Here's How Many Victims Jerry Brudos Actually Had

Jerome "Jerry" Brudos was a serial killer with a distinct fetish for women's high-heeled shoes, going so far as to cut off the foot of one of his victims and keeping it in the freezer so he could pull it out and dress it up in a high-heeled shoe,  according to the Department of Psychology at Radford University. Brudos was convicted of killing three women, but confessed to murdering four, yet according to Radford University, 12 other young women went missing in Oregon during the time he was an active serial killer there, which wasn't very long. Though Brudos had a history of fantasies about violence against women, with his shoe fetish starting at age 5, he didn't start killing until he was 28 during the years 1968 to 1969. 

Beyond murder victims, though, Brudos assaulted and tormented other girls when he was still a teenager. Radford University reported that when he was only 16 he was stealing women's shoes and underwear. When that wasn't enough he lured a girl to his house where a masked man with a knife made her take off her clothes so he could take photos of her. No one was charged. 

At 17 he picked up a girl and took her to a farmhouse where he badly beat her. For that, he was charged with assault and battery and committed to a psychiatric hospital where he was diagnosed as borderline schizophrenic but was released after eight or nine months. 

At 21, Jerry Brudos followed a young woman home, then strangled her to unconsciousness and stole her shoes, which he took home to sleep with, according to Radford University Psychology Department. For several years after that attack, Brudos laid low as a family man with a wife. The couple would have two children. After the birth of their second child in 1967, Brudos' depraved urges came back. That year he stalked another woman and broke into her house where he raped and strangled her until she passed out, then he stole her shoes. 

Brudos' known murder victims are Linda Slawson,19, Linda Salee, 22, Karen Sprinker, 19, and Jan Whitney, 23. According to the book "Serial Murderers and Their Victims", Brudos bludgeoned Slawson with a two-by-four. It was her foot that he kept before throwing her into a river. 

From there, Brudos went on to strangle the remainder of his victims — Whitney, Sprinker, and Salee — as well as abusing their bodies in various, torturous ways. A month after his final murder, Brudos was caught.