Inmate Says He Killed 48 Across U.S.

A man already serving a life sentence for killing a teenage girl has claimed responsibility in 47 other slayings -- a 25-year cross-country spree that, if true, would make him one of the most prolific serial killers in U.S. history, officials here said Thursday.

Authorities said they had confirmed the details in at least seven of the murders Robert Browne claims to have committed. The 53-year-old man on Thursday morning pleaded guilty in one of those 47 slayings, the 1987 strangulation of a 15-year-old in Colorado Springs.

El Paso County Sheriff Terry Maketa said that Browne’s information could help many people whose loved ones vanished between 1970 and his 1995 arrest. “To the friends and families of the victims, it answers many questions,” Maketa said. “More important, it brings some sense of closure, and even vindication.”

Gary Leon Ridgway -- the Seattle area’s Green River killer -- now is thought to be the nation’s most prolific serial killer. He was convicted in 48 deaths but claimed to have killed 71 people.

Officials said Browne, the son of a Louisiana deputy sheriff, had given many details of his alleged crimes. But in several instances his memory was vague.

“It’s possible he’s exaggerating, but I don’t think you can conduct business assuming he’s exaggerating,” Maketa said. “We’ll continue to pursue leads.”

The case was cracked by volunteers in the sheriff’s cold-case squad, including Charlie Hess, a 79-year-old former FBI and CIA officer. Hess engaged in a four-year-long correspondence with the imprisoned Browne, coaxing out details of the killings in exchange for jailhouse favors.

“He told me outright, ‘Get me a private doctor; I’ll give you three murders,’ ” Hess said. The state Department of Corrections allowed an outside physician to treat Browne’s arthritis, and the killer gave Hess information.

The murder that led to Browne’s capture captivated Colorado Springs in 1991, when 13-year-old Heather Dawn Church was abducted from her bedroom in the nearby town of Black Forest. Her skull was found in the local mountains by a hiker two years later.

The case baffled authorities until 1995, when a detective ran fingerprints that were found on a window screen in the Church house through a national database. They matched Browne’s, which were on file because of a burglary conviction in Louisiana. Browne, who lived half a mile from the Church house, was arrested and pleaded guilty.

Five years later, he sent a taunting letter to the local prosecutor’s office: “The score is you 1, the other team 48,” Browne wrote, attaching a hand-drawn map with numbers apparently illustrating his victims in several states. He hinted at two in California, nine in Colorado and 17 in Louisiana.

Sheriff’s investigators were unable to confirm any killings with such sketchy information.

Then in 2002, Hess began writing to Browne. They corresponded regularly, with Browne once telling Hess that he should look for a white Grand Am. After a year, the letters from Browne stopped.

Hess decided to visit Browne in prison several months later. The killer agreed to continue writing and began to offer trades for information.

Eventually, the cold-case volunteers and sheriff’s detectives were able to piece together enough information to pinpoint possible killings; they began calling detectives across the country, who confirmed that Browne had accurately described decades-old unsolved cases.

“It was like something out of a movie,” Maketa said. “You begin to think: What’s he reading; what’s he getting this from? But then the information is corroborated.”

The killings mainly involved what Browne called “opportunities” -- women he said he picked up and had sex with. He would strangle, stab or shoot them, he said, then dump their bodies in rivers or trash bins. Some were dismembered.

Browne told authorities that he killed some men too -- the first in 1970, while he was in the military in South Korea. He said he had killed the soldier during a fight over a prostitute.

Though authorities have not confirmed that killing, they did verify several others. They said they believed that Browne murdered two Louisiana women who lived in an apartment building owned by his brother. Browne, authorities said, also probably killed a 17-year-old topless dancer he picked up outside of Houston, and stabbed a woman who stayed at the same motel he did in Flatonia, Texas.

On Thursday, Browne pleaded guilty in the murder of Rocio Sperry. After searching through 172 reports of missing Pontiacs, sheriff’s detectives linked him to the 15-year-old’s disappearance in 1987. Sperry had met Browne at the neighborhood Kwik Stop -- where he was working -- while her husband and 2-month-old daughter were in Florida. Authorities said Browne confessed to strangling Sperry in her apartment and stashing her body in a nearby trash bin. The body was never found.

Joseph Sperry said Thursday at a news conference that when he returned from Florida, he found the apartment in disarray. It had been arranged to look like Rocio had packed her bags and left, he said, but he knew his wife had been killed.

Even his own family, Sperry said, suspected he’d killed her. He lost custody of his daughter, who was raised hearing rumors that her father had killed her mother. Now, Sperry said, he has a measure of peace.

“Last week was the first time I had a dream about my wife,” the 39-year-old said. “It was her face, and there was a bright light behind it. I woke up and I felt good. I feel I can move on.”