown began dropping hints.

(12:44):
He sent a letter to El Paso County prosecutors, writing
the score is U one, the other team forty eight.
This seemed to have been inspired by the Zodiac messages,
in which an unknown killer in San Francisco in the
late nineteen sixties taunted police with his score versus theirs.
Among other things, Brown also wrote, seven sacred virgins entombed

(13:06):
side by side. Those less worthy are scattered wide. If
you were to drive to the end zone in a
white trans am, the score could be nine to forty eight.
That would complete your home court sphere. Again, it sounds
like he was reading a book about the zodiac and
trying to copy his style. Smith was already aware that

(13:28):
two women were missing from Brown's hometown of Cushata, Louisiana,
both from an apartment complex where he had worked as
a handyman. Hesse began correspondence, and he and Brown played
a cat and mouse game for about four years before
the effort paid off, but only after promises and a
few gifts, they were finally able to solve the murder
of young Rossio Sperry. Only fifteen detectives set to work

(13:52):
on the Grandam Lady. Hescott Brown to provide more details,
including that the woman had been an army wife who
had once lived in Florida. From her, he'd taken a
specific type of ring, which he described. He also pinpointed
the apartment complex and said that the victim had lived
at either unit one O seven, one O eight, or

(14:13):
one O nine. They got a list of Pontiac Grandams
and transams registered in Colorado between January nineteen eighty seven
and December nineteen eighty eight. There were one hundred and
seventy two. This was further narrowed down until they located
a Grandam owner named Joseph Sperry. He had lived near
Pike's Peak during the right time period. He'd served in

(14:35):
the army, and his apartment number was correct one O nine.
His wife at the time had vanished in November nineteen
eighty seven. Her name was Rossio, and she'd had a
ring like Brown had described. Joe had been away, and
upon his return he found her gone and her clothes
piled into garbage bags. A ten inch length of her

(14:55):
hair caught off while still in a pony tail, lay
on a dresser, and while his television was gone, her
purse was still there. He called the police but became
an immediate suspect. It was he, not the police, who
found the car abandoned, but he could not get them
to process it. Unfortunately, a clerk had mistakenly written that

(15:17):
Roscio had been found, so the evidence had been tossed.
That made corroboration difficult, but most of the circumstances matched
what Brown had finally described. Once the victim was identified,
although her body was never found, he pleaded guilty and
received a second life sentence. Of the forty eight supposed
murders Brown had provided information in nineteen and even with

(15:40):
those much of his accounts were vague. He had been
considered a viable suspect in only seven more, but in
these he'd provided solid details. Of the nine supposed victims
in Colorado, he'd supplied information in only two cases. The
first person he said he had killed was Mail, a
soldier in South Korea in nineteen seventy. That case could

(16:02):
not be verified. There were several unsolved homicides in the
areas Brown claimed as his killing ground, and many families
hoped for closure about their missing or murdered loved ones.
Detectives in different jurisdictions investigated their case files to try
to determine if Brown could be their man. They understood
he might have read news accounts about their victims and

(16:23):
could then report names, dates, and other items to falsely
link him if he so chose. They knew well enough
to be careful not to feed him more. One potential
victim was Catherine Jean Hayes, whose remains had been discovered
in winn Parish, Louisiana, in nineteen eighty one, six months
after she disappeared from a restaurant. Another woman, Wanda Hudson,

(16:46):
had been murdered in nineteen eighty three in her apartment
where Brown had worked as a handyman. He said he'd
attacked her with a screwdriver. They self had gone missing
from the same apartment complex in nineteen eighty three. Brown
claimed he killed her in her apartment and then took
her body out to the Red River, dumping it. He
made the same claim about another woman from Louisiana, unnamed

(17:08):
because the authorities were unable to corroborate it. Brown's details
were too vague. The same was reported about a few
other cases that Brown claimed during interviews, he was unable
to give sufficient detail to assist significantly. More than one
officer expressed reservations about Brown's grandiose claims, but Brown frequently

(17:29):
clammed up and refused to say any more. He was
the one in the driver's seat. Brown wrote a letter
in two thousand and two in which he hinted that
he might have kidnapped someone to hold her in a
concealed chamber, but then he had been incarcerated. Since he
could not get to her to feed her, she presumably died.
Would he then be held responsible? If so, then three

(17:52):
should be added to the nine He followed this with
a letter the year after, in which she stated he
did not know why he was writing these letters. I'm
trying to get my affairs in order, he wrote. To
do so, I need to contact many sources, of which
I don't even know who they are. He mentioned that
the sanitation companies do a great job of disposal and

(18:14):
claimed that no one ever got away, never gave the opportunity.
If you're going to do it, just do it. He
stated that he found women untrustworthy and that what generally
triggered a murder was discussed with a person. He viewed
women as cheating, whores, and users, although it was never
made clear why he had taken such a dim view.

(18:37):
As months passed without much progress, many people began to
question whether Brown was the killer he claimed, or more
of a con man. It would seem to defy reason
to confess to something one did not do, especially murder,
but some ambitions override reason notoriety, for example, gamesmanship, leverage

(18:59):
for better conditions, and even self aggrandizement. Let's consider similar cases. H. H.
Holmes was convicted in Philadelphia in eighteen ninety six for
an insurance fraud that involved murder. He insisted he was innocent,
but for ten thousand dollars, proclaimed himself the world's most
notorious killer, claiming one hundred victims, before reducing that number

(19:21):
to twenty seven. The newspaper wanted a sensation, he whined,
and before mounting the gallows, he paired his confession to
only two. The truth was probably somewhere in between. During
the nineteen eighties, coverage of serial killers became its own industry,
inspiring groupies, wannabees, and entrepreneurs who created trading cards and

(19:43):
sold serial killer memorabilia. Serial killers became cultural anti heroes
in a wound culture where people openly displayed their physical
and psychological scars on talk shows. Some serial killers were
cast as the ultimate and traumatized children bushing back, and
many were willing to play this to the hilt for

(20:04):
television cameras. These killers spoke about their lack of self esteem,
their abuse, and their unrestrained compulsions to erase the lives
of others in order to feel alive themselves. After killing
a ten year old child, Donald Leroy Evans thirty four,
a self described white supremacist, confessed more than sixty murders

(20:24):
in several different States since nineteen seventy seven. He was
finally convicted of only two murders, and he recanted his
extravagant confession. Donald Harvey, a male nurse, claimed over eighty
murders before making plea deals in thirty seven of the cases,
and when the police arrested Glenn Rodgers in nineteen ninety
five in connection with five murders, he took credit for seventy,

(20:47):
including those of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. Then
he said he was only joking. He was convicted in
two pee Wee Gaskins told his story to an author,
claiming that he'd killed more than one hundred people, mostly women,
and while he was certainly prolific, many of these murders
were unverified by the time he was executed. Claudine Eggers

(21:10):
seventy eight became penpal to Joseph Fischer in prison for
the murder of a sixteen year old boy. He was
paroled in nineteen seventy eight and moved in with Eggers
in her New York home. She financed his cross country trip,
on which he killed several people, including her, but after
being caught, he pursued the distinction of being the most

(21:30):
notorious serial killer. Initially, he said he had decided on
twenty six but had accomplished only nineteen. Various murders from
around the country were attributed to him, and soon as
total went over thirty. However, he was only tried for
the murder of Eggers, for which he was convicted of
second degree murder. He then granted interviews to the media,

(21:52):
including tabloid styled talk shows, and soon his claimed victim
total was up to one hundred and fifty. He thrived
on the notoriety many believed him, but it would not
be long before another killer made law enforcement officers realize
how easily they could be duped. The most infamous confessor
was Henry Lee Lucas, Arrested in nineteen eighty three, This

(22:15):
one eyed drifter estimated he'd killed one hundred people, but
eventually raised that number to three hundred and sixty in
twenty seven different states. In an unprecedented event, lawman filled
an auditorium in the hope of closing their open cases,
but then Lucas recanted. No one knew quite what to
make of a killer confessing to so many crimes he

(22:37):
did not do, but then he insisted that he had
been forced to recant. His persistent waffling reduced his credibility.
While it was clear that he had committed four murders,
including his mother, even one of those, a female victim
dubbed Orange Socks, came into doubt. Some criminologists believed he
was responsible for between forty to fifty murders, but no

(23:00):
one knows for sure. But we do know that during
his confessions, Lucas got extra special treatment, nice meals, a
comfortable cell, and plenty of attention. He was having a ball.
I set out to break and corrupt any law enforcement
officer I could get, Lucas said later, I think I

(23:20):
did a pretty good job. He received the death penalty
for Orange Socks, but this sentence was commuted to life,
and he eventually died in prison in two thousand and
one of natural causes. The truth, if it remained anywhere,
went with him. Doctor Stephen Egger, Associate Professor of criminology
at the University of Houston Clear Lake and the author

(23:42):
of The Killers among Us, an Examination of Serial murder
and its Investigation, once interviewed Lucas. He experienced firsthand the
challenge of interpreting such confessions. It was difficult to tell
when Lucas was lying. Egger admits, in some cases I
might ask them to talk about an average killing, and

(24:02):
it seemed to me that what he said came from
his imagination. He just thought it up. He was convicted
of eleven homicides, so he was a serial killer, but
he did blow a lot of what I call smoke
and mirrors and played a lot of games. Eggar advocates
verifying whatever serial killers say one case at a time.

(24:23):
Most of them are psychopaths, and they're good at lying.
I don't place a lot of stock in my interviews
with them. It appears that Brown might have studied Lucas
as well as the Zodiac. None of these men had
any remorse for their murders or their lies. They're not
made for it. Among the most dangerous features of psychopathy
are a callous disregard for the rights of others and

(24:45):
a propensity for violating norms. They might not necessarily become
outright criminals, let alone killers, but the likelihood of exploitive
and deceptive behavior is high. Without remorse, psychopaths charm and
minut snipulate others for their own gain. They lack a
sense of responsibility, and they con others with no regard

(25:06):
for the feelings of others. In fact, they don't see
others as fully human as themselves. Those with low inhibitions
against violence may kill. Psychopaths are suffering from a personality disorder,
not a mental illness that involves traits such as narcissism, impulsivity,
and callousness. From brain scan studies, it appears that they

(25:29):
fail to process the emotional content of situations such as empathy, concern,
or alarm. Those who commit crimes have proven more brutal
than other criminals, more aggressive, and more diverse in their activities.
They also represent a high percentage of repeat offenders. They're
resistant to therapy and intolerant of frustration. It doesn't matter

(25:52):
whom they hurt. What matters is that they get what
they can for themselves. Because they don't have what people
need for living in social harmony, some psychologists refer to
them as unfinished souls. Robert R. Hare, a renowned expert
on the disorder and author of Without Conscience, says there
are indications that the personality structure and propensity for unethical

(26:14):
behavior is shared by both criminal and non criminal psychopaths,
and they may be as common as one in every
hundred people. Psychopathy hair believes touches virtually every one of us.
For the most part. When they do offend, their crimes
are cold blooded. With those who are serial killers, there
appears to be a strong tendency towards sadism. They find

(26:38):
victims easily because their glib, charming, and predatory, while their
victims are generally naive. They dispense with anyone without a
thought for the suffering of either the victim or their families. Thus,
there's no reason to believe that they'll tell the truth,
whether under oath or not. It's not easy to know
when to trust someone who is already exploited. Trust as

(27:00):
a route to torture and murder. Psychopathic killers knew their
victims as objects, useful only as pawns in their own
personal game, and they thus have this advantage. They feel
no remorse. They're callous, manipulative, and resistant to therapy, and
when they choose to communicate, they have their own agendas

(27:22):
formed in self interest and calculation. What we may accept
as a confession, they may view as bait. Their motives
take shape within a framework that has no equivalent in
the normal world. That's why we can't just accept what
they say at face value. A special agent from the
FBI's Behavioral Analysis Unit interviewed Gary Ridgeway, who had initially

(27:45):
confessed to seventy one before settling on the official toll
of forty eight. She had this to say, I can't
think of any behavior on its own merit that would
indicate that someone is telling the truth or exaggerating. It's
not that I wouldn't leave them, but I'd like to
get basic verification first. In my opinion, many of these

(28:05):
people have an egotistical need to control and manipulate, and
some like to be bigger and badder than the other guy.
She points out that not only might they lie to
exaggerate or doup investigators, but paradoxically, they might also conceal
murders they committed. They don't want anyone to know about
their early feeble halting attempts or the mistakes they made

(28:28):
if they lose a potential victim they claim they intended to.
It's hazardous to be gullible, especially for investigators hoping to
close a case. They might inadvertently reveal details, allowing offenders
to play them for fools. As well, they may expend
limited resources. However, there are hazards in dismissing these offenders too,

(28:51):
notably that they may stop providing details that can solve crimes.
The bottom line is this, even skilled investigators they may
not spot a clever liar with a selfish agenda. Detecting
deception takes time, patience, a bit of sleuthing, and the
corroboration of facts. Above all, it requires the ability to

(29:13):
avoid a rush to judgment that may result in mistakes,
such as those made with Lucas. While psychopaths appear to
use the same language as normal individuals, they have their
own inner logic. They calculate the world around them in
terms of self gain. They are society's vampires. They may
be intoxicated rather than repulsed, by the idea of targeting

(29:36):
humans and picking them off because it makes them feel powerful.
Their agendas have no analogs in the normal world. That
means developing a careful mode of communication. In this person's perception,
almost any response could be the wrong one. Former FBI
profilers John Douglas and Greg McCrary have conducted prison interviews

(29:58):
with psychopaths such as John Wayne Gacy, who killed thirty
three young men and buried them under his house. And
Mark Hoffmann, a brilliant forger who tried to escape debt
by killing people with bombs. These criminals have no sense
of the damage they've caused. To urge them to express regret,
it is pointless. They might do so, but only as

(30:19):
a manipulative tactic. They are three important things to keep
in mind when talking with psychopaths. Clear goals, firm boundaries,
and awareness of their triggers. In other words, keep your
purpose in such communications up front, while also watching for
the psychopaths manipulative tactics, charm, deception, deal making, and for

(30:40):
what will keep him or her talking as opposed to
shutting down. It's tricky and getting it right generally requires
extensive exposure to the person. No matter how many letters
Hess or others write to a killer like Brown, only
those who have lived with them on a daily basis
know them well, and even they be fooled. Brown was

(31:02):
the son of a sheriff's deputy and brother to a
former state trooper. His was a family that cared about
public safety in the law. However, Brown developed differently. He
was the youngest of nine children in Cushata, Louisiana, dropping
out of high school to go into the army. In
nineteen seventy six, he was dishonorably discharged for using drugs.

(31:23):
If he's telling the truth about one of his murders,
he used a position as handyman at an apartment complex
owned by his brother to kill at least one of
the tenants. He had no shame or sense of family loyalty.
The fourth of his five ex wives, Rita Morgan, gave
an interview to The Charlotte Observer, providing details about the

(31:44):
kind of man Brown is. For one thing, he often
flew into rages and made frightening threats. He would tell
her how easy it would be to kill her with
no one the wiser. Yet when he had wooed her
before they were married, he'd been compassionate, even doting. This
behavior is called compartmentalization, something psychopaths are good at. They

(32:07):
morph into whatever they need to be to gain their ends,
and once they have it, they let their true personalities
show before he held the car door open for her,
wrote one reporter about Rita, after he smashed her to
the floor for a misplaced set of keys. Most of
his marriages lasted three years or less, and several wives

(32:28):
alleged abuse. Rita said she'd had no inkling of what
Brown might be like. They met when he was on
leave from the service and she was just a teenager.
They took up a brief correspondence, and when they encountered
each other a few years later, she had married and
divorced another man. He began to show up where she
worked as a waitress, and finally they went out. He

(32:50):
came with flowers. They got married, and within a week
Brown had become a bully. He was already yelling at
her that he could kill her. She was stunned, but
then he apologized and assured her this behavior would not
be repeated. He lied almost anything could set him off,
and he seemed to go into a trance before he

(33:12):
started beating her. He believed he could treat his wife
like property. He once put a gun to her head
and pulled the trigger, but the gun was unloaded. He
also choked her once so badly she had to go
to the hospital. But once he asked her to shoot him,
as if he knew he was bad and he wanted
some one to kill him. He said he knew he

(33:33):
had a problem, but when she got him to a clinic,
a psychiatrist was so confrontational it ended any hope she
had of intervention. Brown was furious. Another woman with whom
Brown was involved said he enjoyed thinking of himself as
a master with her the slave, and that he watched
a lot of pornography. His final wife filed for divorce

(33:55):
and went into therapy for victimization issues. She was reportedly
a afraid of him. A year after Brown's startling confession,
a reporter for the Shreveport Times decided to check in
on what was happening with the investigation. While authorities were
reviewing the claims he'd made, several deputies had expressed disappointment.
Investigators in four states had dropped their investigations altogether or

(34:19):
ruled Brown out as a viable suspect. In Washington, investigators
had searched in Vain for evidence of a woman killed
at a scenic overlook between Spokane and Seattle, while three
murders in Louisiana appeared to match details Brown provided. He'd
not been charged. In fact, as of July two thousand seven,

(34:39):
no new charges had been filed since those for the
murder of Russio Sperry. One promising case involves Nidia Mendoza,
who was murdered in nineteen eighty four. She was a
dancer in Houston, Texas, and was seen leaving one night
with three men. Her body was found four days later.
The case went cold until Brown's can fashion. He described

(35:01):
a young woman like media and apparently provided details that
had not been made public at the time. He'd been
driving a white van to make silk flower deliveries. He
claimed to have accompanied her from the club, taken her
to a motel for sex, and strangled her. He then
supposedly dismembered and beheaded her. Taking the parts away in
a suitcase, he dumped them off a highway, exactly where

(35:25):
they were found. He might be good for half a
dozen murders, perhaps even the nine he'd once suggested, but
that's as far as authorities have come in making a case.
In many ways, it doesn't matter he's in prison for life,
But it does matter to the families who want to
know that the person who killed their loved one has
been caught and is being punished. Hess declines to say

(35:48):
whether Brown opened up because he wants to clear his conscience.
It's a common belief that the guilty sufferer and need
to get their guilt off their chests. That's not true, however,
for psychopath. Brown grants information, it seems when there's something
to be gained, medical treatment or a possible transfer. Despite
his attempt to barter information for a different prison, he

(36:11):
will most likely serve out a sentence in Colorado State Penitentiary.
It's unlikely that he'll ever be known as the most
prolific serial killer in America. His claim to fame is
receding quickly, it to mist attem