Charlie Brandt

"Well, you know what the perfect revenge is, Jim … You kill somebody, and then you cut their heart out, and you eat it."

Carl "Charlie" Brandt was a Serial Killer and attempted Family Annihilator active over a thirty-three year period.

Background
"Sandi, I just shot my mom and dad."

Brandt was the second child (and only son) of Herbert and Ilse Brandt, two German immigrants who moved to Texas in 1955. During the day, Brandt's father worked as a laborer for a division of International Harvester and attended college at night. Eventually, he worked up his way to draftsman and project engineer. The payback for this progress was that the family had to move quickly and often. As a result, Brandt and his older sister Angela went through several different schools. Brandt was regarded as a good student, but he was shy and found difficulties adjusting to the quickly changing locations. On September 1968, Herbert Brandt was transferred to Fort Wayne's Harvester plant. All the Brandts disliked having to resettle in Indiana and longed for their previous lives in Connecticut, where Brandt had been born and they had all ther friends and relatives.

Every summer and Christmas, the Brandts stayed in Florida, where Brandt would hunt with his father in the morning and go to the beach with the rest of the family in the afternoon. When he was twelve-years-old, Brandt was gifted a dog for Christmas. Brandt became quickly attached to the animal, but it was never properly trained. The dog would mess the floor often, forcing Brandt to clean it, and it would never come when Brandt's father called it. The following Christmas, Brandt and his father took the dog hunting. The animal run behind some bushes, and when it wouldn't come out, Brandt's father became impatient and shot twice at the bushes. The dog was killed, much to Brandt's shock. His father claimed that it was an accident and that he had only intended to scare it, and the two continued hunting without discussing the issue further.

The Brandts returned to Fort Wayne on January 3, 1971, just after midnight. The following afternoon, Brandt retrieved his father's handgun and shot him once while he shaved. His mother, who was eigth months pregnant and taking a bath, screamed for help before Brandt shot her twice, killing her instantly. Angela run to the bathroom, from where Brandt also tried to shoot her, but he had no bullets left. Angela defused the situation by telling her brother how much she loved him, and told him to retrieve their younger sisters (aged four and two), who were sleeping, with the claim that they were going to live in a hippy commune together. As soon as she had the opportunity, Angela run to a neighbor's house for help and Brandt run after her. She knocked on the door, then run for the next house. When the neighbor opened the door, she found Brandt at her porch instead, who told her that he had just shot his mother and father. After the neighbor called for help, Brandt was taken into custody and his father was rushed to a hospital, where he was saved.

Since Brandt was too young to be charged for murder in Indiana, he only declared before a grand jury, who adviced to subject him to three separate evaluations in a mental institution of Indianapolis. None of the doctors who examined Brandt found that he suffered from mental illness. Nevertheless, Brandt's father forgave his son and petitioned for him to be released back into his custody, which he was granted after a year. Once together, the family moved to Florida, where they never spoke of the incident again, and Brandt's younger sisters were never told about it. After another year, Brandt's father remarried and returned to Fort Wayne with his younger sisters, his older sister moved out, and Brandt remained in Florida under the care of his grandparents, who moved there from Germany. Brandt became more open and sociable than he had been before. In 1974 he got a degree on electronics and became a radar specialist. In 1986, he married his long-time girlfriend Teri after he told her about his past and she accepted it. No relatives were invited to the wedding. The couple settled in a beach house of Big Pine Key, the southernmost of the Florida Keys, in 1989.

2004 Murders, Suicide and Criminal Investigation
On September 9, 2004 Big Pine Key was ordered to evacuate before Hurricane Ivan made landfall. The Brandts were offered refuge by Teri's niece, Michelle Jones, in her home of Maitland near Orlando, Florida. Jones was a single, 37-year-old advertising executive, whom Brandt had given the pet name "Victoria's Secret." During the visit, Jones kept regular contact with her mother and several friends. However, the day the Brandts were supposed to leave, Jones called a friend to cancel a date and told her that the Brandts had been drinking and arguing. After that, Jones never contacted anyone again. At the request of Jones's mother, her friend checked on her on September 15. She saw Brandt's body hanging behind the house's backdoor and called police. Besides Brandt, the officers found Teri dead on a couch, after having been stabbed seven times; and Jones's body on her bed, killed by a single stab wound and subsequently decapitated and deprived of her heart with surgical precision. Since there was no sign of struggle, the house was locked from the inside, and the Brandts suitcases were packed next to the front door, the police concluded that Brandt had convinced the women to stay one more night before murdering them in their sleep and hanging himself. Further investigation at the Brandt home revealed that Brandt was a monthly suscriptor to Victoria's Secret catalogs; had an extensive collection of surgery-themed books, posters and clippings; and perused the internet regularly for autopsy photos and snuff sites depicting violence against women. Because Brandt traveled often due to his job, the police checked cold cases in Florida that could match Brandt's modus operandi, and launched requests for similar inquiries in the United States and abroad. Ultimately, Brandt was considered a suspect in 26 Florida cold cases, although only some were made public:
 * The abduction of 12-year-old Carol Sullivan from a school bus stop in Volusia County on September 20, 1978. Sullivan's body was never found but she is presumed murdered and decapitated because her skull was found inside a bucket. Brandt was 20 years old and lived in Volusia County st the time, but he could not be tied to the crime in any other way.
 * The murder of Lisa Saunders, 20, who was beaten, stabbed and dragged from her car in Big Pine Key in December 1988. Saunders's heart was missing when she was found, but it is unclear if it was extracted by a person or eaten by vultures.
 * The murder of Sherry Perisho, a 38-year-old homeless woman in Big Pine Key, on July 19, 1989. Perisho slept in a boat over water, which was found inland and with knife marks on the hull indicating that someone had used it as a cutting board. Her body, missing the heart and unsuccessfully attempted to decapitate, was thrown off a highway bridge and found floating in a canal. This murder took place only three months after the Brandts moved to Big Pine Key, and Brandt's brother-in-law Jim Graves declared that Teri had told him that she suspected her husband because he came home late in the night of the murder, and had blood stains on his clothes that he claimed were from filleting fish. Because of Brandt's strong resemblance to a suspect filmed by CCTV while fleeing the scene of Perisho's murder, Brandt was named as the official perpetrator of the crime in 2006.
 * The rape and murder of an unnamed four-year-old girl in Big Pine Key in either 1988 or 1989.
 * The murder of Darlene Toler, a 35 year-old prostitute in Miami, on November 24, 1995. Toler's body, missing her head and heart, was found near a highway wrapped in plastic like a package. Brandt used the same highway regularly and he kept a mileage record of his truck, which shows an entry for 100 miles in the day of Toler's murder. This is the driving distance between Big Pine Key and Miami.

Modus Operandi
In the Fort Wayne murders, Brandt sneaked into his parents bedroom and retrieved a handgun from his father's nightstand. He next walked into the bathroom, where his mother was taking a bath while his father was shaving, and shot him once. Brandt's mother, who was in the bathtube, was shot next, once in the chest and another in the belly. This bullet hit Brandt's unborn brother in the head, killing him instantly. When his sister came to the bathroom attracted by the commotion, he tried to shoot her but he was out of bullets. Enraged by this, he threw the gun to the floor.

In the Maitland murders, Brandt convinced his wife and niece in some way to not return home, as they had planned, and stay in Jones's house one more night instead. After they went to sleep, he drank in the kitchen for a while, picked a kitchen knife and stabbed his sleeping wife seven times. Afterward, he killed his niece in her sleep with a single stab, carved her heart out, decapitated her, and placed her head next to the body, still laid over her bed. This basic modus operandi (single stab or slash, post-mortem heart removal and decapitation or attempted decapitation) is presumed to have been used by Brandt in other crimes.

Known Victims

 * January 3, 1971, Fort Wayne, Indiana: His family
 * Herbert Brandt, 39
 * Ilse Brandt, 40
 * His unborn brother
 * Angela Brandt, 15
 * September 20, 1978, Volusia County, Florida: Carol Lynn Sullivan, 12
 * Big Pine Key, Florida:
 * December 1988: Lisa Saunders, 20
 * July 19, 1989: Sherry Perisho, 38
 * Unspecified date in 1988-1989: An unnamed 4-year old girl
 * November 24, 1995, Miami, Florida: Darlene Toler, 35
 * September 13, 2004, Maitland, Florida:
 * Teresa "Teri" Brandt, 46
 * Michelle Lynn Jones, 37

On Criminal Minds
Brandt's unusual modus operandi was the possible inspiration for Joe Smith, a serial killer who stabbed women, and extracted their hearts as a revenge by proxy.