In the spring of 1969, two young women disappeared from busy public places in western Oregon within weeks of each other. Karen Elena Sprinker, a 19-year-old Oregon State University student, vanished from a parking structure in downtown Salem on March 27. Linda Dawn Salee, 22, vanished from the Lloyd Center shopping mall in Portland on April 23. In May both were found in the Long Tom River, south of Corvallis, their bodies weighted with heavy auto parts. Another young woman, Jan Susan Whitney of McMinnville, had been missing since November 1968, and a fourth, Linda Kay Slawson of Aloha, since January 1968.
By the end of June 1969 a 30-year-old Salem electrician named Jerome Henry Brudos had pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Whitney, Sprinker and Salee, and was serving three consecutive life sentences in the Oregon State Penitentiary. He also told the psychiatrists and psychologists who examined him that he had killed Linda Slawson, but no body was ever found and he was never tried for her death. He remained in prison for the rest of his life and died there on March 28, 2006, at 67. At his death, the Associated Press reported, he was the longest-held prisoner in the penitentiary.
Jerome Henry Brudos was born on January 31, 1939, in South Dakota, according to the Statesman Journal of Salem. The Albany Democrat-Herald reported in 2009 that he was said to have hated his domineering mother, who had wanted a daughter, and that the family moved often. He lived in Corvallis from 1957 to 1963 and graduated from Corvallis High School in 1958.
His trouble with the law began in his teens. The Statesman Journal reported that in 1956, at 17, he was taken into custody in Polk County for stealing women's underwear and was also charged with photographing a naked girl, and that he was placed in the care of the Oregon State Hospital. The New York Daily News, in a 1970 account, said that at 17 he had been arrested for forcing two girls to undress at knifepoint and photographing them, and that he spent several months in a state hospital. The Albany Democrat-Herald's 2009 retrospective said he was committed to the state hospital for several months after beating a teenage girl. The three accounts describe the incident differently; all agree that he was committed to the state hospital as a teenager.
He enlisted in the Army in March 1959 and was discharged that October after telling an Army psychiatrist about a recurring dream, the Albany paper reported. In 1960, according to the Statesman Journal, Oregon State University officials found him near a dormitory dressed in women's clothing, with a large quantity of women's clothing in his possession. The Daily News said his fixation on women's shoes went back to the age of five, when he found a high-heeled shoe in a garbage can.
He married on September 30, 1961, according to the Statesman Journal; the Albany paper gave the year as 1962. The couple had two children. He worked as an electrician for several companies, the Daily News said, but the Albany paper reported that he could not hold a steady job. A neighbor later told a reporter he "could fix anything that broke down." He was also a keen photographer, and he used the large garage attached to his house as a workshop and studio. The Statesman Journal reported that the family moved from Portland to Salem during the period when the women disappeared.
Linda Kay Slawson was 19 and lived in Aloha, west of Portland. She sold encyclopedias door to door. The Daily News described her as dependable and happy. In January 1968 she went out to seek book orders in Portland and did not come back. Police found her purse in her car, and she had left behind a check of about $125 owed to her from her sales, which made them doubt that she had left of her own accord.
Her body was never found. After his arrest, Brudos told the psychiatric team examining him that he had killed her, according to Marion County District Attorney Gary Gortmaker, as reported in 1970. He said he had put her body into the Willamette River; the Statesman Journal reported in 2006 that he named the Wilsonville bridge. Divers searched and found nothing. The Corvallis Gazette-Times reported in July 1969 that Slawson had disappeared while selling encyclopedias in the part of Portland where Brudos then lived.
Jan Susan Whitney was 23 and came from McMinnville. On November 26, 1968, according to the Daily News, she drove to Eugene to ask about going back to the University of Oregon, then headed north on Interstate 5 in her red and white 1959 Rambler. She picked up two hitchhikers. North of Albany her car broke down at a rest stop. A green-blue station wagon pulled in, driven by a tall, heavy man who offered rides. Whitney and the two hitchhikers got in. He let the hitchhikers out near Salem and drove on with her. Her car was found locked at the rest stop. The Statesman Journal gave the date she was last seen, in Eugene, as November 25 and placed the rest area between Salem and Albany.
Brudos later told police he had strangled her after picking her up on Interstate 5 near Albany, and that he had put her body into the Willamette River from the bridge at Independence on November 26. The Daily News reported that she was strangled with a leather strap.
Karen Elena Sprinker was 19, from Salem, and a chemistry student at Oregon State University in Corvallis. On March 27, 1969, during the spring break, she had arranged to meet her mother for lunch at Meier & Frank, the large department store in downtown Salem. She never arrived and never contacted her mother. She had been taken from a multilevel parking structure near the store by a heavy man with a gun that the Daily News described as a realistic toy.
Linda Dawn Salee was 22 and lived in Beaverton. She worked as a secretary and was a part-time student at Portland State University. She planned to marry soon, and on April 23, 1969, she went to the Lloyd Center in Portland to buy birthday presents for her fiance. At a men's shop she bought a pair of slacks and a watchband. As she walked back to her car in the underground garage, a man showed her a fake badge and told her she was under arrest for shoplifting, then took her to his station wagon. The presents were not in her car when the police searched it.
In May 1969 both women were found in the Long Tom River near Monroe, south of Corvallis. The sources differ on the order. The Daily News reported in 1970 that two fishermen found Sprinker's body on May 10 and that divers recovered Salee's about two days later. The Statesman Journal, in its 2006 timeline, and the Albany Democrat-Herald, in 2009, gave the dates the other way round: Salee on May 10 and Sprinker on May 12. Both women had been strangled, and both had been weighted with auto parts. Their hands were bound.
Investigators traced the auto parts through wrecking yards and garages without result. A rag found with Salee led nowhere either; one cleaning company alone, the Daily News reported, had 1,500 customers. The clue that later mattered came from the Oregon State Police crime laboratory. Lieutenant Robert Pennick noticed that a wire wrapped around one of the weights had been tied with an underwriter's knot, a knot used by electricians, and concluded that the man they were looking for might be one.
On April 22, 1969, a 15-year-old girl was nearly abducted in Salem near what is now Parrish Middle School. A man of about six feet and 200 pounds, with light hair and dark glasses, tried to force her to go with him at the point of a gun that looked like a toy. She screamed and he fled. Police began searching their records for known sex offenders who matched her description. The Statesman Journal reported in 2006 that she later identified Brudos and that he was tied to a green Volkswagen Karmann Ghia seen in the case.
On May 14, 1969, at about 9:30 p.m., a man telephoned a woman student, said he was back from Vietnam, and suggested they meet for a soft drink. He had not been in Vietnam. The two met, and during the conversation he mentioned that he was replacing the engine of his car. The remark reminded her of the auto parts that had been used to weight the bodies in the Long Tom. She kept her suspicion to herself, agreed to see him again, and called the police as soon as he left. A detective told her how to proceed.
He failed to appear for a date on the Friday, then called again on the Sunday. She agreed to meet him and called the police again. When he arrived, detectives took him in for questioning. He was Jerome Henry Brudos, 30, an electrician from Salem. The Statesman Journal dated the tip that made him a suspect to May 18, 1969. The district attorney later said Brudos had asked one of the students he contacted a question that referred to what had happened to the other young women.
On May 26, 1969, police searched his house and garage in Salem. They found copper wire, rope and photographs of women who had been his victims, the Statesman Journal reported. They also found lists of telephone numbers for sorority houses and other college residences; police thought some numbers may have come from Sprinker's purse. The garage, which Brudos used as a workshop and studio, held hundreds of photographs. One of them, the Daily News reported, showed a mirror in which Brudos could be seen holding the camera. Evidence later described in court also included paper towels that matched towels in the family's kitchen and other items that the state crime laboratory linked to Sprinker's death.
On May 29, 1969, he was arrested on a charge of assault while armed, over the attempted abduction of the Salem schoolgirl. In early June he was charged in Marion County with four counts of first-degree murder: for Whitney, Sprinker and Salee, and for a "Jane Doe" whom officials described as Slawson. The Albany Democrat-Herald dated the murder arrest to June 2.
Two experienced court-appointed lawyers, Dale Drake and George Rhoten, took his defense. The Oregon Court of Appeals later recorded that within a few days of the arrest they had concluded that insanity was the only defense open to him, given his admissions, a confession and physical evidence that included photographs of the victims. Brudos pleaded not guilty and not guilty by reason of insanity.
Between June 9 and June 25, 1969, five psychiatrists and two clinical psychologists examined him. All of them found that he had been legally sane when the women were killed. The first examination, by Dr. Suckow on June 9, later became the center of his appeals. His lawyers advised him to describe the crimes fully and truthfully, believing that frank disclosure gave him the best chance of an insanity finding, and they did not attend. Both the lawyers and the doctor told him at the start that the examination was not privileged and could be used at trial. An intercom in the room was left open, and the district attorney and two police officers listened. The post-conviction court later found that his lawyers had not known the session was being monitored.
During these examinations, District Attorney Gortmaker said, Brudos orally admitted killing all four women: Slawson, Whitney, Sprinker and Salee. Before sentencing he admitted that he had strangled Whitney, Sprinker and Salee at his house in Salem. He told a psychiatrist, "There must be something wrong with me." A psychologist who examined him told a reporter that Brudos was likable and had a good sense of humor, and that it was hard to connect the man he met with the crimes. Brudos had asked whether he would be safe to release. The psychologist did not tell him his answer, but told the reporter that if Brudos were released he would "probably" kill again.
On Friday, June 27, 1969, Brudos appeared before Marion County Circuit Judge Val D. Sloper and changed his pleas to guilty on three counts of first-degree murder, for the deaths of Karen Elena Sprinker, Linda Dawn Salee and Jan Susan Whitney. Asked why he wanted to plead guilty, he said, "Well, your honor, I did it." Asked whether he had acted with premeditation and malice, he said yes. Drake told the court that the psychiatric reports found Brudos able to assist in his defense and able to tell right from wrong when the crimes were committed.
Judge Sloper sentenced him to three consecutive terms of life imprisonment. Oregon did not have the death penalty at the time. Brudos waived the 48-hour waiting period before transfer, and he was taken to the Oregon State Penitentiary that afternoon. The Statesman Journal later recorded June 27, 1969, as the day he entered the prison, and reported that he had pleaded guilty days before his trial was due to begin. Detective Jim Stovall of the Salem police, who led the investigation, said in 2006 that he believed Brudos pleaded guilty expecting that he would one day be released.
Brudos told the court his wife had known nothing of the killings. On her lawyer's advice, she declined to talk with the police.
When Brudos pleaded guilty, Jan Whitney's body had not been found. On Sunday, July 27, 1969, it was recovered from the Willamette River about half a mile downstream from the Independence Bridge, the place where Brudos had told police he put it into the water the previous November. A family reported the find, Marion County sheriff's deputies recovered the body, and she was identified from dental records at the state medical examiner's office in Portland.
The charge for Linda Slawson stayed pending in district court. On July 25, 1969, District Attorney Gortmaker said there was not sufficient evidence to try Brudos for her death. The Statesman Journal reported in 2006 that no physical evidence supported a prosecution. An Associated Press report of the same year said he had been charged in Multnomah County with her killing and was never prosecuted after the three Marion County convictions. He was never tried, and his account of her death is his confession only.
In July 1969 the Marion County juvenile court took the couple's two young children into its care, on a petition from the district attorney that said the three killings had taken place in the home where they lived. They were placed in a foster home.
On August 7, 1969, a Marion County grand jury indicted his wife, R.B., then 25, on a charge of first-degree murder as an accomplice in the death of Karen Sprinker. She was not accused in any other death. The witnesses listed on the indictment included Detective Sergeant James W. Stovall and State Police Lieutenant Eugene Daugherty.
Her trial opened in late September 1969 before Judge Douglas L. Hay, with Gortmaker prosecuting and Charles Burt defending. The state's main witness was a woman who testified that, from her sister's house across the street, she had seen R.B. help her husband carry a blanketed figure into the house. The crime laboratory described 96 items of evidence taken from the house. When the state rested its case at the end of the first week, Burt asked for a directed verdict of acquittal. He argued among other things that the state had not proved that she had done anything to aid a killing, and that the indictment did not say what act she was supposed to have committed. Judge Hay denied the motion. The defense said it would show that she had not been at home at the time.
Other witnesses disputed the neighbor's account, and in October 1969 R.B. was found not guilty. She later divorced him.
Brudos appealed his sentences to the Oregon Court of Appeals. Represented by Public Defender Gary D. Babcock, he argued that once a life sentence had been imposed, any further sentence had to run concurrently with it, and he challenged the way his guilty pleas had been accepted. On July 9, 1970, the court rejected both points in a short unsigned opinion (State v. Brudos). Consecutive life sentences were allowed under its earlier decisions, it said, and after a guilty plea the only question that could be raised on direct appeal was whether the sentence was excessive, cruel or unusual. Any attack on the validity of the plea had to go through Oregon's separate post-conviction procedure. Rehearing was denied in August, and the Oregon Supreme Court declined review on September 22, 1970.
He then filed for post-conviction relief. At a hearing before Marion County Circuit Judge Jena Schlegel, reported on November 28, 1972, the court heard about seven and a half hours of testimony. Babcock alleged that Drake and Gortmaker had conspired to obtain information from Brudos through the June 9, 1969, psychiatric examination. That was the defense's allegation; the court denied relief.
On July 30, 1973, the Court of Appeals affirmed the denial in Brudos v. Cupp, a decision written by Chief Judge Schwab. Brudos argued that his lawyers had been ineffective, that his pleas had not been made knowingly, and that the prosecution had held back evidence that might have helped him. The court found that the decision to pursue an insanity defense was "eminently reasonable" given the evidence against him, that advising full disclosure to the psychiatrists was a reasonable choice, and that the lawyers' absence from the examination was reasonable because they had been told it might go better without them. It also held that the monitoring of the June 9 examination had not violated his rights in the circumstances, and it accepted the lower court's finding that his lawyers had no part in it. The Oregon Supreme Court denied review on October 23, 1973.
In 1970 the Daily News reported an estimate by Oregon authorities that he would serve at least 30 years before he could be considered for parole. He applied for release many times. At each hearing the families of the women he killed asked the board, often in tears, to keep him in prison for life, the Associated Press reported.
At the hearings he described a troubled childhood. He said his family had mentally abused him and had barred him from the house at 13. He spoke of blackouts and of feeling more and more detached from the world. Asked whether he hated women, he said no. He would not discuss his urges to kill in any detail, saying only that killing had helped him "let off steam." At a hearing about three years before his death he told the board, "I think I've got a whole new personality," and said he would be a good candidate to rejoin society. He described his days as an orderly and making crafts in the prison hobby shop: "One day's like another day in here," he said.
In 1995 the parole board told him that he would never be paroled and that there would be no further parole hearings. He was still allowed to appear before the board every two years for an informal interview, the Statesman Journal reported. Stovall said Brudos was "always hopeful" that he would be released, and called him "pretty arrogant" in television interviews.
Brudos died in the Oregon State Penitentiary at 5:10 a.m. on Tuesday, March 28, 2006. He was 67. The Oregon Department of Corrections said in a brief statement that he had died of natural causes. He had been held there since June 27, 1969.
Cindi Elliott, Jan Whitney's younger sister, told the Statesman Journal that she felt relief. "It's over," she said. "It's finally done and it's pretty sad." She said she had cried, for her family rather than for him. "He put our family through hell," she said. "I hope eternity is not easy on him." Stovall, then 81 and retired, said, "I'm satisfied that he has died." He remembered Brudos as meticulous but overconfident in his own intelligence, and said that in interviews he would try to play games, offering hypothetical examples that came too close to the truth. Stovall said the case had needed cooperation among police agencies across the Willamette Valley, and the Statesman Journal described it as the first case of its kind in the Northwest to draw wide attention.
The killings became the subject of the true-crime writer Ann Rule's book Lust Killer, the Associated Press noted in 2006. In 2009 the Albany Democrat-Herald looked back at the case in a long retrospective, recalling how a Gazette-Times reporter had covered the search of the "slow-moving, muddy" Long Tom River.
The women's families went on attending his parole hearings for more than two decades to argue against his release. In 2006 the Statesman Journal headlined its report on his death as bringing relief to the victims' families, 36 years after the case.
Proven by final judgment: the first-degree murders of Jan Susan Whitney, Karen Elena Sprinker and Linda Dawn Salee, on his guilty pleas of June 27, 1969, affirmed on appeal in 1970 and upheld against collateral attack in 1973.
Confessed, never tried: the death of Linda Kay Slawson. He described killing her to the psychiatric team in June 1969, according to the district attorney, but her body was never found and the district attorney said there was not enough evidence to try him. Sources differ on where the charge stood: 1969 Oregon papers describe a "Jane Doe" murder count left pending in Marion County district court, while a 2006 Associated Press report says he was charged in Multnomah County.
Suggested, never charged: the Albany Democrat-Herald's 2009 retrospective said officials linked him to five deaths and that 12 women went missing in the region during the period, and it listed a fifth woman whose remains were found near Forest Grove in March 1969. No charge was ever brought for that death, and it does not appear in the court record.
Details that vary between sources: the ages of two of the women (Sprinker is 19 in the 1969 reports and the 2006 Associated Press report, 18 in a 1970 Albany report; Salee is 22 in the 1969 reports and 19 in the 2006 Associated Press report); which body was found first in the Long Tom River (Sprinker on May 10 in the 1970 Daily News account, Salee on May 10 in the 2006 and 2009 Oregon accounts); whether Whitney was last seen on November 25 or 26, 1968; the year of his marriage (1961 or 1962); the reason for his teenage commitment to the state hospital; and the date of his arrest on murder charges (late May or June 2, 1969). The 1970 Daily News account gives the date of his guilty pleas as June 17, 1969; the Oregon papers of the day report it as Friday, June 27.
January 31, 1939: Jerome Henry Brudos is born in South Dakota.
1956: at 17, he is taken into custody in Polk County, Oregon, and placed in the Oregon State Hospital.
1957 to 1963: lives in Corvallis; graduates from Corvallis High School in 1958.
March to October 1959: serves in the Army and is discharged.
September 30, 1961 (or 1962): marries; the couple later has two children.
January 1968: Linda Kay Slawson, 19, of Aloha, disappears while selling encyclopedias in Portland.
November 26, 1968: Jan Susan Whitney, 23, of McMinnville, disappears after her car breaks down on Interstate 5 near Albany.
March 27, 1969: Karen Elena Sprinker, 19, disappears from a parking structure near Meier & Frank in Salem.
April 22, 1969: a 15-year-old girl escapes an attempted abduction in Salem.
April 23, 1969: Linda Dawn Salee, 22, of Beaverton, disappears from the Lloyd Center in Portland.
May 10 and May 12, 1969: the bodies of Sprinker and Salee are found in the Long Tom River near Monroe.
May 14, 1969: a man calls an Oregon State University student asking for a date; she alerts police.
May 18, 1969: Brudos becomes a suspect after her tip.
May 26, 1969: police search his house and garage in Salem.
May 29, 1969: arrested on a charge of assault while armed.
Early June 1969: charged with four counts of first-degree murder.
June 9 to June 25, 1969: examined by five psychiatrists and two psychologists; all find him legally sane.
June 27, 1969: pleads guilty to three counts of first-degree murder before Judge Val D. Sloper; three consecutive life terms; enters the Oregon State Penitentiary.
July 25, 1969: the district attorney says there is not enough evidence to try him for Slawson's death.
July 27, 1969: Whitney's body is recovered from the Willamette River near Independence.
August 7, 1969: his wife is indicted as an accomplice in Sprinker's death.
Late September 1969: her trial opens before Judge Douglas L. Hay.
October 1969: she is acquitted.
July 9, 1970: the Oregon Court of Appeals affirms his sentences (State v. Brudos); review denied September 22, 1970.
November 1972: post-conviction hearing before Judge Jena Schlegel; relief is denied.
July 30, 1973: the Court of Appeals affirms the denial (Brudos v. Cupp); review denied October 23, 1973.
1995: the parole board tells him he will never be paroled.
March 28, 2006: dies of natural causes in the Oregon State Penitentiary, aged 67.