A (6:56)
Yes. So we're gonna learn more about hopefully how all that happened this coming week. Hopefully some more answers will come about. But obviously it's a tremendous tragedy, not only these four young lives lost so brutally and so horrifically, but then you have a group of young men who are sort of, you know, also maligned and in, in some cases use lose many years of their lives to wrongful convictions. So it's a double tragedy. So this man, Robert Eugene Brashers, he is a serial killer. He's been linked to a number of other homicides. If you recognize his name, it's probably because several years back he was linked to a number of other murders and, and rapes. And so he's been out there for a while. But this is a new development that he's being linked to the yogurt shop case. So I thought it would be interesting. We're going to get into some of the other cases he was linked to. And I think though, before we get into it, like, who is this guy? I wanted to know, like, who's his family, what's his background, where's he from, what's going on? How does someone become like this? And what I found was pretty interesting, actually. I wasn't really expecting to find this much, but I did some research and I want to share this with all of you. So we're going to kind of go into his family background. And I found that his family had another murderer in it. And I think it's, it's interesting. So let's talk about it. So his parents were married on February 7, 1948. That was Nellie Louise McClelland of Newport News, Virginia, and a man named Doulas Woodward Brashers. And he was listed as being from Perrigold, Arkansas. And Robert Eugene Brashers was born on March 13, 1958 in Newport News, Virginia. And in terms of his parents, Nellie Brashers pre deceased him, she died on November 3, 1980 at the age of 50. She died in Newport News and it listed her as a Wilco department store former, you know former employee of them and a lifelong resident of the Peninsula. And she had a long illness and passed away in in 1980. And her obituary lists her husband for some reason is living in Corpus Christi, Texas, and her sons, Robert Brashers living in New Orleans, and her other son, Gary Dean Brashers, living in Huntsville, Alabama. So at some point, Woody Brashers, as the father is known, remarries a woman named Inez lovely Scott Brashers, and she dies on February 17, 1992. And that was in Glendale, Arizona. A Paragould Daily press article from March 17, 1995 has Woody Brashers Sr. Again, the serial killer's father says he's 71, he's living with a dog named Skipper, and he's moved back to Arkansas after traveling through 24 states with Inez. And it's his dog is named Skipper, and he's apparently the first possession that he and Inez had together. So hit list. His father is being born in I don't know if I'm saying this right, but Okene, Arkansas, and graduating from Perigold High School and then Virginia Tech University, and that he was a person who served in World War II, graduated high school through the Navy in 1943, and then most interestingly actually worked for a number of years with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, also known as NASA. So he worked there from 1963 to 1969 in Huntsville, Alabama. For those of you who are unfamiliar, Huntsville is where the Marshall Space Flight center is, or rather it's technically in Redstone Arsenal, but Huntsville, you know, basically the same area, but this is the largest NASA center. And he worked on the team that developed nuclear powered submarine technology stuff with aircraft carriers, partially responsible for the design of the Saturn 5B rocket. So he's an educated man. He's an engineer with obviously a pretty successful career from 71 to 92. He's listed as a contract engineer in the following states, Indiana, so close to home for us, New Mexico and Arizona. And also he apparently served in the Navy in the Korean War as well. He dies on April 13, 2004. And so he actually outlives his son, Robert Eugene Brashers. We'll get into what happened to him towards the end of this episode. But the thing is, Robert, Eugene and you know, I mentioned he's not the only murderer in his family. So I'm going to get into a story that kind of connects some of these different things with a different relative who actually killed somebody. So it's September 13, 1979, a man named Robert Hogan is the manager of Sandy Motors. And that's a used car lot along Highway 31 south in Decatur, Alabama. And two men come inside his office, and they're asking about a two 80Z Datsun automobile. It's around 3pm in the afternoon, and these two guys arrive together in a brown and beige Chevrolet Malibu. They are both young men. One looks a little bit older. The older one is bearded, wearing a straw kind of almost cowboy type hat. And in between their two visits, they come at 3, and then they come back at 3:15. In between these two visits, they actually call Hogan and say that they're ready to, you know, maybe make a purchase of this car. And they go into his office again, and then they pull a gun on Hogan. So they bind and gag him, and they put him on the bathroom floor. They take about $320 from him, and they also take the car keys for the Datsun and flee. So Hogan is able to untie himself after about 10 or 15 minutes, and he, you know, alerts authorities. So to give you a bit of a sense, Decatur is in Alabama's Morgan County. A portion of it is actually in Limestone County. So things kind of start going out towards Limestone county, so around Mooresville, which is nearby, Alabama Department of Public Safety. So they don't call them the state police, that's Alabama Department of Public Safety. And then there's the Alabama Highway Patrol. So Highway Patrol Trooper David Temple, you know, police are alerted that there's, you know, stolen cars out there. So he sees these two cars and, you know, there's this report of an armed robbery. So Temple begins following the cars, follows them for about two miles. He's waiting for backup, apparently, and he pulls up on the suspect on Highway 20 near Mooresville. And it's kind of unclear, depending on what you're looking at. It's either maybe in front of the Madison Manor Nursing Home or Mac Bedingfield General Store. The thing is, like, a lot of these articles were written as this was breaking, so I think they got some details confused. But either way, I mean, give you a sense of David Temple because he's important in this story. He, at that point, had worked for the Highway Patrol for four years. He had an infant daughter with his wife. He was originally from Michigan, and he had served in the United States army. And he previously worked at a Decatur motorcycle shop. He was big into citizens band radio. His nickname was Motorcycle Man. And he used to be an officer with the Huntsville Police Department, which ironically, was the same place where the guy who's pulling over. Used to work. So we'll come back to that. And Doug, here we have the Limu Emu in its natural habitat, helping people customize their car insurance and save hundreds with Liberty Mutual. Fascinating. It's accompanied by his natural ally, Doug Limu is that guy with the binoculars watching us. Cut the camera. They see us. Only pay for what you need@libertymutual.com Liberty Liberty, Liberty. Liberty Savings Ferry unwritten by Liberty Mutual Insurance Company Affiliates excludes Massachusetts. But he essentially, you know, he pulls them over and he's aware that this is a dangerous situation. So he actually gets out of his car with his gun drawn. But the driver of this car. So one of the robbers, the younger one, is driving the Chevrolet. And then the older driver with the straw hat is driving the Datsun. So the Datsun driver gets out. He's got a gun under his arm, his left arm, and fires twice, and he hits Temple and he is knocked to the ground. And the. The shooter gets out again and shoots him as he is attempting to get up. And then he drives away. So a citizen sees this and gets into the trooper's car and radios in about the shooting. Emergency response, you know, takes place, and they get Temple to Decatur General Hospital, but he's been shot multiple times with a.44 Magnum pistol and is declared dead on arrival. So then the robbers continue on, and they are spotted by Madison, Alabama policeman Edgardo Eliel Velez. And he's on patrol. He's aware that there are stolen car, a stolen car involved in a shooting. And he kind of tracks them down, and he finds this Datsun, like spun off into a cotton field. So he gets out and is approaching the car, but there's no one in the car because the man who shot Trooper Temple is actually hiding in the cotton field. And he stands up and then shoots Velez. So Velez falls down, but gets up and then he shot a second time. But at that point, the guy who shot Temple, his gun is empty. So the man who shot Temple, he wears apparently this almost belt with a scabbard with this really long knife inside. So he pulls out the knife and starts going over to stab Velez, who pulls his revolver and shoots and kills the guy. So the knife falls to the ground, the man dies. And Velez is in very serious condition, but is ultimately civilians kind of intervene to help him. And then he's rushed to the hospital. He ultimately survived. So one robber is dead and the other is a fugitive. Uh, the fugitive's name is David Edwin Ledbetter. That was the robber who got away. He was 22 years old. And they searched southern Tennessee and northern Alabama for him. He's pretty quickly caught and charged. And the man that was killed, the robber that was killed, was Duellis Woodward Brashers J Jr or Woody Brashers Jr so this is Robert Eugene Brashers, his older brother. Isn't that insane?
