Prisoner confesses to 25 years of killing

Man already serving life for murder of Colorado girl in 1991

Sara Burnett, Rocky Mountain News

Published July 28, 2006 at midnight

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At first, convicted killer Robert Charles Browne taunted investigators, sending letters about his murderous "ramblings" and a hand- drawn map marked with the number of people he claimed to have killed: 49 across nine states and South Korea, including nine in Colorado.

On Thursday, El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said authorities have reason to believe him.

The 53-year-old, already serving a life sentence for the 1991 murder of 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church, has given detectives enough information during the past four years to corroborate his role in seven other killings, including the 1987 strangulation of a Colorado Springs mother whose body never was found, Maketa said.

Browne pleaded guilty to that murder, of 15-year-old Rocio Sperry, and was sentenced to another term of life in prison Thursday .

Browne says he murdered for the first time in 1970 while serving in the U.S. Army in South Korea, then left a trail across the south, into Texas, the West Coast and, finally, Colorado, where he has been behind bars since 1995.

The claims, if true, would place Browne - a high school dropout with a penchant for young, petite women - among the most prolific of serial killers.

Disgust for women

Why he committed the crimes, however, remains a mystery.

Browne told investigators he liked to go "rambling" at night, and sometimes would encounter men and women in deserted areas whom he called "victims of opportunity."

In many cases, he had sex with the victims, which he said was always consensual.

"I think the word he used quite often was, 'They were more just opportunities,' " Maketa said.

"With the women that he murdered, he also claims those were more or less - 'The opportunity was there and I took advantage of it.' It's just how he viewed things."

But Browne also spoke often of his disgust for women, calling them "low . . . unfaithful . . . cheats" who "screw around on their husbands," according to a statement released by the sheriff's office.

"(It would be triggered by) my disgust . . . at the lack of morality . . . Women try to present themselves to be one thing, and then always prove to be something else," Browne is quoted as saying.

Browne likely got away with his crimes because he never spent much time with his victims before killing them and was adept at disposing of their bodies, Maketa said.

When he killed in the South, he often put the bodies in lakes and rivers. In the mountains, he would drop them off cliffs.

On at least one occasion - the murder of a 17-year-old topless dancer in a motel room near Houston - Browne said he cut up the body, put it in a suitcase and made two trips to a ditch to get rid of her, Maketa said.

Most of the victims Browne barely knew and in many cases, the details he provided police were so scant that they cannot verify his story.

In one case, Browne told investigators all he knew of his victim was her nickname - "Fuzzy."

Motive for confession unclear

His methods of murder also varied. Some people he strangled with his hands or a ligature such as leather shoelaces. Some of his victims he shot. He also used chemicals such as chloroform and ether, and stabbed victims using a knife, screwdriver or ice pick.

Detectives said they aren't sure why Browne decided to come clean about his crimes. It's possible he wanted to use the information to get things authorities provided him in exchange - medical care, novels or a cell to himself, for example.

In an arrest affidavit, authorities said Browne once asked hypothetically whether a person could be quickly put to death if he were to confess to another murder.

Browne also has expressed interest in having a book written about him.

But it still could be years before the full story is known.

The process of drawing information from the Louisiana native has been long and slow, Maketa and investigator Charlie Hess said. Browne is intelligent - his IQ is around 140 - and holds much, if not all, of the control, meting out sometimes vague information as he sees fit.

What authorities know so far, they said, is the result of relentless, exceedingly patient police work.

Browne flew largely under the radar until he was arrested for Church's murder in 1995.

The 13-year-old had gone missing four years earlier while baby-sitting her younger brother. Her remains were found two years after her disappearance in a mountainous area near Rampart Range Road, west of Colorado Springs.

Detectives pursued hundreds of leads in the case. But it wasn't until well-known investigator Lou Smit became captain of detectives that a nationwide search of fingerprint databases turned up a match to prints found at the Church home: Robert Charles Browne, a parolee released from a Louisiana prison after serving 10 months for burglary and motor vehicle theft.

Records showed Browne's parole had been transferred in 1987 to Colorado, where he lived a half-mile from the Church home.

Browne maintained his innocence after being charged, but eventually pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison.

Doubted at first

On March 30, 2000, Browne sent an unsolicited letter to the district attorney's office in Colorado Springs in which he wrote a kind of poem, implying he had killed others. It read, in part, "seven sacred virgins, entombed side by side, those less worthy, are scattered wide," and went on to taunt investigators with, "The score is, you one, the other team 48."

He also made reference to a white Trans Am and nine victims, presumably the number scrawled on a map that he indicated he killed in Colorado.

At the end of the letter, Browne said he did not want to be contacted.

When Browne wouldn't cooperate, investigators began to doubt his claims. The letter was filed away until two years later, when Smit began working on the cold case unit with Hess and Detective Scott Fisher.

The trio decided to try communicating with someone who might be a serial killer, Hess recalled Thursday. Smit suggested Browne - a hunch that was bolstered when the group discovered the 2000 letter.

Hess, a former FBI and CIA officer who now volunteers with the unit, wrote a letter to Browne in May 2002, explaining who the group was, its background and its suspicions.

During the next few years the two communicated, and Browne again mentioned a white car, this time a Grand Am, that was involved in a Colorado Springs case in 1987 or 1988.

Browne recalled that the victim was married to a soldier at Fort Carson. In 2005, he told Hess the location of the murder, that he stole a television from the woman's home, put her body in a Dumpster, and that her husband later found the car.

A search of 172 Pontiacs reported stolen around that time eventually turned up Joseph Sperry, who reported his wife missing Nov. 15, 1987.

Sperry, who is now living in Florida, told investigators he and his wife, Rocio, were having marital problems at the time of her disappearance. They had decided Joseph should take their 3-month-old daughter, Amie, to Florida to stay with his parents for a while.

Rocio dropped Joseph off at the airport and was supposed to pick him up when he returned. But she never showed.

According to Browne, Rocio Sperry would often come in to the Kwik Stop down the road from the couple's apartment, where he worked. She would talk about her marital problems, and when her husband left town, she let it be known she was home alone, Browne told investigators.

Browne said he suggested the two see a movie together.

After their date, he strangled her with his hands, dismembered her in his bathtub, put the pieces in trash bags and threw them in the Dumpster behind his apartment.

Rocio's body never was found, and until 2005, she was still listed as a missing person.

Joseph and Amie Sperry were in Colorado Springs for Browne's guilty plea Thursday. They sat at a table near the podium during a news conference Thursday afternoon and told reporters afterward that they were relieved.

It was for the Sperrys and the families of the other victims that the detectives pursued the case so vigorously, even though Browne already was serving a life term and the investigation was costly, Maketa said.

"For the friends and family of the victims, it answers many questions. More importantly, it brings about some sense of closure and, maybe, even in some cases, some vindication."

Twenty letters

Browne's accounts didn't stop with Rocio Sperry.

In all, he wrote more than 20 letters to investigators in addition to eventually meeting with them in person.

In one of the more detailed letters - described by detectives as "a windfall of sorts" - Browne took authorities on an imaginary road trip, in which he narrated several of his murders.

"We started out in Colorado Springs . . . " he began the letter, dated May 20, 2003. "From there we went to Flatonia (Texas)," a town Browne had referenced in earlier exchanges.

The letter continued on, through New Orleans - which he described as "very fertile grounds" - then Mississippi, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Washington, California and New Mexico. He described killing a woman in a hotel near the French Quarter, dumping two men in a swamp along the Alabama border, and a "male in the muck" in Oklahoma.

Detectives began contacting authorities in other states, and continued questioning Browne, who agreed in 2004 to meet with them in person.

The discussions and continued investigations have resulted in the guilty plea in the Sperry case as well as six other cases that Maketa said have been corroborated, as well as the earlier Church case.

They comprise three women in Louisiana - all killed in or around Browne's hometown of Coushatta - one in Arkansas and two in Texas.

Of the eight victims besides Sperry that Browne claims to have killed in Colorado, he has given details about only one, a woman he met at a Colorado Springs bar called Cowboys in 1991 or 1992. Investigators have dubbed her "The Cowboy Girl."

Browne said he spotted the tall, thin blonde "making the rounds" at the bar and picked her up later along Academy Boulevard, where he saw her hitchhiking.

The two went to another club before going back to his home, where they had sex and he strangled her, Browne said. He wrapped her body in plastic and kept it in a spare room for a few days before disposing if it off Gold Camp Road, near Cripple Creek.

Detectives have contacted area departments and reviewed missing person files from the time, identifying three who match Browne's description. Two have been located, while the third is still being investigated.

The remaining Colorado cases are more vague.

Browne said he shot a young couple at a rest stop along westbound Interstate 70 sometime around 1980, for example. But he couldn't say if the murders occurred in Colorado or Utah or describe the couple's car or the type of gun he used.

The Colorado Bureau of Investigation is looking into that case, according to the statement released Thursday.

Other law enforcement departments also are investigating information provided by Browne, and still could file charges against him.

Among them is the Criminal Investigation Division of the U.S. Army in South Korea, where Browne said he committed his first murder, breaking the neck of another soldier who had become "jealous of a whore."

Meantime, Browne remains in prison in Cañon City, where he has health problems and has told investigators he does not want to speak with the media.

"He dreads the day he becomes notorious," Maketa said.

burnetts@RockyMountainNews.com or 303-892-5343

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