Jerry Brudos
Jerry Brudos | |
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Born | Jerome Henry Brudos January 31, 1939 Webster, South Dakota, United States |
Died | Script error: The function "death_date_and_age" does not exist. Salem, Oregon, United States |
Cause of death | Liver cancer |
Other names | The Lust Killer The Shoe Fetish Slayer |
Criminal penalty | Life imprisonment |
Killings | |
Victims | 4 |
Span of killings
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January 26, 1968–April 22, 1969 |
Country | United States |
State(s) | Oregon |
Date apprehended
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May 25, 1969 |
Jerome Henry "Jerry" Brudos (January 31, 1939 – March 28, 2006) was an American serial killer and necrophiliac, also known as "The Lust Killer" and "The Shoe Fetish Slayer".
Early life
Brudos was born in Webster, South Dakota, and was the younger of two sons. His mother had wanted a girl and was very displeased that she had another son instead. She would also constantly belittle him and treat him with disdain, as well as abuse him. As a child, Brudos and his family would move into different homes in the Pacific Northwest, before settling in Salem, Oregon.
He had a fetish for women's shoes from the age of five,[1] after playing with spike-heeled shoes at a local junkyard. He reportedly attempted to steal the shoes of his first grade teacher. Brudos had a fetish for women's underwear, and claimed that he would steal underwear from female neighbors as a child. He spent his teen years in and out of psychotherapy and mental hospitals. He began to stalk local women as a teenager, knocking down or choking them unconscious, and fleeing with their shoes.[2]
At age 17, he abducted and beat a young woman, threatening to stab her if she did not follow his sexual demands. Shortly after being arrested, he was taken to a psychiatric ward of Oregon State Hospital for nine months. There it was found his sexual fantasies revolved around his hatred and revenge against his mother and women in general. He also underwent a psychiatric evaluation, and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Despite being institutionalized, he still graduated from high school with his class in 1957. Shortly after graduation, Brudos became an electronics technician.
In 1961, he married a 17-year-old girl, with whom he would father two children, and settled in a Salem, Oregon suburb. He asked his new bride to do housework naked except for a pair of high heels while he took pictures. It was at about this time, however, that he began complaining of migraine headaches and "blackouts", relieving his symptoms with night-prowling raids to steal shoes and lace undergarments. He kept the shoes, underwear, and (for a time) the bodies of his victims in a garage that he would not allow his wife to enter without first announcing her arrival on an intercom that Brudos had set up.
Crimes
Between 1968 and 1969, Brudos bludgeoned and strangled four young women. The only initial evidence were witness sightings of a large man dressed in women's clothing. In the garage of his Salem, Oregon home, Brudos kept trophies from his victims, expressly two pairs of amputated breasts that were used as paperweights and the left foot of a 19-year-old woman named Linda Slawson (his first murder victim) which he used to model the shoes he collected. After committing a murder, he would dress up in high heels and masturbate. Police investigation and interviews of local university students led them to Brudos, who described the murders in detail.[2] He had confessed to murdering Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Karen Sprinker and Linda Salee, and was sentenced to life in prison.
While incarcerated, Brudos had piles of women's shoe catalogues in his cell — he wrote to major companies asking for them — and claimed they were his substitute for pornography. He lodged countless appeals, including one in which he alleged that a photograph taken of him with one of his victim's corpses cannot prove his guilt, because it is not the body of a person he was convicted of killing.
Brudos died in prison on March 28, 2006 from liver cancer. At the time of his death, Brudos was the longest incarcerated inmate in the Oregon Department of Corrections (a total of 37 years, from 1969 to 2006).[3]
Music
- American thrash/death metal/grindcore band Macabre recorded a song about Brudos (from their Murder Metal album) called "Fatal Foot Fetish".
References
- ↑ Ronald M. Holmes, "Sequential Predation: Elements of serial fatal victimization", Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, Volume 4, Issue 1 January 1997, pages 33 - 42 doi:10.1080/10720169708400129
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
- ↑ Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'strict' not found.
External links
- Articles with hCards
- 1939 births
- 2006 deaths
- American rapists
- American serial killers
- American people who died in prison custody
- American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
- American people convicted of murder
- Cancer deaths in Oregon
- Deaths from liver cancer
- Male serial killers
- People convicted of murder by Oregon
- People from Day County, South Dakota
- People from Salem, Oregon
- People with schizophrenia
- Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Oregon
- Prisoners who died in Oregon detention
- Serial killers who died in prison custody
- 1968 murders in the United States
- 20th-century American criminals
- Criminals from South Dakota
- Necrophiles
- Transgender Serial Killers