Jerry Brudos
Brudos in a 2005 prison photograph
Born
Jerome Henry Brudos

(1939-01-31)January 31, 1939
Webster, South Dakota, U.S.
DiedMarch 28, 2006(2006-03-28) (aged 67)
Salem, Oregon, U.S.
Other namesThe Lust Killer
The Shoe Fetish Slayer
Motive
Conviction(s)Life imprisonment (x3)[1]
Details
Victims4+
Span of crimes
January 26, 1968 – April 23, 1969
CountryUnited States
State(s)Oregon[2]
Date apprehended
May 25, 1969

Jerome Henry Brudos (January 31, 1939 – March 28, 2006) was an American serial killer and necrophile known as the Lust Killer and the Shoe Fetish Slayer who committed the kidnap, rape, and murder of four young women between 1968 and 1969 in Salem, Oregon. He is also known to have attempted to abduct two other young women.[3]

All of Brudos's murders were committed inside either his car or the basement or garage workshop of his home. Each victim was killed by strangulation; several victims were photographed before and/or after death, and three of his victims endured post mortem dismemberment. Brudos is known to have engaged in acts of necrophilia with his victims' bodies and to have retained selective body parts — invariably the severed breasts or feet — of three of his victims to both demonstrate his domination and to satiate his sexual fetish for women's feet and shoes.

Sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment, to be served at the Oregon State Penitentiary, Brudos died of liver cancer while incarcerated at this facility in 2006.

Brudos became known as the "Lust Killer" due to the primal motive behind his crimes; he also became known as the "Shoe Fetish Slayer" due to his lifelong shoe fetishism.

Early life

Childhood

Jerry Brudos was born in Webster, South Dakota, on January 31, 1939, the younger of two sons born to Marie Eileen (née Alldridge) and Henry Ervin Brudos.[4] His mother had wanted her second child to be a girl and was very displeased that she gave birth to another son;[5] she would frequently emotionally abuse and belittle her younger son — making no secret of the fact to Brudos she had wanted a daughter as opposed to a son. By contrast, Brudos's mother doted on her older son, Larry.[6]

The Brudos family frequently moved home around the Pacific Northwest before settling in Salem, Oregon. This property was located upon family farmland.[7]

Fetishisms

Brudos harbored a lifelong shoe and foot fetishism; he later recollected his fascination for women's shoes and feet sourced from an incident when he, aged approximately five years, observed the teenage daughter of a family friend lying asleep on his bed, having been allowed to do so by Brudos's parents after she complained of feeling unwell. According to Brudos, he was "transfixed" by the sight of the girl's high-heeled shoes and attempted to pry them off her feet; the girl awoke and simply told him to leave the room.[8] On another occasion at age five, Brudos discovered a pair of leather high-heeled shoes with a rhinestone-studded clasp while exploring a local junkyard. Brudos took these shoes home, then slipped them on his feet to show his mother. In response, Brudos's mother shrieked he was "wicked" and ordered him to remove the shoes and return them to the junkyard.[6] Upon learning her son had secretly retained the footwear and frequently secretly wore the garments, Brudos's mother severely beat her son before burning the attire in his presence.[9]

He reportedly attempted to steal the shoes of his first grade teacher. Brudos also developed a fetish for women's underwear and later claimed that he would steal underwear from female neighbors as a child.[10] He spent his teen years in and out of psychotherapy and psychiatric hospitals.

First offenses

In his early teens, Brudos began stalking local women — several of whom he discreetly photographed; he also established a pattern of abducting girls his own age or younger — typically at knife point — and forcing them into a barn upon his family farm before ordering them to disrobe before photographing them. He would then lock these girls in a corn crib before reappearing several minutes later, wearing different clothing and with his hair combed in a different fashion; he would then release the girl, explaining he was "Ed. Jerry's twin brother" and feign shock at the her account of her ordeal before asking, "He didn't hurt you, did he?" Brudos would then claim his twin was "in therapy ...this is going to set him back a bit" before pleading with the girl not to inform anyone of her ordeal and promising to locate and destroy the camera "Jerry" had used. None of these girls were subjected to physical sexual assaults beyond tentative fondling, and all apparently agreed, as none are known to have informed authorities of these experiences.[7]

Other assault victims were knocked to the ground and choked into unconsciousness before Brudos fled with their shoes.[11] At age 17 he abducted and beat a young woman, threatening to stab her if she did not comply with his sexual demands.[3] He was arrested shortly thereafter and subjected to a range of psychiatric evaluations within the Oregon State Hospital, where he remained for nine months; these tests concluded Brudos suffered from a schizotypal personality disorder and that his sexual fantasies revolved around his hatred towards his mother and women in general.[8]

While undergoing examinations at the Oregon State Hospital, Brudos was allowed to attend high school. Upon completion of his evaluations, he returned to live with his parents. He graduated from high school in 1957. Two years later, Brudos joined the army, where he trained as a communications technician.[12] He was discharged from the army in October 1959, having been classified as unfit for military service and moved back into his parents' home.[13]

Marriage

In 1961, Brudos married a 17-year-old girl with whom he fathered two children and settled in a Salem suburb. He asked his new bride to do housework naked except for a pair of high heels while he took pictures. It was at about this time that he began complaining of migraine headaches and "blackouts," relieving his symptoms with night-prowling raids to steal shoes and lace undergarments. Brudos would undergo a period of transvestitism, where he used the female persona as a form of escape mechanism.[14] Brudos kept the shoes, underwear and (for a time) the bodies of his victims in a garage that he would not allow his wife to enter without first announcing her arrival on an intercom that he had installed.[15]

Murders

Between 1968 and 1969, Brudos bludgeoned and strangled four young women and attempted to abduct a minimum of two others.[16][17] Three victims were murdered in the basement or garage workshop of Brudos's home, and one inside his vehicle.[18]

All of Brudos's victims were abducted and murdered in order to satisfy his need to both dominate and possess attractive young women and to satiate his sexual fetishes. Following the act of murder, each victim was subjected to a ritual of dressing in differing lingerie and footwear during which Brudos would arrange her body in suggestive and provocative positions prior to photographing her body and engaging in masturbation.[11] Each victim was also subject to acts of necrophilia and three were mutilated after death, with Brudos retaining the severed body parts to fuel his fetishes in addition to expressing his dominance. All were disposed of in the Willamette River.

Linda Katherine Slawson

Slawson was a 19-year-old door-to-door encyclopedia saleswoman whom Brudos encountered as he worked in his yard on January 26, 1968; she inadvertently entered his property having confused his address with another on the belief she had an appointment with the homeowner to potentially sell an encyclopedia. Brudos lured her to the basement on the ruse of his interest in purchasing a set of encyclopedias. She was bludgeoned about the head with a section of wood as she sat on a stool, then strangled to death and hidden beneath a staircase. Brudos then asked his mother to take his daughter from the house to purchase hamburgers in order that he could engage in necrophilia with Slawson's body and dress her corpse in differing footwear and lingerie — photographing much of the process.[15]

Following a ritual of arranging Slawson's body in provocative poses in addition to acts of necrophilia, Brudos severed Slawson's her left foot from her body with a hacksaw. He later disposed of her body in the Willamette River but stowed her severed appendage in a freezer for future usage of modelling his extensive collection of high-heeled shoes.[15]

Jan Susan Whitney

A 23-yea-old motorist whose car broke down on Interstate 5 between Salem and Albany on November 26, 1968. Brudos later insisted this murder — much like Slawson's — was a crime of opportunity; he had simply encountered Whitney as he drove home from work. After inspecting her car, Brudos claimed he could fix her vehicle, but would need to drive her to his home to collect the tools. Whitney agreed to accompany him.[19]

While parked in the driveway of his home, Brudos entered the rear of the vehicle as Whitney sat in the passenger seat; he then asked her to close her eyes and describe how to tie a shoelace without opening her eyes or moving her hands. Whitney agreed to the challenge; Brudos then strangled her from behind with a leather strap before raping her body inside the vehicle. He then carried her body into his basement workshop where he dressed her body in differing footwear and lingerie before engaging in necrophilia with her corpse.[20]

Whitney's body was then hoisted from the pulley in the garage ceiling several days, during which he repeatedly dressed, photographed and engaged in necrophilia with the corpse. Brudos also severed one of her breasts which he attempted to preserve with view to usage as a paperweight. Her body was later tethered to a section of railroad iron and thrown into the Willamette River along with Slawson's foot, which had by this stage begun to decompose.

Karen Sprinker

Karen Elena Sprinker

Sprinker was an 18-year-old student abducted at gunpoint from a parking lot outside a department store en route to meet her mother on March 27, 1969. Brudos was dressed in women's clothes during this attack. He took her to his garage, made her try on his collection of undergarments and pose while he photographed her, raped her and strangled her by hanging her by her neck from a pulley. Brudos had sex with the body on several occasions and cut off her breasts to make plastic molds. Afterward, he tied the body to a six-cylinder car engine with nylon cord and threw it in the Willamette.[21]

Attempted abductions

In April 1969, Brudos attempted to abduct two young women on consecutive days. Both escaped and reported their ordeal to authorities. The first of these women, 24-year-old motorist Sharon Wood, encountered Brudos in the basement stairwell of a parking garage in Portland on April 21, 1969. Although Brudos attempted to abduct Woods at gunpoint, the young woman escaped. The following day, a 15-year-old schoolgirl, Gloria Gene Smith, was forced at gunpoint to accompany Brudos to his vehicle, although when Smith observed a woman working on her front lawn, she ran towards the woman, causing Brudos to flee from the scene.

Linda Dawn Salee

Salee was a 22-year-old removal firm secretary whom Brudos abducted from a shopping mall parking lot on April 23, 1969. Brudos brought her to his garage where he raped and strangled her, then played with her corpse. He decided to not cut her breasts off because they were "too pink" and instead applied an electric current to the body in an attempt to make it "jump", which failed. Afterward, he tied the body to a car transmission with a nylon cord and threw it in the Willamette.

Discoveries

On May 10, 1969, a fisherman discovered what he believed to be a large parcel floating in the Long Tom River.[n 1] Upon closer inspection, he discovered the parcel was actually the bound, bloated body of a young woman, clad in a coat and weighed down by a large gearbox. The body was identified a that of Linda Salee. Due to the extent of decomposition, a subsequent autopsy was unable to determine whether she had been raped, although the coroner did rule her death as being due to strangulation. In addition, her autopsy discovered burn marks surrounding puncture marks beneath her armpits.

Days later, an underwater search and recovery unit discovered the body of Karen Sprinker approximately 20 yards from where Salee's body had been found. Her body was similarly weighted to the river bed — in this case by a six-cylinder head — and she had been bound with precisely the same cord and copper wire as Salee's body had been. Sprinker had also died of strangulation, and both her breasts had been severed from her body after death. Although Sprinker was discovered wearing the same green skirt and sweater she had worn on the day of her disappearance, the black bra upon her body was many sizes too large for her, and had been stuffed with brown paper toweling in an apparent effort to simulate a much larger breast size.[23]

Arrest

The police asked students at a nearby university campus about suspicious men and one led them to Brudos, who had phoned her several times to ask her for a date. Brudos gave police a false address, which increased their suspicions. Within Brudos's garage, police discovered copper wiring determined to have been cut with the same tool to cut the cords used to tie the bodies discovered within the Long Tom River. Brudos was arrested, and he made a full confession.[24]

Conviction

On June 28, 1969, Brudos pled guilty to three first-degree murders (Sprinker, Whitney and Salee) and was sentenced to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment in Oregon State Penitentiary. Though he confessed to Slawson's murder, Brudos was neither tried nor convicted for it because he did not make and keep photographs of the body, unlike in the other cases, but only of her foot. Whitney's body was found a month after Brudos' conviction, about a mile downstream from where he said he had thrown it.[18]

While incarcerated, Brudos amassed piles of women's shoe catalogues in his cell. He wrote to major companies requesting them, and claimed they were his substitute for pornography. He lodged countless appeals, including one in which he alleged that a photograph taken of him with one of his victim's corpses could not prove his guilt, because it was not the body of a person he was convicted of killing. In 1995, the parole board told Brudos that he would never be released.[18]

Psychiatrist Michael H. Stone identifies Brudos as having a psychopathic personality, noting his callousness and lack of remorse for his crimes.[25] Marion County detective Jim Byrnes recalled a conversation with Brudos in which he asked him, "Do you feel some remorse, Jerry? Do you feel sorry for your victims, for the girls who died?" Brudos then picked a half-piece of paper up off of the table, wadded it up into a ball and threw it on the floor, whereupon he replied, "I care about those girls as much as I care about that piece of wadded up paper."[26]

Illness and death

Brudos died in prison on March 28, 2006, from liver cancer. At the time of his death, he was the longest incarcerated inmate in the Oregon Department of Corrections (a total of 37 years, from 1969 to 2006).[27]

Media

Literature

  • Rule, Ann (1994). Lust Killer. Signet Books. ISBN 0-4511-6687-6.

Television

  • Most Evil S01E06 "Deadly Desires" (2006). Narrated by Tim Hopper, this episode was first broadcast in August 2006.[28]
  • Jerome Brudos: The Lust Killer (2008). Directed by Jeffrey Woods, this hour-long documentary was first broadcast in June 2008.[29]
  • Most Evil Killers S05E03 "Jerry Brudos" (2021). Narrated by Fred Dinenage, this episode was first broadcast in February 2021.[30]

See also

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Ramsland, Katherine (January 1, 2015). "The Fetish Killer". crimelibrary.org. Retrieved November 28, 2023.
  2. ↑ Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI ISBN 978-0-671-71561-8 p. 306
  3. 1 2 The Murder Almanac ISBN 978-1-897-78404-4 pp. 31-32
  4. ↑ "Ancestry: Marie Eileen Brudos". Geni.com. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
  5. ↑ Barcella, Laura (November 13, 2017). "The Murderers of 'Mindhunter': What's True, What's Not?". aetv.com. New York City: A&E Television Networks LLC. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  6. 1 2 Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3 p. 169
  7. 1 2 Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI ISBN 978-0-671-71561-8 p. 127
  8. 1 2 The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers ISBN 978-1-856-48328-5 p. 28
  9. ↑ Killers ISBN 0-752-20850-0 pp. 437-438
  10. ↑ Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3 pp. 169-170
  11. 1 2 Ramsland, Katherine. "The Fetish Killer". truTV Crime Library. Archived from the original on February 9, 2015. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  12. ↑ Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3 p. 175
  13. ↑ Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI ISBN 978-0-671-71561-8 p. 297
  14. ↑ Ramsland, Katherine. "The Fetish Killer: The Transvestite". truTV Crime Library. Archived from the original on February 10, 2015. Retrieved September 22, 2020.
  15. 1 2 3 Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3 p. 179
  16. ↑ Bovsun, Mara (January 9, 2019) [June 14, 2014]. "Sicko Shoe Fetishist Goes on a Killing Spree". New York Daily News. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  17. ↑ The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime ISBN 978-1-633-88532-5 pp. 152–156
  18. 1 2 3 The World's Most Bizarre Murders ISBN 978-1-843-58698-2 pp. 73-84
  19. ↑ Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3 p. 180
  20. ↑ Killers ISBN 0-752-20850-0 p. 437
  21. ↑ "His Hobby was Murder". New York Daily News. June 28, 1970. Retrieved December 2, 2023.
  22. ↑ "Long Tom River: River in Coast Ranges, Fern Ridge Wildlife Area in Monroe, OR". naturalatlas.com. Retrieved December 3, 2023.
  23. ↑ Killers ISBN 0-752-20850-0 p. 436
  24. ↑ Morrison, Alan (June 28, 1969). "Brudos Tells of Attacks, Slayings". Statesman Journal. Retrieved December 4, 2023.
  25. ↑ The Anatomy of Evil ISBN 978-1-633-88336-9 p. 210
  26. ↑ Lust Killer ISBN 978-1-101-66745-3 p. 271
  27. ↑ "DOC Public Affairs: Inmate Jerome Brudos Passes Away". oregon.gov. March 28, 2006. Archived from the original on July 21, 2011. Retrieved April 4, 2012.
  28. ↑ "Most Evil: Deadly Desires". IMDB. imdb.com. August 24, 2006. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  29. ↑ "Biography: Jerry Brudos". IMDB. imdb.com. Retrieved December 1, 2023.
  30. ↑ "Jerry Brudos: The Shoe Fetish Killer". IMDB. imdb.com. February 2, 2021. Retrieved November 30, 2023.

Cited works and further reading

  • Blundell, Nigel (1983). The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. London: PRC Press. ISBN 978-1-856-48328-5.
  • Cawthorne, Nigel; Tibballs, Geoff (1993). Killers. London: Boxtree. pp. 437–441. ISBN 0-752-20850-0.
  • Foreman, Laura (1992). Serial Killers: True Crime. The editors of Time-Life Books (Hardcover ed.). Time-Life. ISBN 978-0-7835-0001-0.{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: ref duplicates default (link)
  • Holmes, Stephen T.; Holmes, Ronald M. (2008). Sex Crimes: Patterns and Behavior. Louisville, Kentucky: Sage Publications. ISBN 978-1-412-95298-9.
  • Lane, Brian; Gregg, Wilfred (1995) [1992]. The Encyclopedia Of Serial Killers. New York City: Berkley Books. pp. 75–77. ISBN 0-425-15213-8.
  • Marrison, James (2010). The World's Most Bizarre Murders. London: John Blake Publishing. ISBN 978-1-843-58698-2.
  • Ressler, Robert; Schachtman, Tom (1992). Whoever Fights Monsters: My Twenty Years Hunting Serial Killers for the FBI. London: St Martin's Press. ISBN 978-0-671-71561-8.
  • Rule, Ann (1983). Lust Killer. New York City: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-101-66745-3.
  • Stone, Michael H. (2017). The Anatomy of Evil. Amherst, New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-633-88336-9.
  • Stone, Michael H.; Brucato, Gary (2019). The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. ISBN 978-1-633-88532-5.
  • Vronsky, Peter (2004). Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters. New York City: Berkley Publishing. ISBN 978-0-425-19640-3.
  • Whittington-Egan, Richard; Whittington-Egan, Molly (1992). The Murder Almanac. Glasgow: Neil Wilson Publishing. pp. 31–32. ISBN 978-1-897-78404-4.
  • Wilson, Colin (2023). Hunting Serial Killers: Criminal Profilers and Their Search for the World's Most Wanted Manhunters. New York: Skyhorse Publishing. ISBN 978-1-510-77240-3.
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