By DOUG HARLOW Staff writer
News accounts of a child molester charged with killing a family in Idaho this month to have sex with their children is similar to a case involving a former Waterville man a decade ago.
Earl C. Bramblett, who graduated from Waterville High School in 1961, was put to death in the electric chair in Virginia two years ago for similar crimes -- killing an entire family over sex with a little girl.
Like Joseph Edward Duncan III, who was arrested July 2 in Idaho, Bramblett had a history of child molestation charges. And like Duncan, Bramblett kept a diary of his thoughts as fantasy built into bloody reality.
Duncan, 42, was charged with kidnapping 8-year-old Shasta Groene and her 9-year-old brother, Dylan, in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho after killing their mother, her boyfriend and the children's older brother.
Shasta told police that Duncan sexually assaulted her and Dylan. She said Duncan showed them the hammer he used to kill the rest of the family. Dylan's body was found July 4 in Montana. Duncan allegedly doused the boy with fuel in an attempt to burn the body. Shasta was found alive with Duncan two days later at a restaurant near her home.
Duncan is being held without bond. If convicted, he could be sentenced to death.
WATERVILLE MAN ACCUSED
Bramblett was convicted of killing a family of four in Virginia in the early 1990s after his sexual obsession with a pre-adolescent girl was discovered by her parents. The victims were Blaine Hodges, 41; his wife Teresa, 37; Winter Hodges, 11; and Anah Hodges, 3.
The family was murdered in their home in August 1994, after Bramblett was caught with Winter by her mother. Bramblett reportedly was afraid Blaine Hodges would tell police he had molested the girl.
After killing the family, Bramblett poured gasoline inside the house and set it on fire.
Duncan's victims also were murdered in their own home. Police charge that Duncan stalked them with night-vision binoculars after seeing Shasta in her bathing suit.
Bramblett had set up his victims in a more devious way. They befriended him, and he moved in with them.
ARREST AND APPEALS
Bramblett was arrested in South Carolina in 1996 and returned to Virginia to face murder charges. While always maintaining his innocence, he was found guilty and sentenced to death in November 1997.
His lawyers appealed the ruling, saying their client was mentally incompetent to stand trial and belonged in a psychiatric hospital, not on death row in a state prison.
"There is only one question remaining," Terry Grimes, one of Bramblett's two court-appointed lawyers, told a Morning Sentinel reporter in 1999. "Do we execute the mentally ill in Roanoke County?"
The Virginia Supreme Court later rejected all 13 points of Bramblett's appeal. An execution date was set for December 1998, but was delayed by more appeals. The U.S. Supreme Court rejected Bramblett's final appeal as well as a requested stay of execution.
He was put to death just after 9 p.m. April 9, 2003.
Bramblett chose the electric chair over death by lethal injection as an act of defiance, continuing to insist that he was innocent. The century-old electric chair was handmade of oak by Virginia prison inmates.
Bramblett made no request for his last meal, opting instead for the same supper the other inmates were having: sloppy Joes, boiled potatoes, corn and chocolate cake.
WATERVILLE REMEMBERED
Bramblett was a three-sport athlete at the old Waterville High School on Gilman Street in the late 1950s and early 1960s. He was coached in basketball by the legendary John P. "Swisher" Mitchell.
He was a good student at Waterville High School, captain of the track team and a member of the "W" Club, a fellowship of varsity lettermen from all school sports.
Bramblett was New England champion in the discus throw in 1961.
Known by the nickname "Rufus," Bramblett lived with his parents in a second-floor apartment on Elm Street, near St. Francis de Sales Roman Catholic Church. He later moved to Unity but finished high school in Waterville.
Bramblett's high school classmate Robert Byrne, a lawyer in Florida, said his pal was accepted to Colby College, then disappeared without ever attending a class.
"I went to Colby and the first few days we looked for him," Byrne said in a telephone interview in 1998. "I've never seen him since that last moment after (high school) graduation. He literally dropped out of sight."
In handwritten letters to a Morning Sentinel reporter in 1997 and 1998, Bramblett repeatedly asserted his innocence, and said he longed for the quiet life of central Maine, not the half-life of death row in a Virginia prison. "It's always good to hear from someone from Waterville," he wrote. "Waterville (high school) was a pleasant and enjoyable experience in my life, as Maine was."
Bramblett was married on March 14, 1971. He and his wife had two boys, Mike and Doug, to whom he gave a defiant verbal salute of his innocence minutes before his execution.
BLOGGING MOLESTATION
The similarities between Joseph Duncan and Earl Bramblett do not begin or end with mass murder to cover up the sexual assault of a child. Both had been involved in earlier cases involving sexual abuse of children. Both men kept journals.
Duncan was a month shy of his 17th birthday in 1980 when he was convicted of raping a 14-year-old boy at gunpoint in Washington state. He was sentenced to 20 years in prison, and was released on parole in July 2000.
He moved to North Dakota and again was arrested in July 2004 for allegedly molesting two young boys. He was released on bond, fled the jurisdiction and remained at large until a Denny's waitress in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, recognized Shasta Groene and called police.
Duncan called his Internet blog, or cyberjournal, "Blogging the Fifth Nail," a reference to the fifth nail used to crucify Jesus Christ, the nail that legend says was intended to end Christ's suffering on the cross.
Bramblett also had a history of child sex abuse; his journal was recorded on tapes that were played at his trial.
Bramblett's obsession with children came under scrutiny as early as 1977, when Tammy Akers and Angela Radar, both 14, disappeared from their northwestern Roanoke neighborhood. The girls lived near Bramblett's silkscreen shop. They were never found.
Bramblett was suspected in the disappearance, but never was charged. In a drunken moment at a party years later, Bramblett lamented having "hurt Tammy," according to testimony at his trial.
Tammy's oldest sister testified that Bramblett had begun molesting her little sister when the girl was just 9. Again in 1984, Bramblett was arrested and charged with molesting a 10-year-old girl, but later was acquitted.
Several women testified at his murder trial that they had sex with Bramblett when they were young teens, but the judge did not let the jury hear the testimony.
Duncan's murder trial has yet to be scheduled, but authorities say his Internet blog entries will be used against him, just as Bramblett's audio tapes were used to convict him of murder.
The words contained in the blogs and on the cassette tapes, authorities say, are telegraphed messages from the psychic battlefield of right and wrong.
In a blog entry posted just days before the Idaho murders and child kidnappings, Duncan wrote that he no longer could determine right from wrong.
"The demons have taken over," he wrote. "God has shown me the right choice, but my demons have me tied to a spit and the fire has already been lit."
MAINEJOBS
