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Brenda
HUMPHREY
Classification: Murderer
Characteristics: Kidnapping - Robbery
- Rape
Number of victims: 1
Date of murder: May 29, 1987
Date of arrest:
June 15, 1987
Date of birth: 1954
Victim profile:
Deborah Pooley, 36
Method of murder:
Strangulation
Location: Covington, Kenton County, Kentucky, USA
Status:
Sentenced
to life in prison without parole for 25 years on October 31, 1988
According to the state’s case, on 29 May 1987, a
36-year-old woman, Deborah Pooley, was abducted at knifepoint outside
the restaurant where she worked by Gregory Wilson, then 30, and Brenda
Humphrey, a 34-year-old white woman.
Deborah Pooley was forced into her car, raped,
killed and her body left in a wooded area in central Indiana, a state
neighboring Kentucky. Gregory Wilson and Brenda Humphrey were tried
jointly in 1988 with the state seeking the death penalty for both.
Gregory Wilson was sentenced to death, Brenda Humphrey to
life imprisonment.
Parole denied in 1987 Covington killing
By Brett Barrouquere - Kentucky.com
April 19, 2012
PEWEE VALLEY — A former prostitute with a long
criminal record on Wednesday apologized for her role in a 1987
kidnapping, rape and slaying, calling herself "a coward back then,"
but the Kentucky Parole Board opted to keep her in prison for at least
five more years.
The two-member panel rejected 58-year-old Brenda
Humphrey's move for immediate release from prison after a
quarter-century, after quizzing her for more than 30 minutes about the
death of 36-year-old Debbie Pooley, an Ohio native who lived in
Covington at the time. The decision means Humphrey, who was sentenced
to life without parole for 25 years, will not be eligible for release
until at least 2017.
The board cited the seriousness of the crime as
well as Pooley's death as reasons for the decision after the hearing
at the Kentucky Correctional Institution for Women in Pewee Valley.
Humphrey, speaking publicly for the first time
about Pooley's death and her role in it, apologized and said she was a
drug abuser at the time of the crime. When asked what she would say to
Pooley's family given the chance, Humphrey wasn't sure.
"What could I say to the family? I hope they have
found peace and closure," Humphrey said. "If me staying here makes
them feel better, then that's where I should be."
Pooley's family and friends circulated an online
petition that drew about 250 signatures calling for Humphrey to remain
in prison. Family friend Kathy McBurney Salce of Miami, Fla., said the
petition brought Pooley's friends back together and turned her from a
"faceless victim" and made "Debbie come alive again."
"Today is a good day," Salce said.
Humphrey and 55-year-old Gregory Wilson were
convicted in 1988 of kidnapping, raping, robbing and killing Pooley.
Wilson is awaiting execution, a fate he avoided in 2010 when a judge
halted lethal injections in the state after ruling Kentucky's method
of carrying out the procedure was flawed. A final ruling in that case
is pending.
Humphrey, wearing tinted glasses and a tan prison
uniform, sat silently as board member Ray Winburn read off the details
of Pooley's kidnapping, rape and murder. Periodically as Winburn
spoke, Humphrey lowered her chin onto her fingers, but otherwise
showed little emotion.
Winburn recounted how Humphrey and Wilson
approached Pooley after she parked her car near her home in Covington,
with Humphrey driving the vehicle as Wilson attacked Pooley in the
back seat.
Humphrey and Wilson, who has an extensive criminal
record in Ohio and Kentucky, drove toward Danville, Ill., and Wilson
raped and killed Pooley along the way, with her body being dumped in a
berry field not far from the Indiana-Illinois border. The pair then
took Pooley's credit cards to make purchases at Kmart and Payless
Shoes in Illinois before returning to Kentucky, where they were
arrested several weeks later.
When asked about the details of the crime, Humphrey
said she and Wilson, her then-boyfriend, were looking for a car to
steal. Humphrey said she was unaware that Wilson planned to kidnap
Pooley.
"I was a coward back then, sir," Humphrey told the
parole panel. "I thought we were just getting the car. That's how it
went down."
Deborah Pooley’s family, friends remember a ‘sweet girl'
By Brett Barrouquere
- KyPost.com
September 16, 2010
LOUISVILLE, Ky. - Debbie Pooley left Miami for the
suburbs of Cincinnati in the mid-1980s looking for a safer place in a
smaller city near home.
To her family and friends, her kidnapping and
murder in 1987 about two years after she moved home proved a cruel
irony.
"She was a sweet girl," said Kathy McBurney Salce,
who worked with Pooley at a restaurant and bar in suburban Miami. "To
lose her like that, we're still not over it."
Pooley's sister, Bonnie Shinkle, and several
friends spoke to The Associated Press in recent days as the Kentucky
Supreme Court weighed whether to let the execution of the man
convicted of her killing go forward. It's the first time many have
spoken publicly about Pooley since her death.
Gregory Lee Wilson, 53, had been set to die by
lethal injection at the Kentucky State Penitentiary in Eddyville on
Thursday before a judge halted the proceedings because of concerns
about the inmate's mental state and how Kentucky execution method. The
high court was considering whether to lift the stay of execution.
Wilson was convicted in 1988 of kidnapping Pooley
from the parking lot of her apartment complex in Covington, Ky.,
raping her while a co-defendant drove, then killing Pooley, 36, in
1987. Investigators found Pooley nearly three weeks later in a field
in Indiana.
When Gov. Steve Beshear signed a warrant setting
Wilson's execution date for Sept. 16, memories of Pooley and the way
she died 23 years ago came rushing back for her family and friends.
"It's just opening old wounds for all of us," said
Salce, who now works at the University of Miami.
Pooley, a native of Hamilton, Ohio, moved in with
her sister in South Florida in the early 1980s and went to work as a
bartender at Dalts, a popular eatery and bar in Kendall, a suburb of
Miami. She joined a group of young employees, including Salce, in an
atmosphere veterans of the establishment describe as "flamboyant" and
"family-oriented."
The group became a tight-knit circle of friends
that shared holidays, spawned lasting connections and several
marriages.
"We used to always eat Thanksgiving dinner together
like family," said Maria Doria Perez, who also worked at Dalts and is
now a teacher in the Miami area.
In the middle of this group was Pooley, who earned
the nickname "Mom" from co-workers who turned to her for advice about
relationships, college and the future.
"If Debbie had not been murdered, she's still be my
friend," Salce said. "We were robbed of that because of this heinous
murder."
Pooley also doted on her two nieces, who would sit
in a booth at Dalts eating homemade potato chips under her watchful
eye. Shinkle, who took her sister in after the move to south Florida,
said Pooley would read to the children, who couldn't get enough of
their aunt.
"She made the stories come alive," said Shinkle,
62. "I think she would have loved to have had a family."
Perez recalls Pooley buying large amounts of "Hello
Kitty" paraphernalia for the girls.
"They were the world to her," Perez said.
Pooley moved back north to be near her parents,
Walter, a pressman at the Hamilton, Ohio, Journal-News who died in
May, and Anne, who is now in poor health, in the mid-'80s. She settled
in northern Kentucky and went to work at Barleycorn's Yacht Club in
Newport, across the Ohio River in Cincinnati. Within two years, Wilson
and Brenda Humphrey, a former prostitute now serving life in prison,
would kidnap and kill Pooley.
The pending execution date has brought back the
horror of the days when no one could find Pooley and the sadness they
felt at her death.
"We were all young and it hit everyone hard," said
Donna Lovell of Miami, who worked at Dalts.
Shinkle said her parents stopped putting up a
Christmas tree and kept all of Pooley's things at their home.
"They've still got her clothes in a drawer, like
she still lives there," Shinkle said. "You think she's going to come
walking in the door someday."
More than 23 years after Pooley's death, her
friends still miss her some speak of her in the present tense and
remain angry at Wilson.
"If he's found God, he should be willing to meet
his maker," Perez said. "I don't think he should be seeing any
sympathy."
The facts
The victim was a restaurant employee in Newport. On
Friday, May 29, 1987 at 11:45 p.m., she left her best friend's house
and said she was going straight home. The prosecution presented
evidence that she had just parked her car outside of her apartment in
Covington when she was abducted by Wilson and co-defendant Humphrey at
knife point.
Testimony at trial from various sources, including
Humphrey, indicated that the victim was forced into the back seat of
her own car. Humphrey drove the car to the flood wall in Covington.
Wilson took the victim out of the car and took her up on the flood
wall and made her lie down with her eyes closed while Humphrey went to
put gas in the car. After Humphrey returned from the gas station,
Wilson again forced the victim into the back seat of the car.
Wilson made the victim unbutton her blouse. Wilson
finished undressing the victim and raped her. He then tied her hands
with a lamp cord, and the victim began begging for her life. Wilson
told her she would have to die. Humphrey said, "You have seen us. You
know who we are, and you have to die." The victim kept begging,
"Please don't kill me. I don't want to die." Wilson robbed her and
strangled her to death before they crossed the state line into
Indiana.
Wilson and Humphrey disposed of the victim's naked
corpse in a wooded thicket in rural Hendrix County, Indiana. Later
that same morning, Saturday, May 30, Wilson and Humphrey stopped at a
Holiday Inn in Crawfordsville, Indiana. According to a registration
card, Humphrey and a guest checked into the hotel at 4:19 a.m. Two of
the maids there identified the pair as Wilson and Humphrey
Wilson and Humphrey proceeded to a Payless Shoe
Store in Danville, Illinois where the victim's credit card was used to
purchase two pairs of women's shoes and some hosiery. Later that same
day, May 30, 1987, Wilson and Humphrey went to a K-Mart in Danville
where the victim's credit card was used to make purchases totalling
$227.46. Included in these purchases were a man's Seiko watch and a
woman's Gruen watch for $68.00 each. Wilson and Humphrey also paid
cash for a number of cosmetic items and some clothing. Later that day,
the victim's credit card was used to make a $24.50 purchase at an
Amoco gas station in Urbana-Champagne, Illinois.
On Sunday, May 31, Wilson and Humphrey returned to
the home of Humphrey's best friend, Beverly Finkenstead. Finkenstead
testified that Humphrey had a K-Mart bag with a blouse in it. They
both had a watch on and were each wearing a necklace. On Sunday, June
7, Humphrey visited Finkenstead and told her details of the crimes in
which she and Wilson had participated the previous weekend. Eight days
later, on June 15, Finkenstead reported to the police what Humphrey
had told her. Also on June 15, the Hendrix County, Indiana Sheriff's
Department was summoned to a wooded thicket where a corpse had been
discovered.
Authorities were able to determine the identity of
the corpse only by comparing its remaining teeth with the victim's
dental X-rays. The cause of death could not be determined due to the
absence of internal organs. A forensic entomologist testified that,
based on the extent of blowfly maggot development in and on the
corpse, the estimated time of death had occurred 15 to 19 days prior
to his June 16 examination of the corpse.
Wilson told cell mate Willis Maloney details of the
crimes including that the initial intent had been to "snatch" the
victim and rob her; that the victim was still alive when her money was
taken from her; that the victim was killed before they crossed the
state line into Indiana; that the corpse would be so badly decomposed
that no sperm would show up; and that they had used the victim's
credit card to purchase, among other things, a watch Wilson was
wearing at the time of his arrest which Humphrey later obtained by
signing it out from one of the jailers. Wilson also told Maloney, "I
bet they can't find what I used to strangle her with."
Maloney's and Humphrey's account of the rape was
corroborated by the presence of semen on the back seat of the victim's
car. Head hairs similar to those belonging to Humphrey were found
inside the victim's car. Pubic and head hairs similar to those
belonging to Wilson were also found inside the victim's car. A
handwriting expert established that Humphrey had authored the forged
credit card receipts. A search of the hotel room where Wilson and
Humphrey were arrested produced various items of clothing, all bearing
K-Mart price tags.
Humphrey was the only defense witness during the
guilt/innocence phase of the trial. Wilson gave his own closing
argument in which he told the jury he was not guilty, he "never met
nor knew the victim" and that Humphrey told her sister that she killed
the victim. The jury returned guilty verdicts against both defendants.
