GIST: "When Thomas Bruce was charged last year with a shocking crime, investigators found something strange: He had a
clean criminal record. In November 2018, the
former Missouri pastor
allegedly posed as a customer at a Catholic Supply store in the suburbs
of St. Louis before returning with a gun and forcing two women to
perform sex acts, then killing a third. Given the horrific nature of the
crime and the fact that it seemed carefully planned, police suspected
it was the work of an experienced criminal, the
Riverfront Times reported. Soon,
other disturbing allegations about Bruce surfaced. Now,
attorneys are questioning whether the 54-year-old might also be linked
to another senseless murder that took place decades ago in Tennessee.
Authorities have long considered the 1985 death of Suzanne Marie Collins
to be a closed case, and in 2006, her alleged killer was executed by
lethal injection. But the crime scene evidence never underwent DNA
testing, leading lawyers from the Innocence Project to wonder whether
police had the wrong suspect all along. At a Monday
court hearing in
Memphis, Barry Scheck, co-founder of the Innocence Project, said he
learned about the possible link to Bruce earlier this year, when law
enforcement officials in St. Louis sent him a “chilling” letter.
Authorities had been researching Bruce’s background, and discovered that
the accused murderer attended an avionics training school in Memphis at
the same time that Collins was taking classes there. “They
were saying to us, there’s a possibility that he is the serial killer
that you had argued might be discovered by a DNA test all those years
ago,” Scheck said. In July 1985, Collins, a 19-year-old Marine corporal, left her barracks to go for a run and
never returned.
The young woman’s body was found the next morning in a park in
Millington, Tenn., the town just outside Memphis where she was
completing avionics training. She had been sexually assaulted, beaten
with a sharpened tree branch and strangled. A pair of red men’s
underwear lay nearby, leading police to believe that they had been
abandoned by her assailant. To
this day, despite considerable legal wrangling, the red underpants have
never undergone DNA testing. Even before they found Collins’ body,
authorities had honed in on Sedley Alley, a 29-year-old air-conditioning
repairman who drove a dark green station wagon similar to the one
reportedly driven by their suspect. As
the Nashville Scene
reported in a 2006 profile, Alley struggled with alcoholism and drug
addiction. In July 1985, after police gave him breakfast, cigarettes and
coffee, he confessed to murdering the young Marine. When he stood
trial, a jury took less than three hours to convict him. But
in 2004, Alley recanted his story, and some experts came to believe
that he had been coerced into the confession. There was no physical
evidence linking the repairman to the attack, and his description of the
murder didn’t entirely square with the autopsy results and crime scene
findings. Attorneys
from the Innocence Project argued that Alley shouldn’t be subject to
the death penalty until the red underwear and other evidence from the
crime scene went through DNA testing. Otherwise, they argued, the state
of Tennessee ran the risk of putting the wrong man to death, and leaving
a dangerous culprit on the loose. Their
request was denied, and in June 2006, Alley was executed by lethal
injection at the age of 50. Five years after his death, the Tennessee
Supreme Court ruled that the denial had been a mistake: Alley did, in
fact, have the right to try to prove his innocence through DNA analysis. During the years that followed, questions about Alley’s guilt didn’t go away. In April, lawyers with the Innocence Project
petitioned to have the DNA evidence tested on behalf of his daughter, April Alley, who hoped to get closure. Scheck said at Monday’s
court hearing that the new information from St. Louis law enforcement inspired the nonprofit legal organization to revisit the case. “They were wondering, looking back, whether or not Mr. Bruce might have committed this crime as well as others,” he said. Authorities in Tennessee have
opposed the request
to perform DNA analysis on the crime scene evidence, which is still
being held in storage more than three decades later. In recent court
filings, prosecutors
argued
that a number of different factors were used to secure Alley’s
conviction, and DNA evidence alone wouldn’t prove he was innocent. A
judge is expected to issue a ruling on Nov. 18,
KTVI reported. Bruce’s attorneys have not yet commented on his possible connection to the Tennessee case. Officials in the St. Louis area have
acknowledged that they’re looking for other cases that may be linked to the murder suspect, but have not provided any other details. The 54-year-old is currently awaiting trial on the
17 felony charges
stemming from the Catholic Supply store attack. In January, he was
charged with another random act of violence: A 77-year-old woman, who
recognized his mug shot on TV,
told police that
two months before the murder, Bruce had forced his way into her home
and raped her, then stolen her cellphone. He has pleaded not guilty to
both sets of charges. At Monday’s
court hearing,
Scheck noted that private investigators working for the Innocence
Project hadn’t been able to track down records from the Memphis avionics
school that would show whether Bruce, who at one point left the
program, returned for a graduation ceremony on the same weekend that
Collins was killed. “The
truth of the matter is we never expected to be here," he said later.
"But we got that letter from St. Louis identifying Thomas Bruce as a
person who took courses with this individual, who could be the serial
offender that we were talking about thirteen years ago, that no one ever
knew about. Could be him, might be somebody else. DNA can tell us the
answer.” "
