Episode 618: Jerry Brudos: The Shoe Fetish Slayer (Part 2)

Hey, weirdos. Before we dive into today's twisted tale, let me tell you about a place where the darkness never ends.
Wondery Plus. It's like stepping into a haunted mansion where the floorboards creak with ad-free episodes and early access to new episodes lurks around every corner.
So come join us, if you dare. Morbid is available one week early and ad-free only on Wondery Plus.
You can join Wondery Plus in the Wondery app or an Apple Podcasts or Spotify. You're listening to a Morbid Network podcast.
The mirror should reflect your inner confidence at every age. That's why supermodel and entrepreneur Cindy Crawford partnered with renowned cosmetic specialist Dr.
Sabag to create meaningful beauty, a skincare system designed to help women look and feel their absolute best. At the heart of this breakthrough formula lies a unique secret, a rare melon found only in the south of France, packed with powerful antioxidants.
The seven-piece deluxe face and neck skincare system includes everything from the revolutionary youth-activating melon serum to the age-recovery night cream with retinol. Over 5 million women have discovered Meaningful Beauty, with clinical studies showing remarkable results in skin firmness, elasticity, and hydration.
Every purchase comes with a 60-day satisfaction guarantee. Tomorrow's gorgeous starts today.
Go to MeaningfulBeauty.com slash skincare to receive 25% off and get the Targeted Treatment Duo gift set for free. Go to MeaningfulBeauty.com slash skincare to receive 25% off and get the Targeted Treatment Duo gift set for free.
MeaningfulBeauty.com slash skincare. Audible ignites your next action-packed adventure with thrills of every kind on your command.
Dive into The Silent Patient by Alex Michaelides, a psychological thriller that will keep you guessing until the very end, masterfully narrated by Jack Hawkins and Louise Breetly. From electrifying suspense and daring quests to spine-tingling horror and romance in far-off realms, unleash your adventurous side with gripping titles.
Discover exclusive Audible Originals, hotly anticipated new releases, and must-listen bestsellers that hook you from the first minute. Because Audible knows there's no greater thrill than the one that speaks to you.
Discover what lies beyond the edge of your seat.

Start your free 30-day trial at audible.com slash wonderypod.

That's audible.com slash wonderypod.

Hey, weirdos.

I'm Alayna.

I'm Ash.

And this is Morbid. Morbid.
It's pretty macabre. Macabre.
Indeed. Macabre, you say.
So what's blowing your skirt up these days? What's blowing my skirt up? You know, it's a big real season. Real Housewives.
There's so many Real Housewives on right now. Oh, I love that for you.
New uh potomac is on doing pretty good steady potomac season there you go uh slc is popping the fuck off might i say that this might be my favorite season of slc that's ever happened i love the new housewife brownwin there you go yep and then um what other one is on right now why can't i think things oh

oc oc just had a fucking banger of a season and i think that the season finale might be this week wow really looking forward to the reunion so bravo heads it's real housewives season yeah have at it and let's just hope that new york gets better what are you guys doing I really I couldn't

I tried I wanted to

New York cast girly

Oh same Let's just hope that New York gets better. What are you guys doing? I really, I couldn't.
I tried.

I wanted to.

I am an OG New York cast girly.

Oh, same.

Once it flipped over, I was like.

No, like those women raised me.

Essentially.

They literally did.

Those women raised me.

For better or for worse, they raised me.

Yeah, it's okay.

I still, like literally I was watching the season with Jules the other day. Oh, I love the old season.
I'll watch them over and over. That's one of my favorite seasons.
It's just chaos. Yeah.
I really wanted to be, and I was, I was excited for the new, like, the new reboot of New York, and it was fine. Like, I was like, okay, season one, it wasn't, like, my favorite thing ever.
I hate change, so I couldn't even bother. Yeah.
Ben Mand mandelker i have to pull it up really quickly because he had a tweet that explained exactly what uh ben and ronnie for life yeah but if you're a bravo head we've mentioned them before but just in case you're like just joining or something if you're a bravo head go listen to watch what crap happens with ben and ronnie oh my god they're fucking hilarious and they cover all the Bravo shows. They're so funny.
They're just lovely humans as well. Oh my god and if you're looking for like a campy like just I don't even know how to describe them.
They're like indescribable because I love them so much and you got me into them. Lara and Carrie.
Oh Sup. Sexy Unique Podcast.
They cover OC and SLC. They're just hilarious.
Me and Drew listen to those recaps cry laughing. Like through genuine like streams of tears.
Oh, huge. I'm huge Laura and Carrie fan.
Forever and ever. But Ben, this sums up the difference between Real Housewives of Orange County and Real Housewives of New York, okay? So he tweeted, RHOC, you told everybody I pushed Travis down the stairs.
Her daughter told Emily's kids that I'm mean. You did a background check on Ryan.
The FBI is investigating. You talked about my bloody face photo.
Are you going to put a hit out on me? And then Real Housewives of New York, I made a Pavlova. It's literally all that's happened.
Wow. It's only been two been two episodes so i'm hoping for more but that's my real house vibes recap for you guys damn how are you well shit what's going on in your life you gave a lot for that was good that was good information that was good recs i'm always here to give give the bravo recs yeah i love that and our bravo heads listening love that yeah hell yeah hi friends we're well here.
What's going on in your neck of the woods? Well, I just saw a really cool thing on TikTok, and I was really excited to share it because I think people listening will be like, holy shit, because I was. Tell me everything.
I guess Blumhouse is doing this cool, it's an insidious live horror experience. Ooh.
And I think they're doing it. I'm bringing the thing up right now i i wanted to give you guys the right information because i was just i kept following tiktoks about it and i was like can i i want to do this i love an immersive experience yeah it's like a tour they're going in like over 80 cities in north america next year damn yeah it looks cool like a haunted house kind of vibe yeah i think it's just like this like immersive like you're going to be surrounded by Insidious, essentially.
Oh, I'm obsessed with that. It just looks too, the idea of it was just too cool, not to mention.
Yeah, and Blumhouse, I feel like I love everything that they do. And I think there's tickets on sale now, I think, so I want to go.
I'll go with you. I'm looking at it, and I'm like, I want tickets to this.
Coming to a city near you. And I'm looking right now.
Is it in our city? Bitch, it's in our city. It's coming to Boston at the Colonial.
Oh, shit. That's a fun venue.
We got to get tickets. Well, we are getting tickets.
We're going. See you there? We're absolutely going.
If you are not there, you are square. That's very true.
You're not a weirdo. And this is just me.
I just found it. I just wanted to tell you guys about it.
I like that. that this is just me I just found that I just wanted you to know you talking about horror shit and me talking about bravo this is just us this really is just the dichotomy of our podcast I figured you know what that was blowing my skirt up at the moment that idea of that so that's one of my favorite expressions ever I got it from you you were I've heard it before but you used it recently and it tickled me.
I used it on the car ride home the other night because Drew loves to say that things didn't blow his skirt up. And it's so funny because Drew doesn't wear skirts.
So it just makes me lol. I like that.
Yeah. Well, you know what doesn't blow my skirt up? Jerry Brudos.
Jerry Brudos. He also does not blow my skirt up.
But it's a fascinating true crime case. That up but he's it's a fascinating true crime that's the thing it's a fascinating case it's a horrific case and it's only gonna get worse and part two is really gonna take it there so i just need everybody to know that i'm just really looking forward to him getting apprehended because i that's my always my favorite part of the story is like when the police close in and i don't know how that happens here.
So pop off, sister. So when we last left you was when he had already kidnapped and murdered Linda Slauson and Jan Whitney.
So he's already escalated to horrific acts. And he's doing these.
I mean, he's strangling, he's hanging them up by their neck, he's dressing them in other women's clothing that he has stolen all around his career.

Like keeping them.

He's taking lots of photographs.

He's taken one of their feet and kept it, and he dumps them in a river afterwards and weighs them down.

Like, he's a fucking brutal dude.

He was going to try to make a paperweight out of one of their breasts. Yes, and that wasn't the last time he's going to do that.
So. What? Yeah.
Oh, God. So, on the afternoon of March 27th, 1969, 19-year-old Karen Sprinker left her home, and she was on her way to the Meyer and Frank department store in Salem, Oregon.
That day, she had made plans to have lunch with her mom and to do some shopping for spring clothes because she was going to be going back to school and she wanted to have additions to her wardrobe. Yeah.
She actually had big plans of a medical career as a doctor, and she was brilliant. She was so smart.
She had everything going for her. She graduated second highest in her high school class.
Wow. She was going places.
Jerry Brudos had also gone out that afternoon just driving around, doing his disgusting troll thing. He was looking for women, particularly near the Meyer and Frank department store.
That's when he spotted a specific woman. This woman was not Karen.
He said later that he couldn't take his eyes off of this woman. He said, quote, I had to have her, he told detectives later.
But by the time Jerry had parked his car in the, it was like a multi-tiered parking garage. Yeah.
By the time he had found a spot and parked his car, the woman had disappeared inside the store. So he missed this chance.
For her. We will not know who that woman is, but I i'm like somebody out there has no idea possibly that they were a second away like you have to wonder how often that happens that's the thing that like something just you know something gets in the way yeah like some kind of intervention just gets in the way yeah yeah so as jerry was walking back to his car his car, he was going back to his car to leave.
Like he was going to be like, he was like, fuck, I missed my chance of leaving. Right, right.
But as he's walking back to his car just by chance, he notices Karen Sprinker getting out of her car. Oh, no.
And he later said, I didn't like her shoes, but she was a pretty girl with long dark hair. Now Jerry and Karen were were walking towards one another.
She was headed to the inside to the department store, and he was headed to the parking lot. And when she got to the front door of the department store, he suddenly grabbed her by the shoulder out of nowhere, just walking by a dude, and he just grabs you.
And she's almost in the store. So what it is, is there's like a stairway that goes from the parking lot garage to right to the front door.
Okay. So it's like this stairway that is just like door at the bottom of the stair that goes right into the department store and then right here.
And she's right there. She was going down there and he was like, it was literally like seconds away from that door.
And it's like nobody saw anything? No, nobody saw anything. So he grabbed her by the shoulder and he shoved the barrel of a pistol into her ribs.
Oh my god. And he told Karen to come with him quietly and he wouldn't shoot her.
So she did exactly that because I can't imagine being in that position. Well and you honestly I feel like you just have to comply when somebody has a gun to your anywhere on your body.
My personal advice to you is never let someone take you to a second location. Yeah.
Do whatever you can. If you can help it, obviously.
Do whatever, and that's what I mean. Like, do whatever you can to stop that from happening, which also Karen also did try to stop that from happening.
She fought like hell. Yeah.
So do that. Like, don't let somebody take you to a second location that is far worse than something happening to you right there.
So kick, scream, do whatever you got to make. Make the most noise you can possibly make if something like this happens.
Literally the most noise. Scratch at eyeballs.
Do whatever you got to do. And scream fire.
Yeah, exactly. So, because it's that second location when they get you in a car or they're taking you somewhere else, that it's going to be a lot when they have the upper hand in a second location yeah and now you're somewhere where you weren't initially going so they can't track you right but what she didn't know and what she had no way of knowing was that the pistol he was using was a toy oh no but it looked like a of course and you're not gonna you to question that in the moment.
Yeah. So when Karen failed to show up for lunch that afternoon, her mother became alarmed very quickly.
And she waited more than an hour at the restaurant. She searched around.
She checked the parking lot. And that's where she discovered Karen's car, locked and abandoned.
Karen's father, Lucas, reported her missing later that day.

And police opened an investigation pretty immediately.

Because they were like, she wasn't running away.

She was coming to meet me for lunch.

Like, her car is here.

Something happened.

The first lead came in quickly when a young woman matching Karen's description was actually seen at the Southern Pacific Railroad Station with two men.

It wasn't Karen.

Right.

But matched her description. One of these people bought tickets to San Francisco for all three of them.
And the ticket clerk remembered the three young people and told detectives it didn't look like the girl was being forced to accompany them. She looked like she was willing to go there.
But Karen's mother was like, and they were really going with this lead, and Karen's mother was like, no, she wasn't running away. Like, this isn't.
And please, everybody fucking believe her. She said to them, something happened to that girl from the time she parked her car on the ramp before she could get into the store.
Wow. And he, she just knew.
She was like, she didn't make it into that car, into that store. Right.
Now, once Karen was taken back to Jerry Brudos' basement of horrors, he sexually assaulted her. Then he forced her to dress in the stolen underwear and shoes while he photographed her.
He took a lot of photographs of Karen. He made her change several times.
This was a very long, drawn-out, torturous process for her. The photos are heartbreaking because it's clear.
I mean, it's just of her face because they've Because they've obviously cropped it. Yeah.
But it's clear that she is just in complete shock and doesn't know how to get out of the situation. Yeah, that's not something.
Like, it's a horrifying photo just because of her face. Not something I would want to see.
No, I don't recommend going to look for it, but it's just, it's awful what he did to these women because you can tell. Like, how do you get out of that? You're in his basement.
no idea what do you do and it's like you don't know if you comply if you if i comply maybe he's gonna let me leave like you know that he just wants this yeah there's so many things that must be running through your head when he was done photographing her against her will he looped a rope around karen's neck and through the other end over the hoist in the basement ceiling because he had created this whole loop and pulley system now where he could hoist someone up.

He then hoisted her up just enough for her feet to not touch the ground, literally so her toes were scraping the ground.

Yeah.

And then he left her to strangle to death while he went upstairs and watched cartoons and spent time with his family.

So they were just upstairs while this was going on? Mm-hmm.

Okay. So he just went upstairs, spent time with his family, his kids, his wife, watched cartoons, while there is a woman strangling slowly to death in their basement.
that I don't know how you I don't know how the human brain can allow you to hurt somebody like that. And to like also hurt your family at the same time.
Like that's fucking with your family too. Oh yeah.
Like that's just. And it's just like such conflicting pieces of your brain.
Right. How are they turned on at the same time time i don't even i don't know about the pathways in jerry bros's brain well later he returned to the basement to repeatedly violate karen's body yeah um and she had died at that point yeah she had died she strangled to death by that point he had developed a routine so he spent the next few days photographing her body, just like he had done, and violating it in other ways.

Because remember, he is a necrophiliac.

And before disposing of Karen's body, he sliced off both of her breasts because he wanted to try to make the paperweights again. When the time came to get rid of her body, Jerry weighted her down with mechanical parts, like an engine from an old car and stuff, and dumped her in the Long Tom River.
I don't know what happened with the paperweights of it all. I think it's better that we don't know.
Yeah, I didn't go too far into whether they worked or not, whether he was able to finally do it. For his sake, I hope no.
Yeah, definitely not. So several months would pass before Karen's body was discovered in May.
By then, she had been in the water way too long for the medical examiner to get much information about her remains. Her cause of death was listed as death by traumatic asphyxiation.
Wow. When you, so obviously like it becomes harder because like you got waterlogged.
Will your teeth disintegrate faster in water too? No. No.
Your teeth will pretty much hang out. At the same time.
Now, unlike the other bodies who were discovered without clothing, Karen was actually fully clothed when she was found. So he redressed her, obviously.
So, yeah. But what was even weirder was the clothing didn't belong to her.
And it clearly didn't belong to her. Is it his wife? The sizing of the undergarments, for example, were much larger than anything Karen owned or would reasonably be wearing.
Okay. Also, when the medical examiner removed the 38D size bra, which was not her size, quote, sodden lumps of brown paper toweling dropped out, revealing that Jerry had cut off Karen.

This is when they found out that he had cut off Karen's breast.

Right. And then stuffed a bra to make her chest appear larger with paper towels.

Oh.

And all this clothing was clothing taken from other women. Okay.
And some of it was like other women he had murdered. Yeah.
He dressed her in. This man.
Yeah. Yeah.
That's just... Yep.
Awful. Now, less than a month passed before Jerry was back out on the prowl.
Less than a month. Holy shit.
April 21st, Jerry attacked a 24-year-old woman, Sharon Wood, in a parking garage as she was leaving work. He walked right up behind her and put a pistol in her back, telling her that if she didn't scream, he wouldn't shoot her.
But she said, fuck that, and she fought real hard. Hell yeah.
She basically was like, I was not. She was having a having a bad day and she was like i was in no mood to deal with this bullshit so he tried to choke her out he put an arm around her like and literally tried to put her in like a sleeper hold and she just bit down super hard on his hand like drew blood from his thumb like that's how.
And just screamed. She just kept on screaming.

And luckily, a car drove in as this was happening, and she was able to get away because he ran.

We see you're getting after your fitness goals, but what about those money goals? You can count on Credit Karma for a clear view of your finances and your progress, helping you see results so you can keep checking off those financial personal vests and find your way to money. Progress never felt so good.
Download the Intuit Credit Karma app and start achieving your money goals today. Intuit Credit Karma.
Karma you can count on. If you're a parent or share a fridge with someone, Instacart is about to make grocery shopping so much easier.
Because with family carts, you can share a cart with your partner and each add the items you want. Since between the two of you, odds are you'll both remember everything you need.

And this way, you'll never have to eat milkless cereal again.

So minimize the stress of the weekly shop with family carts.

Download the Instacart app and get delivery in as fast as 30 minutes.

Plus, enjoy $0 delivery fees on your first three orders.

Service fees apply. For three orders in 14 days, excludes restaurants.
Can you imagine how traumatizing that experience would be? How do you move on from that? How do you ever park your fucking car in a parking garage again? Or go in public. Or do anything, exactly.
By yourself. Like, I would never want to be alone again.
No. i'm sure that happens a lot with survivors of like

attacks like this like they probably don't want to do anything by themselves absolutely and luckily he so he ran away and then on the afternoon of april 22nd the next day very next day he tried to abduct a 15 year old girl and force her into his car he's disgusting but she Wow. Like she was able to run away.

He also tried to kidnap a fucking 12-year-old on her way to school.

Oh, my God.

Literally grabbed her and was trying to throw her in his car.

And she saw a neighbor working in the yard.

She's on her way to school.

Yeah.

A 12-year-old.

Yeah, like a 6th or 7th grader.

Literally saw a neighbor working in her yard and was able to break free from him and run directly into this neighbor's arms. Like this neighbor just grabbed her.
Talk about timing. Yes.
And it's like, what, he was going to do this to a 12-year-old? Well, it seems like he was trying to look for somebody like easier to overtake. That was one of the things they said about him later was if you put up too much of a fight with him he would like like that would throw him off because he wanted the easy like thing or what he determined to be the easy thing so that's why like they all fought like most of them fought to some extent you know what i mean but it was like if you somehow were able to like get someone else involved or get because as soon as someone else became involved he was a willpower flower yeah like he was a little bitch right so it's like if he got you alone he was more likely to overpower you no matter what but if you could get someone else's attention or like break free somehow he was out of there he was out of there and it's just like a fucking 12 year you were going to bring a 12 year old back to your fucking basement of horrors i can't get over that like i'm like you literally have like two children literally your father yeah like that's disgusting and horrific no matter what but you're you add the layer of the fact that he has his own children he is i mean he he i don't think there's enough credit is put on how bad this guy is I think it gets overshadowed a lot by like oh he's the shoe guy he's the shoe fetish guy and that's like the oh what a weird part of this story and it's like yeah yeah that's real weird do you know what else he did you gotta look at what this fucker did he's gross he's.
He's a fucking necrophiliac. Oh, he's a fucking demon.
And it's crazy. Like, you were just saying, the shoe thing definitely overtakes this story.
Because I know who Jerry Brudos is. I've heard the story.
Yeah. But I actually forgot that he was a necrophiliac.
Yes. And it's like, the shoe thing is a big deal.
Yeah, of course. Because it's like, that is a massive part of his pathology.
And it's a massive part of what he fetishizes and what he does. And it seems like why he became who he was.
And you heard what he said with Karen Springer. Right.
He said, I didn't like her shoes, but she was pretty. Yep.
But he had to comment on the shoes, like, I didn't like her shoes. Yeah.
So it was a massive part of his pathology.

So I'm not knocking the fact that, like, that's a big part of this. But there's so much more.
And it should be a big part of it. But, like, I feel like it doesn't get known how bad he was.
He was disgusting. Yeah.
So after trying to abduct a 12-year-old and failing, just one day later. He's, like, desperate.
On April 23rd, Jerry drove over to Portland where he spotted 22-year-old Linda Sally loading bags into her car in the parking lot at the Lloyd Center. Armed with that same toy pistol and now a fake police badge, he approached Linda and he flashed the badge and he told her that he was a store detective with the Lloyd Center and he was taking her into custody for shoplifting.
What? So Linda was like, what are you talking? I didn't shoplift anything. Like, no, like you have the wrong person.
But he was very insistent and she was always one to follow the rules. Yeah.
She didn't go against authority. So she went with him.
Well, you're not going to like run away from what you think is a police officer. And that's, and of course not.
And later after his arrest, Jerry commented on this and said, she didn't fight me at all. She just got into my car.
Well, why would she? Because you were pretending to be a detective. Exactly.
You fucking asshole. Like making it seem like, like it was so weird.
She didn't do anything. You're making it seem like you're a detective.
Which is the entire reason that you came up with that plan in the first place. I remember this is in the 60s.
It's like people, like, we're just coming out of the 50s here. People are taught to respect, even now, but it's like, especially back then, you were taught to respect police officers.
Well, and especially as a woman, you didn't have a lot of fucking rights back then. That's the thing.
So it's like, of course she did. Yeah.
Oh, it's so annoying. And she apparently, according to him, remained remained completely silent the whole drive she didn't even speak up when it was clear that they had passed the portland city limits and crossed into salem well she's probably just trying to figure out how the fuck to get out of there she's probably in complete shock and terrified and still being like is he a detective like he flushed a badge like going on? So they pulled into his home, and she still didn't say anything.

And once he led Lyndon to the basement workshop, is what he called it,

he tied her up with rope and then went back into the house to have dinner with his family

while she was tied up.

And they just, like, they never heard screams or anything like that?

I guess not.

Like, they never heard struggles?

I'm shocked by it, to be honest.

Yeah.

Not the kids, obviously.

No, not the kids, but Ralphine.

I'm like, Ralphine, you never heard anything?

Which, again, like, we've seen that happen.

I don't know anything, is when they're- It wasn't happening in the house. Right.
Like, when they're bringing back people that they've already killed. Yeah.
But the fact that he, like, dragged this girl into the basement and tied her up and then was like, okay, dinner time?

Yeah.

It's just strange.

That's what's confusing to me is, like, he's bringing live women back to his house

to murder in his basement.

Right.

And it's like, there's times where there is, like, you know, his wife is home.

Well, no, so, like, I mean, maybe this is just me,

but, like, you hear a car pull in the driveway.

I look at my camera, or before cameras, I would look out the shades. Yeah.
Like, I don't know. Yeah, I don't know.
Unless he's picking specific times where Ralphine isn't home when he pulls in. Mm-hmm.
Right. So she just comes home and gets home and starts dinner.
He just walks upstairs and is none the wiser. You know what I mean? Yeah.
Like, it's possible. No, definitely.
It's just, I'm like, damn. It's also just a, another thing of how bold and brazen oh yeah and how completely like having no room he's remorseless yeah like he doesn't he walks upstairs and has dinner with his family knowing what's happening down knowing somebody else's child is downstairs in his basement right like it's you know i mean Like that's just fucked up.
He's looking at his wife, a woman he claims to love and has another woman downstairs in his basement. And a daughter.
Yeah. So this asshole had dinner with his family and then he just goes back downstairs to the basement and Linda had actually freed herself from her ropes somehow.
But she was just sitting there on the couch. Hadn't tried to run away.
You know, nothing like that. She likely believed he was going to let her go eventually.
What bothered me about this is he made it seem, and he had like a habit of doing this where he would sit there with detectives and be like, yeah, it's so weird. She just sat there.
She didn't even try to get away. She didn't even try to use the phone.
And it's like, I think what you're failing to tell us, you big piece of shit, is that you probably told her several times, if you just stay put and listen to what I say, you're going to go home to your family tonight. Right.
And it's like, he's making it seem like these dumb women didn't do anything. Like, of course I killed her.
And it's like, first of all, you told her you were a detective. So she probably had no fucking clue what was going on.
And it's like, don't tell me that you didn't give her some kind of idea that if she just listened and didn't fight back, that you were going to let her go. It pisses me off so much because he did the thing was like, yeah, it's crazy.
She just got my car. You flashed her a badge.
Right. Of course she did.
And said you had to take her downtown. Like, come on.
Yeah. This one is very – Graphic.
They're all very unsettling and graphic, but this one just has like an added element into it, just so you know. So it was – she just kind of was sitting there when he came downstairs probably hoping that he was just going to be like, okay, let's get you home.
It was only when Jerry pulled out a big belt, like a leather strap, and tried to get it around her neck that Linda lost it. She started resisting, kicking, scratching at every part of him that she could, which again, she's yelling.
She's fighting. In his basement.
There's nothing over her mouth to stop her from yelling. In his home basement.
Yeah. She was fighting the whole time and he finally did get it around her neck and he strangled her to death.
But she fought hard. Yeah.
He did what he did to all the other women that he killed. He violated Linda's body.
He photographed her. And then he hung her up by her neck on the usual pulley system, her body.
And while she hung there, he placed needles into her rib cage on either side. And attached those to wires and an electrical current attached to a large battery.
What? And what he was hoping to do there was he was hoping that by doing that and, like, sending the electrical there that he would make her body like jump or dance. Yeah.
On the pulley. Like animate it in some way.
What a fucking weirdo. Yeah.
And it didn't do that. It just burnt her skin, which he was upset to find out.
That's just so sad. It reminds me of the hillside strangler stranglers with the the you should usage of like electrical and experimentation like that and stuff and how they just and the way they are so fucking callous and cold about it later just being like what i want to see what would happen it's like this is a person like what are you doing like what the fuck so a few days later jerry waited linda's body down with with another old engine that he could find and dropped her body into the Long Tom River as well.
Not far from where he had dumped Karen Sprinker's body, and then he just went home. now with the recent disappearances of jan whitney and karen sprinker and the attempted abductions just a few days earlier like one after the other yeah linda sally's disappearance was

taken pretty seriously, like right away. Like the other women, I feel like they were like, oh, maybe they were in a way.
Oh, it's a one-off. But now they were like, oh, shit, these might be connected now.
When you have three, it's like, okay. Yeah, like start looking at it.
And not only three women who have turned up missing, but other disappearances and other assaults and other— And attempts. Exactly.
Now, everyone who knew Linda described her as very stable and very reliable. Hardly the type of person that would run off without telling anyone.
So, finally, they listened to people who knew her. Good.
And also, Linda's car was discovered abandoned in a parking lot, which definitely

supported the theory that she was taken away from where she was and that she didn't run away with it.

Yeah. Now, whether he was in a rush or was just careless, Jerry failed to notice how shallow

the part of the water was where he dumped Linda's remains. About two weeks later on May 10th,

two men fishing on the Long Tom River noticed something partially submerged in the water. When they got closer, they realized it was the partially nude body of a young woman.
Her remains had been tied to an auto transmission. It was tied using a nylon cord and copper wiring, which he used for all of them, and that was going to be something that tied him to it.
Because those are very specific things, nylon cord, copper wiring. It's not like a regular rope.
So by the time the body was discovered, decomposition and the effects of being in the water had made Linda's face largely unrecognizable. Investigators thought it could actually have been Karen Sprinker at first.
And ironically, it was just two days later, while investigating that same area for evidence, you know, in whoever this body was, that the sheriff's department divers also located Karen Sprinker's body about 50 feet from where Linda Sally had been discovered. Oh, wow wow yeah so linda's body was identified through dental records okay because that's how badly she was decomposed uh karen's body was tentatively identified by her mother through a description of her personal items which is just horrifying that's heartbreaking yeah detectives were glad to have some information to work with but they couldn't ignore the fact that the similarities in the cases suggested that they were likely looking for one killer.

Not only were the bodies left in roughly the same area, but they also were killed and weighted down in very similar ways.

Also, they were mindful of the fact that Jan Whitney had also disappeared under similar circumstances, and they couldn't rule out the possibility that this was the same person and they had a serial killer. Now, in the days that followed, divers continued to comb that riverbed, looking for any additional evidence belonging to either of the women or anything else, for that matter.
But they didn't get anything else. Sheriff Charles Ream told reporters on May 15th, we're sure there are more bodies bodies under the bridge.
The problem was, though, that they also didn't have a lot of leads to work with at this point. The lack of leads kind of sent detectives back to the drawing board a little bit.
So they looked at the last time anyone had seen Linda. And it seemed impossible that her killer could have abducted her in like a brightly lit parking lot in the middle of the day.
But honestly, he had done it at least one other time in the case of Karen Sprinker. Right.
And it is shocking. Like, I understand why they were like, how the fuck did he just grab her? In daylight.
And, you know, they're thinking like he couldn't have grabbed her and she fought back in broad daylight. Someone would have seen her.
But then they're like, but again, like, it happened to Karen. Right.
You never know. So you just don't know.
But they said that back at Lloyd's, they talked to a clerk that was at the jewelry counter who had last seen Linda. And they ended up being the last person who saw Linda alive besides Jerry Brudos.
But this clerk said that she remembered Linda because it happened to be a very slow day and she took a long time making up her mind. So she just had remembered her.
Yeah, she spent a lot of time with her. But that's all she could really tell her was just like, yeah, she was in here.
Right. Now for months, investigators dug into every aspect of the victim's lives just trying to find anything that they could connect them together or that they could just figure out anybody connected to them that could do this.
But they just kept coming up

like dead end after dead end. And then in mid-May, they finally got a break when an Oregon State

University student called police to report an incident. This incident was when a suspicious man

had called this girl out of nowhere on May 14th, and this guy just asked her out on a date. Okay.
And she was like, I didn't know who he was. He was a man who called me.
What the fuck? And I guess he said, I just came back from Vietnam, and he had dialed her number at random. That's what he told her.
That's believable. And he wanted to ask her out on a date.
He was like,'s go out and she said like you have no idea what i look like you have no idea what my fucking name even is and you want to go on a date yeah you good but she said i didn't know why but i accepted the date and i said i would meet him she's a college student so maybe she was like you you know what maybe she's a big believer in fate

maybe I think that's why

she was like you know what

maybe this will

it was the 60s

yeah and nearing the 70s

very different time

honestly

it me

yeah

like oh my god

my future husband just called

crazy

you're like the stars have aligned

relatable So I just used NerdWallet's card finder tool to find a better card for me. And listeners, this is genius.
All you have to do is answer a few questions, and in minutes, you'll get matched with recommendations tailored to you. I'm discovering cards I didn't even know existed.
And the matching was on point. The best part? No research needed.
The nerds already did that for us. So if you, like me, want to easily find the right card for you, go to nerdwallet.com to get matched today.
Terms and conditions apply. Credit products subject to lender approval.
See nerdwallet.com for details. Dropping 10 bucks or more on deodorant that makes big promises but delivers little to no protection.

These bad boys give you 48 hours of serious sweat and odor protection.

Suave is all about cutting the nonsense and delivering what works.

No gimmicks, no fancy marketing tricks, just solid protection and great scents that keep you fresh all day long.

Stop overpaying for basics.

Cut the BS out of your routine with Suave.

Available now at your local store. So the two met at the Oregon State Dorm Lounge.
And the girl said it was a very awkward experience, which I imagine it was. I hate that it's Jerry Brudos, obviously, that she met up with.
But I love that she was just like, all right. Let let's try and she went to like a public place yeah she was smart about it you know she didn't go meet him at like some secluded area or like his house or something yeah um so they made small talk briefly and then the man began telling her about his experience with new massage techniques no gracias and before she could say anything, he was up and standing behind her

and massaging her shoulders. Nope.
Get the fuck away from me. Do not touch me without my consent.
Same. He told her to think of something sad while he was doing it.
Why would I think of sad things while you're relieving tension for my body, you fucking idiot? Well, and she was like, I can't. I don't know what to think of.
Like, she was like, what the fuck? So his response was, Think of the two girls killed and put in the Long Tom River.

Oh.

Yeah. I'd say, you know what? I've got to go back to my dorm now.
Get the fuck away from me. Scream.
The conversation progressed, and eventually the man mentioned that he believed people should be able to decide for themselves what's right and wrong. Oh, yeah.
That's a good idea. And she was like, hard disagree.
And she said it to him. She was like, hard disagree.
Like, that is not how the world works. No.
There's bad people in the world. So like, bad people can't decide what's right and wrong for people.
And he became irrationally angry at her for that. Did not want to hear that.
And the flare up of anger obviously made her very uncomfortable. And scared.
But it wasn't until he mentioned that he needed to replace the engine in his car that she really became uncomfortable. Because she remembered that at least one of the women that had been found in the river had been bound to an engine block when she was discovered.
And she was like, too much. Too much is leading back here.
Why is he telling her all of this? Oh, and it gets worse. Because the most alarming moment happened when after they'd been talking about the missing women for a little, because he kept bringing it back.
Yeah. Jerry casually asked, and he was referring to her agreeing to meet him when she didn't know who he was.
So he was, this is why I think he does this shit to make women look stupid yeah because he he invited her he called her up pretended to be this guy got her to come there with him and now she's gonna kind of shame her for it yeah because he said what makes you want to be raped like the other girls oh my god whoa he casually said that oh my god referring to the fact like well you just showed up and met a stranger. What makes you want it? He's like, they must have done.
And again, he's blaming the other girls like they must have wanted to. Holy shit.
And also like, first of all. When they were going to a department store.
Well, that's the thing. Like this girl came for a date and did not want that.
That does not mean that she wanted to be raped. And those two girls, you took them against their will.
So what the fuck are you talking about, small guy? Exactly, small guy. Fucking ass.
It's so true. And that's why when he's doing this whole thing, like the story, and the story out there for Linda Sally is like that he just came downstairs and it was so weird.
She had untied herself and she's just sitting there. She didn't even try to call on the phone the phone she didn't even try to escape like that's the story right that's everywhere you read and it's there's no like it's it's almost being like isn't that weird that she just like was fine with being in this guy's basement and like didn't try to get away and it's like no no it's very clear that this is what he does that he he has clearly made her promises and kept her docile

with the hope of getting the fuck out of there.

Yeah.

And then he's going to turn around

to the detectives and go,

yeah, isn't it fucking weird?

She just like untied herself

and didn't even try to escape.

She must have wanted it.

Well, and I also was thinking-

Fuck you.

Fuck you.

And I also was thinking too,

I feel like the fact that he took pictures of women

almost led them to believe

that like he would let them go

because then he had some kind of blackmail over them. Exactly.
and they could just say like yeah i'm not going to tell anybody you have those pictures of me i'm gonna go yeah like we have an equal thing here and i'm going and i can never have to do this again yeah and i can see why somebody photographing you like that wouldn't lead you to believe that the next step would be them killing you exactly it would actually lead you to believe like i, like, I'm in this position, I'm going to take these pictures, and then I'm going to get the fuck out of here. I'm just going to try to get myself out of here so I can at least try to get help.
Right. Like, I'll do what he says to keep him calm.
Right. Because he's also a big guy.
That's the other thing. Even though I just called him small guy.
Jerry Brudos, he's a small guy. Well, small guy mentality for sure.
like that's he he has the, he has the energy of a tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny, tiny microman. Small dick energy, if you will.
The tiniest dick energy. TLDR, small dick energy.
Oh my God, yeah. But he's a big guy.
Is he? He's a big freckled man. I actually haven't looked up a picture of him this entire time.
He's heinous. I believe it.
He's heinous. They usually are.

Something you just said about the way that he was just sitting there on the date with her and saying, like, what he just said to her about, you know, well, why do you want to get raped like those girls? It reminds me, I just watched the new Anna Kendrick movie that she, it's like her directorial debut. I heard great things about it.
woman of the hour i just watched it was so good but it reminds me of this one scene in the movie

where he gets like upset with a girl that he's very much trying to kill. And it just sent chills down my fucking spine.
But 10 out of 10 recommend that movie. Really good.
I definitely want to watch that. Siri also is interested.
Siri is also like, you should watch that. She said, I didn't hear that.
What movie was that? Just tell me more. But that's the thing.
I feel like if you look him up, he's a big, Jerry Brudos is like a big beady-eyed fuck. Yeah, he's big.
And I'm sure they were trying to comply because he's a scary fucking intimidating foe to be in his world. Yeah.
In his literal home. Yeah.
So they're trying to just like comply, get the fuck out of there. But it pisses me off that this little asshole likes to make it like, oh, so what makes you want to do this just like the other girls? And it's like, first of all, shut the fuck up.
Right. They didn't.
Nobody wants it. Shut the fuck up.
No. And it's like, and you were the weird fuck who called her and did this.
And she met you in a public place on a campus yeah exactly like she's in she's safe you're the one being a weirdo it's just it's for the shock factor because you're immediately still like imagine sitting across from somebody and hearing them say that to you immediately all you would like you would you would dart back of course and it's to shame them yeah exactly it's to make her feel uncomfortable feel uncomfortable, to make her feel ashamed that she has agreed to do this. And he's a piece of shit.
So where do we go from here? So after they'd returned to the dorm, because he walked her back to the dorm, the man asked if he could see her again. And she was like, I'll think about it.
But as soon as he left, because she didn't want to piss him off. So she was like, I'll think about it.
As soon as he left, she called a Corvallis detective to report it. Smart fucking girl.
That's my girl. And they said, okay, here's what we want you to do.
We want you to make another date with him. But we will be waiting for him when he comes to pick you up.
This poor girl. So they were like, you don't have to go on the date.
You just have to make a date with him. And she did.
So she a few days later, or she made a date for a few days later. And so she was like, come pick me up.
And when he came to pick her up, detectives were waiting to question him. This might be my next favorite apprehension next to fucking the Night Stalker.
Well, it's kind of, this one's layered because they didn't have anything on him yet. Oh,'re just they just had this yeah they're just questioning him still great still love that still great that he thought he was going on a date with this girl but yes but also he was like creep he was probably gonna kill her well one he was gonna kill her and two i'm like did you guys put her in the fucking witness protection program seriously you didn't arrest him after that he knows where she lives the good news is this is what gets them on this is what gets him on the radar.
So this leads to his arrest for sure. So he gave detectives his name, but he provided a fake address and denied knowing anything about the murders of Linda and Karen or the disappearances and attempted abductions of other young women.
But still, Detective Jim Stovall recalled how Jerry, quote, attempted to play mind games with him during their interview. So this dumb fuck thinks he's smart, too.
Yeah. I would be like, you're laughing.
Like, I wish they, I hope they were just so fucking mean to him. I would demean this man until his future generations felt it.
Yeah, I like that. Like, just ruin his life.
Yeah. According to Stovall, Bruto's, quote, used hypothetical examples of what the killer could have done.
That struck a little too close to the truth to be a coincidence. Wow.
Yeah. It's giving if I did it.
I literally was just thinking that. Now, despite their suspicions, investigators had no crime that they could charge him with technically.
He didn't do anything. And Jerry, you know, he was just kind of of being weird and creepy but you can't really charge anyone with being weird and creepy so they had to let him go and in the week that followed they discovered that their instincts were probably right about brudos because a search of his name they went like further into his background it turned up previous charges for assault and kidnapping as well as his incarceration at the state hospital in his late teens.
They also discovered a 1960 arrest where Jerry was arrested for prowling around the Oregon state campus. Oh, no.
So Brudos also lived in close proximity to where the victims had been abducted from. So as they're putting all these things together, they're being like, all right, something's off here.
He's got a record. He was acting strange with us.
He was trying to play mind games with us, getting a little too close to the real details of shit. And now he lives close to where they're abducted, like all the pieces are falling in.
And his car wasn't a match for the one that had been identified in the attempted abduction of like some of the young women who had gotten away, but his mother's car was. And she had been known to, she was known to have been staying with him at the time.
So he was going to abduct these, this 12-year-old, this 15-year-old, this 23-year-old in his mother's car and probably killed him in her car. He probably got like some kick out of that because obviously he hated her.

That was for sure part of it.

Oh, the weird psychological layers to that.

Oh, yeah.

Wow.

Oh, yeah.

So the information Stovall and the other detectives managed to get together was enough to get a warrant.

So they really did their due diligence after this meeting.

Yeah.

They had to let him go, but they didn't let it lie.

They went further and got enough to get a warrant to arrest him. Or to search his home, at least.
Right, right. So, on May 26, 1969, Stovall and a team of investigators arrived at Jerry Brudos' front door.
Wow. Which is not good for him.
Uh-uh. So, the warrant to search his house mentioned the sexual nature of the crimes and the specific ways in which the bodies had been disposed of, including the use of the copper wire and the nylon cord being very specific, very niche, and also the car parts that they had been bound to.
In their search of the basement, investigators found copper wire and nylon cord. Imagine that.
And they matched exactly to those found in the murders. They also found industrial mechanical cloth, which matched the cloth that was discovered on Linda's body.
Wow. Now, the materials discovered in the basement tied Brudos to the missing and murdered women.
But the most damning evidence was the massive stash of photographs showing nude bodies dangling from a rope. And that's a quote.
And women's clothing discovered all over. Like, they found a massive stockpile of this stuff.
According to the press, many of the photos of women were taken from the neck down, so it was difficult to identify them or even determine whether they were alive when the picture was taken. That's horrifying.

But at least one photo, a small image that was confiscated from Jerry's wallet, he was carrying it around with him, was a nude Karen Sprinker. Oh, that's awful.
And it was like her face was in it. Also, in many of the images, they found that there was a mirror that he had laid on the ground underneath the women's bodies so that he could, like, dress them, hang them up, and put a mirror underneath their bodies so he could look up their dresses.
Oh, God. Ew.
Yep and in one of those specific photos with the mirror There is an image

Of Jerry's own fucking face

Reflected back as he was taking the fucking photo he's so simple and it is a you can see the photograph it is just of his face like they blew they it's not like the whole photograph yeah no it's just the part that's his face yeah and it's haunting to look at because you are looking at the moment that this person is torturing someone it's wild to look at somebody in the moment that like they have no humanity yeah you know what I mean like that it's just like they are they're most a creature we can't even fathom you know I mean it's weird to be able to look at someone and in that photo be it because of the flash or like something else that whatever happened it distorted his face a little so his eyes are like blurred like there's no eyes oh that's horrifying and his eyes are like the scariest part of him for something he has very beady very evil looking eyes yeah and they're like erased off Oh, that just sent a chill down my spine again. Yeah, it's very, very unsettling, but it was a very specific thing about him that he would put that mirror under there and take photos because he liked having all the angles.
That's disgusting. Yeah.
So, the discoveries in his home were enough for an arrest warrant, obviously. I would say so.
And on May 29th, Jerry Brudos was arrested for the murders of Karen Sprinker and Linda Sally. Since he had become a suspect two weeks earlier, technically, Jerry had been under constant surveillance.
They were not letting him just walk around. That's good.
And he was picked up after, and this is interesting, after officers pulled Ralphine over while she was driving, his wife, and found Jerry hidden under a blanket in the back of the car. Huh.
And what they believed was that he was attempting to flee the state. Yeah, she was helping him out.
That's upsetting. That's interesting.
A few days later, on June 2nd, two additional murder charges were added for the murders of Linda Slauson and Jan Whitney, as well as a charge for assault while armed with a dangerous weapon related to the attempted kidnapping of the 15-year-old victim. She had identified Brudos as the man who tried to abduct her.
Good for her. What a brave girl.
On June 4th, the grand jury indicted Jerry for the murder of Karen, to which he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

You're gross, but not insane. Yep.
The judge on the case, Val Sloper, accepted the plea, but ordered that Jerry had to undergo psychiatric examination before proceeding with the case. Because he was like, okay, you want to claim that you're insane? Let's see.
Get me some experts that agree with you. Right.
So in a statement to the press, Jerry's lawyer, Dale Drake, told reporters that he expected the trial to begin sometime within the following four to six months because they were going to have to gather all that. But at the same time, District Attorney Gary Gortmaker was holding off on pursuing an indictment for the other three murders because he didn't want to be forced to reveal the details of those cases to the defense during the trial prep for the Karen Sprinker case.
During discovery. Now, by mid-June, the evidence against Jerry Brutus had been piling up, so it seemed very unlikely that he was going to get away with murder.
Yeah. In addition to the photographs and women's clothing, investigators had discovered additional evidence indicating that at least two of the murders, those of Jan Whitney and Linda Sally, had occurred in Jerry's home.
Right. Like at least those two had been murdered in his home.
Right then and there, yeah. And the manner of the deaths were listed as, and this just gave me like, it was very chilling to me, the manners of death were listed as hands, rope, and strap.
Oh, I don't like hands. It's really upsetting.
In the early hours of December 4th, 2024, CEO Brian Thompson stepped out onto the streets of Midtown Manhattan. This assailant pulls out a weapon and starts firing at him.
We're talking about the CEO of the biggest private health insurance corporation in the world. And the suspect.
He has been identified as Luigi Nicholas Mangione. Became one of the most divisive figures in modern criminal history.
I was targeted, premeditated, admit to so terror. I'm Jesse Weber, host of Luigi, produced by Law and Crime and Twist.
This is more than a true crime investigation. We explore a uniquely American moment that could change the country forever.
He's awoken the people to a true issue. Finally, maybe this would lead rich and powerful people to acknowledge the barbaric nature of our health care system.
Listen to Law and Crimes Luigi exclusively on Wondery Plus. You can join Wondery Plus on the Wondery app, Spotify or Apple Podcasts.
Under the circumstances and believing he could successfully use an insanity defense, Jerry began providing Detective Stovall with details of the crimes. Because he was thinking, well, I'm going to bleed insanity.
Who cares? And he was careful to omit certain pieces of incriminating evidence, like the location of Linda Slauson's body, because they had not found Linda yet. He did this under the mistaken assumption that they couldn't charge him with her murder if they couldn't find her body, which we know is incorrect.
When he wasn't meeting with his lawyers or detectives, he was spending a lot of time with any of the seven state psychiatrists assigned to the case by the state. Wow.
In general, they observed what they described as, quote, a man who was agitated and tense, could not sit still for an interview, but rose frequently to stride around the interview room. And when he was cooperative, the evaluating psychiatrist found him to be affable and talkative, saying that he spoke with grandiosity and immaturity, and peppered his conversations with unnecessary details.
A check. Because he's a lying sack of shit.
The doctors also noted that Jerry seemed to demonstrate an appropriate range of emotional responses when discussing most subjects, except when he talked about the deaths of the victims. And they all said during that time, he showed no emotion at all.
That's really scary. So, totally human, except when he was speaking about the deaths of them, where he didn't give a shit.
In fact, in one case, he called, I believe it was Linda Sally. He referred to her as inconsequential to him as a candy wrapper.
What the fuck? And the fact that he can't even, it seems like he can't even pretend to care. No.
And he makes no attempt to. He's just like, no, I don't care.
That's so dark. Yeah.
And he said, he told them, I act the way I do because everybody takes advantage of me. And that's how he described why he was such a violent predator.
That's not true. And it was clear.
You take advantage of others. It was clear to the evaluating psychiatrist that his behavior stemmed from his very bad and very abusive relationship with his mother in particular.
Yeah. But as far as Jerry was concerned, he attacked and killed women because his wife couldn't meet his sexual needs.
Okay. He said she won't dress up like the other women do, and that makes me feel sorry for myself.
Makes you feel sorry for yourself. Also like, Hey, there's this thing called divorce.
And there's also this thing called, there's many other women on this planet. So like, if that's a kink that you have, talk about it.
Figure it out. Before you get married to somebody and like figure that whole part of yourself out.
And just the fact that when someone says, and then it made me feel sorry for myself. Gross.
Completely negated. Gross.
Whatever statement you made before that, I don't give a fuck. It made me feel sorry for myself.
Shut the fuck up. Well, it's also just another way to blame another woman.
Of course. Like, I'm mad at Ralphie.
It's women's fault. I'm mad at her for trying to drive him past date lines.
But I am also sorry for her for that. For like, what the fuck? He's just always trying to blame a woman.
Anybody else. And in his evaluation report to the prosecution, Dr.
Guy Parverush summarized Jerry as follows. In psychiatric examination, he was obviously anxious, agitated, and depressed.
He cried frequently, saying he was sick and that he could not have help. Throughout the detailed discussion of his crimes, he appeared very preoccupied, emotionally detached, and quite certain that these things had to be done.
In general, I did not find any evidence of a psychotic process or evidence of perceptual disturbances. His cognitive processes are very well maintained, and he was able to give details of past and recent events.
He shows poor and faulty social judgment, and certainly has no insight into his basic emotional problems. It is my clinical opinion that Mr.
Brudos understands the nature of the charges against him and can assist in his own defense. This man has a paranoid disorder, and his behavior is a product of that disorder.
Despite this, I believe he can differ and Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

100%. And you said there was like seven total, right? Seven of them.
Yeah. They all noted that while Jerry did appear to meet the diagnostic criteria for a psychotic disorder, he was certainly capable of knowing that his behavior and perspectives were socially unacceptable and in certain cases, criminally unacceptable.
Right. Also, at least one of the psychiatrists, Dr.
George Suckow, noted that on all three occasions that Mr. Brudos has requested psychiatric help in his life, he has been in difficulty with the law.
So as he saw it, Jerry was savvy enough to use his psychiatric history to his benefit. Yep.
Citing his mental illness whenever he was in trouble. Uh-huh.
That's pretty savvy. That is.
However, he also wrote, though he does describe some rather elaborate fantasies of a sadistic nature towards women in particular, none of these is extensive enough or involved enough to qualify, in my opinion, as being delusional, since he clearly understands that they are not real. Now, in simple terms, Jerry Brudos may have been a violent sex offender and murderer who saw himself as being above the standards of others, but he was well aware of what he was doing.
And when he committed the murders that he was charged for, he was fully, he knew what was going on.

He knew it was wrong.

He was fine with it.

Right.

And in fact, several of the psychiatrists who evaluated him diagnosed him with an antisocial personality disorder and noted that there was no known treatment for such individuals. So, and George Suckow wrote, in the convoluted medical ease of the psychiatrist, Jerome Henry Brudos was quite sane and eminently dangerous.
In the language of the man on the street, he was a monster. He would always be a monster.
He certainly is. So he's saying this guy is a monster and he can never be cured.
This is who he is and you cannot rehabilitate him. You just wonder, like, what's missing?

What piece is missing?

I think the more we see these things, the more I am convinced childhood is so vital to who you become. something gets broken in a very specific way by a very specific set of treatments or

situations that you are in when you are in a perfect state of development.

I don't even know if it's just that though.

Because that happens and people turn out fine.

But that's what I mean.

I think it has to be a perfect storm.

I think it has to be at a certain, I think we don't know what that one spot in development is that if you fuck it up, you're fucked. I think we can't pinpoint it yet.

When I wonder if it's like you, it's so hard to like articulate, but I wonder if it's that, but also like if not everybody has that thing that you can fuck up.

You know what I mean?

Like I feel like they have, like the people like this who do things like this like Jerry Brudos did there's got to be something in them already like I truly believe that there's got to be something innately wrong with you from the jump that then I I'm I feel like I'm a pretty firm believer that it's nature and nurture. I agree.
At the same time. I agree.
I think, I mean, when you look at his mother, any mother who can actively hurt their child and, like, neglect their child and, like, abuse their child and, you know, tell them basically that they're not worth what the other child is there's something broken in that person oh absolutely and it's like so

obviously something could absolutely be in there biologically and genetically that's just broken

right but you wonder where it all starts like where does it how far back not only do yeah not

only do i wonder how far back that starts but what is that piece yeah and i i wish there was like

Thank you. it all starts like where does it's how far back not only do yeah not only do I wonder how far back that starts but what is that piece yeah and I wish there was like I feel like someday we will figure it out we need to like follow a line yeah back and you need to like first determine where every where you see these little bits and pieces of things to determine what is this coming through the maternal side,nal side is it both does it matter it does it skip a generation does it go every three generations that you see this is it every generation and i feel like there's got to be some kind of like stimulus where like or like stimuli where something like one part of the brain connects with another part that it's not supposed to given a certain yeah response there's some pathway that is disrupted or is bifurcated or created you know like something is happening yes i just want to know what it is it makes it because it's like and obviously if we knew what it was we could stop these things from happening before they happen well and i just I just wonder, like, how many studies are being done on incarcerated serial killers? Because I think, like, I'd be happy to fucking fund that just to find out.
For real, like, I would love to be able, I just want to see, and it's something to look into, and I think we should look into, like, what studies are being currently done on this kind of stuff. Yeah, let's look into that a little bit and maybe follow up in the next couple episodes.
I'm just interested in like, what are we looking at? Well, there's got to be some psychology behind this all. There's got to be some psychology.
There's psychology. There's physiology.
I feel like there's so many things happening. There's a lot at work for sure.
There's got common denominator yeah yeah just that no one's been able to find because it's like finding a thread in a haystack yeah we need to gather like three to five fucking monsters and just study the fuck out of their brains while they're still living you know it would be a very hard study to conduct it would It's going a very hard study. That's the thing.
Like, it'd be dangerous, I'm sure. But I'm just, there's got to be something.
And I just want to know what it is. This kind of stuff is fascinating.
It is. Because it really is.
Because like we always said, like, they're not always from a home like this, you know? No. Or there's things that, I mean, there's things that I hear in certain stories that I can relate to.

And I'm like, I'm not a serial killer, you know? Exactly.

That's why I think it's just, there's got to be a perfect storm of things that once it all meets, it's like all the boxes get ticked and an explosion happens.

Yeah.

And I, I don't know.

My brain is just really rambling now.

Yeah.

Because I'm also like, why is it more often men than, like, obviously there serial killers but it's so it's but it doesn't happen as often yeah so is it something within like within chromosomes possibly like what could this be there's just i just want to know about the science it's just like it really is and he's really one of those like because you're just like what the fuck you are just up monster. Yeah.
But then you look at his background and you're like, yeah, there's some shitty things going on in there. But then you go back to that whole thing of, like, a lot of people have shitty upbringings.
Yeah. I find him to be really similar to Ted Bundy.
Yeah. Especially with, like, the necrophilia, like, that kind of thing.
But then he's got, like, hillside stranglers in there. Yeah, definitely.
He's got some in there yep definitely he's got and that's the thing you look at all these like an amalgamation fuck's going on yeah what's going on with all you and he was before btk right yeah yeah i mean i think btk was like killing at that point but yeah not caught he was in the 70s yeah so he wasn't going yet wasn't going yet yeah this is. He was just about to start.
So by mid-June, Jerry had entered similar plays of not guilty by reason of insanity in the indictments for the murders of Jan Whitney and Linda Sally. But by the time the psychiatric evaluation started flowing in, it was clear that he was not going to have anything to back that up.
Yeah. Definitely no expert witnesses, no testimony, no evidence.
No diggity. So he had no choice but to change his police.
On June 27th, 1969, just three days before his trial for the murder of Karen Sprinker, Jerry changed his plea to guilty on all three counts of murder. There it is.
At the time, the prosecution didn't have enough evidence to get an indictment for the murder of Linda Slauson. Oh, that's sad.
So that charge was dropped. That always makes me so sad when like— You know he did it, but they just can't get like the official amount.
Yeah. When Judge Sloper asked for confirmation, defense attorney Dale Drake said, the defense had exhausted every legal remedy for providing Brudos with the defense.
And he added, the state's evidence tallied with statements made by Brudos to his defense team. So when Sloper addressed Brudos directly and asked why he was changing his plea, Jerry said, well, because I did it.
Whoa. That was his answer.
Simple as that. He waived his right to a delay between conviction and sentencing as well.
So Judge Sloper imposed three life sentences, each running consecutively, putting Brudos in jail for the rest of his life. Good.
On July 28th, just one month after he was sentenced, the body of Jane Whitney was discovered, tied to a piece of railroad iron submerged in the Willamette River. That same day, the prosecutor's office released a statement to the press saying, although he had confessed, they would not be pursuing a case against Brudos for the murder of Linda Slauson.

They said, we have no substantiation.

So they just were having trouble getting the pieces together.

He confessed to it.

Unfortunately, and this is really heartbreaking, Linda Slauson's remains were never recovered.

And Brudos refused to tell investigators where he had disposed of her body. What a douche.
So the sentences handed down to Jerry brought a lot of relief, especially to women in Oregon. Right.
As well as for the families of the victims. But many were very concerned, though, because the sentences still allowed for parole.
Parole. I was just thinking that.
Yeah. Under the terms of his sentence, Jerry could be eligible for parole in as little as 10 years.
Wow. After receiving three life sentences.
Contingent upon the adjustment he makes during the interim is what it said. In response to the community's concerns, Oregon Parole Board Chairman Jack Wiseman released a statement saying there'll be a continual study of the case over the course of his imprisonment to evaluate his threat level before parole could even be considered, which we're like, that's basically...
I think his threat level is pretty fucking high, guys. I don't think you need to continue studying that.
Threat level midnight at all times. And he said, there must be sufficient learning, adjustment, emotional, social, and psychological on the part of Brudos

before he would be a proper candidate for serious parole, even consideration.

Damn.

So that's nice, but still the idea of it is still scary.

And those families were probably freaking the fuck out.

Of course.

As it happened, Jerry Brudos became a model prisoner once he started serving his sentence.

He joined several programs. He even took on a clerical job at the Oregon State Penitentiary.
But he did remain a target for the other prisoners. Really? Particularly those who targeted sex offenders and sexual killers.
Including one incident in 1978 when he was stabbed a lot by a fellow inmate. I just loved a a lot but he lived unfortunately uh throughout his nearly four decades in prison jerry was considered for parole a number of times but each time he was denied that must have just been gut-wrenching yeah it made them go through the families all had to go through it over and over right because that's a lengthy process it's not like they just like god you know the the number that must have done in their nervous systems to have to be in fight or flight for that long, like every year.
Days on end, yeah. And then just wondering how long until the next one.
In June 1995, after repeated parole hearings, the board informed Jerry Brudos he was no longer eligible for parole due to his complete inability to show considerable evidence of rehabilitation. they said to him this is the the state board chair, Marva Fabian, told him, you will be in prison for the rest of your life and there will be no future parole hearings.
Icom. But Jerry did try to appeal before the parole board every two years, despite them saying this, and despite never demonstrating even an ounce of remorse for his crimes.
And it's like, that's all you have to do. Yeah.
I'm glad he was incapable. Yeah.
On March 28, 2006, Jerry Brudos died in the infirmary at the Oregon State Penitentiary after a long and terrible battle with liver cancer. Karma.
His death was a big relief to many of the victim's families who lived with constant anxiety that you just never know that they're going to let him out for something. Jan Whitney's sister, Cindy Elliott, told a reporter, I'm feeling relief.
You hate to say you're glad that someone is dead, but my family believes it should have happened years ago. And to that I say, fuck yeah, it should have.
Hear, hear. And you don't have to feel bad at all.
Nope. He took your loved one.
Fuck that guy. Yeah.
And he was a blight on humanity. And continued to terrorize your poor family.
Yeah, of course. I don't think she should feel bad one bit.
You wouldn't tell people where, like, Linda Slauson's family never had her body to bury. Never had her, anything of hers to say goodbye to.
And he loved it. That's absolutely devastating.
Yeah, he did it. It was his last little power trip he could take.
Right. And he took it to the grave.
Fuck that guy. Unreal.
What a douchebag. What a wild story.
I never, I don't know if I knew all the details of that, to be honest. He's really bad.
Yeah. Like, he's a really bad one.
Yeah. Yeah.
He's a piece of shit. Yeah.
And I'm glad he's dead. And we're glad to be rid of him.
Yeah. Bye.
Rest in distress, Jerry. Truly.
Don't rest at all. No.
Be tormented for the rest of your life. Yeah.
Your afterlife. Yeah.
Wow. Thanks for that.
Well, if you want a palate cleanser, go buy tickets to that Insidious event because that sounds awesome yeah and we

hope you keep listening and we hope you keep it weird but not so weird as jerry brudos because

wow if you're listening to the show and you're doing that yuck yuck yuck get out of here bye

you're gross

you Thank you. I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm I'm's coverage of the USS Indianapolis, where 900 sailors battled rough seas, sharks, dehydration, and madness in the open ocean, you need to check out my podcast, Against the Odds.
We dive deep into this survival story across four full episodes, revealing details you haven't heard yet. Each week on Against the Odds, we put you in the shoes of real survivors, from the Thai cave rescue to Somali pirate hostages to the Donner Party.
These aren't just headlines. They're incredible stories of human endurance.
Follow Against the Odds on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. Wondery Plus subscribers can listen to both Against the Odds

and Morbid early and ad-free.

Start your free trial in the Wondery app,

Apple Podcasts, or Spotify today.