DNA evidence in the 1984 murder of a Texas girl may provide the most promising evidence yet to bolster claims by Robert Charles Browne that he killed as many as 48 people.
The DNA evidence becomes even more crucial in the murder of Nidia Mendoza, 17, whose dismembered body was found Feb. 6, 1984, in Sugar Land, Texas, since Browne’s attorney, public defender William Schoewe, sent a letter Friday to El Paso County sheriff’s investigators asking them to stop talking to Browne.
“We have all of the fingernail scrapings, the bodily swabs that were taken at the time of the autopsy, and we have some articles of clothing that were collected from the crime scene that appear to have bodily fluids or blood on them,” said Capt. Gary Cox, commander of investigations for Sugar Land police.
The evidence was submitted to a state lab three months ago, and authorities are waiting for results.
Cox said a lot of information that Browne provided in the Mendoza case was never publicized – including information that he did not sever her arms.
“It tends to corroborate what happened with our case. We’re optimistic that we can have some of the physical evidence support that statement,” Cox said.
Browne, 53, is serving a life sentence for the 1991 murder in El Paso County of Heather Dawn Church, whom he now denies killing. Over the past four years, he has told investigators that he killed up to 48 people. Police say seven of those cases, not including the Church case, have been corroborated, but Browne has been charged and convicted only in the Church case and one other.
William Earl Hilton, sheriff of Rapides Parish, La., said he planned to come to Colorado Springs this week in hopes of talking to Browne about a body found Dec. 15, 1980. But after Schoewe’s letter, Hilton does not know if he’ll make the trip.
“We’re kind of waiting to see if we’re going to be able to talk to him. I don’t want to make that trip without being able to interview him,” Hilton said.
Hilton said he has a hunch that Browne may have been involved in the 1980 murder.
Browne, who grew up in Coushatta, La., told El Paso County investigators that he killed as many as 17 people in his home state.
In conversations with Charlie Hess, 79, the cold-case investigator from El Paso County who wrote letters and talked to Browne over a four-year period, Browne mentioned that “New Orleans was fertile ground,” according to an arrest affidavit.
But he offered details about only one murder in the area – the strangling of a prostitute at a Holiday Inn in the 1970s.
Capt. George Waguespack, who heads the New Orleans homicide unit, said investigators have reviewed old case reports, trying to determine whether Browne is responsible for unsolved homicides around 1977.
In Texas, the brother-in-law of Melody Bush, a 22-year-old Browne claims to have killed near Flatonia, Texas, in 1984, said his older brother, Robert Bush, was broken up by his wife’s murder and was considered a suspect.
“They put him in jail because apparently he had broken his probation by drinking. They locked him up for six months, I think, just due to the investigation,” Walter Bush said Monday. “You know they had a child and they took the child away because they thought (Robert) did it,” he said. “He hasn’t seen that kid in probably 22 years. He was 4 years old when that happened.”
Walter Bush said he doesn’t know for certain where his brother is now.
Raymond Browne, one of Robert’s older brothers who lives in Idaho, said the family is stunned by news that their brother is a serial killer.
“We were shocked. We can’t understand it any way. We were raised well. Our parents were great parents. We know the difference between right and wrong, and we were taught that,” Raymond Browne said.
Raymond Browne said that while his father and his brother Donald worked in law enforcement, neither one ever knew anything of Robert’s crimes.
“Before any of these happened, my dad was already dead. He died in July 1974,” Raymond Browne said. “All of these occurred after that fact, other than the one he said he did in South Korea, which is no proof or anything.”
Erin Emery can be reached at 719-522-1360 or eemery@denverpost.com.
