Robert Charles Browne does not remember the names of the people he says he killed.
His memory, which isn’t clear, tracks more on where and how he killed, rather than who or why.
Browne’s trail lasted from 1970 to 1995. Along the way, he used a variety of weapons to kill: ice pick, butcher knife, screwdriver, knife and gun.
Five years after he was imprisoned for life for the murder of Heather Dawn Church, 13, he began telling his story to authorities but never spoke of the countless families that suffered, people who lived life never knowing, never forgetting, always wondering.
Browne’s cruelty is compounded by the misery caused to some husbands and boyfriends, who lived under a cloud of suspicion that wasn’t lifted until late last week, when El Paso County sheriff’s deputies revealed Browne as a probable serial killer responsible for as many as 49 murders.
“It’s been tough carrying this around for more than 20 years,” said John Higgs, who dated Wanda Faye Hudson, a 21-year-old woman found stabbed to death in Browne’s hometown of Coushatta, La., on May 28, 1983.
“Friends of mine and some acquaintances had their doubts about me. But the worst part of it was that both my mother and my father went to their graves never knowing the truth. They always supported me, but they never had any closure,” Higgs said.
Higgs, a young pharmacist, started dating Hudson about six months before she died. She lived in an apartment complex where Browne worked as a maintenance man. He had a key to her apartment.
One night, he slipped into her apartment and placed a rag soaked in chloroform – a chemical he found in a can of red ant killer – and “put her out,” according to an affidavit in the case. He then stabbed her repeatedly with a screwdriver.
Higgs found her bloody body when he stopped at her apartment to pick her up for work. He had graduated from the University of Louisiana-Monroe School of Pharmacy exactly one year before Hudson was murdered. Since then, he’s lived in more than a dozen towns, filed for bankruptcy and lost a pharmacy he owned in Vivian, La. Today, he’s married, working again as a pharmacist in Texas and doing well, he said.
“I really don’t want to discuss much of this,” Higgs said. “I’m so far away from it now. I’ve moved on.”
For some families, moving on was never possible.
“You just don’t know how tore up I’ve been since then,” said Rusty Watson, 44, Hudson’s first cousin only three weeks apart in age. “Wanda was like a sister to me. We were never told nothing about the investigation. She’s just dead, and that’s that.”
Everyone, Watson said, suspected Higgs.
Hudson’s mother, Sybil Shaddox, lives in a nursing home in Coushatta and refused to be interviewed.
“Wanda’s murder just broke her down,” Watson said. “She lost her daughter, nobody was caught, and the sheriff’s deputy started showing photos of the murder scene around town. Eventually, this stuff eats you alive.”
In December 1991, a fisherman found the body of Lisa Lowe, a 21-year-old mother of four, in a drainage ditch of a small river off Interstate 40 west of Memphis, Tenn.
Lowe was last seen by her boyfriend as she was leaving home to go to a convenience store to purchase pantyhose. She was going to a nightclub in Forest City, Ark., where she lived.
Browne told investigators the woman performed oral sex on him. He believed he strangled her and may have shot her. He said he dropped her off a 2-foot embankment into the water, the affidavit says.
Lowe’s four children went to live with Pearl Grady, the paternal grandmother who raised them for 15 years.
“When I heard the news, I just said ‘Thank you, Lord,”‘ she said. “It’s been so hard on them. They were all just babies when it happened.”
In Texas, retired Sugar Land police Detective Judith Flagg said she was pleased to learn there may finally be some closure in the killing of 17-year-old Nidia Mendoza, whose body was found in tall grass by a man who lost a hubcap near a turnaround along U.S. 59, about 12 miles south of Houston, on Feb. 6, 1984.
Browne told investigators he had met Mendoza at a strip club off U.S. 59. He said he made a deal with her to exchange money for sex. They left after her shift was over. They drove in his company van (he delivered silk flowers) to a motel room where they had sex and he strangled her.
He then put her in a bathtub and severed her head, arms and legs, an affidavit says.
“If he is truly the one that did it, I am happy that there is finally going to be some closure to that case,” Flagg said. “It’s the type of case that you will never forget.”
Staff writer Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
20 cases among Robert Browne’s murder claims
Key
NC = not corroborated
UI = under investigation
SUB = substantiated
2 cases closed with murder convictions.
1. 1970 or 71 – Killed a soldier in South Korea; UI
2. 1975 or 1979 – Strang led a prostitute in a New Orleans motel; NC
3. Late 1970s – Strangled a woman he met in a Morgan City, La., bar. Dumped body from bridge; NC
4. 1980 – Strangled Katherine Jean Hayes, 15, in Coushatta, La. Dumped body near Montgomery, La.; SUB; body found then
5-6. 1980 – Shot young couple at I-70 rest stop in western Colorado; NC
7. 1983 – Chloroformed Faye Self, a female neighbor, in Coushatta, La. Dumped body in bayou; body not found; declared dead 1991; SUB
8. 1983 – Strangled a woman he met in a Clarence, La., bar. Dumped body in a river next to a county road; NC
9. 1983 – Strangled Wanda Faye Hudson, 21, in Coushatta, La. Body found in apartment. Browne’s name surfaces in initial investigation; SUB
10. 1984 – Stabbed Melody Bush with ice pick in his Flatonia, Texas, motel room. Body found along highway; SUB
11. 1984 – Strangled and dismembered an exotic dancer, Nidia (Bolivar) Mendoza, 17, outside Houston. Dumped body parts in field alongside road; SUB; body found.
12. 1986 – Shot a man at a roadside turnout in Washington state; NC
13-14. 1986 – Shot a man and woman camping on California coast near Oregon line. Crammed bodies between driftwood and boulders; NC
15. 1987 – Strangled Rocio Sperry in Colorado Springs. Dumped body in trash bin; murder charge 2006; body never found
16. 1991 – Strangled Lisa Lowe after meeting her in a Memphis, Tenn., bar and driving her across the Mississippi River; SUB; body found in river
17. 1991 or 1992 – Met a woman in a cowboy bar in Colorado Springs, strangled her at his home; UI; identity being researched.
18*. 1991 – Killed Heather Dawn Church in El Paso County; arrested in 1995 for murder; sentenced to life in prison; skull recovered in 1993
19. 1992 – Shot a man in Tulsa, Okla., and rolled his body into a lake; UI
20. 1993 – Shot a man at a scenic overlook on U.S. 64 in New Mexico; UI; body recovered then
*Browne has not “claimed” this killing and, despite pleading guilty, maintains his innocence.
– Compiled by Nancy Lofholm
Source: El Paso County Sheriff’s Office
