In part 2 of the 4-part series on The Murder of Ronald Browning, a genuine, but unlikely, suspect quickly comes into focus. One would think the case cruises on smoothly moving forward, but not hardly.
Listen how what seems to be a closing case, opens doors to chaos.
Murder Suspect, 19 year old Camille Browne.
Show Transcript
Part 2 of 4
Morgan Bragg:
At that point, your mind’s going all kinds of different directions. Because you do not expect a 19 year old girl to be involved in this incident. I would not, walking into that house, that is not who I would’ve expected to be involved here. I know I was thinking, why was she at this house? Had he done something to her? There’s a lot of things that were at play here that really peaked our interest.
Wendy Lyons:
Warning. The podcast you’re about to listen to may contain graphic descriptions of violent assaults, murder, and adult language. Listener discretion is advised.
Wendy Lyons:
Welcome to the Murder Police Podcast, the Murder of Ronald Browning. Part two of four.
David Allard:
We did feel pretty quickly that she was not involved, but we also had some other family members that were brought to our attention. Actually, while we were on scene prior to, I think interviewing a granddaughter showed up and she was adamant, she wanted to get inside. She was concerned about getting money that she thought would be hers. And I think Rexanna also mentioned to us about possibly a suspect of the granddaughter or the other granddaughter’s boyfriend.
David Lyons:
Interesting. I think for the listeners, what they’re probably catching on in these investigations too, is that victimology, right? Assessing risk factors because that’s going to direct you. And then for the investigator is working close and central to that victim and working your way out. And then what you hit on and I really like is I’ve always said, is that when you get people you’re looking at, to me, it was always, you got to get them in or get them out because if they linger, it just gets in the way. And that’s why I came back and asked one more time on that, because that’s super critical to try to take somebody out of the picture if they don’t belong. So you can move on, not always easy, but it’s-
David Allard:
…and I think that’s one thing that we’ve learned and we’ve done did well in this case is we kept an open mind. We went into it looking for what suspect fit this type of crime and why this would happen to the victim, but we didn’t let you know the belief that it most likely be a family member, or it would be someone close to the victim. We kept an open mind of that. And ultimately, I don’t know that we would’ve ever picked this suspect out, had we not continued to just not focus on one person, not get blindsided. And we kept an open mind and were able, ultimately find out who was responsible.
David Lyons:
To me, that whole scene would make you stay open-minded. I mean, a gallon of milk, that’s been drunk with blood on it and all that. I’m sitting there, furrow my brow listening. It’s just bizarre.
David Allard:
Well, there’s things like, there was a milk and magnesia bottle in the bathroom that clearly had been drank. There was clothing, like I mentioned, in the washing machine that after speaking with Ms. Browning did not belong to her and was not in the washing machine prior. And as he described, I mean the pull down attic access was down. You could see where someone had clearly went up there and laid, there was blood upstairs. There was furniture turned over in other bedrooms. So it appeared to us that someone had searched this residence and spent a considerable amount of time in the residence.
David Lyons:
Yeah. Were things opened, drawers, opened clothing disheveled out, out of them and stuff like that to that degree. Was it ransacked to that degree?
Morgan Bragg:
Oh, absolutely. There was closets gone through. Every drawer in the house practically had been gone through. A couple other things of note, one of the things that we determined pretty early on is that the majority of this blood was not actually the victims. The scene related to violence of the victim was pretty limited in that living room. So we were pretty confident that our suspect was injured and not only injured, but injured pretty severely.
David Allard:
Material or something. There was lots of blood spatter throughout the house. It appeared to us from previous cases that we had that most likely it was some type of injury and it, as the heartbeat discontinues, and it was all over the house. The ceilings, the amount of blood is really hard to comprehend without seeing it.
David Lyons:
Unreal, unreal. So they start processing the scene, you’ve eliminated the wife and then the granddaughter shows up and wants in the house and is really interested about material things in the wake of this, right? Is that something that gets your eyebrow to go up when you hear that?
Morgan Bragg:
Oh, absolutely. You know, and I actually spoke to her in front of the residence and she was pretty set that she wanted to get into that house, particularly to a safe that was in the basement. She didn’t really specify what items she was after, but it was that she wanted to secure these before it became arguable between she and this new wife. So it certainly piqued our interest and I think had things not developed over the next hour or so, we would’ve been going down that road and been looking into that a lot more
David Allard:
Absolutely.
David Lyons:
You said new wife, what’s the relationship of does that bleed into this? Or how long was the new wife in a picture?
Morgan Bragg:
They had not been together I think a year and a half in total, at that point. They had met in church and married after that. He had known her for 14 years prior to that, but his wife had passed away and he ended up marrying Rexanna.
David Lyons:
Okay, good deal. Well, where do we go from here?
Morgan Bragg:
Well, one of the things that we noticed ourselves, but also was reported to us from the crime scene response team is there were some aside from the milk jug and things like that, one particular item that really stood out was there were braided hair pieces. Long, probably 18 inch braided hair pieces throughout this crime scene. Probably somewhere in the area of four to five different pieces. And some of those were so close to the victim that they were commingled with his blood. They were beneath his body. It was one of those really piques your interest. You don’t want have to make of that. That was one of the things that we really wanted to try to figure out. And we spoke to Rexanna about that. She there again had no idea how to explain that. And as you’ll see that obviously that becomes really important later on, but it was something that we were going to follow up on.
David Lyons:
Yeah. Every time y’all go a little further, it’s something else bizarre in that house. I’m really flabbergasted by it.
David Allard:
Yeah. Those braids were something. Like I said, there was four or five. They were all, if I remember correctly, all in the living room, one was under the victim’s body. It was clear to us from a little bit deeper examination of the victim that he had fought. And this was a violent attack, but he had fought back. We didn’t know, we thought that the victim or the suspect was injured. We weren’t sure how that happened. We would later learn, he mentioned the glass jar, the large change jar. A lot of people do, they have a big glass jar they just throw their change in. That had been used to attack him. And then I believe there was a candle warmer or tart warmer.
Morgan Bragg:
Tart burner, yes.
David Allard:
That had severe damage to it. There was a TV turned over. It was clear there would’ve been a violent struggle in this living room.
David Lyons:
Let me go into this too, just because I’m not familiar with West Virginia, but how does the coroner and medical examiner system work here? Where do they get involved? Because obviously you’ll have a post-mortem examination, but how do they step in?
Morgan Bragg:
We have a local coroner in the regional area that comes to the scene of any kind of homicide case or any equivocal death. That’s typically someone that’s appointed by the medical examiner’s office. They received additional training and they kind of get that first impression from the scene. And then they relay that information to our medical examiner’s office and all of our homicide victims are transported to Charleston for further examination.
David Lyons:
Interesting. So unlike in Kentucky, coroners are elected, but they still get fantastic training. They actually get very good death investigation training. But here they’re actually appointed by a sitting medical examiner, correct?
Morgan Bragg:
Yeah. They work from medical examiner’s office in Charleston.
David Lyons:
Now as investigators, do you all actually, or do you send somebody from the PD to attend the autopsy?
Morgan Bragg:
The lead investigator is typically responsible for attending the autopsy when necessary.
David Lyons:
Did you attend to that one?
Morgan Bragg:
I did, yes.
David Lyons:
Okay. Good deal. And was that like how many days after?
Morgan Bragg:
It was the following day then.
David Lyons:
And that’s where we started getting more information about putting together what the fact of, for example, I guess it ruled out a gunshot, correct?
Morgan Bragg:
Yeah. We learned a few things from that particular autopsy that really stood out to us there. Again, as David stated, you could tell there had been extreme level of violence involved here. The bludgeoning had reached a level that had actually fractured his skull. There were pieces of the skull missing that you could… The portions of his brains were exposed. And also we found some injuries that we were a little surprised. When they took his shirt off, he had some bad injuries to his rib area. And we didn’t know the significance of that at that point. We later found out some information that explained that. But you could tell that he had been through a horrible, horrible attack.
David Allard:
I believe he had some broken ribs?
Morgan Bragg:
He did. Yes.
David Allard:
And then there was signs of manual strangulation and I believe ligature strangulation as well. The level of injury was pretty severe.
David Lyons:
And it emphasizes the importance of a good postmortem to have that stuff on the table. Because you’re going to go there, I’m pretty sure, but my Lord, that’s important stuff to know as you move forward.
Morgan Bragg:
Good deal.
David Lyons:
Hopefully I didn’t interrupt and get you out track with those questions, but granddaughter shows up, weird questions, wants to get to a safe. That’s an eyebrow raiser, for sure. Not crazy. So where do we go from here?
Morgan Bragg:
Well, there again, that certainly piqued our interest. And I think that Dave would agree. At that point, we would probably have gone down that trail. But you come to a point in these cases, especially with one that’s this equivocal, you can’t quite piece together what’s going on here. Where you kind of have a brainstorm session.
Morgan Bragg:
And Dave and I went back to our office and began to talk about this, began to talk to other officers about this. And that led to some really interesting developments.
Morgan Bragg:
One of the things that we determined is we discovered that a 19 year old girl had been reported missing earlier in the day. Really wouldn’t be significant in any other situation. But one of the things that we determined is the officer told us that when she went missing, she was in the process of having her hair braided. Obviously that piques our interest immediately. So we look into that report, we find out that 19 year old Camille Brown has been reported missing earlier in the day. Her mother reported that they had been in the process of braiding her hair that the mother had left the room, Camille had suddenly got up, walked out the front door, left her phone, all her belongings at the house and just never returned. And that was much earlier in the day.
David Allard:
And the location of that was less than, it’s the next street over from Odessa. So it was on Westwood Drive, and from where she went missing, you could almost see the victim’s house. The measurement, as the crow flies is, it’s probably a half mile, if that.
Morgan Bragg:
Oh yeah. Few hundred yards.
David Allard:
Few hundred yards. It’s pretty close. So that piqued our interest and then the hair braid-braiding aspect of it was pretty interesting too.
David Lyons:
Let’s say you didn’t have those other things. What I’m thinking from doing these two is a 19 year old that walks away from all of those things in and of itself. That investigation, as far as a missing person, would probably come a little closer to the front burner because of the fact that communication devices are left behind. I mean, do you see where I’m going?
David Lyons:
It wouldn’t be your run of the mill thing because when you’re looking at missing persons and we’ve actually done some episodes on missing person investigations, because some people don’t understand why the police just don’t go out and hunt everybody down. But I’m thinking in my mind right there that if I’d pulled that case, that one would’ve started just alone on that, would’ve been kind of bizarre too, of walking away from a phone because that’s weird for people to do that.
David Allard:
I think the family, as most missing person families do, they waited a period of time before they called the police. So she’d actually been missing, if I remember correctly, about eight hours and then it was probably around four something when the family actually reports it to the police. So they were in the process, they had just cleared that missing person initial call when we come back and we’re brainstorming and talking about this. And luckily that officer was there completing that report and things started to fall into place.
David Lyons:
That’s called serendipity. I mean we can call it luck too, because I’ll be the first and you all will agree is that it’s not always because we’re geniuses it’s because luck does. But the idea that those paths crossed for just a minute to be able to say, oh, by the way, with that kind of detail. Wow.
Morgan Bragg:
Oh absolutely. And I don’t know about Dave, but at that point, your mind’s going all kinds of different directions. Because you do not expect a 19 year old girl to be involved in this incident. I would not, walking into that house, that is not who I would’ve expected to be involved here. I know I was thinking, why was she at this house? Had he done something to her? There’s a lot of things that were at play here that really piqued our interest.
David Lyons:
Well keep going, I don’t want to interrupt too much, but one of the questions I had is the first logical thing is connection. Where we are on our victimology, but I don’t want to jump ahead and take you off the train ride.
Morgan Bragg:
Well, as serendipitous as that was, there’s actually another moment in this same interaction where we find out some more information. One of the other things that we determined is some of the officers had heard our conversations and they had heard certain parts of the conversation and heard that we were talking about braided hair and a 19 year old female. And they reported us that they had overheard the dispatch of a call in a neighboring jurisdiction, very small jurisdiction nearby called Mabscott that a young female with braided hair had forced her way into some homes there and had subsequently been arrested. And she was now at one of our local hospitals. So obviously at that point that really sets things ablaze. And we really want to find out more information about that. And that’s what really led us to the discovering Camille Brown.
David Lyons:
And again, that personal communication, the overhearing, the talking, I think people sometimes when they look at police departments, think we have these, and sometimes we’ve got good things, but they I think we have these big brainiac information systems where all that data’s in there and it just isn’t. It’s on voice recordings at best, but again, to have the fortune of somebody overhearing something like that and then relaying information that’s credit.
Morgan Bragg:
And I think one thing that played into this and into all of our investigations is as you know, Dave, a lot of times the police departments’ information is held in silos and you have units that don’t speak to each other that don’t talk to each other. We have worked extremely hard to make sure the information flows back and forth between us, patrol, and narcotics units, all of our different task forces. And that type of information is crucial when you have an investigation like this, ’cause so many times patrol officers have the information that helps us solve crimes. And if we didn’t have those relationships, even in a small department, the bigger departments, it gets hard, but even in a department our size that can definitely happen, but it is good to have the relationships. And I think that played a big part here.
David Lyons:
And I think you have to be intentional in leadership to have that paradigm set for sure, because it can be kept. Well, let’s look at 9/11, without going into too much detail. But one of the biggest criticisms over 9/11 is, even at the federal agency level, there was literal no communication. There were silos. And then that there was disconnect from local agencies too. And maybe we’ve gotten better about that, I don’t know. But that’s a hat tip to Beckley that you have that culture because that’s not everywhere.
Morgan Bragg:
It certainly benefited us here. That’s for sure. At that point, one of the things that we really wanted to do is talk to Camille. That’s the next step in this investigation. I think at that point, all these stars were aligning and we did not give really a whole lot more thought at that point to the other suspects. We wanted to find out more about this Camille Brown connection.
Morgan Bragg:
So Dave and I responded to our Raleigh General Hospital in hopes that we could speak with her. I remember walking in there and seeing her. We moved the curtain back and she was seated in this little area and she was just violent and just distraught and had some very severe injuries to her hands, which obviously was very interesting to us because we knew that we had a suspect that had shattered this glass that we knew that they had bled throughout this residence so profusely. So we expected to see some severe trauma to those hands. And then when we did, the light bulbs just went off. That piqued our interest. And we also noticed that she had the identical braided hair that we had found at the crime scene.
David Lyons:
How many hours are we in from victim discovery to this revelation?
Morgan Bragg:
At that point I’d say maybe two hours from the time that we had arrived on scene to there.
David Allard:
I’d say two, two or three. It wasn’t long. I mean, we had interviewed the granddaughter somewhat. We had interviewed the wife and I think probably I’d say three hours, we’re at Raleigh General. We walk in, she’s very combative with the doctors, combative with the nursing staff. And then the injury, one finger, I’ll never forget seeing it, but it was almost severed. It was severe damage to the finger, but she did not appear to be in pain from that.
Morgan Bragg:
You would never know it.
David Lyons:
Yeah, exactly. And when you’re talking, did they have her restrained and all that good stuff or were they just kind of holding her down or?
David Allard:
They were holding her down. I think they were trying to treat her. It was to the point to where she’d kicked a nurse, kicked a doctor and I think they’d done everything they medically could do at that point just to release her. Be able to AMA her pretty much and release because she was just creating a disturbance. She was under arrest. They didn’t want that in the hospital creating quite a scene. So to that point, they released her. And one thing we didn’t notice or didn’t realize until later, our victim said he was a pastor, he worked as a chaplain at this same hospital. She was wearing a Raleigh General Hospital jacket at the time, which we later would learn, came from that residence. At that point, I don’t think we knew the relevance of the jacket, but she had a Raleigh General jacket on when we get there. Mabscott police officers are with her. Then ultimately they go to transport her to the jail once she was cleared from the hospital.
David Allard:
Stars aligning, I think you said it best. Yeah, go ahead. This is great.
Morgan Bragg:
Well, procedurally, it was an interesting situation. It was a little unique for us because we want to talk to Camille, but she’s also been involved in these crimes and Mabscott, she’s their prisoner. They were fairly new officers, young guys, one of them I think it was his first day actually. The other had been there, I think a matter of months. So they were not very experienced. It’s a very small agency in mascot. They did a great job at night, as best as they were able to. But it’s usually a 2, 3 man department. So we wanted to help, that was probably our biggest part. We just want to help, we obviously want to talk to her at some point, but right now we’re not worried about that. We’re not going to try to talk to her cause we also don’t want to delay her presentment to a magistrate or anything of that sort. So we just asked them, kind of plead with them. Let us help you.
Morgan Bragg:
At that point, she was removed from the hospital. The hospital did not want to treat her any longer. Like he had said, she had actually kicked one of the doctors. He didn’t want to treat her anymore. So we knew with the extensive injuries that she had to her hands, it was not likely that she was going to get accepted to our local jail. But it’s a process that has to be attempted.
Morgan Bragg:
So Mabscott PD was going to transport her to the jail. As we removed her from the hospital, brought her to the parking lot. She went crazy and became extraordinarily violent. We had to wrestle her. We had to hold her down. And what probably the more disturbing part of that is at this point in time, her family has been made aware that Camille’s been brought to the hospital. They don’t know the details. They know that she’s been involved in something in Mabscott and that the police have her in custody and that she’s been brought to the hospital.
Morgan Bragg:
They certainly don’t know about the crime that we’re investigating. So they all come to the hospital and just like any family would do with a missing person, they are now being reunited with Camille. And here we are holding her down, wrestling her, fighting her in the middle of this parking lot. It was a horrible situation. The crowd surrounded us. We had people trying to interject and be involved and we’re trying to keep them back. And we’re trying to get her into a cruiser to get her out to the jail. It was a very chaotic scene.
David Lyons:
I think we call that a hot mess.
David Lyons:
Something else you hit on that listeners don’t understand, the challenge in policing is when you have somebody that’s injured is jail for the right reasons. Don’t want to take custody of them unless it’s been treated completely. And we understand that completely. So that was funny when you said that was the next challenge that you knew what the end was going to be. But holy moly, with the family descending on you at the hospital. Well, we what’s that like anyway. If you have a shooting victim and the family comes and that’s a colossal mess in and of itself, and then you’ve got them on your back. Crazy.
Morgan Bragg:
Well, and I think this was unique because you’re looking at it from their perspective and they’re looking, our daughter’s been missing and now she’s found and you police officers are holding her down and there’s violence being happening here. And so they had every right to be upset.
David Lyons:
Amen. Yeah.
Morgan Bragg:
At that point we wanted to get her into a cruiser. Mabscott Police Department pulled a cruiser nearby. They opened the door and I looked in and they did not have a partition. And we were not excited about that prospect because like I said, she was extraordinarily violent. We did not anticipate that going well. So we asked them, allow us to get you a car, Beckley PD cruiser with a partition, let us transport her for you. And they agreed to that. So what we did is we ended up having an officer pull in there. We loaded her into the cruiser, took her out to the jail and got her inside. And as you might expect, like I said earlier, the jail observed those injuries and they said no way, it’s not going to accept custody of somebody with those severe injuries without further treatment.
Morgan Bragg:
I would say this is where it probably got one of the more chaotic parts of our evening. Me and Dave here, we wanted to help him again. Now at this point, our cruiser has already left. This partitioned cruiser has already gone. So Mabscott PD, we said, let us get them get back out here. We’ll get you a cruiser. And they didn’t want that. They said, she’s our prisoner. Let’s get her to a different hospital for treatment. So we said, well at the very minimum, let us follow you. We’ll follow you out there. Let’s just make sure everything’s safe. Now, as we leave the jail, pulling down this a little stretch of little hillside to leave, to get on the airport road there. And we just see this cruiser in front of us, just wildly dart across the road, almost into the oncoming lane, almost over the hillside. And we’re thinking what in the world has just happened.
Wendy Lyons:
Hey, you know, there’s more to the story. So go download the next episode like the true crime fan that you are.
David Lyons:
The murder police podcast is hosted by Wendy and David Lyons and was created to honor the lives of crime victims so their names are never forgotten. It is produced, recorded, and edited by David Lyons. The murder police podcast can be found on your favorite apple or Android podcast platform, as well as at murderpolicepodcast.com, where you will find show notes, transcripts, information about the presenters and much, much more. We are also on Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, which is closed caption for those that are hearing impaired. Just search for the Murder Police Podcast and you will find us.
David Lyons:
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David Lyons:
Lock it down, Judy.
