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Quietly resonating through the years, Jan. 3, 1971, would surface like a horrid omen in the shadow of the hurricane, as the tempest inside Charlie Brandt once again stirred, forcing his dad and sisters to face a tragic truth: Little Charlie Brandt – who loved his parents and still shot them; who told police he was somehow forced to do it – had not disappeared with the passing years.
Police: Did you get any enjoyment when you shot your parents?
Charlie: No. I didn’t want to. That’s the thing, because I loved my parents. We were happy.
Charlie spent a year in an Indianapolis mental hospital after the shooting. When he was released, his father, Herbert Brandt, took a leave of absence from his job at Fort Wayne’s International Harvest plant and moved his family to a little house in Ormond Beach, Fla., the Brandt’s longtime vacation spot north of Daytona Beach.
After his hospital stay, Charlie seemed more outgoing, social, relaxed.
It would be a time of adjustment for the family, and for Herbert Brandt, a time to move on.
Although he would later settle in Ormond Beach, after a year in Florida, Herbert Brandt remarried and moved with his two youngest girls – Jessica and Melanie – back to Fort Wayne, to resume his Harvester job.
Charlie, 16, and Herbert Brandt’s oldest child, Angela, 18, remained in Florida. Angela moved out on her own, and their grandparents arrived from Germany to stay with Charlie as he attended high school.
After graduating in 1974 and earning a two-year degree from a community college, Charlie became an electronics technician, a radar specialist.
As the years passed, distance grew between Charlie Brandt, the troubled kid who killed his mom, and Carl Brandt, the successful professional.
Charlie’s education led him to several good jobs. By April 1985 he was working at the Ford Aerospace and Communications Service, Electronic Warfare Range in Astor near Daytona Beach when he met Theresa Helfrich on a blind date.
Charlie had girlfriends over the years. But Teri – then a manager of a retail store in Daytona Beach – was special. He wanted to marry her.
Charlie’s past was about to clash with his future, and he needed Angela’s help.
Should I, he asked his sister, tell Teri about what I did?
His family never believed Charlie understood the enormity of what he did.
Angela held nothing against her brother, but after becoming a mother in 1979, she didn’t want him spending the night in her house, either. Clear in her mind was that Sunday in 1971 when shots roared like firecrackers. and Charlie ran into her bedroom pointing a gun. If he hadn’t emptied it shooting their parents, he might have killed her, too.
Police: If your sister would have gotten in your way that night, you think that you would have killed her?
Charlie: It’s hard to say. Probably – anybody.
Like her father, Angela talked around the subject. As she sat on her couch and the tears began to pour, Angela, then 30, leveled with her brother.
Yes, tell Teri. If you do and she doesn’t marry you, then you’ll just have to live with that. If you don’t, somehow, sometime she might find out and that’s not going to go over well.
OK, Charlie said, I’ll take your advice.
Charlie and Teri were married Aug. 29, 1986. No family members were invited.
The couple settled in the Keys, where Charlie worked as a radar technician. They built a 1,000-square-foot home on Big Pine Key and lived on the water. They were Piners, as residents called themselves, and big Jimmy Buffet fans.
To family and friends, life seemed good. Charlie and Teri traveled, boated and fished together, and even made each other’s lunch. They did everything together.
But trouble struck their tropical paradise.
In July 1989, just months after the couple moved to Big Pine Key, the body of Sherry Perisho was found floating face down under a bridge 1,000 feet from the Brandt’s Big Pine Key home. Fishermen had snagged her remains.
Perisho, 38, lived in a small boat and had been seen riding her bike earlier that day. She had been in the water no longer than 12 hours. Divers found her throat slit, and, with a surgical incision, her heart removed.
By 1993 puzzling phrases began to pepper Teri Brandt’s daily planner: “Charlie a little depressed,” “started to talk things out – talkative time a bit emotional,” “Charlie called very emotional,” “Charlie had a rough day,” “weird talk and not a good night.”
Marital problems? Stress from day-to-day matters? Work? Something darker?
In November 1995, along a Miami-Dade County highway that Charlie would have used to get in and out of the Keys, the mutilated body of Darlene Toler, a 35-year-old prostitute, was discovered in a plastic bag. The head and heart were missing.
There was a Charlie Brandt that friends and family didn’t know. A Charlie who fantasized about death, who liked to visit Web sites depicting female autopsies with living models made to look dead. He used Internet search terms like “dead women autopsies,” “disembowelment,” and “dark fantasies.”
Police: “Why did you get the gun at this time?”
Charlie: “I can’t really remember. I felt sort of weird. Maybe it was something I saw on TV. I saw ‘Chamber of Horrors.’ This guy sort of liked chopping people.”
When Herbert Brandt’s second wife died in March 2001, Charlie stayed with his father for a few days. A nice gesture, thought Jessica, one of Charlie’s younger sisters. All three siblings reunited for the somber event. But Angela would remember the reunion with a bit of trepidation. Charlie didn’t meet her gaze. He wouldn’t look her in the eye.
As Florida’s summer of hurricanes came to an end in 2004, Angela would have little doubt why.
In the wake of Hurricanes Charley and Frances, Ivan would kill 68 people in the Caribbean before threatening the Keys. Residents were told to evacuate Sept. 9, 2004.
Jessica, who lived near their father in Ormond Beach, called her brother to check in.
We’re packing up to leave, Teri told her. We’re staying with my niece, Michelle Jones, near Orlando. Maybe we’ll see you this weekend.
Charlie and Teri arrived at Jones’ house Saturday, Sept. 11. On Sunday, Charlie called his dad about noon and said he and Teri were in Orlando and would like to come by. They arrived about 2 p.m.
The three made bread, drank some beer and laughed for a couple of hours before heading to Jessica’s house for a lasagna dinner. Charlie took pictures. He and Jessica talked to their two other sisters by phone.
During the call, Angela, an hour’s drive away, asked to meet Charlie the next day for a visit.
Sorry, I have plans, Charlie told her. Maybe next time. Good talking to you again, Angie.
As the evening came to a close, Charlie held his dad and Jessica tightly. A hug and pat on the back was routine for Charlie, but this was longer, more intense. Jessica and Herbert both noticed.
After saying their goodbyes, Charlie and Teri left for Michelle Jones’ house.
Police: Were you happy with your family?
Charlie: Yes.
Police: Had a nice family?
Charlie: Yes. Other kids wished their family was like ours.
Jones, 37, an advertising executive with the Golf Channel, lived in a four-bedroom house with a pool and screened-in porch in Maitland, a city of 12,000 north of Orlando. A community with plenty of sunshine and little crime.
Charlie hadn’t wanted to evacuate. Be prepared and stay home, was his motto. And at Jessica’s house Sunday, he was pressing to leave for home the next day. The hurricane had already gone around the Keys and was heading up the middle of the Gulf.
But something changed.
Charlie had a fondness for Michelle. Maybe that was it. She could have been a model, Charlie thought. He talked about her at work. Her name is Victoria, he told a co-worker, Victoria’s Secret.
On Monday, Teri told one of her sisters by phone that she was displeased Charlie wanted to stay another day.
By Tuesday, Jessica assumed Charlie and Teri were home or heading that way. She e-mailed them for a bread recipe Wednesday, sure they were back by then.
But Wednesday night the couple’s Outback was still parked in Michelle’s driveway. Two newspapers, still wrapped in plastic, lay in the front yard. A black mailbox left of the front door was stuffed with mail.
A midnight call that night jolted Angela awake.
I have really bad news, her father said. Bodies were found at Teri’s niece’s house. Something bad has happened. I just feel it.
Angela knew the feeling. She’d felt it before. But there must be some mistake. She finally fell asleep two hours later refusing to believe it.
Police got the call at 7:43 Wednesday night. It would take them two days to inventory Michelle Jones’ home. They began in the living room.
Two canvas travel bags and a blue Coleman cooler containing water and juice bottles sat against a wall. A photo box with a drop of blood on the lid lay on a coffee table. A wine glass sat on an end table.
Slumped in a sitting position on the far right end of a couch and wearing only a yellow T-shirt was Teri Brandt. She had been stabbed in the chest several times.
Down the hall in the master bedroom the body of Michelle Jones lay on the bed. She had been stabbed once in the chest and decapitated, her head placed next to her body. Her left leg was detached at the hip, her breasts and heart removed and left on the bed. Two bloodstained kitchen knives were nearby.
Scattered on the floor, cut through with a knife, were assorted panties and bras – Victoria’s Secret.
This was no aberration.
Before changing his bloody clothes and leaving them on the master bedroom floor, and with the precision of someone who had done this before, Charlie Brandt spent a great deal of time with Michelle. Behind a bedroom door at his home in the Keys was a female anatomy poster with the left side exposed to the skeleton.
The ritualistic nature of the killing matches the ones in Big Pine Key and Miami-Dade County, plus 26 others with similar characteristics found in an FBI database.
Charlie’s work included travel and provided him the opportunity. A Fort Wayne grand jury three decades before cautioned that 13-year-old Charlie might kill again.
Carl “Charlie” Brandt, serial killer.
Police: “Why did you get the gun originally, Charlie?”
Charlie: “It’s sort of a, like I was programmed or something, just inside of me. I was just forced to do it.”
How many slayings and what made Charlie Brandt snap, might never be known.
Inside Michelle Jones’ garage, among the tools, outdoor supplies and Christmas decorations; between a blue Mazda Miata and a black Acura sedan, a yellow bed sheet swung from the wooden rafters above. Hanging from it by the neck was Charlie, dressed in a white polo shirt and blue shorts, his legs dangling 2 feet above the floor. A 6-foot metal stepladder stood within reach.
Why?
Two days after the grisly discovery, Angela sat outside a police station struggling with the truth. Inside, her sister Jessica vainly attempted to explain her brother’s actions.
Searching for a reason, Jessica mentioned that the mother she knew only through the eyes of a 3-year-old had died in a car accident.
In 33 years, Herbert Brandt never told his youngest daughters that their brother killed their mother.
Angela – who heard the shots, who listened to her brother’s cries of betrayal, who encouraged him to be truthful with Teri – also bore the pain of the past.
Through police interviews with Herbert, Jessica and Angela Brandt, that past would be exposed.
But whether Teri Brandt knew is impossible to say. Her family believes Charlie never told her.
Angela is unsure. Charlie said he did.
In welcoming Teri to the family, Angela had called her a special person.
Charlie told you about himself, and you married him anyway, she said.
Maybe Teri took it as a joke. She smiled and gave Angela a hug.
Good, thought Angela. She accepts him. They’re going to live happily ever after.
rshawgo@jg.net
Acknowledgments
This story makes extensive use of police interviews with Carl “Charlie” Brandt and his family.
It is based on Allen County Sheriff’s Department records from 1971, including transcripts of interviews with Charlie, his father, Herbert, and sister, Angela.
Further information was provided by Allen County Sheriff Jim Herman, who was new to the department when Charlie killed his mother in 1971, and Capt. James Quinn, who was first on the scene.
Also used were transcripts of interviews with Herbert and Angela Brandt and Charlie’s younger sister, Jessica, conducted in September 2004 and provided by the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office, Sanford, Fla. A 35-page timeline of Charlie and Teri Brandt’s financial and personal records also was used.
Further background was gathered through phone interviews with investigator Rob Hemmert of the Seminole County Sheriff’s Office. Hemmert is lead investigator of the Teri Brandt and Michelle Jones slayings. Seminole County Sheriff Donald Eslinger also was interviewed.
Accounts of two of the deaths Charlie Brandt is suspected of committing – Sherry Perisho and Darlene Toler – came from a 1989 Monroe County, Fla., sheriff’s department report, in Perisho’s case, and from the Orlando Sentinel newspaper.
Phone messages left by The Journal Gazette for Herbert, Angela and Jessica Brandt seeking comment were not returned. Hemmert said the family has rejected all interview requests from the media.
After the September 2004 deaths of Charlie and Teri Brandt and Michelle Jones, their families issued a brief statement through the sheriff’s office. It reads: “Like everyone, we struggle to understand why.”
Postscript •James Quinn, working traffic patrol for the Allen County Sheriff’s Department, was first officer on the scene of the Jan. 3, 1971, Brandt shooting. He is now a captain on the force. •Lt. Daniel Figel interviewed Charlie Brandt the day after he shot his mother. Figel was Allen County sheriff from 1982 to 1990. He is now retired. •Richard J. Dunne, a sergeant then, and Gerald L. Hall, a lieutenant, interviewed Charlie Brandt in 1971. Both are retired. •Rob Hemmert, lead investigator for Seminole County, Fla., Sheriff’s Office, continues to trace connections Charlie Brandt might have had in past Florida slayings. He currently is pursuing Brandt’s 35-year-old medical records from Indiana. •Charlie Brandt’s father, Herbert, 74, and sisters, Angela, 50, and Jessica, 39, live in Florida. His youngest sister, Melanie, 37, lives in Missouri.
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