Daughter of serial killer, rapist grieves for his victims

GREENVILLE - Growing up, Deborah Brashers-Claunch thought she knew her father. As it turns out, she only knew one side of him.

"We lived with a serial killer and rapist, and I didn't know it. He was an amazing father, a father anybody would have wanted to have," she said. "They always say serial killers live two separate lives. Some live just to kill; then there's others like my father who live in plain sight for years."

The 27-year-old Alabama woman is coming to terms with the reality of who her father was while grieving over his victims, one of whom was Jenny Zitricki, a Greenville woman murdered in her apartment in 1990.

The Zitricki case came to a close last year with Robert Eugene Brashers being identified as the suspect through a series of DNA tests and other means including swabs provided by his immediate family members and the exhumation of his remains.

Zitricki, who was only 28 when she was found beaten and strangled to death in her bathtub, was only part of the story. Investigators determined Brashers was responsible for a string of killings, sexual assaults and burglaries between 1985 and 1998.

He was convicted of beating and shooting a woman in Port St. Lucie, Florida, in 1985. He sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl near Memphis, Tennessee, in 1997. Then in 1998, he shot and killed a mother and her 12-year-old daughter in a Portageville, Missouri, home. He also sexually assaulted the child before shooting her. Brashers shot another woman across state lines in Tennessee that same day.

This Sunday marks the 20-year anniversary of the day that Brashers shot himself in a motel room during a police standoff in Kennett, Missouri. The family had been staying there when authorities spotted a vehicle with a stolen tag parked outside, and it led them to Brashers' room.

Brashers-Claunch, at 7 years old, was in the room that day. Negotiators brought her and her family members out of the room before Brashers took his own life. He died in a hospital days later.

Brashers-Claunch spoke exclusively to The Greenville News earlier this month to reflect on the cases tied to her dad and to offer condolences to the families of those impacted by his actions.

"If I was in front of them and actually talking to every one of the victims he ever hurt, or their families, I would tell them I was sorry my father was the way he was. He took lives away from people who done nothing wrong at all. He got what he deserves; he's burning in hell," Brashers-Claunch said. "He is better off where he is than in prison because of the simple fact of when you're in prison, you're still alive. These people he killed aren't."

The Greenville Police Department announced the breakthrough in Zitricki's case in October 2018 after partnering with authorities in Tennessee to use the assistance of Parabon NanoLabs, Inc., a technology company that develops forensic products to help with DNA processing.

Philip Hegedusich, Zitricki's brother, stood with police officials in Greenville City Hall to make the announcement. He said nothing would have stopped him from being there that day. The investigation into his sister's gruesome death had grown cold for nearly 30 years.

"Intervening years brought painful sorrow of loss and the longing for what could have been," Hegedusich said at the Oct. 5, 2018, announcement.

Brashers-Claunch said when investigators first came to her home to ask for a DNA sample for a cold case, she felt in her gut that her father was guilty. She said the timeline and locations matched up where the crimes took place and where she knew her father to be staying at those times.

She said he worked in construction, so it wasn't out of the ordinary for him to go to South Carolina, Tennessee or elsewhere for his job.

She said at home, Brashers struggled with alcoholism, but she never suspected him of being a murderer. She could only think of two or three times Brashers lost control and harmed either her or her sisters.

Once when Brashers-Claunch swallowed a penny at a young age, Brashers became enraged and beat her. Another time when her sister walked in on him in his bedroom, he dragged her out of the room by her hair and little finger.

After his death, Brashers-Claunch said she found an audio recording of Brashers centered around him experimenting with pain. She said he recorded himself cutting his own arm and his neck with a saw to see if he could withstand the pain.

Another time, she said she remembered a fistfight between Brashers and another relative, and the relative backed off when Brashers taunted him to hurt him.

She said something felt off when he would be gone from home for an extended time and return.

"He would come home one day, and he just wasn't the same," she said. "I wish he was alive so I could ask him 'why' and 'how could you?' How could you harm a child in any way knowing he had myself and my two sisters at home?"

Brashers-Claunch suspects more of Brashers' victims are still out there who have not yet been identified. She said for the surviving victims, her father likely changed their lives forever.

She's not sure why he targeted the women that he did but said that each of the victims closely resembled her mother, his wife's, physical appearance particularly with each victim having the same hairstyle. Brashers-Claunch's mother died of several health complications at age 53 in December 2018, after Brashers was identified as a serial killer. The other siblings are all grown now and stay in touch.

"I wish I could take all their pain away," Brashers-Claunch said of the victims and their families. "He was not a man. He was a person who breathed air that he didn't deserve for many years."

In Zitricki's case, nothing was stolen from her apartment. A trail of blood was found from the bedroom to the bathroom. Pantyhose had been tied around her neck. Her purse was found floating in a sink that was filled with water. Jewelry was left in plain sight.

"He never stole anything from them. He went in and raped them and killed them. Some killers, they shoot one time and they're done," Brashers-Claunch said, adding that her father beat and assaulted his victims rather than just shoot them. "There had to be something wrong with his brain."

During the October announcement of Brashers' identity, police chief Ken Miller described a gruesome scene and one that city police investigators struggled with for years.

"He attacked her as she slept," Miller said. "He bludgeoned her, strangled her and sexually assaulted her."

Brashers-Claunch still viewed her father as "the greatest man alive" when thinking about his role as a father, but acknowledged there was a different side she never knew, she said.

"It just makes me sick to my stomach. There's no telling how many lives he ruined," she said. "He was a wolf in sheep's clothing."

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Information from: The Greenville News, http://www.greenvillenews.com