Shoe Obsessed Slayer - Did The Wife Know More? - Jerry Brudos
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- Hi friends, how are you today? My name is Bailey Sarian and today is Monday, which means it's murder mystery makeup Monday. So I'm in my robe, I'm nice and comfy, 'cause why not? And today's story has been highly requested. And the main reason why I didn't wanna do today's story because like, I don't like the guy's face. He looks like a melting meatball or something. Like, I just don't like it. So I've been avoiding the story, but I finally like jumped into it and

You guys are crazy because you've been recommending this one and it's sick. You sickos. No, I'm just kidding. But other than that, I don't know what I'm doing. So here I go. Today's story takes place in Portland, Oregon in the 1960s. There, Jerome Henry Brudos, I think it's Brudos. He was born in Webster, South Dakota on January 1st, 1939. Now when he was born, the Great Depression was still

was still happening and Jerome's father thought it would be best if the family picked up and moved in hopes to like find a better life really. So that's what they did. The family picked up and moved to Oregon. Unfortunately, there wasn't a lot of jobs available in Oregon. So the family, they like jumped around a lot. They moved a lot, many, many times. And because of this, Jerry and his older brother, they would switch schools.

every couple of weeks, it seemed. And to them, it seemed like nothing was really secure. At one point, Jerry's father ended up finding work and he was working two jobs, which meant that the kids were at home with their mother, Eileen. Now, Eileen,

was not the nicest lady. Oh nay nay. It was said that she showed a lot of resentment and anger towards Jerry, but towards Jerry's older brother, Eileen was very affectionate and gave him lots of praise. She loved the older brother. He could do no wrong in her eyes. You see, Eileen, she really wanted a baby girl and she made that very clear to anyone and everyone she met. She was like, "Yeah, I wanted a baby girl, but I got this."

So it seemed like she took her frustrations out on him. Jerry's mother was verbally abusive towards him and physically, I think, I think, but physically,

But either way, she was very abusive towards him and she would punish him for like any rhyme or reason she could find. So she just didn't like Jerry and she let it be very clear to him that she didn't like him. And I guess when Jerry was like five years old around this age, he was pretty much left to himself, left to just raise himself. And he would go outside and just kind of wander the neighborhood because

I guess it was better than staying at home. While Jerry is wandering around doing his own thing, one day he like found his way into an area with some trash. People are getting rid of a bunch of stuff, you know, trash, great. And Jerry goes over there and he's kind of looking through it. And that's when he came across this magical contraption called high heels.

He's like, "What is this? It's so beautiful." Like he was infatuated. He pulls them out of the trash and decides, "I'm gonna take these home. These are mine. I am loving these." So when he gets home, he tries his shoes on and he's like walking around the house, right? In his high heels. When his mother, Eileen, saw this, she was all sorts of upset. But like Jerry noticed this time her upset was very different. Like she became,

very frantic, like demanding for the shoes, give me the shoes, give me the shoes, and telling him like, you cannot have these. These are very inappropriate. And she's just outraged. Now, Jerry, he couldn't understand why is she acting this way over this contraption I found? Like, why is she so mad? He couldn't understand why she's so mad over this.

It didn't matter, 'cause Eileen, she ends up taking the shoes and she's showing Jerry like these are going in the trash and she throws them away. Jerry waited until she was gone and then he like snuck back out into the trash and he got the shoes. Jerry would hide the shoes and wear them around the house when like no one was around, but it didn't take long for Eileen to catch him doing this. When she caught him, she was again, outraged.

But this time to an extreme because she's like, "How dare you go get these out of the trash when I threw them away?" She grabs the shoes from Jerry. She took them outside.

She's like, "Jerry, come here, come outside, Jerry." And then she lights the high heels on fire right in front of him. She liked to put on a show, I guess. Anyway, so Jerry's watching this and he's got such mixed feelings, hatred towards his mother. He's feeling the adolescent, like sexual arousal feeling

The shoes have made his mother upset and like a dash of aggressiveness. This is the concoction or the terrible mixture that had created Jerry's very disturbing, strong fetish. It was just not good, not good. Makeup.

- The year now is 1955. Jerry is 16 years old and he's living at home and in the house next door, moved in a family with some teenage girls. Jerry over here went full blown creep, okay, and became a peeping Tom. He would wash the girls through their windows, see what they're doing.

Just be a little creep. And because creeps don't just stay doing one thing, it progresses, right? So he's watching them through the window. And then he notices like that they have their clothes hanging outside on the clothing line. So he sees that the girl's underwear is on the clothing line outside drying. Jerry was like,

I'm gonna take that underwear and he did just that. He took the underwear numerous times. Eventually the family was like, do we have no more underwear? Like it's just all gone. So they call the police and they're like, we don't have any more underwear. I don't know how but Jerry somehow figured out that the police were called about the missing underwear. He saw an opportunity, I guess. On a different day, Jerry saw that one of the daughters was home alone.

He goes over to the house, knocks on the door, knock, knock. And when she answers, he pretended to be a police officer who had further questioning about the missing underwear. This part confused me 'cause Jerry's like, again, 15, 16 years old. So he must've looked older or maybe he presented himself in a way that was very believable. The girl next door, she thought he wasn't indeed a police officer and he had more questions. So she's like, okay. Jerry told the girl to come over to his house to speak about the theft.

When she got there, again, knocks on the door, invites her into the room. He runs to another room really quick, puts on a mask, then comes back out holding a knife to her throat. He then tells the girl to undress and then takes pictures of her. And then he runs off. He runs off into another room. And then he comes back into the room moments later with no mask on. And he tells the girl, "Whoa, like a stranger with a mask came up to me.

Locked me in the barn. It was wild. This is what he's telling the girl. And he's trying to convince her this person with the mask wasn't him. It was some stranger with a mask and he was locked in the barn. The girl, she never reported the attack because she felt embarrassed for being duped. Poor thing. But this was a very thrilling moment for Jerry. He's like, I did that and she believed me. Yeah.

Now Jerry, again, he's only like 15, 16 years old at this time. He's ready for his next situation. Jerry was out doing his thing one day and he runs into a girl that he recognizes and he's like, "Hey, do you want to go on a ride with me?" Because he has his own car. She agreed. She's like, "Okay." And they go for a drive. So I guess Jerry drives out to the middle of nowhere, then sees like an opportunity to pull over, so he pulls over.

and he holds the girl at knife point, demanding that she take off her clothes. Now she was in the passenger seat, right? She fought back. Uh-uh, no, no. And then she gets out of the car and she tries to run off, but he caught up with her. And they were...

What's the word? It's like, they're not, this isn't wrestling. It's like where they're going like this, like trying to get away from him, struggling, doing this with each other, right? She's trying to get away. Another couple was driving by and they spotted what was going on. And they're like, she seems to be in danger. So they leave and they go to find a phone to call police.

The police are called and then Jerry, he gets arrested. After police arrest Jerry, they get a warrant and they're able to search his room. And in his room is where they find Polaroid pictures of like the neighbor girl, remember? Please remember?

They find weird pictures of like underwear, the stolen underwear. So police have the evidence they need to link him to the missing underwear next door. But also just the fact that he had these pictures is enough, whatever. So Jerry's only 17 at this time. And instead of going to jail, they send him off to Oregon State Hospital for a psychological evaluation. So while he is there, Jerry spoke with a doctor about his fantasies and the thoughts that he had.

At some point, he shared with the doctor that he had a desire to have an underground room where he could stash captured girls. Like, okay, red flag, right? Now this was concerning to doctors, but they believed, I'm laughing because it's whatever, they believed this was just a phase. They're like, "It's just a phase in his life. He's gonna get over it. Don't worry."

So they truly believed that there was a phase and he would grow out of it. Because they considered this condition to be not that serious, the doctors allowed him to leave during the day, attend school, and then come back in the evenings.

After receiving nine months of treatment, Jerry was deemed safe for society and he was released. He moved back in with his family and he ended up finishing high school and a couple of years go by and he's like, fuck, I don't know what to do. So Jerry decides to enlist in the army. Now this wouldn't last long for Jerry. Oh no, no. He would end up being discharged for having peculiar obsessions.

He literally was there for like a couple months and they're like, "You're too much, you're out." He ends up moving back in with his mother who once again treated him very poorly. She was like, "You can live in the back house." They had like a back garage area. She's like, "You can live there." And as time went on, you know, he starts going back to his old habits. Jerry started breaking into houses.

stealing women's underwear, also stealing their shoes. It progressed to him attempting to assault women. There was this one time in broad daylight, he was sitting in a parking lot, 'cause he did this a lot. He would sit in a parking lot in his car and he noticed like a very attractive

woman, she was walking back from what seemed to be like her lunch break or something. So he's watching this chick, he notices that she's alone, he goes up behind her, grabs her, puts her in an area where no one could see them, chokes her until she passes out. While she was out, he takes off her shoes and then makes a run for it. The lady survived, but she'd never saw who did this to her. Like he came up behind her.

When he was 23 years old, Jerry met Ralphine and she was like 17 at the time. They really liked each other. They hit it off, I don't know. And then they dated. So the two are very smitten with one another. And then Ralphine, she becomes pregnant. So the right thing to do at this time is to get married. So the two of them get married in spring of 1962. Time is going on and Ralphine, she's starting to get married.

and she's starting to notice that Jerry is very controlling. He's very controlling and he was super weird. You know, she's like paying attention more. He would make Ralphine dress up in women's clothing that he stole and it would be underwear and shoes and he would make her pose for pictures. Later on, Ralphine would say that she had no idea these items were stolen. She just thought Jerry was a thief

had different interests. She started stepping up and saying no to his weird like underwear and shoes photo shoots he was making her do. Jerry would say that this left him feeling very unfulfilled in his fantasies because his wife wasn't playing along anymore.

And because of this, he started going out and stalking women. It's her fault. We're always the problem, aren't we? One day, Jerry had seen this woman that he found very attractive walking to a bus stop. So he decides, "I'm gonna follow her." So he does. So when she hopped on the bus,

he hopped on the bus. When she hopped off the bus, he hopped off the bus. Eventually it led him all the way to her house. He watched her go into her apartment and like just waited outside and looked at the windows to see which light turned on. And he was like, okay, that's her house. And then he waited until he saw the lights go off. And then he's like, okay,

she's asleep or she's going to bed. Once he notices that the lights are off, he then breaks in, I mean, quietly, he's trying to do this quietly, right? So he breaks into her house, he goes over to her dresser and he's like trying to snatch her underwear. I guess at some point he must make a noise loud enough to wake her up because she wakes up.

She starts screaming. He then jumps on top of her, tries to choke her and then assaults her. Once he's done, he finishes or whatever, he runs out of the apartment. Now this woman, she's okay, she reports it, but there are no leads as to like who this attacker was. It was just so random. So Jerry is feeling all sorts of unstoppable. His confidence is just building with each attack.

App Store or Google Play. Slash makeup.

So the year is now 1967 and Jerry is 28 years old. Now he's still married to Ralph Fien and he is a father. And at this time he is working as an electrician. Oh, but I guess I should tell you about the basement 'cause I forgot to mention the basement. So at Jerry's house, Jerry turned the basement into his own dark room where he would develop his film and do his little crafts and just be all sorts of creepy. You know, typical, not typical, but,

Maybe you can imagine that creepy photo guy in the dark room like...

He's that guy. So he would spend a lot of his time down there and he would tell Ralphine, like, "You cannot step foot into my basement." Well, in January of 1968, a 19 year old girl named Linda was going door to door selling encyclopedias. Yeah, wild times. Eventually she got to Jerry's house and he was working out in the front yard. Okay, and she's like, "Would you like to buy an encyclopedia?" And Jerry is like, "Oh."

Oh yes, I am very interested in encyclopedias. So he invites the girl inside like, "Yes, come inside, let me get my pocket book." Now he's able to get her inside, lure her into the basement. She's in the basement looking around and he attacks her from behind, hitting her in the head and then he strangles her. Now let me tell you something even more funky. Jerry's wife and kids are upstairs in the house.

Yeah, they're home. So Jerry strangles the girl, well hits her, strangles her, leaves her for dead. He goes upstairs and he tells his wife, "Hey, you should take the kids out for dinner." And he gives her money. They leave, they're going out for dinner and he waits. Jerry goes down to the basement. He goes down to the basement, takes photos of her body, dresses her in different stolen underwear, takes pictures, is posing her in different poses. He does some sexual things.

And then once he was satisfied, he wanted to keep a piece of his accomplishment, so he cuts off her foot. He keeps the foot stored in the basement freezer. Now Jerry would say, from time to time, he would take that foot out of the freezer, place different shoes on it, and pose it for pictures. It was his muse. That's different, Jer.

That's one I haven't heard yet. The family gets back home, right? Jerry is like, "Well, shit, now that they're home, I can't, I gotta move the body, but I need to wait until they're asleep." So he waits until the whole family is asleep. And then he goes back to the basement to move Linda's body to the trunk of his car. Now he also brings along an automobile transmission. He ties it to her and then he puts her in the Long Tom River. Now,

This is Jerry's first kill, okay? And ooh, you know, well, you don't know. I hope you don't know. But rumor has it after their first kill, they get some kind of high, right? And they're just like, "Oh my God, this is incredible." His first kill seemed to keep him satisfied for a bit of time because he wouldn't kill again for another 10 months.

Wow, that's a long time Bailey. I know. During these 10 months, the family picked up and moved to Salem where the family got a new house, which had a detached garage. It was off like to the side of the house, it wasn't connected.

detached garage, like I said, great. So the garage is on the side and Jerry is like, "Oh shit, this is my dream home." And he tells his wife, "I'm turning that garage into my dark room/workspace," which he did. And he told his wife, "You are not allowed to step foot in here." Allegedly, she didn't step foot in there.

That's what she says. I wanna believe her, I really do, because I can believe that maybe you just don't know. I just feel like we're curious creatures and if someone tells you, "Do not go in there," when they're not home, you might go for a little peek, just kinda see what's in there. Especially if that's your husband.

Wouldn't you go for a little peek? You're gonna tell me you didn't pink once. Anyways, in November of 1968, Jerry is out driving. It's kind of late at night, it's the evening, and Jerry notices a girl on the side of the road, and she's like working on her car. He pulls over and it's a 23 year old woman named Jan.

Now Jan tells him like her car stalled and she needs help fixing it 'cause she doesn't really know how to fix it. So Jerry's like, "Oh, perfect. I can help you out." He's like, "I just need to drive back to my house, grab my tools, and then we can come right back and I'll fix your car." And he tells her like, "You should come with me because it's kind of getting late. You're in the middle of nowhere." So she agrees with Jerry and gets in the car

He drives straight to his home, right? Pulls it into the driveway. He tells her like, "Just wait in the car. I'm gonna run to my garage and grab my tools." But when he comes back to the car, he enters into the back passenger seat of the car and then strangles Jan from behind. Once she was dead,

He then drags her all the way to the garage. And then he did just, girl, this is where it gets real gross. He just did all sorts of nasty things to her. Just terrible, terrible things, okay? For starters, he like hung her from a crank in the garage, hung her with a rope and a crank,

in the garage and he kept her hanging there for about five days. Throughout these days, he was posing her for pictures, dressing her, touching her, doing things to her, just being all kinds of gross. Jerry is feeling all sorts of motivated to be a dad. He tells his family to all pack up because they are going on a family trip for the weekend.

Mind you, the body is still in the garage hanging, okay? And they're going on a trip. Now talk about a small world because while they're away, some shit goes down. Back at Jerry's house, a car driving by the home randomly loses control, goes off the road and crashes straight into Jerry's garage.

Police come out and they check the area, they tow the car, they do all that they need to do, but I guess nobody, taking a further look in the garage or noticed the body. They came very, very close though, right? But nobody saw anything. Jerry gets worried about this back at home, he is freaking out. Jerry gets home, he sees the damage to his garage, he's like, "Yeah, everything's great, everything's fine."

Oh God, it realizes like this was a very close call. So after this, Jerry wait till everyone went to bed. And once again, he takes the body down and weighs it down and takes it to the river to drop it off.

So in the spring of 1969, Jerry is now 30 years old. He's been getting away with his shenanigans for quite some time. So at this age, Jerry was really enjoying just hanging out in parking garages and watching attractive women. I know, I guess he had a lot of free time, 'cause I was like, when did he work?

But he's in the parking garage and there is where he saw a woman by the name of Karen Sprinkler. Karen was 19 years old and she was walking to her car. He comes up behind her, forces her into his car and then drives her back to his garage.

He held her in the garage, tied her up and whatnot. He made her pose for photos and then hung her from the ceiling. Now he used some tool to crank her off the ground where it forced her on her tippy toes. And if she slipped, she would essentially hang herself. Yeah, some real sick shit. You know what I'm saying?

So she has to stay on her tippy toes or she's gonna die. So he leaves her in the garage, he goes back inside to his home and he has dinner with the family. Yes, he has dinner with the family like everything's normal. And when he did go back, that's where he found Karen now,

He also did some terrible things to her while hanging in the garage. Everything, the photos, everything, just everything, he did it. But Jerry wanted to remember this moment forever. So he did something just super goddamn unbelievable. This crafty little bitch, he made a plaster cast out of her bare chest. Now, once it was all dried, he spray painted it bronze and attempt to make a literal trophy for himself.

That's real different. When Jer was satisfied, he tied her to an engine block and then also dropped her off in the river. Now time goes on and Jer tries to kidnap two other women, but he fails. I guess they fought back and they were able to get away. So Jer is like, "I need to change up my technique, my approach." So you know what he does? He goes out and he purchases a fake police badge.

So yeah, this is gonna be good. So he has his badge now. He would hang around shop parking lots in Portland. And again, just kind of scoping out, waiting for somebody that he found to his liking. He noticed this one woman who was walking to her car with a bunch of bags. Like she just went on a shopping spree. So Jerry saw an opportunity. So he goes up to her and he says that he's a security guard.

and that there's been like a bunch of thefts going on and she needs to come with him to the station so she could be questioned. Well, she agrees. She's like, okay, I understand. I mean, he has a badge. I don't know, you know, like, oh fuck. Would I get in? I don't know, maybe. But yeah, she gets in the car and Jerry drives straight to his garage. He held a knife to her. He brought her into the garage where he tied her up and then again hung her from the ceiling.

He took photos of her, he tortured her, he did all the awful things to her. And when he was done or when he was satisfied, same thing, he took her down to the river and just dropped her in there. May of 1969, there was a fisherman who was out

You guessed it, fishing in the Long Tom River. So this guy's fishing and he spots something floating in the river. It was a body. Police come out. It's the body of Linda. So police notice that there are strangulation marks on her neck, like this was intentional and there could possibly be more. So police are keeping an eye out on the river and two days later they find another body.

Second body that they found was Karen. Both bodies had died from an apparent strangulation. It was also noted that the rope found on the women were tied in a very unusual way, a way in which only an electrician would tie a rope, which I totally learned something new. I didn't know electricians had their own certain ties. That's a pretty big clue. So investigators, they need to start like questioning people

but they don't really know where to start. So investigators are like, okay, let's go down to this college and just start asking women like, have you ever been on a date with like a really creepy weird guy? Or like, hey, have you noticed anyone around who maybe is a little off anything? So they're asking hundreds of girls. Eventually one girl told them that she noticed this weird guy was hanging around the campus for an unusual amount of time.

She said at one point he approached her and the conversation was going right and as it went on he wouldn't stop talking about the dead bodies that were recently found in the river. Police are like,

That's probably him, great. They're like, if you run into him again, try and get his name or a phone number or something. She runs into him again and she is able to get his full name. This creeper's name, Jerry Brudos. It's Jerjer being a little weirdo. Investigators are like, hell freaking yeah. So they go through his records and they're able to find out that he worked as an electrician

But not only that, his ass had been arrested before for assaulting teenagers when he was a teenager. So investigators had his name and address and they know it's him, but they don't have anything linking him to the crimes. So technically they can't do anything. So one investigator was getting a little antsy and feeling brave. He decided to go to Jerry's house. He knocks on the door, knock, knock, knock.

Knock, knock, Jerry answers and they start talking. The detective is like trying to act like his friend and like, hey, you know, how's it going? Blah, blah, blah. But he's also kind of looking over Jerry's shoulder to see like what's going on back there. Well, Jerry notices that this detective is looking over his shoulder and he notices that he's looking at a rope that's hanging. And Jerry made a comment like, oh, you like that rope, huh? Do you want me to cut you a piece of it? The detective's like, yeah.

He then, Jerry proceeds to cut a piece of the rope off and he gives it to the detective. Yes, Jerry, what are you doing? I mean, like, I'm not rooting for you, but like this guy's so stupid. The detective gets the rope and he's like, fuck yeah, like hell yeah, he just gave me this rope. But at this point it said that like Jerry was very cocky and he was very overconfident as most of these killers usually are. And he truly believed that he,

would not get caught. He was never gonna get caught. Giving this detective the rope was kind of showing like, I don't care. Who do you think I am, a killer? 'Cause I'm not. What's that called? When you're like, what's that?

"You're not gonna catch me." The rope was sent to the forensic scientist who linked Jerry's rope to the rope that was found on the victims. So police were able to get a search warrant for Jerry's car. I don't know why just the car, but they did. And they go back out to his house. And when the detective and police get there, they notice that the inside of Jerry's car was soaking wet. And Jerry's like, "Oh, my kid left the windows down "when we went through the car wash."

Whoops. Now investigators are feeling very frustrated because any evidence that may have been in that car was now definitely ruined because it was soaking wet. So now what are they gonna do? Well, I guess this was enough to spook Jerry. And that same day he packed up and he took off heading towards the Canadian border. Now this is where I got a little confused. So they are on the run. Police caught up to them and placed Jerry under arrest. I say them because

This is the weird part, but Jerry's wife, remember her, Ralphine? She was the one driving the family car towards the border. And Jerry, I guess, was like in the back seat, hiding under a blanket. So I was trying to figure out like, what was her excuse? But I couldn't figure out what was her excuse. She didn't know she was driving to the border.

I don't get it. Investigators bring Jerry in for questioning and he's remaining silent for the most part, but it doesn't take long for Jerry to start blabbing away. I mean, this man loves to talk. So Jerry would end up confessing to everything. I mean, starting back to day one, he held nothing back. He went as far as to telling the investigator that he tried to electrocute one of the victims to see what would happen. Investigators believed him because it lined up with an injury that was on one of the victim's

and they couldn't understand what it was. But Jerry's like, "Oh yeah, I electrocuted her to see what would happen." And they were like, "Oh." But nobody knew that little tidbit. The media didn't know, nobody knew. So it was obvious that Jerry was the one who committed these crimes. On June 3rd, Jerry's house and garage were searched. And that's where they found a ton of pictures of women, ton of pictures of a foot in a shoe,

Awful photos, weird photos, terrible photos. What they did see was that in some of the photos, they saw the victims who were recently found, but they're looking through all these photos, right? And in one of the photos, it's not funny, I'm sorry, it's just trauma. In one of the photos, they see a victim's body. Behind it was like a mirror in the photo, okay? There's a mirror, victim's body.

And what Jerry didn't realize is that you could literally see his reflection in the mirror in the photo. So they're like, "Oh my God, that's him." Just solidifying that Jerry was indeed the one who committed these awful crimes. When they went into Jerry's house and they looked around, investigators find the bronzed breastplate sitting on the mantle as home decor.

We've got an Ed Geiner. This is some Ed Gein shit. This is real different. This was really all the evidence they needed on Jerry's ass, right? So he's arrested and he was charged with three counts of murder, which he pled guilty to everything. And Jerry would receive three consecutive life sentences. Investigators found it really hard to believe that Jerry's wife, Ralphine, wasn't involved somehow. She would end up getting arrested and charged as an accomplice.

But during trial, she would be found not guilty and was released. She stood by her innocence. And once she was free, she picked up all her stuff and she moved ASAP. Now Jerry, Jerry, this overachiever here, he would go on to become the longest living inmate of the Oregon State Penitentiary. I can't say that word.

Congratulations, Jer, you fucking did it, bro. He would end up dying of liver cancer in 2006 at the age of 67 years old. And that my friends is the awful story about Jerry Brudos. This dude was real sick.

Okay, his shoe obsession, just all of it. I haven't heard a story like this in a while, in a while. There's some sick people out there, aren't there? But other than that, I hope you have a wonderful rest of your day. You make good choices. Please be safe out there and I'll be seeing you guys later.