The Horrifying Case of Vincent Brothers: Catching The Killer Teacher

Bakersfield, California on July the 8th 2003. Local police detective Jeff Watts got to work early.

“The morning I got the call, I um I was the duty uh detective for callout homicides. I was sitting at my desk. I thought my day was going to be an easy day. It was a Tuesday morning. Um we had just had a long Fourth of July weekend.”

Jeff could not have been more wrong.

“I had sat down on my desk and I heard the radio traffic of um suspicious activity, unknown circumstances at 9013rd Street. I remember thinking um that something didn’t sound right, just the way the call was coming through on the radio. Shortly thereafter I received a phone call at my desk at the police department uh that there was a homicide at the at the location.”

Bakersfield has its fair share of crime. Gun deaths are not uncommon. Jeff headed to the scene.

“I was looking at the scene from a a standpoint of any a number of things, whether it could have been a burglary, whether it could have been uh a specific like a driveby shooting um because I hadn’t walked in yet. Initially when we enter a house when it’s a, when we know it’s a homicide… In this case fire department had been there. We were told by the original reporting party that there were supposed to be five people in the house, and of the five people that was were in there, two were adults and three were children.”

The residents were all from one family: Ernestine Harper, her daughter Joanie, and Joanie’s three children, Marcus, four, Lindsay, two, and baby Marshall, just 6 weeks old.

“I truly thought, okay, this cannot happen. This entire family… You’re talking grandmother, mother, kids, three generations.”

As the police began recording the scene, they found Joanie, Marcus, and Lindsay in the main bedroom, all on the bed, dead. Jeff Ceil was the lead crime scene technician that day.

“Each of the children had single gunshot wounds. Um Joanie, you could see that some aggression was taken out on Joanie, so Joanie had multiple gunshot wounds, she had multiple stab wounds.”

Police had been alerted by a close friend who had heard nothing from the family since seeing them at church on July the 6th, 2 days before. From the clothing they were found in, it seemed the family had been murdered after returning home from the service.

“Ernestine, Joanie, they were just completely involved with the church. They were very faithful. They would um they would go to church starting in the morning on Sunday, they’d break for lunch and they’d be there for the rest of the evening after lunch. They usually… Their routine was morning church, morning service, they’d go to lunch. That particular day where they were murdered they went to Black Angus, and then the routine was to go home, rest, take a nap.”

In the hallway outside her bedroom, Ernestine had been shot twice. A gun by her side indicated she had heard the killer and tried to intervene with her own weapon.

“She had uh unfortunately some old ammunition in this handgun. She’s squeezing that trigger, she’s trying to work that gun… Doesn’t, doesn’t go off. There’s… The bullets are bad and they, they were corroded. That, you know, uh she did try to, she did try to save her family.”

This crime scene would have been so traumatic for the police officers who, who were first on scene. It was basically carnage. The scene that greeted those police officers would have been horrific.

“I was only three years into the job. I had never mur… Worked a mass murder um as in this case, so it was one of those, those feelings where this is something big um and this needs to be solved. The hardest part were the babies. So you have very young kids in that house um innocent kids that, that were, you know, just taking a nap. And I think the hardest part was just being in there and seeing the, the destruction that was caused to them, you know. I have kids this age, and so some of the hardest part is just to look at these kids and, and in their stillness, and just wondering, you know, why somebody would do this.”

As they searched the house, it became clear not all the family were accounted for. Baby Marshall appeared to be missing.

“Once we found out Marshall was missing, we put a halt on the video. Everybody on deck, start looking for this baby. Do we have a baby? Has it been kidnapped?”

“So I went in, documented the scene um so that we could start looking for the baby. My main area of concern was maybe that bedroom with the, the, the main bodies. Another lab technician um handled everything near Ernestine in the hallway, and then a third lab technician was documenting the exterior of the residence. But there’s a possibility there’s fingerprints, we need to look for trace evidence. So if the person’s walking around, they might have dropped some hairs or fibers, and then um DNA, the invisible stuff.”

But the only prints and DNA they found belonged to the family.

“I started putting yellow evidence numbers uh to mark um each physical item of evidence. So um in my crime scene photos, you’ll start to see yellow numbers. There was clothing evidence that was on the floor that belongs to the kids, but that’s still evidence to us that, that could have some potential value.”

At first glance, it looked like the killer was interrupted while trying to rob the house.

“See a computer that was removed from the bedroom and placed into the laundry room, like it was set up that somebody was going to take it out the garage and steal it. You can see things that are, that are knocked over, things that are high value items. Uh back in 2003, a big screen TV was, was a high value item. I mean, maybe 5, $6,000 for a TV back then. But something doesn’t add up. Somebody is breaking into this house… Why wasn’t the TV taken? There’s money on a, on a nightstand um in the bedroom where Joanie and the kids were killed um large amount of money. Why wasn’t it taken?”

“And it became clear, hey, this scene looks like it’s a stage scene. Somebody is wanting us to think, wanting the police to think that this was potentially a burglary gone bad. And it was pretty clear to me that um this was somebody that was um intent on killing a family versus committing a burglary and being caught in the act, just by, you know, the very nature of what was seen.”

As well as the baby, there was one other family member missing: Joanie’s estranged husband, Vincent Brothers.

“When we found out that Vincent was the, the husband, my concern was… Initially went to, well, where’s he at? Is he alive? Is he outstanding? Is he safe?”

It turns out Vincent was in Ohio, 2,200 miles away.

“We were told, ‘No, he’s in Columbus.’ Well, let’s make sure he’s safe. Somebody’s going to want… Take the time to walk into a house and kill his family, they may be after him as well.”

By now, the media had got wind of the case and were out in force. As news spread, it sent shock waves through the community.

“I don’t think there was panic. I, I don’t remember that, that being part of… I, I mean, I think people were interested in, you know, having the, having the person brought to justice, but it wasn’t a fe… I, I don’t remember it as being a fever pitch like that. It was more of a fever pitch, at least from where I was coming from, of sadness for, for this family, and just disbelief that something like this could happen.”

The team had been at the house for 15… The possible motive for the murders remained a mystery.

“I think Joanie had really had it with Vincent and his, you know, seeing other women, and she just decided it was time for her to go on her own, and was intending to divorce Vincent. But the problem for Vincent was, he had three young children, and that would have meant financial… It would have meant alimony, it would have meant then financial responsibility and support of these children really for the next 18 to 20, 20 years, and Vincent just simply did not want to do that.”

“He devised this elaborate plan to basically put himself out of state at the time they were murdered. So he, he flew to Ohio, then he rented a car in Ohio and drove straight back to Bakersfield, where he enacts his plan.”

“I remember sitting there thinking, ‘This has been a long 4 years.’ Because it had been 4 years from the murders to the trial in 2007.”

When the case finally came to court, Jeff Watts had a ringside seat.

“Brothers’ demeanor at the trial was um was different uh when the jury was present and paneled. Sitting there across from him, he’s very stoic. He, he would barely make any movements. Uh he would just sit there with uh just a frozen look on his face.”

“Um when the jury wasn’t there, he became quite animated. Uh he, as far as I was concerned, he liked to taunt um the uh the prosecutor.”

It was clear Vincent thought he was the smartest person in the room anytime the jury was not there. But come the verdict, it was a different story.

“The jury went out and deliberated for 3 days, and um they came back in and I could see… You could literally see his heart pounding through his shirt, and he was kind of leaned back, waiting for the verdict. And the clerk read the verdict, and the first count was read and it was, uh you know, guilty, murder in the first degree.”

“He knew he finally was done.”

Vincent Brothers was found guilty on all five counts. He was sentenced to death. The investigation was one that would stay with all those involved long after it had concluded.

“So just being out here, it’s, it’s a surreal feeling, and and in a 20 year career, I’ve seen plenty of other homicides um but I, I do remember this one. It really stands out in my mind. I, I don’t think it’ll be anything I will ever forget.”

“This particular case was something completely novel for me, and I don’t think anyone else has any experience with this kind of thing either.”

“With this case, it was just… I, I, I don’t know, it’s, it’s… It was just a very unique case for me to work. It, it was very personal in, in a lot of the just photographs I saw. Um one particular photograph I had told the district attorney, ‘I do not want to see that photograph in court. Please do not show it to me unless there is some huge need to show this photograph in court.’ I didn’t want to see it. Uh it reminded me of my own son.”

“It’s one of the kind of the, the tragedies, public tragedies of my adult life, to, to watch somebody who was such a positive influence just, you know, do this awful thing, cuz I, I, I really believed in him, you know. I just believe… I was one of many who, I would have never thought it possible.”

“I think Vincent Brothers is probably a psychopath and deserves to be on death row.”

“But in the end, is justice really served for these kids, you know? Wouldn’t it have been better if they could have lived their lives, and if Joanie and Ernestine could have finished out their lives? Of course, uh and that’s… I think for me is always the sadness in these cases, that yeah, we get to a legal justice and Vincent Brothers will be incarcerated for the rest of his life, but what about the victims? They… Their lives are over, and I think that is always the sad piece.”