Las Cruces Bowling Alley Massacre: Part Three (Conclusion)
Sources:
https://lascruces.gov/las-cruces-mass-shooting-unsolved-after-35-years/
https://www.borderreport.com/regions/new-mexico/las-cruces-bowling-alley-massacre-still-unsolved-after-nearly-4-decades/
https://kfoxtv.com/news/local/las-cruces-police-seek-new-leads-in-1990-mass-shooting-case
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Las_Cruces_bowling_alley_massacre
https://www.krwg.org/regional/2017-02-10/27-year-anniversary-of-las-cruces-bowling-alley-massacre?
https://kfoxtv.com/news/crime-news/family-remembers-victim-of-bowling-alley-massacre-investigation-continues
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Zevon Odelberg is a true crime podcast host and disability advocate. Zevon has cerebral palsy and he wants Kinda Murdery to be welcoming community for people with disabilities and for people living with challenges of any kind. Life can be hard, but being together makes it better.
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Speaker 2: Part three, The conclusion of the Loss Crusius Bowling Alley Massacre.
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Speaker 2: Part three, the conclusion of kind of murderies, the lost
Speaker 2: Crusius Bowling Alley massacre starts. Now it's days later, and
Speaker 2: the bowling Alley is still closed. The tape stretched across
Speaker 2: the entrance and retied where it started to sag. The
Speaker 2: front doors stay locked, the glass darkened from the inside,
Speaker 2: and unless someone steps close enough to look through it,
Speaker 2: the counter and the first stretch of lanes or just
Speaker 2: shapes behind it. Nothing about the building has changed the
Speaker 2: distance from the door to the counter, from the counter
Speaker 2: to the lanes, from the lanes to the office at
Speaker 2: the back. It all sits exactly the way it did
Speaker 2: that morning. What happened inside hasn't moved. The work has.
Speaker 2: It's laid out now across a table at the department,
Speaker 2: Photographs in rows, front counter, seating, the approach to the lanes,
Speaker 2: the office, close shots of impact points, close shots of
Speaker 2: casings before they were lifted, Evidence envelopes stacked to one side,
Speaker 2: labeled and sealed. The older detective stands with both hands
Speaker 2: on the table, leaning over the photographs, his tie gone,
Speaker 2: now sleeves rolled the same legal pad filled edge to
Speaker 2: edge across from him. The younger detective flips through his notebook,
Speaker 2: lining up what's written there against what's laid out in
Speaker 2: front of them. The sequence is fixed and doesn't change
Speaker 2: no matter how many times they go back through it.
Speaker 2: Two men walk in, seven people are moved into the office,
Speaker 2: gun fire inside the room, cash and checks taken, fire
Speaker 2: set before before they leave. The younger detective reads it
Speaker 2: again from the first page, then looks down to the photographs,
Speaker 2: as if something new might show up if he just
Speaker 2: looks long enough. It doesn't. The structure of what happened
Speaker 2: is clear. Nothing else is. The canvas sheets sit in
Speaker 2: a stack beside the photos, each one filled out in
Speaker 2: a different hand, different times, written next to names that
Speaker 2: don't connect to anything solid, most of them in the
Speaker 2: same way. Didn't see them arrive, didn't see where they went,
Speaker 2: heard the sirens, saw the smoke. The younger detective pulls
Speaker 2: one sheet out, reads it again, a witness who saw
Speaker 2: two men walking away from the direction of the Bowling Alley.
Speaker 2: Distance unclear, no vehicle, no details that hold. He sets
Speaker 2: it back into the stack and pulls the next one.
Speaker 2: That one ends faster, nothing unusual. It goes aside without
Speaker 2: being read twice. The older detective slides three photographs closer
Speaker 2: together the bullet casings from different parts of the bowling alley,
Speaker 2: one near the counter, one along the seating, one closer
Speaker 2: to the office, different sizes, different markings. He doesn't touch them,
Speaker 2: just lines the images up so they sit side by side.
Speaker 2: Two weapons were in that room. That part doesn't move.
Speaker 2: It's written down, circled, returned to every time they come
Speaker 2: back to the table. The description from the hospital is
Speaker 2: written clean on the page. Now two men, Hispanic, dark complexions,
Speaker 2: fluent English, no names attached to them, no details that
Speaker 2: separate them from anyone else who could fit that description
Speaker 2: in the city. The younger detective presses the pen into
Speaker 2: the page harder than he needs to, then lifts it
Speaker 2: and sets it down again. Phones ring in the background.
Speaker 2: They get picked up. Information comes in and gets written down,
Speaker 2: then checked and set aside. Tips come through with names
Speaker 2: attached to them, and those names get it pulled, questioned,
Speaker 2: and then cleared. When the times don't line up or
Speaker 2: the details don't hold, each one starts with something that
Speaker 2: might connect and ends the same way. No connections, nothing
Speaker 2: that stays. The older detective moves around the table and
Speaker 2: stops at the photograph of the office. The doorway open
Speaker 2: the floor marked where people were found, burn damage along
Speaker 2: the lower walls where the fire took hold. Everything that
Speaker 2: matters sits inside that frame. Everything they need to identify
Speaker 2: who did it is supposed to come from that room.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. The younger detective goes back to the first
Speaker 2: page of his notes and reads the sequence again, slower
Speaker 2: this time, like changing the pace might change the outcome.
Speaker 2: It doesn't. The same order, the same result, no new
Speaker 2: line added to the bottom of the page. Outside the building,
Speaker 2: the city keeps moving the way it always does. Traffic
Speaker 2: along the main roads, business is open, people going in
Speaker 2: and out of places that look exactly the way they
Speaker 2: did before that Saturday morning. Inside the room, the file
Speaker 2: stays open. The photographs don't change, the statements don't change.
Speaker 2: The evidence stays where it's been placed. Days pass, and
Speaker 2: the work repeats, with different names at the top of
Speaker 2: the page, different people brought in and questioned, different leads
Speaker 2: that start the same way and in the same way.
Speaker 2: Nothing locks into place long enough to build on. Nothing
Speaker 2: connects back to the two men who walked into the
Speaker 2: bowling alley, took control of the room, and left without
Speaker 2: being identified. The space between what happened inside that office
Speaker 2: and who did it? Stays empty. It's a void, and
Speaker 2: it stays that way no matter how many times they
Speaker 2: come back to the table and try to fill it.
Speaker 2: The hospital room holds steady. The light is kept low,
Speaker 2: filtered through a shade that flattens everything into the same
Speaker 2: pale tone, and the only movement comes from the monitors
Speaker 2: beside the bed and the quiet work of the staff
Speaker 2: moving in and out. An officer remains just outside the door,
Speaker 2: not speaking, not shifting position, making sure no one crosses
Speaker 2: the threshold without being accounted for. Inside, the air carries
Speaker 2: that clean, sterile edge that never quite covers the smell
Speaker 2: of injury and sickness, the various reasons that bring a
Speaker 2: patience to the hospital in the first place. Melissia Repass
Speaker 2: lies against the pillows with the sheets pulled high across
Speaker 2: her body. The tubes running into her arm are fixed
Speaker 2: in place with tape that has already been replaced once
Speaker 2: since she came out of surgery. Her breathing is steady,
Speaker 2: but measured, the kind that comes from some one being
Speaker 2: watched second by second by the machines beside her. When
Speaker 2: the detectives enter, they don't come in with the same
Speaker 2: pace they carried at the bowling Alley. The older one
Speaker 2: steps just far enough into the room to be seen,
Speaker 2: then stops, giving Melissa time to recognize that someone is
Speaker 2: there before anything is asked of her. The younger one
Speaker 2: stays back half a step, notebook open but held low,
Speaker 2: not raised between them. What Melissia gives them comes in order,
Speaker 2: not because she's trying to tell a story, but because
Speaker 2: that is how it sits in her memory. The two
Speaker 2: men come through the front of the bowling Alley without
Speaker 2: being stopped, without being questioned, moving the same way anyone
Speaker 2: else would move through that space in the morning. They
Speaker 2: don't announce themselves beyond what they say to the people inside,
Speaker 2: but what they say is enough. They tell them to move,
Speaker 2: and the people in the building move from the counter,
Speaker 2: from the lanes, from where they had been standing only
Speaker 2: seconds before, all of them directed to the office in
Speaker 2: the back. Seven people inside that room, arranged without discussion,
Speaker 2: placed by where they are told to go. Melisia describes
Speaker 2: their positions in relation to the doorway, to the walls,
Speaker 2: to each other, not as measurements, but as a fixed
Speaker 2: picture that doesn't shift no matter how many times it's looked.
Speaker 2: At The men remain near the entrance to the office,
Speaker 2: controlling the space from that point. They do not pace
Speaker 2: the room, do not circle, do not need to. Everything
Speaker 2: they require is in front of them, and everything in
Speaker 2: front of them responds the way they expect it to.
Speaker 2: When the gun fire starts, she does not try to
Speaker 2: give it shape or sound. She describes instead what happens
Speaker 2: to the people in front of her, how the bodies
Speaker 2: drop and don't get back up, how the order of
Speaker 2: the room breaks apart in a way that cannot be
Speaker 2: put back together once it happens. The detectives don't interrupt
Speaker 2: her to fill in what they already know. They let
Speaker 2: the structure of the story come from her, because the
Speaker 2: structure is the one thing that holds together. After the shooting,
Speaker 2: the men move into the room itself. This part settles
Speaker 2: differently because it shifts what they were doing from control
Speaker 2: to purpose. They step over the people on the floor,
Speaker 2: moving directly to where the money and the checks would
Speaker 2: be kept, opening drawers, pulling through what's inside, checking without hesitation,
Speaker 2: without confusion. The motion is not scattered. It follows a
Speaker 2: path one location to the next, each place treated the
Speaker 2: same way. Before they move on It reads less like
Speaker 2: a search and more like a series of stops that
Speaker 2: they already anticipated. One of them moves along the edge
Speaker 2: of the room, low along the wall, where the fire begins.
Speaker 2: Melissia doesn't know what they use to start it, but
Speaker 2: she can place where it starts and how it builds.
Speaker 2: The first signs of it near the floor, before it
Speaker 2: spreads into the furniture around it. The fire does not
Speaker 2: surge immediately. It takes hold and then grows enough to
Speaker 2: move across the space. While the men are already turning
Speaker 2: away from it, they leap through the same door they
Speaker 2: came in, passing through the front of the building without
Speaker 2: anything to slow them down. No one is in a
Speaker 2: position to stop them, and no one follows them. The
Speaker 2: control they held at the start carries all the way
Speaker 2: through to the end, uninterrupted, from the moment they step
Speaker 2: inside the bowling alley to the moment they walk out.
Speaker 2: Melissa stays where she is after they are gone. The
Speaker 2: fire continues to build along the wall, spreading across anything
Speaker 2: close enough to burn. The people around Melisia do not move,
Speaker 2: and that stillness becomes part of what she is seeing.
Speaker 2: As she looks from one side of the room to
Speaker 2: the other, trying to make sense of what has happened.
Speaker 2: The detectives don't push her past that point. They let
Speaker 2: the sequence of events stand as she relays it, because
Speaker 2: what matters is already there. The positioning of the men,
Speaker 2: the control of the room, the order of actions after
Speaker 2: the shooting, the setting of the fire as the final
Speaker 2: step before they leave. Each piece fits with what is
Speaker 2: pulled from the scene, but it adds something that was
Speaker 2: not visible from the floor alone. It shows how little movement,
Speaker 2: how little activity, how little action was needed to control
Speaker 2: seven people, and how directly, succinctly everything that followed was
Speaker 2: carried out. When the detective stepped back into the hallway,
Speaker 2: the hospital sounds return around them, steady and unchanged from
Speaker 2: when they walked in. The younger detective closes the note
Speaker 2: book without adding anything further to the page, because the
Speaker 2: structure of events is already complete. He hands the note
Speaker 2: book to the older man, who carries it with him
Speaker 2: without looking down. The details held in place now not
Speaker 2: just by what was found in the building, but by
Speaker 2: the experience and memories of a witness, of a victim
Speaker 2: who was inside that room and watched it happen. In
Speaker 2: real time. By the end of the first week, the
Speaker 2: center of gravity shifts completely away from the Bowling Alley.
Speaker 2: The building stays sealed, unchanged behind the tape, but no
Speaker 2: one is standing in that lot anymore trying to solve
Speaker 2: the case from the outside. No one is standing in
Speaker 2: the Bowling Alley trying to solve the case from the inside.
Speaker 2: The work has been consolidated inside the police department, where
Speaker 2: the case is no longer a collection of scenes and statements,
Speaker 2: but a file that has to be reviewed and analyzed
Speaker 2: and added to, a file that has to produce something actionable,
Speaker 2: or the wheels of justice will refuse to move. The
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley massacre is given a permanent investigation room inside
Speaker 2: the police station. Tables are fixed in place, walls are
Speaker 2: used for more than posted note overflow, and everything that
Speaker 2: comes in is immediately sorted into where it fits or
Speaker 2: discarded when it doesn't. Photographs remain grouped by location, but
Speaker 2: the emphasis has moved to timelines and connections. Statements are
Speaker 2: broken down into components time, location, observation, and those components
Speaker 2: are compared across every person who spoke. Anything that alignes
Speaker 2: is marked, anything that drifts even slightly is flagged and
Speaker 2: held back from the core. The hospital statements hold the
Speaker 2: number of offenders, their control of the room, their position
Speaker 2: at the doorway, the sequence of gunfire followed by the
Speaker 2: search for cash and checks, and the setting of the fire.
Speaker 2: Those elements don't shift under comparison. That part of the
Speaker 2: case is stable enough that it no longer requires attention
Speaker 2: beyond confirmation. The detectives don't spend time reworking it because
Speaker 2: it doesn't produce anything new. It explains what happened, but
Speaker 2: it doesn't identify who did it. It doesn't produce a suspect.
Speaker 2: What changes is the treatment of everything outside the building.
Speaker 2: The canvas is no longer about collecting statements. It becomes
Speaker 2: about eliminating them. Names that came in during the first
Speaker 2: hours are pulled back up, checked against employment records, shift times,
Speaker 2: distances that can be traveled within the window the crime allows.
Speaker 2: People are recontacted, asked to repeat what they saw without
Speaker 2: reference to what they said before. Small differences emerge under repetition,
Speaker 2: and those differences are enough to push most of the
Speaker 2: early accounts out of consideration. A timeline is built with
Speaker 2: tighter constraints than anything written in the first days. The
Speaker 2: time the Bowling Alley opened, the last confirmed normal activity inside,
Speaker 2: the point at which control was established, and the first
Speaker 2: external indication that something was wrong. The window narrows until
Speaker 2: it can be held in a few lines on a page.
Speaker 2: Every name, every sighting, every reported movement is forced into
Speaker 2: that window. If it doesn't fit, it's removed, and most
Speaker 2: of them don't fit. The absence of a vehicle moves
Speaker 2: from a detail to a condition. No one places a
Speaker 2: car arriving with the two men, no one places a
Speaker 2: car leaving with them. That forces the search outward in
Speaker 2: a different way, not looking for a vehicle at the scene,
Speaker 2: but for where a vehicle could have been left without
Speaker 2: being seen. Streets adjacent to the Bowling Alley are mapped
Speaker 2: in terms of line of sight. What could be observed
Speaker 2: from each business, each entrance, each point where someone was
Speaker 2: standing that morning. Areas fall away is impossible without being noticed.
Speaker 2: What remains are smaller zones where a car could have
Speaker 2: waited without drawing attention, But those zones do not produce
Speaker 2: a witness who can confirm it. Leads continue to come in,
Speaker 2: but they are processed differently. Now each one is measured
Speaker 2: against the established time line before any field work is done.
Speaker 2: If it fails there, it doesn't move forward. If it passes,
Speaker 2: it is assigned, checked, and either incorporated or discarded. The
Speaker 2: volume does not slow, but the percentage that survives the
Speaker 2: first pass drops sharply. What remains after that is still
Speaker 2: not enough to identify anyone outside the department. The case
Speaker 2: expands in a way that doesn't help the investigation directly,
Speaker 2: but increases its pressure. The victim's names are no longer
Speaker 2: confined to reports. They're repeated in broadcasts, printed, spoken in
Speaker 2: public settings. Appeals for information are issued with the same descriptions,
Speaker 2: each time unchanged because nothing has been added to it.
Speaker 2: That repetition pushes more calls in, but the content of
Speaker 2: those calls follows the same pattern as before. Partial observations,
Speaker 2: uncertain times, descriptions that match too broadly to isolate the suspect.
Speaker 2: Two men, Hispanic fluent English. That's it. Inside the investigation room,
Speaker 2: the detectives stop expecting the next piece to complete what
Speaker 2: they have. The work shifts towards testing whether anything that
Speaker 2: already exists can be strengthened enough to hold on its own.
Speaker 2: The evidence remains consistent, the statements remain consistent, but consistency
Speaker 2: does not convert into identification. The crime is fully defined,
Speaker 2: but the individuals who carried it out remain mysterious. By
Speaker 2: the time the first week closes, the cases reached a
Speaker 2: point where nothing inside it contradicts anything else, and nothing
Speaker 2: inside it points to a name. The investigation continues at
Speaker 2: full scale, but the expectation of an immediate resolution is
Speaker 2: no longer part of it. What remains is a complete
Speaker 2: account of what happened inside the office and an incomplete
Speaker 2: understanding of everything beyond it, with no direct path from
Speaker 2: one to the other. In the second week, the investigation
Speaker 2: changes direction without changing its pace. The dedicated room at
Speaker 2: the police department stays active, but the focus shifts from
Speaker 2: reconstruction to comparison. What happened inside the Bowling Alley is
Speaker 2: already fixed. Now the question becomes whether anything like it
Speaker 2: has happened before, close enough in time or method to
Speaker 2: point to somewhere. Specific reports from surrounding jurisdictions are pulled
Speaker 2: and laid out alongside the existing file. Robberies involving multiple offenders, firearms,
Speaker 2: and physical control of victims are flagged first. Anything involving
Speaker 2: a back room, an office, or a movement from a
Speaker 2: public space into a confined area is separated out. I
Speaker 2: have to mention here, although there's no specific reporting on
Speaker 2: this listener, Paul did mention, and it does jump out
Speaker 2: that this crime has multiple things in common with the
Speaker 2: mo of robber Eugene Brashers and the Austin yogurt shop murders.
Speaker 2: You have multiple firearms two although there are reported to
Speaker 2: be two assailants here. You have control of the victims
Speaker 2: moving them into a back room, and you also have
Speaker 2: the setting of a fire. And it is around the
Speaker 2: same time the Bowling Alley massacre happened, first taking place
Speaker 2: on February tenth, nineteen ninety as where the yogurt shop
Speaker 2: murders occurred on December sixth, nineteen ninety one. They also
Speaker 2: both happened on a weekend. The yogurt shop murders occurred
Speaker 2: late on a Friday night, or I guess you could
Speaker 2: say in the early morning hours potentially of a Saturday,
Speaker 2: and the Bowling Alley massacre happened on a Saturday morning.
Speaker 2: Now again, there were two assailants described by victims of
Speaker 2: the Bowling Alley massacre. They were also described as Hispanic.
Speaker 2: It's worth noting that while Robert Eugene Brashers was white,
Speaker 2: if you google him and look at Google images, I
Speaker 2: think it's completely plausible, completely possible that Robert Eugene Brashers
Speaker 2: could have been mistaken for Hispanic, especially by a person
Speaker 2: under duress. So there really is quite a bit in
Speaker 2: common here New Mexico versus Texas, similar region, similar years,
Speaker 2: February nineteen ninety versus December nineteen ninety one. And of
Speaker 2: course the elements of robbery control multiple handguns of different calibers,
Speaker 2: and a setting of a fire after the crime. I'd
Speaker 2: be curious to know if law enforcement has looked into
Speaker 2: the possibility of anything that might connect Robert Eugene Brashers
Speaker 2: to the Las Crucis Bowling Alley massacre. I think it
Speaker 2: was certainly a salient and intriguing observation by listener Paul.
Speaker 2: And if anybody knows whether law enforcement has investigated anything
Speaker 2: that might connect Robert Eugene Brashers to the Los Crusius
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley massacre, I'd love to hear about it. You
Speaker 2: can email me Kindomurdery at gmail dot com, you can
Speaker 2: find me on social media, or you can call the
Speaker 2: kind of Murdery hotline, which is eight eight eight Murdery.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get back to the story. So again,
Speaker 2: reports from surrounding jurisdictions are pulled and laid out alongside
Speaker 2: the existing file. Robberies involving multiple offenders, firearms and control
Speaker 2: of victims are flagged first. Anything involving a back room,
Speaker 2: an office or movement from a public space into a
Speaker 2: confined area is separated out, and just to list them
Speaker 2: one more time, multiple firearms, control of victims, movement from
Speaker 2: a public area into a confined area, as well as
Speaker 2: setting of a fire after the crime is committed, and robbery.
Speaker 2: Of course, these are all components that the Lost Crew
Speaker 2: Us Bowling Alley massacre has in common with the Austin
Speaker 2: yogurt shop murders, although again I don't know if that
Speaker 2: connection was ever made by law enforcement, especially since the
Speaker 2: yogurt shop murders had not yet occurred, nor had brashers
Speaker 2: been identified. Obviously, but the younger detective does work through
Speaker 2: reports of similar crimes line by line, not reading for narrative,
Speaker 2: but for structure, jury method, number of offenders, how victims
Speaker 2: were handled, whether the offenders lingered or moved quickly once
Speaker 2: they had what they came for. Most of what comes
Speaker 2: up doesn't match single offenders, quick cash grabs, no attempt
Speaker 2: to control the room beyond what was necessary to get
Speaker 2: in and get out. Those crimes get set aside. A
Speaker 2: smaller subset remains cases where two men entered together, where
Speaker 2: instructions were given instead of for supplied immediately, where the
Speaker 2: offenders stayed long enough to direct movement rather than react
Speaker 2: to it. Even those don't align cleanly, the timing is off,
Speaker 2: or the follow through doesn't match, or the level of
Speaker 2: control breaks down under closer reading. At the same time,
Speaker 2: known offenders in the area are pulled and checked against
Speaker 2: the same criteria recent arrests, parolees, anyone with a history
Speaker 2: of armed robbery or coordinated activity coordinated criminal activity, of course,
Speaker 2: we're not talking about synchronized swimming here. The older detective
Speaker 2: reviews those names against the timeline built in the first week,
Speaker 2: eliminating anyone who can't be placed in the area or
Speaker 2: who can be accounted for when the crime occurred. The
Speaker 2: list contracts quickly. What remains is too broad to act
Speaker 2: on and too thin to build from. Nothing in that
Speaker 2: pass produces a direct lead, but it establishes something the
Speaker 2: case didn't have before. The crime does not sit comfortably
Speaker 2: within the patterns already on file. It resembles other robberies
Speaker 2: in Peace Pie, but not in a way that points
Speaker 2: to a specific crew or known method, or a name
Speaker 2: that can be pulled and pursued. In the weeks that follow,
Speaker 2: the pace of the investigation doesn't drop so much as
Speaker 2: it flattens. The same dedicated room stays in use at
Speaker 2: the police department, the same tables covered in photographs and statements,
Speaker 2: but the way the detectives move through it changes. Early on,
Speaker 2: every new piece of information had somewhere to go, some
Speaker 2: place it could be tested against what was already known.
Speaker 2: Now the flow reverses. Information still comes in, but most
Speaker 2: of it doesn't make it past the first pass. It
Speaker 2: gets checked against the timeline, against the statements, against the
Speaker 2: fixed structure of what happened inside the Bowling Alley, and
Speaker 2: it falls away before it ever reaches the center of
Speaker 2: the case. The core file doesn't expand in a meaningful way.
Speaker 2: It thickens, more pages, more names, more attempts, but nothing
Speaker 2: alters the structure that was established in the first days.
Speaker 2: Two offenders to firearms, seven people moved into the office.
Speaker 2: Gun fire, murder, theft fire. Every verified piece supports that sequence,
Speaker 2: and nothing outside of it attaches to a person who
Speaker 2: can be placed inside of it. The detectives return to
Speaker 2: the same materials because those materials are the only things
Speaker 2: that hold. Photographs are re examined, not for what they show,
Speaker 2: but for what might have been missed. Statements are re read,
Speaker 2: compared again, looking for a detail that shifts when placed
Speaker 2: next to another account. Nothing separates itself from what is
Speaker 2: already known. Time begins to show up in smaller ways.
Speaker 2: Follow up calls take longer to return. Names that were
Speaker 2: checked once are checked again, not because they've changed, but
Speaker 2: because nothing has replaced them. The same questions are asked
Speaker 2: in slightly different forms, and the answers come back the same.
Speaker 2: The absence of a vehicle remains. The description of the
Speaker 2: suspects does not narrow the empty void. The separated ven
Speaker 2: diagram between the crime and any identifiable person stays unchanged.
Speaker 2: Outside the department, the case continues to circulate. The suspect
Speaker 2: description is repeated, appeals for information continue. More calls come in,
Speaker 2: and they are handled the same way as before. Logged checked,
Speaker 2: measured against what is known. Most of them end at
Speaker 2: the same point, unable to move beyond possibility into confirmation.
Speaker 2: The volume of information does not translate into direction. By
Speaker 2: the end of this stretch, the investigation has not stopped,
Speaker 2: but it has changed form. It is no longer moving
Speaker 2: towards something new. It is holding everything that has already
Speaker 2: been established in place, maintaining it, preserving it, waiting for
Speaker 2: something that has not yet appeared. The work continues, but
Speaker 2: the case itself remains exactly where it was once the
Speaker 2: first week closed, defined in detail, but empty where it
Speaker 2: matters most. By the mid twenty tens, the Los Crucis
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley massacre case has outlived the people who first
Speaker 2: worked it. The file is no longer a single stack
Speaker 2: that can be lifted and carried. It's a system that
Speaker 2: has been added to over time, each layer built on
Speaker 2: top of what came before it. The photographs are the same,
Speaker 2: the statements are the same. The evidence recovered from the
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley is the same. What changed is the set
Speaker 2: of hands moving through it and the tools those hands
Speaker 2: have available. Amador Martinez steps into the case as the
Speaker 2: lead detective, not as someone arriving fresh, but as someone
Speaker 2: from the same place the case belongs to. He was
Speaker 2: born and raised in Los Crusis. The names in the
Speaker 2: file are not abstract to him. They are tied to
Speaker 2: a city he already knows well, a place that has
Speaker 2: carried the weight of what happened at that buling alley
Speaker 2: for decades. By the time Detective Martinez takes over, the
Speaker 2: sequence of the crime is not in question, and there
Speaker 2: are still no confirmed identities, no arrests, no direct link
Speaker 2: between the evidence and the suspect. What Detective Martinez inherits
Speaker 2: is not uncertainty about the event, but rather the absence
Speaker 2: of resolution. The evidence is sent out again, not because
Speaker 2: it was mishandled, but because it can, now, now being
Speaker 2: in the mid twenty tens around twenty fourteen, be examined
Speaker 2: in ways that were not available in nineteen ninety. Materials
Speaker 2: collected from the office are tested with updated forensic methods.
Speaker 2: Each submission is logged, each result returned with a level
Speaker 2: of detail that refines what is already known without extending
Speaker 2: it beyond its limits. Where something can be clarified, it
Speaker 2: is clarified. Where it cannot, it remains unchanged. Detective martine
Speaker 2: Is works the case as something active, not archived. That
Speaker 2: distinction is maintained deliberately. Tips are taken, names are still checked.
Speaker 2: Each piece of information is measured against the same fixed
Speaker 2: structure that has defined the case from the beginning. Most
Speaker 2: of them resolved the same way, unable to attach to
Speaker 2: the two men who entered the building and left without
Speaker 2: being identified. When he speaks about the case, Detective Martinez
Speaker 2: does not describe it as something finished. This event twenty
Speaker 2: five years ago pretty much rocked the foundation of Las Crusis,
Speaker 2: he says. He states it without emphasis, as a fact
Speaker 2: that does not require explanation. He describes the work the
Speaker 2: same way. We've utilized numerous resources throughout the years to
Speaker 2: try to solve this, so it's not a cold case.
Speaker 2: It's very active. The file reflects that it continues to grow,
Speaker 2: not with breakthroughs, but with attempts, re examinations, updated reports,
Speaker 2: new line of inquiry that begin and end within the
Speaker 2: same boundaries. The structure of the crime remains intact. The
Speaker 2: absence the void at its center remains intact as well.
Speaker 2: The materials recovered from the Bowling Alley are no longer
Speaker 2: just photographs and reports. They are physical objects that can
Speaker 2: be tested again not because they were overlooked, but because
Speaker 2: the methods used to examine them continue to change. Detective
Speaker 2: amid Or Martinez pushes those materials back through the system.
Speaker 2: Casings are re examined not for what they confirmed years earlier,
Speaker 2: but for whether anything new can be pulled from the
Speaker 2: markings left behind. Items collected from the officer are evaluated again,
Speaker 2: looking for traces that could not be isolated before. Each
Speaker 2: test is precise within its scope, and each result returns
Speaker 2: with the same limitation refinement without identification. The evidence becomes
Speaker 2: clearer in detail, but it does not extend beyond the
Speaker 2: boundaries already established. It does not identify a suspect or suspects,
Speaker 2: and until something enters that file that can attach a
Speaker 2: name or names to the two men who walked into
Speaker 2: that bowling alley and left without being identified, the case
Speaker 2: holds exactly where it's been from the beginning, complete in
Speaker 2: what happened and incomplete in who did it, and for
Speaker 2: all the reasons already mentioned. The overlapped the similarities the
Speaker 2: commonalties in modus operendi from a similar region the American Southwest,
Speaker 2: New Mexico and Texas, to similar years nineteen ninety in
Speaker 2: nineteen ninety one to a similar time of year, winter
Speaker 2: December and February, a nearly matching time of the week
Speaker 2: the week end late Friday night early Saturday morning, a
Speaker 2: crime that involved two different firearms of two different calibers,
Speaker 2: that involved control of the victims, moving them from a
Speaker 2: public space to a private space in the back, a robbery,
Speaker 2: a less than immediate exit, a fire set after the crime,
Speaker 2: and the fact that if you google Robert Eugene Braschers,
Speaker 2: I do believe that he could be plausibly mistaken for hispanic,
Speaker 2: especially by a person under duress. All of these things
Speaker 2: are potential commonalities between the Austin, Texas yogurt chop murders
Speaker 2: and the Las Crusus Bowling Alley massacre. Of course, in
Speaker 2: the case of the Bowling Alley massacre, Brashers would have
Speaker 2: had to have had an accomplice, which he did not
Speaker 2: apparently have in any of his other crimes. But the
Speaker 2: Bowling Alley massacre did happen before the yogurt chop murders.
Speaker 2: Perhaps he was evolving or slightly less set in his ways,
Speaker 2: But for all of these reasons, for all of these
Speaker 2: potential points of contact, I would love to know whether
Speaker 2: Detective Amador Martinez, any of his predecessors, contemporaries, or successors
Speaker 2: have investigated a potential connection between the Las Crusis Bowling
Speaker 2: Alley massacre and Robert Eugene Brasher's the Austin Yogurt chop Killer.
Speaker 2: If anyone has any information about this question, please do
Speaker 2: reach out to me. Also, if you happen to have friends, family, acquaintances,
Speaker 2: somebody you bumped into on an elevator, anybody you know
Speaker 2: who enjoys a true crime podcast, please do tell them
Speaker 2: about the show. I sure would appreciate it. And please,
Speaker 2: please please do join me a week from today next Wednesday,
Speaker 2: April twenty second, for a brand new story, a brand
Speaker 2: new episode of the show. Thank you so much for
Speaker 2: being here. I'm Zevanodleberg and this has been kind of Murdery.
Speaker 1: If you like the show, please subscribe, review and tell
Speaker 1: your friends. You can find us on social media at
Speaker 1: kinda Murdery or email at Kinamurdery at gmail dot com
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