Man Released in Wife’s Slaying Says Police Are Doing Their Best

Herbert Lee Brinkley says the Simi Valley police are just doing their job.

“They’re trying to do the best they can,” he said. “I appear to be the only suspect they can come up with, and they’re trying to do what they think is right.”

Brinkley’s calm demeanor seems remarkable, considering that he has been stalked by detectives for more than a year.

In their view, he is the prime suspect in the slaying of his wife, Dorothy Mae, in January, 1991.

“I guess I accept things as they happen,” Brinkley, 55, said during an interview this week at his modest home on Simi Valley’s Cole Avenue.

Eight days ago, Brinkley was summoned to the police station and grilled for more than an hour about the slaying.

On Friday, in rapid-fire order, he was arrested at gunpoint on a busy Simi Valley street, booked on suspicion of murder, and jailed. Detectives turned parts of his house upside-down in a search for evidence.

Finally, on Monday, investigators turned Brinkley loose without filing charges.

Lt. Robert Klamser, chief of detectives for the Simi Valley Police Department, declined to detail the case against Brinkley, except to say that he is the only suspect. He said Brinkley’s arrest, the search of his house, and his release were all justified.

While Brinkley voiced little quarrel with police, he insisted in an interview Tuesday that he is innocent.

“No sir, I didn’t,” he replied when a reporter asked if he was the one who bludgeoned Dorothy Mae Brinkley’s face and slit her throat.

And the victim’s son, Chris Ladriere, who also resides in the Cole Avenue home, said he believes his stepfather.

“If I thought he did it, I wouldn’t be living here,” said Ladriere, 24.

The body of 44-year-old Dorothy Mae Brinkley was found in her parked car in a public parking lot on Jan. 15, 1991. Investigators appear to have ruled out robbery as a motive because the victim still had rings on both hands amd credit cards, jewelry and cash in her purse.

Brinkley acknowledged that he and his wife of 10 years--it was the second marriage for both--were having marital problems. But he characterized the trouble as a spat, not a reason for murder.

Brinkley said the disagreement was rooted in who should pay some bills. Dorothy Mae Brinkley, a legal secretary, had moved out of the couple’s house and into a 27-foot mobile home that was parked on the Brinkley lot.

“But we were going out to dinner together,” he said. “She kept saying she would move back into the house.”

His stepson says he recalls it differently.

“She was in the mobile home a month or so,” Ladriere said. “For a long time, they weren’t talking.”

Finally, he said, “she told me she was seriously considering divorce” and “had talked to one of the attorneys” for whom she worked.

Moreover, Ladriere said, he and his mother “were looking for (another) place to stay.”

As Brinkley’s relationship with his wife worsened, Ladriere said, his mother would often eat out or stay with friends for the evening and not return to the mobile home until a late hour in an effort to avoid her husband.

On the evening of Jan. 14, 1991, her son said, she didn’t return at all.

The next day, Dorothy Mae Brinkley’s body was discovered in her 1988 Mercury Cougar, parked in the Valley Federal Savings & Loan lot in Simi Valley.

Ladriere said he was at home with his stepfather the night of Jan. 14. He said he doesn’t recall what time he fell asleep.

Dorothy Mae Brinkley had a modest life insurance policy favoring her husband, Ladriere said. But because of the homicide investigation, her son said, the life insurance company has withheld payment.

Since the slaying, Brinkley has attempted to resume his life, Ladriere said, and hasn’t changed much. A computer data circuits supervisor for Los Angeles County, Brinkley still drives the long commute to Los Angeles in his 1987 Ford LTD.

“He was pretty down for a while” after the slaying, Ladriere said, “and then started to feel better about life.” But then, a few months later, Brinkley’s father in Oklahoma became ill. He died last May.

Now, Ladriere said, “we’ve all pretty much recovered” from last year’s tragedies, which he said may account for Brinkley’s calm demeanor. By nature, he said, his stepfather is generally a quiet person.

Indeed, as Brinkley escorted a reporter around his house, he spoke in almost hushed tones with no trace of emotion. He said he had lost considerable weight during the stressful past year, and his 5-foot-10 frame appeared gaunt.

Without a note of animosity, he readily acknowledged that he has been the target as far as the police are concerned. “They’ve always said I’m a suspect,” he said.

Klamser was more precise.

“He’s the only suspect,” he said. But Klamser declined to detail any evidence that the police have against Brinkley.

Twice, police have conducted extensive searches of Brinkley’s four-bedroom home. The first was shortly after the slaying, the second last Friday after Brinkley gave his consent.

“They ransacked his house,” said Brinkley’s attorney, George C. Eskin. He said the observation was based on a conversation that he had Monday with Brinkley’s sister, Louise Brinkley Rice, 50, of Checotah, Okla., who is staying at the house.

Brinkley said the area most savaged by the search was the dining room. Indeed, books, papers and personal belongings were still scattered on a table and on the floor this week.

“They tore it up,” he said. “Everything was put away. I don’t know what they want.”

Klamser said the search “was as unobtrusive as it could be, given what we were searching for.”

In all, Klamser said, more than 100 items were taken from the house. He declined to describe them.

Brinkley said he hadn’t begun an inventory, but a cursory check told him that detectives seized a number of videotapes and audiotapes, a shotgun, a rifle, two revolvers and a quantity of ammunition.

Eskin, a Ventura attorney whom Brinkley retained last July, said he was upset over the seizure of Brinkley’s personal belongings.

“I have drafted a letter demanding that police return the items or provide an explanation of what they’ve taken and why they’re not returning them,” Eskin said.

For his part, Klamser said Brinkley will be provided with a receipt describing what was taken from the house and the mobile home, which also was searched by detectives.

Brinkley’s recent confrontation with police began last Thursday. Simi Valley Detective Bob Hopkins called him at his Los Angeles office, Brinkley said, and asked him to drive to the police station to answer some more questions.

There, for more than an hour, a woman interrogated him, Brinkley said.

“She pressured me to confess,” Brinkley said. “She said they had witnesses at the (murder) scene. They said they had DNA (genetic) evidence from her car.

“She wanted me to admit it. But I didn’t do it. She kept going on and on.

“I finally left,” he said, “because they kept trying to get me to admit that I killed her.”

Then, Brinkley said, the woman called him at home “three times that night again” with more questions. By then, he said, he was too weary to deal with any more inquiries.

Klamser identified the woman as an Atlanta-based consultant who has extensive experience at interrogation. He said she has provided police with “a fresh, uninvolved perspective on the case.”

The next day--last Friday--Hopkins again called Brinkley at work. This time, according to Brinkley, the detective ordered him to return to the police station immediately so he could be arrested and booked on suspicion of murdering his wife.

Brinkley said he asked for permission to stop at home first to drop off his car and have a friend drive him to the station. Hopkins insisted that he come straight to the station.

Brinkley said he tried to drive home anyway. But after he left the Simi Valley Freeway at Tapo Canyon Road, several Simi Valley police cars--red lights flashing--intercepted him near Simi Valley City Hall, Brinkley said.

Several police officers, guns drawn, ordered him to kneel on the busy street, he said.

Surrounded by police cars and officers “crouched behind their guns,” Brinkley said he “got out with my hands up. I didn’t know what to think.”

Klamser defended the officers’ handling of the arrest.

“That’s a normal felony-stop procedure,” Klamser said. “It’s a routine procedure to make an arrest (with guns drawn) of a high-risk suspect who is known to possess firearms.”

Brinkley said he was handcuffed and transported to the nearby police station, where he was booked. He then gave detectives permission to search his house.

“I have nothing to hide,” he said.

On Monday, Hopkins met with Deputy Dist. Atty. James D. Ellison. According to Ellison and Klamser, Hopkins said Brinkley should be released from jail because investigators needed time to evaluate the items seized from Brinkley’s house.

Brinkley walked out of jail at 3 p.m. Monday.

“It’s an experience,” Brinkley said of being in jail. And “it certainly is stressful” to live under a cloud of suspicion, he said.

Ladriere wonders if Simi Valley police have been on a fishing expedition with his stepfather.

“I kind of have a feeling that they don’t have anything against Herbert,” he said. “They’re trying to pressure him into a confession.

“I hope they solve the crime. But, so far, I haven’t really seen anything promising from them.”