Shraman Mitra
Investigation Discovery’s ‘Evil Lives Here: He Was a Good Man to Me’ follows the lives of Alvin “Bud” Brown and his wife, Jackie Brown. The episode chronicles the four gruesome murders Alvin was suspected of and portrays the harrowing ordeal Jackie Brown was forced to live through when her husband’s dark secret was revealed. Do you want to know more about this case and where Alvin and Jackie are now? Well, let’s find out, shall we?
Who Are Alvin “Bud” Brown and Jackie Brown?
Alvin Brown lived in Portland with his wife, Jackie Brown. According to Jackie, their marriage was going strong, and she felt as if her husband was the most caring and most loving person ever. She adored Alvin and never suspected that he was hiding such a dark and horrifying secret. To her, Alvin was a normal and caring family man who was the perfect husband, and she was devoted to him.
Jackie said that there were signs which showed her that Alvin was not the man she thought he was. There was an instance where Alvin’s brother visited her and told her not to marry Alvin as she did not know him that well and that Alvin was not a decent human being. Jackie said that Alvin’s brother was vague and did not provide any proof.
Since she was blindly in love with Alvin, she even refused to believe what his brother had to say and asked him to leave. Alvin also had a criminal past, and a month before the 1981 Portland murders, he was arrested on the charges of rape and sodomy. Authorities claimed that Alvin had raped and sodomized a 15-year-old high-school girl. After the girl identified him from a series of photographs, he was arrested and tried. Alvin was found guilty of the charges.
When a deadly string of murders gripped Portland in 1981, the whole city was terrorized and concerned about their safety. Though the police did everything in their power to bring the perpetrator to justice, they were unable to find any leads. The first victim to fall to an untimely and horrible death was Kimberley Stevens. She was just 17-years-old and on the cusp of adulthood when tragedy struck and wiped out her life. On May 8, 1981, her dead body was found near a church. An autopsy determined that she was raped before being killed.
The cause of death was claimed to be strangulation. The police soon understood that they were dealing with a serial killer when just ten days later, on May 18, 1981, Norene K. Davis was found to be dead. A 31-year-old mother of two children, her co-workers, claimed that she was called away from work on the day before by someone unknown. That was the last anyone saw or heard from her. Her body was found the next day, and the police determined that she too was raped before being strangled to death.
The month of May in 1981 seemed to be distressing for police as they had to deal with two other missing reports from the same area of Portland. The first report was filed on May 9 and stated that Melina Crist, a 17-year-old college student, was last seen on the Sylvania campus of the Portland Community College. The second report had to do with the disappearance of Sheila Burnett, who vanished on May 29, 1981. Both missing women were found to be deceased later.
Is Alvin “Bud” Brown Dead or Alive?
Alvin Brown died of natural causes in 2002. But it is pertinent to note that ever since the murders rocked Portland, the police had a suspicion that Alvin was somehow involved in them. He was also spotted near the crime scenes, but the police never had enough evidence to build a case against him. You see, Melina Crist, who was reported to be missing on May 9, was found to be dead when her body was discovered on November 17, 1983.
Two years later, skeletal remains were found in the backyard of a house in Tigard, Oregon. The police were able to identify the remains as the missing woman, Sheila Burnett. They also discovered that during the time Sheila disappeared in 1981, the house in question was rented by Alvin Brown. The most significant lead in the case came ten years after the row of murders. In 1991, a woman claimed that she was attacked on the freeway.
She said that someone assaulted her on the I-5 Freeway before throwing her off the overpass. The woman, though, survived and was able to identify Alvin Brown as her attacker. She was also able to provide enough evidence that supported her claim. After Brown was arrested, the police tested his DNA against DNA recovered from the Kimberley Stevens and Norene Davis murder scenes.
The results came back as a match, and police were sure of his involvement in the 1981 Portland murders. It was also reported that Alvin showed violent tendencies towards the police officers and even claimed that he was deranged, comparing himself to the fictional serial killer, Hannibal Lector. He was charged with robbery and theft and was sent to prison for the attempted murder of two women (one of them being the woman attack on the freeway). Alvin Brown was never convicted of any of the four murders that the police accused him of. He was sentenced to almost 69 years in prison. In 2002, Brown was still in jail when he died due to natural causes.
Where Is Jackie Brown Now?
Jackie stated that she had no idea of Alvin’s dark secrets and was stunned when Alvin was arrested from his home on Thanksgiving day in 1991. Jackie was taken aback and found it difficult to come to terms with the thought that her husband could be capable of murder and rape. After Alvin was arrested, national media kept broadcasting the news about the murders he was suspected of.
Jackie claimed that she initially cut herself off from all kinds of media during this time and refused to believe the negativity about her husband. However, Jackie and Alvin felt a disconnection in their life from the first time that he was arrested. She claimed that an emotional detachment made itself inevitable from that very day. Shortly after Alvin’s arrest in 1991, Jackie and her husband separated. She claimed that after standing up for them in their relationship, she felt cheated when Alvin was finally convicted of the heinous crimes, and thus, she left.
Jackie said that she was always his wife and remained committed to him in her mind until Alvin died. Having said that, she now focuses on the good memories of their lives instead of the horrifying events that marred their lives. She surrounds herself with happy pictures and happy memories to deal with the ordeal she to go through. Moreover, it is difficult to ascertain her current whereabouts since it seems as though she prefers to stay away from the limelight.
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