January 30, 2023 • 37 mins
On October 16, 2005, Dennis and Norma Woodruff were found murdered in their Royse City, TX home. Their son Brandon, a freshman in college, had been visiting that weekend and police became suspicious of him and his lifestyle. Brandon is bisexual and was struggling in school, so police developed a narrative that Brandon had to kill his parents in order to maintain the double life he wanted. These details, however, were not secrets to Brandon’s parents at all. And despite evidence that supported his innocence, Brandon was convicted and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
To learn more and get involved, visit:
https://www.change.org/p/texas-court-of-criminal-appeals-take-up-brandon-woodruff-s-case
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freleng is a production of Lava for Good™ Podcasts in association with Signal Co. No1.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:04):
In October of two thousand five, nineteen year old Brandon
Woodruffe was home from college visiting his parents. They had
just moved to a new home in Royce City, Texas.
Brandon helped them around the house and then the family
sat down to a pizza dinner. In almost every way,
it was a normal Sunday night for the Woodruffs. Everything
(00:25):
just seemed to be ordinary. I mean, if I you know,
if somebody were to tell me, well it was there
one thing that was strange, was there one thing that
was odd? And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just
a normal weekend. None of this what ended up happening
was even I mean I couldn't even have thought that
would have happened. Two days later, Brandon's parents were found
(00:46):
brutally murdered. In the days that followed, Brandon was doing
his best to try and help investigators find out who
had killed them, and then they just flipped the whole
table and they were like, well we really think that
you murdered your parents. My name is Brendon Dell Woodruff.
I'm thirty six years old from rock Wall, Texas, and
I've been wrongly convicted for seventeen years from love of
(01:11):
for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today.
Brandon Woodruff Brendan Woodruff was born September six in Rockwall, Texas,
(01:39):
to Dennis and Normal Woodruff. Brendan and his sister, Charliae
are eighteen months apart. Because he was a baby of
the family. This is Brendan's grandma, Bonnie. Brandon was always
a happy child. He just he loved everyone. He was
always happy singing when he was a little boy. Smiling,
(02:00):
Brandon describes life growing up as idyllic. We had two
wonderful parents. Uh, they kind of spoiled us a whole lot,
he says. The family was always on the go and
participating in community events. Charlie was a dancer and had
recitals and shows, and Brandon embraced the country life. The
wood Droffs lived on a farm in the town of Heath,
(02:23):
just a few miles south of Rockwall. Kind of a
small town. It's really like close knit, and Brandon was
involved in the youth agricultural organizations for Age and Future
Farmers of America. My mom gave me this passion for horses,
and so my mom was really there to you know,
kind of inspire me and teach me things with the horses,
(02:44):
with the cattle. Like she was a blue jeans kind
of woman. Most moms like cook. Well, my dad cooked,
and my mom was out there hall and hay like
a hard working guy. And you know she would go
out there with a post hole digger and go dig
to put a post to build a fans. Yeah, she
(03:04):
was definitely like one of the strongest woman I've known.
Brendon says he and his mom raised livestock to show
and sell at markets in the surrounding cities. We would
basically get a young count and you basically raise them
up since maybe you halter train on which can be hectic.
And then I didn't really want to do the market
steers because then you would have to sell them to
butcher and I really don't want to butcher my animals.
(03:27):
So Brendon would show them instead, traveling to fairs all
over Texas. So it's a lot of hours and three
o'clock morning drive times to Wago, Texas and Abilene and
four stock show and all different types of rodeo and fairs.
So that is a life I know, not but it
(03:48):
sounds pretty cool. Brandon loved this life, especially being around horses. Really,
I kind of wanted to be a horse trainer, Like
I really have this huge horse bug. My mom volunteered
at a therapeutic rotting center called equest Is for like
disabled kids and kids would like autism and stuff, and
so she used to take me out there to volunteer.
(04:10):
You know, it kind of opened my eyes to the
world is a little bit different than in your perfect
little neighborhoods. Brandon was also really close with his father.
He says his dad was really funny, like he was
kind of embarrassingly funny, like he was a class crown
like I was kind of. He would just make everybody laugh,
and I would have friends come over, and he had
(04:31):
blared Tina Turner's Proud Mary, like at eight o'clock in
the morning. He would go get donuts, and I would
come out and he would be in the room dancing
to Proud Mary, and I've got my friends over, and
I'd be like, Dad, are you crazy. One time, Brandon
remembers he broke both his legs falling off a horse.
For the first two months of recovery, he was bedridden
(04:52):
and his dad was totally there for him, and so
I had a toilet next to my bed, and I
remember when I had to use the toilet, it was
so embarrassing for me. You know, I'm already a teenager
and I'm having to scoot onto this plastic toilet to
use the bathroom. And my dad literally took off work
so he could be there so any time that, like
(05:12):
I needed him, I could just say hey, Dad, you know,
and he would come in there and he would claim
the whole toilet, like, no questions asked, no embarrassment, no belittlement.
Brandon says there was a lot of love in the
Woodrofe household, but internally he was struggling. It started around
(05:32):
his high school years in the early two thousand's. I
basically started like maybe exploring my sexuality. He had a girlfriend, Morgan,
who he really loved, but he also had thoughts and
feelings about boys. Coming from a close knit town, there
wasn't too many quote unquote gay kids at school. I
think we maybe had like one or two. And you know,
(05:54):
as embarrassed I am to say it now, you know,
I was kind of along with the group that kind
of made fun of them. So in his world of Rockwall, Texas,
Brandon kept his attraction to boys to himself, you know,
to my friends that I showed cattle and horses with.
I knew that they would probably not understand, and especially
the reaction to gay people in my small town. Um,
(06:15):
you know, they would just kind of like ostracized a
little bit. Like I said, there was maybe only two
in my public high school, and I think both of
them went to alternative school by the end of their
senior year because it just got too much. I mean,
the people calling them names, um, stuff like that. I
really didn't see any like of the LGBT community in
(06:36):
my neighborhood. You know, we definitely didn't have no Pride month.
We definitely have no pride parades. We didn't have none
of that. So I would actually have to drive into Dallas,
which was about thirty five minutes away to go experience
any of that stuff. What I would do is I
would kind of go out on the weekends, visit like
a gay club. I visited a couple of gay bars
(06:59):
for didn't would also go online and chat rooms and
my Space groups for gay men. He says, life went
on like that for a while. I thought my private
world was gonna be my private world. Um, probably like
mid late senior year in two thousand and five, I
really started getting to where I really kind of just
dinak care um. It wasn't like I was advertising my sexuality.
(07:20):
I wasn't jumping up and down with a rainbow flag.
But I wasn't hiding it at so much because I
was going in public places. I was having you know, boyfriends.
Then one night, when Brandon was on his way out,
his dad asked him the name of the club he
was going to. I really didn't want to tell him
that it was a gay club, so I just said
a club's name on the radio that we had heard,
you know, like repeated over the years. And uh, the
(07:42):
next day he said, you know, that club he went
to last night was a gay club. And inadvertently I
had given him a gay club's name anyway, And so
I actually had a kind of telling well, okay, uh,
you know, I just told him I didn't know yet
at that time, which was the truth. Brandian was still
trying to find himself and figure it all out. And
he told me, you know, would be safe, be careful,
(08:04):
and he said, when you find out, let me know.
Denis would be the type of person that would accept that,
you know. I mean, here's Brendan's grandma Bonnie again. He
was accepting the people because he loved people, just like Brandon,
didn't matter who that was because he had a friend
(08:26):
that was also gay. I've told my dad a lot worse.
I could tell my dad anything. I could literally talk
to my dad about the bad grades I was making. Um. Now,
sometimes I would try to hide them too, but at
the end of the day, my Dad's gonna be there
for me no matter what. So we're the bad grades
(08:48):
worse than being gay? Is that one of the worst
things you told him? I mean, I really think that
the back grades would have been a little bit worse
than being gay. Like my parents were like so hands
on loving that that's the last thing that they would
have really even cared about. Brandon graduated from Rockwall High
(09:10):
School in two thousand five and went on to Abilene
Christian University, about three and a half hours away. He
found himself struggling in his first semester. He was put
on academic probation and was on the verge of failing
out of college. His parents told him they could no
longer support him financially if that happened, and that he'd
have to come back home, but Brandon wasn't worried about money.
(09:33):
He would wear designer clothes, go on shopping sprees, and
eat out often, which led his college friends to believe
he came from a wealthy family, but the reality was
Brandon was acting in pornographic movies to make money. Though
he told his friends he had taken up modeling, most
of his money was coming from making porn, but with
his spending habits, he was racking up credit card debt.
(09:57):
In October if that first semester in college, Brandon came
home for a few days to see his parents and
help him out. His parents had just bought a trailer
home in Royce City, about fourteen miles north. They still
had some things at their place in Heath and needed
help moving. I guess it was like a foreclosed property.
So there was a lot of stuff that my mom
(10:17):
wanted to do to get the horses out there eventually,
and so I was just tom, you know, to help
her and help my dad a little bit. On the
evening of October sixte the Woodroft family sat down for
a pizza dinner in their new place. Everything just seemed
to be ordinary, I mean, if I you know, if
somebody were to tell me, well, it was there one
(10:39):
thing that was strange? Was there one thing that was odd?
And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just a normal weekend.
After the dinner, Brandon headed out for the evening. He
plans on coming back to Royce City in a few
days to take Father's Day pictures with his sister Charla,
who would also be home from school, and so really
I was expecting to see them, you know, in four days.
(11:00):
So what ended up happening was even I mean, I
couldn't even have thought that would have happened. Shortly after
seven pm on October sixte Brandon left his parents home
to go out with friends, first stopping by their old
(11:21):
home in Heath, about twenty four minutes away. A bit
after ten that night, a neighbor saw Brandon in the
driveway of the Heath house. Then Brandon picked up some
friends around ten forty pm and went to Dallas to
party with them and his boyfriend, Alex. Brandon drove back
to school in Abilene in the early hours the following morning.
(11:47):
Later that day, on the people started becoming concerned about
Dennis and Norma Woodruff. They didn't show up to work,
which was unusual for them, and no one had seen
or spoken to them since nine pm the night before,
when Norma talked with her mother on the phone. Charla
had called her parents from school at eleven pm on
Sunday night and had not heard back, so she contacted
(12:08):
her aunt Linda on two days after they were last
heard from. Linda reached out to a family friend to
go over to the Woodruff's new home to check on them.
A couple of friends showed up, knocked and got an
no response, so they opened a window with a pride
bar to see what was going on. Once inside, they
found a horrific scene. Dennis and Norma's dead bodies were
(12:32):
seated on their couch. They've each been shot and stabbed
several times. This episode is underwritten by a i G,
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
(12:54):
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where they work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
the ai G pro bono program provides free legal services
(13:14):
and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When investigators
from the Hunt County Sheriff's Office arrived at the Woodrofts
trailer home, they found a crime scene covered in blood,
(13:37):
yet they failed to wear protective foot coverings. And what's
even more bizarre, they began investigating in the dark. They think, well,
this is how the murderers would have seen the house.
So we're going to turn off the lights in the house,
and that's how we're going to to walk around and
make our crime scene video. And during the course of
doing that, you know, they're knocking stuff off, They're destroying
all kinds of potential evidence of the sea and it's
(14:00):
it's they literally investigated the crime in the dark. This
is Alison Clayton. She's the deputy director of the Innocence
Project of Texas and the adjunct professor of the Innocence
Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law. Allison says
that inside the trailer it's unclear what had been disturbed
by the crime or by the investigators stumbling around in
(14:23):
the dark, But what seems clear is that there were
strange items found laying around the house. Flavored condom packets
were strewn about, along with an extensive pornography collection and
an air mattress completely inflated. On top of the mattress
were two pairs of women's capri pants that were way
too big to fit Norma. Brandon says none of this
(14:46):
was there when he left on that Sunday night. Joel
Gibson was the lead investigator on the case along with
Texas Ranger Jeff Collins, and Brandon was their lead suspect.
He was the last person known to have seen his parents,
and they were like, well, we really think that you
murdered your parents. And I just I didn't know what
to think. You know, I wasn't raised to cuss at
(15:08):
a law enforcement officer or anything, and I just I
just kind of lost it because I thought, you do
not know what you're talking about, Like, you don't know
who these people are. These are my parents, these like
are the people who raised me. Brandon was devastated. His
parents had been violently murdered and here he was being
accused of killing them. And what stung even more his sister,
(15:29):
Charla turned on him. She told police she thought that
Brandon could have done it. I think my sister's uh
sentence that has been repeated over and over, Well, if
you could lie about being gay, then he could lie
by killing my parents. On November two, Brendon was indicted
for capital murder. His grandma Bonnie was horrified. I knew
(15:51):
Brandon couldn't have couldn't have done anything to his parents.
He leved both his parents. He said he's dead. Was
his best friend. So I know, you know, I'm even
more convinced today. I know what type of person he
is and what love he has for people and for God.
So I know Brandon Wood. As for the investigators, I
(16:14):
just think they they were a small town and they
were they were a little bit lazy. They just wanted
to wrap the case because it makes the neighborhood feel
better and say they knew that Brandon was the last
person to see them alive, because you know, they knew
that he had gone and gotten the pizza. This is
Alison Clayton again, and that's the fact that there was
(16:37):
no forced entry into the house, so they thought that
that indicated that it was somebody that the would have SNeW.
Allison says that investigators quickly homed in on Brandon not
only for those reasons, but also because the police had
discovered his secret life. So then that was a large
part of their motive. That Brandon was leading this double life,
(17:00):
that he was coming home and helping his parents move
on the weekend and then going out and partying gay
night clubs, and you know, participating in all these activities,
and that they were about to find out. And his
grades were bad and he had credit card Debton, so
you know, they were about to cut him off, and
so he was just terrified that he was going to
get cut off, and so in an act of indescribable violence,
(17:21):
the way these people were murdered was very, very violent.
You know, he just decides to murder his parents. Brandon's
trial started on March six nine in front of the
Honorable Judge Richard Beacom Jr. The current Governor of Texas.
Greg Abbott was the state's attorney general at the time,
(17:43):
and he was appointed as a special prosecutor on the case.
The state presented the theory that Brandon was living in
double life, having money troubles and failing out of school,
all of which he wanted to keep secret from his parents.
But mainly really the state's only motive that Brandon would
have had to do this is that he was gay.
(18:05):
That's it. He's gay. His parents are going to find
out about it, and so he just has to kill
them right now. And remember again, this is a small
town Texas early two thousand's uber uber conservative, so the
mention of oh, well, he was gay would have been
plenty to start raising eyebrows like, oh my goodness, he
was gay. What a shame? Like That's what would have
(18:28):
been the senti mentality coming someone coming from small town
Texas in the early two thousands. The state offered no
real hard evidence against Brandon. It was mostly speculation. I
think they got caught up in this whole story of
well he had a double live. He was wearing boots
and jeans, and then he was wearing city clothes, and
(18:48):
he was, you know, like they felt like he was
a lot more sinister, when really it was just me
being myself. I mean, I would wear boots and jeans
when I was around the horses and stuff, and then
I would wear you know, what they would call like
city clothes. I guess to you know, the bars and
clubs and stuff. But your clothing doesn't make you who
you are, and your clothing doesn't make you a killer.
(19:09):
And you ligging guys and girls or just guys or
just girls, they doesn't make you a killer either. But
there was one thing. Brandon's girlfriend, Morgan's parents noticed that
(19:30):
a Western style revolver was missing from their home. They
didn't know how long it had been missing, but they
remembered that the night before the murder, Brandon had showered
at their house and so would have been able to
take the revolver, And so police were thinking that that
you know, had corroborated their suspicions of Brandon because he
would have had the opportunity to still the gun. They
(19:51):
viewed that as inculploratory evidence that he had the opportunity
to get what they thought would be the murder weapon.
The gun used in the murders was never recovered, but
the state offered expert testimony that the gun missing from
Morgan's home could have theoretically been the one used to
commit the murders. One of the main things the state
(20:15):
focused on during trial was Brandon's cell phone records to
try and disprove Brandon's alibi that he was driving around
picking up friends and heading to a club. However, because
of a merger between cell phone companies, many of Brandon's
calls during the crucial Sunday night time period we're missing,
and that didn't bode well for the defense. After both
(20:37):
sides presented, the jury deliberated for five hours, and you know,
it was just the whole time, I kept telling myself, well, Okay,
everything's gonna be. Okay, everything is gonna be. I never
would have thought they were going to return a guilty
verdict ever, Like I really felt like I was going
home that day, but he didn't. Brandon was convicted by
a jury of murdering his parents on March Line. So
(21:02):
they said guilty, and I was like, like, I really
just wanted to sit down, Like I wanted to sit down.
I wanted to like just breathe. I was really kind
of freaking out. But Brandon was told to remain standing
while his sister, Charlotte gave a victim impact statement where
my sister got up there and basically just told me
(21:24):
how I ruined her whole life and told me how
you know, because of my actions. And that was the
hardest thing to hear because I'm sitting here thinking to myself,
I did not do this, and I just had to
stand there and be quiet and accepted. And I think
that was the hardest thing in my entire life. And
I will never forget that you had to sit there
and listen to your sister not believe you, Like what
(21:45):
is that? Like? Like this is a person you grew
up with. She's supposed to be better than anybody. Yeah,
and I you know, it makes so many questions come up,
like why, like why are you doing this? Like I
don't know. It's really hard to just grab. I mean,
even to this day, it's hard to grasp. At two
(22:06):
years old, Brendan was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(22:27):
Even though his relationship with Charlie was strained, Brendan's grandma
Bonnie never let him down. About every three months we've
traveled down to see I mean, we'd spend the night
and go early the next morning and we'd get to
stay four hours with him and stead across the table
from him. He never gave up, and he always claimed
(22:50):
his inn assess and I knew he was innocent, and
he he lives me up. He's the type of person
that lifts you up and makes you feel better about
true so if he's not a person that's day on
all the time. She's like my angel, She's like my rock.
(23:10):
I tell people that all the time. I'm like, that's
my angel right there. I Mean she's never once even
like faltered from the truth. She's been like, there's no way, absolutely,
I'll believe in you. Um. She doesn't care who she
has to stand up and tell that to, including the investigators.
She's like, you know, show me proof, Like quit telling me,
you'll have proof, shown me something. With Bonnie by his side,
(23:43):
Brendan spent years in prison appealing his decision to no avail.
But while he stayed up beat in front of his grandmother,
inside his emotions were a different story. Prison is a
hard place for anyone, especially a young man finding himself.
You gotta have walls put up anyway, you've got to
be like a different person in here. You can't be,
(24:04):
you know, to cry your weak or to be gay
you're a little bit weaker or so you always have
to kind of like prove yourself. So I just stay
out of really everybody's away. I don't really even talk
to too many people here. Brendon spends much of his
time in prison, taking classes or working in the craft shop.
Are you wearing a wedding ring? Actually I made this
(24:25):
in the crash. Yeah, I started working with like metal
and stuff like that. We're allowed like a few, um
what they call in prison free world items. So you
can have a wedding band, a watch, and then you
can have like a cross necklace and it can only
be a wedding ring. Yeah, you cannot have any other
rings or jewelry or that's considered contraband. There are certain
(24:56):
red flags that we look for in every single case.
Brandon exhibits a lot of them. In two thousand twenty one,
Alison Clayton from the Innocence Project of Texas took on
Brandon's case. First red flag, you don't know anything about
the victims. That is a good investigation. Will oyster out with,
who are these victims? Why did they meet this horrific end? Right?
(25:17):
A good investigation that's bent on figuring out what happened
to these people and not bent on painting a bullseye
around someone like you've already chosen who did it? A
good investigation starts with the victims. So who were Norma
and Dennis? They weren't judgmental they weren't. You know, my
mom volunteered for for adults and children that really a
lot of the world wouldn't have nothing to do with
(25:39):
them because they can't come sit at a dinner table,
you know, normally and functionally. And um, I mean my
dad used to go to these drag shows for guys
that would dress up like Dolly Parton and Tina Turner,
like the Five five, you know, and so like, I
feel really really bad that the jury didn't get to
learn about who my parents were, like. They did not
(25:59):
humanize my parents because they would know that my dad's
best friend from high school and college is openly gay.
They're basically not only accusing me of killing my parents
because I was gay and had a lifestyle, but they're
also accusing my parents of being so judgmental that they
wouldn't have loved their son if he was gay. You're
telling me that my parents are basically like hateful people.
(26:22):
In fact, at trial, Brandon's lawyers presented that Brandon's dad
did know about Brandon's sexuality. It wasn't a secret from him.
On the evening of the sixteenth, the night the wood
Druffs were presumably murdered, Dennis spoke on the phone with
his sister Kathy. During that phone call, is whenever Dennis
told his sister, you know, Brandon told me that he
(26:43):
likes boys, and he told his sister, you know, he
was okay with it that he loved Brandon. He's he's
fine with it. It's just he was worried about Brandon
because that can be a dangerous lifestyle. So this entire
idea that his parents would have rejected him because of
his sexuality, there is no basis in fact for that.
(27:06):
Allison goes on to outline a key part of Brandon's
defense at trial, his alibi. We know Brandon was out
of his parents house a bit after seven pm, because
cell phone records show he called them at seven thirty
six pm, indicating he had already left the house. But
after that, Brandon wasn't really with anybody after the time
(27:30):
he left his parents house until much later that night
when he met up with his friend back in Dallas.
So it's not we have somebody who can say, yes,
he was with me, this is what we were doing.
So in those instances, normally we would go back to
the cell phone records, but remember there were missing records
during the crucial time because of the cell phone company merger,
so Brandon's team relied on piecing together other people's records,
(27:53):
people who he said he was on the phone with.
Allison says this timeline is the most important part of
the case. The first time in Brandon's phone records that
we have really anything is whenever we have that paying
um at ten forty six, where he's around I thirty
and six thirty five. This intersection is about twenty minutes
(28:15):
away from both of Brandon's parents homes. A neighbor had
seen Brandon down at the heath House just after ten
p m. He would have been about twenty minutes away
from them at ten, which means he would have left
from either Royce City or Heath around ten six that night.
And Norma spoke to her mother on the phone that
(28:36):
night as well. If the last time that anyone spoke
to the Woodruffs was that call between Norma and her
mom from nine, then you look at everything else. In
my analysis, I look at everything from nine twenty that
evening until ten six, leaving Brandon with just an hour
(28:57):
where he could have killed his parents. But timeline shrinks
even more during that time You've got the call from
Brandon to Alex, to Morgan with Morgan, nine with um,
you know, the roommate he was taking back ten, ten
to Morgan, and then that's that. So you've got five
(29:18):
phone calls during that hour, and between those phone calls.
I'm terrible with math, but it's looking to me like,
I mean, there's about maybe ten minutes, ten eleven minutes
tops that you have in between any of these phone calls.
Allison says that in such a short amount of time,
it's unrealistic, if not impossible, that Brandon would have been
(29:41):
able to pull all of this off shoot and stab
both of his parents, shower, change his clothes and shoes,
hide his clothes and shoes, clean the bathroom, clean the
knife and gun, ditch the gun, and hide the knife.
A man who has zero history of violence. So either
(30:02):
he is i mean, just committing a vicious crime against
his parents and really really efficient style, which I've never
seen anyone inflict the number of wounds that these people
had on them in ten minutes time, or you're assuming
that he's in the course of murdering his parents, he
gets a phone call from Morgan and you know, hey, Morgan,
(30:25):
how's it going? Everything is fine over here? What are
you doing? Or you know, you hang up and you
go back to murdering your parents, and then your boyfriend
calls you like, oh hey, Alex, yep, I'm going to
be there later on this evening. Yeah, I've just got
to finish up here and we're gonna go and we're
gonna party in Dallas all night long. And then you
hang up and you keep on murdering your parents. Neither
one of those scenarios makes sense to me. So Alison
(30:45):
has a different theory. It wasn't Brandon, and she says
the crime scene points to that. Remember the air mattress,
the women's pants, the porn and the condoms. I don't
know for a fact that my dad has a bisect
to me, because he's actually told that on multiple occasions.
In fact, you know, he had told me so much
it became a joke. And so I tell myself, like,
(31:06):
why would you need a condom if you had in
my sectomy? And then the pornography collection, why why would
you have a pornography collection out There's it's just there
feels there are some very overtly sexual elements that are
part of the crime scenes. I think there's definitely something
going on there. Not only that, but Norma was found
(31:29):
with long blonde hairs in her hands and those hairs
were never tested for the original trial. They did not
test the hair in the dead woman's hand, um, which
is just befuddling to me. You know, if you're truly investigating,
truly trying to find out who did this that, what
would you do? Like, you don't have to be an investigator,
(31:51):
don't have to have FBI training or anything advanced. What
do you do? You test the hair in the dead
woman's hands. But they didn't do that, So to this day,
we don't know who that hair belongs to. Since Allison
(32:12):
and the Innocence Project of Texas have taken Brandon's case,
they have actively fought for DNA testing of the hair
and any other items that exist from the crime scene.
Is that evidence still available for us to go look at.
I don't know. We've filed requests with you know, law enforcement,
with the d a's office. We're trying to figure out,
you know, where's the hair, what about everything else? I
(32:33):
don't know where those things are at. I don't know
if they have been maintained. They should have been, but
I mean, come on, it's Texas. Just because it should
have doesn't mean it happened. While Brandon waits, he concentrates
on the future he'll have when he's out. Um. You know,
growing up, I've always want to adopt a kid, like
I've even told you know, my girlfriend at the time,
(32:54):
I was like, hey, you know, if we ever had kids,
like I would rather have like one on my own
and adopt one. Um in college was a part of
the Big Brother Little Brother program, and so that really
opened my eyes too. You know, there's a lot of
kids and you know, a lot less fortunate places and situations.
Now I look, you know, looking at myself now, I'm like, okay,
you're thirty six. You might be thirty seven or thirty
(33:15):
eight before something, you know, goes on with your case.
And then at least for a couple of years, I
want to just hang out and spend time with the
people who took care of me, especially his grandma Bannie.
My grandmother is like a very avid traveler, and I'm
just like, meet me. Look one day when I come home,
we're not gonna sit down. Like I don't want to
be idle. I've been idol for too long now. But
(33:39):
in thinking about all the people who were there for him,
Brendon can't help but think about the people who weren't,
Like his sister Charla. You know, it's been over ten
years and I can still remember some of the things
she said, and yet I still love my sister. So
it's it's really, you know, a torn, torn feeling right there.
(34:01):
Brandon says that although his parents are gone, they're always
with him, and that inspires him to keep going. It's
a lot more personal than what a lot of people think.
People are thinking, oh, well, you know, the truth is
gonna come out one day, and but there's you know,
there's not justice for me right now, but there's also
(34:21):
not justice for my parents either, And so I told myself,
you know, I'm gonna make this count. Like my parents need,
you know, justice, but they also need, you know, some
change in Texas. Something good can come from this, and
maybe that can be like my parents legacy is to
(34:42):
help what needs to be fixed in the justice system.
I don't want this to just be like, Okay, well
he's innocent, he's free, and we're gonna let this go.
I mean, I think there needs to be at least
some change, because they should never, ever, ever have happened
to me, and it definitely shouldn't happen in the future.
(35:03):
To learn more about Brandon's case and show your support,
visit free Brandon dot org and you can sign a
petition for his exoneration at change dot org. Next time,
un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Deb Nichols. You could
see the emergency lights since we were coming up the
(35:26):
street and I got out, the current started rounding around
the corner and it was my house and it was
on fire. I was literally terrified, and my brain was like,
I just I need to get to the back and
make sure the kids are okay. Thanks for listening to
(35:50):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence
organizations and go to the links in our bio to
see how you can help. I'd like to thank our
executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis, as well as
our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story
editor Sonja Paul. The show is edited and mixed by
Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall.
(36:13):
The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast,
and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also
follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling.
(36:34):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
In October of two thousand five, nineteen year old Brandon
Woodruffe was home from college visiting his parents. They had
just moved to a new home in Royce City, Texas.
Brandon helped them around the house and then the family
sat down to a pizza dinner. In almost every way,
it was a normal Sunday night for the Woodruffs. Everything
(00:25):
just seemed to be ordinary. I mean, if I you know,
if somebody were to tell me, well it was there
one thing that was strange, was there one thing that
was odd? And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just
a normal weekend. None of this what ended up happening
was even I mean I couldn't even have thought that
would have happened. Two days later, Brandon's parents were found
(00:46):
brutally murdered. In the days that followed, Brandon was doing
his best to try and help investigators find out who
had killed them, and then they just flipped the whole
table and they were like, well we really think that
you murdered your parents. My name is Brendon Dell Woodruff.
I'm thirty six years old from rock Wall, Texas, and
I've been wrongly convicted for seventeen years from love of
(01:11):
for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today.
Brandon Woodruff Brendan Woodruff was born September six in Rockwall, Texas,
(01:39):
to Dennis and Normal Woodruff. Brendan and his sister, Charliae
are eighteen months apart. Because he was a baby of
the family. This is Brendan's grandma, Bonnie. Brandon was always
a happy child. He just he loved everyone. He was
always happy singing when he was a little boy. Smiling,
(02:00):
Brandon describes life growing up as idyllic. We had two
wonderful parents. Uh, they kind of spoiled us a whole lot,
he says. The family was always on the go and
participating in community events. Charlie was a dancer and had
recitals and shows, and Brandon embraced the country life. The
wood Droffs lived on a farm in the town of Heath,
(02:23):
just a few miles south of Rockwall. Kind of a
small town. It's really like close knit, and Brandon was
involved in the youth agricultural organizations for Age and Future
Farmers of America. My mom gave me this passion for horses,
and so my mom was really there to you know,
kind of inspire me and teach me things with the horses,
(02:44):
with the cattle. Like she was a blue jeans kind
of woman. Most moms like cook. Well, my dad cooked,
and my mom was out there hall and hay like
a hard working guy. And you know she would go
out there with a post hole digger and go dig
to put a post to build a fans. Yeah, she
(03:04):
was definitely like one of the strongest woman I've known.
Brendon says he and his mom raised livestock to show
and sell at markets in the surrounding cities. We would
basically get a young count and you basically raise them
up since maybe you halter train on which can be hectic.
And then I didn't really want to do the market
steers because then you would have to sell them to
butcher and I really don't want to butcher my animals.
(03:27):
So Brendon would show them instead, traveling to fairs all
over Texas. So it's a lot of hours and three
o'clock morning drive times to Wago, Texas and Abilene and
four stock show and all different types of rodeo and fairs.
So that is a life I know, not but it
(03:48):
sounds pretty cool. Brandon loved this life, especially being around horses. Really,
I kind of wanted to be a horse trainer, Like
I really have this huge horse bug. My mom volunteered
at a therapeutic rotting center called equest Is for like
disabled kids and kids would like autism and stuff, and
so she used to take me out there to volunteer.
(04:10):
You know, it kind of opened my eyes to the
world is a little bit different than in your perfect
little neighborhoods. Brandon was also really close with his father.
He says his dad was really funny, like he was
kind of embarrassingly funny, like he was a class crown
like I was kind of. He would just make everybody laugh,
and I would have friends come over, and he had
(04:31):
blared Tina Turner's Proud Mary, like at eight o'clock in
the morning. He would go get donuts, and I would
come out and he would be in the room dancing
to Proud Mary, and I've got my friends over, and
I'd be like, Dad, are you crazy. One time, Brandon
remembers he broke both his legs falling off a horse.
For the first two months of recovery, he was bedridden
(04:52):
and his dad was totally there for him, and so
I had a toilet next to my bed, and I
remember when I had to use the toilet, it was
so embarrassing for me. You know, I'm already a teenager
and I'm having to scoot onto this plastic toilet to
use the bathroom. And my dad literally took off work
so he could be there so any time that, like
(05:12):
I needed him, I could just say hey, Dad, you know,
and he would come in there and he would claim
the whole toilet, like, no questions asked, no embarrassment, no belittlement.
Brandon says there was a lot of love in the
Woodrofe household, but internally he was struggling. It started around
(05:32):
his high school years in the early two thousand's. I
basically started like maybe exploring my sexuality. He had a girlfriend, Morgan,
who he really loved, but he also had thoughts and
feelings about boys. Coming from a close knit town, there
wasn't too many quote unquote gay kids at school. I
think we maybe had like one or two. And you know,
(05:54):
as embarrassed I am to say it now, you know,
I was kind of along with the group that kind
of made fun of them. So in his world of Rockwall, Texas,
Brandon kept his attraction to boys to himself, you know,
to my friends that I showed cattle and horses with.
I knew that they would probably not understand, and especially
the reaction to gay people in my small town. Um,
(06:15):
you know, they would just kind of like ostracized a
little bit. Like I said, there was maybe only two
in my public high school, and I think both of
them went to alternative school by the end of their
senior year because it just got too much. I mean,
the people calling them names, um, stuff like that. I
really didn't see any like of the LGBT community in
(06:36):
my neighborhood. You know, we definitely didn't have no Pride month.
We definitely have no pride parades. We didn't have none
of that. So I would actually have to drive into Dallas,
which was about thirty five minutes away to go experience
any of that stuff. What I would do is I
would kind of go out on the weekends, visit like
a gay club. I visited a couple of gay bars
(06:59):
for didn't would also go online and chat rooms and
my Space groups for gay men. He says, life went
on like that for a while. I thought my private
world was gonna be my private world. Um, probably like
mid late senior year in two thousand and five, I
really started getting to where I really kind of just
dinak care um. It wasn't like I was advertising my sexuality.
(07:20):
I wasn't jumping up and down with a rainbow flag.
But I wasn't hiding it at so much because I
was going in public places. I was having you know, boyfriends.
Then one night, when Brandon was on his way out,
his dad asked him the name of the club he
was going to. I really didn't want to tell him
that it was a gay club, so I just said
a club's name on the radio that we had heard,
you know, like repeated over the years. And uh, the
(07:42):
next day he said, you know, that club he went
to last night was a gay club. And inadvertently I
had given him a gay club's name anyway, And so
I actually had a kind of telling well, okay, uh,
you know, I just told him I didn't know yet
at that time, which was the truth. Brandian was still
trying to find himself and figure it all out. And
he told me, you know, would be safe, be careful,
(08:04):
and he said, when you find out, let me know.
Denis would be the type of person that would accept that,
you know. I mean, here's Brendan's grandma Bonnie again. He
was accepting the people because he loved people, just like Brandon,
didn't matter who that was because he had a friend
(08:26):
that was also gay. I've told my dad a lot worse.
I could tell my dad anything. I could literally talk
to my dad about the bad grades I was making. Um. Now,
sometimes I would try to hide them too, but at
the end of the day, my Dad's gonna be there
for me no matter what. So we're the bad grades
(08:48):
worse than being gay? Is that one of the worst
things you told him? I mean, I really think that
the back grades would have been a little bit worse
than being gay. Like my parents were like so hands
on loving that that's the last thing that they would
have really even cared about. Brandon graduated from Rockwall High
(09:10):
School in two thousand five and went on to Abilene
Christian University, about three and a half hours away. He
found himself struggling in his first semester. He was put
on academic probation and was on the verge of failing
out of college. His parents told him they could no
longer support him financially if that happened, and that he'd
have to come back home, but Brandon wasn't worried about money.
(09:33):
He would wear designer clothes, go on shopping sprees, and
eat out often, which led his college friends to believe
he came from a wealthy family, but the reality was
Brandon was acting in pornographic movies to make money. Though
he told his friends he had taken up modeling, most
of his money was coming from making porn, but with
his spending habits, he was racking up credit card debt.
(09:57):
In October if that first semester in college, Brandon came
home for a few days to see his parents and
help him out. His parents had just bought a trailer
home in Royce City, about fourteen miles north. They still
had some things at their place in Heath and needed
help moving. I guess it was like a foreclosed property.
So there was a lot of stuff that my mom
(10:17):
wanted to do to get the horses out there eventually,
and so I was just tom, you know, to help
her and help my dad a little bit. On the
evening of October sixte the Woodroft family sat down for
a pizza dinner in their new place. Everything just seemed
to be ordinary, I mean, if I you know, if
somebody were to tell me, well, it was there one
(10:39):
thing that was strange? Was there one thing that was odd?
And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just a normal weekend.
After the dinner, Brandon headed out for the evening. He
plans on coming back to Royce City in a few
days to take Father's Day pictures with his sister Charla,
who would also be home from school, and so really
I was expecting to see them, you know, in four days.
(11:00):
So what ended up happening was even I mean, I
couldn't even have thought that would have happened. Shortly after
seven pm on October sixte Brandon left his parents home
to go out with friends, first stopping by their old
(11:21):
home in Heath, about twenty four minutes away. A bit
after ten that night, a neighbor saw Brandon in the
driveway of the Heath house. Then Brandon picked up some
friends around ten forty pm and went to Dallas to
party with them and his boyfriend, Alex. Brandon drove back
to school in Abilene in the early hours the following morning.
(11:47):
Later that day, on the people started becoming concerned about
Dennis and Norma Woodruff. They didn't show up to work,
which was unusual for them, and no one had seen
or spoken to them since nine pm the night before,
when Norma talked with her mother on the phone. Charla
had called her parents from school at eleven pm on
Sunday night and had not heard back, so she contacted
(12:08):
her aunt Linda on two days after they were last
heard from. Linda reached out to a family friend to
go over to the Woodruff's new home to check on them.
A couple of friends showed up, knocked and got an
no response, so they opened a window with a pride
bar to see what was going on. Once inside, they
found a horrific scene. Dennis and Norma's dead bodies were
(12:32):
seated on their couch. They've each been shot and stabbed
several times. This episode is underwritten by a i G,
a leading global insurance company. A i G is committed
(12:54):
to corporate social responsibility and to making a positive difference
in the lives of its employees and in the communities
where they work and live. In light of the compelling
need for pro bono legal assistance, and in recognition of
a i g s commitment to criminal and social justice reform,
the ai G pro bono program provides free legal services
(13:14):
and other support to underrepresented communities and individuals. When investigators
from the Hunt County Sheriff's Office arrived at the Woodrofts
trailer home, they found a crime scene covered in blood,
(13:37):
yet they failed to wear protective foot coverings. And what's
even more bizarre, they began investigating in the dark. They think, well,
this is how the murderers would have seen the house.
So we're going to turn off the lights in the house,
and that's how we're going to to walk around and
make our crime scene video. And during the course of
doing that, you know, they're knocking stuff off, They're destroying
all kinds of potential evidence of the sea and it's
(14:00):
it's they literally investigated the crime in the dark. This
is Alison Clayton. She's the deputy director of the Innocence
Project of Texas and the adjunct professor of the Innocence
Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law. Allison says
that inside the trailer it's unclear what had been disturbed
by the crime or by the investigators stumbling around in
(14:23):
the dark, But what seems clear is that there were
strange items found laying around the house. Flavored condom packets
were strewn about, along with an extensive pornography collection and
an air mattress completely inflated. On top of the mattress
were two pairs of women's capri pants that were way
too big to fit Norma. Brandon says none of this
(14:46):
was there when he left on that Sunday night. Joel
Gibson was the lead investigator on the case along with
Texas Ranger Jeff Collins, and Brandon was their lead suspect.
He was the last person known to have seen his parents,
and they were like, well, we really think that you
murdered your parents. And I just I didn't know what
to think. You know, I wasn't raised to cuss at
(15:08):
a law enforcement officer or anything, and I just I
just kind of lost it because I thought, you do
not know what you're talking about, Like, you don't know
who these people are. These are my parents, these like
are the people who raised me. Brandon was devastated. His
parents had been violently murdered and here he was being
accused of killing them. And what stung even more his sister,
(15:29):
Charla turned on him. She told police she thought that
Brandon could have done it. I think my sister's uh
sentence that has been repeated over and over, Well, if
you could lie about being gay, then he could lie
by killing my parents. On November two, Brendon was indicted
for capital murder. His grandma Bonnie was horrified. I knew
(15:51):
Brandon couldn't have couldn't have done anything to his parents.
He leved both his parents. He said he's dead. Was
his best friend. So I know, you know, I'm even
more convinced today. I know what type of person he
is and what love he has for people and for God.
So I know Brandon Wood. As for the investigators, I
(16:14):
just think they they were a small town and they
were they were a little bit lazy. They just wanted
to wrap the case because it makes the neighborhood feel
better and say they knew that Brandon was the last
person to see them alive, because you know, they knew
that he had gone and gotten the pizza. This is
Alison Clayton again, and that's the fact that there was
(16:37):
no forced entry into the house, so they thought that
that indicated that it was somebody that the would have SNeW.
Allison says that investigators quickly homed in on Brandon not
only for those reasons, but also because the police had
discovered his secret life. So then that was a large
part of their motive. That Brandon was leading this double life,
(17:00):
that he was coming home and helping his parents move
on the weekend and then going out and partying gay
night clubs, and you know, participating in all these activities,
and that they were about to find out. And his
grades were bad and he had credit card Debton, so
you know, they were about to cut him off, and
so he was just terrified that he was going to
get cut off, and so in an act of indescribable violence,
(17:21):
the way these people were murdered was very, very violent.
You know, he just decides to murder his parents. Brandon's
trial started on March six nine in front of the
Honorable Judge Richard Beacom Jr. The current Governor of Texas.
Greg Abbott was the state's attorney general at the time,
(17:43):
and he was appointed as a special prosecutor on the case.
The state presented the theory that Brandon was living in
double life, having money troubles and failing out of school,
all of which he wanted to keep secret from his parents.
But mainly really the state's only motive that Brandon would
have had to do this is that he was gay.
(18:05):
That's it. He's gay. His parents are going to find
out about it, and so he just has to kill
them right now. And remember again, this is a small
town Texas early two thousand's uber uber conservative, so the
mention of oh, well, he was gay would have been
plenty to start raising eyebrows like, oh my goodness, he
was gay. What a shame? Like That's what would have
(18:28):
been the senti mentality coming someone coming from small town
Texas in the early two thousands. The state offered no
real hard evidence against Brandon. It was mostly speculation. I
think they got caught up in this whole story of
well he had a double live. He was wearing boots
and jeans, and then he was wearing city clothes, and
(18:48):
he was, you know, like they felt like he was
a lot more sinister, when really it was just me
being myself. I mean, I would wear boots and jeans
when I was around the horses and stuff, and then
I would wear you know, what they would call like
city clothes. I guess to you know, the bars and
clubs and stuff. But your clothing doesn't make you who
you are, and your clothing doesn't make you a killer.
(19:09):
And you ligging guys and girls or just guys or
just girls, they doesn't make you a killer either. But
there was one thing. Brandon's girlfriend, Morgan's parents noticed that
(19:30):
a Western style revolver was missing from their home. They
didn't know how long it had been missing, but they
remembered that the night before the murder, Brandon had showered
at their house and so would have been able to
take the revolver, And so police were thinking that that
you know, had corroborated their suspicions of Brandon because he
would have had the opportunity to still the gun. They
(19:51):
viewed that as inculploratory evidence that he had the opportunity
to get what they thought would be the murder weapon.
The gun used in the murders was never recovered, but
the state offered expert testimony that the gun missing from
Morgan's home could have theoretically been the one used to
commit the murders. One of the main things the state
(20:15):
focused on during trial was Brandon's cell phone records to
try and disprove Brandon's alibi that he was driving around
picking up friends and heading to a club. However, because
of a merger between cell phone companies, many of Brandon's
calls during the crucial Sunday night time period we're missing,
and that didn't bode well for the defense. After both
(20:37):
sides presented, the jury deliberated for five hours, and you know,
it was just the whole time, I kept telling myself, well, Okay,
everything's gonna be. Okay, everything is gonna be. I never
would have thought they were going to return a guilty
verdict ever, Like I really felt like I was going
home that day, but he didn't. Brandon was convicted by
a jury of murdering his parents on March Line. So
(21:02):
they said guilty, and I was like, like, I really
just wanted to sit down, Like I wanted to sit down.
I wanted to like just breathe. I was really kind
of freaking out. But Brandon was told to remain standing
while his sister, Charlotte gave a victim impact statement where
my sister got up there and basically just told me
(21:24):
how I ruined her whole life and told me how
you know, because of my actions. And that was the
hardest thing to hear because I'm sitting here thinking to myself,
I did not do this, and I just had to
stand there and be quiet and accepted. And I think
that was the hardest thing in my entire life. And
I will never forget that you had to sit there
and listen to your sister not believe you, Like what
(21:45):
is that? Like? Like this is a person you grew
up with. She's supposed to be better than anybody. Yeah,
and I you know, it makes so many questions come up,
like why, like why are you doing this? Like I
don't know. It's really hard to just grab. I mean,
even to this day, it's hard to grasp. At two
(22:06):
years old, Brendan was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
(22:27):
Even though his relationship with Charlie was strained, Brendan's grandma
Bonnie never let him down. About every three months we've
traveled down to see I mean, we'd spend the night
and go early the next morning and we'd get to
stay four hours with him and stead across the table
from him. He never gave up, and he always claimed
(22:50):
his inn assess and I knew he was innocent, and
he he lives me up. He's the type of person
that lifts you up and makes you feel better about
true so if he's not a person that's day on
all the time. She's like my angel, She's like my rock.
(23:10):
I tell people that all the time. I'm like, that's
my angel right there. I Mean she's never once even
like faltered from the truth. She's been like, there's no way, absolutely,
I'll believe in you. Um. She doesn't care who she
has to stand up and tell that to, including the investigators.
She's like, you know, show me proof, Like quit telling me,
you'll have proof, shown me something. With Bonnie by his side,
(23:43):
Brendan spent years in prison appealing his decision to no avail.
But while he stayed up beat in front of his grandmother,
inside his emotions were a different story. Prison is a
hard place for anyone, especially a young man finding himself.
You gotta have walls put up anyway, you've got to
be like a different person in here. You can't be,
(24:04):
you know, to cry your weak or to be gay
you're a little bit weaker or so you always have
to kind of like prove yourself. So I just stay
out of really everybody's away. I don't really even talk
to too many people here. Brendon spends much of his
time in prison, taking classes or working in the craft shop.
Are you wearing a wedding ring? Actually I made this
(24:25):
in the crash. Yeah, I started working with like metal
and stuff like that. We're allowed like a few, um
what they call in prison free world items. So you
can have a wedding band, a watch, and then you
can have like a cross necklace and it can only
be a wedding ring. Yeah, you cannot have any other
rings or jewelry or that's considered contraband. There are certain
(24:56):
red flags that we look for in every single case.
Brandon exhibits a lot of them. In two thousand twenty one,
Alison Clayton from the Innocence Project of Texas took on
Brandon's case. First red flag, you don't know anything about
the victims. That is a good investigation. Will oyster out with,
who are these victims? Why did they meet this horrific end? Right?
(25:17):
A good investigation that's bent on figuring out what happened
to these people and not bent on painting a bullseye
around someone like you've already chosen who did it? A
good investigation starts with the victims. So who were Norma
and Dennis? They weren't judgmental they weren't. You know, my
mom volunteered for for adults and children that really a
lot of the world wouldn't have nothing to do with
(25:39):
them because they can't come sit at a dinner table,
you know, normally and functionally. And um, I mean my
dad used to go to these drag shows for guys
that would dress up like Dolly Parton and Tina Turner,
like the Five five, you know, and so like, I
feel really really bad that the jury didn't get to
learn about who my parents were, like. They did not
(25:59):
humanize my parents because they would know that my dad's
best friend from high school and college is openly gay.
They're basically not only accusing me of killing my parents
because I was gay and had a lifestyle, but they're
also accusing my parents of being so judgmental that they
wouldn't have loved their son if he was gay. You're
telling me that my parents are basically like hateful people.
(26:22):
In fact, at trial, Brandon's lawyers presented that Brandon's dad
did know about Brandon's sexuality. It wasn't a secret from him.
On the evening of the sixteenth, the night the wood
Druffs were presumably murdered, Dennis spoke on the phone with
his sister Kathy. During that phone call, is whenever Dennis
told his sister, you know, Brandon told me that he
(26:43):
likes boys, and he told his sister, you know, he
was okay with it that he loved Brandon. He's he's
fine with it. It's just he was worried about Brandon
because that can be a dangerous lifestyle. So this entire
idea that his parents would have rejected him because of
his sexuality, there is no basis in fact for that.
(27:06):
Allison goes on to outline a key part of Brandon's
defense at trial, his alibi. We know Brandon was out
of his parents house a bit after seven pm, because
cell phone records show he called them at seven thirty
six pm, indicating he had already left the house. But
after that, Brandon wasn't really with anybody after the time
(27:30):
he left his parents house until much later that night
when he met up with his friend back in Dallas.
So it's not we have somebody who can say, yes,
he was with me, this is what we were doing.
So in those instances, normally we would go back to
the cell phone records, but remember there were missing records
during the crucial time because of the cell phone company merger,
so Brandon's team relied on piecing together other people's records,
(27:53):
people who he said he was on the phone with.
Allison says this timeline is the most important part of
the case. The first time in Brandon's phone records that
we have really anything is whenever we have that paying
um at ten forty six, where he's around I thirty
and six thirty five. This intersection is about twenty minutes
(28:15):
away from both of Brandon's parents homes. A neighbor had
seen Brandon down at the heath House just after ten
p m. He would have been about twenty minutes away
from them at ten, which means he would have left
from either Royce City or Heath around ten six that night.
And Norma spoke to her mother on the phone that
(28:36):
night as well. If the last time that anyone spoke
to the Woodruffs was that call between Norma and her
mom from nine, then you look at everything else. In
my analysis, I look at everything from nine twenty that
evening until ten six, leaving Brandon with just an hour
(28:57):
where he could have killed his parents. But timeline shrinks
even more during that time You've got the call from
Brandon to Alex, to Morgan with Morgan, nine with um,
you know, the roommate he was taking back ten, ten
to Morgan, and then that's that. So you've got five
(29:18):
phone calls during that hour, and between those phone calls.
I'm terrible with math, but it's looking to me like,
I mean, there's about maybe ten minutes, ten eleven minutes
tops that you have in between any of these phone calls.
Allison says that in such a short amount of time,
it's unrealistic, if not impossible, that Brandon would have been
(29:41):
able to pull all of this off shoot and stab
both of his parents, shower, change his clothes and shoes,
hide his clothes and shoes, clean the bathroom, clean the
knife and gun, ditch the gun, and hide the knife.
A man who has zero history of violence. So either
(30:02):
he is i mean, just committing a vicious crime against
his parents and really really efficient style, which I've never
seen anyone inflict the number of wounds that these people
had on them in ten minutes time, or you're assuming
that he's in the course of murdering his parents, he
gets a phone call from Morgan and you know, hey, Morgan,
(30:25):
how's it going? Everything is fine over here? What are
you doing? Or you know, you hang up and you
go back to murdering your parents, and then your boyfriend
calls you like, oh hey, Alex, yep, I'm going to
be there later on this evening. Yeah, I've just got
to finish up here and we're gonna go and we're
gonna party in Dallas all night long. And then you
hang up and you keep on murdering your parents. Neither
one of those scenarios makes sense to me. So Alison
(30:45):
has a different theory. It wasn't Brandon, and she says
the crime scene points to that. Remember the air mattress,
the women's pants, the porn and the condoms. I don't
know for a fact that my dad has a bisect
to me, because he's actually told that on multiple occasions.
In fact, you know, he had told me so much
it became a joke. And so I tell myself, like,
(31:06):
why would you need a condom if you had in
my sectomy? And then the pornography collection, why why would
you have a pornography collection out There's it's just there
feels there are some very overtly sexual elements that are
part of the crime scenes. I think there's definitely something
going on there. Not only that, but Norma was found
(31:29):
with long blonde hairs in her hands and those hairs
were never tested for the original trial. They did not
test the hair in the dead woman's hand, um, which
is just befuddling to me. You know, if you're truly investigating,
truly trying to find out who did this that, what
would you do? Like, you don't have to be an investigator,
(31:51):
don't have to have FBI training or anything advanced. What
do you do? You test the hair in the dead
woman's hands. But they didn't do that, So to this day,
we don't know who that hair belongs to. Since Allison
(32:12):
and the Innocence Project of Texas have taken Brandon's case,
they have actively fought for DNA testing of the hair
and any other items that exist from the crime scene.
Is that evidence still available for us to go look at.
I don't know. We've filed requests with you know, law enforcement,
with the d a's office. We're trying to figure out,
you know, where's the hair, what about everything else? I
(32:33):
don't know where those things are at. I don't know
if they have been maintained. They should have been, but
I mean, come on, it's Texas. Just because it should
have doesn't mean it happened. While Brandon waits, he concentrates
on the future he'll have when he's out. Um. You know,
growing up, I've always want to adopt a kid, like
I've even told you know, my girlfriend at the time,
(32:54):
I was like, hey, you know, if we ever had kids,
like I would rather have like one on my own
and adopt one. Um in college was a part of
the Big Brother Little Brother program, and so that really
opened my eyes too. You know, there's a lot of
kids and you know, a lot less fortunate places and situations.
Now I look, you know, looking at myself now, I'm like, okay,
you're thirty six. You might be thirty seven or thirty
(33:15):
eight before something, you know, goes on with your case.
And then at least for a couple of years, I
want to just hang out and spend time with the
people who took care of me, especially his grandma Bannie.
My grandmother is like a very avid traveler, and I'm
just like, meet me. Look one day when I come home,
we're not gonna sit down. Like I don't want to
be idle. I've been idol for too long now. But
(33:39):
in thinking about all the people who were there for him,
Brendon can't help but think about the people who weren't,
Like his sister Charla. You know, it's been over ten
years and I can still remember some of the things
she said, and yet I still love my sister. So
it's it's really, you know, a torn, torn feeling right there.
(34:01):
Brandon says that although his parents are gone, they're always
with him, and that inspires him to keep going. It's
a lot more personal than what a lot of people think.
People are thinking, oh, well, you know, the truth is
gonna come out one day, and but there's you know,
there's not justice for me right now, but there's also
(34:21):
not justice for my parents either, And so I told myself,
you know, I'm gonna make this count. Like my parents need,
you know, justice, but they also need, you know, some
change in Texas. Something good can come from this, and
maybe that can be like my parents legacy is to
(34:42):
help what needs to be fixed in the justice system.
I don't want this to just be like, Okay, well
he's innocent, he's free, and we're gonna let this go.
I mean, I think there needs to be at least
some change, because they should never, ever, ever have happened
to me, and it definitely shouldn't happen in the future.
(35:03):
To learn more about Brandon's case and show your support,
visit free Brandon dot org and you can sign a
petition for his exoneration at change dot org. Next time,
un Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Deb Nichols. You could
see the emergency lights since we were coming up the
(35:26):
street and I got out, the current started rounding around
the corner and it was my house and it was
on fire. I was literally terrified, and my brain was like,
I just I need to get to the back and
make sure the kids are okay. Thanks for listening to
(35:50):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence
organizations and go to the links in our bio to
see how you can help. I'd like to thank our
executive producers Jason Flam and Kevin Wurtis, as well as
our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lila Robinson, and story
editor Sonja Paul. The show is edited and mixed by
Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cleburne and Connor Hall.
(36:13):
The music in this production is by three time OSCAR
nominated composer Jay Ralph. Be sure to follow us on
Instagram at Wrongful Conviction, on Facebook at Wrongful Conviction Podcast,
and on Twitter at wrong Conviction, as well as at
Lava for Good. On all three platforms, you can also
follow me on both Instagram and Twitter at Maggie Freeling.
(36:34):
Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling is a production of Lava
for Good Podcasts in association with Signal Company Number one
Hosts And Creators
Lauren Bright Pacheco
Maggie Freleng
Jason Flom
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