I’ve never written a post like this for Websleuths before.
James Willie Brown was executed in November 2003 for the murder of Brenda Sue Watson in 1975.
My interest in him comes from the fact that he was from where I grew up (he is well before my time).
I can close my eyes and vividly recall where he lived, the cemetery he is buried at, the area he is known to have left victims near Stone Mountain.
I didn’t know about him, somehow, until a few years ago and it was only very recently that I started to really research him.
Eventually I plan to research unsolved cases in Fulton, DeKalb, and Gwinnett Counties that fit his profile and his relatively short period of activity (1966-1968, 1971-1975).
His execution garnered international headlines due to his off and on again determinations of competency and his diagnosis as being paranoid schizophrenic. I could write for days about his two trials and all the legal complications that delayed his execution… but that’s for another day (maybe).
Brown reportedly grew up in an extremely poor and abusive household in Lilburn, Georgia. He was reported as having a near genius IQ. In the second grade he developed a sever stutter.
He channeled his rage from the mocking of his speech by children and adults alike into tormenting other children around him (peers and family) as well as torturing and killing small animals (which his younger brother of a year said he enjoyed immensely).
He dropped out of school after repeating the 9th grade twice. At that point he was already 17 due to being held back other years as well. He started receiving treatment at Emory, at 15, for severe headaches, blackouts and seizures he had been suffering for years.
Because he was 17, he was able to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1965 after dropping out (I assume he did not disclose the medical background). In 1966 he was picked up AWOL and discharged on mental health issues soon after.
He got married and picked up his first arrest for burglary. He was serving a two year probated sentence when he was arrested on Feb. 26th, 1968 for a Feb. 17th attack on a woman at an apartment complex in NW Atlanta. She was moving out of the complex and got a knock on the door from Brown asking if she knew of any vacant rentals. He forced his way in, beat her with a pistol, and chased her to the bedroom. He shoved a washcloth in her mouth when she started screaming. During the struggle, she managed to start screaming again and he fled. A bystander in the parking lot gave chase and Brown fired twice at him.
He was charged with 2 counts of attempted murder, 1 count of attempted rape, 1 count of attempted robbery. At this point Brown and his wife are expecting a child.
He was convicted in Fulton County on Dec. 2nd, 1968 to a ten year sentence (time starting from his Feb. arrest date). He was paroled September 20th, 1971. The majority of his sentence was served at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville (a gruesome mental institution).
From his discharge date until December 1972, he is treated with outpatient counseling at the Gwinnett County Mental Health Clinic. From December 1972 until January 1974, he is treated on both an inpatient and outpatient basis back at Central State Hospital.
In DeKalb County he is charged (but not arrested) for the March 15th, 1974 abduction and rape of a woman he picked up hitchhiking. He is charged (but not arrested) for the July 29th, 1974 abduction, rape, and robbery of a woman he kidnapped from an Atlanta coffee house.
Both victims were taken to the same area of I-285 and Moreland Ave where they were bound and raped. I don’t know the circumstances of how they got away (escape/release). Because of this, he is suspected in the murder of an unidentified woman whose partially nude remains were found, posed spread eagle, in the same area in 1973.
In September of 1974, he is charged with aggravated sodomy of a 15 year old. He convinced her to come with him to help babysit his seven year old daughter. He drove into the woods near Stone Mountain, locked his daughter in the car, and marched the victim further into the woods where he assaulted her.
The charges are dropped when he victim decides not to testify.
At this point, I want to point out that he seems to be bringing victims closer and closer to his home area of (then, very) rural Gwinnett.
On Monday, May 12th, 1975, he meets Brenda Sue Watson at the What It Is club in the Peachtree Triangle area of Atlanta. She is a topless dancer at the club. At the time, this stretch of Peachtree Street is dubbed in the papers as “Pornographic Peachtree” due to the plethora of adult clubs, book stores, cinemas, and bathhouses that are geared towards more of a blue collar crowd (the “higher end” establishments that can afford to move, like Tattletale’s, already have due to city harassment and the clear future of the district to be redeveloped).
Watson and Brown head to the lounge at the Mark Inn hotel near Stone Mountain. It was located off Hirsch Drive, near 78 and Mountain Industrial. It is now the 2 star Rodeway Inn.
On the way, they pick up a to go order from a steakhouse. They arrive at the lounge roughly 8:30pm (with the dinner in styrofoam containers). People remember them because they cause somewhat of a loud scene, enjoying their dinner, drinking at the bar, and dancing. They leave roughly between 11-11:30pm.
The next morning, Tuesday, Watson’s body is found partially nude at an illegal dump. The dump is located off DeShong Drive, a dirt road in a heavily wooded area off a dirt section of Rockbridge Road.
She has been bound and raped. Her cause of death was asphyxiation from her panties being shoved so far down her throat that they were not noticed until autopsy. Bits of wood and leaves are noticed in her mouth and throat and when the panties are found, it is deduced that a stick was used to push them so far down. Clear markings from being bound hand and foot are visible on her wrists and ankles. A piece of nylon cord is still tied to one of her ankles. She is posed spread eagle.
Watson remains unidentified until Thursday when her roommate and co-worker identifies her body. She is only 21 years old. She is buried back home, in Illinois, in a grave that remains unmarked (with the exception of placed ornaments… no headstone).
I know sleuthing of families is not allowed but I hope it will be acceptable to note that her mother died at only the age of 35, after an extremely abusive marriage and her only full sibling, a sister, is found strangled to death at the age of 33 in an ally in Dallas, in 1981. As far as I can find, that murder is unsolved.
Tragic doesn’t com close to describing how their lives ended.
Once Brenda Sue Watson is identified, it’s fairly easy to backtrack her movements with Brown. A waitress remembers them from the steakhouse. Multiple witnesses remember them from the Mark Inn.
A week after Watson’s body is found, a severed arm is found by a motorist sitting alongside Rockbridge Road.
An “extensive” search ensues. About a mile away, and roughly 100 yards from where Brenda Sue Watson was found, police find the reminder of the body.
She is a young Black woman somewhere in her late teens to early 20s. She has been in the woods for roughly 4 weeks and animals have scattered her remains (which is why her arm was found on the side of the road).
Her lower torso is about twenty yards away from the rest of her. She is also described as being posed spread eagle but with the scavenging, I don’t how this could be definitely determined.
More important, I think, is that she died from asphyxiation from a mechanic ‘s rag being shoved down her throat. Brown worked as an auto repair mechanic and came from several generations of family doing the same work.
Found with/near the body was a single silver earring, brown wig, blue halter top, yellow knit skirt with a split in the front, blue pantyhose, and black sequined platform shoes.
The shoes were unique and police were able to trace them back to the only store in Atlanta that sold them. However, tracing the credit card purchases was a dead end and they were left with the assumption that it must have been an untraceable cash purchase.
I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for that lead to fizzle out.
She remains unidentified.
She was buried at Old Shadowlawn Cemetery in Lawrenceville with a small metal marker inscribed “Unknown Lady.”
I think there is equally probable scenarios that Brown picked this woman up either as a dancer in a club, as a prostitute, or abducted her. His wife had a prostitution arrest. He once claimed he murdered Brenda Sue Watson only after they left the Mark Inn lounge and were parked in the woods. He said she demanded $200 and said if he didn’t pay, she would go to the police and claim he raped her. So he figured he would go ahead and rape her.
Of course, I take this with a large grain of salt.
However, Watson has only been in Atlanta a few months, after leaving her husband in Hollywood, Florida. Her father said she planned to move back to Decatur, Illinois in the next few months.
So, part of me can see a young streetwise hustler trying to make, and save, money to get out of the South and back home to Illinois.
If true, she just didn’t know she was trying to hustle a killer.
This brings us to the discovery of Marlene Standridge’s partial remains in 1982. She disappeared in 1973, while Brown was receiving inpatient/outpatient care at Central State Hospital.
Her identification in 2021 is covered in the linked thread at the bottom of this post.
The comments in the post regarding the husband of Standridge being a suspect because he never filed a police report and because the murder of Watson happened after they met at a club partially inspired this post because of the lack of understanding of Brown’s extensive history, especially his abductions.
I don’t want to discount the sentiments regarding the lack of a missing persons report because it bothers me too.
A lot.
To me though, clearly Brown *is* a very viable suspect. Especially which the discovery of the nylon cord with Standridge’s body.
In addition to these two bodies off DeShong Road, and the 1973 body near I-285 and Moreland (at Old McDonough Road), Brown is also suspected in the murder of a 18 year old Susan Dian Robertson.
She was found strangled to death and left, partially clothed, at an illegal garbage dump off Cruise Road in Lawrenceville on July 19th, 1972.
She was a dancer at a club in the original incarnation of Underground Atlanta. Originally, two members of the Outlaws MC were arrested for her murder.
Coincidentally, a raid on the Outlaw’s Atlanta HQ (two houses at 413 and 419 Sixth Street, Atlanta) on July 19th (the same day she is found) turned up belongings of hers.
8 people were arrested after police recovered 10 guns ammunition, drugs, stolen motorcycles and parts.
It was later determined that she lived there.
James Willie Brown once bragged that police would never find all the bodies he had left in the woods.
When his picture appeared on television newscasts, upwards of 40 women called police to report they had been raped by Brown.
At the time he killed Watson, his house was supposedly under surveillance in anticipation of arrests for the DeKalb County rapes. It is never publicly disclosed how extensive the surveillance was.
Nor is it disclosed why he wasn’t arrested sooner for those crimes when he was apparently living his life wide open and not hiding.
It feels like there are so many breakdowns and failures regarding law enforcement and the criminal justice system in regards to James Willie Brown that Brenda Sue Watson, (probably) Marlene Standridge, and the other unidentified victims should never have crossed paths with Brown.
I know this is a long and exhaustive post. I searched and did not see a thorough accounting of him and thought that maybe this and the search for possible victims may be of interest to other members.
www.websleuths.com
James Willie Brown was executed in November 2003 for the murder of Brenda Sue Watson in 1975.
My interest in him comes from the fact that he was from where I grew up (he is well before my time).
I can close my eyes and vividly recall where he lived, the cemetery he is buried at, the area he is known to have left victims near Stone Mountain.
I didn’t know about him, somehow, until a few years ago and it was only very recently that I started to really research him.
Eventually I plan to research unsolved cases in Fulton, DeKalb, and Gwinnett Counties that fit his profile and his relatively short period of activity (1966-1968, 1971-1975).
His execution garnered international headlines due to his off and on again determinations of competency and his diagnosis as being paranoid schizophrenic. I could write for days about his two trials and all the legal complications that delayed his execution… but that’s for another day (maybe).
Brown reportedly grew up in an extremely poor and abusive household in Lilburn, Georgia. He was reported as having a near genius IQ. In the second grade he developed a sever stutter.
He channeled his rage from the mocking of his speech by children and adults alike into tormenting other children around him (peers and family) as well as torturing and killing small animals (which his younger brother of a year said he enjoyed immensely).
He dropped out of school after repeating the 9th grade twice. At that point he was already 17 due to being held back other years as well. He started receiving treatment at Emory, at 15, for severe headaches, blackouts and seizures he had been suffering for years.
Because he was 17, he was able to enlist in the Marine Corps in 1965 after dropping out (I assume he did not disclose the medical background). In 1966 he was picked up AWOL and discharged on mental health issues soon after.
He got married and picked up his first arrest for burglary. He was serving a two year probated sentence when he was arrested on Feb. 26th, 1968 for a Feb. 17th attack on a woman at an apartment complex in NW Atlanta. She was moving out of the complex and got a knock on the door from Brown asking if she knew of any vacant rentals. He forced his way in, beat her with a pistol, and chased her to the bedroom. He shoved a washcloth in her mouth when she started screaming. During the struggle, she managed to start screaming again and he fled. A bystander in the parking lot gave chase and Brown fired twice at him.
He was charged with 2 counts of attempted murder, 1 count of attempted rape, 1 count of attempted robbery. At this point Brown and his wife are expecting a child.
He was convicted in Fulton County on Dec. 2nd, 1968 to a ten year sentence (time starting from his Feb. arrest date). He was paroled September 20th, 1971. The majority of his sentence was served at Central State Hospital in Milledgeville (a gruesome mental institution).
From his discharge date until December 1972, he is treated with outpatient counseling at the Gwinnett County Mental Health Clinic. From December 1972 until January 1974, he is treated on both an inpatient and outpatient basis back at Central State Hospital.
In DeKalb County he is charged (but not arrested) for the March 15th, 1974 abduction and rape of a woman he picked up hitchhiking. He is charged (but not arrested) for the July 29th, 1974 abduction, rape, and robbery of a woman he kidnapped from an Atlanta coffee house.
Both victims were taken to the same area of I-285 and Moreland Ave where they were bound and raped. I don’t know the circumstances of how they got away (escape/release). Because of this, he is suspected in the murder of an unidentified woman whose partially nude remains were found, posed spread eagle, in the same area in 1973.
In September of 1974, he is charged with aggravated sodomy of a 15 year old. He convinced her to come with him to help babysit his seven year old daughter. He drove into the woods near Stone Mountain, locked his daughter in the car, and marched the victim further into the woods where he assaulted her.
The charges are dropped when he victim decides not to testify.
At this point, I want to point out that he seems to be bringing victims closer and closer to his home area of (then, very) rural Gwinnett.
On Monday, May 12th, 1975, he meets Brenda Sue Watson at the What It Is club in the Peachtree Triangle area of Atlanta. She is a topless dancer at the club. At the time, this stretch of Peachtree Street is dubbed in the papers as “Pornographic Peachtree” due to the plethora of adult clubs, book stores, cinemas, and bathhouses that are geared towards more of a blue collar crowd (the “higher end” establishments that can afford to move, like Tattletale’s, already have due to city harassment and the clear future of the district to be redeveloped).
Watson and Brown head to the lounge at the Mark Inn hotel near Stone Mountain. It was located off Hirsch Drive, near 78 and Mountain Industrial. It is now the 2 star Rodeway Inn.
On the way, they pick up a to go order from a steakhouse. They arrive at the lounge roughly 8:30pm (with the dinner in styrofoam containers). People remember them because they cause somewhat of a loud scene, enjoying their dinner, drinking at the bar, and dancing. They leave roughly between 11-11:30pm.
The next morning, Tuesday, Watson’s body is found partially nude at an illegal dump. The dump is located off DeShong Drive, a dirt road in a heavily wooded area off a dirt section of Rockbridge Road.
She has been bound and raped. Her cause of death was asphyxiation from her panties being shoved so far down her throat that they were not noticed until autopsy. Bits of wood and leaves are noticed in her mouth and throat and when the panties are found, it is deduced that a stick was used to push them so far down. Clear markings from being bound hand and foot are visible on her wrists and ankles. A piece of nylon cord is still tied to one of her ankles. She is posed spread eagle.
Watson remains unidentified until Thursday when her roommate and co-worker identifies her body. She is only 21 years old. She is buried back home, in Illinois, in a grave that remains unmarked (with the exception of placed ornaments… no headstone).
I know sleuthing of families is not allowed but I hope it will be acceptable to note that her mother died at only the age of 35, after an extremely abusive marriage and her only full sibling, a sister, is found strangled to death at the age of 33 in an ally in Dallas, in 1981. As far as I can find, that murder is unsolved.
Tragic doesn’t com close to describing how their lives ended.
Once Brenda Sue Watson is identified, it’s fairly easy to backtrack her movements with Brown. A waitress remembers them from the steakhouse. Multiple witnesses remember them from the Mark Inn.
A week after Watson’s body is found, a severed arm is found by a motorist sitting alongside Rockbridge Road.
An “extensive” search ensues. About a mile away, and roughly 100 yards from where Brenda Sue Watson was found, police find the reminder of the body.
She is a young Black woman somewhere in her late teens to early 20s. She has been in the woods for roughly 4 weeks and animals have scattered her remains (which is why her arm was found on the side of the road).
Her lower torso is about twenty yards away from the rest of her. She is also described as being posed spread eagle but with the scavenging, I don’t how this could be definitely determined.
More important, I think, is that she died from asphyxiation from a mechanic ‘s rag being shoved down her throat. Brown worked as an auto repair mechanic and came from several generations of family doing the same work.
Found with/near the body was a single silver earring, brown wig, blue halter top, yellow knit skirt with a split in the front, blue pantyhose, and black sequined platform shoes.
The shoes were unique and police were able to trace them back to the only store in Atlanta that sold them. However, tracing the credit card purchases was a dead end and they were left with the assumption that it must have been an untraceable cash purchase.
I can’t imagine how frustrating it must have been for that lead to fizzle out.
She remains unidentified.
She was buried at Old Shadowlawn Cemetery in Lawrenceville with a small metal marker inscribed “Unknown Lady.”
I think there is equally probable scenarios that Brown picked this woman up either as a dancer in a club, as a prostitute, or abducted her. His wife had a prostitution arrest. He once claimed he murdered Brenda Sue Watson only after they left the Mark Inn lounge and were parked in the woods. He said she demanded $200 and said if he didn’t pay, she would go to the police and claim he raped her. So he figured he would go ahead and rape her.
Of course, I take this with a large grain of salt.
However, Watson has only been in Atlanta a few months, after leaving her husband in Hollywood, Florida. Her father said she planned to move back to Decatur, Illinois in the next few months.
So, part of me can see a young streetwise hustler trying to make, and save, money to get out of the South and back home to Illinois.
If true, she just didn’t know she was trying to hustle a killer.
This brings us to the discovery of Marlene Standridge’s partial remains in 1982. She disappeared in 1973, while Brown was receiving inpatient/outpatient care at Central State Hospital.
Her identification in 2021 is covered in the linked thread at the bottom of this post.
The comments in the post regarding the husband of Standridge being a suspect because he never filed a police report and because the murder of Watson happened after they met at a club partially inspired this post because of the lack of understanding of Brown’s extensive history, especially his abductions.
I don’t want to discount the sentiments regarding the lack of a missing persons report because it bothers me too.
A lot.
To me though, clearly Brown *is* a very viable suspect. Especially which the discovery of the nylon cord with Standridge’s body.
In addition to these two bodies off DeShong Road, and the 1973 body near I-285 and Moreland (at Old McDonough Road), Brown is also suspected in the murder of a 18 year old Susan Dian Robertson.
She was found strangled to death and left, partially clothed, at an illegal garbage dump off Cruise Road in Lawrenceville on July 19th, 1972.
She was a dancer at a club in the original incarnation of Underground Atlanta. Originally, two members of the Outlaws MC were arrested for her murder.
Coincidentally, a raid on the Outlaw’s Atlanta HQ (two houses at 413 and 419 Sixth Street, Atlanta) on July 19th (the same day she is found) turned up belongings of hers.
8 people were arrested after police recovered 10 guns ammunition, drugs, stolen motorcycles and parts.
It was later determined that she lived there.
James Willie Brown once bragged that police would never find all the bodies he had left in the woods.
When his picture appeared on television newscasts, upwards of 40 women called police to report they had been raped by Brown.
At the time he killed Watson, his house was supposedly under surveillance in anticipation of arrests for the DeKalb County rapes. It is never publicly disclosed how extensive the surveillance was.
Nor is it disclosed why he wasn’t arrested sooner for those crimes when he was apparently living his life wide open and not hiding.
It feels like there are so many breakdowns and failures regarding law enforcement and the criminal justice system in regards to James Willie Brown that Brenda Sue Watson, (probably) Marlene Standridge, and the other unidentified victims should never have crossed paths with Brown.
I know this is a long and exhaustive post. I searched and did not see a thorough accounting of him and thought that maybe this and the search for possible victims may be of interest to other members.
Identified! - GA - Stone Mountain BlkFem UP77802 pre-30 Dec'82 - Marlene Standridge
Case added to Namus today. Case is not on Doe Network. www.namus.gov/UnidentifiedPersons/Case#/77802/details Case Numbers ME/C Case Number82-25926 Demographics Sex Female Race / Ethnicity Black / African American Estimated Age Group Adult - Pre 30 Circumstances Type Unidentified Deceased...
www.websleuths.com
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