Detectives foil an unassuming California school principal’s attempt to cover up his family’s quintuple murder with an out-of-state flight by thoroughly inspecting the car he rented in Columbus, Ohio.
Vincent Brothers, who will be 61 on death row at San Quentin State Prison this year, was convicted of five counts of first-degree murder in 2007.
To this day, he denies killing his wife Joanie Harper, mother-in-law Earnestine Harper, 4-year-old son Marques, 2-year-old daughter Lyndsey and 6-week-old baby Marshall on July 6, 2003.
Retired FBI Behavioral Analysis Unit special agent Mark Safarik breaks down the time it took detectives to disprove the Brothers’ seemingly solid alibi and secure his conviction on the Fox True Crime Podcast.
A friend of 39-year-old Harper called police on July 8, 2003, after checking on the woman after she accidentally failed to attend church two days earlier. There, he found the mother of three “lying on the bed, dead,” per recordings of her 911 call previously obtained by Oxygen’s “Family Massacre” podcast.
Harper, her mother and the woman’s three children were all shot dead. In addition, his mother was stabbed seven times post-mortem. Autopsies later put their deaths at around 1pm two days before they were found.
Vincent Brothers was convicted in 2007 of the 2003 murders of his wife Joanie Harper, her mother and their three children. ZUMAPRESS.com
Harper’s home appeared to have been ransacked — but cash, cards, a TV set and other valuables left in plain sight led detectives to believe the crime scene may have been staged, Safarik said. At that point, his office was called to help.
About four days before the murder, detectives soon learned, Brothers had flown out of Los Angeles International Airport to Columbus, Ohio to visit his brother and his family.
“So in the beginning, Vincent was basically sidelined,” Safarik recalls.
A picture of Joanie Harper and her son Marshall James was displayed above her casket at the funeral. Getty Images
The man’s mother-in-law is a community activist who “[spoke] out about gangs and gang activity,” which Safarik said led investigators in another direction for a while.
Earnestine, 70, is “very security-conscious,” Safarik said — her home is equipped with barbed wire fences, burglar bars on every window and multiple locks on every door.
This raises the question of how the killer broke into the house without informing the occupants. Harper’s wounds indicate he was asleep when he was shot, and he was the first to be killed.
Picture of 4-year-old Marques Juwan Getty Images
After examining the scene, Safarik decided that it “doesn’t look like a crime of financial gain,” he said.
An autopsy revealed the killer had placed a pillow and blanket over the youngest victim’s body, Safarik said — the youngest was not found by investigators until they had been on the scene for three hours, and the pillow covering him had been removed. The “depersonalization” of these children showed Safarik that their killers were upset about their deaths, he said.
At that point, investigators turned their attention to Brothers, finding and seizing the rental car he used while in Ohio.
A picture of Earnestine Harper was displayed above her casket during the funeral for her and four family members. Getty Images
According to Safarik, the car has about 5,600 miles — about the distance from Columbus, Ohio to Bakersfield, California, and an additional trip from Dayton, Ohio, to Elizabeth City, North Carolina, which credit card records show Brothers took.
“The point is that it’s circumstantial evidence,” Safarik said. “It’s good evidence, but it’s not conclusive. It doesn’t prove anything.”
So the Bakersfield Police Department took a completely unprecedented step, Safarik said. They took the radiator from the Brothers’ rental and sent it to a forensic entomologist at the University of California, Davis.
Lyndsey Michelle Harper, 23 months, Getty Images
Forensic entomology, according to the National Institutes of Health, is the study of insects/arthropods in criminal investigations.
“They asked the entomologist, ‘Can you identify every bug in this radiator?’ And that’s what it is [she] do,” Safarik reminded.
“[She] removed every splinter and every piece of bug, and he identified it. And what he found was that there were about four or five species of insects in the radiator that were only found west of the Rockies. So there is absolutely no way that the bug could have gotten into the radiator if or if he only lived in Columbus, Ohio. So that becomes a very strong forensic evidence,” he said.
The Rev. Eddie L. Harper gives the eulogy at the funeral of five family members who were found shot to death in their home on July 16, 2003. Getty Images
Prosecutors will say that Brothers killed his family to avoid paying alimony in his upcoming divorce, Safarik said.
“If the children are still alive, you have three young children. You will pay child support for the next 20 years. And he has a relationship. And basically Vincent just… wanted something clean,” Safarik said.
Even as Brothers cried on the stand, Safarik said, the former FBI behavioral analyst “got the sense that the people he was crying for weren’t his family — for himself he was arrested and basically his life was over.”
“I really don’t think someone who can kill their own child in such a horrible way can really feel remorse,” he said.
The California Department of Corrections did not respond to inquiries about the impending execution.
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Source: thtrangdai.edu.vn/en/
