Daily News from New York, New York • 32

SUNDAY NEWS, JUNE 28, 1970 C29 Ralphene Brudos (A), wife of killer Jerome Brudos was charged with murder as his accomplice but acquitted. She denied any role in Brudos strange and deadly proceedings in the garage at the Brudos home (upper right) in Portland, Ore. them up," one psychiatrist said. "It was what I'd call 'lust That implied that Brudos got a thrill from the mere act of killing. But his admissions indicated he had made forcible love to a girl or two among those he had driven to the chamber of horrors that was his garage.

The yarn he'd given the Oregon State coed he dated about having served in Vietnam was just that a yarn. He'd finished high school and then gone to work for several companies and one neighbor said he "could fix anything that broke down." One of the police searches of Brudos home and garage yielded lists of phone numbers of sororities and college girls' living quarters. He may have obtained some numbers of girls at Oregon State from Karen Sprinker's purse, police said. 'NE COED told a newsman there wan an electrician's apprentice. But police couldn't possibly pick up every electrician or apprentice in the Northwest.

So they concentrated on rounding up sex offenders. They found none who filled the bilL detectives checking through records of recent sex cases found one that might offer a fair description of the killer. In April, a man in his 30s, 6 feet tall, about 200 pounds, with "light hair and dark glasses," had accosted a 15-year-old high school girl in Salem. He drew what she thought was a toy plastic gun and said: "I want you to come with me. I won't hurt you." Suddenly he seized the back of her coat and dragged her between two houses.

"I won't rape you," he whispered. "I wouldn't do that" She told him she would walk with him if he let go of her coat and he did. They went out to the street and he said: "Get into that green car." Just then the girl saw a woman neighbor and screamed her name and ran toward her. The man, after a moment of hesitation, fled. While one group of police checked suspects of the description supplied by the girl, others searched every wrecking yard and garage in the area in an effort to trace the origin of the auto parts.

That got nowhere. Tracing the pink rag found on Linda Salee's neck shaped up as impossible. Many commercial cleaning firms handled such rags and on a large scale. One firm alone said it had 1,500 customers and that its rag loss averaged 15,000 a month. With police of several counties in on the hunt and the investigative heat on high, a more prudent murderer would have taken a vacation, but the man who slew Linda Salee and Karen Sprinker was a man lashed by a strange compulsive drive.

At 9:30 p.m. May 14, a Wednesday, a cute brunette coed at Oregon State University received a phone call from a man she didn't know. He said he was just back from Vietnam and wanted to talk to a girl and had dialed her number at random. They kidded back and forth and he suggested a date, just for a soft drink, to get acquainted. nothing unusual about girls accepting blind dates from men phoning sororities.

"You wouldn't do it if you were living in an apartment," she said, "but here in the university community it's a common way to make dates." And very, very risky. Without identifying the girl, District Attorney Gorfc. maker said Brudos asked one coed: "What makes you want to be raped like the other girls?" On June 17, 1969, Brudos, after first pleading innocent by reason of insanity, appeared in Marion County Circuit Court and pleaded guilty to the murders of Karen Sprinker, Jan Whitney and Linda Salee. He was sentenced to serve consecutively three terms of life imprisonment. Oregon does not have a death penalty.

In August, Oregon, just about recovering from the horrors of the Brudos case, was jolted anew when his brunette wife, Ralphene, 25, was indicted for first desree murder as an accomplice in Karen Sorinker's death. Witnesses who appeared before the indicting grand jury included Mrs. Brudos' own 7-year-old daughter. The trial opened late in September. A woman witness said that while visiting a relative living near the Brudos home she Brudos and his wife force a gagged, Mpnket-covered youne woman into their -nnce on March 27, the day Karen wa tl-n there.

However, the testimony was -mtv disputed by other witnesses and Mrs. Brudos was acquitted. But even with good behavior oti his part, Ralphene won't be reunited with her husband for a long, long time. Authorities figure he would have to serve at least 30 years before becoming eligible for parole. Brudos himself asked a psychologist: "Would you feel safe if they let me out tomorrow? What do you think would I do it again?" The psychologist didn't reveal his reply to the defendant but he told a reporter: "It's hard to connect Brudos with this horrible person you know he is.

He's likeable, has a good sense of humor. But would he do it again if he got out right now? probably." Of course, 30 years from now, Brudos might be a different man. And then again maybe he won't. of right and wrong. She disagreed and anger brought sudden life to the washed-out blue eyes.

She became uneasy. He said something else later. He said he had to replace the engine in his car. It was said very casually but it rang a bell. She suddenly remembered the auto parts used to weight the bodies of the girls fished out of the Long Tom River.

But she was a good actress and concealed her revulsion. He walked her back to the dormitory and asked if he could call on her again Friday evening and she agreed. But directly he was gone, she phoned police headquarters. A detective advised her precisely how to proceed with the situation. Her "date" failed to show up Friday, but he did phone Sunday and she said all right, she'd see him.

Again she called police. The man showed up this time. Detectives closed in on him. He was taken into custody and questioned. His name wa Jerome Henry Brudos and he was 30 and he worked as an electrician.

That crime lab cop had really hit it on the nose hen he spotted that underwriter's knot. Brudos was married, the father of two children and lived in a small yellow house with a rather large attached garage in Salem, and what went on in that garage was a caution, to hear Brudos himself tell it. Marion County District Attorney Gary Gortmaker disclosed that Brudos, under interrogation by a team of psychiatrists and psychologists, made oral admissions to the murders of all four missing girls Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker and Linda Salee. When the Slawson girl vanished, he was living in the very district of Portland where she was selling books. Subsequently Jan Whitney's body was recovered from the Willamette River.

Brudos said he tossed Miss Slawson into the same river, but divers were unable to find her. Brudos was a camera bug and a search of his garage, which he used as a workshop and studio, revealed hundreds of photographs. One was damning as circumstantial evidence. It showed Karen Sprinker in the node, standing, in a pair of high-heeled slippers. There were pictures of dead women hanging by a pulley, faces concealed under a hood.

A mirror was fixed below the bodies and it revealed the reflection of Brudos with his camera. He assertedly told of taking Jan Whitney to his garage. He picked up a ong leather luggage strap with a toothed buckle, slipped it around her neck and Dulled it tight. He told of luring Linda Salee from the shopping complex with the accusation of shoplifting. Once in his car, he told her she was being kidnaped for ransom.

In his garage, he tied her to a chair, went into the house a moment, and returned to find she had loosened her bonds. He grabbed a fabric luggage strap and said: "Please turn around. Shortly after she died, a car crashed into his garage but he kept his cool. After learning what had happened, he removed the girl's body to a pump house, then phoned police about the crash. When they arrived, he discussed the damage calmly.

Completely unaware of the murder, the police departed. Before dumping the girl's body. Brudos suspended her nude, by the heels, from the pulley. There were dozens of photographs of Brudos' favorite fetish women's shoes. And he enjoyed dressing in his victim's clothes.

"There must be something wrong with me," was his masterpiece of understatement as he told of keeping one body for days, just dressing and undressing it. The shoe fetish bloomed early for Brudos. He was only 5 when he found a high-heeled shoe in a garbage can. He treasured it in secret. At 17, he was grabbed for forcing two girls to disrobe at knife-point and then photographing them, and was lodged in a state hospital for several months.

He boasted to one psychiatrist that he had a 160 IQ, although actually it was 110-20. He was contemptuous of people and he complained that if people hadn't persecuted him, he would have gone far in the world. AH this suggested a paranoid personality, a doctor said, but all the doctors who examined him agreed he was sane. Analysis indicated he couldn't obtain satisfaction from the normal sexual act. So he turned to killing.

He knew he was going to kill the girls when he picked HE GIRL, in spite of the fear touched off by the two known killings and the suspected murders of the Slawson and Whitney girls, said, "Okay." She just wasn't in the mood to think about murder. They met in her dormitory lounge. He was fattish, about 30, with light red hair. He was also glib and amiable. He got to talking about a new method of study he had learned in an Army hospital and he began massaging her shoulder.

He said that was part of the "study procedure." She went along with the gag. "Now," he said, "think of something sad." "I can't," she said. He said: "Think of the two girls dropped in the Long Tom River." That should have chilled her, but it didn't. After all, he was a kidder. They got up and went out and had a soft drink and he philosophical.

He said that a person should decide Ids own rules.