
Loading summary
Sleep Number Advertiser
Why choose a sleep number smart bed.
Anya Cain
Can i make my site softer can i make my site firmer can we.
Sleep Number Advertiser
Sleep cooler sleep number does that cools up to eight times faster and lets you choose your ideal comfort on either side your sleep number setting jd power ranks sleep number number one in customer satisfaction with mattresses purchased in store and online and now the more you buy the more you save on beds faces and more limited time for jd power twenty twenty five award information visit jdpower dot com awards check it out at the sleep number store or sleepnumber dot com today.
Anya Cain
Hi i'm anya and today we are going to be talking about an update in a case connected to a serial killer that we previously covered on this program content warning this episode contains discussion of murder rape including the murder and rape of children so today is january seventh twenty twenty six and today lexington police in kentucky just announced that they solved the nineteen ninety eight homicide of linda marie rutledge if you recall some of the murder sheets previous coverage you'll recognize this case because we covered it the reason we covered the murder of miss rutledge is because we believed at the time that it was linked to the serial killer robert eugene brashears who had just been arrested who had just been announced as the culprit of the nineteen ninety one yogurt shop murders in austin texas and today it's been confirmed that that was correct rutledge was believed to be one of his victims as well so we're going to get into all the information we have about this case right now this is breaking news and we'll get on with it my name is anya cain i'm.
Kevin Greenlee
A journalist and i'm kevin greenlee i'm.
Anya Cain
An attorney and this is the murder.
Kevin Greenlee
Sheet we're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting interviews and deep dives into murder cases we're the murder sheet.
Anya Cain
The yogurt shop murders and serial killer robert eugene brashears the solving the murder of linda rutledge okay so i think it probably makes sense to start at the beginning let's talk about the actual case the actual murder of miss rutledge.
Kevin Greenlee
How does that sound sounds like a.
Anya Cain
Good plan this is a horrible horrible crime just just to anybody who is listening if you know if you're not in the headspace this is pretty horrible so what occurred and what we previously reported was early morning hours of saturday november seventh nineteen ninety eight passing a passing motorist spots a fire at a business around seven am or seven thirty and the business is the nixon hearing aid center at one twenty one malibu drive number eight in lexington kentucky this is as you can imagine a hearing aid center they sell hearing aids that's their business the lexington fire department responds and puts out the blaze and then find a woman's body inside it's apparent from the get go that her injuries were not just from the fire but that she had been murdered and she was located at the back of the structure the person who had been supposed to be opening the store that saturday morning was missing and that was linda rutledge she was forty three and she'd last been seen at nine pm eastern on friday november sixth nineteen ninety eight at mister b's bar and restaurant on lane allen road in lexington so this is linda marie nixon rutledge she was working at the store but she was also the daughter of the owners of george and belma m nixon of winchester kentucky so she was there as a hearing aid specialist she had a son she was divorced and and she was a member of the church of the living god so she was found murdered and police believe she was killed the night before she was set to open the business not that morning and police couldn't officially say it was linda at first they got the autopsy though and was linda unfortunately her car was missing at that time the black nineteen ninety six pontiac grand am was later found abandoned behind an apartment building around ten pm that saturday night in the rear of one hundred thirty seven malibu so the coroner ultimately weighed in this is the fayette county coroner's office and said that linda had been murdered and was killed with multiple gunshot wounds then a fire was started and you know she did not die from the fire so yeah this case went unsolved and there was a lot of people interviewed police worked it hard they tried to solve it but unfortunately it went unsolved so this is where we jump to the present and this is from a press release that we just got from the lexington police department quote in july twenty twenty five detectives were contacted by the austin texas police department after they received a match from the national integrated ballistic information network nibin regarding the three hundred eighty shell casing that was recovered from the nixon hearing aid center the three hundred eighty shell casing was a match to the one that was located in austin in december nineteen the yogurt shop murders the three hundred and eighty spent shell casings from austin and lexington were examined by the kentucky state police forensics lab and preliminary comparisons revealed the spent shell casings came from the same firearm in addition to the ballistic evidence dna evidence from both cases was also a match in september twenty twenty five a sexual assault kid from miss rutledge was sent to dna labs international for testing and matched the profile from austin the suspect was identified as robert eugene beshears beshears has been deceased since january nineteen ninety nine if he were alive today he would have been arrested and charged with linda's murder end quote so they solved it so we first got kind of the indication that some what wasn't.
Additional True Crime Commentator
This case mentioned in the press conference when they first identified the yogurt chop.
Anya Cain
Killer that is correct so detective dan jackson is was the lead for austin on the yogurt shop murders that of course is the horrific quadruple homicide of four young girls amy ayers sarah and jennifer harbison two sisters and eliza thomas horrible case they were bound gagged shot amy ayers was shot with a three hundred eighty and the other girls were shot with a different caliber firearm and of course the three hundred eighty is the one that was used in the linda rutledge case too and so that was in nineteen ninety one december sixteenth sixth and so detective jackson mentioned that they got a hit in nibin to a kentucky case as well and you remember what i was doing we were watching that press conference live do you remember what i was i i think it was live or either live or.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Like very shortly after you were watching it live there was a reference to a related kentucky case and they mentioned that in that case they weren't quite ready to go forward publicly with what they had you may recall that the yogurt shop press conference happened pretty quickly after some leaks but they mentioned there was a murder in kentucky in i think they said the nineties they said.
Anya Cain
A kentucky city in nineteen ninety eight and had the similar hallmarks of yogurt.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Shop and anybody who knows you wouldn't be surprised the first thing you did is you went to newspapers dot com and even before the press conference ended you found this case and you said i think this is it and we ended up covering we did an episode.
Anya Cain
On the case yeah we did an episode on the case that day after immediately after our press conference on robert eugene brashear's episode and we speculated that this was it and we were correct and i actually you know we you know we we kind of had a pretty good sense that we were correct afterwards you know based on some conversations but we weren't leaked anything we just figured it out because when i saw a business a woman found in a burned shop i just that was so similar to what happened to those girls at yogurt shop that i just thought it had to be related and then we've had since you know a lot of interviews with different people in the know and and like like including deborah brashears who was the the perpetrator's daughter who's been kind of trying to form her own timeline and raise awareness of what happened here and the timeline also completely fit because in january thirteenth nineteen ninety nine beshears was tracked down by police for a warrant not to do with any of the murders but he was he holed himself up in a motel with his family in kennett missouri and then shot himself he died from those injuries on january nineteenth nineteen ninety nine so you know in terms of the timeline let me just go over this quickly just so people understand in nineteen in november twenty second nineteen eighty five in port saint lucie florida brashears shoots a twenty four year old woman named michelle wilkerson after rejects his sexual advances she survives and he is sentenced to twelve years but is released in nineteen eighty nine so great job with that florida april fifth nineteen ninety brashears goes into the apartment in greenville south carolina of twenty eight year old genevieve or jenny zatriki he bludgeons her to death and sexually assaults her and december sixth nineteen ninety one he goes to i can't believe it's not yogurt and kills those four girls brutally and in march eleventh nineteen ninety seven he goes to memphis tennessee ties up four people in a home there rapes a fourteen year old girl leaves them alive probably because it was a you know it was a suburban area i think with you know kind of densely populated and there would have been concerns about shooting a gun in the middle of the day in march twenty eighth nineteen ninety eight he goes into the rural portageville missouri home of the shearer family he ties up thirty eight year old mother sherry and her twelve year old daughter megan rapes megan and then shoots them both to death two hours later he drives to nearby dyersburg tennessee and shoots a twenty five year old mother of several children but she's able to fight him off and survives and then in april twelfth nineteen ninety eight he tries to break into the home of a woman in perigold arkansas he's able to bond out after being arrested and goes on the run going on the run he then is able to kill linda rutledge which is so unfortunate if he had not been bonded out in april on april for the april twelfth nineteen ninety eight crime he may have not been able to get out and kill linda so that that's deeply unfortunate so yeah this is i'm really excited about this that they were able to get this one solved because for a while there i was a little bit worried because i was like it's clearly this one why are they waiting for but obviously there was a lot of stuff going on behind the scenes so i mean i'm not blaming them it's just you know i was i was hoping that they would be able to give the rutledge rutledge's family answers right these are some other details that are included in this press release again this is breaking news we just got this email and i kind of freaked out and was like let's do an episode so they give some details on just the case so quote on november seventh nineteen ninety eight around seven forty am the lexington fire department was dispatched to the nixon hearing aid center in the hundred block of malibu drive for a structure fire when crews arrived at the scene they observed heavy smoke coming from the business inmate entry the fire was extinguished quickly and a female victim was located deceased in the back hallway end quote the fayette county coroner's office identified the victim as forty three year old linda marie rutledge misses miss rutledge's cause of death was determined to be multiple gunshot wounds to the head end quote again identical to yogurt shop identical to yogurt.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Shop i i think it's also important this press release praises the detectives who spent twenty seven years working on this case the press release says they were reviewing notes re entering evidence following up on leads and tips and researching how new technologies could help further the investigation end quote i think that's so important to remember that law enforcement some of these cold case detectives get really really involved in these cases and they care about them so deeply and it is their passion that we rely on to.
Anya Cain
Get these cases solved yeah and that's i think so important because when we talked with steve kramer a former federal bureau of investigation attorney who ended up being such a critical player in terms of getting the golden state killer cases solved as well as he also contributed as we learned to the yogurt chop case so so basically what dan jackson and austin police did and as well as you know folks with the prosecutor's office there they were able to get a brain trust going where they were able to get these experts who had solved these other tough cases with dna and what they did was they just sat them down and said what do we need to do what do we need to do to get yogurt chop.
Kevin Greenlee
Solved and i don't think until we.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Really dove into yogurt shop that i fully realized there's almost an unofficial network of these investigators who work together across the country on these cases helping bring justice to them it's a new year.
Anya Cain
That means you need a new wardrobe and you need one without breaking the.
Kevin Greenlee
Bank our sponsor quince makes refreshing your style easy their pieces are high quality and thoughtfully designed so you're not just buying clothes you're making a good investment in a garment that will last a long time we love their mongolian cashmere sweaters their silk dresses and their cute.
Anya Cain
Berets quince keeps prices down on these premium fashion staples by cutting out the middleman we've bought a lot of their clothing and we love the way these garments feel they hold up really well.
Kevin Greenlee
I love my quince wool and mongolian cashmere sweaters and my quince suede bomber jacket never been a big fashion guy but i wear all of these regularly and i love the way they feel the new purchase i'm most excited about.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Getting in the new year is their.
Kevin Greenlee
Cotton piquet knit overshirt i really like the way it looks it looks like an elevated version of what i usually wear and it seems great to help me layer and stay warm this winter i'm really excited to get it and.
Anya Cain
Try it on i'm excited for kevin to model it too when you support our sponsors you support us and we only support brands that we believe in we know firsthand that quince is the place to go for coats sweaters silk shirts dresses shoes home goods jewelry and more you can get more with quints because their prices for quality goods are significantly less than other brands refresh your.
Kevin Greenlee
Winter wardrobe with quints go to quince dot com msheet for free shipping on your order and three hundred and sixty five day returns now available in canada too that's q dash u dash i dash n c e dot com msheet free shipping and three hundred sixty five day returns quince dot com msheet if.
Anya Cain
You'Re like me you're so into true crime that you kind of get extra careful about stuff making sure you're not followed for instance staying situationally aware of and of course checking the locks on your doors and windows before bed better safe than sorry right because we all know bad stuff can and unfortunately does.
Kevin Greenlee
Happen well our sponsor simplisafe can help with your peace of mind we've trusted simplisafe's home security system for years traditional home security systems just don't cut it they only go off after someone's breaking in they are purely reactive safe safe.
Anya Cain
Safe simplisafe is proactive their ai powered cameras detect threats while they're still outside that's when live monitoring agents jump in they can address the intruder directly tell them they're on camera and that the police are coming they can even set off alarms and sirens and lights we.
Kevin Greenlee
Love simplisafe we used it when we were renters we used it when we bought our home it is so easy to set up and allows you so much flexibility it's reliable we've gotten threats over our reporting before so we take this stuff very seriously and with simplisafe we feel we're in great hands so.
Anya Cain
Protect your home with simplisafe and get fifty percent off any new system for a limited time just go to simplisafe dot com msheet that's simplisafe dot com msheet there's no safe like simplisafe and.
Additional True Crime Commentator
I want to note in this press release listen to this quote the lexington police department would like to thank the following agencies for their assistance and teamwork including the austin texas police department the texas office of attorney general the city of austin's forensic science department the kentucky state police forensic laboratory dna labs international the atf the fbi and the lexington fire department unquote this so obviously was the result of really solid teamwork from a number of professionals in number of agencies all over the country yeah and.
Anya Cain
It'S like you often see the cases especially in the historic serial killer cases you see issues around oh no like there's different jurisdictions and no one's talking to each other and it's a disaster and like i get that but you know i think this is kind of paving a new way forward as far as like we're all working together to get the same goals and frankly if it hadn't been for these different agencies uploading data to nibin or uploading dna or whatnot this would never have gotten solved so the fact that you had people just working this so tremendously in austin in lexington in greenville in missouri it's all been tremendous and it's really kind of like showing you how you get some of these complicated cases solved because for shears let's let's not forget some serial killers pray within their own little geographic space they're like in one city and that's where they you know for instance dennis rader right who called himself dennis find torture kill he was in park city he was in witcha and that was it as far as we know others like ted bundy they're mobile they're going around and this guy was certainly mobile he was going around to different states so that is very difficult to solve back in the day when you have a stranger homicide he's targeting random people and then he's leaving he does not have a real connection to some of these places he's just driving so i think that i think you need this kind of cooperation i think you need this kind of law enforcement collaboration in order to solve these and i just have been really impressed with the professionalism of the people who've worked on this and i think it's wonderful that you had people who kind of came back you know did golden state and then said let's do it again you know let's try to help and they'll tell you okay we didn't really help that much but you know that austin solved it on its own and austin you know worked with these other places but i think i think all of this makes me feel good because you're seeing these people of the expertise come back and continue to assist so yeah this is obviously a huge tragedy i think we mentioned you know the department in its release thanked the detectives who worked this thanked the forensic services unit thank the investigators these are people who worked this for twenty seven years i mean that's incredible i imagine for them this is a huge weight off their shoulders when you have a really horrifying case where someone is raped shot to death and then left in a building set on fire that is going to be a case that sticks.
Additional True Crime Commentator
With you yes and they also note in this release they have spoken with miss rutledge's family and they are asking for the media and the public to respect their privacy at this time i can't imagine what this must be like for them for all of these decades they haven't had the they haven't had linda and they haven't had the answers they deserve about who took linda from them and now to suddenly have it confirmed that miss rutledge was taken by this notorious serial killer i can't imagine what emotions they must be going through.
Anya Cain
This time yeah and i know for our part we're not going to be bothering them or reaching out to them i hope other people follow suit i understand that you know people want to get the comment from the family but it sounds like you know through the police department they're saying that they're not really ready to talk and when they are hopefully they'll go to an outlet that they trust to be respectful and they'll say their piece or if they never want to talk that's also okay different families want different things you have even in the same case you have different families doing different levels of media outreach and whatnot and i'm i'm certainly not going to add to their pain or stress by randomly reaching out to them that something will play it by ear if they if we see them doing more media maybe we will but other than that you know leave them alone it's it's really sad i can't imagine what it's like to be in a case like this and this is a case that i don't think necessarily got a lot of attention outside of the region of you know lexington i don't think this was like a notorious case but there are cases like this that are so heinous and you've just never even heard about them but then they can kind of turn out to be connected to something much bigger but yeah i'm like you know i commend.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Them the nineties weren't really that long ago but in a way it was a completely different era because in the pre internet age we all lived in our little silos in our different states and you could have these terrible crimes happening in another state and you just never heard about them nowadays with the internet with greater awareness of true crime i think these cases would get more.
Anya Cain
Attention i tend to agree and i'm gonna i'm gonna do i'm gonna go back to my press conference notes really quickly because i do want to talk a little bit about the modus operandi because when we interviewed deborah brashears again that is the daughter of this serial killer she is a wonderful person she fully accepts her father's guilt and is also trying to speak out about it so that she can help other people get answers because she and myself included we are convinced that there may be more cases we are convinced that when robert eugene brashears was out and about he may have been killing people he went to prison for some stints those are the times when i think he did not kill anybody other than that we have to be open minded so if you are aware of a case that occurred before nineteen ninety nine that before january of nineteen ninety nine that involved things like someone being bound with their own clothing rape fire arson occurring within a home occurring within a business that is something that reach out to us i mean we'll talk to you about it i mean i'll tell you if i think it's you know a possibility email me at murder sheet at gmail dot com like i will talk to you about this i and she really will i will i've gone the i've gone down the rabbit hole with this case guys here's the thing i mean he had a modus operandi that differed okay so like the murder of genevieve zatricky looks a lot different than a lot of the other ones but we do know i mean reading about signature killers i just recently read robert keppel's book on that he was the detective that hunted ted bundy and also the green river killer gary ridgeway so he talks about how serial killers evolve they learn what they like they learn what they don't like they learn this is what i need to do when they're sexually motivated like that they will kind of evolve and kind of go towards the the ideal of what they want in their attack in their approach in the stalking in the in the murdering in all the signatures they use so it it's not like a serial killer has to be doing the exact same thing every time but there are some parallels that we should look at when we are looking at this and the parallels are brashears again bondage was the thing he was often using ligatures or that were just basically like from the victim's clothing or from stuff nearby so convenience perhaps um maybe one instance where he brought his own but but again that that seems kind of a mixed bag some cases where he's covering up his crimes with arson the rutledge case and of course the yogurt shop murders others he wasn't doing that one thing i would say like cases that would not be as likely is where he's transporting the victim it seems like he was mostly attacking people in spaces and then keeping it confined so he's doing like the home invasions or coming into a business that's what he's doing he's not really like picking up someone on the side of the road and taking or transporting people from one place to another again mos can change it's not set in stone things can happen i'm just telling you what i think is the most helpful information as far as what we're looking at and then of course he also was known to use multiple weapons in the same attack that's exactly what happened in yogurt shop the three of the girls were killed with the twenty two caliber weapon amy was shot with the twenty two and then also shot with the three hundred and eighty then the three hundred and eighty was used on linda rutledge as well that's a gun he kept from nineteen ninety one to nineteen ninety eight and it is a gun that he is believed to have then committed suicide with in nineteen ninety nine so if this case is involving a three hundred eighty if there's if there's anything like this and let's remember i mean what deborah told me was that he was at one point in washington state so we're really looking at southern states as a focus he was we know he was in florida he was in louisiana he was in arkansas he was in missouri he was in kentucky he was in tennessee all of that texas obviously but he may have had links to arizona and if he was up as far as washington i think we can say he could have been anywhere we and we know he was in indiana he lived up in south bend for a year when he was a high schooler so anywhere he could get to in a car i think we need to be open minded to i mean i think we could probably rule out most of like hawaii and alaska but everywhere else in the contiguous united states we should be looking at mos and we should be looking at cases that are unsolved that involve some of these mos again most i don't ever want to get into the stupid true crime mindset of like everything's connected to this case i'm interested in let's not do that let's set that aside but let's be open minded and let's at least have the conversations that's all i want we're not not every case involving some of these signatures is going to be related to him at all nor should we assume that but we can at least say is this a possibility would he have been out at this time is there anything that would link him to this area those are things we should be doing because frankly i think places like lexington austin they're doing a great job they're putting resources into these cold cases but if something happened in a rural community somewhere or something just didn't get that attention or any number of factors we have the opportunity to perhaps look and say well could this be it and then maybe some things will fall together so if anyone has any informations about brashear and informations i'm like so excited i can't even talk if anyone has information about robert eugene brashears where he was what he was doing maybe maybe your dad was in jail for a stint with him i don't know like email us at murdersheetmail dot com if you have any cases that you're aware of that fit some of the hallmarks email us and you.
Additional True Crime Commentator
Know yeah we would very much like to see other families get the answers that the rutledge family have gotten today.
Anya Cain
And you know you can also let your local police know about this but i would i would almost you know i have a pretty good timeline going and i'm adding to it every day so i can tell you okay he was in prison so then you don't have to waste your time you know so like i i you know so the like let's let's i mean let's kind of monitor this i think this was i think this is a case where i i'm really often loathe to say oh it's a serial killer oh it's all connected but goodness knows a lot was connected here so i think we have to be open minded on this one i mean and just the amount of damage that this guy rod and frankly the amount of damage that him getting out on bond when he did i mean like that's so horrifying again like if i believe deborah told us that his father was largely the one bailing him out of these different legal troubles he got into and his decision to do that led to a woman getting killed so that's a horrifying thing to contemplate.
Kevin Greenlee
I think we're going.
Additional True Crime Commentator
To try to reach out to law enforcement in lexington try to get a bit more information about this but we just wanted to share this information as soon as we could because it was truly significant and each one of these cases when there is a solve it doesn't bring back the victim but it does give answers which is so important.
Anya Cain
It is so important oh alabama that's another case that's another state that he was connected to for a time i know the one that haunts me right now is deborah talked about how she heard from family members that her dad made some kind of comment about perhaps carjacking a woman up in indiana and keeping the car now of course that's a situation where you could carjack somebody and just let them out and let them live that doesn't necessarily mean there's a murder and frankly if there's just a carjacking that occurs then that's not necessarily going to make the news so that would be impossible to research if that's the case if there's a car and then he and so his claim was also that robert eugene beshears had an older brother named duellis woodrow brashears junior who was also apparently a bad egg and also not even just apparently that guy murdered a alabama state trooper named david temple in in the seventies so i mean he was killed in a shootout with police he was also a criminal and he claims they did this carjacking again that doesn't necessarily result in a fatality it doesn't result necessarily in a case that we can track down and also he could just be lying or like joking around or saying something happened when it happened in a different less crazy way but if that is true if that is true that if that is true and it also resulted in a disappearance or a homicide and the car was never located for all my indiana listeners that's something we need to be also thinking about because if that's the case then what case is that i have my ideas but i'm not going to say what i have yet because i don't think that would be responsible i have some ideas but i think we need to be looking i mean indiana would be in his path if he was up in kentucky he could have easily gotten to indiana and we know he lived in south bend for a year so i don't know we just need we need to be looking at these i think if you are somebody who enjoys research hop on there be looking for arson be looking for ligatures with their own clothing be looking for some keywords associated with some of the modus operandi of this killer and you could possibly be uncovering things that are relevant and if not then maybe you just learn about some interesting cases that you wouldn't have heard about otherwise but yeah this is one where i'm gonna actually be like let's try to sleuth this out normally i don't encourage that but this is one i feel like it could actually be helpful what do you think am.
Additional True Crime Commentator
I crazy no i think it's very.
Anya Cain
You'Re very accurate yeah thank you i can't believe this though wow i mean this happened in nineteen ninety eight and they solved it that's amazing and yeah again kudos to the lexington police department and for everyone else who worked on the yogurt shop and all the brashears cases and kudos to debra for being so open about this stuff and trying to help get a timeline down i really feel like this is one of those cases that it's the worst of humanity because of what this man did to these people and the torture and the horrific pain he put all of his victims through and just all of this is so sick but at the same time you're also seeing the best of humanity of all these people coming together and saying let's figure this out finally the only regret i think i would imagine a lot of people have is that he is not alive to be held accountable for what he did he got off easy but yeah thank you thank you all so much for listening and yeah thank you for putting up with our breaking news format thanks.
Kevin Greenlee
So much for listening to the murder sheet if you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover please email us at murdersheetmail dot com if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime please report it to the appropriate authorities.
Anya Cain
If you're interested in joining our patreon that's available at www dot patreon dot com murdersheet if you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests you can do so at www buymeacoffee dot com murdersheet we very much appreciate any support special thanks to.
Kevin Greenlee
Kevin tyler greenlee who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web at kevintg.
Anya Cain
Dot com if you're looking to talk with other listeners about a case we've covered you can join the murder sheet discussion group on facebook we mostly focus our time on research and reporting so we're not on social media much we do try to check our email account but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages thanks again for listening.
This episode covers the breaking news that the 1998 murder of Linda Marie Rutledge in Lexington, Kentucky, has been solved. The case has been linked definitively to serial killer Robert Eugene Brashers, who was also recently identified as the perpetrator of the infamous 1991 Austin Yogurt Shop Murders. The hosts walk listeners through the developments, evidence, and investigative breakthroughs that connected these crimes, as well as the broader implications for serial killer investigations and collaboration between law enforcement agencies.