Killer Heels: How One Pair of Shoes Shaped the Life and Crimes of Jerry Brudos
- Amelia Lenz
- Sep 23, 2024
- 11 min read
During 1968 and 1969, Jerome ‘Jerry’ Brudos killed and defiled the bodies of four women and attempted to abduct at least two others. When the police searched his home, they were prepared to find any manner of strange and horrifying things, but what they found baffled them. Jerry Brudos' attic contained boxes of stolen high heels and women’s undergarments. This fascination with women’s fashion and high-heeled shoes earned him the moniker “The Shoe Fetish Slayer,” which is how he is remembered today. Brudos was reportedly an inspiration for the serial killer character in J.K. Rowling's novel, Troubled Blood (Daily Mail), and Ted Levine’s portrayal of Buffalo Bill in Silence of The Lambs (Hough). He was also played by Happy Anderson in the Netflix series Mindhunter (IMDb). However, there is always a common focus of discussion about Jerry Brudos – and other serial killers – and it is a simple one: why? Why was he so obsessed with women’s clothes and shoes? Why did he hate women as much as he was fascinated by them? Why did he kill those girls? It may boil down to a single incident and a single set of shoes. Jerry Brudos, “The Shoe Fetish Slayer,” was intrinsically shaped and defined by a pair of black high heels and the sexual and gendered expectations that they represented.
Born on January 31, 1939, Jerome ‘Jerry’ Brudos, was the second child of Eileen and Henry Brudos. The family moved frequently, and Jerry and his older brother Larry switched schools often as a result. His older brother was obviously favored by their mother, and Eileen Brudos ran their house with an iron fist and a sharp tongue. Brudos was not particularly close to his father, Henry, either, but he certainly preferred his father to his verbally abusive mother.
Young Jerry was a shy awkward child. He was regarded as a loner not just because of his frequent moves but also because he was a sickly child who often missed school. He was not particularly bright, but he showed promise as an electrician. To an outsider, he seemed like an unremarkable child, and he grew into, what seemed like, an unremarkable adult.
When he was twenty-three years old, Brudos met seventeen-year-old Darcie Metzler. Though her parents disapproved of the match, the couple was allowed to marry after Darcie became pregnant with their first child, Megan, who was born in 1962. The pair had a second child, Jason, in 1967. At work, Brudos presented himself as a solid family man. He did not smoke or drink. He never partook in conversations about women or sex. His coworkers and wife were shocked when Brudos admitted to the murder of Linda Slawson, Jan Whitney, Linda Salee, and Karen Sprinker.
Looking back, however, it is hard to see how no one saw the storm that was Jerry Brudos coming. Brudos showed a propensity for violence starting at a young age. As a young boy, he dug tunnels and pits near his home and imagined keeping women and girls trapped in them. The idea of exerting power over women excited him, though his sexual education was severely lacking until his late teenage years. Around the age of sixteen or seventeen, Brudos began to have violent sexual fantasies about women and girls, and he quickly started acting on them. At first, he only stole women’s underwear from clothing lines or nicked shoes from neighboring houses. Then, during the summer of 1955, Jerry held an eighteen-year-old neighbor girl at knifepoint and took nude photos of her. The girl did not come forward until he was arrested in April of 1956 – after he offered a seventeen-year-old girl a ride in his car, drove to a secluded area, and beat her viciously. He was interrupted by a couple who lived nearby and called the police. After this event, he was committed to Oregon State Hospital, where he stayed for eight months. At the time of his release, doctors decided that he was not particularly dangerous. One can only imagine how the world might have been different if Brudos had not been released from Oregon State Hospital.
On January 6, 1968, Jerry Brudos murdered Linda Slawson, an encyclopedia saleswoman, before performing multiple necrophilic acts on her, freezing her severed foot to preserve it as his own personal shoe model, and tossing her body in a river. She was only nineteen years old.
About eleven months later, Brudos strangled and defiled the body of a twenty-three-year-old University of Oregon student named Jan Whitney after her car broke down.
Then, on March 27, 1969, Jerry Brudos, dressed in women’s clothing, abducted and killed nineteen-year-old Karen Sprinker. He took her from a parking garage on her way to meet her mother for lunch. When her body was recovered from the Long Tom River, her breasts had been cut off.
Next, on April 21, 1969, Brudos confronted Sharon Wood in a parking garage at her workplace with a pistol. She screamed and fought against the man, biting down on his thumb, before the fight was interrupted by the appearance of a Volkswagen Bug – causing Brudos to panic and run. Sharon Wood was left battered and traumatized but alive.
The very next day he failed to kidnap fifteen-year-old Liane Brumley on her way to Parish Junior High. The girl was able to yell for help from a neighbor and pull away. She would later identify him and the car he had been driving – which belonged to Brudos' mother.
After two failed abductions in a row, on April 23rd, Linda Salee would become Jerry Brudos' fourth victim. Her body was later found by a fisherman in the Long Tom River. Brudos would later claim in interviews that he electrocuted her body posthumously as an “experiment” – to see what happened. This was substantiated by electrical burns found on the corpse of Linda Salee.
After the murder of Linda Salee, Jerry Brudos began calling college dorms, asking for common names – like Mary or Susan – and telling whoever answered that a friend had set them up on a blind date. Though he never succeeded in murdering or abducting any women using this method, the girls he called mentioned him to detectives interviewing students about the death of Karen Sprinker, and it was this that eventually led to him being apprehended. He was arrested on May 30, 1969, and he died in Oregon State Prison on March 28, 2006.
As Ann Rule put it, “The question must always be ‘Why?’” What happens to change a chubby-cheeked, freckled five-year-old into a monster?” (Rule 318). What makes a killer? What shapes and forms them? The answer may be found in an event from Jerry Brudos' childhood.
At five years old, Jerry found a pair of black spiked heels in a local junkyard. He had never seen anything like them; his mother never wore heels. He took them home and paraded around in them – as many children do. However, when his mother saw him doing this, she berated him and demanded that Jerry return the shoes to the junkyard. Instead, Jerry hid them. When his mother discovered that he kept the shoes, she was enraged and burned them. This incident – henceforth referred to as “the shoe incident” – was instrumental in shaping Brudos.
Research supports the possibility that this was the beginning of Jerry Brudos' fetish. Mark Griffiths says, “Psychological research has shown that many fetishes appear to be the result of early imprinting and conditioning experiences in childhood adolescence (instance, where sexual excitement and/or orgasm is paired with non-sexual objects or body parts) or as a consequence of strong traumatic, emotional and/or physical experience.” This traumatic experience is the shoe incident. The shoe incident – the strong emotions of his mother and the secretism – cemented itself in Brudos' mind, planting seeds of fetishism – long before he understood the mechanics of sex. Griffiths also goes on to say, “Some children have been said to associate sexual arousal with objects that belong to an emotionally significant person like a mother or older sister.” This also aligns with the shoe incident being the start of Brudos' shoe fetish. It is an incident of the object being connected to a traumatic experience and the emotionally significant figure of Eileen Brudos. This event being the starting point for his fetishism is supported by current theories on the origin of fetishism.
It is important to note that there is research pointing to a biological predisposition to fetishism (Griffiths) – just as there is for psychopathy (Hunter). It is accepted that psychopathy is indeed somewhat affected by a genetic component. As one study states, psychopathy is “now widely regarded as a congenital state characterized by lack of empathy or moral compass and defined at least partly by genes” (Hunter). There is a strong possibility that it is the same with fetishism. There is also strong evidence that “nurture” factors, as opposed to or in addition to “nature” factors, have a strong influence on both the development of psychopathy and fetishism (Griffiths) (Hunter).
Some also might argue that because Jerry Brudos was so young when the shoe incident took place – five years old – it could not have contributed to his sexual obsession with shoes and women’s clothing. This is not the case. According to an article published by the Journal of Human Reproductive Sciences, “Development of sexuality starts as early as in intrauterine life following conception and continues through infancy, childhood, adolescence, adulthood till death” (Lankford). This shows that it is absolutely possible that the shoe incident could have affected Brudos' sexuality.
The shoe incident is vital to understanding Jerry Brudos – not just in regard to his shoe fetish. It paints a fascinating portrait of the sexual repression of Jerry Brudos. Like in many other families of the time, sex was a taboo topic in the Brudos household. For instance, when Eileen Brudos discovered that Jerry had his first wet dream – something common among males his age – she berated and demeaned him. Sex was always something dirty in the Brudos household, and this had a major effect on Jerry Brudos' view of sex and sexuality in general.
When Jerry showed interest in a pair of black spike heels as a child – a symbol of sexuality that was banned in the Brudos house – Eileen Brudos was enraged. Like sex, any interest in women’s shoes was a forbidden dirty thing – linking them together in the mind of young Jerry Brudos.
These feelings of shame surrounding his interest in shoes and his budding sexuality are intrinsically tied when it comes to Jerry Brudos. In the case of a severe shoe fetish – where one can reasonably assume Brudos would fall – a person “absolutely requires and depends on the visual stimulus” (Purcell). One cannot talk about sexuality in regard to Brudos without talking about his shoe fetish, and one cannot talk about sexuality or fashion concerning Jerry Brudos without talking about shame.
The other issue highlighted by the shoe incident has to do with gender roles and their link to Brudos’ sexuality. The enforcement of gender roles – in this case through fashion – is already inherently harmful (CNN), but in the mind of Jerry Brudos, it also became linked to his feelings of sexual frustration and shame. One study, researching the effects of gender roles on straight identifying – but behaviorally bisexual – men, showed that “traditional sex and gender stereotypes impose constraints on relationships that can limit authentic sexual expression and intimate satisfaction” (Siegal). The enforcement of gender roles themselves – through the shoe incident – contributed to Brudos’ sexual repression even further.
This repression of sexuality is significant due to research that shows a link between aggressive behavior and sexual frustration (Lankford). It certainly cannot be contested that Brudos showed aggressive behavior, and the sexual nature of his crimes already suggests an obvious link. Sex, violence, shoes, and shame were intrinsically connected in the mind of Jerry Brudos, and it is – at least partially – due to this mindset, that he killed his victims.
This is not to say that sexual frustration or repression is to blame for Jerry Brudos' crimes. Many people struggle with sexual repression and frustration and are never violent, but given that it has been suggested that there is a biological predisposition to psychopathy and the sort of violence committed by Jerry Brudos (Hunter), it is reasonable to suggest that sexual repression – through the shoe incident – contributed to creating the killer Jerry Brudos.
What might have been different if Eileen Brudos had not been so cruel about those black spike heels? How might things be different if shoes, sex, and shame had not become so twisted in Brudos' mind? Would he still have killed those girls? Perhaps, but then again, perhaps not. No one can say for certain.
What can be said for certain is that when Eileen Brudos burned those shoes, Jerry Brudos’ sexuality, life, and crimes became intrinsically tied to shoes and women’s fashion. Even after his arrest, Brudos continued to show a fascination with women’s footwear – ordering women’s shoe catalogs in prison up until his death in 2006 (The Register-Guard).
Shame, sex, and fashion made up the dark fantasies and cruel crimes of Jerry Brudos, and this intersection likely began with the shoe incident. It’s where his fetish originated. It’s where his sexual shame began. It’s where a great source of his anger lay. It shaped him. Whether or not he was already predisposed to be a violent killer, Jerry Brudos’ life and crimes, as “The Shoe Fetish Slayer”, were essentially shaped by that one pair of black high heels.
1 Darcie Brudos is sometimes referred to as Ralphene or Susan. However, since most sources use the name Darcie – including Ann Rule, who wrote the most comprehensive account of Jerry Brudos' life and crimes – she will be referred to as such throughout this paper.
2 Liane Brumley is also referred to as Gloria Jean Smith. Since she was a minor at the time of her attack, an attempt was made to keep her name out of the press and court proceedings. It is unclear if either Liane or Gloria is her real name.
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