Victim's fiance accused of 15-year-old slaying - DNA leads to arrest
Jason...@virgin.net
Morning News reports:
DNA leads to arrest
Victim's fiance accused of
15-year-old slaying
by Theresa Conroy
Daily News Staff Writer
Relying upon determination and 15-year-old bits of
skin meticulously scraped from beneath the
victim's fingernails, police in Bucks County say
they have solved an old murder.
On Thursday night -- the anniversary of Terri Lynn
Brooks' slaying 15 years ago -- Falls
Township Police arrested her fiance for beating
and slashing her to death.
Alfred Scott Keefe, 37, of Warminster, was charged
with first-degree murder in the Feb. 4, 1984,
killing. Brooks' bloodied body was discovered,
with a knife protruding from her throat, on the
floor of the Fairless Hills Roy Rogers she helped
to manage.
"It's definitely a shock. And it's a relief," said
Betty Brooks, Terri Lynn's stepmother. "I thought he
was involved. All along. My husband did not."
During the first police investigation, Keefe was
not considered a suspect, said Bucks County
District Attorney Alan Rubenstein. But after Falls
Township Police Chief Arnold Conoline
reopened the case 10 months ago, he and
investigators began to focus on the man who had begun
suspecting the victim of being unfaithful.
"They really didn't look at Scott Keefe" during
the first investigation, Rubenstein said. "Then we
find out that he was angry that she might have
been seeing another guy. She wanted to break off
the engagement. [ He was angry ] that she left her
job, a good-paying job, and went to Roy
Rogers."
What really cracked the case were the DNA tests
police had done on the 15-year-old scrapings
carefully taken and preserved from Brooks' autopsy
by forensic pathologist Halbert Fillinger Jr.
Using DNA technology unavailable at the time of
her slaying, lab technicians matched the skin
from under Brooks' fingernails to saliva police
collected recently from Keefe's cigarette butts,
collected from his trash.
"Surprisingly, the evidence that was available to
us was kept properly and maintained," said
Conoline. " . . . Hal Fillinger is a great
pathologist."
Keefe, who was arrested Thursday night at his job
at a Horsham pizzeria, has stayed in
Warminster since the murder. He married and had a
child. Police said Keefe, who is now
separated from his wife, lived in the same family
home he occupied while courting Brooks.
Betty Brooks, who also lives in Warminster, said
she ran into Keefe only once during the last 15
years.
"We saw him approximately two weeks after [ Terri
] was buried," Betty Brooks said. "He made
a point of letting us know he had a date."
Brooks said she had barely gotten to know Keefe
during the eight months he was engaged to her
daughter.
"He was not the type that would come over to the
house," she said.
Brooks said Terri Lynn's father, George, was
handling news of the arrest "pretty well" yesterday.
"It's awful," she said. "It's good, but it's
painful to know that he would do that to her. . . . We're
annoyed and angry."
Brooks said that Keefe's arrest was "justice."
"We really commend those police, the work that
they have done," she said. "They were so kind.
They were just absolutely wonderful, very kind and
very thoughtful."
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Inquirer reports
Arrest caps a 15-year mystery
Terri Lynn Brooks was killed in Bucks County in
February 1984. Her fiance was charged with
murder.
By Rich
Henson,
Richard V.
Sabatini
and Mark
Binker
INQUIRER STAFF
WRITERS
The murder of Terri Lynn
Brooks had stumped police for 15 years.
Her body, badly beaten and
with a knife protruding from the neck, was
found on the kitchen floor of
a Roy Rogers Family Restaurant in Falls
Township, Bucks County, where she was an assistant
manager, on Feb. 4, 1984. The safe was
open and empty, leaving investigators to theorize
that she was likely the victim of a robbery gone
woefully awry.
Yesterday, authorities announced the arrest of
Brooks' then-fiance, Alfred S. Keefe, 37, of
Warminster, and charged him with first-degree
murder in her killing, which Bucks County District
Attorney Alan Rubenstein described as one of the
"most brutal, heinous and malicious homicides"
he had encountered. He said prosecutors would seek
the death penalty.
According to the probable-cause affidavit, Keefe
gave a statement to police late Thursday night --
15 years to the day that Brooks was killed.
Rubenstein declined to discuss a motive but
pointed to statements by Brooks' friends in the days
after the killing in which they told police that
the couple's relationship was strained and that Brooks
was second-guessing her decision to marry.
The district attorney noted that $2,579 was stolen
from the restaurant. He said Keefe also has
been charged with the robbery.
Falls Township Police Chief Arnie Conoline said
the big break in the case, which sat dormant for
more than a decade before being reopened last
summer, came Tuesday, when DNA tests
conducted on hair and other forensic evidence
found at the scene linked Keefe to the killing. Police
said they obtained Keefe's DNA surreptitiously,
taking the butts of spent cigarettes from his
curbside trash and having the saliva tested at a
private laboratory.
Rubenstein said Keefe had always been "in the
universe of suspects -- not excludable, but nothing
to pinpoint him."
Brooks' stepmother, Betty Brooks, said during an
interview in her Warminster home yesterday that
she always "had a gut feeling that he did it" and
that she had shared that feeling with authorities.
On the other hand, George Brooks, the victim's
father, said he had long felt assured that Keefe
was not involved.
"They were engaged," he said. Keefe even came
looking for Brooks, 25, on the morning her body
was found. The couple said Keefe was sitting in
the kitchen with them when police came by and
told them their daughter had been murdered.
Both the father and stepmother said they were
grateful to police.
"I was shocked, and then I was relieved," Betty
Brooks said as she sat in her living room, where
her stepdaughter's picture sat atop a nearby
table. ". . . Now we can go on with some closure."
Terri Lynn Brooks planned to work in human
resources when she graduated cum laude with a
degree in behavioral science from the University
of Maryland in 1980, her parents said. But she
enjoyed her stints as a waitress during college
and decided on a career in restaurant management.
She went to work at Roy Rogers in June 1983.
During the first week of February 1984, she
became an assistant manager at the Falls
restaurant.
It was a busy week. Two days before her death, she
and Keefe had put down a deposit on a
honeymoon trip to Hawaii. The wedding was set for
that summer. Later in the week, Brooks was
to pick out a wedding dress.
On Feb. 3, 1984, Brooks was working the night
shift. About 10 p.m., she called Keefe to tell him
she would be working late. She told him not to
worry, that she would have two "closers" with her
-- teenagers who cleaned up after the restaurant
closed.
The teenagers left about 1:30 a.m., and Brooks
stayed behind, saying she needed to do some
paperwork. The following morning, Brooks' body was
found by the restaurant's general manager.
All of the exterior doors were locked. The safe
was open and empty.
According to the arrest affidavit, Keefe told
police he went to the restaurant that night and Brooks
let him in. He said that he and Brooks fought, and
that he struck her, pushed her to the floor,
banged her head on the floor, and stabbed her.
The affidavit said Keefe told police he placed a
plastic bag over Brooks' head, then grabbed the
money, and climbed out through the drive-through
window.
A friend also told police that "Keefe frequently
voiced concerns about money and complained
about Brooks' decision to take the job with Roy
Rogers, because it was a pay cut from her
previous job," the affidavit said.
Scrapings taken from under Brooks' fingernails, a
single hair, and "human genetic material" from the
kitchen knife had been stored, along with 90 other
pieces of evidence and more than 200 witness
statements, in a police evidence locker over the
years.
According to the affidavit, tests conducted
recently at a private lab, DrugScan Inc. in Warminster,
matched the hair, the scrapings, and the DNA
material on the knife to Keefe.
Police said they obtained a sample of Keefe's DNA
by confiscating trash bags from outside his
home on Horseshoe Lane. Inside were Newport
cigarette butts, with saliva still present. The saliva
was tested and confirmed to be Keefe's.
Over the years, Betty Brooks said she had stopped
believing the killer would ever be brought to
justice. "I had just hoped that some day, someone
would come forward," she said. When police
reopened the case, she said, she was encouraged:
"They went at it like a dog with a bone."
Rubenstein yesterday credited Keefe's arrest to
Conoline, who took over as Falls Township police
chief three years ago. Conoline personally
reopened investigations into the township's two unsolved
murders. The other remains under investigation.
"Were it not for Conoline, none of us would be
here today and Keefe would not be in custody,"
Rubenstein said. "These things don't happen by
accident. It takes good police work. You can't
imagine the man- and woman-hours put into this."
Keefe is being held without bail in Bucks County
Prison. A preliminary hearing before District
Justice Jan Vislosky is scheduled for 10 a.m.
Friday.