Episode 172: Charlie Brandt

 In this episode Janus and Joyous look into the life and death of Charlie Brandt, his wife Terry, and her niece Michelle. What was learned after they died shocked almost everyone that knew them.

Transcript

SPEAKER_05 0:00

Unsung Murder Ballads is a true crime podcast, and as such, we will be discussing topics that are disturbing, graphic, and often violent in nature. So this is not for children under the age of 13.

SPEAKER_02 0:12

But you know this because you did start playing this episode. So here are some things you might not know about us.

SPEAKER_05 0:18

We are going to be critical of mistakes made by both criminals and law enforcement.

SPEAKER_02 0:22

We're going to express our views on things that you might not always agree with.

SPEAKER_05 0:26

We will occasionally go on an off-topic tangent.

SPEAKER_02 0:29

And we're going to use dark humor to express ourselves now and then.

SPEAKER_05 0:33

So if you're easily triggered, this might not be the podcast for you.

SPEAKER_02 0:38

However, if this is your cup of tea, then raise your pinky finger while you sip and join us for this week's horrific case, you sick bastards. And I'm Joyce Dead.

SPEAKER_05 1:03

I think we're at 173. I don't know. It's hard to keep up.

SPEAKER_02 1:07

We're almost beyond counting at this point.

SPEAKER_05 1:14

You know, it's what I find funny is when I meet someone new and I mention the podcast, and I'm like, yeah, we, you know, I have a podcast, but they expect it to be like six episodes, and then they look and they're like, holy shit. And I'm like, yeah, we've been doing this for a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 1:27

They don't know how serious we are about murders.

SPEAKER_05 1:31

Right? And murder is a serious thing, let's be honest.

SPEAKER_02 1:34

It's a very serious thing, but the you know, there's serious and then there's dedicated. And we're out here every week almost telling y'all fucked up stories. Yeah, welcome.

SPEAKER_05 1:45

Torturing ourselves and fucking with our sleep.

SPEAKER_02 1:48

Exactly. As if my sleep needed more fucking with.

SPEAKER_05 1:51

You know, I say the same thing. I can't sleep past 6 30 anymore. It's really weird. I don't know if that's an old thing or what, but yeah.

SPEAKER_02 1:59

That sucks. I don't have that problem yet, but I can't sleep until noon like I used to, so I can relate.

SPEAKER_05 2:05

Yeah, noon would never happen. I would have to do an all-nighter. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 2:09

Which I'm gonna not likely think the military probably beat that out of you.

SPEAKER_05 2:13

Uh yeah, probably. I I can't remember the last time I had to do it. So yeah, I don't know.

unknown 2:20

All right.

SPEAKER_05 2:21

So this episode, this episode this week, I do not have a teaser this week. And the funny thing is, I had like there's at least two good moments to do a teaser, but there's such pivotal moments that I didn't want to tease them for that reason.

SPEAKER_02 2:39

So we have at least two pivotal moments. LFG.

SPEAKER_05 2:43

Yeah, this is um this fucked up. Not gonna lie. So this is the case of Charlie. This is the case of Charlie Brandt. And yeah, it's fucked. I don't know, there's no other way to say it. And if the audience knows, they know.

SPEAKER_02 2:58

Well, all right. I I definitely don't. So here we go again.

SPEAKER_05 3:02

Yeah, I was gonna say, like, it's gonna be rare that I hit you with something you'll know. Although I am working on one, I don't know if I'll do it next week or two weeks from now, but you're going to at least know the name of the person. I know that much.

SPEAKER_01 3:16

Well, all right.

SPEAKER_05 3:17

Yeah, that one probably would have been at Four Joyous's at some time, you know, at some point. But here we go. So in 2004, Charlie Brandt and his wife Terry were living in the Florida Keys. In fact, they were living in the southernmost portion of the Florida Keys. Now, Brandt had spent most of his life in Florida. He was an engineer. And for most of his career, he was allegedly in charge of the radar blimp that was used to intercept drugs being smuggled into the U.S.

SPEAKER_02 3:48

How are they intercepted drugs with a blimp?

unknown 3:51

Right.

SPEAKER_05 3:51

I'm guessing this is this is like pre-drone days, maybe, but I'm thinking he's that the drone was the OG or the blimp was the OG drone. Yeah, it was just there to surveil, it's not there to actually intercept itself. You know what I mean?

SPEAKER_02 4:07

That's such a vibe. God, bring back blimps. I know they were bad, right? But I think they're so cool.

SPEAKER_05 4:14

I'm now imagining being a drug smuggler on a boat, and a blimp is just trying to come down on me.

SPEAKER_02 4:20

Literally, it's like coming, the like the sun is blocked, and you're like a huge shadow, and you look up and it's a blimp.

SPEAKER_05 4:27

Just with guys hanging out the sides with guns on ropes.

SPEAKER_02 4:31

No, right? At that point, you're tearing open your cocaine, you're snorting it, you're like, I'm going out good, huh?

SPEAKER_05 4:37

Why snort it? Just dump it in the ocean. Oh, I you're right. I guess you want to take part in it, yes.

SPEAKER_02 4:42

Yes, exactly.

SPEAKER_05 4:44

Yeah, you can tell I don't use, I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 4:47

So I don't even like it, but in that situation, this is what you do.

SPEAKER_05 4:52

Right. So Brandt and his wife Terry had been married, got married in 1986, and they were together for almost 18 years. And for all appearances, it seemed to be the perfect marriage. Which again, how many times do we say that? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 5:06

Yeah. I mean, like, God, how many times have we heard that? Every time.

SPEAKER_05 5:10

Almost every time, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 5:12

So although half the time it's like, maybe they weren't so happy. So we gotta give it that.

SPEAKER_05 5:16

Right.

SPEAKER_02 5:16

Sometimes a relationship does look like shit.

SPEAKER_05 5:19

Well, apparently, people reported that they would make each other's lunches every day because they believed that lunch that was made for them by someone who loved them just tasted better.

SPEAKER_02 5:33

That's cute. Oh.

SPEAKER_05 5:34

It is cute. So again, from the outside looking in, this looks legit. Then in September of 2004, Florida was hit by Hurricane Ivan, and the people of the Keys were told they needed to evacuate. Brandt boarded up their home as any engineer might, and he left it in pristine condition. He figured they wouldn't be gone for that long, and he actually thought it was ridiculous that they needed to evacuate.

SPEAKER_02 6:02

But his family Well, you know, hindsight 2020.

SPEAKER_05 6:05

Right? But his family and his wife insisted. So they drove the however many hours it takes to get from the Keys to Orlando to stay with Terry's niece, Michelle. Now, the first night that they were there, one of Michelle's friends, a woman named Lisa, was supposed to come over and visit. She wanted to meet Michelle's aunt Terry and her uncle Charlie. But Michelle had called Lisa and told her not to come over. They'd all been drinking, they'd all been drinking, and she thought maybe they had a little too much because Brandt and Terry were arguing.

SPEAKER_02 6:38

Oh dear. Yep. Okay, good. Good she called off the friend.

SPEAKER_05 6:42

Right, so the friend never went over. Now, while staying in the Orlando area, Brandt did go and visit other family members that were in the area, and they all got the impression that he really wanted to go home.

SPEAKER_02 6:54

Brandt, you know, fair.

SPEAKER_05 6:56

Right.

SPEAKER_02 6:57

No one wants to evacuate and board up their house. That's really sucks.

SPEAKER_05 7:00

Right. Yeah, and who knows how long, and he's probably worried about damage and you know, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 7:07

Yeah, I mean, I'd be wrecked.

SPEAKER_05 7:09

Well, they decided they their original plan was to leave on the 12th. But for some reason, when that day arrived, things felt different. Despite the fact that their bags were packed, Brandt all of a sudden insisted on staying just one more night.

SPEAKER_02 7:26

In Orlando, you mean?

SPEAKER_05 7:28

In Orlando, yes. After this is after the storm, yes, sorry.

SPEAKER_00 7:33

Gotcha.

SPEAKER_05 7:34

So the next day on September 13th, Michelle's mother, Mary Lou, who normally talked to her daughter every day, couldn't reach her.

SPEAKER_04 7:44

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 7:45

All of her calls were going to voicemail. A full day passed. And I gotta give this woman credit for being patient, I guess.

SPEAKER_02 7:55

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 7:56

A full day passed. And she's getting more and more worried. But then a second day went by and she hadn't heard from her. So she knew something was wrong. Now she called one of Michelle's friends, a woman named Debbie. Now Michelle and her friends had this kind of cool thing going on where they all had keys to each other's places just in case. So this was the plan. Mary Lou asked Debbie if she would go check on Michelle. And she also mentioned that her sister, Michelle's aunt, Terry, was also supposed to be there because she couldn't reach her either.

SPEAKER_04 8:34

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 8:36

So Debbie grabbed the keys and she made the trip over. But on her way, before arriving, she called up the other friend, the friend Lisa, the one that was supposed to go over the first night, and asked her to go with her.

SPEAKER_02 8:54

Good instincts?

SPEAKER_05 8:55

When she got there, she saw both cars sitting in the driveway. Cars being Michelle's and the Brandt's car. So she walks up and she knocks on the front door, but no one answers. So she waited for a little bit and she's not hearing anything inside. But she sees the cars, so she starts pounding more frantically. And she takes out the key and she puts it in the lock, but it wouldn't open. Oh. Yeah, she couldn't get in. She's like freaking out now.

SPEAKER_02 9:26

Yeah, what the hell?

SPEAKER_05 9:27

So she decides to walk around the house and she's looking in windows and she's knocking on windows and she's calling Michelle's name. And as she's going around, she notices through the glass door of the garage, because now she can see directly through. This is the first time she can see something through. She sees Michelle's Uncle Charlie hanging from the roof of the garage with a bed sheet around his neck.

SPEAKER_04 9:55

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 9:57

She immediately calls the police. Now when Yep. So when the police arrived, they actually managed to use one of Debbie's keys to open the front door of the house. Well, it turns out she was actually she was using the wrong key. It you know is one of those ones that fit still fits the lock but won't turn it. She was using the wrong one. This poor thing. But as it turns out, that mistake saved her from being completely traumatized by the scene inside that house that was far worse. That was far worse than what she already saw.

SPEAKER_02 10:42

Oh Lord.

SPEAKER_05 10:44

So upon entering, police found Terry slumped over the couch with seven chest wounds from stabbings.

SPEAKER_04 10:53

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 10:54

Then they made their way further back into Michelle's master bedroom. And what they found was so much worse than anyone anticipated. Apparently it was so bad that it's reported that officers ran out of the house to vomit.

SPEAKER_02 11:14

Holy shit.

SPEAKER_05 11:16

Michelle's body was found on her bed. And while it was determined that her cause of death was from a single fatal stab wound to her chest, she had also been decapitated. Her head was placed next to her body in such a way that it looked like her head was made to watch the other depraved acts that were about to be perpetrated against her.

SPEAKER_00 11:46

Oh my fucking god.

SPEAKER_05 11:48

Her killer had cut off her breast and he had cut her body completely open. Oh her organs, including her heart, had been removed and placed around her body, and her intestines were thrown in the trash.

SPEAKER_02 12:06

What the fuck depraved ass cult shit is this?

SPEAKER_05 12:10

Throughout the rest of the room were her underwear scattered about everywhere, most of them being bras from Victoria's Secret, which put in your back pocket on that one.

SPEAKER_02 12:22

Okay.

SPEAKER_05 12:23

Now, when police and investigators went back outside to talk to Debbie and Lisa, they were kind of like, all right, we need a description of Michelle. And once they confirmed that that body was Michelle, they told the two women that their friend had been murdered.

SPEAKER_04 12:40

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 12:41

Now it was her friends that had to call Michelle's father to inform him. And whichever one of them was on the phone just cried and kept repeating over and over again, Michelle's dead. She's dead. She's dead.

SPEAKER_04 12:55

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 12:57

Fucking crazy.

SPEAKER_02 12:59

That's so unbearable.

SPEAKER_05 13:02

So the police were real quick to develop a theory. And this theory was that it was a murder suicide perpetrated by Charlie Brandt. But this didn't make any sense to his family because to them, Brandt, he was just a normal guy.

SPEAKER_01 13:17

Right.

SPEAKER_05 13:18

He and Terry had been married for almost two decades. Everyone saw them as the perfect couple. He was smart, he had a good job. And he had spent time with Michelle many times in the past with no apparent red flags.

SPEAKER_02 13:32

Yeah, it is really fucking bizarre.

SPEAKER_05 13:34

Well, police came to this conclusion because of the manner of death, believing it was obvious that Brandt had killed Michelle and Terry and then killed himself.

SPEAKER_02 13:43

It's certainly what it looks like by like the way that each of them died.

SPEAKER_05 13:47

Right, and but to them, obviously the motive here is a complete mystery. Even when they went and looked up even when they went up and looked up Charlie Brandt's criminal records, he was completely clean. He had no arrest, his fingerprints were not in the system at all. However, it would be Brandt's sister Angela who would reveal what was hidden in Brandt's criminal history.

SPEAKER_02 14:13

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_05 14:15

When police spoke with her before they even started asking her questions, she stopped them and said, I have something to tell you. Whoa. Angela told police that Brandt had murdered before.

SPEAKER_00 14:28

What the fuck? Is it a juvenile?

SPEAKER_05 14:32

She told them that his records were sealed because he was only 13 years old when he murdered their mother.

SPEAKER_00 14:40

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_05 14:43

Angela then went and told them a horrific story. In 1971, Angela was 15 and Charlie Brandt was 13. And they also had two younger sisters as well, and we're talking like real young, like two or three. Oh God. They were living in Fort Wayne, Indiana with their parents, and their mother was eight months pregnant. As we've already said, which is often the case from the outside looking in, the Brants looked like a normal family. Brandt was a normal boy, and he did well in school. However, on January 3, 1971, the Brands were spending the night watching TV together, and at one point it was time to go to bed. Angela got up, she went into her room and started reading a book. The younger girls were already asleep, and mom and dad went into the bathroom to get ready for bed. Brandt's mother made herself a bath while his dad was at the bathroom sink shaving. Out of the corner of his father's eye, he spotted Charlie Brandt coming into the bathroom. The next word out of their father's mouth was Charlie no, Charlie, stop. Thirteen-year-old Charlie raised a gun and fired it once into his father's torso. He then went to the bathtub, stood over his pregnant mother, and shot her five fucking times.

SPEAKER_00 16:17

Oh my sucking God.

SPEAKER_05 16:20

Angela heard the shots from her room and got up to go investigate. But before she even stepped out of her bedroom, there was Charlie Brandt standing in her doorway.

SPEAKER_02 16:31

Oh horrifying, horrifying.

SPEAKER_05 16:33

She saw that he was holding something in his hand, but in this moment she still hadn't quite pieced together what was going on yet. And he suddenly just pointed the gun right at her and pulled the trigger. And Angela heard the click. It's unclear. But the gun didn't fire. And the next thing she remembers is that her and her brother Charlie are suddenly wrestling one another on the floor, and she was able to kick the gun away from him. And as they're fighting, she kept saying to him, Charlie, I love you. What are you doing? I love you. Then all of a sudden, she says she was looking him right in the eyes, and she watched as this glazed, crazy look just disappeared. He had snapped out of whatever the fuck he was in, and he literally asked her, What did I do?

SPEAKER_02 17:27

What the fucking hell?

SPEAKER_05 17:29

And she said, I don't know, I think you shot our parents, but I need to go check. He kept asking what they were gonna do, and she kept saying she didn't know. And all she really knew was that she had to remain calm.

SPEAKER_02 17:44

Yeah, because otherwise she and the other kids are in danger.

SPEAKER_05 17:48

And that's just it. She started thinking on her feet, making him think that she was on his side. But in her mind, she knew she had to do something to take care of her sisters. So she started to walk down the stairs, and all the while telling Charlie Brand that they should leave, but they needed to bring their sisters with them. And she said, Hey, go upstairs and grab some blankets, because you know it's fucking winter outside, it's January. Mm-hmm. And so that they can get the girls bundled up. And he's walking up the stairs backwards, looking at her the whole time. And he's asking her, Angie, you're not gonna leave me, are you? And the whole time she's like, nope, no, I'm not, you know, just waiting for him to get far enough away.

SPEAKER_04 18:32

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 18:33

And once he was at the top of the staircase, she bolted out the front door. She ran through the snow, her nightgown is covered in blood, she's barefoot, and she's screaming for anyone to save her and her family from her brother. She ran to one of the neighbors' houses and she pounded on the door. But before anyone came to the door, she looked over her shoulder and there was her brother coming up behind her. She could hear him yelling, Angie, you promised me. You promised you wouldn't leave me. She would later say that those words would constantly be in the back of her mind for the rest of her life.

SPEAKER_02 19:15

Oof. Angela then's horrific.

SPEAKER_05 19:18

It's fucked up. It is so fucked up. This was one of those moments, like I said, there were this is the I was gonna use this as the teaser, but it was too big of a moment.

SPEAKER_02 19:28

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 19:30

So she ran to another neighbor's house, but by that point, Charlie Brandt had made his way to the door of the first house, and the door opened, and there was a young girl on the other side of the door.

SPEAKER_04 19:44

Oh no.

SPEAKER_05 19:45

And he stood there in the cold and calmly just said, I shot my parents. And then the police and the paramedics were called to the scene. At this point, he's shut down. So Brandt's father survived. But his mother and her unborn child didn't have a chance.

SPEAKER_02 20:06

Five times a lot. Oh, that's so awful.

SPEAKER_05 20:10

Both she and the unborn baby died in the tub that January night. Over the years after killing his mother, Brandt underwent three separate psychological evaluations. Each time, the professional that was talking with him was looking for some underlying signs of a specific mental illness that could explain away his behavior. But each of them ended up reporting that he seemed like a normal kid, just snapped for no apparent reason.

SPEAKER_02 20:38

Right. But it's like that can't be.

SPEAKER_05 20:41

Unfortunately, under Indiana law, he was too young to be charged with murder. So instead he was sent to a psychiatric hospital. After a year in the hospital, it was his father that fought to get him released.

SPEAKER_02 20:56

Whoa.

SPEAKER_05 20:57

Right? So fucked.

SPEAKER_02 21:00

Hell of a father.

SPEAKER_05 21:02

I couldn't forgive him. Fuck that. No way.

SPEAKER_02 21:06

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 21:07

You can't trust him around anybody.

SPEAKER_02 21:09

No, but I and I just can't even imagine the anguish as a husband and a parent.

SPEAKER_05 21:16

Yeah. And had he and had that gun not been empty, he would have killed his sister Angela.

SPEAKER_02 21:22

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 21:24

So, yeah. But when Charlie Brandt was finally released, it was his father that met him, and he moved the entire family to Florida.

SPEAKER_02 21:33

He moved him back in with the family?

SPEAKER_05 21:36

Yes. And as the and as it as it goes, Fort Wayne isn't that small of a town, but I have very little doubt that everyone there knew what happened.

SPEAKER_01 21:48

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 21:49

So if if Brandt was going to have a chance of growing up normal, they knew they needed to get him out of there. So off they went to Florida. However, within a year, his father remained. Remarried and soon after he took up the entire family again and left and went back to Indiana, but left Charlie Brandt behind with his grandparents. Really fucking weird.

SPEAKER_02 22:17

Yeah, I don't love it.

SPEAKER_05 22:18

At this point, Angela's gonna be like 16, 17, who knows? So I'm sure she had a lot of input on like, hey, I want to get the fuck out of here. You know what I mean? Right.

SPEAKER_02 22:29

And also, like, if you are marrying a man and you know that his son killed his previous wife, right? You sure aren't gonna move in with the child.

SPEAKER_05 22:40

You would hope not, no.

SPEAKER_02 22:43

I sure fucking wouldn't.

SPEAKER_05 22:45

Interestingly, though, and this is a side note, the two younger, younger sisters, they were not told the truth about how their mother died. Whoa. They went their their entire lives until 2004, having no idea that it was their brother who had killed their mother.

SPEAKER_02 23:05

That feels like an injustice to them.

SPEAKER_05 23:08

It's fucked up. I mean, I understand trying to keep them safe, but right. But eventually, once they're old enough to know 71 to 2004 is not a short amount of time.

SPEAKER_02 23:21

No, not at all.

SPEAKER_05 23:23

Like once they were like 12, 15, maybe, but you waited until they were in their 30s. Crazy.

SPEAKER_02 23:30

That's and it like they weren't really waiting, they were just deciding we're never gonna tell them.

SPEAKER_05 23:33

Yeah, we're never gonna tell them. Right.

SPEAKER_02 23:36

Technically putting them in danger, kind of, and also just like not knowing the truth about your parent dying is really fucked up.

SPEAKER_05 23:44

Yeah, that would fuck me up, yeah. Now the family wanted Brandt to live a normal life in Florida, and it seemed like that that's what was happening. You know, that is until 2004, when police are suddenly investigating three bodies at a brutal crime scene.

SPEAKER_04 24:00

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 24:01

But with Angela telling them of the past, police now had the history, but they still had no real motive. And this story that Angela told them showed them that there was some kind of darkness that existed in Charlie Brandt.

SPEAKER_02 24:17

Right. And that he had like snapped at one point with no explanation.

SPEAKER_05 24:22

Well, they they didn't think that this that he had actually been suppressing his evil for 33 years. The crime in 2004 was a little too perfect for their liking.

SPEAKER_02 24:34

Ah, like it didn't seem like someone just like snapping and doing something crazy.

SPEAKER_05 24:38

Right. It was too neat. And she was killed and mutilated. Michelle in particular was killed and mutilated in such a way with such precision that the police were like, how many victims does Charlie Brandt really have out there?

SPEAKER_02 24:52

Extremely fair point.

SPEAKER_05 24:54

And the more they looked into his life, especially from his teens into his forties, the more they started to hear these little disturbing stories.

SPEAKER_01 25:04

Yikes.

SPEAKER_05 25:04

Now it's important to note here that no one person had all the facts. But when they talked to different people, they got little pieces of a puzzle, and it started to kind of paint this disturbing picture. His sister Angela had told the police about everything that they went through and how the family tried to forgive him and they really did love him. But there was always this instinctual part of her in particular that was afraid of him, which makes sense.

SPEAKER_02 25:29

Yeah, and also like, man, I feel like I would I mean, no blame on anyone, but I would have a hard time letting my murderous sibling marry someone without them knowing.

SPEAKER_05 25:40

Right. We'll we'll get into that in a little bit.

SPEAKER_02 25:41

But I don't know if they were like right. I would like don't know if they're actively involved in each other's lives at all.

SPEAKER_05 25:46

Yeah, we'll get into that in a little little bit. But Angela did say that she would never go down to visit him in the keys. And whenever he came up to visit, she would sleep with her door locked and barricaded, and she did not want her kids around him.

SPEAKER_02 26:01

Valid. And also, like, why the fuck is she having to sleep in the same house as him? I don't like that.

SPEAKER_05 26:06

Well, again, it's when the family's all together and they've traveled and whatever. But you'd think that they'd be like, Charlie, you need to stay at a hotel.

SPEAKER_02 26:14

Yeah. And like he should be in the room that's locked with barricaded from the outside.

SPEAKER_05 26:19

And with their luck, a fire would break out. Yeah. But either way, I agree with you.

SPEAKER_01 26:24

Right?

SPEAKER_05 26:25

Well, Brandt's co-workers talked about how Brandt would talk about his niece, Michelle, at work sometimes. When he talked about her, he didn't call her by her name. He didn't say Michelle. He was using a nickname that he gave her. And this nickname was Victoria's Secret.

SPEAKER_02 26:46

Oh, that is fucking weird and gross, and I hate it.

SPEAKER_05 26:50

Yeah. And I didn't have to. My next line was obviously this is the same brand of underwear that was thrown all around her room the night she was murdered. Because you pieced that together, because it's pretty obvious.

SPEAKER_01 27:01

Right.

SPEAKER_05 27:01

But people at his work said that he would talk about Michelle in such a way that it was clear he was obsessed with her.

SPEAKER_02 27:08

Ew.

SPEAKER_05 27:09

He talked about the men she dated and how none of them were good enough for her.

SPEAKER_02 27:14

God, if a man's talking about this shit at work, I'm like, shut the fuck up.

unknown 27:18

Right.

SPEAKER_05 27:18

Like, dude, this is your niece.

SPEAKER_02 27:20

Like, I don't want to hear it, you weird fuck.

SPEAKER_05 27:22

Right. It's fucked up.

SPEAKER_02 27:24

Personally, I'm an engineer also. And if someone was talking about that at work, I'd be like, reporting into HR.

SPEAKER_05 27:30

Right? It was.

SPEAKER_02 27:31

Did you not want to hear about how you want to fuck your niece?

unknown 27:34

Right.

SPEAKER_05 27:36

Well, they found things in the Brand's home that were odd, to say the least. They found anatomy books throughout the house, even though neither Brandt nor Terry worked in the medical field. On the back of their bedroom door, there was a full poster of the anatomy of a woman. Like something you'd see in a college classroom. It was, and I've seen I've seen an image of it. It's it's weird. It's like the front and back of the woman, but like the woman is kind of bisected where one half shows the skeletal system and the other half shows the muscular system.

SPEAKER_02 28:18

Yep, I've seen stuff like that before. Yep.

SPEAKER_05 28:20

And what makes this one creepy is that like they kept like the woman's head is intact, but she's not like in one of them, she's not facing the viewer. So like her she shows a full head of hair that's done up in a bun, which in my opinion made the image really creepy. I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 28:38

Huh?

SPEAKER_05 28:38

It was weird.

SPEAKER_02 28:40

I mean, they're all creepy. I mean, like any sort of like medical drawings type stuff. And I also say that's a really weird thing to have up in your house. And I I work in a healthcare-related field and a very deep interest in a human body. I have anything like that in my house.

SPEAKER_05 28:57

And not just that, it's on the back of the bedroom door, which means when you're sleeping at night, that's what you're looking at. And why did Terry let him have that up?

SPEAKER_02 29:09

I mean, everyone's got a weird boyfriend who has a weird poster.

SPEAKER_05 29:13

I suppose. I suppose. And and maybe she was picking and choosing her battles.

SPEAKER_02 29:18

That is exactly it. Like it's like she is fighting to not have the like poster of a woman with big boobs on the wall. I'll allow the medical poster.

SPEAKER_05 29:29

I guess it's still weird to me, just saying.

SPEAKER_02 29:32

Oh, it's weird, but you know, you've been to a man's house before. Make some weird art choices.

SPEAKER_05 29:38

Yeah, my my walls are covered in my autographed paraphernalia, so I get it. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 29:44

Yeah, that's a red flag too, friend.

SPEAKER_05 29:46

Is it really? Why? I don't get it.

SPEAKER_02 29:49

Well, not for murder, but just for weird.

SPEAKER_05 29:51

Okay, fair. I guess in a way they're kind of like trophies. Yeah, I can see it.

SPEAKER_02 29:57

Well, I mean specifically the pornography related ones.

SPEAKER_05 30:00

There's only four of those, and they're they're only four. Only four. Anyway, even creepier was his internet search history, which you can imagine, right?

SPEAKER_02 30:15

I was about to say, we had Google, right? Check the search history.

SPEAKER_05 30:19

These searches involved uh searches for autopsy photos, snuff films, and necrophilia sites. Hate it. So another person in his life that saw glimpses of the darkness that was Brandt was his br best friend. And his name was Jim. And Jim had initially been married to Angela, Brandt's sister, at one time. And that's how the two met. Oh. Yeah, that's how the two met and they had become friends. Now, Jim is one of the few people who actually knew about Charlie Brandt's past because Angela told them before they got married. Kind of like what you kind of like what you were saying earlier. She thought, if we're gonna spend our lives together, you need to know this.

SPEAKER_02 31:03

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 31:04

So fast forward to some years later, and Angela ends up ending their marriage. Like she's leaving Jim. And Jim decides he's gonna crash at his best friend's place, you know, Charlie down in the Keys. So they're living together and they become those best buds as they do, and they start drinking and smoking and going out to fish and all that shit that guys do, I guess. Oh, a few days into Jim's stay, they're out on a fishing boat, and Jim's just mad at the world. He's mad at Angela, and he's venting, and he's talking about how he just wants to get revenge.

SPEAKER_02 31:40

And Charlie Brandt in front of the man who killed her mother.

SPEAKER_05 31:45

And Charlie Brandt just looks over at him and says, quote, you know what the perfect revenge is, Jim? You kill somebody and then you cut their heart out and you eat it. Unquote.

SPEAKER_00 31:59

Hey, buddy. Um like Yup.

SPEAKER_05 32:05

Now remember, Jim knows about Brandt's past.

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Yep.

SPEAKER_05 32:10

Yeah, now he's never really talked to him about it, but he's aware. And he figures, he's figuring, and this is what he says later, he's figuring at this point that he hadn't done anything wrong in so long. That he's thinking that maybe the guy's just talking shit and he shrugs it off. Which I gotta say, if one of my friends said something like that, I wouldn't call the cops. Like I say crazy shit.

SPEAKER_02 32:34

If one of my friends said that, sure, but if one of my friends had murdered someone before.

SPEAKER_05 32:40

Right.

SPEAKER_02 32:42

Then that calculus goes a little differently.

SPEAKER_05 32:45

Right. Now, years later, Jim hears another story straight from Terry, Brandt's wife. Now, Jim and Terry were friends, and that's how Brandt met Terry. So that's important to know. According to Jim, Terry had pulled him aside one day and said that she was thinking of calling the police on Brandt. She said that she had come home early from work one day, and that Brand was in their fish gutting room, which was like a small utility room off their house, and that she had opened the door and there was Brandt covered in blood, and there was blood all over the sink. Now, Jim he's he tried to calm Terry down. He's like, hey, you know, that's what that room's for. He's cleaning fish. There's supposed to be blood there.

SPEAKER_01 33:31

Right.

SPEAKER_05 33:32

And she's like, I know that, but there were no fish anywhere. Oh. And Jim's he just kept making excuses for his best friend, but Terry cuts him off. She says, like, no, listen to me. And this is this is what she tells him. She said, There was a girl that was murdered not too far from where they lived. They had found her murdered body in a rowboat, and she was worried that it was Charlie who might have done it.

SPEAKER_02 33:59

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 34:00

And she literally asked Jim, she's like, What should I do? Now he warned her that if she called the police, it would be the end of their marriage. And that's why she didn't call the police.

SPEAKER_03 34:13

Oof.

SPEAKER_05 34:14

Yeah. Now, as I mentioned, this is how Brandt met Terry. It was through Jim. So when Brandt told Jim that he wanted to propose to Terry, Jim told Brand, you need to tell her about your past. Plain and simple. Right. And Brand was like, I don't want to, I whatever. But Jim's like, no, no, no, no. If you don't tell her, I'm gonna tell her.

SPEAKER_01 34:42

Right.

SPEAKER_05 34:42

So Brandt says, okay, okay, I'll tell her. But then, boom, surprise wedding, none of his family gets an invite, and soon they're married. And Jim assumed his friend told Terry, and he never brought it up again.

SPEAKER_04 34:59

Oh.

SPEAKER_05 35:01

Yeah. So interestingly though, he does back this up because he said that one point he was talking to them and he asked Harry if they were considering having kids. And she supposedly said to him, I'm not sure, considering everything. And he let it go at that, thinking that she must have known.

SPEAKER_01 35:22

Oh shit.

SPEAKER_05 35:25

Now her family swears up and down that she could not have known, that she couldn't have kept a secret like that.

SPEAKER_02 35:33

Yeah. Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 35:36

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 35:36

Especially when she had seen something suspicious like that and like freaking. If she had seen that and knew that he had murdered someone before, yeah, no, no, no, no.

SPEAKER_05 35:44

Right. She would have called the cops.

SPEAKER_02 35:46

He would have 100% called the cops.

SPEAKER_05 35:49

Investigators did find a journal that was Terry's in the house, and it showed some alarming things. Now, this isn't the kind of journal you're thinking where she's writing about her life or whatever. It was more like a planner, and she did jot down like random significant notes, like things like had a nice dinner with Charlie, or Charlie went out fishing, like that kind of thing. Some of them had weird, simple remarks that just said weird day. But a few were more like Charlie stayed out all night, or Charlie got home at 3 a.m.

SPEAKER_04 36:25

Hmm.

SPEAKER_05 36:26

But unfortunately, there's no more details than that. And not one and not one person in Brandt's life seemed to have the entirety of who he was.

SPEAKER_02 36:37

That's pretty scary.

SPEAKER_05 36:39

It's crazy. So after he took the life of his niece and his wife, he then took his own life in 2004, and police opened up this large-scale investigation. They were sure that he had done this before. And after digging, they reported to some media outlets that they were looking at a possible 26 victims. Whoa. With similar MO's where the victims had been decapitated andor had organs removed. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:13

That's fucking nuts. And like they have the journal that says, like, oh, he was out till 3 a.m. last night.

SPEAKER_05 37:19

Exactly. Now connect those things and they make the argument that typically killers don't just jump straight to beheadings their first go-round. Let's be honest.

SPEAKER_02 37:29

Yeah, it's a little intense.

SPEAKER_05 37:31

Yeah, it's it you know that kind of thing takes practice. You gotta build up to that, I would assume.

SPEAKER_02 37:37

I mean, in a lot of cases, we've talked about that's exactly how it works. They start they start simple and they get crazier and crazier.

SPEAKER_05 37:43

Right. And this is extreme.

SPEAKER_02 37:46

Yes.

SPEAKER_05 37:48

So the investigators got together and they tried to link other crimes to Brandt. Now no official list has been created, so I don't conclusively have anything to just read off. But there are two victims that have conclusively been linked to him. One of them was believed to have been a woman named Sherry Pariso in 1989. Sherry was found decapitated and her heart had been removed. This is this is actually the one that was found in a rowboat beneath a bridge near their house, the one that Terry had been so freaked out about.

SPEAKER_02 38:24

Oh shit, and she was fucking right.

SPEAKER_05 38:27

All they had at the time, police, all they had was a sketch of a man seen running across U.S. Route 1 near where the body was discovered, and that sketch looked a lot like Charlie Brandt.

SPEAKER_04 38:41

Oof.

SPEAKER_05 38:42

And whoever did it had literally used the boat as sort of like a cutting table. It's so fucked up.

SPEAKER_02 38:50

Yeah, that's really fucked up.

SPEAKER_05 38:52

Another case that the police are confident were him, that's linked to him, is a 1995 murder of a woman named Darlene Toller in Miami. She was found wrapped in a blanket and then in a tarp off the highway. And when they her body was discovered, they unrolled the body and found that her head and her heart were missing.

SPEAKER_02 39:14

Oof. Sounds like him, alright.

SPEAKER_05 39:18

Absolutely. And some people were speculating that he ate the hearts because of what he told Jim, but that can't be confirmed. There that, you know. And he didn't eat the heart of the heart. There's no way to know. Yeah, he didn't eat Michelle's heart, but at that point, I don't know if he would. I mean, he was planning to kill himself, so who the fuck knows? The whole thing's so fucked.

SPEAKER_01 39:38

Right.

SPEAKER_05 39:39

Law enforcement were confident enough to connect him to this those specific cases, but in particular Darlene, because of what they found in his vehicle.

SPEAKER_03 39:48

Oof.

SPEAKER_05 39:49

Now, Darlene's body was found to have dog hairs similar to dog hairs that were found in Brandt's car.

SPEAKER_02 39:58

Now, whose fucking dog is this?

SPEAKER_05 40:00

Well, that's the weird part. So Brandt and Terry didn't have a dog. They had a cat. But it's believed that Brandt had helped out a friend at some point in time around that time, bringing her dog to the vet. And eventually DNA testing was done that confirmed that there was the only way for her to have had this dog's hair on her was if she was somehow in his vehicle.

SPEAKER_02 40:25

Right. Yeah, so they were able to dog hair being the confirming one. You don't hear that often.

SPEAKER_05 40:31

Right. Now, interestingly, Brandt also kept meticulous like travel logs, like mile logs of his when he traveled. And on the day that Darlene went missing, he had an extra 100-mile trip that he that couldn't be explained. Which was about the distance, exactly. Now Yerp. Now a weird side note about this friend with the dog, she actually talked to police. And she said that she got real creeped out by Brandt about 12 years before the murders happened. Now keep in mind he's married to Terry at this point. And he wrote this friend a three-page love letter professing his love to her.

SPEAKER_01 41:18

Ugh.

SPEAKER_05 41:20

And don't do that. And she had to pull him aside and was like, listen, it's not gonna happen. I love you like a brother. I love Terry like a sister. Nothing is gonna happen between us. But she said that after that she didn't see him again, but for a really long time she was having nightmares of him chasing her and trying to kill her.

SPEAKER_02 41:40

Ooh.

SPEAKER_05 41:42

So fucking weird.

SPEAKER_02 41:44

Woman's intuition, I tell ya.

SPEAKER_05 41:46

There was also a book that was written about Charlie Brandt, and it was called The Invisible Killer, The Monster Behind the Mask. In this book, the author theorized that Brandt was also responsible for two other murders. Now again, we gotta be clear. I gotta be clear here. This is not actually connected to him by law enforcement. This is just something that this author seems to think, and he has the he does have some interesting theories backing it up, but the family one of the families was actually annoyed that their family member was lumped in with his victims.

SPEAKER_02 42:22

So that's that's very fair. Like what it says like you don't want to have your family member's name dragged through publicity if it's just some guy.

SPEAKER_05 42:30

Yeah, I mean, and that's just it. Like, how many times, like you there are certain people out there when you talk about a case, they were wrongfully investigated, and then when we cover it, I spend time talking about them only to say, but they didn't do it. So those they're still like you said, lumped in. Yeah. So the but regardless, we're gonna touch on these two two murders. The first one was Carol Sullivan, and she went missing in 1978. She was 12, about to turn 13. And the crazy part is this was the first day that she talked her family into letting her walk to the school bus on her own.

SPEAKER_00 43:10

Oh fuck.

SPEAKER_05 43:13

She went missing, and later her skull would be found in a paint can. Which is fucking weird.

SPEAKER_02 43:23

And of course he's already on the skull shit.

SPEAKER_05 43:26

Really? Theoretically. Theoretically. And that's why they connect this, they they're trying to connect this to Brent because of the decapitation. And because he did live in the area that she went missing at the time that she went missing. Tough to say, but possible. The other victim that was linked to him was a woman named Lisa Saunders, who was 20 in 1988. This Lisa was found nude and lifeless on the side of the road in some bushes in an area named No Name Key. Vultures were actually what alerted authorities to her body.

SPEAKER_02 44:06

Oh, that's gross and awful.

SPEAKER_05 44:10

When found, she was missing her heart, her brain, her eyes, a lot of her neck muscles, her appendix, her colon, her vagina, her left fallopian tube, her ovaries, her bladder, her thyroid gland, and parts of her lung.

SPEAKER_02 44:28

And how much of that is because of the vultures?

SPEAKER_05 44:31

Interesting that you say that.

SPEAKER_01 44:41

Right.

SPEAKER_05 44:42

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 44:42

Exactly.

SPEAKER_05 44:43

So, but she had marks on her body indicating that her killer tied her to the back of a car and dragged her for about a half a mile.

SPEAKER_00 44:53

Oh my god.

SPEAKER_05 44:55

Before dumping her body.

SPEAKER_02 44:57

What? That's fucking evil.

SPEAKER_05 45:00

What the fuck?

SPEAKER_02 45:02

That yeah. Oh.

SPEAKER_05 45:04

So while that might not fit his MO entirely, it's possible.

SPEAKER_04 45:10

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_05 45:12

So again, at this point, Charlie Brandt died in 2004. But people are still looking into other possible victims. And unfortunately, not much else has been released about that list of 26 deaths that they believe may be connected to him. And we may never know.

SPEAKER_02 45:31

Yeah, it's yeah, it's tough to know when he's already dead.

SPEAKER_05 45:34

Yeah, it really sucks that he went out that way because it would have been interesting to hear what he actually had to say. But that is the case of Charlie Brandt.

SPEAKER_02 45:45

Fuck that fucking guy.

SPEAKER_05 45:46

Yeah, this is a brutal case, I told you. It was fucking awful.

SPEAKER_02 45:50

Something's something weird about the way juvenile cases are sealed like that.

SPEAKER_05 45:55

You know, I don't think they would be today. I really don't. 1971 was a different time.

SPEAKER_02 46:01

Was this but this was still like this was serial killer era when people were freaking out about this shit and like satanic panic, right?

SPEAKER_05 46:08

It's a little early for it. 1970. So it's like, for example, Bundy doesn't start till 74. Gacy doesn't get caught for a few more years. So it was right at the beginning. So one kid going nuts and killing his family doesn't send up quite the same number of red flags. Not back then.

SPEAKER_02 46:27

So that makes sense. Yeah, I guess that is early.

SPEAKER_05 46:30

But my thing is, was he just obsessed with the niece Michelle? Or do you think maybe he had abused her at some point? I I I don't know. Because it's really weird that he like what the f I want to know what happened in those couple days.

SPEAKER_02 46:45

Yeah, and it's weird because it's like I don't I guess we don't know about the other potential victims if he had any sort of relationship with them because the people we know he killed were family.

SPEAKER_05 46:55

Right.

SPEAKER_02 46:55

And the other people seem to be random people, but but who knows?

SPEAKER_05 46:59

But my thing is like what happened in that house. So the first night they were drinking and arguing, and Michelle tells her friend not to come over. And then there are a couple days past where he visits family, and then instead of leaving, he kills them both. What I want to know what happened. And obviously, we're never gonna know.

SPEAKER_02 47:21

We'll never, never know.

SPEAKER_05 47:23

But it's just it's crazy to think.

SPEAKER_02 47:26

Yeah.

SPEAKER_05 47:27

Personally, I'm glad I've never been so obsessed with anybody that I wanted to do that kind of shit.

SPEAKER_02 47:34

No, it's also a weird kind of obsess that you would want to kill somebody.

SPEAKER_05 47:38

Well, that too, but like, and I guess if you were that obsessed with someone, why would you go and stay with that person with your wife?

SPEAKER_02 47:46

Well, I mean, people are fucking dumb.

SPEAKER_05 47:48

You're right, and he's a psychopath, so yeah, who knows?

SPEAKER_02 47:52

But right, we don't know that this woman, like, we don't know that she was comfortable being around him alone.

SPEAKER_05 47:57

That's true, too. It's just so fucked. I don't know. This case bothers me, and that's why I wanted to cover it.

SPEAKER_02 48:04

Yeah, yeah, it's really fucked up.

SPEAKER_05 48:06

Yeah. So I guess if you don't feel comfortable with a family member or anybody for that matter, you do not have to be alone with them. That's our message to the world.

SPEAKER_02 48:16

Amen to that.

SPEAKER_05 48:18

Fuck that. It's okay to be rude if you're uncomfortable.

SPEAKER_02 48:22

Absolutely. Cut people the fuck off if that's what you gotta do.

SPEAKER_05 48:27

If that's what you gotta do. Agreed. 100%. But uh on that note, anywhere near you. And on that note, thank you everybody for joining us again. Once again, I'm Janice Dead.

SPEAKER_02 48:38

And I'm Joyce Dead.

SPEAKER_05 48:40

And we'll see you next week.

SPEAKER_02 48:41

Bye.