In Loving Memory Of Faye Aline Self

2006-10-18T13:20:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Aline.

We love you.

2006-09-12T05:55:00.000-07:00

Interview with killer is 'major step' in Coushatta investigations
Investigators to brief DA this week on their progress.
September 12, 2006
By Vickie Welborn
vwelborn@gannett.com

COUSHATTA "" An interview with self-professed serial killer Robert Browne in Colorado Springs, Colo., was a "major step" in the investigation of three apparent unsolved homicide cases in Red River Parish, a state police investigator said Monday.

Exactly what information Browne shared to aid in the investigation cannot be disclosed, said Michael Allen, senior trooper with the Louisiana state police North District Detectives Division. But Allen and state police Lt. Dusty Gates plan to brief Red River Parish District Attorney Bill Jones on Wednesday.

"Our investigation is continuing, but we have a lot of work to do," Allen said Monday.

Allen, Gates and Red River Parish Sheriff Johnny Ray Norman spent several days last week with the El Paso County sheriff's office in Colorado Springs. Browne, 53, who grew up in Coushatta and Fairview, is serving two life sentences for the killings of two young Colorado girls.

In July, Browne claimed responsibility for 48 homicides nationwide, including three in Coushatta in the early 1980s. Browne takes credit for the deaths of Katherine Jean "Fuzzy" Hayes, 15, in October 1980, Faye Aline Self, 26, in March 1983 and Wanda Faye Hudson, 20, in May 1983.

Browne was questioned about all three cases, Allen said.

"Browne was very cooperative with the interviews. The option of returning to Colorado is open as our investigation progresses," he added.

Monday Norman was on the receiving end of questions as Self's niece, Christy Cole, of Minden, was armed with questions that have haunted family members.

Cole said she left Monday's session with Norman with even more questions.

Allen acknowledged the family's frustration. "We are doing everything we can. It was a cold case. It was 23 years ago. It's like starting from scratch," Allen said.

(For those who are asking questions, Christy went to Coushatta yesterday with a list of questions and a tape recorder to interview Sheriff Norman. Almost every question she asked he answered by saying he didn't know and we would have to ask the previous sheriffs. He was extremely agitated whether from frustration or anger or whatever but his answers didn't really answer anything. He said he tried to sit in on the conversation but their tape recorder wasn't working very well so he missed a lot of the talk between Browne and the La. State Police agents. Why go all that way with faulty equipment ? Doesn't anyone in Colorado have a working tape recorder? He did say that Browne was very forthcoming with answers and talked freely. Still it remains a mystery what he said. After reviewing witness statements around the time it happened, there are many details the police never brought up, including another suspect who was apparently lying from the start, Daniel Gallaspy. I understand he still lives somewhere around Mansfield and has a reputation as being a rather strange "duck". Is he also a killer ? Does he know more than he admitted to? It appears likely that he does. Where is Lacresha Foster (her name then)?
She tells one story and Daniel tells another. If you are out there Ms. Foster and someone knows you, please contact me at nyetno9@hotmail.com. If you lived around there in March of 1983 and you may have seen something or heard something please email me and it will be checked out. A long time ago Larry Rhodes (detective) told me the only way this case would ever be solved is for someone to talk. We need the help of the people who may know some little tid-bit. Thank you from her family)

2006-08-27T14:59:00.000-07:00

One year later

Into the Bonny Blue

Katrina, Katrina, wash me away.
Cry me a river and flood the bay.
Float me the hope of rescue one day.
As you drown my love I'll drift astray.

Bring history to bear on open shores.
Bring back thy fathers from distant wars.
Bring back to me The Empire I love.
Katrina, Katrina. What have you done?

On waves of memory comes back the child.
Left to die, alone in the wild.
The old are gone too, all washed away.
The day Katrina came home to stay.

North winds scream and south winds blew.
While the bayous weep, they still do.
They lay in wait for better days.
Where better dreams once were slaves.

Katrina, Katrina. Wash us away.
Kill our tommorrows and savage our way.
Change the heart of a nation in less than a day.
Katrina. Katrina. Wash me away.

Christy Cole

2006-08-25T04:50:00.000-07:00

Fields of Flowers, for those still lost to dwell in.

2006-08-25T04:41:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, they do come home again.

This is why no loved one of 'The Missing' can ever give up hope. God bless you child and welcome back.

VIENNA, Austria - Police said Friday that DNA tests prove that a young woman who turned up earlier this week is Natascha Kampusch, who vanished as a 10-year old eight years ago.

The announcement was made at a news conference called to give new details of the investigation into Kampusch's disappearance and her discovery Wednesday in the small town outside Vienna where she says she was held by her abductor. While relatives had already identified Kampusch, police had been waiting for the results of DNA tests to remove any doubt.

Link Here

(When her captor was cornered he killed himself. In this case that may actually be for the best, since she will never have to face him again.)

2006-08-24T08:52:00.000-07:00

What in Gods' Name is going on in Red River Parish...?

Black students ordered to give up seats to white children

Status of Red River Parish bus driver is unknown.

COUSHATTA -- Nine black children attending Red River Elementary School were directed last week to the back of the school bus by a white driver who designated the front seats for white children.

The situation has outraged relatives of the black children who have filed a complaint with school officials.

Superintendent Kay Easley will meet with the family members in her office this morning.

The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People also is considering filing a formal charge with the U.S. Department of Justice. NAACP District Vice President James Panell, of Shreveport, said he would apprise Justice attorneys of the situation this week. He's considering asking for an investigation into the bus incident and other aspects of the school system's operations, including pupil-teacher ratio as it relates to the numbers of white and black children, along with a breakdown of the numbers of black and white teachers employed.

"If the smoke is there, then there's probably fire somewhere else," Panell said in a phone interview from New Orleans. "At this point, it is extremely alarming. We fought that battle 50 years ago, and we won. Why is this happening again?"

Link here

2006-08-23T08:03:00.000-07:00

What the hell....?

"Browne had written Hess in one of his early letters that he wouldn't give out information for free — he expected favors in return. Hess worked with corrections officials to allow a private doctor to examine Browne's arthritis after he complained about the medical care in prison. The doctor concluded that Browne was being treated correctly.

In exchange, Browne told Hess about three women he said he killed in his hometown of Coushatta, La. Two were Browne's neighbors in an apartment complex owned by his brother whose deaths had drawn Smit's suspicions years ago. Louisiana authorities confirmed the killings and said Browne once had been a suspect but was never charged."

****

"In his conversations with Hess, Browne declared several subjects off the table. One was his family. The son of a onetime deputy sheriff, Browne was the youngest of nine children reared in a modest home in northern Louisiana. He dropped out of high school and joined the Army, serving seven years before being dishonorably discharged for drug use. Investigators said Browne claimed to have committed his first murder — breaking the neck of another soldier during a fight over a prostitute — while stationed in South Korea in 1975."

Link Here LA TIMES

2006-08-22T07:27:00.000-07:00

One for Wanda Faye Hudson. If any of her family can see this, you are welcome here any time.

"Across the country, loved ones sat stunned Friday, still absorbing startling revelations about daughters or mothers taken from them a long time ago.

Wanda Faye Hudson's relatives heard the news on television Thursday and immediately began calling one another with the shocking news: Robert Charles Browne, a home-town boy from Coushatta, La., was a self-described serial killer.

And his confession, cops now say, could bring the mystery that had haunted them for 23 years to an end.

The news brought back horrific memories. But, along with the anguish came some vindication. Hudson's uncle, Robert Watson, always felt that the case was bungled. He described his family as "poor white folk" and said the sheriff's office failed to pursue the case.

"It's a terrible situation," Watson said. "They wouldn't tell us nothing at the sheriff's office. They sure wouldn't. They still don't want to talk about it."

Watson recalled the horror of the scene. His 21-year-old niece was naked and had been stabbed repeatedly.

"I put my hands over my face and looked. She was struck with a screwdriver 20 times," Watson said.

Afterward, Watson sat on the porch of his niece's home. Burning up with a fever, he tried to protect her from the many people who were tromping through the crime scene. He said he heard that sheriff's deputies were snapping crime scene photos and showing them around town.

Watson's son, Rusty Watson, said Hudson was a "happy-go-lucky" girl. About six months before her death, she had decided to return to the church.

"She was just being a teenager, running around and having a good time. She had just quit all that and started going to church and was living for the Lord," said Rusty Watson, who now lives in Petal, Miss.

Continues here

2006-08-21T08:07:00.000-07:00

Alines pic after 16 hours in paint shop.

Still working on it.

2006-08-20T10:02:00.000-07:00

The Three Amigos

“Whenever Aline came up missing and another woman was stabbed by a screwdriver, it should have raised red flags all over the place,” Cole said.

When Cerwin Brown, now deceased and no relation to Robert Browne, left office and Buddy Huckabay replaced him July 1, 1983, “the new sheriff came out to daddy’s house and said everything in her file was gone,” Cole said.

Sheriff Norman: (Present Red River Parish Sheriff)

"Red River Parish Sheriff Johnny Norman must now investigate the three cases anew, but he doesn't have any crime scene evidence and the body of one victim was never found. Many of the notes from witness interviews also have disappeared over the years, he said.

''We've got pieces and bits of it, but not the whole thing,'' Norman said Saturday.

**

However, convicting Browne in Coushatta would require evidence good enough for a jury -- something Norman said he doesn't have. He wasn't sheriff then and he doesn't know what happened to evidence from the crime scenes.

''I don't know where it went. That was two sheriffs ago,'' he said.

Browne grew up in Coushatta, a north Louisiana farming town of about 2,500 people, as the youngest of nine siblings, the son of a dairy farmer who later became a sheriff's deputy.

Link Here NYTimes

Ex-Sheriff Huckaby: (Red River Parish Sheriff from July 1983, to 2000)

"Huckabay told The Gazette the nearly empty file was found in the trunk of a sheriff’s car.

He called the investigation “poor,” but said his administration “worked it pretty hard,” although “there wasn’t much left of the file.”

Huckabay, who left office in 2000, said he suspected Browne in both cases but couldn’t recall if he was questioned. "

Link Here Colorado Gazette

Mr. Jones, Sitting DA of Red River Parish since 1980....

"El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said Red River Parish District Attorney Bill Jones didn’t say much at a February meeting in Dallas, where agencies discussed Browne.

When Jones was asked to share information, Maketa said, “There was some kind of statement made that they didn’t really have a lot. Disappeared is how it was put.”

Link Here Colorado Gazette

And this....

"They ought to let us finish before they start making comments," Jones said of the El Paso, Colo., authorities.

*

"I'm not saying Robert Browne did do it or didn't do it. ... I just don't need to reveal some of our stuff that's going on right now. But there will be an appropriate time for us to make a comment on all of this," Jones said.

Link Here Shreveport Times

2006-08-19T19:52:00.000-07:00

Flowers for Aline.

2006-08-18T09:57:00.000-07:00

For All Of The Victims,

Both Known And Unknown.

May God Have Mercy On Your Souls.

2006-08-15T08:24:00.000-07:00

This one says it all.

Families: Slaying probes bungled

By PAM ZUBECK
THE GAZETTE
August 02, 2006

Family members of two women whom serial killer Robert Charles Browne says he killed in his hometown in 1983 say the cases were botched by authorities.

“If he had been stopped then, there’d be a whole lot more people alive today,” said Kathy Cole, sister of Faye Aline Self, 26, whom Browne said he poisoned with chloroform in her apartment.

Documents have been lost, crime scenes not secured.

Browne, 53, has told El Paso County investigators he killed 48 people, not including a soldier in Korea in the early 1970s and Heather Dawn Church, 13, of Black Forest in 1991.

He’s serving two life terms, one for the Church case and another imposed last week after he pleaded guilty to strangling Rocio Sperry, 15, in Colorado Springs in November 1987.

Among his confessions are two slayings in Coushatta, La.

On March 30, 1983, he said he chloroformed Self in her apartment, near his apartment. He worked for the complex’s owner, his brother, as a handyman.

According to the arrest affidavit, he told El Paso County investigators he entered Self’s unlocked apartment, found her asleep, placed a tainted rag over her face and went to get a rope to bind her. When he returned, she was dead, so he dumped her body in the Red River.

She was declared dead five years later so her children could collect Social Security payments, Cole said.

Cole said her sister’s apartment was never processed as a crime scene. The first day she was missed, Cole’s daughter went to the apartment and saw the bed was unmade.

“A few days later, the bed was made and everything was cleaned up,” she said.

On May 28, 1983, Browne said, he unlocked the door of another neighbor, Wanda Faye Hudson, 20, and found her asleep. He chloroformed her but she awoke, so he stabbed her more than two dozen times in the chest and vaginal area with a screwdriver. He used a key after having changed her lock the day before and removed a chain lock with a screwdriver, which he later threw into the complex’s trash bin.

“Whenever Aline came up missing and another woman was stabbed by a screwdriver, it should have raised red flags all over the place,” Cole said.

When Cerwin Brown, now deceased and no relation to Robert Browne, left office and Buddy Huckabay replaced him July 1, 1983, “the new sheriff came out to daddy’s house and said everything in her file was gone,” Cole said.

Huckabay told The Gazette the nearly empty file was found in the trunk of a sheriff’s car.

He called the investigation “poor,” but said his administration “worked it pretty hard,” although “there wasn’t much left of the file.”

Huckabay, who left office in 2000, said he suspected Browne in both cases but couldn’t recall if he was questioned.

Authorities told Self’s family her disappearance and Hudson’s slaying weren’t related. “They stood there and told me my sister just took off,” Cole said. “She has an 11-month-old baby. She’s not going to just take off.”

Cole said the family helped rebuild the file with dental and other records but found out recently the file is again nearly empty.

“Now the sheriff is saying a lot of that has gotten lost,” she said. “He doesn’t have witness statements. Where all that stuff went, I have no idea.”

Cole said officials put a crime scene tape around Hudson’s apartment but didn’t post an officer, allowing neighbors to wander in and out.

“The guy living next to it said he went over there and wished he hadn’t looked,” she said. “It was something that stayed with him his whole life. It was pretty gory.”

Hudson’s cousin, Rusty Watson of Mississippi, said Hudson’s investigation was bungled.

“Since Saturday, I have learned more about Wanda Faye’s death from reporters from Colorado than I knew for 23 years,” he said. “I feel all along there’s been a cover-up going on here.”

Cole is skeptical Browne’s confession will change things.

Henry Whitehorn, Louisiana’s deputy secretary for public safety, said state police began helping officials in Red River and Natchitoches parishes with Browne slaying investigations in March. He refused to discuss the investigations.

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said Red River Parish District Attorney Bill Jones didn’t say much at a February meeting in Dallas, where agencies discussed Browne.

When Jones was asked to share information, Maketa said, “There was some kind of statement made that they didn’t really have a lot. Disappeared is how it was put.”

Red River Sheriff Johnny Ray Norman, who took office in 2004, and Jones, DA since 1980, didn’t return telephone calls.

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or

pam.zubeck@gazette.com

God Bless you Pam Zubeck.

And three cheers for The Apple Dumpling Gang!

2006-08-14T05:05:00.000-07:00

“I still had hope she was lost.”

Karrie Bateman was 10 when her mother, Faye Aline Self, above (top row, far right), disappeared. Bateman said pictures are really all she has to remember her mom by.

Bateman said she looked for her mom in the faces of strangers for years.

After 23 years of not knowing what happened to her mother, woman learns Browne killed her

By ANSLEE WILLETT
THE GAZETTE

For years, Karrie Bateman pictured her missing mother’s face when she spotted petite, blond women in grocery stores.

“I’d be disappointed when they turned around, and it wasn’t her,” she said. “I still had hope she was lost.”

Bateman was 10 when her mom, 26-year-old Faye Aline Self, vanished in 1983 from Coushatta, La. Since then, 23 Mother’s Days and 23 anniversaries of the disappearance have passed.

Twenty-three years of not knowing what happened — until El Paso County sheriff’s officials revealed in late July that serial killer Robert Charles Browne says he killed Self in her apartment.

“I wept like a child for almost the first time in a quarter of a century, because now I know she’s dead,” said 33-year-old Bateman, who lives in Houston. “The not knowing is what drives you insane, but in a way, it gives you hope.”

As in Self’s case, the bodies of some of Browne’s victims weren’t recovered, giving hope to relatives who wanted to think they were missing.

Browne’s confessions made them face the worst.

“When a case is solved, and particularly if it’s in the media, it’s bittersweet,” said Michigan psychiatrist Frank Ochberg, former associate director of the National Institute of Mental Health. “The trauma memories, they feel like they’re now. It comes back and it hits you, and it’s right here.”

How the victims’ relatives deal with the news after years of uncertainty — and how they’ve dealt with it up until now — depends on the individuals, said Seattle psychiatrist Ted Rynearson, who’s done studies on homicide bereavement.

“Generalizations can’t be made. Some family members go through it in a healthy way. I think resilience is the norm,” he said. “Nobody gets over it. Everybody, to some extent, is forever changed by this.”

The grief may have been compounded or delayed when cases weren’t solved.

“People who go through the court process, that piece of uncertainty is removed,” Ochberg said. “At the gut level, I think a lot of us have an almost uncontrollable preoccupation to the point of obsession with solving the crime. The grief hasn’t begun to flow when you’ve assigned yourself the job of detective.”

Browne, imprisoned on a life sentence since 1995 for killing 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church of Black Forest, claims he’s killed 50 people in several states. Sheriff’s officials have corroborated six cases, including Self, but no charges have been filed.

Browne received a second life sentence in July after pleading guilty to another Colorado killing, saying he strangled 15-year-old Rocio Sperry in 1987 at his Colorado Springs apartment before dismembering her body.

Her remains haven’t been found.

Sperry vanished while her husband and 3-monthold daughter, Amie, were in Florida.

“Growing up, I kept thinking I can never really say that she’d left or had been killed,” Amie Sperry, now 19, said. “You have to weigh it and decide which one you want to go with.”

Maybe her mom had returned to her native Cuba. Or, she thought, maybe her dad killed her. Other relatives wondered the same.

She cried — “but it was more like happiness in a way” — when she heard Browne was a suspect in her mom’s case. “After so many years, anything is better than nothing,” she said.

She traveled from Mississippi last month to watch Browne plead guilty to killing her mom. Even after getting answers 19 years later, some things remain the same.

“There is no closure, I’m sorry,” she said. “How do you put closure on death? You don’t. I learned that two years ago when my best friend died.”

The day sheriff’s officials said Browne claimed to have killed 50 people, they established phone lines for information from the public about his activities. Calls poured in, including from people wondering if Browne was responsible for killing their relatives.

Jill Seng of Westminster was one of the callers.

Her sister, Leesa Jo Shaner, 22, disappeared in May 1973 from the Tucson, Ariz., airport.

Her unclothed body was found five months later in a shallow grave in a streambed in the remote Garden Canyon area of Fort Huachuca.

Seng, 53, knew Browne didn’t claim any victims in Arizona and that he dumped bodies instead of burying them. But she still called.

She doubts she’ll find out why her sister was killed 33 years ago, but she’d like to know who did it.

“It would just give us a chance to put it all to rest finally,” she said. “The not knowing, the waiting and the waiting to hear something, it just grinds at you day and night. It’s unbelievable torture.”

Bateman learned about her mom’s killer while driving home from work in July. Her grandmother called her cell phone: someone had confessed, and it was on the TV news.

Bateman was stuck in traffic, in shock and wanting to get home to the TV.

Browne was the maintenance man at the apartment where Self lived. He says he entered her unlocked apartment, found her asleep, placed a rag with chloroform over her face and went to get a rope to bind her. When he returned, she was dead. He dumped her body in a river.

“I’m glad to know that if what Mr. Browne says is true, then she did not suffer,” Bateman said. “I’m hoping that’s true.”

She’s gathered as much information as she can on Browne, but sometimes it’s too much and she has to stop.

“I’ve been praying for closure on this for the majority of my life. When it finally did happen, there’s a big weight that went away — at least I know,” she said. “But now I’m angry she died the way she did.”

2006-08-13T09:50:00.000-07:00

Ghost Of Your Love
by Sheena Marie St. Charles

Somewhere in the mist,
I can see
a shadow of your face,
staring back at me.

When I close my eyes,
it does not disappear,
everywhere I go,
your singing I still hear.

I can't seem to escape,
the ghost of your love,
no matter where I am,
you're all I'm thinking of.

It's not that I,
should want to forget,
It's only that I haven't
had a moment to mourn yet.

Just let me have a moments rest,
and then, you will see,
you can come if you'd please,
and haunt me for all eternity.

Copyright ©2002 Sheena Marie St. Charles

2006-08-06T09:43:00.000-07:00

Flowers For Aline.

To speak in real time in the familys' private chatroom,

Please Link Here

2006-08-05T12:31:00.000-07:00

A Tribute of love.

LOST

Have you seen the ghost of Faye Aline?
For twenty three years she's wandered.
Across the bridge, alone and unseen
Except in dreams by the hundreds.

Only the night with a million eyes,
Saw fate lay down her pretty head.
Before the sorrow and all of the lies,
She walked the banks of the Mighty Red.

Seasons passed and years did too,
Gold bayous returned to green
No one whispered what we knew,
Except the ghost of Faye Aline.

The children who have looked for her,
Are still haunted in their sleep.
They all swear they see her there.
Her secrets theirs to keep.

Have you seen the ghost of Faye Aline?
Does she know that New Orleans fell?
Was justice blind? Was she left behind?
Does she watch from the levy swells?

Soft grey eyes reflect with cries.
Like moonlight ripples upon that river.
Her 26 years was enough it appears.
Even now to make some men shiver.

If you meet the ghost of Faye Aline,
In the fog of the Mighty Red,
Let her know that she is not unseen,
Nor is her spirit dead.

Anonymous

2006-08-05T12:20:00.000-07:00

A statement from the family of Faye Aline Self

Open Letter to: Sheriff Norman and all of the deputies of the Red River Parish Sheriffs Department and the Louisiana State Police

Because of recent revelations in the press, we would like to state clearly that we do not fault you, nor any of the current law enforcement officers of the Red River Parish Sheriffs Department. The missing police files, the missing evidence may not have been mishandled by this present administration. If it is not your fault; however, it has now become your responsibility.

Just because time has held at bay the truth of what happened to her, it does not absolve this department for it's neglect from long ago in finding her and finding the truth. That certain key people have died since then, also in no way resolves this issue.

Faye Aline Self is still missing and in the confessions of a killer she has been dead for a long time. We accept that she is gone but we will never accept that she was not worth looking for 23 years ago or still today.

The ones who were sworn to protect and serve, namely the Red River Parish Sheriffs Department, betrayed Faye Aline in every way possible in the immediate aftermath. The children she loved so dearly deserve and will now be demanding answers that the Red River Parish Sheriffs Department could have, and should have given long ago.

Specifically we are asking that :

1. The Red River Sheriffs Department allow members of her family to examine the files they do have that have not "disappeared" so that we can help in making connections that may have been overlooked.

2. We also are asking for specific information on how they intend to proceed with trying to discover if there were any bodies recovered in that time frame that may have been buried as Jane Does. We are all available for any DNA samples to aid in possibly identifying whether any bodies previously recovered might be hers. We request the police do a rigorous and thorough search with any means available.

3. We ask for an investigation into the missing files. An empty folder in the trunk of a sheriffs car would lead us to believe that the files were removed by someone in the department. How would anyone except a police agent have access to her file or have the opportunity to dispose of the contents. We want an investigation by another agency because we lack confidence in the ability of the Sheriff's department to investigate itself. Her file did not go missing over decades; it was missing within months of her disappearance. No rational explanation has ever been given, and this is simply no longer acceptable.

We are particularly aghast and horrified to know that this man was the first named by the family of Wanda Hudson as a suspect. We also have learned evidence is missing in that murder case as well. Not surprisingly, her family has also long believed that in the case of Wanda Hudson there was a police cover up. They have now also stated it publicly.

It is hard not to feel just as hurt for them as we do for such a tragic loss within our own lives. We feel a deep kinship with them and wish their family the best.
This situation is so unimaginably difficult and shocking, we are still trying to gather all of our kin back together. We are unsure how to proceed in the aftermath of such a complete failure of the system, which has left a wake of sorrow that is 23 years long.

We want her home. All we ever wanted was for her to return to us.

It is still our only objective and hope. We have been told that since nothing was done then, that perhaps nothing can be done now. Again, this is unacceptable. Twenty three years was not enough time for us to forget what was taken from us.

It is past time for this town and the police agencies to do the right thing for one missing woman and two women who were savagely murdered..

Signed By

Katherine Cole
and all the family members

2006-08-04T11:00:00.000-07:00

Faye Aline Self, 26, left, was chloroformed, and Wanda Faye Hudson, 20, was stabbed to death, says Robert Browne.

Family members of two women whom serial killer Robert Charles Browne says he killed in his hometown in 1983 say the cases were botched by authorities.

Documents have been lost, crime scenes not secured.

“Whenever Aline came up missing and another woman was stabbed by a screwdriver, it should have raised red flags all over the place,” Cole said.

When Cerwin Brown, now deceased and no relation to Robert Browne, left office and Buddy Huckabay replaced him July 1, 1983, “the new sheriff came out to daddy’s house and said everything in her file was gone,” Cole said.

Huckabay told The Gazette the nearly empty file was found in the trunk of a sheriff’s car.

He called the investigation “poor,” but said his administration “worked it pretty hard,” although “there wasn’t much left of the file.”

Huckabay, who left office in 2000, said he suspected Browne in both cases but couldn’t recall if he was questioned.

2006-07-28T11:16:00.000-07:00

Faye Aline Self

Missing since March 30, 1983 from Armistead, Red River Parish, Louisiana.

Classification: Missing, legally declared dead.
Age at Time of Disappearance: 26 years old

Circumstances

On the night of March 30, 1983, Aline Self left her baby with her mom and went to meet some friends at the Wagon Wheel Bar & Restaurant. The friends in the bar said that Aline told them she was leaving to go get her daughter since she had to be at work early the next day. She never arrived at her mom's house. Her car was still in the parking lot the next day.

The car was still locked and the keys were not found. Her father and brother broke into it and popped the locked steering column so they could pull it home. Her family says she did have a wild streak but she was very responsible where the baby was concerned and she would never have left willingly. Aline was declared dead 5 years after her disappearance.

And for 23 years, that is where it stayed.

Until yesterday.

At least now we know.

God bless you Aline. We never stopped looking.

After these 23 long years love, finally, may you rest in peace.

We will never forget. And our search will continue now, more vital than ever.

Until you are home.

2006-07-28T10:46:00.000-07:00

Springs murderer claims 48 victims

The man who murdered a Black Forest teen in 1991 was unveiled Thursday as a serial killer who claims 48 victims in nine states and South Korea.

While El Paso County officials have linked him to 20 killings and believe he likely has more victims, authorities elsewhere refused to name Robert Charles Browne as a suspect in their unsolved cases.

Browne said he killed people in Washington state, California, New Mexico, Colorado, Oklahoma, Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi and his home state of Louisiana, including his hometown, Coushatta, where residents were stunned by the news.

The case went public after Browne, 53, pleaded guilty Thursday morning to first-degree murder in one of the cases, the 1987 death of a Colorado Springs woman.

Browne is serving a life sentence for the 1991 kidnapping and murder of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church of Black Forest. He was arrested and convicted in 1995.

He gave investigators details linking himself to 18 other killings, ranking him among the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history. He claims to have killed 28 others, as well.

Gary Ridgway, Seattle’s Green River Killer, is the nation’s most prolific convicted serial killer, pleading guilty to 48 murders. John Wayne Gacy was convicted in Illinois of killing 33 men and boys, and Juan Corona killed 25 migrant laborers in California.

At a news conference Thursday afternoon, officials unveiled information Brown gave tying him directly to six unsolved killings.

In 4th Judicial District Court earlier in the day, Browne admitted he killed Rocio Sperry, the 15-year-old wife of a soldier and mother of a 3-month-old girl. He said he placed her strangled body in a Colorado Springs trash bin in 1987. Her body was never found.

Browne pleaded guilty in exchange for a concurrent life sentence with parole eligibility in 40 years. He would be 93 years old.

While respectful, Browne was emotionless and terse. Asked to describe the crime, he said, “I caused the death of the individual.”

The court hearing was the culmination of four years of interviews by El Paso County sheriff’s officials during which Browne slowly revealed details of numerous killings that they said only the killer and investigators would know.

Of those, authorities are confident Browne is responsible for six besides Heather Church and Sperry: three women in Louisiana, two women in Texas and one woman in Arkansas.

Browne says he killed one person in Washington, two in California, nine in Colorado, two in New Mexico, two in Oklahoma, seven in Texas, five in Arkansas, three in Mississippi and 17 in Louisiana.

His methods of killing included strangulation, chloroform, ether, handguns, a knife, screwdriver and ice pick.

He cut some of this victims up before disposing of their bodies in lakes, rivers, ditches, trash cans and over cliffs, Sheriff Terry Maketa said at the news conference.

Maketa said he believes Browne’s claims and supported the investigation, which involved cooperation with jurisdictions in other states.

But most of those authorities, while interested, balked at naming Browne as a suspect.

“We don’t know anything specific enough to make an arrest,” said Maj. Cleve Barfield, head of the criminal investigations division of Arkansas State Police. The El Paso County Sheriff’s Office affidavit says Lisa Lowe, 22, was missing from Forest City, Ark., on Nov. 3 1991, and her body was found in a ditch later that month. Browne’s admissions matched details in original police reports.

Barfield said investigators are reviewing all missing-persons reports from that period, and are talking to sheriff’s investigators here. He said they may come here to interview Browne.

Officials in Flatonia, Texas, would not confirm Browne is a suspect in the slaying of Melody Ann Bush, although El Paso County authorities see it as one of the stronger cases.

Fayette County sheriff’s investigator Rick Cole would say only that he has been contacted by sheriff’s investigators here about the 1984 slaying and is awaiting more details.

Police in Sugar Land, Texas, the site of the 1984 killing of Nidia Mendoza, would provide no information Thursday.

In Tulsa, Okla., police detective Eddie Majors interviewed Browne in prison last month after learning he said he shot a man there and dumped his body along a river. Timothy Warren was found shot to death in March 1992.

Majors said some details didn’t match Browne’s version.

Officials in Washington have found no case that mirrors Browne’s claims that he killed a man at a scenic overlook on Interstate 90 and dropped her body over the edge.

In New Mexico, state police have been unable to substantiate Browne’s story that he killed a man on another scenic overlook in 1993, on U.S. Highway 64.

But Maketa thinks he’s telling the truth, and that some unidentified victims could be children. “I think it would be reasonable if you look at some of the ages” of his victims, he said. Most were young and small. One weighed 95 pounds. Sperry weighed 104 pounds.

“The younger the victims are, the less he’s going to talk,” he said. “He doesn’t seem interested in talking about children. In letters he made reference to children. When detectives asked him, he completely shut down.”

Detective Jeff Nohr, who worked with volunteer Charlie Hess to coax information from Browne, stopped short of saying he believes Browne killed children. But he said, “When we talked about children, what he’d tell us consistently is he said, ‘That’s not on the table.’”

Officials established two phone numbers to accept information from the public about Browne’s activities or suspicions. One call came in Thursday from a woman in Shreveport, La., after she’d read The Gazette’s Web site account of the Browne case. She wanted to know if her daughter, missing since the 1980s, might be one of his victims.

The numbers: 719-520-7209; 719-492-7349.

Maketa said the point of his investigation wasn’t to pile another sentence on Browne.

“This is unlike many cases where we’re taking a threat off the streets,” he said. “I recognized this three years ago and told our folks this isn’t about making the streets safer. This is an investigation that’s really about bringing closure to families and friends. We owe it to them to continue this investigation and to do everything we can to bring closure.”

Maketa said El Paso County commissioners authorized $20,000 in additional money to pay for the investigation, without knowing details.

Two cases involve local women who were missing and weren’t considered homicide victims at the time they disappeared years ago.

Browne went to prison in 1995 after pleading guilty to kidnapping Heather from her rural home the evening of Sept. 17, 1991. She had been baby-sitting her younger brother, who was found safely sleeping in his bed.

Her disappearance launched a community search that scattered tens of thousands of posters of the girl in store windows and on utility poles throughout eastern Colorado and western Kansas.

It was a high-profile case that faded from public attention until her skull was found in a canyon off Rampart Range Road exactly two years after she disappeared.

In 1995, the Sheriff’s Office pinned the murder on Browne using a fingerprint from a window screen that had been removed from the Church family’s home. Browne had been fingerprinted during an arrest for a 1986 vehicle theft in Louisiana. He lived a half-mile from the Church home.

His arrest for Heather’s murder was the end of the line for Browne, who says he started his series of murders by killing a soldier in South Korea in the early 1970s after a squabble over a prostitute. The list included more women than men, and many victims who were assumed to have simply disappeared because of transient lifestyles.

Browne told cold-case volunteer Charlie Hess in letters and sporadic meetings over four years that he strangled, shot or stabbed 20 men and women he encountered at roadside turnouts, in bars or on the street. Browne didn’t know many of their names. Some he spent only a few minutes with before killing them.

Hess said Browne told him he dismembered one body in a motel room to avoid being seen carrying it to a vehicle. “He cut her up in the bathtub and put body parts in a suitcase and took them to a certain place and just threw them near the road,” said Hess, a former special agent with the FBI who was with the CIA in Vietnam in the 1960s and now works on Sheriff’s Office cold cases with two other retirees.

The affidavit says the body of Nidia Mendoza was found Feb. 6, 1984, on a roadside in Sugar Land, near Houston. The head and legs had been cut off, but not her arms.

Brown told Hess he met the woman in a strip club, made a deal for sex and they drove together to a nearby motel. There, they had sex and he strangled her. He said he cut her up but then stated, “I may not have cut her arms off.”

He used a dull butcher knife from the room’s kitchenette.

Maketa said the body was cut up with precision, and that Browne was trained as a medic while in the Army.

Browne escaped suspicion because many bodies were never found or there was no reason to suspect him, Hess said.

Browne told interrogators he chose easy targets, or “opportunities,” as he called them, during “ramblings” that took him on days-long drives across the country.

Hess said women who have known Browne, who reportedly wants no visitors or contacts from media, describe the tall man as charming, attractive, well-read, articulate and conversant. But as relationships progressed, he became domineering and cruel.

According to Browne’s arrest affidavit, a woman he dated in Colorado Springs told investigators: “He liked to tie her up and act like he was the master, and she was the slave. She said he would blindfold her but never used any type of ligatures. She recalled Mr. Browne telling her she needed to ‘trust’ him when she was blindfolded.”

Maketa said he believes two other cases, in Texas and Louisiana, have enough evidence to prosecute and he hopes Browne’s guilty plea spurs interest in other jurisdictions.

It’s unclear whether information Browne has given would be enough to convict him or whether it would be admissible in court; he never asked for or was given an attorney before making the revelations, but always waived his Miranda rights to remain silent and have an attorney present. He was represented in court Thursday by public defender William Schoewe.

HOW IT STARTED

Browne’s tale began to unfold after the cold-case volunteers identified him as a possible serial killer.

Former Colorado Springs police detective-turned-volunteer Lou Smit had a hunch Brown had killed before. Smit, who drew headlines for his intruder theory in the 1996 slaying of JonBenet Ramsey in Boulder, solved the Church case after being lured from retirement by then-Sheriff John Anderson.

Because of that work, he was familiar with Browne, but his sense for Browne’s past was “intuitive,” Hess said.

They found Browne had written to the Sheriff’s Office in 2000, two years after he lost a bid to withdraw his guilty plea in the Church case. The letter taunted authorities, Hess said, saying, “There’s a lot more out there you don’t know about.” But after exchanging a letter or two, Browne stopped writing and clammed up when a deputy attempted to visit him in prison.

On May 9, 2002, Hess wrote his first letter to Browne.

“I just wrote to say who I was, the fact we had a small group working on cold cases and our goal was to find closure in those cases,” Hess said.

Browne wrote back May 16, and a dialogue began. Early on, he wrote in riddles, such as, “Seven virgins side by side, others less worthy scattered wide.” There’s no evidence of a grave with seven bodies.

In September 2002, he gave the first concrete clue to a slaying, the Sperry murder, by identifying the victim’s vehicle as a white Pontiac Grand Am.

Detective Rick Frady compiled a list of about 170 stolen white Grand Ams from state vehicle registration records during a years-long period and narrowed it to the one that belonged to Sperry.

Then in May 2003, Browne wrote a letter that listed cities and states where killings had happened, including specific locations of bodies.

Hess, Smit and Scott Fisher, a former Gazette publisher and the unit’s third member, contacted authorities, including officials in Flatonia, Texas.

“They immediately identified the case, and at that time said that the few details he gave us did match up with their unsolved murder,” Hess said.

Browne told Hess he was on a “rambling” in March 1984 when he stopped at a motel in Flatonia, between Houston and San Antonio. He said he met a woman, 19 or 20, in the bar.

As with most of his victims, he didn’t know her name. The woman has since been identified as Melody Bush, 22.

She was intoxicated and wasn’t wearing shoes. Browne said he lured her to his room, had sex with her, knocked her out with ether and stabbed her in the heart with an ice pick. He dressed her and dumped the body in a ditch on a rural road near a small bridge or culvert.

Authorities with the Fayette County Sheriff’s Office told Hess that Bush’s body was found 10 to 11 days after she was killed, barefoot.

The woman had been staying at the motel with her husband. She had become angry, marched out of the room and went to the bar, the husband told authorities at the time.

An autopsy found she died of ingesting what was believed to be acetone, although the report noted there was bleeding around the heart.

Hess said that when contacted by El Paso County, the Texas authorities couldn’t offer much detail, saying most records had been lost. Still, the deputy who dug up the case file said Browne “couldn’t know all that unless he did it or he was there,” Hess said.

POLITE, UNEMOTIONAL

In 2004, Browne stopped writing. Hess suggested a meeting, but Browne refused, saying he hadn’t spoken with anyone for so long. Browne had had no visitors in prison.

“I wrote back and I told him, ‘Hey, I’ve debriefed people who were held prisoner where they had absolutely no contact with any other Americans and some of them almost forgot the English language,’” Hess said, referring to work he did with U.S. prisoners of war in Vietnam. “He still said he didn’t want to talk in person. He said, ‘I don’t want to be interrogated or pushed around.’ I wrote back and said that’s not my style. I don’t interrogate people. I interview people. He still didn’t want to see me.”

Browne didn’t write for three months, so Hess showed up unannounced. “I thought there was nothing to lose.”

Shackled and cuffed in a room with Hess, Browne sat without saying a word, Hess recalled. Hess said, “Do you know who I am?” Browne said, “No.” Hess said, “I’m Charlie Hess.”

Hess said Browne seemed intrigued. Sitting across an office table with a guard outside the door, they chatted for an hour but didn’t discuss cases. “I just wanted to know if he wished to re-establish contact, because it appeared he wanted to provide information,” Hess said. “After all, he contacted us originally and all letters were voluntary.”

Hess described Browne as polite and respectful but unemotional, guarded and not remorseful. “It became obvious to me that in order to discuss anything with him he would have to be talked to with respect and I would have to be nonjudgmental or the conversations and probably the communications would stop,” he said.

Hess said he visited Browne once or twice a month, and Browne gave information more freely with hopes some of his requests would be granted, such as a move to another prison and treatment by a nonprison doctor for arthritis and other ailments.

By early 2005, Browne had provided enough details of two killings in Texas that local authorities were convinced he committed them.

“What made us willing to consider this doctor and relocation was that Robert Browne stated, ‘If you can have these things happen, I will give you three murders in Louisiana, unsolved, and enough information to solve or prove I killed a lady in Colorado Springs,’” Hess said.

Browne was moved out of 23-hour lockdown when he became eligible for a rehab program that prepares prisoners to be housed in the general prison population. He also was provided a new doctor. After doctors changed his medicine, Browne’s health improved, and so did his cooperation.

Hess said Browne provided information on the three Louisiana slayings, as promised.

Browne told Hess that in 1983 he killed two women in his hometown, Coushatta, La., in Red River Parish. One victim was a neighbor. He met the other woman in a bar.

One, Wanda Kay Hudson, was found in her apartment, a cabin that sat in view of Browne’s apartment window. The body of the other, Faye Self, was dumped into the Red River. Her body has not been found, and she was considered a missing person until recently. Both were in their 20s.

Browne did maintenance work at the complex, and had changed the lock on Hudson’s door the day before she died, saying the owner, his brother, wanted the lock changed. He used a screwdriver to loosen the chain lock on the door, overtook Hudson with red ant spray, which contained chloroform, and stabbed her with the screwdriver. An autopsy showed she was stabbed 25 times in the chest and four times in the vaginal area.

Many details of the case matched those Browne has given to investigators, such as that he cleaned up in her bathroom and the position of the body on the floor when he left.

Hudson told an uncle about the lock being changed and expressed concern that Browne had a key.

Officials knocked on Browne’s door when the body was found. Browne and his former wife answered, looking hung over. They asked if he heard anything the night before. He said he had not. End of interview.

The third victim was Katherine Hayes, 15, whom he picked up after a teenage gathering at a local food place. She needed a ride and a place to stay. Taking her to a front room in his mother’s house, he had sex with her and strangled her before dumping her body in a creek about 50 miles away.

Four months later, body parts and a skull were found by hunters and identified as those of the person Browne described, whom he knew only by a nickname, Fuzzy.

Browne also told of a woman in Colorado Springs — Sperry, but he didn’t know her name — who was treated as a missing person. He strangled her after a date and dumped her body in a trash bin. Sperry’s husband, Joseph, had taken their baby daughter, Amie, to Florida to visit family.

Joseph Sperry has been estranged from his daughter since then; the girl was raised by her father’s family.

“She didn’t know until we told her,” Maketa said, “so she’s gone all through her life being led to believe that it was her father who killed her mother. When we contacted him, he had some of the original (missing persons) reports he filed. That’s something he carried with him for a long time.”

In 1986, Browne stole a truck in Louisiana, drove across the country and says he killed three people on the West Coast. Arrested for the vehicle theft, Browne was fingerprinted. That set of prints led to his life prison term, when El Paso County officials matched a print to the Church home.

NO APPARENT MOTIVE

Hess said some dates Browne provided don’t match exactly with when someone disappeared, because of his memory problems and because he dumped bodies in places he’d never been and hasn’t returned to since.

“It was a slow process because it was always one question, one answer. New question, new answer,” Hess said. “You didn’t get the feeling that he was enjoying providing the details, yet he wasn’t reluctant to give them.”

Maketa said FBI profilers concluded Browne is a psychopath and possesses a common serial-killer trait — an obsessive need to be in control.

“First, Robert Browne is not stupid. He would give us just enough to where we knew we had a case but it wasn’t a strong case,” Maketa said.

“He controlled the tempo of the conversations, what we could ask, when we could hold the interviews, how long they would last,” he said. “To some degree they want to share but under their rules.”

Officials can’t explain his motive.

“When I asked him what would trigger it, what would make you want to kill an individual, he said, ‘I wouldn’t be particularly mad about something, upset. It’s just the opportunity was there,’” Hess said.

Last year, detectives worked with officials in other states to match unsolved cases and verify details. The work involved phone calls and visits to other states, digging records from forgotten file cabinets and testing memories.

Sheriff’s investigator Nohr was assigned full time more than a year ago. In recent months, almost everyone in major crimes was involved.

In February, authorities from several states met in Dallas for two days during which El Paso County officials outlined Browne’s story.

Whether Browne is tried in more slayings is a secondary concern to Hess and his cohorts, because he wouldn’t be eligible for parole until 2046.

“We want to be able to bring some closure to these people. That’s what we’re all about,” he said.

Maketa credits Hess with persuading Browne to talk. He also praised Nohr.

“Charlie really opened a gateway to a lesson learned on this,” he said. “I fully credit Charlie. His demeanor and patience should be a reminder to all investigators, cold case or even current homicide, that sometimes you can’t control everything. Sometimes you need to let the suspect think they have control.”

Maketa said he believes Browne’s claims he killed 48 people. “At this point, he says, ‘I’ve given you everything I can remember,’” he said. “I think he’ll continue to remember things.”

The sheriff said he hopes the hotlines will be used by people who may have information on Browne’s crimes.

“We’re setting it up in anticipation of a lot of calls,” he said. “There’s still a lot of cases he’s told us about that we can’t tie him into.”

CONTACT THE WRITER: 636-0238 or pam.zubeck@gazette.com . Connie Becchio, Cary Leider Vogrin, Annie Mullin, Scott Rappold, Andy Rohrback, Trudy Thomas, and Anslee Willett contributed to this report.