The secret serial killer
Victims Michelle and Teri
Saturday 19th January 2008
Family — it's the most important thing in the world, isn't it? Well, mine certainly was to me. I had a husband, Bill, 60, and two grown-up kids, Michelle, 37, and Sean, 34, who I adored. Not to mention four fantastic sisters, Pat, 60, Marty, 58, Claudia, 55, and Teri, 46. We all lived miles apart, but we were always helping each other out.
And it was a trait I'd passed on to my children. Back in 1998, Hurricane Georges had hit the Big Pine Key area of Key West, Florida, where Teri and her husband of 14 years, Charles Brandt, 47, lived. So my daughter, Michelle, said they could come and stay at her house 300 miles away, in Orlando, Florida.
Single with no children, Michelle was a successful career woman. She had a great job as sales manager for a TV channel and owned a gorgeous four-bedroom house with a pool.
'You must be so proud of her,' Teri said.
But it wasn't Michelle's salary or success that I was most proud of. It was
her kind heart. She'd do anything to help her family. So, when another hurricane threatened, in early September 2004, she didn't hesitate to help Teri and Charlie again.
'It'll be fun having them to stay,' Michelle said, when I rang her that Saturday after breakfast.
A few days later, on 11 September 2004, I was just wondering if her aunt and uncle had arrived, when she phoned.
'They're not here yet,' she told me. 'I'm just out doing a bit of shopping.'
'I'll leave you to it, then,' I smiled.
'Love you,' she replied.
A few hours later, listening to the weather forecast, I rang Teri.
'Are you on your way yet?' I asked. 'According to the news, the hurricane's only a few hours away.'
'Don't panic,' she laughed. 'We're in the car now.'
At 9pm that night, a news broadcast came on.
'Evacuation of the Key West coast has been lifted…' it said.
'Typical,' I said, ringing Michelle.
But it went to voicemail. She must be busy with Charlie and Teri, I told myself.
Normally, Michelle would get straight back to me, but she still hadn't rung two days later. Then Marty rang, saying she couldn't get hold of Teri, either.
'I'll call Michelle again,' I said.
She didn't answer, so I rang her friend, Debbie Knight, 37, who lived near Michelle's house.
'I tried her last night,' she said. 'But she didn't call back. I'll go and see if she's OK.'
'I hope everything's all right,' I fretted to Bill, feeling uneasy.
Five minutes later, Debbie rang back. She was outside Michelle's house with her spare key.
'It's not working. I'll go around the back, then ring you,' she said.
I waited impatiently until Debbie called back. The minute I picked up the receiver, I knew something was wrong.
'I can see through the garage door. There's a man hanging from a bed sheet in the garage,' she gibbered. 'I've called the police and they're on their way.'
The phone went dead, and I became hysterical. Who's the man hanging in the garage? Is it Charlie? If it is, where are Michelle and Teri?
The next 20 minutes were the longest of my life. Bill and I were out of our minds with worry. Then, the police rang.
'We've found the bodies of two women and a man at Michelle's house,' an officer told me.
I screamed as he confirmed they were Michelle, Teri and Charlie.
'We're coming straight down,' I sobbed, but the officer explained it would take at least 48 hours before I'd be allowed in the house. As I put down the receiver, my head was spinning. If Charlie was hanging, that suggested suicide. Had he killed Teri and Michelle first?
'He couldn't have,' I wept to Bill.
We'd known Charlie for 18 years, and although he and Teri lived a 14-hour drive away from our home in Durham, North Carolina, we saw them a few times a year. He was a quiet, down-to-earth bloke, who had always got on brilliantly with Michelle. Surely he wasn't capable of murder?
In the following 48 hours, Bill and I broke the news to the rest of the family. Sean, Michelle's brother, was heartbroken.
'I can't believe it,' he wept. 'Why?'
We were all asking the same thing. And it still hadn't sunk in as Bill and I drove to Seminole County Sheriff's Office, in Florida. Officers were still at the scene, so it wasn't until 17 September, on what would have been Michelle's 38th birthday, that the police told us what had happened.
'Teri was stabbed nine times in the chest,' an officer said. 'Michelle was stabbed through the heart with a kitchen knife, then her body was cut up.'
Too shocked to cry, Bill and I stumbled back to the car. My sister was dead and our beautiful daughter had been mutilated. It didn't bear thinking about.
Then a vehicle pulled up. It was Charlie's sister, Angela Brandt, 51. We'd never met her before, but before we had a chance to talk to her, she went over to one of the police officers and spoke to him. Then, the officer called us back into the briefing room.
'There's something you should know about Charlie's past,' he said slowly. 'When he was 13, he shot his mother dead. She was seven months pregnant at the time.'
He had also shot and injured his late father, Herbert.
'Charlie?' I gasped, stunned. He'd been part of our family for years.
How the hell hadn't we known about his past? That night, me, Bill and Sean, who'd flown from his home in Woodside, California, to be with us, talked into the early hours. None of us could believe big, cuddly Charlie was a killer.
The following day, we went to the undertaker's, but the police wouldn't let me see Michelle. That's when I discovered the gruesome details of her death. She'd been stabbed once in the chest, and her head cut off and placed beside her on the bed. Her left leg had also been hacked off at the hip. Sickest of all, her breasts and heart had also been removed.
'Oh, Michelle,' I wept, choking back a horrified sob.
I just wanted to hold her and tell her I loved her. But Charlie had destroyed everything.
Bill and I thought the devastating pain couldn't get any worse, but the shocks kept coming. First, Charlie's sister claimed Teri had known all about his past.
'No way,' I fumed. Teri would never have stood by a killer.
Later, we found out more from the police. Charlie was never charged with killing his mum because of his age. Instead, he'd spent just 13 months in a mental institution. In the years that passed, he'd changed his original name, Carl, to 'Charlie' and somehow, his appalling crime had disappeared from his records. It really was too much to take in.
Finally, on 19 September, we held a memorial service at a funeral home in Florida for Teri and Michelle, and a church mass the following day. More than 400 friends and family turned up. As I stood up and said a few words, I felt as if my heart was about to break.
'We loved Michelle so much,' I wept. 'She was very special.'
After the funeral, Bill, Sean and I didn't know how we'd ever go on. We started seeing a counsellor, and Bill and I moved to Rocklin, California, to be near Sean. Police were now linking Charlie to other unsolved murders. The first was a woman called Sherry Perisho, 38. She'd been found in July 1989, floating under a bridge in South Pine Channel, Monroe County, Florida, just months after Teri and Charlie moved to the area. Like Michelle, her heart had been removed and was never found. The second was Darlene Toler, 35, whose body was found stuffed in a bin bag by the Miami-Dade highway in 1995.
Although police are convinced Charlie murdered them, the cases still haven't been solved. But it seems clear we had a serial killer in the family.
Bill and I are determined no other family should go through what we have. We're fighting for a change in the law, so crimes can't just vanish without a trace from people's records. Our campaign has been featured in a documentary, and at
a conference in Chicago, so we are succeeding in raising awareness.
It won't bring Michelle or Teri back, but if it spares anyone else our heartbreak, then their deaths won't have been in vain.
You can find all stories older than four weeks IN FULL in our Pick Me Up Story Library. Just click here to browse or try:
Whatever happened to Karen Ross, whose daughter Rosie was stabbed to death?
Stalked by an arsonist