The DNA had left a trail, from murder scenes to the bodies of rape victims, scattered across several Southern states. The genetic dots had connected to form a zig-zagging line of attacks on females ranging from preteen to adult, some slain with gun or strangled, others left alive.
But the authorities in Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee had no further clues after the last spasm of violence—two attacks the same day in 1998. The crimes appeared to stop. The cold case produced a sketch of the man responsible—and that full DNA profile.
But nothing more—until this past summer, 20 years later.
That DNA profile resulted in one of the dozen-plus cold cases cracked through the burgeoning use of forensic genealogy. Two close relatives quickly led to the grave of a man who killed himself in a motel just as police approached to ask him about a stolen license plate.
Robert Eugene Brashers, who died and was buried in 1999, was the killer and rapist responsible for at least three deaths and crimes in multiple states, authorities said.
But now, after a huge leap to get the identity through genealogy, the detective work remains.
Investigators still must connect the timelines of Brashers’ travels on the U.S. map, figuring out how far and wide his rampage extended in the years he was not in prison.
The three states’ detectives are working with the FBI’s Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, or ViCAP, to home in on violent attacks, in possibly seven states or more, said Lt. Philip Gregory, a district lieutenant for the Missouri State Highway Patrol, one of the lead investigators.
“There’s no telling what we’ll come up with before we’re done,” Gregory told Forensic Magazine.
“The timelines are such that, most of the time when there was nothing going on with him, it was because he was in prison,” added Ruth Montgomery, a criminalist supervisor and DNA technical leader at the MSHP Crime Laboratory.
Genevieve Zitricki (left), 28, was murdered in her apartment on April 4, 1990. The same offender murdered Sherri Scherer and her young daughter Megan (right) on March 28, 1998 at their farmhouse. (Photos: Courtesy of the Greenville Police Department)
Forensic Magazine profiled the case and the efforts of ViCAP to zero in on the serial offender back in January as part of the “Rape Kits in America” series.
At that point, Brashers’ name was on none of the persons-of-interests lists, or in the case file at all. What remained alone were the composite sketches—and the violent trail.
The first known crime was the “blitz” attack of Genevieve Zitricki, 28, in her apartment the night of April 4, 1990 in Greenville, S.C. The offender broke in through a patio glass door. He also left clues, including DNA and a threatening message on the bathroom mirror. Zitricki’s body was left in the tub.
Sherri Scherer and her daughter Megan were killed at their Portagevill, Mo. farmhouse on March 28, 1998. Both mother and daughter were shot with a .22-caliber gun. The girl was also sexually assaulted before being executed. Investigators believe the killer used a ruse to trick the victims into gaining access inside.
Just two hours and 40 miles down the road, in Dyersburg, Tenn., the man failed to kill or rape the woman in her mobile home. She refused to allow him inside with her children. He shot through the door—but only wounded her in the arm, before fleeing in a conversion van.
The links, made by DNA and witness description, only started building the portrait of a serial killer. The firearms analysis of the two attacks in 1998 linked them together. The double homicide in Missouri was linked to the South Carolina murder through DNA in 2006.
Missouri authorities tried geographical searches, cross-referencing people who lived near Zitricki in 1990 and near the Scherers in 1998. Montgomery recalls testing 103 buccal reference samples since 2006, she said.
Together, it all came to a series of interconnected dots on the map—but no names.
“People who had possible connections—people who had criminal histories—it just never fit,” said forensic analyst.
But just last year, a rape kit “discovered” among a backlog of such evidence in Tennessee has further triangulated his travels. The Memphis rape kit from a 14-year-old victim in 1997 pulled up the same DNA profile. The particulars of the case are familiar: the rapist knocked on the door, got inside, threatened three women and a girl with a gun, then bound them. He sexually assaulted the youngest among them. This time, however, no shots were fired, and all were left alive.
Two composite sketches of the suspect in a series of attacks from 1990-1998. The sketch on the left was produced in 1998 and the sketch on the right is from 2017. The suspect was ultimately identified as Robert Eugene Brashers through genetic genealogy. (Images: Courtesy of the Missouri State Highway Patrol)
But that rape kit from Memphis also did nothing to further the case—at least at the time. Instead, the case was advanced by 2018’s biggest contribution to crime science: forensic genealogy.
The sensational arrest of suspected Golden State Killer Joseph James DeAngelo in April kicked off a run of “solves” of cold cases that had been stuck for decades. Almost every law enforcement agency in teh country, it seemed, was inspired by the possibilities: what if their own dead-end cases could be cracked in the same way?
The detectives in Missouri, South Carolina and Tennessee—plus the FBI and their Behavioral Analysis Unit—discussed the possibilities over a conference call in May, mere weeks after the Golden State Killer arrest.
A decision was reached. The Memphis rape was already past the statute of limitations to prosecute, and it had the greatest amount of DNA sample remaining, according to Gregory.
The decision was made: they would seek out the help of Parabon NanoLabs and its genealogical service. Unlike other agencies, they didn’t seek a phenotyping (face-likeness-from-DNA sketch) first, because they already had their witness sketches. They went directly for the genealogical searching.
The results were better than they could have reasonably hoped: two readings of nearly 300 centiMorgans (cM), which indicate relatives as close as first cousins, once removed, according to Montgomery.
Investigators were stunned with the reversal of fortune in their favor.
“Some of it’s skill—and quite honestly, some of it’s luck,” said Gregory.
The person of interest on the family trees quickly became clear. He was a man who had been dead since 1999, who killed himself with a gunshot as police investigating his stolen license plate closed in on his motel room in Missouri.
The name was Robert Eugene Brashers. It was unfamiliar to all the homicide investigators.
“Brashers’ name was not on any of the lists or in our case file until this DNA hit,” said Gregory.
“The minute this guy’s name came up, it all started to fit,” added Montgomery.
To be sure, the investigators did the “deep investigatory dive” before proceeding. They checked his whereabouts, his background. The details they found further and further solidified suspicions. Brashers had been in prison in Florida from 1985 to 1989 for attempting to sexually assault, then shooting, a woman in a public place; and he also served federal time from 1992 to 1997 for weapons crimes. Furthermore, he had lived within a mile of Zitricki at the time of her death.
The Brashers mugshot was brought to the victim in Memphis. The now-adult woman and the other women who had been in the house at the time of her attack picked him out of a photo lineup, according to investigators.
The detectives talked with surviving family members—including Brashers’ wife and biological children—and told them they were investigating some old crimes.
Search warrants were granted to dig up Brashers. The remains pulled out of the ground on Sept. 27. The body was fairly well preserved, having been embalmed in 1999, and sealed within both a casket and a vault. They took a swab within Brashers’ humerus, and came up with a good amount of bone marrow.
“He was still in good shape,” said Montgomery. “It was quick.”
They had their killer—but the investigation had only reached a new phase.
“This (genealogy) is certainly not the solve-all of all homicides, but it is great lead information,” said Gregory. “You still have to do the police work—you still have to go back and get the DNA to confirm you’re on the right track.
“But it’s pretty exciting technology, I think,” the lieutenant added.
Police exhumed the body of Robert Eugene Brashers, who died in 1999, in order to confirm that he was the perpetrator of a series of cold case rapes and murders throughout the 1990s. (Photo: Courtesy of the Greenville Police Department)
In some ways, the challenges still posed by the Brashers series of crimes may echo a huge ongoing effort: the investigation of the “Chameleon Killer,” Terry Peder Rasmussen.
Rasmussen died in a California prison in 2010. But it was the use of genealogy in the Rasmussen case that unearthed the existence of a still-as-yet undetermined trail of bodies and mayhem across the United States in the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s.
It all started with a little girl who came form nowhere, seemingly.
Genealogy was employed in the case by a partnership between Pete Headley, a detective at the San Bernardino Sheriff’s Office, and Barbara Rae-Venter, a forensic genealogist. At first, the two were simply trying to determine the real identity and beginnings of a little girl named Lisa who had been abused and abandoned at an RV park in the 1980s by a drifter named Curtis Kimball. Rae-Venter’s work led to a family back in New Hampshire—and Lisa’s real family.
But the map posed a “what if” noticed by experts at the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. Lisa’s original tiny New England town was just down the road from one of the most infamous cold cases in American history—the four bodies stuffed in barrels in the woods, known as the “Bear Brook Murders.” DNA testing proved the connection between the dead California inmate and the quadruple homicide.
“Curtis Kimball” was the biological father of one of the little girls stuffed in those rusty barrels in New Hampshire, the genetic analysis showed.
Further genealogical investigation by Rae-Venter turned up the true identity of “Kimball” a year later: his real name was Terry Peder Rasmussen.
Authorities on both coasts remarked from the outset how genealogy had upended their normal process of investigation.
“When you can’t identify your victims, you generally can’t get anywhere,” said Jeffery Strelzin, chief of the homicide unit for the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office, in January 2017. “In this case, it was the opposite … Now we need to identify and try to find all of his victims.”
Investigators have told Forensic Magazine that the look into Rasmussen’s travels—and list of potential victims—continues as of this writing.
Terrance Peder Rasmussen (left in 1959, center in 1960, right in a 1985 booking photo during which he was going under the name “Curtis Kimball”) has been identified as the “Chameleon” killer believed responsible for the death of one woman and three young girls whose bodies were found in barrels in 1985 and 2000 in the same location in New Hampshire. Rasmussen, who went under several aliases, died in prison under the name Kimball in 2010 while serving a sentence for the murder of his wife, Eunsoon Jun. (Photo Credits: Courtesy of the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children and the New Hampshire Attorney General’s Office)
EIGHT STATES, ONE KILLER, AND VICAP
Similarly, just having Brashers’ name doesn’t mean authorities have the full answers about his history.
Kevin Fitzsimmons, supervisory crime analyst at ViCAP, said the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Unit has been involved in the investigation for years—and they are eager to connect all the dots that fit.
“In my opinion, follow-up on this series through ViCAP is strongly recommended because although the offender has been identified, there is still a lot of investigation that will need to be done regarding the offender’s past,” Fitzsimmons told Forensic Magazine. “We plan to work with investigators on this series as long as they would like our assistance.”
With narrowing down a list of unsolved homicides and rapes, and other crimes where the suspect’s DNA is not in CODIS, Gregory said their best bet is to be “very open-minded.” Brashers attacked adult women in Florida and South Carolina (Zitricki) up to 1990—but after that, he sexually assaulted younger victims who were 12 and 14 years old.
“I would less restrictive than I would have been in years past as to what those cases could be,” said Gregory.
The map is fairly wide open, as well. The states in which Brashers had listed addresses were Arkansas, South Carolina, northern Alabama, Florida, New Mexico, Texas, Virginia and perhaps even California.
The timeline may be more narrow, since Brashers wasn’t free from behind bars for long during the last 14 years of his life. His stints in prison were 1985 to 1989, for the Florida attack; and 1992 to 1997 on the federal weapons charge.
But virtually the rest of the time, the independent construction worker appears to have been busy. Just 15 days after the Scherers were slain and the Tennessee woman was shot, Brashers was caught in Paragould, Arkansas (near his father’s home) trying to break into a woman’s house. He had cut the phone lines, and was carrying a bag with a video camera, wire cutters, gloves—and a gun. He was taken into custody and charged with an array of counts—and a federal warrant was issued for a weapons violation.
Brashers, within the Super 8 motel room in Kennett, Mo. on Jan. 13, 1999, was awaiting trial for those counts when the police knocked on his door about his stolen license plate. And the law at that time in Arkansas would have mandated his DNA collection into CODIS—a genetic sample that would have connected all the dots much, much sooner.
“The pieces would have gotten put together quicker,” said Gregory.
The closing DNA net may very well have influenced his pull of that trigger after that four-hour standoff with police, to escape justice for good.
For now, the Missouri authorities are looking at the series and hoping the federal assistance from ViCAP will help get other agencies considering the possibility that Brashers is the man in their unsolved rapes or murders—or even robberies.
“My hope is it would motivate some agencies that have some evidence that maybe they haven’t taken a look at in a few years, to go back and re-examine that set and see if they can potentially develop a DNA profile from (them),” said Gregory. “Then also look at those cases around this guy’s location in those times.”
In some ways, the hunt for Brashers continues, Montgomery said. The rapist of children and killer successfully evaded authorities in 1999 with a self-inflicted gunshot—potentially taking some of his secrets with him.
“It’s kind of a part of this job—are they ever really dead in cases like this?” said Montgomery. “You just wonder, and wonder.”
