Linwood Earl Briley was born in Richmond on March 26, 1954, the eldest of the three brothers. He is carried here as an individual because he was tried and sentenced as one; his brothers James and Anthony have their own entries and were convicted of different things.
In 1971, at sixteen, he shot an elderly neighbour from a window of the family house. A detective traced the bullet's path back to the Briley home with a sheet of plywood, and the gun was found there. He first said he had been shooting at squirrels, then admitted he had meant it, and said of the dead woman that he had heard she had heart problems and would have died soon anyway. His lawyer persuaded the court it had been an accident. He was convicted of involuntary manslaughter and sent to reform school for a year.
The brothers, with a younger accomplice named Duncan Eric Meekins, robbed and killed across Richmond between March 12 and October 19, 1979. Figures for the series differ widely: contemporary reporting settled on eleven, most later accounts say at least twelve, and one tally runs to twenty-one by including the 1971 killing and every death attributed to the group. What follows in the victim field is what this brother was convicted of, not the series total.
On March 12, 1979 the group forced their way into the home of William and Virginia Bucher, robbed them, tied them and set the house alight. The Buchers got free because the bonds had been tied loosely, and they are the only people known to have survived the Brileys.
It ended on October 19, 1979 at the house of Harvey Wilkerson, a short distance from the Briley home. Wilkerson, his partner Judy Barton, who was twenty-three and pregnant, and her five-year-old son Harvey were bound and killed. The bodies were not found until October 21. Police had seen the group in the area, and arrests followed within days. Meekins, who was a minor, gave evidence against the brothers.
He was convicted of capital murder and six counts of first-degree murder, along with involuntary manslaughter, rape, robbery and a firearms count. The killing he was condemned for was that of John Gallaher, a Richmond country-music disc jockey he shot in the back.
In 1984 he and James escaped from death row at the Mecklenburg Correctional Center with four other men. All were recaptured within three weeks. The Richmond prosecutor who had tried them said publicly that dangerous men who escape have only one way to stay out, which is to kill again.
He was electrocuted at the Virginia State Penitentiary on October 12, 1984 and pronounced dead at 11.05 at night, killed by two fifty-five-second bursts of current. Eight witnesses attended and no reporters. His lawyer said afterwards that he had been exceedingly brave and had maintained his innocence, and that those were his last words.
The prosecutor Warren Von Schuch called the brothers killing machines and said what infuriated them was weakness in other people.