Juror Daniel Farber says Braae didn't help himself by taking the stand. "He eliminated any doubts that jurors had just by his own presentation. Every aspect of what he said had this ring of incredibleness to it."
The three-week trial was emotionally draining, Farber says. "It's not the kind of life I'm exposed to. This guy preyed on people who are vulnerable and prone to bad choices. The absolutely most chilling thing is that rape in the throes of death was something that turned him on."
Brian Stauffer
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The trial lasted three weeks, but the jury returned with a verdict after just two and a half hours of deliberations: guilty on counts of first-degree rape and second-degree murder.
Farber says the quality of work done both by the police and the prosecutors was impressive. "The way the criminal justice system discovered and prepared evidence was phenomenal, to see all of those procedures and see them followed," he says. "At the end of it, you couldn't help but think of the people who'd been there all those many years, like Bev Reinhold—you couldn't help but imagine her emotions. That was the heart of it for me, to see evil, but to see the capacity of a good society and the functionality of a capable society to put this guy away."
Prosecutors will ask for close to the maximum, 56 years, when Braae is sentenced this week. Braae says he plans to appeal the conviction, but his attorney, Jim Shackleton, says he can't talk about any details of the appeal until his client has been sentenced.
With this seven-year case finally behind her, Reinhold plans to dig into another local homicide, a 1993 cold case involving a man who mail-ordered a bride from the Philippines who later vanished. Reinhold believes the man killed her. He moved to Texas shortly thereafter, she says, and "remarried a couple people that no one's seen again either"—circumstances eerily similar to those of Cowboy Mike.
"I don't think you can kill your wife and get away with it," Reinhold says dryly.
Reinhold notes that the effort to put Braae away has been the crowning work of her career. "It's certainly the biggest case we've ever done, both because of the magnitude of its impact and the number of victims," Reinhold says. "This may be their only hope for justice, knowing that he's never going to get out."
The survivors and their relatives— Jones' daughter, Morgan's mother and son, and Peterson and her daughter—are also hoping for some monetary justice. They've filed three civil suits in Thurston County against the state corrections department for letting Braae out on lenient parole in the late 1990s. Yakima-based attorney Bryan Smith says the state was negligent in putting Braae on legal financial obligations only, a level of supervision typically reserved for the least dangerous offenders, requiring only that former prisoners pay a fine every month.
"We have a very extensive chronology of his criminal record and activities dating back to the 1970s," Smith says. "He was in and out of jail on all kinds of crimes. It's shocking that he was placed on LFO."
Indeed, Braae's criminal record in Washington is extensive: six gross misdemeanors, including multiple DUIs; fourth-degree assault, and reckless driving; felonies for drug possession; and that 1997 escape from the Thurston County Jail. The state isn't commenting on the lawsuit because the investigation is still in progress. But, says Washington Department of Corrections spokesman Chad Lewis, "Our hearts and concern remain with the families who have been tragically victimized by Michael Braae. With the resolution of the criminal trials, the civil cases can now move forward."
Reinhold says a national search indicates that Braae, though he spent much of his time in the Northwest, also surfaced in Illinois and Florida, had a DUI arrest in Oregon, and was convicted of assault in California for inflicting corporal injury on a spouse—actually a girlfriend named Teri Conway. According to court documents, Braae met Conway in New Orleans in the summer of 2001 at a cowboy bar, singing karaoke. A month later, he moved to California to live with her, and was arrested after twice trying to strangle her. She reported that the relationship was both volatile and violent—that he would rape her, grab her head and bang it against the headboard, and pin her arms down with his knees. But she didn't know him as Cowboy Mike. Apparently he was called the "barefoot cowboy" in California, where he had a preference for going shoeless.
Both Reinhold and Tunheim think Braae is probably responsible for other yet unknown rapes and possibly murders. "He's done some things that he hasn't been caught for yet," says Reinhold. "He's pretty cunning and frightening in that he goes from zero to 90 in a second and a half. Things are going well, and all of a sudden something sets him off and he becomes this livid, choking fiend."
"He has a typical serial-killer profile," Tunheim adds. "He became convinced he couldn't be caught, that he was invincible. I kept thinking during the trial that if we don't convict this guy, somebody else is going to get killed."
acurl@seattleweekly.com
