World's Most Evil Killers - Season 5, Episode 10 - Jerry Brudos - Full Episode | Forensic Files

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

Jerome Brudos was a serial killer and necrophile who murdered four women in Oregon during the 1960s. He was known as the 'The Lust Killer' and 'The Shoe Fetish Slayer.'

An in-depth look at the lives and crimes of some of the world's most evil killers, including Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Richard Ramirez, Cary Stayner, Leonard Lake, Dorothea Puente and more.

Brief Summary

Jerry Brudos, a serial killer, murdered four women in Oregon, driven by a disturbing shoe fetish and a complete lack of remorse.

Key points

The First Victim. Linda Slawson, a 19-year-old encyclopedia saleswoman, was lured into Brudos' home and murdered.
The Depraved Killer. Jerry Brudos, a seemingly family man, harbored dark secrets and committed horrific crimes.
Brudos' Dark Obsession. Brudos' obsession with high-heel shoes escalated into a deadly fetish.
The Chilling Dinner. Brudos strangled Linda after having dinner with his family, showcasing his dual life.
The Aftermath of Murder. Linda Salee's murder left a lasting impact on her family, haunting them for decades.
Sharon Wood's Narrow Escape. Sharon Wood confronts her attacker, Jerry Brudos, and fights for her life.

Episode highlights

Episode quotes

He was the personification of evil.

Lars Larson on Jerry Brudos' lack of remorse.

3:51WatchAug 19, 2021

Tension

85/ 100High tension

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