Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 1 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
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"If we can do something
to help somebody else to prevent them from facing what
we did, then Michelle's life will have meaning. Teri's
life will have more meaning. There should not be
Charlies on the street."
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Mary Lou Jones
(CBS) Michelle Jones was a successful TV executive,
living the good life in Orlando, Fla. When a hurricane
threatened the Florida Keys, Michelle invited her aunt
and uncle to take shelter with her in Orlando.
Days later, Michelle and the aunt were discovered
savagely murdered; the uncle committed suicide.
As correspondent Susan Spencer reports, the
investigation would unravel a dark family secret and
lead detectives to the possibility they were dealing
with a serial killer.
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It has been more than a year since the shocking murder
of Michelle Jones, but her best friends, Lisa Emmons and
Debbie Knight, still feel the loss.
"She wanted so much more out of life, but she was
robbed," says Debbie.
Michelle was 37, single, and a successful executive at
The Golf Channel in Orlando, Fla.
The three women had been friends since they were
teenagers, but the events that would tear them apart
began Tuesday, Sept. 2, 2004. A violent storm, Hurricane
Ivan, gathered in the Atlantic, prompting an evacuation
of the Florida Keys.
"Michelle kept an extra-close watch on it because her
aunt and uncle lived there," recalls Lisa.
"She said, 'Of course … Come stay with me,' " Debbie
adds.
To Michelle's delight, the aunt and uncle, Teri and
Charlie Brandt, did come for the weekend; Michelle was
close to both, but especially to Teri, her mother's
sister.
"Twenty minutes after they got there I got the phone
call from Michelle. 'Teri and Charlie are here, where
are you? Why aren't you over here?' " remembers Lisa.
"They were hanging out."
"She had a Jacuzzi and a pool. She had a lovely home,"
Debbie adds.
Meanwhile in North Carolina, Michelle's mother, Mary
Lou, wondered how the weekend was going. "We were very
close, very close. We talked almost every day," she
remembers.
So Mary Lou was puzzled when Michelle didn't pick up the
phone. "We placed a call to Michelle Monday night and
Tuesday night. We got her voice mail," Mary Lou recalls.
By Wednesday night, there was still no answer and Mary
Lou was beginning to get very worried.
She called Debbie, asking her to go check on Michelle
and stayed on the phone as Debbie walked up the drive to
Michelle's home.
Debbie says she thought something was wrong and was
worried about what she would find. When her key wouldn't
open the front door, she headed to the back, with Mary
Lou still on the phone.
"There was a garage door with almost all glass. So you
could see in," Debbie recalls. "I was in shock."
Inside the garage, she could see Charlie hanging from a
rafter.
Even Rob Hemmert, the lead investigator, had to steel
himself for the gruesome scene in the sweltering garage.
"I could see Charlie Brandt hanging from the rafters in
the garage. He was hanging from a bedsheet, which was
around his neck, and there was a ladder close by to his
body," he explains.
Brandt had apparently committed suicide.
Little could Hemmert imagine what else awaited him
inside Michelle's meticulous house.
"It was just a nice home. It had that feminine kind of
feel to it. All of those nice decorations and the aroma
of her home was masked by death. The smell of death,"
Hemmert says.
Teri's sat slumped on the living room couch. She had
been stabbed seven times in the chest. Michelle's
mutilated body — decapitated, with her heart removed —
was in her room.
All three bodies were locked inside the house, and
Hemmert says there was no indication of any type of
struggle or fight. That led the investigator to one
inescapable conclusion: that Brandt had committed the
murders and then hung himself.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 2 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
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As Hemmert pieced events
together, the evening seemed to have started innocently
enough. "I know they had dinner together. Charlie cooked
some type of fish. It looks like they may have had some
drinks, some wine and so forth," he explains.
But after dinner, Michelle spoke with Lisa and told her
not to come over. "She said Teri and Charlie had been
arguing and they weren't in the best of company. They
had a little too much to drink. She was tired and she
wanted to go to sleep," Lisa recalls.
Hemmert learned that although the Brandts had planned to
leave that day, their bags sat in the front hall,
because Charlie insisted on staying the extra night.
"There was no reason for them to stay behind," Hemmert
says. "The hurricane had passed so he chose to stay for
a reason. I think that was because he knew what he was
going to do."
Brandt used Michelle's own kitchen knives to kill both
her and his wife. "Teri was killed in a quick, repeated
stabbing-type attack to her chest. In comparison,
Michelle had one stab wound to the chest," Hemmert
explains.
Hemmert says he then carefully put her blood-soaked
clothes in the bathroom sink, before dismembering
Michelle's body. "It all took time. And it took
thought," he says.
Mary Lou just couldn't accept that this monstrous crime
was the work of the mild-mannered brother-in-law she had
known for 17 years. "When they described what had
happened to Michelle, it was even beyond description,"
says Mary Lou.
The crime was just as incomprehensible to Michelle's
horrified friends, who considered Charlie a bit of an
oddball, but certainly no threat.
"He was just very quiet and reserved," Lisa remembers.
"He would just sit back and observe. Michelle and I used
to call him eccentric."
But Charlie was well suited to Teri's carefree
personality, says Debbie. "Teri was gypsy-like. Just
happy-go-lucky. Nothing bothered her. She was a
wonderful person. Very kind, very sweet," she says.
Teri's closest friend, Melanie Fecher, said Teri and
Charlie were inseparable. "If my husband could love me
one-third the amount that Charlie loved Teri, I'd be the
luckiest woman in the whole world," she says.
Melanie says she never detected any problems in Teri's
marriage, saying they never argued, that she never saw
him get angry and that, to her knowledge, Charlie didn't
have a temper.
Everyone agreed that it had seemed a perfect match.
"They often did things for each other that would make
each other feel good," says Hemmert. "One of those
things was that they would make their lunches for each
other. Because the lunch tasted better when it was made
by the one who loved you."
Yet Charlie stabbed his wife seven times. He left no
note or an explanation. But the first hints came a few
days later from an unexpected source: Charlie's older
sister, Angela.
Angela was supposed to join other relatives for a
briefing by police, but she didn't show. "She was in a
car in the parking lot. She basically came to us and
said there's something I need to tell you people,"
explains Hemmert.
Angela shared with investigators an explosive secret — a
secret her distraught family had kept hidden for more
than three decades.
She haltingly told her story on tape to a stunned
Hemmert, telling him exactly what happened on a hellish
night in January 1971.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 3 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
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At the time, Angela was
15 and Charlie was 13. They lived with their parents and
two younger sisters in Fort Wayne, Ind.
It was just after 9 p.m., and Angela was reading in her
room. "My mom was in a bath and my dad was shaving. And
I heard my father yell, 'Charlie don't' or 'Charlie
stop!' " Angela tells Hemmert.
"Charlie walked into a bathroom while his father was
shaving. Shot him in the back. He went down. He stood
over her mother, she was in a bathtub, bathing and fired
several rounds into her body and killed her. She was
eight months pregnant," says Hemmert.
"The last thing I remember hearing my mom say was
'Angela, call the police,' " she tells Hemmert in the
taped interview.
But Angela had no time. She told Hemmert that after
shooting their mother, Charlie had turned the gun on her
but that it wouldn't fire. "The next thing she knew they
were physically fighting," Hemmert says.
She said she tried desperately to calm her brother down
by telling him how much she loved him. "I saw the
madness, the glazed over look. I saw it disappear,"
Angela tells Hemmert.
With her brother calmed down, Angela ran out of the
house screaming in her bloody, torn nightgown. She ran
through the snow to her neighbor's home and pounded on
the front door, startling then-16-year-old Sandi
Radcliffe.
But by the time Sandi got to the door, Angela had
already headed to another house; instead, it was Charlie
waiting outside. "There was just a 'knock, knock' and I
opened up the door and he goes, 'Sandi, I just shot my
mom and dad,' " she recalls.
Newspaper reports of the murder were sketchy; it was
portrayed as a freakish crime by a quiet kid — the last
kid on earth, friends said, who would shoot anyone, much
less kill his mother.
"That's why this whole incident was such a shock because
they were very close, incredibly so. He was a momma's
boy," says Sandi.
Only a few crime scene photos survive in the Fort Wayne
police archives. Dan Figel, then a young detective, was
in charge of the investigation. When the call came, he
remembers hurrying to the hospital, hoping that
Charlie's critically wounded father would survive and be
able to explain what had happened.
"He just kept saying, 'I don't know why my son did this.
I have no idea as to why my son did this,'" Figel
remembers.
But he did confirm that his son had done it, and Figel
proceeded to take the boy into custody. "He was in
shock. His eyes were dilated and he couldn't understand
why he had done this," says Figel.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 4 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
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Police didn't know what
to make of their 13-year-old killer. The Indiana courts
ordered that Charlie undergo three separate
psychological evaluations.
One was with psychiatrist Ronald Pancner, who agreed
with his two colleagues that Charlie was something of a
mystery.
"Basically, I was looking for mental illness. And he
wasn't showing the signs and symptoms of serious mental
illness, which I thought was what the court wanted to
know," says Pancner.
Pancner talked with Charlie about his friends, his
family, his interests, trying to uncover some underlying
problem. "This kid did well in school. He didn't get
into any trouble. He loved his family, he said. And the
family said that he was a loving kid, you know. So,
there wasn't anything to diagnose," the psychiatrist
explains.
But there was something wrong with him.
"To the layperson, this doesn't make sense. The guy
killed his mother. She's pregnant. Shot his father. Why
doesn't he have a mental illness? But he doesn't have a
diagnosable mental illness," Pancner says. "We found no
psychosis, no distorted thinking that would basically be
a reason for this crime to be done."
Asked why Charlie turned violent, Pancner says, "We
don't know."
Whatever his demons in Indiana, 13-year-old Charlie was
still too young to be held criminally responsible for
his crimes. So he never was charged with murder, and he
was never brought to trial. Instead, a grand jury
investigated and issued an ominous warning, writing that
such anti-social conduct could repeat itself in the
future.
Charlie was sent to a psychiatric hospital, where he
stayed just over a year — only until his forgiving
father could win his release. Herbert Brandt then pulled
up stakes and moved the entire family, including
Charlie, to Florida.
"He never spoke to Charlie about what took place," says
Hemmert. "Never said, 'Hey Charlie, why did you shoot
me? Why did you kill your mother?' You know? 'What were
you thinking? How about an apology?' None of those
things. He just accepted him back into the home as if
nothing happened."
Even Charlie's two baby sisters, too young to remember,
were never told the truth about their mother's death,
all of which infuriates Michelle's parents, Bill and
Mary Lou.
"There's something wrong here. There's something wrong
with a system that allows a 13-year-old boy to kill his
mother, to try to kill his father and an older sister
and nothing was done," says Mary Lou.
Both Mary Lou and Bill are sure that, years later,
Charlie never told his wife, Teri.
"I don't think she would have married him, period, at
all had she known," explains Bill.
The Joneses say that, to this day, Herbert and Angela
Brandt never have acknowledged that telling Teri might
have saved lives.
Mary Lou says Herbert and Angela should have known that
Charlie had the potential and capacity to kill. She
added that Herbert has never made any effort "to say how
sorry he was that this happened to us."
For Michelle's best friend, Debbie, the anger goes even
deeper. "Charlie's father should be exposed. He knew
what his son did. He knew the crimes he did. I would
love to see him sitting right next to me 'cause I find
him guilty," she says.
Herbert, now 75, lives in Florida, as does Angela, now
51. Both have declined 48 Hours' requests for
interviews.
But talking with them didn't much help Hemmert
understand the twisted psyche of Charlie Brandt. He
would find those clues in the Florida Keys, right where
Charlie left them.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 5 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
Four hundred miles from Orlando, the Brandts' house on
Big Pine Key sat frozen in time, boarded up meticulously
in preparation for the storm.
"I'd never seen anything like it. Charlie took it to the
extreme. Every piece of wooden panel that was cut for
each window looked like it had been custom-fit. The
holes for the doorknobs on the French doors were
meticulously cut. Perfectly round circles," explains
Hemmert.
It was something one might expect from an engineer —
Charlie worked as a radar technician.
Inside the house, things were just as precise. The first
shock came when Hemmert stepped into the Brandts'
bedroom and spotted a graphic poster of the female
anatomy on the back of the bedroom door.
"Her hair's put up in a bun. Which I had never seen
before. And it's showing the skeletal system and the
muscular system," Hemmert explains, describing the
doctor's office-style poster.
Teri would have seen the poster every day and Hemmert
wonders whether she hadn't considered it a big deal.
"Charlie and Teri were not in the medical profession. We
saw no reason for that chart to be there. What is this
doing in someone's home?" he wonders.
The investigator had an unsettling answer to his own
question. "I'm looking at a chart that's got these
portions of the body exposed. And he's virtually
duplicated or exposed some of those areas of the body in
what he did with Michelle," Hemmert explains.
And there were other eerie reminders, including medical
books, journals, and an anatomy book. "And in that book
there was a newspaper clipping that showed a human
heart," says Hemmert. "Knowing what he did to Michelle
and then finding those things, it all started to make
sense."
As did the Victoria's Secret catalogues found in the
house, addressed to Charlie. "He always referred to
Michelle as 'Victoria Secret.' He gave her that name.
And he never referred to her as Michelle," says Hemmert.
Far from being just a friendly uncle, to the horror of
the Jones family, Charlie had been secretly infatuated
with his own niece.
Bill Jones says his daughter would have been livid had
she known about the infatuation.
Hemmert thinks Charlie was obsessed with Michelle. "He
was fascinated by her, and I think ultimately he
intended on killing her. I think that's evident in the
way he spoke about her and the things that he looked at
on the Internet," he says.
When investigators examined Brandt's computer, they
found he had been on ghastly Web sites that featured
death fantasies, necrophilia and violence against women.
"You saw where he may have gotten some of his ideas and
thoughts and fantasies from," says Hemmert. "The thing
that we noted immediately was that the things he did
with her body did not appear to be someone who had done
this for the fist time — there had to be more."
Hemmert was quite sure, if he looked hard enough, he
would find evidence that Charlie was a serial killer.
The only real question was how many other victims had
there been over some 30 years. To answer that, police
first tried to match their unsolved murders with
Brandt's travels in the United States and abroad.
Potential cases poured in and investigators weeded
through them by focusing on those with specific
similarities to Charlie's murder of Michelle.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 6 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
Criminal profiler Leslie D'Ambrosia has been asked to
analyze dozens of these cold cases. "There's no
boilerplate profile for a — quote — serial killer. It
doesn't exist. It's all individual; it's based on a
person's life experiences and everyone has a different
life experience."
Charlie's trademark was precision and a methodical
technique. "How a person normally behaves is translated
into how they carry their crimes out," says D'Ambrosia.
"He's quite organized and planned in what he does. He's
intelligent, very reliable, very responsible."
And to the outside world, he was just an ordinary guy.
Teri's diaries, found in the house, reflected that very
ordinary life.
"They weren't detailed writings, they were just
something very simple from, went fishing, caught a good
bull dolphin, to nice dinner with Charlie. Boat ran out
of gas. Buy steaks for dinner," explains Hemmert.
There were few hints of anything wrong. "We only found a
couple of interesting notations and those were 'weird
day.' But there's nothing more specific, and we have no
idea what occurred to cause her to write that," says
Hemmert.
Teri also noted times when Charlie was out late, even
out all night, but never added explanations in her diary
entries.
Musician Jim Graves spent time with Charlie in the
1980s, when he was married to Angela. He'll never forget
the day she confided in him that, decades before,
Charlie had shot their parents, killing their pregnant
mother.
"I came home one day and she was crying rather
uncontrollably, and said she had something that she
absolutely had to talk to me about," Jim recalls. But he
says that, after getting to know him, it seemed clear
that whatever had happened years before, Charlie was OK
now.
"He was so gentle that when there was a bug in the house
he would refuse to step on it and carried it outside,"
Jim remembers.
Today, Jim regrets that he didn't pay more attention —
especially during one instance after he and Angela split
up and the two men got to talking.
"We were havin' a few beers after fishing all day and
everything. I was just really despondent. Somehow we
started talking about revenge. Well you know you get
your feelings hurt and wanna lash out. I believe he
looked at me and said, 'Well, if you really wanna get
revenge, you should kill somebody and cut their heart
out,' " Jim recalls. "And it creeped me out at the
time."
But at the time, Jim dismissed it and, years later, when
a new girlfriend wanted to fix up her friend Teri, Jim
called Charlie.
"No way in the world would I know that they would fall
in love and get married!" says Jim.
Charlie and Teri married on Aug. 29, 1986; Jim was their
best man.
"I did have a conversation with Charlie. And I insisted
that he inform her of his past," Jim says.
He says Charlie did tell Teri about the 1971 shooting.
"After they got married and I went down to visit them I
asked them when they were gonna have kids. And she told
me, considering everything, that she didn't think it was
a good idea."
Jim took her response to mean that she knew.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
(Page 7 of 9)May 30, 2006
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
"Here's the thing about Charlie Brandt that's disturbing
— beyond what we already know is disturbing in how he
commits his crimes," says D'Ambrosia. "He's very well
traveled. For many years, he has traveled all over the
United States and even outside the United States."
More than 30 years had elapsed from the time he shot his
mother until he killed his wife and niece, and what
investigators desperately want to know is how many other
crimes Charlie Brandt committed.
D'Ambrosia doesn't think we'll ever know how many
murders Charlie is responsible for. But she is working
with Hemmert and a task force from around the state to
at least try to narrow it down.
In the search for unsolved murders that fit Brandt's
peculiar profile, one case immediately jumped out.
It was the 1995 murder of Darlene Toler, a prostitute in
Miami's Little Havana section.
Det. Pat Diaz handled the investigation and remembers
that it was an unusual case. Like Michelle Jones, Toler
had been decapitated and had her heart removed.
Toler's body was found along a highway. Apart from the
manner of her death, two bits of evidence convince Diaz
that Brandt was the killer. "The body was wrapped up in
a blanket, then wrapped up in plastic and tied, almost
like a package," he explains.
In that blanket, dog hairs were found; police also found
dog hairs in the back of Charlie Brandt's truck.
Brandt's truck also yielded another clue.
"Every time he put gas in the truck, he kept the
mileage," Diaz says.
In those mileage records, Diaz says, a spike occurs
right around the time Toler was killed, 100 miles away
from Brandt's home.
Asked whether he thinks Brandt drove from the Keys to
Miami just looking for somebody, Diaz says, "He had come
to Miami. Him and his wife worked opposite shifts. And
he did what he had to do."
DNA analysis of animal hair is difficult and costly, but
police say that — if they get it — a match would close
the Toler case.
"That'll get me to 100 percent. It wouldn't be 99, it'd
be 100 percent," says Diaz.
But a second murder, much closer to home fits the
pattern even more convincingly. It dates back 17 years
to a summer night in July 1989. It happened just four
blocks from Charlie Brandt's house.
Under a bridge off Big Pine Key, local fishermen had
made a frightening find. Initially thinking they were
reeling in a mannequin, the fishermen actually
discovered the body of a woman.
Monroe County Homicide Det. Trish Dally was the lead
investigator in the murder of 38-year-old Sherry Perisho,
a local woman who lived on a small rowboat.
"She had her bicycle that she would put on the bow of
the boat and then she would take the boat out
approximately 100 yards off shore and that's where she
lived," Dally explains.
Investigators believe it was also where she died. "What
we believe happened is that she was placed on the bottom
of the boat, possibly with her feet off the stern,"
Dally says.
Deadly Obsession
A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
For years the boat has been locked away in the evidence
yard. In the wood, one can see cutting marks, leading
Dally to believe the bottom of the boat was used as a
cutting table.
As with the other victims, Perisho was decapitated, her
heart cut out. For years, all police had to go on was a
sketch of a man spotted running across the highway near
the scene — that is until Charlie's former
brother-in-law, Jim Graves, revealed something Teri had
told him just after the Perisho murder.
"She goes, 'Well you know, somebody was killed not too
far from our house. I'm thinkin' about, you know, callin'
the sheriff.' And I said, 'Well, why?' And she goes,
'Well, because of Charlie's past,' " Graves recalls.
Stunned, Graves says he later confronted Charlie. "I
look at him and I said, 'You know your wife thinks you
might've committed this heinous act.' And he was like,
'I didn't do it,' " he says.
"You didn't think, 'My God, you know, could he have done
this?' " Spencer asks.
"You know, I couldn't tell you what I was thinking at
the time," Graves replies.
But recently, when investigators were looking again at
the Perisho murder, they talked with Graves, who, under
oath, was much more specific about Teri's story.
"She apparently found Charlie downstairs and he had
blood on him. And she asked him what had happened and he
gave an excuse that he was filleting fish, although it
was a workday, it was in the evening, she went ahead and
believed him," Det. Dally recalls.
Graves' bombshell statement was enough to close the
Perisho case, officially.
Still, questions persist why there is nothing about the
incident in Teri's diaries, or whether she really
believed her husband's explanation. If not, why did she
stay with him?
Dally has her own theory. "You're talking about somebody
that you're in a relationship with, you don't want to
believe somebody that you have you committed your life
with would commit a crime, especially that heinous," she
explains.
But in the end, Charlie fooled everyone.
"And that's the sad part about this — these people were
completely misled," says Hemmert. "They knew Charlie
Brandt to be this guy that they could rely on, that was
a friend and was there when they needed him. 'We knew
Charlie.' They knew the 'work' Charlie. The 'go out on
the boat fishing' Charlie. They didn't know the true
Charlie. We do."
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A Family Tragedy Unmasks A Killer's Secret Past
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Charlie Brandt (CBS)
In the months since the murders of Michelle Jones and
Teri Brandt, family and friends have struggled to accept
their deaths.
"We have to face every day without our daughter and that
is horrible," says Michelle's mother, Mary Lou.
"We lost two people who were very dear to us," says
Bill, her father.
They have struggled in part because of the way they
died, say Michelle's parents.
"Michelle was totally destroyed and that is
devastating," Mary Lou explains.
Time only has increased the Joneses' fury toward Herbert
and Angela Brandt for protecting Charlie.
"This man may have been able to have been stopped," says
Bill. "He may never have been cured, but he could have
been stopped."
Asked if he holds Herbert and Angela responsible for the
murders, Bill says, "Well, I do, because they should
have gotten the man help. And they knew he needed help."
Mary Lou says Angela told her right after the murder
that she had been terrified of Charlie for years.
"Angela said that she was glad that Charlie had
committed suicide because now she could sleep at night,"
says Mary Lou. "For 20-some years, she would not allow
the air conditioner to run, the windows to be open and
unlocked in her home because she was afraid. She was
afraid Charlie would come back to kill her."
Despite what Jim Graves says, the Joneses still find it
hard to believe that Teri knew anything about her
husband's past.
"It's just very hard for me to conceptualize my sister
could know something about a person who could do what
Charlie did," says Mary Lou. "If she knew that, could
she have stayed with him? I don't know. I don't think
so. In my heart I don't believe so."
Records from Charlie's brief stay in the psychiatric
hospital might shed more light on his past, but the
Brandt family refuses to allow the state to release
them.
"They had a family secret," says Mary Lou. "The tragedy
is that they're going to try and preserve the family
secret."
"I'd love to see the medical records and find out what
type of treatment he had. If any. And how they handled
him," says Hemmert, who is left with a host of
unresolved questions as well. "What triggered him back
in '71 to kill his mother? What actually was the
breaking point for him? I don't know."
Asked what he would want to ask Charlie if he had the
opportunity, Hemmert says, "Why? What was going through
your mind at that specific point in time that caused you
to do what you did? And why was it so different than how
you took the life of Michelle Jones versus your wife
Teri?"
Mary Lou has her own theory of why Charlie did what he
did. "I believe he had a covert, evil nature, and I
believe he was able to control it and cover it," she
says. "He was an invisible criminal walking around."
An invisible criminal whose total number of victims is
unlikely ever to be known, despite law enforcement's
best efforts.
"A lot of these cases are cold cases. They're old. They
may not have the physical evidence," Hemmert explains.
"They require an enormous amount of time and legwork.
And the resources are limited everywhere. But we're not
going to give up."
Nor will the Joneses, who want new laws to ensure that
the outrage of Charlie Brandt never be repeated. They
are pushing for a public database, much like that for
sex offenders, including anyone of any age who ever has
killed another person, regardless of the circumstances.
"If we can do something to help somebody else to prevent
them from facing what we did, then Michelle's life will
have meaning. Teri's life will have more meaning. There
should not be Charlies on the street," says Mary Lou.
Charlie Brandt is gone, but for Hemmert this case is, in
many ways, not closed.
"I still think about it every day what happened here,"
he says. "Michelle and Teri and how evil Charlie was."
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