#329 Maggie Freleng with Brandon Woodruff

In October of two thousand and five, nineteen year old Brandon Woodroff was home from college visiting his parents. They had just moved to a new home in Royce City, Texas. Brandon helped them around the house, and then the family sat down to a pizza dinner. In almost every way, it was a normal Sunday night for the Woodroffs.

Everything just seemed to be ordinary. I mean, if I you know, if somebody were to tell me, well it was there one thing that was strange, was there one thing that was odd? And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just a normal weekend. None of this what ended up happening was even I mean, I couldn't even have thought that would have happened.

Two days later, Brandon's parents were found brutally murdered. In the days that followed, Brandon was doing his best to try and help investigators find out who had killed them.

And then they just flipped the whole table and they were like, well we really think that you murdered your parents. My name is Brendon del Woodriff. I'm thirty six years old from Rockwall, Texas, and I've been wrongly convicted for seventeen years.

From LoVa for good. This is wrongful conviction with Maggie Freeling today. Brandon Woodruff Brendan Woodruff was born September sixth, nineteen eighty six, in Rockwall, Texas, to Dennis and Norma Woodruff. Brendan and his sister, Charla are eighteen months apart.

He was a baby. Other family.

This is Brendan's grandma, Bonnie.

Brandon was always a happy child. He just he loved everyone. He was always happy singing when he's a little boy smiling.

Brandon describes life growing up as idyllic.

We had two wonderful parents. They kind of spoiled us a whole lot, he says.

The family was always on the go and participating in community events. Charlie was a dancer and had recitals and shows, and Brandon embraced the country life. The Wooddrifts lived on a farm in the town of Heath, just a few miles south of Rockwall.

Kind of a small town. It's really like close knit.

And Brandon was involved in the youth agricultural organizations Four Age and Future Farmers of America.

My mom gave me this passion for horses, and so my mom was really there to you know, kind of inspire me and teach me things with the horses, with the cattle. Like she was a blue Jean kind of woman. Most moms like cook when my dad cooked, and my mom was out there hauling hay like a hard working guy. And you know, she would go out there with a postal digger and you know, go dig to put a post and build a fence. Yeah, she was definitely like one of the strongest women I've known.

Brendan says he and his mom raised livestock to show and sell at markets in the surrounding cities.

We would basically get a young count and you basically raise them up since so maybe you halter train them, which can be hectic. And then I didn't really want to do the market steers because then you'd have to sell them to butcher and I really didn't want to butcher.

My animals, so Brandon would show them instead, traveling to fairs all over Texas.

So it's a lot of hours and three o'clock in the morning drive times to Wago, Texas and Abilene and for war stock show and all different types of rodeo and fairs.

So that is a life. I know nothing, but it sounds pretty cool. Brandon loved this life, especially being around horses.

Really, I kind of wanted to be a horse trainer, Like I really have this huge horse bug. My mom volunteered at a therapeutic writing center called Equests for like disabled kids and kids with like autism and stuff, and so she used to take me out there to volunteer. You know, it kind of opened my eyes to the world is a little bit different than in your perfect little neighborhoods.

Brandon was also really close with his father. He says his dad was really funny, Like.

He was kind of embarrassingly funny, Like he was a class clown like I was, kind of. He would just make everybody laugh, and I would have friends come over, and he had blared Tina Turner's Proud Mary, like at eight o'clock in the morning. He would go get donuts, and I would come out and he'd be in the room dancing to Proud Mary, and I've got my friends over, and I'd be like, Dad, are you crazy.

One time, Brandon remembers he broke both his legs falling off a horse. For the first two months of recovery, he was bedridden and his dad was totally there for him.

And so I had a toilet next to my bed, and I remember when I had to use the toilet, it was so embarrassing for me. You know, I'm already a teenager and I'm having to scoot onto this plastic toilet to use the bathroom. And my dad literally took off work so he could be there. So anytime that, like I needed him, I could just say hey, Dad, you know, and he would come in there and he would claim the whole toilet, like, no questions asked, no embarrassment, no belittle.

Mint Brandon says there was a lot of love in the Woodroff household, but internally he was struggling. It started around his high school years in the early two thousands.

I basically started to like maybe exploring my sexuality.

He had a girlfriend, Morgan, who he really loved, but he also had thoughts and feelings about boys.

Coming from a close knit town, there wasn't too many quote unquote gay kids at school. I think we maybe had like one or two, and you know, I was embarrassed, I am to say it now, you know. I was kind of along with the group that kind of made fun of them.

So in his world of Rockwall, Texas. Brandon kept his attraction to boys to himself.

You know, to my friends that I showed cattle and horses with. I knew that they'd probably not understand, and especially the re action to gay people in my small town. You know, they were just kind of like ostracized a little bit. Like I said, there was maybe only two in my public high school, and I think both of them went to alternative school by the end of their senior year because it would just got too much. I mean,

Would also go online in chat rooms and MySpace groups for gay men. He says life went on like that for a while.

I thought my private world was going to be my private world. Probably like mid Lake senior year in two thousand and five, I really started getting to where I really kind of just did a care. It wasn't like I was advertising my sexuality. I wasn't jumping up and down with a rainbow flag. But I wasn't hiding it at so much because I was going in public places. I was having you know, boyfriends.

Then one night, when Brandon was on his way out, his dad asked him the name of the club he was going to.

I really didn't want to tell him that it was a gay club, so I just said a club's name on the radio that we had heard, you know, like repeated over the years. And the next day he said, you know that club you went to last night was a gay club. And inadvertently I had given him a gay club's name anyway, And so I actually had a kind of telling him, well, okay, you know, I just told him I didn't know yet at that time, which.

Was the truth. Brandon was still trying to find himself and figure it all out.

And he told me, you know, be safe, be careful, and he said, when you find out, let me know.

Dennis would be the type of person that would accept that, you know.

I mean, here's Brendan's grandma Bonnie. Again.

He was accepting the people because he loved people just like Brandon, you know, didn't matter who they was, because he had a friend that was also gay.

I've told my dad a lot worse. I could tell my dad anything. I could literally talk to my dad about the bad grades I was making. Now sometimes I would try to hide them to but at the end of the day, my Dad's going to be there for me no matter what.

So were the bad grades worse than being gay? Is that one of the worst things he told him.

I mean, I really think that the back grades would have been a little bit worse than being gay. Like, my parents were like so hands on loving that that's the last thing that they would have really even cared about.

Brandon graduated from Rockwall High School in two thousand and five and went on to Abilene Christian University, about three and a half hours away. He found himself struggling in his first semester. He was put on academic probation and was on the verge of failing out of college. His parents told him they could no longer support him financially if that happened and that he'd have to come back home.

I guess it was like a foreclosed property. So there was a lot of stuff that my mom wanted to do to get the horses out there eventually, and so I was just home, you know, to help her and help my dad a little bit.

On the evening of October sixteenth, the Woodroff family sat down for a pizza dinner in their new place.

Everything just seemed to be ordinary. I mean, if I you know, if somebody were to tell me, well it was there one thing that was stranged? Was there one thing that was odd? And I can't pinpoint anything. It was just a normal weekend.

After the dinner, Brandon headed out for the evening. He plans on coming back to Roy City in a few days to take Father's Day pictures with his sister Charla, who would also be home from school.

And so really I was expecting to see them, you know, in four days. So what ended up happening was even I mean, I couldn't even have thought that would have happened.

Shortly after seven pm on October sixteenth, Brandon left his parents' home to go out with friends, first stopping by their old home in Heath, about twenty four minutes away. A bit after ten that night, a neighbor saw Brandon in the driveway of the Heath house. Then Brandon picked up some friends around ten forty pm and went to Dallas to party with them and his boyfriend, Alex. Brandon drove back to school in Abilene in the early hours the

They think, well, this is how the murderers would have seen the house. So we're going to turn off the lights in the house and that's how we're going to walk around and make our crime scene video. And during course of doing that, you know, they're knocking stuff off, They're destroying all kinds of potential evidence of the sea. They literally investigated the crime in the dark.

This is Alison Clayton. She's the deputy director of the Innocence Project of Texas and the adjunct professor of the Innocence Clinic at Texas Tech University School of Law. Allison says that inside the trailer it's unclear what had been disturbed by the crime or by the investigators stumbling around in the dark, But what seems clear is that there were strange items found laying around the house. Flavored condom packets were strewn about, along with an extensive pornography collection

And they were like, well, we really think that you murdered your parents. And I just I didn't know what to think. You know, I wasn't raised a cuss out of law enforcement officer or anything, and I just I just kind of lost it because I thought, you do not know what you're talking about, Like you don't know who these people are. These are my parents, these like are the people who raised me.

Brendan was devastated his parents had been violently murdered and here he was being accused of killing them. And what stung even more his sister, Charla turned on him. She told police she thought that Brandon could have done it.

I think my sister's sentence that has been repeated over and over, well, if you could lie about being gay, then he could lie by killing my parents.

On November tenth, two thousand and five, Brendan was indicted for capital murder. His grandma Bonnie was horrified.

I knew Brandon couldn't have couldn't have done anything to his parents. She loved both his parents. He said he's dead, was his best friend. So I know, you know, I'm even more convinced today. I know what type of person he is and what love he has for people and for God. So I know Brandon Wood. As for the investigators, I just think they were a small town and they were a little bit lazy. They just wanted to wrap the case up because it makes the neighborhood feel better and say.

They knew that Brandon was the last person to see them alive, because you know, they knew that he had gone and gotten the pizza.

This is Alison Clayton again, and is.

The fact that there was no forced entry into the house, so they thought that that indicated that it was somebody that the would have's knew.

Allison says that investigators quickly homed in on Brandon not only for those reasons, but also because the police had discovered his secret life.

So then that was a large part of their motive.

Brandon's trial started on March sixth, two thousand and nine, in front of the Honorable Judge Richard Beakham Junior, the current governor of Texas. Greg Abbott was the state's attorney general at the time, and he was appointed as a special prosecutor on the case. The state presented the theory that Brandon was living a double life, having money troubles and failing out of school, all of which he wanted to keep secret from his parents.

But mainly, really the state's only motive that Brandon would have had to do this is that he was gay. That's it.

He's gay.

His parents are going to find out about it, and so he just has to kill them right now. And remember again, this is small town Texas, early two thousands, uber uber conservative, so the mention of oh, well he was gay would have been plenty to start raising eyebrows like, oh my goodness, he was gay.

What is shame like?

That's what would have been the sentimentality someone coming from small town Texas in the early two thousands.

The state offered no real hard evidence against Brandon. It was mostly speculation.

I think they got caught up in this whole story of well, he had a double life. He was wearing boots and jeans, and then he was wearing city clothes, and he was, you know, like they felt like he was a lot more sinister, when really it was just me being myself. I mean I would wear boots and jeans when I was around the horses and stuff, and then I would wear you know what they'd call like city clothes, I guess to you know, the bars and clubs and stuff. But your clothing doesn't make you who

But there was one thing. Brandon's girlfriend, Morgan's parents noticed that a Western style revolver was missing from their home. They didn't know how long it had been missing, but they remembered that the night before the murder, Brandon had showered at their house and so would have been able to take the revolver.

And so police were thinking that that you know, had corroborated their suspicions of Brandon because he would have had the opportunity to still the gun. They viewed that as inculpatory evidence that he had the opportunity to get what they thought would be the murder weapon.

The gun used in the murders was never recovered, but the state offered expert testimony that the gun missing from Morgan's home could have theoretically been the one used to commit the murders. One of the main things the state focused on during trial was Brandon's cell phone records to try and disprove Brandon's alibi that he was driving around

You know, it was just the whole time, I kept telling myself, well, Okay, everything's gonna be. Okay, everything is gonna be. I never would have thought they were going to return a guilty verdict ever, Like I really felt like I was going home that day, but he didn't.

Brandon was convicted by a jury of murdering his parents on March twentieth, two nine.

So they said guilty, and I was like, like I really just wanted to sit down, Like I wanted to sit down. I wanted to like just breathe. I was really kind of freaking out.

But Brandon was told to remain standing while his sister, Charlotte gave a victim impact.

Statement where my sister got up there and basically just told me how I ruined her whole life and told me how, you know, because of my actions. And that was the hardest thing to hear because I'm sitting here thinking to myself, I did not do this, and I just had to stand there and be quiet and accept it. And I think that was the hardest thing in my entire life. And I will never forget.

That you had to sit there and listen to your sister not believe you, Like what is that?

Like?

Like this is a person you grew up with. She's supposed to know you better than anybody.

Yeah, and I you know, it makes so many questions come up, like why, like why are you doing this? Like I don't know. It's really hard to just grabb I mean, even to this day, it's hard to grasp.

At twenty two years old, Brendan was sentenced to life in prison without parole. Even though his relationship with Charlie was strained, Brendan's grandma Bonnie never let him down.

About every three months, we'd traveled down to see him, and we'd spend the night and go early the next morning and we'd get to stay four hours with him and set across the table from him. He never gave up, and he always claimed his innocens And I knew he lifts me up. He's the type of person that lifts you up and makes you feel better about if he's not a person this day on all the time.

She's like my angel, She's like my rock. I tell people that all the time. I'm like, that's my angel right there. I mean she's never once even like faltered from the truth. She's been like there's no way, absolutely, I believe in you. She doesn't care who she has to stand up and tell that to, including the investigators. She's like, you know, show me proof, Like quit telling me, y'all have proof, show me something.

With Bonnie by his side, Brandon spent years in prison appealing his decision to no avail. But while he stayed up beat in front of his grandmother, inside his emotions were a different story. Prison is a hard place for anyone, especially a young man finding himself.

You gotta have walls put up anyway. You got to be like a different person in here. You can't be, you know, to cry you're weak, or to be gay you're a little bit weaker, or so you always have to kind of like prove yourself. So I just stay out of really everybody's a way. I don't really even talk to too many people here.

Brendan spends much of his time in prison, taking classes or working in the craft shop.

Are you wearing a wedding ring? Actually? I made this in the crash, did so? Yeah? I started working with like metal and stuff like that. Okay, we're allowed like a few what they call in prison free world items. So you can have a wedding band, a watch, and then you can have like a cross.

Necklace and it can only be a wedding ring.

Yeah, you cannot have any other rings or jewelry or that's considered a contrabmand.

There are certain red flags that we look for in every single case. Brandon exhibits a lot of them.

In twenty twenty one, Alison Clayton from the Innocence Project of Texas took on Brandon's case.

First red flag, you don't know anything about the victims. That is a good investigation. Will away start out with who are these victims? Why did they meet this horrific end?

Right?

A good investigation that's bent on figuring out what happened to these people and not bent on painting a bullseye around someone like you've already chosen who did it? A good investigation starts with the victims.

So who were Norma and Dennis?

They weren't judgmental. They weren't you know, my mom volunteered for adults and children that really allot of the world wouldn't have nothing to do with them because they can't come sit at a dinner table, you know, normally and functionally. And I mean, my dad used to go to these drag shows for guys that would dress up like Dolly Parton and Tina Turner, like the five five, you know, and so like, I feel really really bad that the jury didn't get to learn about who my parents were like.

In fact, at trial, Brandon's lawyers presented that Brandon's dad did know about Brandon's sexuality. It wasn't a secret from him. On the evening of the sixteenth, the night the Woodruffs were presumably murdered. Dennis spoke on the phone with his sister Kathy.

During that phone call, is whenever Dennis told his sister, you know, Brandon told me that he likes boys, and he told his sister, you know, he was okay with it, that he loved Brandon, and he's fine with it. It's just he was worried about Brandon because that can be a dangerous lifestyle. So this entire idea that his parents would have rejected him because of his sexuality, there is no basis in fact for that.

Alison goes on to outline a key part of Brandon's defense at trial, his alibi. We know Brandon was out of his parents' house a bit after seven pm, because cell phone records show he called them at seven thirty six pm, indicating he had already left the house.

But after that, Brandon wasn't really with anybody after the time he left his parents' house until much later that night when he met up with his friend back in Dallas. So it's not we have somebody who can say, yes, he was with me, this is what we were doing. So in those instances, normally we would go back to the cell phone records.

But remember there were missing records during the crucial time because of the cell phone company merger, so Brandon's team relied on piecing together other people's records, people who he said he was on the phone with. Allison says this timeline is the most important part of the case.

The first time in Brandon's phone records that we have really anything is whenever we have that pang at ten forty six, where he's around I thirty and six thirty five.

This intersection is about twenty minutes away from both of Brandon's parents' homes. A neighbor had seen Brandon down at the heath House just after ten pm.

He would have been about twenty minutes away from them at ten forty six, which means he would have left from either Royce City or Heath at around ten twenty six that night.

And Norma spoke to her mother on the phone that night as well.

If the last time that anyone spoke to the Woodruffs was that call between Norma and her mom from nine to nine twenty, then you look at everything else. In my analysis, I look at everything from nine to twenty that evening until ten twenty.

Six, leaving Brandon with just an hour where he could have killed his parents. But the timeline shrinks even.

More during that time. You've got the call at nine twenty seven from Brandon to Alex, nine thirty two to Morgan nine forty one with Morgan nine forty nine, with the room that he was taking back, ten ten to Morgan, and then that's that. So you've got five phone calls during that hour, and between those phone calls, I'm terrible with math, but it's looking to me like, I mean, there's about maybe ten minutes, ten eleven minutes tops that you have in between any of these phone calls.

Allison says that in such a short amount of time, it's unrealistic, if not impossible, that Brandon would have been able to pull all of this off, shoot and stab both of his parents, shower, change his clothes and shoes, hide his clothes and shoes, clean the bathroom, clean the knife and gun, ditch the gun and hide the knife.

A man who has zero history of violence, so either he is, i mean, just committing a vicious crime against his parents in really really efficient style, which I've never seen anyone inflict the number of wounds that these people had on them in ten minutes time. Or you're assuming that he's in the course of murdering his parents, he gets a phone call from Morgan and you know, hey, Morgan, how's it going. Everything's fine over here? What are you doing?

So Allison has a different theory. It wasn't Brandon, and she says the crime scene points to that. Remember the air mattress, the women's parts, the porn, and the condoms.

I know for a fact that my dad has a mysectomy, because he's actually told me that on multiple occasions. In fact, you know, he had told me so much it became a joke. And so I tell myself, like, why would you need a condom if you had a mysegnamin?

And then the pornography collection, why would you have a pornography collection out there's it's just there feels there are some very overtly sexual elements that are a part of the crime scenes. I think there's definitely something going on there.

Not only that, but Norma was found with long blonde hairs in her hands and those hairs were never tested for the original trial.

They did not test the hair in the dead woman's hand, which is just befuddling to me. You know, if you're truly investigating, truly trying to find out who did this that, what would you do? Like, you don't have to be an investigator, don't have to have FBI training or anything advanced. What do you do? You test the hair in the dead woman's hands? But they didn't do that, so to this day, we don't know who that hair belongs to.

Since Alison and the Innocence Project of Texas have taken Brandon's case, they have actively fought for DNA testing of the hair and any other items that exist from the crime scene.

Is that evidence still available for us to go look at? I don't know. We filed requests with you know, law enforcement, with the DA's office. We're trying to figure out, you know, where's the hair what about everything else. I don't know where those things are at. I don't know if they have been maintained. They should have been, but i mean, come on, at Texas. Just because it should it doesn't mean it happened.

While Brandon waits, he concentrates on the future he'll have when he's out.

You know, growing up, I've always wanted to adopt a kid, like I've even told you know, my girlfriend at the time. I was like, hey, you know, if we ever have kids, like I would rather have like one on my own and adopt one. In college, I was a part of the Big Brother Little Brother program, and so that really opened my eyes to you know, there's a lot of kids and you know, a lot less fortunate places and situations. Now I look, you know, looking at myself now, I'm like, okay,

Of me, especially his grandma Bonnie.

My grandmother's like a very avid traveler, and I'm just like me and me look one day when I come home, we're not going to sit down like I don't want to be idle. I've been idle for too long now.

But in thinking about all the people who were there for him, Brendan can't help but think about the people who weren't, like his sister Charla.

You know, it's been over ten years and I can still remember some of the things she said, and yet I still love my sister. So it's it's really, you know, a torn, torn feeling right there.

Brendan says that although his parents are gone, they're always with him, and that inspires him to keep going.

It's a lot more personal than what a lot of people think. People are thinking, oh, well, you know, the truth is going to come out one day, but there's you know, there's not justice for me right now, but there's also not justice for my parents either, And so I told myself, you know, I'm gonna make this count. Like my parents need, you know, justice, but they also need,

To learn more about Brandon's case and show your support, visit Freebrandon dot org and you can sign a petition for his exoneration at change dot org. Next time, on Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling, Deb Nichols.

You could see the emergency lights since we were coming up the street, and I got out of the car and started rounding around the corner and it was my house and it was on fire. I was literally terrified, and my brain was like, I just I need to get to the back and make sure the kids are okay.

Thanks for listening to Wrongful Conviction with Maggie Freeling. Please support your local innocence organizations and go to the links in our bio to see how you can help. I'd like to thank our executive producers Jason and Kevin Wordis, as well as our senior producer Annie Chelsea, producer Lyla Robinson, and story editor Sonia Paul The show is edited and mixed by Annie Chelsea, with additional production by Jeff Cliburn and Connor Hall. The music in this production is by