As we mill about our lives, interacting with those that we know, or think we know, & those that we simply pass on the street, there’s sometimes no way of knowing what lies beneath the surface of a friendly smile. For all intents & purposes, Carl Eric “Charlie” Brandt seemed like a completely even-keeled, happy person. He was in what appeared to be a happy marriage that others envied, but it turned out he was hiding an exceptionally deep, dark secret. This case highlights the question: Do we ever truly know the full depths of another person?
It was Thursday, September 2, 2004 & Hurricane Ivan, which started in the Atlantic, was now barreling through the Gulf of Mexico, headed for the panhandle of Florida. Many were hunkered down, sheltering in the safety of their homes as the wind & rain battered down on their rooftops. Everyone’s biggest concern was getting through the storm unscathed. 91 people lost their lives during the passage of Hurricane Ivan, but it was the work of a madman that claimed the lives of two innocent women as the storm passed through.
47-year-old Charlie Brandt lived with his 46-year-old wife Teri on Big Pine Key which is situated near Marathon in the Florida Keys. The island is glorious & widely regarded as one of the clearest & best reefs for snorkeling & diving in the Keys.
However, with the storm churning closer to Florida, Charlie & Teri made the decision to board up & secure their home & evacuate to safer, more inland ground, 364 miles/586 kilometers to Orlando. The couple made the six hour & fifteen minute drive north to stay with Teri’s 37-year-old niece, Michelle Jones. Michelle was close with her maternal aunt & happily welcomed her & her husband into her home.
Michelle was also close with her mom, Mary Lou, who lived in North Carolina & the two spoke on a near daily basis. Mary Lou last spoke with her daughter on September 13, but remained unable to reach her in the three days after so she began to worry. She wondered how her daughter’s visit was going with Charlie & Teri & couldn’t understand why she was unable to get a hold of her.
Two days later, on September 15, since Mary Lou was still unable to reach Michelle, she decided to ask her friend, Debbie Knight, if she could head over to Michelle’s house for a welfare check. When Debbie arrived, she remained on the phone with Mary Lou & voiced her worry that she thought something was wrong as she feared what she could potentially find. Debbie’s knocks went unanswered & her key wouldn’t open the front door so she headed toward the garage. The garage was almost all glass so she peered through one of the windows & was stunned by what she saw.
Charlie was hanging from the rafters of the garage so Debbie immediately contacted the police. When authorities arrived, what they discovered inside the sweltering garage paled in comparison to the horrors that lay within Michelle’s home. They likened the scene to what would be expected in a slasher film & even veteran detectives were shocked & sickened by what they found.
After finding Charlie in the garage, hung from a bedsheet, a ladder positioned close to his body, they turned to enter the house, fully aware that Michelle & Terry were likely inside.
According to investigators, as they entered the home, they initially found a cozy, immaculate space with carefully placed decorations that gave the home a feminine feel. Beyond that, the rooms were cloaked with the aroma of death.
They discovered Teri’s body slumped over on the couch; she had been stabbed seven times in the chest. Michelle’s body was in her bedroom & the scene was absolutely gruesome to the point that some of the officers had to run outside to vomit. She had been decapitated, her head was placed next to her body & her heart had been removed. Her breasts had been sliced from her body & she had been disemboweled.
There was no indication of a struggle or fight inside the house which led investigators to believe that the victims hadn’t known they were in danger when they were attacked & murdered. The house had been locked from the inside & there was no sign of forced entry.
Based on the obvious evidence, it was obvious that Charlie Brandt was the person responsible for the murder of his own wife & niece.
As the scene inside the home came together, the evening of the brutal murders appeared to have started innocently. The trio had dinner together after Charlie cooked some type of fish & they may have had some drinks & wine. However, it was clear that the dinner was not without issues as after they ate, Michelle spoke with one of her best friends, Lisa Emmons on the phone & told her not to come over as previously planned since Teri & Charlie had been arguing. She explained that they wouldn’t be very good company as they’d had a bit too much to drink. Michelle explained that she was tired & just wanted to get some sleep.
Investigators learned that Charlie & Teri were meant to head back down to the Keys that day; their bags were packed, sitting in the front hall, ready to be loaded into their car. Despite the fact that the hurricane had already passed through, Charlie insisted on staying an extra night for no apparent reason other than that he may have known what he was going to do.
Charlie used Michelle’s own knives to kill her & his wife. Teri’s attack appeared to be a very quick, rapid stabbing frenzy to her chest whereas Michelle’s murder was a stark contrast. She had one stab to the chest. Charlie then placed her blood-soaked clothing in the bathroom sink before moving on to dismembering her body which would have taken both a lot of time & thought.
When Mary Lou learned the devastating news & the horrors found within her daughter’s home, she was stunned & could not accept what she was hearing. She had known her mild-mannered brother-in-law, Charlie Brandt, for seventeen years & was unable to connect the man she knew with the horrors being described.
As with Mary Lou, Lisa Emmons was equally as stunned & horrified to learn that Charlie could be capable of such sick violence. Lisa thought of Charlie as a very quiet, reserved man who often just sat back & observed interactions. She & Michelle always described him as an eccentric person & anything but threatening or dangerous.
Michelle had been a single, successful woman who worked as an executive at The Golf Channel in Orlando. Debbie recalled that as Hurricane Ivan developed, Michelle closely tracked its path, fearful for her aunt & uncle’s safety. She readily offered up her home for their shelter. Lisa got a phone call from Michelle shortly after Teri & Charlie arrived & her friend asked her to come over to hang out with her aunt & uncle since Michelle had a lovely home with a pool & a Jacuzzi.
On top of the fact that those that knew Charlie only considered him a nice, agreeable person, they thought that he & Teri had the perfect marriage. The two were connected at the hip, traveling, fishing, boating & generally enjoying the beauty of island life together. Teri had a care-free personality & those that knew & loved her described her as happy-go-lucky & gypsy-like. She wasn’t bothered by much & she was a kind & caring woman.
As word of what happened spread, no one could wrap their heads around how a seemingly stable person suddenly snapped.
Teri’s close friend, Melanie Fecher, recalls that she always thought, If my husband could love me one-third the amount that Charlie loved Teri, I’d be the luckiest woman in the whole world. She never suspected any issues within their marriage & never witnessed them fighting. She didn’t ever see Charlie get angry & didn’t think that he had any sort of temper.
Those that knew Charlie & Teri felt they were the perfect match; they often thought of each other & did sweet, thoughtful things to make the other feel good. They would prepare lunches for each other because they believed that food tasted better when it was made by the one who loved you.
So what could have possibly led Charlie to stab his wife of nearly two decades seven times? Why did he kill & mutilate his niece’s body? There was no suicide note & therefore no explanation as to why he’d done what he’d done.
However, the pieces of the tragic puzzle began to fall into place after Charlie’s sister, Angela Brandt, who was two years older than her brother, came forward with a dark secret. Angela was supposed to join other relatives for a briefing by police, but didn’t show up. They found her sitting inside a car in the parking lot. It turned out that she had been harboring a dark secret since her childhood in Indiana that not a soul outside her family was aware of.
She sat down in an interrogation room & finally worked up the nerve to break her silence. The story she told had taken place over three decades earlier when Charlie was 13 & in ninth grade while Angela was 15. At the time, they were living with their parents in Fort Wayne, Indiana with their two younger sisters.
Angela began to tell her story:
It was January 31, 1971 at 9 or 10 pm. We had just gotten a color TV. We were all sitting around watching The FBI with Efram Zimbalist Jr. After the show was over, I went & got in bed to read my book like I always did before I went to sleep.
In the meantime, Angela & Charlie’s mom Ilse, who was eight months pregnant, was getting a bath ready for herself while their dad, Herbert, was shaving. Angela suddenly heard loud noises that she initially thought were firecrackers until she heard her father yell either Charlie don’t or Charlie stop while her mom wailed in the distance. The last thing she heard were her mom’s cries, Angela, call the police!
Before Angela even had a moment to react, Charlie walked into her room holding a gun. She sat in horror as her own brother raised the gun in her direction & pulled the trigger. She braced for the pain that was sure to come, but only heard a click & realized the gun was out of bullets. Charlie dropped the gun & Angela kicked it under the bed. With a chance of survival, Angela began to fight her brother who tried to strangle her.
The young girl was terrified & saw a glazed look in her brother’s eyes that she’d never seen before. She tried everything she could to snap him out of whatever was happening as she told him how much she loved him. Suddenly, the look vanished & Charlie’s eyes seemed to clear when he looked at his sister & asked her, What am I doing?
Angela ran from the house in hysterics, her nightgown bloodied & torn. She ran through the snow to her neighbor’s home & began pounding on the door for help. 16-year-old Sandi Radcliffe recalls being startled by the sudden commotion & by the time she opened the door, Angela had already run off to another house. She soon heard another knock on the door, this time, much calmer. When she opened the door, she found Charlie standing on her stoop, as he told her, Sandi, I just shot my mom & dad. He later spoke with Allen County Sheriff Department investigators & said, It’s like I was sort of programmed to do it.
Charlie told the police about an event that happened while the family was vacationing in Florida for Christmas break. When Charlie had gone out hunting with his father, Herbert killed the family dog. Despite this being a traumatizing & disturbing event, it was not a likely motive for murder.
Within an instant, the Brandt family was destroyed. With zero prompting, Charlie had retrieved a handgun from his father’s dresser inside his parent’s bedroom & walked into their bathroom while they were getting ready for bed. Here, he shot his father once in the back while he was shaving, leaving him wounded. He then turned to the bathtub where his mom was soaking & as he stood above her, he fired the gun several times, killing her & his unborn sibling.
Herbert was transferred to a hospital in Fort Wayne where he was treated for several weeks. Uncertain of the extent of his injuries, a young detective rushed there in hopes he could speak with the critically injured man before he potentially died. Herbert couldn’t elaborate on what happened that night since he was unable to wrap his head around why his son had seemingly snapped, but he did confirm that it was his son who had done it.
Up until this point, Charlie was someone that would be described as a normal kid who did well in school & had no previous signs of psychological issues or stress. Classmates from Jefferson Junior High School saw him as shy, quiet & unassuming.
Given his young age, the courts decided not charge him with any criminal offense. Rather than going to trial, it was ordered that he spend just over a year in a psychiatric facility where he underwent three evaluations. None of the psychiatrists who worked with Charlie ever found any mental illness or explanation as to why he shot his family & attempted to kill his sister. One psychiatrist, Ronald Pancner, felt that Charlie was a mystery. He spoke with the teen about his friends, family & interests, trying to pinpoint an underlying problem. However, they found absolutely nothing to diagnose & saw him as a loving child who always loved his family.
A grand jury investigated & issued a warning, writing that such anti-social conduct could repeat itself in the future without warning.
To the average person, it was obvious that something was clearly wrong since out of the blue, on a typical night, Charlie murdered his pregnant mom, shot his father & attempted to kill his sister. How was it possible that he didn’t have a diagnosable mental illness? They found no psychosis & no distorted thinking.
Newspaper reports about the attack were vague & portrayed a bizarre crime by a quiet kid, the last kid anyone would have ever expected of violence, no less toward his own mother. Charlie & his mom were exceptionally close to the point that many considered him a mama’s boy.
Because of his young age, Charlie’s records were sealed & Herbert instructed Angela to keep the event a secret. After Charlie’s release from the psychiatric facility in June 1978, the Brandt family relocated from Indiana to Ormond Beach, Florida. The traumatic event was essentially buried & put behind them as they started fresh in their new environment. Herbert never once spoke to his son about what he’d done that night or why. Angela was forced to pretend that everything was fine & Charlie was never asked of any sort of explanation or acknowledgement. He was simply accepted back into the home as if nothing had ever happened & life went on.
Charlie’s baby sisters had been too young to remember the traumatizing events of the night their mother was murdered & they were never told the truth about it & instead, they were under the impression that she died in a car accident.
After relocating to Florida, Herbert remarried a year later & moved back to Indiana with his youngest children, leaving Charlie & Angela with their grandparents. Charlie attended Seabreeze High School & in 1984, he went on to graduate from college with a degree in electronics. He went on to work for Ford Aerospace as a radar specialist & he met Teri in 1985. The couple were married in Ormond Beach, but soon moved to the Florida Keys.
Now in 2004, faced with the gruesome discovery in Michelle’s house, her parents, Bill & Mary Lou, were furious that such an alarming event had been hidden away. They felt that thes system had failed & Teri had unknowingly married a murderer. Bill & Mary Lou were sure that Charlie never confessed his dark secret to Teri since they don’t believe she would have married him if he did. They also felt like Herbert & Angela could have saved Teri & Michelle’s lives had they been open & honest, knowing that it was possible that he could absolutely snap again. Mary Lou indicated that after Michelle & Teri’s murders, Herbert has never made any effort to extend his apologies for their loss.
Once authorities were aware of Charlie’s present & past murders, they headed 400 miles south of Orlando to investigate Teri & Charlie’s home on Big Pine Key. They found the house prepared to face Hurricane Ivan, meticulously boarded up. Investigators were taken with the extreme precision Charlie had cut each piece of wood to fit in a custom manner to cover the windows & doors of the home before they evacuated to Orlando. Perfect holes were cut to snugly fit over the doorknobs of the French doors. One might expect to find such precision at an engineer’s home whereas Charlie worked as a radar technician.
Things were just as precise inside. Although they strangely came across a graphic medical poster that displayed female anatomy posted on the back of the bedroom door. In the image, the women’s hair was put up in a bun & depicted the skeletal & muscular systems one would expect to find at a doctor’s office, not a home of a couple who were not in the medical profession. Investigators wondered what Teri thought of the poster that she would have seen on a daily basis. Parts of the body were exposed on the poster that unsettled the investigators as Charlie virtually duplicated or exposed those same areas on Michelle’s body.
They also found medical & anatomy books & a newspaper clipping that depicted a human heart. Detectives shuddered, recalling the scene in Michelle’s bedroom, her heart removed from her body.
Investigators also came across Victoria’s Secret catalogs that had been addressed to Charlie rather than Teri. They learned that he apparently referred to Michelle as Victoria Secret & never called her Michelle. As the disturbing layers of this case were exposed, the Jones family began to realize that rather than being a friendly uncle, Charlie had been secretly infatuated with his own niece. Coworker’s of Charlie’s also came forward to report that they noticed that he had an inappropriate fixation on his niece.
Based on the way that Charlie spoke of his niece & the things he viewed online, Rob Hemmert, the lead investigator, believes that Charlie planned Michelle’s murder. As they dug deeper into the search history on his computer, they found exceptionally dark Web sites that involved necrophilia, death fantasies & violence against women. Based on the crime scene in comparison to what Charlie had been looking into online, it was clear he had gotten some of his ideas, thoughts & fantasies from what he viewed on his computer monitor.
To the outside world, Charlie was nothing more than an ordinary guy. As investigators paged through Teri’s diaries they found in the house, the entries reflected an ordinary life. They weren’t detailed & just summed up their days, went fishing, caught a good bull dolphin, nice dinner with Charlie. Some entries vaguely hinted that something could be wrong, Weird day, but nothing specific to understand what prompted her to write that. Teri did note occasions that Charlie was out late, if not all night, but never elaborated where he was or what he was doing.
Musician Jim Graves had been married to Angela & spent time with Charlie during the 1980s & recalls coming home one day to find Angela hysterically crying. She told him she had something she absolutely had to tell him & went on to confide in him about what happened decades earlier. Knowing Charlie at that point, Jim figured that whatever happened years before, Charlie had recovered from as he seemed perfectly fine, elaborating that he was very gentle, unwilling to even kill a bug in the house.
Looking back, Jim regrets not paying more attention, especially after he & Angela split up & he got into a deeper conversation with Charlie. After a day of fishing, the two men had some beers together & somehow their conversation turned to the topic of revenge. They spoke about how when their feelings were hurt, the natural reaction is to lash out. Jim recalls that Charlie looked at him & said, Well, if you really wanna get revenge, you should kill somebody & cut their heart out. Jim felt immediately uneasy by this bizarre statement.
However, Jim just dismissed the comment & forgot all about it. Years later, a new girlfriend wanted him to fix her friend, Teri, with someone so Jim called Charlie, never thinking it would lead to marriage.
Charlie & Teri were married on August 29, 1986 & Jim was Charlie’s best man. He spoke with his friend & urged him to tell Teri about his past. Jim indicated that Charlie did go on to tell Teri about the 1971 shooting. When Jim went down to visit the couple, he asked them when they were planning on having children & Teri said that considering all that happened, she didn’t think it was a good idea. Jim took this response to mean that Teri was aware of Charlie’s dark past.
Investigators didn’t think that what Charlie had done to Michelle’s body was his first time & felt confident that there had to be more victims. Hemmert believed that if they continued to dig, they would find evidence that Charlie was a serial killer & wondered how many victims he could be responsible for in the 30 years since he killed his mother & when he killed his wife & niece.
With this, they began to dig into Charlie’s travels in both the United States & abroad in relation to unsolved murders during those time periods. Potential cases began to pour in & as investigators studied each, they focused on similarities to Charlie’s murder & mutilation of Michelle. Charlie’s trademark appeared to be based on precision & a methodical technique. He was an exceptionally organized & planned person, so it would be expected that this would translate to his crimes.
One particular case stands out to investigators, the 1995 murder of 38-year-old Darlene Toler, a sex worker in Miami’s Little Havana neighborhood. Just like with Michelle, Darlene was decapitated & her heart was removed. Her body had been discovered along a highway, wrapped in a blanket, then wrapped in plastic & tied like a package.
Within the blanket around Darlene’s body, investigators found dog hairs which they also found in the back of Charlie’s truck. He also kept a close record of his mileage each time he stopped for gas & amongst the mileage records, they noted an entry for 100 miles at the time of Darlene’s murder. Darlene just so happened to live 100 miles away from where he lived. Because he & Teri worked opposite shifts, it would have allowed him to travel without her knowledge.
Because DNA analysis of animal hair is costly & difficult, the hair found in Charlie’s truck compared to what was found on the blanket around Darlene’s body has not been able to be matched which would allow the case to be closed.
Another murder even closer to Charlie’s home has investigators even more convinced that he is the killer. During July 1989, a local fisherman made a horrific discovery while reeling in what he believed to be a fish under a bridge in Big Pine Key, only four blocks from Charlie’s house. As the line came in closer, he thought he snagged a mannequin, but had actually discovered the body of a woman.
The body was that of a local woman, 38-year-old Sherry Perisho, who lived on a small rowboat. She had a bicycle that she would place on the bow of her boat, row out about 100 yards from shore & live there. Investigators believe she was killed while on her boat. Years passed & the boat remained locked in evidence storage. Investigators noted cutting marks in the wood & believe the bottom of the boat was used as a cutting table.
As with Michelle & Darlene, Sherry had also been decapitated, her heart also removed. Police had only a sketch of a man that a witness saw running across the highway near the scene of the crime. However, investigators then heard from Charlie’s former brother-in-law Jim Graves who indicated that Teri told him something after Sherry’s murder.
He recalls Teri saying, Well you know, somebody was killed not too far from our house. I’m thinkin’ about, you know, callin’ the sheriff. When Jim asked why, she said, Well, because of Charlie’s past.
After speaking with Teri, Jim confronted Charlie & told him that Teri believed he could have been the person to murder Sherry & all he said was, I didn’t do it. After investigators spoke with Jim under oath, he became much more specific about Teri’s story.
Now according to Jim, Teri apparently found Charlie downstairs, covered in blood. When she asked him what happened, he claimed he had been fileting a fish, but it was a workday in the evening, but she just took what he said as the truth & let the subject drop. After hearing his statement, investigators were certain that he was responsible for Sherry’s murder.
They couldn’t explain why she hadn’t noted anything about the incident in her diary & they wondered if she actually believed his story & questioned why she chose to stay with someone she believed could be capable of something so horrible. Much of the time, we don’t want to believe that the person we love & have committed our life to would commit such a horrible act.
In total, police believe that as many as 24 other murders could be connected to Charlie.
So Charlie continued to fool everyone who only saw him as someone who could be relied on, a friend who was there when you needed him. They did not know the true Charlie, the dark depths that were hidden under the facade of a smiling face.
Those close to Michelle Jones & Teri Brandt have struggled to accept their deaths in the months following their murders. Each day that Mary Lou wakes, she is faced with another day of grief & the reality of a life without her daughter. On top of being without her, Mary Lou & Bill cannot come to terms with the violent way in which she was taken. Passing days only cause their fury toward Herbert & Angela to grow, knowing that maybe Charlie couldn’t have been cured from whatever sickness his mind suffered, but he could have been stopped. Their daughter could still be here today had anyone known the darkness he was capable of.
When asked if they hold Angela & Herbert responsible for Michelle & Teri’s deaths, Bill responds, Well, I do, because they should have gotten the man help. And they knew he needed help.
After the murders, Angela told Mary Lou that she was relieved that Charlie was dead since she had been terrified of him for years. She elaborated that since his death, she’s been able to sleep at night. For twenty years, she didn’t sleep with the air conditioner on at night, she had the windows & doors tightly secured because she thought Charlie would come back to kill her.
Despite the fact that Jim Graves indicates that Teri was aware of Charlie’s dark past, they find it very hard to believe. Mary Lou cannot accept that her sister would choose to stay with a man who was capable of such sudden, unprompted violence & in her heart, does not believe it to be true.
The Brandt family are not allowing the records to be released from Charlie’s brief stay in the psychiatric facility which could help shed some light on his past. Mary Lou feels that they’re preserving a family secret while investigators would love to see what sort of treatment, if any, he received & how he was handled. What triggered him to snap in 1971 to kill his mother & attempt to kill his father & sister? What was the breaking point?
What lead investigator Hemmert would like to ask Charlie if he was still here, would be Why? What was going through your mind at that specific point in time that caused you to do what you did? And why was it so different than how you took the life of Michelle Jones versus your wife Teri?
Mary Lou theorizes that Charlie had a covert, evil nature that he was able to mask & bury. An invisible criminal walking among us, whose true victim count will never be known. A lot of the cold cases that could be connected to him are lacking the physical evidence & require a lot of resources & legwork, but investigators will not give up.
The Jones family want new laws implemented that will prevent what happened to Teri & Michelle from happening in the future. They would love to see a database, similar to what is used for sex offenders, to include any offender of any age, who has killed another person, regardless of the circumstances. They want to make it their mission to prevent anyone else from dealing with the pain they’ve had to live with on a constant basis.
In July 2006, an Indiana judge released Charlie Brandt’s mental health records to investigator Rob Hemmert, but they were not released to the public. They have helped him better understand the motive for Charlie’s crimes.
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