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Colorado Inmate Robert Browne Pleads Guilty to a 1987 Murder and Claims Up to 48 Killings

Investigators said they had corroborated seven of the killings Browne described, in Colorado, Louisiana, Texas and Arkansas. Forty-one remain unproven.

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Illustration of an empty courtroom with wooden pews and a tall window looking onto Colorado mountains. Not an actual scene from the case.

Robert Charles Browne was already serving life for killing a 13-year-old girl. On July 27, 2006, he pleaded guilty in Colorado to a second murder, and authorities said he claimed to have killed as many as 48 people.

Browne, 53, pleaded guilty in El Paso County Court to the November 10, 1987, murder of Rocio Delpilar Sperry, 15, of Colorado Springs, and received a second life sentence. District Attorney John Newsome agreed not to seek the death penalty in return for the plea. Browne had pleaded guilty in 1995 to kidnapping and murder in the 1991 death of Heather Dawn Church, 13, of Black Forest, and was sentenced to life without parole.

Browne told investigators he had killed up to four dozen people from 1970 until his arrest in 1995, in nine states and in South Korea. Investigators said they had found evidence corroborating seven of the killings, in cases where he gave information only the killer would know: Sperry; Katherine Hayes, Wanda Faye Hudson and Faye Self in Louisiana; Melody Bush and Nidia Mendoza in Texas; and Lisa Lowe of West Memphis, Arkansas. Forty-one of his claims had not been substantiated. "I don't think you can conduct business assuming he's exaggerating," said El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa.

Browne first contacted authorities in a March 20, 2000, letter to the district attorney's office that read, in part, "The score is, you one, the other team 48." About two years later, a volunteer cold-case team that included Lou Smit, a former detective known for his work on the JonBenét Ramsey case, began pursuing him.

Browne pleaded guilty in 1995 to killing Heather Dawn Church, but the Denver Post reported in 2006 that he said he had been wrongly accused of her killing.

Sources