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World's Most Evil Killers S05E03 Jerry Brudo
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00:00In January 1968, 19-year-old encyclopedia saleswoman
00:06Linda Slauson arrived on the doorstep of a family home
00:10in Portland, Oregon.
00:11She was invited in by a seemingly kind stranger,
00:15but she would never leave.
00:17While his children played above, the man of the house
00:21strangled Linda to death before severing her foot
00:24and dumping her body in a nearby river.
00:28And then he put a foot in a freezer
00:30and would put shoes on this foot.
00:35The depraved killer was local electrician Jerry Brudos.
00:39The 28-year-old appeared to be an upright family man,
00:43but he was keeping a dark secret very close to home.
00:48If you can imagine a man who would capture women
00:51while his wife and his two small children are in the house,
00:54she's making dinner and he's in the garage torturing a woman.
00:59Brudos killed four young women in the cruelest of circumstances
01:03before defiling their bodies for his own twisted pleasure.
01:07Brudos is intent on only one thing, his own gratification at its most extreme.
01:13And that is one of the things that makes him the most horrifying of killers.
01:18The perverted desires of Jerry Brudos had erupted,
01:22turning him into one of the world's most evil killers.
01:47In June 1969, Jerry Brudos was given three life sentences for murder.
01:53Over a 15-month period, he abducted, raped, killed,
01:58and desecrated the bodies of four young women in Oregon.
02:03The 30-year-old could not suppress his unhealthy desire for high heel shoes.
02:11Rod Englert is a crime scene analyst who visited Brudos' infamous kill room
02:16and spent time speaking with the sadistic killer.
02:21I talked to him about what went through his mind.
02:25What was he thinking about prior to picking up a victim?
02:29He would drive for hours at a time,
02:32all over looking for what he had in his mind as that perfect victim
02:37walking in front of him.
02:39Because in his mind when he saw that,
02:42it had to have something.
02:43What was it that it had to have?
02:45High heel shoes.
02:47Portland journalist and radio talk show host Lars Larsson also interviewed Brudos in prison.
02:55All of these women who were Brudos' victims were women that all of us could imagine as wives,
03:02mothers, sisters, daughters, and they were simply disappearing like a puff of smoke.
03:09And that made it particularly terrifying for the community because they didn't know if the next day
03:14it wouldn't be a member of their family who was taken in this way.
03:18Despite being incarcerated for over 35 years, Brudos never showed any remorse for his horrendous crimes.
03:28The big question, Jerry, if you got out today, would you not do it again?
03:34And there was a blank stare. He just nodded like that. That's all he did. He would do it again.
03:42There was apparently no conscience. There was apparently no remorse. Yeah, he was the personification of evil.
03:51This killer story begins in Webster, South Dakota.
03:55Jerome Brudos was born on the 31st of January 1939. The second son of Henry and Eileen,
04:03young Jerry had a difficult upbringing.
04:07Eileen, his mother, was a rather solid figure, and she really favored his elder brother Larry.
04:15I think that was to color a great deal of Jerry Brudos' childhood.
04:21An unaffectionate mother. A fairly remote father.
04:25So you've got this sort of runt of a litter concept with Brudos' childhood.
04:32And the family were quite nomadic. They moved around a lot.
04:35So Brudos didn't really get the chance to develop those stable peer relationships
04:40that are really important to becoming who we are.
04:43It was at a young age that Brudos first discovered the fetish that would define him.
04:50When Brudos was five, he was just allowed to go and roam about and do what he wanted to do.
04:56So he was in a junkyard one day, and he came across a pair of quite elaborate, shiny, high-heeled
05:01shoes.
05:03And he would have been fascinated by them, because his mother dressed very conservatively.
05:07These weren't the kind of shoes that he would have seen her wearing.
05:11So they were something quite intriguing.
05:15And develops, well, I almost call it an excitement about them, and indeed takes them home.
05:21His mother is very, very disapproving, and indeed so disapproving, she burns them.
05:27Now, that is the genesis in my mind of what turned Jerry Brudos into a shoe fetishist.
05:35That single moment completely altered the trajectory of the rest of his life.
05:42As the family settled in Oregon in the early 1950s, the now teenage Brudos' fascination with women's shoes took a
05:52more sinister turn.
05:55So the obsession which started off with shoes then expanded to women's underwear.
06:01And he would steal women's underwear, and he would wear it, and he would play with it.
06:05And I think he starts to experience feelings of comfort and feelings of arousal.
06:11So these are things, I think, that are quite kind of confusing for him, but quite intriguing at the same
06:16time.
06:18Brudos collected his high heels and underwear, the thefts of them, from clotheslines, sneaking through neighborhoods.
06:27This was a challenge to him.
06:29And it's not about the sex, it's about power.
06:32What can I get away with?
06:34Brudos' next twisted plan was to photograph a naked girl.
06:39Aged 17, he lured one of his neighbors into his house and threatened her with a knife.
06:46When she'd taken her clothes off under his orders, he took photographs of her.
06:51And I think at this point, he hadn't thought much beyond taking photographs, but he knows that he can control
06:58women,
06:58he knows he can get them to do what he wants them to do, and this sets a really dangerous
07:02precedent.
07:04The girl didn't report Brudos to the police, which only spurred him on further.
07:10Eight months later, he escalated the intensity of his attacks.
07:16He persuades a 17-year-old girl to get into his car on the pretext of giving her a lift
07:22home.
07:23He doesn't give her a lift home, he takes her to a remote spot and beats her, assaults her,
07:30brutally, because she refuses to take off all her clothes for him and let him photograph her.
07:37This is somebody who's been fantasizing about the control that he has over women.
07:42This is somebody who's been able to get women to do what he wants before,
07:46and now he's got somebody who is not playing ball, and he doesn't like it.
07:50So this violent reaction, it's not a particularly surprising one to me.
07:55This time, Brudos didn't get away with it.
07:59A couple overheard the assault taking place and called the police.
08:03In the spring of 1956, instead of facing a prison sentence,
08:08Brudos was committed to Oregon State Hospital for psychiatric evaluation.
08:14It's concluded that he's having what might be described as an aberrant adolescence,
08:21sexual deviation with fetishism. It's also suggested that there may be an element of schizophrenia
08:29in his condition.
08:34It was mentioned at the time that he couldn't be rehabilitated, that he had a sociopathic issue that
08:41couldn't be rehabilitated.
08:44But what you have now is the beginnings of a full-scale sexual predator.
08:50You feel like the genesis from the cocoon is beginning to emerge.
08:56Brudos spent his days at school and his nights in the hospital,
09:01despite the report suggesting he could not be rehabilitated,
09:05the 17-year-old was released after just nine months in December 1956.
09:11After he left school, Brudos, he did do a short stint in the military,
09:16but then he became a commercial electrician and began to do wiring jobs.
09:22By 1963, the 24-year-old was working for a local radio station in Corvallis, Oregon.
09:30It was there he met his wife, 17-year-old Darcy.
09:36They begin a relationship, get married, and have the first child.
09:40But Brudos hasn't really changed.
09:44What he wants Darcy to do is to do all the housework naked, or only wearing underwear,
09:52or only wearing a pair of high-heeled shoes.
09:54And that is typical of an abusive situation. It's typical of coercive control.
10:00He's got this much younger woman who is completely kind of under his command.
10:06And when he orders her to walk around naked at home, or wearing lingerie, she does it.
10:13Because I think he has got such kind of influence over her in this relationship.
10:20By 1967, the couple had welcomed a second child into the world,
10:26and Darcy had refused to continue dressing up for her husband.
10:31Jerry Brudos would have to go looking for his thrills elsewhere.
10:35In May 1967, he's been stalking a woman, and he breaks into a house when she's asleep.
10:44Now, he's really there to steal her underwear.
10:48But, sadly, she wakes up while he's in the midst of stealing, and he attacks her, rapes her, and flees.
10:57It's the action of a man who has lost control of his own capacities.
11:04On the surface, hardworking family man underneath.
11:09A cauldron of sexual desire, of fetish, of the desire to hurt women.
11:18In just under two years, four women would lose their lives at the hands of Jerry Brudos.
11:26But the police would have no idea until May 1969,
11:31when two fishermen would discover something horrific in the Long Tom River.
11:44In April 1969, Oregon State Police were searching for four missing young women
11:50who'd vanished over a 15-month period.
11:54The latest girl to go missing was secretary and part-time student Linda Sali.
12:00Becky knew was just 10 years old when her big sister disappeared.
12:11She was 22, and she was like a second mom.
12:18Baby sat me, took me to Mary Poppins, you know?
12:22That kind of stuff.
12:26Of course, we had our moments.
12:29I was kind of a brat, but she was always good to me.
12:35On the 23rd of April 1969, Linda headed out to a shopping mall in Portland.
12:42The last time I saw my sister, Linda, she was going to Lloyd Center and get, like,
12:51a birthday present for her boyfriend or fiancé, and that's all I remember.
12:56And she didn't come back.
12:59Linda Sali didn't arrive at her boyfriend's birthday party or for work the following day.
13:06Her worried parents dialed 911.
13:10As far as I know, they called the police as soon as they could.
13:14I, that night, had a dream that she was in a meadow.
13:23And she was happy.
13:25And, uh, I kept having that dream over and over.
13:31And, uh, it was just weird.
13:33She just disappeared.
13:39Linda had become the fourth girl to go missing in the Portland area in just over a year.
13:46I think people were terrorized at the time
13:48because they knew that there was somebody taking young women off the street
13:53in positions where it's not somebody who goes to a remote area late at night
13:59and is involved in some other activity that might put them greatly at risk.
14:04These were women from the community who were just going about their daily lives.
14:13On the 10th of May 1969, 17 days after Linda's disappearance,
14:20authorities were alerted when two fishermen made a grisly discovery in the Long Tom River.
14:27The first news that we heard was when they found a body in the, in the river,
14:33and then we kind of was wondering if it was her, and it turned out it was.
14:39Um.
14:43The police didn't know it yet, but Linda's killer was a 30-year-old local electrician
14:49named Jerry Brudos.
14:51On the 23rd of April, Linda Sali had been walking back to her car at the Lloyd Center shopping mall
14:59with her arms filled with birthday presents for her boyfriend.
15:04Brudos approached the 22-year-old claiming to be a security officer.
15:09He accused Linda of shoplifting, sat her down in his car, and drove her away.
15:15Linda is taken back to the garage, the killing ground, but Brudos doesn't immediately kill her.
15:22He keeps her in the garage and goes to have supper with his family,
15:25and then returns to the garage and strangles her.
15:31I think that process of switching from murderer to family man eating dinner,
15:36and then back again is, it's one that many of us struggle to understand,
15:41because when we hurt other people, we feel bad about it.
15:44We feel guilty.
15:45But Brudos doesn't.
15:46He doesn't have that, that conscience.
15:48He doesn't have that empathy.
15:50He is literally able to just put one part of his life down and go and see to another one.
15:55So it is very chilling.
15:57It is very, very difficult to comprehend, but that's what's going on here.
16:02Brudos had been abducting and killing women for 15 months.
16:06Linda Sali had become his fourth victim.
16:11I hope you enjoyed it.
16:11First, he tied her up and kept her for a while, and she happened to get away or almost got
16:18out of
16:18her restraints.
16:20and he happened to come back into the garage and caught her,
16:25and she fought like hell, but it wasn't enough.
16:29She was, like, my height, and he's, like, six foot,
16:33so it wasn't much of a...
16:35I mean, she tried.
16:37She tried like heck, but it didn't...
16:42I wish it had.
16:46Brudos strangled Linda
16:48with the strap of a postal bag
16:50and raped the 22-year-old as she lay dying.
16:55The 30-year-old shoe fetishist
16:57had taken his obsession to deadly extremes.
17:02She crossed his path, he saw shoes,
17:04and he has to have her,
17:07and that was his modus operandi.
17:10Linda Sarli's post-mortem revealed
17:12that not only had she been strangled by the killer,
17:15but her lifeless body had been experimented on.
17:20After he'd killed Linda,
17:22he violates her body in a whole new way,
17:25so he puts hypodermic syringes at the sides of her ribs
17:29and attaches electrical nodes to them
17:32and tries to get her body kind of reanimated, essentially.
17:36This doesn't work.
17:37It fails.
17:38All that happens is that he burns her skin.
17:41But for me, this says that Brudos is an offender
17:44who will constantly be trying to improve
17:46and refine his offences,
17:48and he's an incredibly dangerous man at this point.
17:55Linda's murder still affects her family over 50 years on.
18:01My mom, she never got over it.
18:06Never.
18:07And she used to call me Linda once in a while by accident,
18:11and she missed her.
18:14You can't talk about it much without crying.
18:18Even after all these years,
18:21you took my sister away from me.
18:24I had no sister anymore.
18:27That was hard.
18:29It was really hard.
18:33Jerry Brudos had begun his murderous career
18:3715 months earlier in January 1968,
18:40when an encyclopedia saleswoman
18:43turned up at the former home
18:46of the dangerous predator in Portland.
18:49Linda Slawson knocks on the door of Jerry Brudos.
18:54Perfectly conventional family scene.
18:57His mother's there,
18:58and the two children.
18:59His wife, Darcy, is out at work,
19:02and on his front doorstep presents a 19-year-old.
19:07Well, I don't think Jerry Brudos could believe his good luck.
19:09Brudos feigned an interest in the encyclopedias and invited Linda into the basement of his house.
19:17There must have been a moment in which Linda thought to herself this is very strange,
19:23but without warning, he hits her over the head with a plank, making her unconscious.
19:29Then he strangles her.
19:31Remember, he can hear the footsteps of his children above him.
19:36He strangled a woman he's never met before in the basement of his own house.
19:41Brudos spent hours dressing and undressing Linda's body.
19:46By 2 a.m., he realized he would have to dispose of her, but wanted to keep a memento of
19:53his first kill.
19:56He wanted that foot to be kept because he couldn't keep the whole body, but he would keep the foot
20:05in a freezer,
20:06and that allowed him to relive the sexual fantasy of seeing this woman's foot in a shoe,
20:11even though for any normal person, seeing a severed, amputated foot would be disgusting on its face.
20:20For Jerry Brudos, this was a sexual fantasy of his.
20:27This was something that they couldn't fight back against him.
20:32Brudos tied the rest of Linda's body to an engine head and threw it into the Willamette River.
20:39Ten months later, he would claim a second victim.
20:43In November 1968, Brudos drove past a broken-down vehicle.
20:5022-year-old Jan Whitney had been driving to the University of Oregon three days before Thanksgiving.
20:57Why don't you come with me?
20:58You know, I'll just pop into the house, and I'll come straight back to the car and fix it up,
21:03and away you'll go.
21:04It'll be fine.
21:05Well, why would Jan think that particularly worrying?
21:09He was an upright enough kind of character.
21:11He didn't have a hook or a claw, or he didn't wear a devil's mask.
21:15He was just an ordinary bloke in Oregon.
21:19And he was able to, while she was in the car,
21:21he got into the back seat and put that strap over her neck from behind and then closed the ends
21:28of the strap into the rear door.
21:30And then in his home, he took her into his garage and then also had sex with her.
21:37He's a necrophiliac.
21:40He's like intercourse with the dead.
21:42And it really is like a cat with a mouse.
21:49It's as if he's playing with the body of this poor, dead young woman.
21:55For days, Brudos left Jan Whitney hanging in the garage workshop of his new family home in Salem, Oregon,
22:03regularly changing her clothes and defiling her body.
22:07It is like an element of fiction.
22:10This out-of-the-blue sudden killing, why should you expect it?
22:15Innocent young woman driving to the University of Oregon?
22:18You don't expect to come across somebody who's going to strangle you in the front of the car.
22:22But of course, that's not Brudos' point, really.
22:25Brudos' point is the body.
22:27It's the body that he wants.
22:29Brudos removed Jan's breast before weighing her body down and dumping her in the Willamette River.
22:37She would not be discovered until eight months later in July 1969.
22:43The killer then towed Jan's car away from his home.
22:48He's not going to leave her car at the side of the road.
22:51So once he's had his way with the body, he goes back and moves the car from the side of
22:58the road to a service station so that nobody's going to miss it.
23:03Indeed, he locks it up.
23:05Brudos is covering his tracks.
23:07In just ten months, Jerry Brudos had taken the lives of two women, but his lust for high heels and
23:14murder was about to intensify even further.
23:18And he would commemorate his next killing by capturing an eerie souvenir.
23:31In May 1969, the body of 22-year-old Secretary Linda Sali had been found in the Long Tom River
23:39just outside Portland, Oregon.
23:42The police didn't know it yet, but Linda had become the victim of an active serial killer named Jerry Brudos.
23:49The 30-year-old shoe fetishist had killed Linda Slauson and Jan Whitney in 1968.
23:57And by March 1969, he was ready to strike again.
24:02He comes across a 19-year-old, Karen Sprinker, in the car park of Oregon State University.
24:10He has a pistol, and he abducts her, forces her into his car at gunpoint.
24:17But Brudos kept Karen detained in the garage workshop of the family home in Salem that he shared with his
24:24wife and two children.
24:26He raped the college freshman before reaching for his camera.
24:31There's pictures that he took of her, and she's standing in the nude in his garage, and she has a
24:40look of somewhat of approval on her face, and that's called fear paralysis.
24:45In other words, she knew she was in trouble.
24:47He told me that she did everything that she could.
24:50Don't shoot me. Please don't shoot me.
24:55Brudos put a rope around Karen's neck and hanged her until she was dead, but not before he took pleasure
25:02in seeing her struggle.
25:04He had an eye hook. An eye hook is like a round device in the ceiling that screws into the
25:10ceiling, and the cable would go into that.
25:13The hook would go into that and hang down, and then he would put that around their neck and then
25:19jack it up, and he would ask her,
25:21Is that okay? Does that hurt? Does that hurt?
25:23And he got off on the fact that her heels, those high-heeled shoes, were kicking the back of his
25:32wall.
25:33He smiled when he talked about it.
25:36Women to him are expendable.
25:38Women to him are no more than a piece of gum that you're tired of and you throw away.
25:43After sexually violating Karen's lifeless body, Brudos continued to defile her.
25:52Karen Sprinker's breasts were cut off.
25:55And they were cut off so that he could make a mold.
26:01These individuals, serial murderers, like to keep souvenirs.
26:07And it was not about the sex.
26:09The sex is just like keeping something to remember by, keeping something so that he can relive this again until
26:19the next victim.
26:21This is a man utterly out of control, fulfilling every dark fantasy that he ever had.
26:28He's mutilating a young woman.
26:30He's abducted, killed, and he's using her body as though it were a toy, a plaything.
26:37It's very hard to imagine a worse kind of depravity than that.
26:43After taking the life of Karen Sprinker, Brudos didn't wait long before hunting for his next victim.
26:51On the 21st of April 1969, 24-year-old Secretary Sharon Wood was on her usual Monday morning trip to
27:00work.
27:02So it was a beautiful spring day.
27:04It was one of those days in April, a rare Portland day where you didn't need a coat.
27:08And I had dropped my children off at the sitter.
27:14And then I went to work.
27:15And I worked all day.
27:17And when I couldn't find my keys after a day of work,
27:21I asked my work-study student, Alex, if he could just cover for me.
27:25I was going to run down to that garage and see maybe I'd left my keys in the car.
27:31Not only could Sharon not find her car keys, she'd forgotten whereabouts she'd parked.
27:38So here I am, not knowing for sure where I'm going because I can't remember what floor I'm supposed to
27:45be on.
27:46And as I'm changing my mind about, oh, I'm down here, no, I'm upstairs, no, I'm down here, no, I'm
27:52upstairs.
27:53So I'm turning.
27:55My body's turning.
27:57And suddenly I realize there's somebody behind me and they're turning every time I turn.
28:05I haven't seen this person.
28:07I just feel this presence.
28:09And then I feel a tap on my shoulder.
28:13And what I remember is him saying, ma'am.
28:18And he said something like, you too, like he's lost too.
28:23So I was off like a shot.
28:26I'm going for the daylight.
28:28And then he pulled a gun and pointed the gun at me and said, if you don't scream, I won't
28:36shoot you.
28:39Despite the order to comply, Sharon's instincts were to stand up to Jerry Brudos.
28:46I just started screaming.
28:48I started backing up.
28:49He came at me.
28:51And then he got his arm around my neck and somehow his thumb got in my mouth and I bit
28:59down so hard.
29:02And then I didn't even know I had what you call fear paralysis.
29:08That's when your jaw locks and you just can't move.
29:12And he's much bigger than I am.
29:14I always call him an army tank, the man.
29:17He was kind of scary looking.
29:19But there we were and I am biting and I cannot let go.
29:23And we were going around and around and around.
29:27As the tussle continued, the sound of a nearby car starting and a flash of headlights startled both Sharon and
29:35Brudos.
29:36He grabbed my hair.
29:38I had very long hair.
29:41And he pulled me backwards.
29:42And he beat my head against the concrete until my jaw would relax.
29:49Because it would not relax.
29:52That was it.
29:53He jumped up, ran off.
29:57And then I'm laying there dazed.
29:59And then he comes back to retrieve his gun.
30:02And when he comes back, I think, oh, no, he's going to shoot me.
30:07But luckily for the 24-year-old, Brudos grabbed his gun and ran.
30:13Sharon was left completely stunned.
30:15I felt like I'd just been hit by a tsunami.
30:18It was over very quickly.
30:20I had no idea what had happened to me.
30:24I assumed I was dead.
30:26And I just was so sad.
30:28I'm never going to see my children again.
30:31But you don't really have time to think about it.
30:33It's like throwing a match on kerosene.
30:36You know, it just goes off.
30:38And you're there.
30:40And you're fighting the fire to save your life.
30:44You have no other feelings or no other thoughts but surviving.
30:50Just two days after the attack on Sharon Wood, Jerry Brudos murdered his fourth victim, Linda Sarley.
30:58The 30-year-old electrician had perfected his method of hiding bodies by tying them to heavy engine parts before
31:06throwing them into local rivers.
31:09Those seemed to be his favorite dumping sites because he knew that if he took a body to a river
31:16and could make it stay underwater for a period of time, maybe not indefinitely, but for a period of time,
31:23that it would be very difficult for that body to be discovered.
31:27On the 12th of May, 1969, just 48 hours after Linda Sarley had been discovered, divers searching for evidence in
31:37the Long Tom River found the body of Karen Sprinker.
31:42Detectives decided to question students in Callaghan Hall at the University of Oregon, where Karen had been living.
31:49It just so happened at the same time, Jerry Brudos had changed his M.O.
31:56Brudos is becoming incredibly bold, incredibly confident in his offending at this point in time.
32:02So he starts phoning up the dorm rooms of a local university and asking to speak to a woman of
32:09a particular name, and he just makes the name up.
32:12But he knows that this is going to be a way of actually getting to talk to young women, and
32:18when he does this, he asks them out on dates.
32:22One student agreed to go for a drink with Brudos, but she'd remember the date for all the wrong reasons.
32:30When he's in the car with her and they're driving, he says, well, how did you know that I wouldn't
32:36murder you and dump you in the river?
32:38And she was really taken aback by this, because, you know, people can make those kind of comments.
32:45How did you know that you could trust me?
32:47But this was incredibly specific, and I think it was that specificity that caused her to contact the police.
32:54The girl arranged a second date, but when Brudos arrived, it was the police who were waiting for him.
33:01Detectives questioned the 30-year-old electrician.
33:05They had no reason to arrest him, but decided to keep Brudos under surveillance.
33:10Armed with a photograph of Brudos, detectives went to visit women who'd been attacked over the past 15 months in
33:18the Portland area.
33:19One of those was 24-year-old Sharon Wood.
33:24So they came out to my mother's house, and they had, I guess you'd call them mugshots.
33:29So I was looking through the book, and so I was able to identify him in that book.
33:35Sharon wasn't the only person to identify Brudos, a 15-year-old girl who'd been attacked on the 22nd of
33:43April 1969,
33:45the day after Sharon and the day before Linda Sarli's murder, also picked him out.
33:52He was very distinctive looking.
33:54He had the sandy, really short hair, what I call ice blue eyes, and these kind of really heavy-lidded
34:02little eyes.
34:02But he was a regular guy.
34:04He was an electrician.
34:05He was married.
34:06He had two kids.
34:07I mean, who knew?
34:10The police issued a warrant for Brudos' arrest for assault while armed with a dangerous weapon.
34:17But the 30-year-old electrician was nowhere to be found.
34:22Detectives needed to track him down.
34:24Fast.
34:36On the 30th of May 1969, detectives made the decision to arrest Jerry Brudos.
34:43But when they tracked him to the home of a friend in Corvallis, Oregon, he and his entire family were
34:50nowhere to be found.
34:52Investigators were going to charge him with assault, but they were certain he was also responsible for at least two
34:58murders,
34:59Karen Sprinker and Linda Sarli, whose bodies had been found in the Long Tom River.
35:06Number one, they were all tied the same way.
35:08Number two, they all had engine parts attached to their bodies.
35:13And number three, there were parts on the body that led back to Brudos' home.
35:19So all of that indicated that this is the act of one person.
35:24The odds of it being two people doing the same kind of thing doesn't fit.
35:29It's like a fingerprint, you know?
35:31This is the work of one individual.
35:35When the police finally intercepted Brudos' car, his wife Darcy was behind the wheel with her two children next to
35:43her.
35:44The 30-year-old killer was hiding under a sheet in the back.
35:47After three days of questioning, Brudos finally told detectives in gruesome detail
35:53how he'd killed three women in the workshop of his family home and one in the basement of his previous
36:00home.
36:01And on the 3rd of June, 1969, Brudos confesses to the killings.
36:06He could hardly not, because to be honest, he knew that once the police searched his house and his garage,
36:13there was no going back.
36:15And this is because he is proud of what he's done.
36:19He's committed all of these murders, he's caused so much harm, so much trauma,
36:23and he wants credit for it.
36:25But we have to be really cautious, because he's telling a story.
36:28He's telling a story that he wants other people to hear.
36:32So it won't be 100% truthful.
36:34There will be elements that we will never know in terms of what these victims experienced.
36:39But this was the narrative that he wanted to stick.
36:44During the confession, Brudos also admitted to the attempted abductions of Sharon Wood
36:50and a 15-year-old girl.
36:52Detectives began a search of his home.
36:56Once he was arrested, items were found in his residence,
37:00such as the car keys and the apartment key that belonged to Whitney.
37:06What was he doing in possession of something of somebody he never knew
37:09or never had contact with?
37:12The car key fit the lock of Jan Whitney's car
37:16that Brudos had abandoned after killing her seven months previously.
37:21Investigators also searched the 30-year-old's workshop,
37:24the area of his Salem home that had been turned into his kill room.
37:29Numerous photographs were found that fell back behind a workbench
37:33because he's trying to hide all of this stuff.
37:36In one of the photographs itself was the one of Karen Sprinker,
37:43where she's in the nude.
37:45A very beautiful young girl.
37:47Her hair was long.
37:48She's very lithe.
37:49And she has on high-heeled shoes.
37:52And she's standing there with a look like whatever.
37:56It's blank.
37:58Police unearthed piles of ladies' underwear,
38:01and in Brudos' attic, they found 40 pairs of high-heeled shoes.
38:07Amongst the pictures in his workshop
38:09was one that chillingly revealed the killer's face.
38:14He could look into the mirror,
38:16and then he could see the reflection
38:18from her groin area or vaginal area into the mirror.
38:24So he took a picture of it.
38:25Well, he also took a picture of himself.
38:29So you can actually see it's actually Jerry Brudos.
38:33And that photograph was big as far as a piece of evidence.
38:40I think Jerome Brudos took those pictures because it aroused him.
38:44And I think that having tortured a woman,
38:47he wanted to be able to go back and relive the torture,
38:50even though to camouflage his murders,
38:53he had to dispose of the body parts
38:56and dispose of these young women in the most horrific way.
38:59But having those photos allowed him to go back
39:02and look at the photos
39:04and relive the experience of torturing these women.
39:09In June 1969,
39:11Jerry Brudos was arraigned for the murders
39:14of Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker, and Linda Sarley.
39:18Despite his confession,
39:20there was not enough evidence
39:21to charge him with the killing of his first victim, Linda Slauson.
39:26Her body has never been found.
39:29Brudos' initial plea was not guilty by reason of insanity.
39:33And I think this is quite a sophisticated thing that he does.
39:37I think he has that understanding of his own deviance,
39:41of his own perversions.
39:42He knows that people are going to look at his crimes
39:44and go, this guy's bonkers, he's crazy.
39:47So I think this is an attempt
39:48to try and secure a good outcome for himself.
39:52And then, a little later,
39:54he changes his plea to guilty.
39:58Because I think that
40:01the evidence was so overwhelming
40:04that there was little else that he could do.
40:07On the 27th of June 1969,
40:11Jerry Brudos was given three life sentences.
40:15He would never be free again.
40:1923 years later, in 1992,
40:22radio reporter Lars Larsen
40:24was given the opportunity
40:26to interview the 53-year-old killer.
40:30They put us in a small room
40:32with a desk in it
40:33that was used as an overflow office,
40:35and they said,
40:36okay, go ahead, do the interview.
40:37So we were face-to-face with him
40:39for a little over two hours.
40:42And it was creepy.
40:44Very, very creepy.
40:46Lars found Brudos to be unremarkable,
40:49yet extremely callous.
40:51And the funny thing is,
40:53if you had passed him on the street,
40:55he had a big, round face,
40:56and he was kind of a heavyset guy,
40:59but he was a big, powerful guy,
41:00but he would have struck you
41:02as just Joe Average,
41:03just an average-looking guy,
41:05nothing really all that distinguishing about him.
41:09But his affect was very strange.
41:11He would laugh about things
41:13that were completely inappropriate.
41:15He's talking about murdering,
41:18dismembering,
41:19and then dumping the bodies of young women
41:21attached to a piece of iron
41:23into a river to rot
41:24like a piece of garbage.
41:26And while he's talking about this,
41:28he's laughing about things.
41:30He loves talking about his cases.
41:33But he's also crafty enough
41:35to hide some that he may not want to talk about.
41:38That may be, for him, even over the top.
41:41In my personal opinion,
41:43I have no facts or basis to know
41:45that he has other victims,
41:46but I know he tried others,
41:48and there may be some, maybe.
41:50Brudos was twice refused parole
41:53in 1977 and 1999,
41:57much to the relief of the people
41:59whose lives he ruined.
42:01I got mad when I got older.
42:05I was in junior high.
42:08We had prisoners
42:10from the Oregon State Penitentiary
42:14come and talk to the kids.
42:17I asked,
42:18do you know Jerome Henry Brudos?
42:20And they said, yeah, why?
42:22I go, because he killed my sister.
42:25And you tell him,
42:27he'll never get out of prison alive.
42:30It just came out.
42:32I couldn't hold it in anymore.
42:34And I figured,
42:35that's the closest I'm going to get
42:37to being able to talk to him.
42:39And so I did.
42:56My hope in talking about this
42:58is that somebody somewhere
43:01just might hear
43:03how important it is
43:04to be aware
43:05of your circumstances.
43:07And I'm still very sad about it,
43:10very sad that there are
43:11the parents of those girls
43:13that will never get
43:14to be grandparents.
43:16I have 11 grandchildren
43:18and a great-grandson,
43:20and that would never be
43:21the experience
43:23of those young women's family.
43:26They didn't get
43:27to have those things.
43:29Jerry Brudos
43:31became the longest-serving inmate
43:33in the state of Oregon.
43:34He spent 37 years in prison
43:37before he died of liver cancer
43:39in March 2006
43:41at the age of 67.
43:44Those who had the opportunity
43:46to speak to him
43:47never saw any signs of redemption.
43:51I asked Brudos
43:52about the remorse
43:53that he had for the victims,
43:54and he had no remorse whatsoever.
43:56They were just,
43:57they were expendable to him.
43:59Brudos hated women.
44:02To make them feel terrified
44:03while they were still alive,
44:05to take their life,
44:06and then to take parts of them off,
44:09and then to keep them
44:10as sexual trophies,
44:12he clearly hated women
44:13with a passion.
44:15But it also sexually excited him
44:17that he could hurt women.
44:20Brudos was a sexual predator
44:22who preyed not only on the women
44:24who happened to cross his path,
44:26but on the shoes they wore.
44:28His fetishism spiraled out of control
44:31and led to the most horrific murders.
44:34To kill four young women
44:36and gruesomely desecrate their bodies
44:39for no other reason
44:40than his own self-gratification
44:42makes Jerry Brudos
44:44one of the world's most evil killers.
44:47is the killing of the victims.
44:48We lose.
44:53We lose.
45:04We lose.
45:05We lose.
45:06We lose.
45:07We lose.
45:10you