Evil Lives Here is investigating the multiple crimes of serial rapist and killer Robert Brashers who destroyed the lives of many women and children across at least four states.
Brashers first became known to the police when he was convicted in 1985 of beating and assaulting a woman in Port St. Lucie, Florida. Unfortunately, he was let out of prison just three and a half years later, and he soon began killing.
In 1990, the body of 28-year-old Genevieve “Jenny” Zitricki was found in the bathtub of her home in Greenville, SC. She had been badly beaten and strangled to death. The crime scene was a horrific sight of blood, violence, and mayhem, exhibiting that the killer had great cruelty.
In 1997, Brashers also sexually assaulted a 14-year-old girl in Memphis, Tennessee.
On March 28, 1998, in New Madrid, Missouri, Brashers entered the home of 38-year-old Sherri Scherer and her daughter, 12-year-old Megan Scherer, and shot them both. He sexually assaulted Megan before killing her.
Just a few hours later, the monster attempted to break into the home of another woman in Tennessee. He shot the woman, but she still managed to fight him off and survive the ordeal. The survivor provided the cops with a sketch of Brashers, but he still evaded capture. Unfortunately, it would take another 20 years to identify him as the killer.
Robert Brashers killed himself in a stand-off with the police
Brashers’s reign of terror ended in January 1999, when he was staying with his family at a motel in Kennett, Missouri. Police officers had clocked a vehicle with stolen tags in the parking lot, and when they went to Brashers’s room to investigate, they ended up in an armed stand-off with the killer. Eventually, Brashers shot himself and died a short time later in a hospital.
Watch the Latest on our YouTube ChannelIn 2006, cold-case detectives had a breakthrough when an analysis of DNA samples indicated that it was the same person who had murdered Zitricki and Sherri and Megan Scherer. But they still couldn’t get an ID on the culprit.
That changed in 2018 when the cops submitted the DNA to a genealogy website and learned the killer’s family background. They took swabs from family members close to Brashers and even exhumed his body. Finally, he was identified as the killer.
Brashers’s daughter, Deborah Brashers-Claunch, has spoken about growing up with the killer and how they were unaware of his crimes.
She said: “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. 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.
More from Evil Lives Here
Follow the links to read about more murders examined on Evil Lives Here.
Wayne Adam Ford was another serial rapist and killer who murdered at least four women as he traveled throughout California. He eventually turned himself in to the sheriff’s office in Eureka, CA.
Robert Walden went on a horrific crime spree in Tucson, Arizona, where he raped and threatened two women. He then went on to rape and murder Miguela Burhans in her own apartment.
Evil Lives Here airs at 9/8c on Investigation Discovery.