It was 6 pm on Sunday night at the beginning of winter solstice, three days since the new moon and the new year. Darkness came early, and it had been dark at the Brandon home for days.
Julian Brandon and his wife Alice lived at 5340 Primitive Baptist Church Road just off Roy Road. Julian was a retired minister who built a new home on his family property in Caddo Parish. Though retired, he served as pastor of senior citizens at First Baptist Church in Blanchard.
People in Blanchard like things quiet, but it was too quiet at the Brandon’s house. The last time anyone heard from Julian and Alice was New Year’s Day, and now, four days later, friends and family were concerned. It was unlike them to miss church that morning, and when they didn’t show up for evening service, everyone knew something was wrong. Friends called, but no one answered. Finally, someone went by to check on them.
It was just after dark when a church member went to the Brandon’s front door. He looked through the window and saw Julian on the ground in a pool of blood. He ran to his car and called the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Office.
At the same time, Alice’s cousin, Danny Kent received a phone call from his sister-in-law who lived across the street from the Brandons. She told him she thought Julian may have had a heart attack and needed help. Danny walked to Julian’s house and finding the back door ajar, he went inside.
The holidays were over, and it had been a quiet weekend for the Sheriff’s Office, but now every available unit was rushing to Primitive Baptist Church Road with lights flashing and sirens blaring. The first to arrive was Deputy Mike Vaitkus.
Vaitkus talked to the caller in front of the Brandon’s home and then went around back checking the perimeter. Behind the house, he found a woman standing next to the open back door. It was Danny Kent’s wife. She said Danny was inside. Danny recently retired from the Sheriff’s Office as a mechanic. He was a no-nonsense man who was devoted to his family. Vaitkus went inside, approached Danny cautiously and asked him to step outside. With Danny out of the way, he went back in and found Julian lying by the front door in a pool of dried blood just like the caller described. There was a slash across his neck, and a knife protruding from his back. He had been dead for awhile. Near his body was a second kitchen knife, broken in two. There were bloody prints on the wall and floor, and a yellow bracelet conspicuously laying on the floor in the kitchen.
Knowing there was nothing he could do for Julian, Vaitkus backed out of the house and waited for back up. When Sergeant Bill Gaines arrived, the two of them went inside with guns drawn making sure the people who murdered Julian weren’t lurking in a dark corner somewhere. Moments later, Deputy Richard Jennings set up a perimeter around the outside of the house. Only law enforcement or medical personnel could go beyond the yellow tape.
Vaitkus and Gaines didn’t find any bad guys, but they did find a woman on the floor in the bedroom. It was Alice Brandon. A trail of blood on the bed led to the floor where she lay. She had been shot in the head, but unlike her husband, she was alive. When paramedics arrived, Gaines backed away, knowing her survival depended on emergency treatment. He wanted to ask who shot her and killed her husband, but he knew it would have to wait. She was air lifted to LSU Medical Center in Shreveport.
Sheila Hostnick and Kay Ward were the on call detectives. When Kay walked up to the scene, Lieutenant Steve Tompkins, the shift commander and former Detective Lieutenant, raised the yellow tape. As she passed, he reminded her about a woman who lived down the road who just got out of jail. Her name was Brandy Holmes, and Kay knew her well.
Brandy was a notorious burglar and a thief. She spent the last part of 2002 with her father in Mississippi but recently returned home. She was a convicted felon on probation. Richard Jennings, the third deputy to arrive at the scene that day, dealt with Brandy in the past. He responded to a call about a dog bitting a little girl. He found the dog tied up in front of Brandy’s house. He spoke to her mother about letting the dog run loose. She told him the dog was tired of being chained to the tree, so she unhooked him. While he was loose, he bit the little girl. Richard was writing her a summons for Dogs at Large when Brandy walked up to him and demanded to know what he was doing. She tried to talk him out of arresting her mother, but he ignored her. Brandy had a soft complexion and was immature. Richard was surprised to find out she was 23 years old. She couldn’t talk him out of writing the summons, so she took her frustration out on the dog. “Looky what you gone and done now. Dontcha know beeter dan dat?” When Richard looked up from his paper work, she was staring at him.
Lt. Tompkins’ observation was surprising since the crime had just been reported. At that point, no physical evidence had been collected and no witnesses spoken interviewed. It seemed premature to hypothesize on suspects.
In October, Kay worked a burglary at Brandy’s next door neighbor’s house. Several pieces of jewelry were taken in the burglary, and those pieces were found inside Brandy’s home. Kay believed she committed the burglary, but someone else confessed to it.
A week before Julian Brandon’s murder, a burglary occurred in Brandy’s neighborhood. One of the items taken was a leather jacket. The case was assigned to Kay, and Brandy was the prime suspect. As a convicted felon who had not been out of jail for long, she was a suspect in every theft and burglary that occurred within a three mile radius of her home, but was she capable of killing two people in cold blood?
Danny Kent thought so. Eight years earlier, he let his dog out at 10 pm before bed, and the dog barked hysterically. He went outside and noticed his barn door open and his riding lawn mower and go cart missing. He found the mower and go cart staged at the edge of the woods. He called the Sheriff’s Office, and they sent out a tracking dog. According to Danny, the dog followed a path straight to Brandy’s house. The deputies asked him if he wanted to press charges against Brandy, but he would not. He didn’t think it was right to put a girl in jail. Now Brandy was an adult and a suspect in Julian’s murder and Alice’s attempted murder. To a man like Danny, leaving a woman for dead after shooting her in the head was far worse than killing her outright.
Despite the consensus, it was too early to round up suspects. Deputies were still waiting for the Coroner’s Office to pick up Julian’s body, and Alice was just arriving at the hospital. Crime Scene Investigators had not yet gone inside the home, and it would take them hours to process the scene. A break in the case might come from evidence, an autopsy, a tip, or a witness, but so far there were only hunches.
Julian and Alice were known for helping people. They did not have enemies or know anyone who would do them harm. Word of their attack spread through Blanchard like wildfire. Residents loaded their guns and locked their doors. There was a killer in their midst. Deputies knew the urgency. The murderer must be caught. They sympathized with Alice and her family, but they didn’t have time to grieve because they had a case to solve. A murder in a cop’s jurisdiction is serious. Priorities change. Shifts are extended. Searches are conducted. There would be no rest until they exhausted all resources.
Sheila and Kay looked through the house for clues. Sheila noticed an open jewelry box in the bedroom. Steak knives from a knife block in the kitchen were scattered around the house. They were used to stab Julian and slit his throat. Ironically, there was a video tape on the couch in the living room entitled The Evil that Men Do.
The Sheriff sent Kay and Sheila to their office to make some phone calls. They called local hospitals and asked about patients needing stitches for knife wounds, but they came up empty handed. Detective Lieutenant Bill Duncan remained at the scene. The manager of the Blanchard Place Apartments approached him with potential information. Duncan called Kay and Sheila and told them to meet him at the apartments. When they arrived, he told them the manager said Brandy Holmes was at the apartments three days earlier and told him she killed an old couple who lived by a church. She showed him a plastic bag full of jewelry and a small caliber pistol as proof. She offered to sell the jewelry, but he knew better than to deal with her. He thought she was lying about the murders because he didn’t hear anything on the news about it.
The detectives canvassed the apartment complex and spoke to other people who heard Brandy talking about killing two people. Over the next few days, others came forward. Unfortunately, no one spoke up until Julian Brandons was dead and Alice incapacitated.
The name on everyone’s lips was Brandy Holmes. Everyone knew she was a thief, neighbors were afraid of her, and deputies named her as a suspect before paramedics left the scene. In hour after the crimes were discovered, Brandy was suspect number one. The detectives had enough information to question her. They at least needed to ask if she ever told anyone she killed an elderly couple. Her home was within walking distance of the murder. Detectives Sheila and Kay found her there with her brother, mother, and boyfriend, Robert Coleman. Coleman was 33 years. She met him in Mississippi while staying with her father. The detectives brought all of them to the office. Brandy wore a black leather jacket. Kay recognized it as the one stolen in her neighbor’s burglary a week earlier. Kay wondered if she was ignorant or brash. By the end of the night, she knew the answer.
Brandy was either involved in the home invasion, or she heard about it from someone else. Women don’t usually commit home invasions. Maybe she heard about it from her boyfriend or brother.
Of the four people the detectives took to the office, the only one who wasn’t a suspect was her mother.
The general rule for interviewing suspects is to interview the least culpable first. That way the main suspect has no idea what others have told detectives, and while he is waiting to be interviewed, he has plenty of time to think about how he should answer questions. The uncertainty of not knowing how to keep the story straight causes stress, and stress effects the way a person speaks, moves, and behaves. It helps the detectives recognize deception. Following the rule, Brandy’s mother should have been interviewed first. Instead, the detectives interviewed Robert Coleman first.
Coleman was an unemployed, convicted robber and thief. He told the detectives he and Brandy had been together for two months. They met when she moved to Mississippi with her father. In December, they came to Shreveport to spend Christmas with her mother. They arrived at the bus station in Shreveport on Christmas Eve. Robert’s alibi was simple: he got drunk every night, slept every day until 2 pm, and never left Brandy’s trailer. When they asked him to give Brandy an alibi, he had nothing to offer. He said he had no idea what his girlfriend did while he was drunk or asleep.
Since three newspapers were found in the Brandon’s driveway, the detectives estimated the attack occurred on Thursday, January 2, but they were one day off. For Robert, it didn’t matter. His alibi was the same either day.
Kay and Sheila interviewed Brandy’s brother and mother together. Her brother said he was home the night the Brandons were attacked. The detectives confirmed his alibi because he was on house arrest in juvenile court. He said he didn’t know anything about the murders, and Brandy never said anything about it. Kay and Sheila didn’t believe him. The case would have to take a dramatic turn before he would cooperate.
Brandy’s mother denied any knowledge of the crimes, and as a faithful matriarch, she gave a sweeping alibi for the whole family. She said everyone was home all week long. Her alibi was the same as Robert’s: broad and vague. Kay noticed two gold necklaces around her neck, and she asked her where they came from. She said they were gifts from Brandy. The detectives glanced at each other. Brandy was an unemployed, convicted burglar with no means or income. Two months earlier, Kay caught her with a necklace Brandy gave her that came from a house she burglarized. Kay had probable cause to arrest Brandy, but her little brother confessed because Brandy was on probation. That’s why he wore an ankle monitor. The detectives seized the necklaces. Her mother realized the implication and asked for a lawyer, ending the interview.
A detective’s goal in an interview is to get an alibi. If the suspect doesn’t give
a detailed alibi, it is suspicious, and casts doubt on his credibility. The first three suspects gave vague, generalized alibis. Nothing Robert Coleman told them convinced them he was innocent, and nothing her mother and brother said convinced them they were not aware of what happened.
Evidence and testimony that is favorable to a suspect is called exculpatory evidence. Evidence or testimony that points to a suspect’s guilt is called inculpatory evidence. Both exculpatory and inculpatory evidence must be corroborated before a case goes to trial. If the detective doesn’t tie up every loose end, the defense attorney will point it out during trial to discredit him. All information must be taken seriously and be validated or proven untrue; however, the priority of a fresh case is locating suspects and developing probable cause to put them behind bars. Details can be worked out later. To jump ahead in pursuit of exculpatory evidence during the initial stages of the investigation can be a distraction from the main priority. The detectives would soon learn that lesson.
Despite his solid alibi, some people thought Brandy’s brother was involved in the crimes, but neither Brandy nor Robert had such an alibi. It was after midnight. The investigation was 6 hours old. Sometimes it is difficult to get suspects to talk but not Brandy. Talking was the reason she was being interviewed in the first place. The challenge with her was to determine what was true and what was fabricated.
The protocol for interview and interrogation is to interview first, then interrogate if necessary. The goal of the interview is to get a detailed alibi. It is not a debate between a detective and suspect; it is the opportunity for the suspect to give his side of the story. Once a detective has as much of an alibi as he can get, he should leave the suspect alone, review his notes, and answer two basic questions. First, did the suspect give a clear detailed alibi, and second, did the suspect appear to be truthful? If the answer to either question is no, the detective should do an interrogation.
The interrogation is different than the interview. During the interrogation, the detective reasons with the suspect, applies the unique circumstances of the case to the crime, and explains how the suspect is the only person who could have committed it. He tells the suspect why his alibi doesn’t work.
Brandy took control of her interview from the beginning, which wasn’t surprising, but then she did something the detectives didn’t expect. Instead of giving an alibi, she blamed the crime on someone else. She told the detectives she knew she would be blamed for the murder, but she didn’t have any firsthand information because her old friend Donny Williams (not his real name) called her and told her he broke in the house on Primitive Baptist Church Road and killed the people inside. She told them where Donny lived. Kay and Sheila left her with Lieutenant Duncan and rushed off to find him, but Donny didn’t live there anymore. They found another address and talked to a man fitting his description, but he said his name was Josh, and he lived there with his wife. When they asked to speak to her, he admitted he was Donny. He had an outstanding warrant, so Kay and Sheila arrested him and took him to the office. When they arrived, Captain Abraham met them at the door. That was when the case took a sudden turn.
While the detectives were gone, Bobby Abraham spoke to Brandy, and she admitted that she and Robert Coleman committed the home invasion at the Brandon’s on New Years Day, and she told him about another homicide that was unreported. She said they killed a man named Terrance Blaze 24 hours earlier. Over the next two days, Brandy retold her story a dozen times, and each time it was different. In one story, Donny was involved and Robert wasn’t. In another, she was the shooter, and in another, a man known only as Marcus killed Terrance Blaze. Brandy was the only constant in her stories, but she could not remove Robert from the crimes by lying. The two were together from the start.
In her report, Kay wrote, “Brandy did not cry or become upset at any time during the interviews. When she talked about the murder of Mr. Brandon and the attempted murder of Mrs. Brandon she talked as if it was an everyday affair.”
After her confession, Brandy led Kay to Terrance Blaze’s body beside a gravel road right where she left him. Brandy asked Kay, “Ms. Ward, have you ever loved somebody so much you would do anything for them?” Kay asked if she was talking about Robert Coleman. She was.
Back at the office, Brandy told detectives she had a dream the night before. She dreamed she was at the Brandon’s house and saw Alice lying on the floor alive. She woke up and told Robert, “The bitch is still alive!” On Sunday afternoon, four hours before the crime was discovered, Brandy went back to the Brandon’s to see if her dream was true, but instead of taking Robert or Donny, she took her nephews. When they got to the house, she asked them if they wanted to see a dead man. The oldest one said no and refused to go inside, but the 9 year-old had never seen a dead man. When he saw Julian on the floor in a pool of blood by the front door, he ran out of the house leaving Brandy alone with the Brandon’s dog who was crouched beside his master, growling. Brandy heard Alice in the bedroom struggling to breath. She went to the bedroom intending to finish her off by slitting her throat, but the dog blocked the bedroom door and prevented her from going further. She left the house to call 911, but she never got around to it.
It was mid-morning. Robert Coleman was dozing in the conference room. Kay felt she didn’t have probable cause to arrest him, so she asked Detective Jay Morgan to take him home. Jay took Robert to Brandy’s house and left him at the front door. When the Captain found out Robert had been released, he ordered Kay to get him back immediately. She called Jay just before he got back to the office. He found Robert at the front door of the trailer with his luggage in his hands. Robert asked him for a ride to the bus station. Jay said he would take him when they finished at the office. He helped Robert load his bags in the trunk.
At the office, Kay searched the Mississippian’s bag and found a pair of jeans with burgundy stains on them. Robert said they were rust, but they tested positive for blood. He changed his story and said the blood came from a cut on his hand. Kay booked him in jail for first degree murder. At booking, she seized his boots and put them in evidence.
Kay booked Brandy for first degree murder. At the booking desk, she told deputies her nickname was Trouble.
Paul Carmouche had been the District Attorney in Caddo Parish for 24 years. He told the Shreveport Times, “My experience has been that normally you’d see this from a man. It’s just our experience in Caddo Parish that less of these types of crimes are committed by women. That type of case normally results in the death penalty.”
Women who kill usually don’t kill people the way Brandy did; they kill someone they know. Half the women on death row in this country are there for murdering a husband, boyfriend, child, or grandchild.
In an article from the Shreveport Times, Victor Streib, an Ohio law professor and expert on women and the death penalty said, “The sort of classic stranger-killing that men engage in is unusual for women. We have found that a group of women, those who kill a stranger, who kill in a very violent, shocking kind of way … if a women does that, this group seems to be treated (by juries) like a man.”
The death penalty was on everyone’s mind. The crimes were brutal and senseless. The town of Blanchard was shaken. A day after the arrests, Perry Hughes who lived down the road from the Brandons told the Shreveport. Times, “This has been devastating for the neighborhood.” Bubba Talbert, a friend of the Brandon’s said, “It’s been a nightmare …it’s devastating. It’s like a bad dream. We’re all shaken.”
The detectives tracked down a list of witnesses. Robbery had been in the couple’s plans from the beginning. They stole Brandy’s father’s pistol in Mississippi and planned to steal a lot of money and retire in Mississippi. When they arrived in Louisiana, they told people they were going to hit a lick, and their desire to rob and kill was without discretion. Brandy’s friends were as likely to be targets as were strangers. During the week of Christmas, Brandy called two people she knew and offered them sex for money. She told them she needed money to get back to Mississippi, but the plan was to rob them. Before the end of the week, Terry Blaze took the bait and ended up dead.
On New Year’s Eve, the day before the Brandon home invasion, there was a party at Brandy’s trailer. One of her friends walked in the bedroom when her brother handed Robert a small pistol. The witness was uncomfortable and left the room. A few minutes later, Robert came looking for him and apologized and told him about their plan to commit a robbery.
*****
The week between Christmas and New Years, the couple were still working out their plans to make a major heist. The Sheriff’s Office Radio Room received a phone call from someone asking for the code to get in the gate at Nob Hill, an exclusive gated neighborhood in Blanchard. The caller said she was from Chicago and was in town visiting her mother but could not reach her on the phone. The dispatcher said the caller sounded like a white woman trying to sound black, and she didn’t have a Chicago accent. The Caller ID showed the call came from Brandy’s house.
To avoid the gate, the robbers went to Nob Hill, on foot with the intent of luring someone outside and ambushing them. They knocked on a woman’s door and told her they were trying to find a friend’s house. She saw Robert hiding in the bushes and quickly slammed the door and locked it. She called 911, but no one was there when the deputies arrived. Three nights later, They went back to the same house. The woman would not open the door and called 911. Once again the couple fled. According to the Shreveport Times, “The convicted killer later told detectives had the woman let her in, she would have done the same things to her she did to the Brandons.”
Brandy’s brother stone-walled detectives when they interviewed him Sunday night, but now that sister was in jail, he wanted to talk. They knew he wasn’t involved in the murders, but as they suspected, he knew about the murders all along. He told detectives Brandy and Robert left home on January 1 around 10 pm to go for a walk, and he described the clothes they were wearing. They came back 45 minutes later, and Brandy locked herself in the bathroom while Robert went to the bedroom and shut the door. As soon as she came out of the bathroom, Robert went in, and she went to the bedroom. He knew something was going on, so he asked her. She told him they did something really bad. When he pressed her, she told him she, Donny, and Robert killed an old couple, but he never saw Donny with them. Robert told him he fought an old man, stabbed him with a knife, then threw the knife in the kitchen sink. It was supposed to be a robbery, but Brandy told him they only got $6 cash and some credit cards. He knew the crimes weren’t just about money. His sister and her boyfriend wanted to be somebody.
He said Brandy returned to the crime scene twice looking for more jewelry. She told her brother she could hear Alice struggling to breath both times she was there. She showed him the .380 pistol she stole from her father. Robert kept it in his travel bag most of the time, but sometimes he took it out and waved it around.
The detectives asked him about the night Terrance Blaze was murdered. He told them, “I know she was calling him a lot. She was calling him trying to get him over to the house and stuff.” Brandy and Robert left in his mother’s car on Saturday night, January 4 shortly after dark.
The car was equipped with a breath machine attached to the ignition to prevent an intoxicated person from driving it. Brandy’s mom had the equipment installed by court order after she was convicted of a DWI. She was an alcoholic, and later she used her alcoholism to defend her
daughter.
Brandy blew in the machine to get the car started which inferred that Robert was drunk when he drove. They told the family they were going to Western Union to pick up some money for bus fare back to Mississippi. About an hour later, they returned home, and Robert put
the .380 pistol in his coat pocket. He said the gun had blood on it. After they spent a few minutes inside the trailer, they went back outside and cleaned the interior of the car with bleach and detergent. They used white towels to wipe blood from the seats. Later, they left the house twice. When they returned, “They acted different. They acted upset, like – I’m not sure what they acted like or how they were feeling or anything, but they were nervous.” He saw blood on the towels and knew they shot someone. He told the detectives the bloody towels were still at the house in a garbage bag.
Detectives looked inside his momma’s car and saw what appeared to be blood on the seats. They seized the car, got a search warrant, and did the search. The car was drenched in bleach, but they recovered blood evidence. When they searched her house, they found the bloody towels from that night in the bathroom.
One of the mysteries of the case was Brandy’s claim that Donny Williams was involved. She not only told detectives, she also told her little brother, but despite her claims, Donny adamantly denied any involvement, and he had an alibi. Donny and his wife had a New Year’s party at their home, and several people were there and verified his presence. Furthermore, there was no physical evidence to link him to the crimes, and Brandy’s brother never saw him with her and Robert before or after the murders. Early in the investigation, Brandy told detectives where Donny lived, but it was his old address. If he was involved, she should have known where he was living. So, why accuse him? It appeared that Donny and Brandy had a relationship in the past, and when she came back from Mississippi, she saw him in the neighborhood. He told her he was married and working a steady job. Between Christmas and New Year’s she called him and asked him to bring his wife over so she could meet her, but his wife refused. It appears Brandy was jealous, and feeling scorned, she blamed him in retaliation.
Of the five people suspected in the crimes, two of them, Donny and Brandy’s brother, had clear cut alibis, and one of them, Marcus, did not exist. The only thing that would change thingswas physical evidence, but physical evidence against the three was never found. Brandy and Robert were not so lucky.
The detectives searched Brandy’s home twice. During the initial search they found two pillows that appeared to have bullet holes in them, a box of rubber gloves, a Wal-Mart shopping card, and some bloody clothing. The second search was a week later. They found spent .380 shells and jewelry wrapped in a rubber glove in the gutter. One of the pieces of jewelry was a bracelet which was identified by Alice Brandon’s daughter as a gift she gave her mother for Christmas a few years earlier.
Two weeks after Robert Coleman was arrested for the murder of Julian Brandon, he called and asked to speak with detectives. They believed he was ready to tell the truth, but it didn’t happen. Brandy was evil, but she confessed her crimes. Coleman never did. He was only concerned for himself. When the detectives arrived at the jail to talk to him, he said, “The reason why I wanted– the reason why I – like I said, I asked for someone, you know, I don’t know nothing about none of this here.” The sentence, “I don’t know nothing...” contains a double negative and according to the rules of grammar, “A double negative is the nonstandard usage of two negatives used in the same sentence so that they cancel each other and create a positive.” (From Literary Education on Line) Experienced detectives listen for double negatives because they indicate deception. It was the closest Robert ever came to a confession.
He stammered through the interview, trying to distance himself from Brandy. He said, “I didn’t even know Brandy was this type of person, you know...” but he knew what type of person she was. He needed a woman to influence, and he found her. He stuck to his alibi of sleeping and drinking and told them nothing new. He called them because he had a complaint: he was not pleased with the way he was being portrayed at the jail. He said, “I’m being treated – I’m being treated as – as I’m – I’m a murderer, you know.”
A year passed…then two. Robert Coleman went to trial first on the Brandon case. His defense team portrayed him as a victim of a crazy girlfriend. The defense concluded that since he never admitted to being involved, he could not be guilty. The DA’s Office assigned their heavy hitters to the case: Lea Hall, Ed Blewer, and Hugo Holland. Coleman’s defense team consisted of men who spoke up for the disenfranchised and were opposed to the death penalty. They equated the death of Julian Brandon with the death of Charles Manson, all in a pretense of placing a high value on life. The Caddo DAs Office sought the death penalty for Robert Coleman.
On Sunday, February 13, 2005, Assistant District Attorney Ed Blewer made his opening statements in Judge Scott Crichton’s courtroom. Ed told the jury there were two New Year’s Eve parties on December 31, 2002 in Blanchard, Louisiana. One of them was at the Julian Brandon’s home, and the other was the Brandy Holmes’ home. At the Brandon’s, guests ate good food and enjoyed each other’s company as they looked forward to a new year. At the other party, Robert Coleman and Brandy Holmes were planning a home invasion. The prosecution called the witness who saw Robert with a gun on New Year’s Eve. He told about Coleman asking him where he could hit a lick.
Detectives testified about searching Brandy’s house and finding Alice Brandon’s jewelry and two pillows with bullet holes in them. They told the jury about Robert’s arrest and seizing his boots. A criminologist took the stand. He explained how he found and identified Julian Brandon’s blood on Robert Coleman’s boots.
The prosecution called two inmates as witnesses. Collies Sharpes and Bobbie Evans, had conversations with Coleman at Caddo Correction Center. According to the Shreveport Times, “’Coleman said they were in a knock – off game,’ Sharpes testified. ‘He said they were in to robbing, breaking in and knocking people off. A knocking off is a thing they do to kill people.’” Bobbie Evans told the jury Coleman told him he was testing Brandy Holmes to see if she could kill someone. Brandy failed because she, “…ratted everyone out.” The stories corroborated Brandy Holmes question to Kay Ward when they found Terrance Blaze’s body, “Have you ever loved somebody so much you would do anything for them?” Brandy’s motivation for the crime spree was Robert Coleman.
Caddo Coroner, Dr. George McCormick took the stand for the prosecution. He told the jurors Julian Brandon suffered nine fatal wounds in a “blitz attack.” The Coroner said Julian did not have a chance.
When the prosecution rested, the defense called its witnesses. Their strategy was to muddy the water as much as possible. To do so, they blamed the crimes on Brandy Holmes and her brother. They said Robert Coleman had nothing to do with the home invasion of the Brandons. They claimed he could not have been involved because an eyewitness saw two white males at the scene. To prove their claim they explained that Brandy was white and boyish looking, and due to her behavior, she could have easily been mistaken for a male. They said the second white male was either Brandy’s brother or Donny Williams. Robert Coleman couldn’t have been involved because he was black.
The defense called the paramedic from Life Air Rescue, the local medical helicopter that took Alice to the hospital on January 5, 2003. Tommy Adams was a well known Shreveport Fireman with twenty five years of experience. Though he had no role in the investigation, he asked Alice a question while they were flying to the hospital. The Times reported, “A paramedic who treated the wife of homicide victim the Rev. Julian Brandon told jurors Wednesday that the woman was lucid when she described two white males who shot her and her husband.” Adams unwittingly gave them the opening they needed to inject their conspiracy theory into the trial. If Alice Brandon said two white males shot her and her husband, her statement should be taken seriously, but the obvious problem was that Alice Brandon had two gunshot wounds to the head and was found on the floor of her bedroom where she lay helplessly for four days before help arrived. Her telephone was inches away from her, but she was incapable of using or even locating it to call 9-1-1. If not for concerned friends, she would have died on her bedroom floor from blood loss, dehydration, and hunger. Describing Alice as lucid was questionable.
During cross examination, ADA Lea Hall pointed out that Adams asked Alice short, closed ended questions such as, how many attackers were there, and were they white or black. The deputies at the scene, who were the ones in charge of the investigation, didn’t ask Alice
any questions because her injuries were life threatening. Sergeant Bill Gaines, wrote in his report that he heard Alice gurgling while she fought to breathe, and she had froth coming from her mouth. Bill wrote in his report, “She told one of the paramedics her first name was ‘Alice,’ answered ‘yes’ to the question of whether she wore glasses and ‘no’ to whether she wanted them brought to the hospital. One of the rescuers asked her if she knew how she had been injured and she did not respond. I asked her no questions as not to interfere with her medical treatment.” The prosecution put Alice’s daughter on the stand. She had been caring for her for over two years since the shootings. She testified that Alice was unable to speak clearly and unable to testify in court.
On Thursday, February 17, 2005, attorneys made closing arguments. After 4-1/2 hours of deliberation, the jury found Robert Glen Coleman guilty of the first degree murder of Julian Brandon. The Louisiana statute for first degree murder fit Coleman’s crime for at least three reasons: Coleman had specific intent to kill or inflict great bodily harm while engaged in (1) an armed robbery, (2) on more than one person, and (3) upon a victim sixty-five years or older. In Louisiana, a guilty verdict of first degree murder qualifies the offender for the death penalty. If the offender receives mercy, he is given a life sentence at hard labor.
Not everyone was happy about the verdict. Coleman’s mother told the Shreveport Times, “Justice was not served.” After the verdict, Caddo Assistant District Attorney Lea Hall observed, “More than anything, it was him wearing the bloody boots. He couldn’t escape his own boots.” Ultimately, there was more real evidence of murder and mayhem against Robert Coleman than there was against Charles Manson. On Saturday, February 19, 2005, the nine woman, three man jury on the Coleman case heard arguments for and against the death penalty. According to the Times, Defense Attorney Richard Goorley told the jury, ”I’d like to know if you think Robert Coleman is the one who did it, was he with the person who did it or did he know who did? Is that enough for you to take someone’s life when you’re not sure what his involvement was? It’s ironic that the state says that killing someone is wrong, however, we need to kill someone.” Prior to the return of the verdict, “Goorley asked that Coleman’s life be spared, stressing that sentencing him to death would have the same effect on the Coleman family that the minister’s death has had on the Brandon family.”
Despite the defense’s attempts, Robert Coleman was sentenced to death.
*****
During her stay in the Caddo Parish Jail, Brandy, aka Trouble, racked up 44 disciplinary incidents. There was the time she was chewing on her wrist and refused to quit, and deputies placed her in a restraint chair. She escaped from the chair, so they strapped her to a board. Then there was the time she told a deputy she looked up her address in the telephone book, and she was coming to her house to kill her.
Sheila Wright was the Director of the nursing staff at Caddo Correction Center. She had close to twenty years in law enforcement when Trouble came to CCC. Sheila was there for Brandy’s initial mental health evaluation. She described her as, “. . . extremely animated.” During the meeting, Brandy told them she only lacked a semester or two from graduating from nursing school, but it was obvious from her records that she never went to college. Besides that, nursing schools don’t enroll felons, but to Brandy, a lie was as good as the truth. Sheila Wright said, “… it was as if she didn’t have a soul.”
Almost exactly a year after Robert Coleman’s trial, on February 11, 2006, Brandy Holmes went to trial. It had been three years since the tragedy. Caddo ADA Lea Hall made this opening statement, “It was murder for the sake of murder. Keep that phrase in mind because that’s exactly what this case is about.” The defense countered with, “There’s no evidence beyond reasonable doubt that Brandy Holmes is guilty of first-degree murder. Evidence will show she’s guilty of second-degree murder.”
When your attorney agrees with the prosecution that you are guilty of murder, it is not good. For the defense, there was no use denying the obvious. Their only hope was to keep her off death row. They claimed Robert Coleman was the real bad guy, and Brandy just submitted to peer pressure. They claimed he had specific intent to kill, but Brandy didn’t.
On the second day of the trial, the prosecution put Brandy’s 12 year old nephew on the stand. He was a tender, 9 year old when Aunt Brandy took him on a field trip to the home where she and Coleman left two people for dead. He told the court she took him there to see his first dead body. She led him inside, and he saw an old man lying in a pool of blood. He turned and ran out the back door.
Day three highlighted the physical evidence in the case. Detectives believed the pistol used in the crimes was stolen from Brandy’s father in Mississippi, but it was allegedly in the bottom of nearby Cross Lake. They went to Mississippi and found a tree that was used as a back stop for target practice with the pistol, and they recovered a .380 bullet from the tree. They sent it to the crime lab to be compared to a partial bullet removed from Julian Brandon’s head. The bullets were a forensic match proving they were fired from the same gun. There was other evidence as well, such as Alice Brandon’s jewelry found at Brandy’s home, and Brandy’s bracelet that was found in the Brandon’s kitchen.
The defense did their best to cast doubt on Brandy’s involvement. They claimed she was intoxicated when detectives picked her up on January 5th and unable to give a coherent story. They told the jury she made multiple statements during her seven hours with detectives, sometimes admitting to the crimes and sometimes blaming someone else. They said she was confused and should be pitied rather than condemned, but they didn’t mention the confessions Brandy made to many people, including her 9 year old nephew.
On Valentine’s Day, 2006, the 4 man, 8 woman jury went behind closed doors for deliberation. After 30 minutes, they returned to the courtroom and found Brandy guilty of first degree murder. The verdict made the 26 year old eligible for the death penalty. All that was left was the sentencing phase. The only two choices were a life sentence or the death penalty. February 15th was spent debating the issue, and the prosecution pulled no punches. They told the jury about Brandy and Robert’s plot to murder residents in the gated neighborhood of Nob Hill. They put Captain Abraham on the stand to recount Brandy’s original story of the murder of Terrance Blaze.
The defense team put Brandy’s mother on the stand. She told them she had been an alcoholic her whole adult life including the nine months she was pregnant with Brandy. She loved alcohol so much, she named her baby after her favorite drink. The defense said Brandy was a victim of fetal alcohol syndrome which caused a personality disorder. They said she was not responsible for her behavior.
The presiding judge was Scott J. Crichton. In response to the defense’s claim that Brandy was mentally deficient, he told the court, “…there is no evidence that she is mentally retarded by law.” According to the Louisiana Code of Criminal Procedure, Title XXI, Chapter 1, Article 641, “Mental incapacity to proceed exists when, as a result of mental disease or defect, a defendant presently lacks the capacity to understand the proceedings against him or to assist in his defense.” As Judge Crichton pointed out, Brandy had been found fit to go to trial. If she was competent to be tried, she was competent to be sentenced.
The defense looked to local Psychiatrist Mark Vigen for help. He said, “This woman has no sense of herself. She hasn’t learned anything. Brandy doesn’t even know who she is.” People familiar with Brandy and the case would disagree. To them, Brandy knew exactly who she was, and what she wanted to be. She built her character and reputation on breaking rules, and she earned her nickname. She learned nothing from her arrest and trial because that was who she was. She wanted to be a cold, calculated killer, and she achieved her goal.
Brandy’s attorney, David McClatchey, told the jury, “I know she has done some of the most horrible things you can think of, but I’m begging you for mercy to spare Brandy’s life. She’s not like a puppy you get for Christmas that’s defective and you throw it away. Whatever that’s in her head to make right or wrong choices does not work. That’s the way God gave Brandy to us, and we can’t change that.”
Before Judge Scott Crichton handed down Brandy’s sentence he told the court, “I must say this case ranks among the most horrific murders in the history of Caddo Parish. I believe Ms. Holmes earned the death penalty.” He sent Brandy to Death Row at St. Gabriel Women’s Prison in Baton Rouge where she became the second woman on death row. Antoinette Frank was the first.
In 1995, Antoinette Frank was a New Orleans Police Officer. Having grown up in the inner city, Antoinette wanted to help wayward kids. One of the persons she helped was 18 year old gunshot victim, Rogers LaCaze. Frank bought LaCaze clothes, a pager, and even a cell phone. She visited him regularly and soon began spending all her spare time with him. It seemed suspicious, but no one complained. Later, Alice Chaney, LaCaze’s mother said, “Frank became obsessed with him.”
Like many police officers, Antoinette supplemented her income working off duty security. One of the officers on her shift was Ronnie Williams. Williams, a 25 year old father of two, was in charge of security at a Vietnamese restaurant called Kim Anh. Kim Anh was owned
and operated by the Nguyen family. Officer Williams had Antoinette fill in when he needed someone to work at the restaurant.
On March 3, 1995, Antoinette got off her patrol shift at 11pm and went by the restaurant twice. It was late and she wasn’t working at the restaurant, so employees were suspicious. At 2 am, Antionette showed up a third time with Rogers LaCaze. When one of the employees saw her pull up, she hid $10,000 in cash in the microwave. The door to the business was locked, but instead of leaving, Antoinette pulled out a key, unlocked the door, and came inside with LaCaze. Once inside, LaCaze took a 9mm pistol and shot Officer Ronnie Williams in the head, neck, and back. While Williams lay dying, LaCaze took his wallet from his back pocket and his pistol from the holster. He handed William’s pistol to Antoinette.
The Vu family were devout Catholics, and two of their children, Cuong and Ha, wanted to be a priest and a nun. Cuong and Ha were working that night, and they heard the gunshots that killed Officer Williams from the kitchen. Seconds later, Antoinette confronted them with the pistol and demanded money. Cuong and Ha dropped to their knees and in prayer believing it was more important to talk to God than the psychotic police officer. When they wouldn’t respond to her, Antoinette shot them ten times. Ha died instantly. Cuong was still alive, so Antoinette finished him off with a bullet to the head.
The robbers stole what cash they could find and fled. LaCaze dropped Antoinette off at a nearby police station where she was able to get the keys to a police car and return to Kim Anh as the first officer to arrive on scene. When other officers arrived minutes later, surviving employees timidly told them Franks was the one they were looking for. They took her to the station for questioning, and she confessed that Rogers LaCaze killed Officer Williams, and she killed Cuong and Ha, but she said she only did it because LaCaze forced her.
Justice was uncharacteristically swift for Antoinette. By October of the same year she went to trial and was convicted of first degree murder. It took very little deliberation to send her to death row. In a separate trial, Rogers LaCaze received the same fate.
A month after Antoinette’s trial, a dog dug up human bones under her house. Crime Scene Investigators found a skull with a bullet hole in it. The bones belonged to Antoinette’s father who lived with her until she reported him missing two years before the Kim Anh murders. She was never indicted for her father’s murder.
Robert Coleman’s conviction in 2006 was overturned over an issue with his jury, but he was convicted and received the death penalty again in 2012. In 2016, both Brandy and Robert Coleman were taken off death row and sentenced to life but for different reasons. The Caddo District Attorney’s office felt Brandy’s conviction could be overturned because of conflicting testimony from a witness, so they made an agreement with her and gave her a life sentence. Robert was taken off death row and given a life sentence due to the exclusion of black jurors. The death penalty is a touchy topic in Louisiana. Though it is law and supported by a majority of residents, many experts believe Louisiana’s ability to execute criminals convicted of capital crimes has been hamstrung by the state’s appeals process. For example, Shreveport serial killer Nathaniel Code killed eight people in 1984-85. In 1989 he was convicted for four of the murders and given the death penalty. Thirty years later, Code still sits on death row. Only one prisoner has been executed in Louisiana since 2002: Gerald Bordelon. Gerald was a two time sex offender who was convicted and sentenced to death for kidnapping, raping, and murdering his 12 year-old step daughter. But in the world of death row inmates, Bordelon was unusual. He felt responsible for his crimes and wanted to die. He decided to abandon his appeals and subject himself to lethal injection, but his lawyers wouldn’t let him. He appealed to the Louisiana Supreme Court for his right to waive his appeals and won. He was executed in 2010.
Not long ago, a life sentence in Louisiana was a life sentence, but that may be changing. As long as killers stay in jail for the rest of their lives, enforcing a death penalty that costs the state millions of dollars doesn’t make sense, but if killers like Brandy Holmes, Robert Coleman, Antoinette Franks, and Nathaniel Code could get out one day, the death penalty should be enforced. It won’t make murder go away, but it would make some murderers go away. The collateral damage from murder affects many innocent people.
Neither Brandy Holmes nor Robert Coleman were ever tried for the murder of Terrance Blaze on January 4, 2003.
