Chapters
Shownotes Transcript
Happy Wednesday, midweek listeners, or happy fill in the blank if you're listening on any other day of the week. I'm Peyton Moreland, and our story this week begins much like last week's episode. A house on fire, a family found dead inside, a blaze intentionally set in the middle of the night. The perfect time for a killer to work under a cloak of darkness.
with the otherwise potentially watchful eyes of neighbors shut for the night and plenty of time to escape before the inferno spreads and attracts attention. By that time, evidence is destroyed and maybe, just maybe, authorities will rule the fire and the deaths accidental.
But what murderers, in their arrogance and in their narcissism, often underestimate is the degree to which professionals like fire investigators and forensic pathologists know what they're doing. And there's no formal training for becoming a murderer the way there is for the investigators trying to get to the bottom of a tragic unsolved mystery. That's why killers, even the ones characterized as brilliant by media outlets looking for a sensational angle,
They have such a gaping hole in their morality and logic that it renders them kind of dumb, in a way. When you've got main character syndrome like many murderers do, you're looking at the world through a distorted lens. It's a blind spot. A blind spot that's ultimately a killer's vulnerability. It's what often leads to them getting caught.
Our story begins on August 29th, 1994 on a quiet residential block in Vinton, Virginia on the southeast edge of Roanoke. It was a little before 5 a.m. on a Monday morning. It was still dark outside. Robert Arnie was on his way home from work to attend to his pregnant wife. She was several months in and she'd called him up in the middle of the night complaining she wasn't feeling well.
So being a good husband, Robert left work early to be there for her. But as he was driving past the house at 232 East Virginia Avenue, a house he'd never paid any attention to before this moment, a monstrous plume of black smoke wafted across the highway, looking like an evil spirit that had emerged from the roadside. When he turned to the direction where the smoke had come from, he saw the house was on fire.
He also saw vehicles in the driveway and children's toys strewn about the front yard. Thinking the people inside might be in trouble, Robert bolted from his car and banged on the front door of the burning house, but he got no reply. He went around to the rear door of the house, but there was no response there either, nor at the side door.
though he did find a handwritten note on the side door that read, had an emergency back late Sunday, early Monday. It was signed, Teresa.
While Robert was at the side of the house, Officer Mike St. Clair of the Vinton Police was cruising through the neighborhood when he spotted the flashing hazard lights on Arnie's car. And then he too noticed the smoke coming from the house. Officer St. Clair radioed for help and within minutes, firefighters and additional police were at the scene.
They forced their way into the house and immediately noticed the floor slick with fuel, oil, and petroleum accelerants. The fire was raging through the first floor of the home, working its way up to the second story. Firefighters worked hard to contain the fire and once it was put out, they began to discover the carnage that was hidden beneath the blaze.
Inside the house was four dead bodies. On a couch in a downstairs living room was the badly burned body of 37-year-old Teresa Lynn Hodges. In an upstairs bedroom was the body of 41-year-old Blaine Hodges, partially hidden behind a pile of laundry.
And in a separate bedroom, together in the same bed, were the couple's two daughters, 11-year-old Winter and 3-year-old Anna. A whole family completely wiped out. And it was immediately obvious that it hadn't been the smoke or the flames that killed this family.
Teresa had been strangled to death with a ligature and then doused with gasoline and set ablaze. Winter and Anna, the two girls, had each been shot twice in the head at point-blank range. Anna was covered in soot and had minor burns while Winter's body was spared by the flames.
And Blaine Hodges, in the master bedroom, had also been killed by a single shot to the head. Blaine and the two daughters had each been shot in the head with a .22 caliber gun, much like the .22 caliber gun that was found lying next to Blaine Hodges' body. And also in the area was an empty container of diesel fuel. What this looked like immediately, and tragically, was a murder-suicide.
A family annihilation in which the annihilator took his own life. And Blaine Hodges was no stranger to local law enforcement. In fact, in 1991, he had been fired from his job at the US Post Office for embezzling, a crime for which he was convicted in 1993 and sentenced to six months in federal prison, a sentence he was set to begin serving in just a few weeks.
He had filed an appeal and that appeal was rejected earlier in the month. Blaine had also been ordered to pay $9,200 in fines and restitution, which was money he didn't have. So Blaine was having substantial problems in his life and financial desperation and mounting shame is often why family annihilators do what they do. Take John List, for example, who we've covered over on our other show, Murder With My Husband.
He'd wiped out his whole family because he'd lost his job. He was deep in debt and was unable to confront these problems head on. But with the Hodges situation, the crime scene was looking a bit off from the outset. For one thing, the gun found next to Blaine Hodges was missing its barrel. This is something criminals will sometimes do, remove the barrel of a gun to prevent the firearm from being linked to a crime.
But why would Blaine have removed the barrel of the pistol if he knew he was going to use it to take his own life? Like that just doesn't add up. Also, police found that the telephone lines in the Hodges' home had been cut, which again was an odd thing to find if it were a murder-suicide as it looked to be.
When the story hit the news, all that was published and all that was reported was that a family of four had died in a fire. There was no mention of murder, no mention of suicide, and the police were keeping a tight lid on things for now because there was more investigating to be done. And before the medical examiner completed his work, he made another startling determination. Blaine Hodges, the father.
had already been dead when the rest of his family was killed. He had died anywhere between 12 and 24 hours earlier than his wife and daughters. So Blaine Hodges couldn't have killed his family, and whoever was responsible clearly tried to make it look that way. But who would have had the motive to do so? And how could they have committed a crime that took that long? Who wanted the Hodges family dead and why?
Police interviewed friends and family of the Hodges and began piecing together how the Hodges spent the days leading up to the murders. On the Friday before, Blaine and Teresa attended an Amway conference two hours away in Charlottesville, leaving their children in the care of a relative. After Blaine had lost his job at the post office, he and his wife had turned to selling Amway products, and they believed they were on the brink of seeing huge returns, or at least that's what they were telling their friends.
Blaine picked up the children Saturday morning and a fellow Amway seller named Marshall Elroy, this is a pseudonym, visited the Hodges at their home that afternoon. During that visit, Marshall would later tell police that nothing seemed amiss. The only unusual thing that occurred was when he was alone in the basement with 11-year-old Winter Hodges to test a stain removal product.
Marshall said there was an older man painting a door in the house, and that older man reprimanded the girl for going down in the basement alone with Marshall. But nothing about that seemed all that out of the ordinary. Later that day, a friend of Blaine's spoke with him on the phone around 5 p.m. And then, several hours later, Teresa talked to a friend who was the mother of one of Winter's classmates from school.
Summer break was ending and the first day of school was the following Monday, so the two mothers wanted to coordinate a carpool. After a brief conversation, they agreed to talk the following afternoon to finalize these plans. And then the following afternoon, Teresa called and left a message on the other mother's answering machine and left a callback number, which was a public payphone at a gas station on Virginia Avenue.
The friend called the number back and talked to Teresa, getting everything squared away for the kids' carpool the next morning. And it's strange because I couldn't find any info explaining why Teresa left a payphone number instead of her home phone. The gas station, though, was on the same street where the Hodges lived. So I'm thinking the phone lines may have already been cut at the Hodges house, but Teresa didn't know it yet. Like all she knew was that the phones weren't working and she didn't know why.
Maybe she also didn't know that Blaine was already dead in the upstairs bedroom because he would have been at the time that she placed that call. I'll admit the difficulty with a case like this is different sources lay out different timelines that are in direct conflict with one another.
Okay, most beauty brands don't understand fine color treated hair, but Proz does. They have a formula that can address my specific type of hair needs, which makes sense because it's based on me. If you're wondering whether custom hair care is worth the hype, let me tell you it is, and that's why I'm obsessed with Proz.
Since 2017, Proz has transformed traditional hair and skincare with a made-to-order model that reduces waste, celebrates unique beauty over one-size-fit-all beauty standards, and works better than off-the-shelf alternatives. Developed in Paris and bottled fresh in Brooklyn, Proz combines the know-how of its world-class team of in-house cosmetic chemists with an advanced AI algorithm that personalizes your formulas
based on 80 plus unique factors. You literally go on, take the quiz, it asks you all types of questions and then they personalize your hair care. Since I switched to pros, I've noticed that my hair is so much shinier, stronger, and my color actually lasts longer. And because you're always changing, so is your pros. Your formulas evolve alongside you and pros will address any new concerns, adjust your formulas with the seasons and learn from your feedback with an always custom fit.
You guys, Proz is so confident that they'll bring out your best hair that they're offering an exclusive trial offer of 50% off your first hair care subscription order at Proz.
at pros.com/dark. Pros.com/dark, go on, take the quiz, see what they come up with. Take your free consultation, get your one of a kind formula and see the difference custom haircare can make with 50% off at pros, P-R-O-S-E.com/dark.
Let's get back into the episode. Sometimes after a particularly long day, I love to play games on my phone to get my mind off things, and one game I have been loving is June's Journey. June's Journey is a hidden object mystery mobile game that puts your detective skills to the test. You play as June Parker and investigate beautifully detailed scenes of the 1920s while uncovering the mystery of her sister's murder. With hundreds of mind-teasing puzzles, the next clue is always within reach.
Every new scene and chapter leads to more juicy secrets and clues being revealed about this mysterious murder that brings out the detective in everyone. Plus, you get to chat and play with or against other players by joining a detective club. You'll even get the chance to play in a detective league to put your skills to the test.
I have always loved good scavenger hunts and puzzles, and of course, we all know I love a good murder mystery, and this is just the perfect marriage of the two. Right now, I'm on chapter two. I've been trying so hard not to use the light bulb feature to help me search for clues. I seriously look forward to playing it every night. Discover your inner detective when you download June's Journey for free today on iOS and Android. Another source indicates that the last time anyone had contact with the Hodges family was Saturday night when Teresa talked to the other mother on the phone.
According to that article, the Hodges family missed church the following morning, and they were supposed to host an Amway meeting at their house that evening, but when the other attendees showed up, they found that note on the side door, the one that said, "Had an emergency," back late Sunday, early Monday. Maybe police were getting conflicting information too. Perhaps they were having trouble assembling a timeline for that very reason.
But one name that came up again and again, someone everyone suggested as a reliable source whom police should talk to, was a man named Earl Bramblett. According to other friends and family, Bramblett was the go-to person to ask about the Hodges' social circles. He was close to the family. He was Blaine's best friend and his former high school track coach.
And Bramblitt spent more time at the Hodges' household than anyone else. I mean, the kids called him Uncle Earl. Police were also told by a neighbor of the Hodges that she had seen Teresa, Winter, and Anna in the company of Earl Bramblitt the last day they were seen alive, sitting on Bramblitt's pickup truck on Sunday afternoon. So it looked like he could be a potentially important witness in helping them sort out the timeline of the Hodges' last few days.
The police telephoned Earl's workplace, a silk screen printing shop, but he wasn't there, so they left a message. He called them back later that afternoon and agreed to meet with police at 5 o'clock that evening. When he appeared at the police station, Earl was sat down in the interview room and told that all four members of the Hodges family had died in a fire.
And he appeared to be deeply upset. And he even sounded angry when he blurted out that sorry SOB had a beautiful family. He did them and did himself. Now this was a very curious statement because up to that point, all that had been reported in the news was that the family had died in a fire. The newspapers and news station had said nothing about a possible murder-suicide up to this point.
and that all four members had been murdered prior to the fire had been kept tightly under wraps. So when Bramblitt saw the puzzled looks on the detectives faces, he added, "They were murdered, weren't they?" He then stated that he had no idea who would possibly want to hurt the Hodges family, but it was too late. He had already aroused suspicion and he could feel the focus was on him.
detectives asked earl when he had last seen blaine hodges and he got defensive why he shot back are you gonna charge me with murder the detectives assured him no one was charging him with murder they were just asking him questions
Earl then told them he couldn't recall when he last saw Blaine, which was also curious since a neighbor had reported seeing him at the house just a day or two before. How could he somehow fail to remember having just seen his friend who was just brutally murdered? Eventually, he admitted in a separate conversation with another investigator that he had been at the house over the weekend.
In fact, it would later be determined that he was the older man who had scolded Winter about going into the basement alone with Marshall, the Hodges' friend from Amway. When the first investigator asked him why he had given inconsistent statements, Earl Bramblitt grew defensive again. "'Why don't you go on and charge me with murder and get it over with?' he said."
After the interview ended, Earl left, having left exactly the kind of impression you don't want to leave on someone investigating a quadruple homicide. Earl was now the number one suspect. In the following days, police set up roadblocks in the early morning hours to contact people who regularly travel past the Hodges' home to determine if anyone had seen anything that morning. And they found two potential witnesses with information possibly worth pursuing further.
One was a newspaper delivery person who said she'd seen a burgundy Toyota with New Jersey plates making several passes through the area around 4 a.m. that morning. She said she saw a single male occupant in the car in one instance and two male occupants in another instance. And then she observed a man with a duffel bag emerge from the car and run into the woods nearby. So, pretty suspicious.
Another possible witness was the elderly employee of a neighborhood fast food joint. She said she'd been driving past the Hodges residence around 4:40 that morning when a light pink truck with a dark colored tailgate backed out of the Hodges driveway and followed behind her for a short while before speeding past her and disappearing down the road.
The driver was a white male and appeared to be the car's only occupant. Now, detectives already knew that Earl Bramblitt drove a similar vehicle, a 1972 pickup truck with a black tailgate. Although the rest of Earl's truck was white, not light pink. Could it have been that the witness was mistaken? Could the orange glow from the streetlights have made a white vehicle look pink to an eyewitness?
Investigators tested it out and took video of the results, and indeed, a white pickup truck would have looked pink under those circumstances. Another thing that was highly conspicuous about Bramblett was his absence at the Hodges funeral. For such a close family friend, it was strange that he was a no-show when it came time to pay his respects and see them laid to rest.
At this point, it was time for investigators to do a deeper dive into Earl Bramblitt's background. Bramblitt was born in 1942 in Sweetwater, Texas, the middle child of five. His two parents had worsening alcoholism that would cast a dark cloud over their children's lives for decades to come. When Earl was a child, the family moved to Waterville, Maine, where he attended Waterville High School and was a star athlete, even winning a track scholarship.
though he attended three different colleges and ultimately dropped out without having earned a degree he eventually moved to and settled in the roanoke virginia area in 1969 where he began working in his father's silkscreen printing shop he became an assistant track coach at jefferson high school which is where he first met blaine hodges when blaine was just a sophomore there
He was Blaine's coach until Blaine graduated in 1971. This is the same year that Bramblitt got married and Blaine remained friends with Bramblitt, who, although he was close to 30 at this point, seemed to favor the company of minors and was not as interested in or successful at connecting with grownups like himself.
In late 1970s, Earl's role at his father's silk screening shop became more prominent as he took on greater responsibility, and his old man began to recede more into the background due to his declining health. Eventually, Earl just took over the shop.
And that's when more and more young people would hang out at the business and sometimes work there on a part-time or as-needed basis. One of those young people was Tammy Lynn Akers, a 14-year-old girl who lived with her family just a block away from the shop and spent a lot of time not just at Earl's shop, but with Earl's wife, Mary, who had two younger sisters who were around Tammy's age, so the three teenagers would often hang out together.
On February 7th, 1977, Tammy and her friend, Angela Rader, were dropped off at their high school by a relative, and they decided to ditch and play hooky. The last time anyone saw them, they were hitchhiking in downtown Roanoke.
Angela and Tammy had run away together before, so when their families first reported them missing to police, the police didn't pay them much mind. The girls were habitual runaways, so it seemed like a waste of resources. But as time wore on and the girls' families received no word from either of them, it was looking more and more apparent that they'd possibly met with foul play or had been taken against their will.
Both the Akers and Rader families told police they should look into Earl, who knew both girls and had employed both of them at the screen printing shop from time to time. What stood out about Earl Bramblitt to the girl's parents, especially in retrospect, was that he seemed to have no adult friends, only minors. A bit of a creep, if you will. But Bramblitt, when he was contacted by police, claimed he had no idea where either girl was. He knew nothing.
At this time, Earl's personal life was in turmoil. His marriage, which had produced two sons by this point, was falling apart and his wife ended up divorcing him in 1978. A couple of years later, two young women approached investigators and told them they had information about Earl Bramblitt that police may be interested in knowing. The two young women said they'd attended a party at Earl Bramblitt's house and as the night wore on, Bramblitt grew increasingly drunk.
to the point that he aimlessly fired a gun and began sobbing that he wished he hadn't hurt Tammy. Again, when police followed up, Bramblitt said he didn't know anything and he didn't remember saying what police were asking about. Without Tammy and Angela's bodies or whereabouts, and without any evidence that a crime had even taken place, all investigators could do was keep a watchful eye on Earl Bramblitt.
And in 1984, Bramblitt was arrested for molesting a 10-year-old girl who worked at his shop, and he was put on trial. He was acquitted, but he soon left the business and began traveling around the U.S. rather aimlessly. He'd become what they call a drifter, living in cheap motels when he had the money or sleeping in his truck when he didn't.
Tammy Aker's older sister, Linda, would later reveal that Earl Bramblitt forced her to have sex with him when she was just 12 years old and sexually abused her for years afterward. In one instance, Bramblitt became violent with her and brandished a gun. Linda believed Bramblitt had begun molesting Tammy when she was just 9, and now Tammy was missing.
After I got older, she would later say, I realized this old man always had young girls around him. He surrounded himself with young girls. And indeed, Bramblitt would confide in someone that he was addicted to young girls, which would come back to haunt him. But more on that later. Okay, you guys, let me guess. Your medicine cabinet is crammed with stuff that doesn't work. You still aren't sleeping. You still hurt and you're still stressed out.
That's how it was for me. So I cleared out my cabinet and reset my health with CBD from CB Distillery. And it has been a real change. Now, CB Distillery's targeted formulations are made from the highest quality clean ingredients.
No fluff, no fillers, just pure, effective CBD solutions designed to help support your health. In two non-clinical surveys, 81% of customers experienced more calm, 80% said CBD helped with pain after physical activity, and an impressive 8%.
90% said they slept better with CBD. And you guys, I have taken CBD to help me sleep and I always zonk out so fast and have such a restful night's sleep. Those nights that I'm tossing and turning, I always reach for my CBD. So if you struggle with a health concern and haven't found relief, make the change like I did to CB distillery. And with over
2 million customers and a solid 100% money back guarantee, CB Distillery is the source to trust. I have a 20% discount to get you started.
Visit cbdistillery.com and use code dark for 20% off you guys. If you wanted to give CBD a try, go to cbdistillery.com, code dark. cbdistillery.com, use code dark. All right, let's get back to the episode. At the time that the Hodges family were annihilated, Bramblitt had been working at a screen printing shop and living in a rundown motel south of Roanoke.
And by day three of the investigation, he was failing to return calls from investigators who were attempting to contact him for a follow-up interview. So a police officer from Vinton went down to the motel with Blaine Hodge's brother in an attempt to talk to Bramblett, who greeted them by telling them he'd written a suicide note and angrily refused to answer their questions. After they managed to calm him down, he agreed to meet them at the police station that afternoon, but he never showed up.
When police returned to the motel and Earl did not respond to knocks on his door, they got the manager to unlock his door, fearing the worst. Fearing that Earl had made good on his threat to commit suicide. But when they entered the room, it was empty. A short time later, Earl Bramblitt returned in a taxi and demanded the police leave.
I'll never help you, he told them. Y'all will just twist whatever I say and lie. Why don't you just arrest me for the murder already? They didn't arrest him, but what they did do is obtain a search warrant to search Bramblitt's motel room and vehicle. And they executed that warrant that very night, just after midnight. And in the room, they found some interesting items. Notebooks and sheets of paper full of Bramblitt's scrawl.
four bullets and bullet casings, a .22 caliber revolver, a textbook about forensic investigative techniques, crime novels, and a detective magazine. Bramblitt was blindsided by the search. It all happened so quickly he didn't have time to prepare and throw away potentially incriminating items. The very next day, Earl Bramblitt skipped town.
Unbeknownst to police, Bramblett drove to his sister's house in Indiana and appeared on her doorstep visibly shaken and upset. He told her what was going on and she asked him if he had an alibi for that night, the night the Hodges were murdered. He indicated that he didn't. He'd left their home, he claimed, around midnight that night and that their murders were drug-related. Earl's sister and her husband were deeply uncomfortable with this situation and with Earl's presence in their home.
A year earlier, Earl had mailed his sister two packages, which he asked her to store for him. She had no idea what was inside of them, but she felt now it may be of interest to law enforcement. So she took the boxes to her local sheriff's office where together they opened the boxes and found six dozen microcassette audio tapes, hundreds of photos, and a sock that looked as though it had belonged to a young girl, possibly Winter Hodges.
The sheriff's deputies then immediately shipped this stuff off to the police in Vinton, Virginia. When the package arrived at Vinton from the sheriff's department in Indiana, where Earl's sister lived, investigators began listening to Earl Bramblitt's audio recordings.
What the microcassettes contained were an extended rambling audio diary that Bramblett had begun keeping in 1992. He would carry around with him this Panasonic microcassette tape recorder, which he took everywhere, and he's speaking to it every opportunity he'd get.
While home alone, while driving, while out walking his dog, sometimes he would record himself speaking on the telephone. And what investigators began to notice was that Bramblitt was paranoid, specifically about Blaine Hodges.
After Hodge's arrest for embezzlement, Bramblitt developed these bizarre suspicions about Blaine, that Blaine was trying to set Bramblitt up so he could get a reduced sentence, and that Blaine was using his then 10-year-old daughter, Winter, as sexual bait. Specifically, here's what Bramblitt said into his little tape recorder.
I'm beginning to realize what a backstabbing cheap mother effer I got for a friend. He's trying to set me up. Blaine is trying to buy his butt out of jail by using his daughter as some kind of sexual enticement towards me. She's trying to sexually excite me, and that's exactly what she's trying to do. She has been instructed to do that.
Blaine is on some kind of espionage expedition. He's keeping espionage on me. He goes on to describe 10-year-old Winter as a devious, manipulative, super intelligent little girl who is sexually sophisticated. I have to admit, he said, it's exciting and it's interesting that a beautiful little girl is just making eyes at me all the time.
There's just no way I can go back over to that place, and they're going to keep inviting me because that's their program. This is disgusting, and it was just about the most bizarre thing investigators had ever heard. Bramblett was seemingly delusional. Like, this family was plotting against him trying to exploit his apparent pedophilia for their own benefit using their daughter?
It's just nuts, and it seems they had no idea. It would seem they invited this man, whom they'd known for years, into their house on a regular basis with absolutely no clue. He was obsessing over them in his spare time and convinced they were plotting against him in the most outrageous way. After listening to these tapes, police performed some additional searches near the silk screening shop where Blaine worked.
They searched the dumpster behind the shop. There they found more tapes, handwritten notes about the Hodges family, and a drawing with stick figures, four stick figures. Two were large and two were small. The two children had arrows pointing towards their heads, and one of the adults had an arrow pointing towards its head.
These arrows mirrored the gunshot wounds that the three members of the Hodges family had sustained. It would take two years to build the case against Bramblett, during which the .22 caliber gun found in Earl's truck was found to be the same weapon that fired the bullets that killed Blaine, Winter, and Anna. And a pubic hair found in the bed shared by Winter and Anna was DNA matched to Bramblett. On July 30th, 1996, Bramblett was placed under arrest.
His trial began in October of 1997. Bramblitt was found guilty on all counts and on December 16th, 1997, Bramblitt was sentenced to death. In the state of Virginia where capital punishment has since been abolished, condemned prisoners were beginning in 1995 given the option of choosing between either lethal injection or the electric chair.
and Bramblitt chose the chair. They hoped that once he was arrested, Bramblitt would confess to Tammy and Angela's disappearances and tell the family where the bodies were, but he maintained that Tammy and Angela had died in a bonfire in Florida in 1980. He had nothing to do with it. On April 9th, 2003, Earl Bramblitt was served his last meal, which was sloppy joe, boiled potatoes, corn, and chocolate cake, and at
8:54 that evening, Bramblett was taken to the execution chamber and strapped into an electric chair that had been built by prison inmates. In his final statement, he said this: "I didn't murder the Hodges family. I've never murdered anybody. I'm going to my death with a clear conscience. I'm going to my death having had a great life because of my two great sons, Mike and Doug." At 9:09 p.m., Bramblett was pronounced dead.
Whatever secrets Bramblitt refused to surrender in his lifetime, he took with him to his grave. I can't conceive of someone who, with nothing left to lose, continues to deny, deny, deny until the day they die. Of course, I can't conceive of wiping out a family of four either, so maybe that's the key to understanding the kind of mental warpage behind people like Earl Bramblitt. Anyway, that's our story for this week. Next week we'll be covering a case where Karma caught up with a killer before the law did.
but perhaps not fast enough. I'll see you then.