[MUSIC PLAYING] REXANNA BROWNING: Ron was
a very generous husband. He would do anything
that I ask him to do, go anywhere that I wanted to go. He was very loving. Two days before, my brother
and I went fishing and had, as usual, a good time together. But then when I got the
call, I mean, it was just, it was shocking to hear that
something that happened to him. As I arrived at the crime
scene, I would have to say, I probably saw the most
gruesome scene that I have encountered in my career. It was in his home. He was minding his own business,
and ultimately, the only thing that he did that
led to his death was opened the
door to a stranger. There was no connection
which is probably what makes this the
scariest possible crime. REXANNA BROWNING: I
did not know of anybody who did not like Ron. I don't think anybody
would have harmed him, people just loved Ron. [MUSIC PLAYING] Ron was a very
kind, generous man. He would give you the
shirt off of his back. He was very religious. The church meant a lot to Ron. He was the pastor of
it for many years. On February the 7th, I kissed
him, and told him I loved him, and told him goodbye. I was going to take my mom
out to her cousin's house. And I was gone all day. He stayed at home and was
going to study his Bible, it was Saturday. On February 7, 2015, it
was just like any other day that we see typically
in a February. It was pretty cold. It wasn't a lot of snow on the
ground, but it was chilled. It's what you would expect
in our area for that climate. REXANNA BROWNING:
Was coming back, and I had told my mom that
it was strange that I hadn't heard from Ron all day long. He always calls me two
or three times a day when I'm out like that,
and he didn't that day. I pulled up into the
house, I did smell gas, and I went upstairs. On the porch, and
went into the house. I went into the kitchen because
I had a cake in my hand, to put the cake
down on the table. And I hollered for him, and ask
him what was going on because I had seen hair in the floor. and I went to the hall,
and my dog came out, and she was shaking. And that's when I
turned around, and I seen Ron laying in the floor. [RINGING] MORGAN BRAGG: The initial
responding officer, when he arrived, he entered the home. He immediately recognized that
this was not, not an accident. It was not a medical call. So what he chose to do
is he did what we would consider clearing the scene. He went room by room
through the residence to make sure that there were
no assailants still on scene. And what he noticed is a
copious amount of blood throughout the residence. He went to the
basement of the home, and discovered that
gasoline had been poured around the basement area. At that point, he
exited, secured the crime scene with
crime scene tape, and called for us to respond. I arrived at the scene at
about 6:00 PM that afternoon. The victim's wife, Rexanna,
was noticeably distraught. I would say, almost in shock. When we entered
the residence, we observed that the victim had
suffered some extreme trauma, particularly what we would
consider to be blunt force trauma to his head and face. There was an extreme amount of
blood in the living room areas. It appeared that there was quite
a struggle that had occurred, and we noted that around
this victim's head, there was a large amount
of shards of glass, and change, and various
items of that nature. We recognize that this
scene was expansive. It was a lot of evidence
that needed collected. We chose to contact
the Western State Police Crime Response Team. They have a lot of resources. The crime scene at
Ronald Browning's house was probably one of the
bloodiest crime scenes in Raleigh County history. The extreme violence
that was used left an absolutely
chaotic scene, and one that I won't soon forget. [MUSIC PLAYING] Well, on February 7,
I was home with my wife, and we received a phone
call from Ronald's wife. And she said that something
had happened at the house, and that he had been murdered. And we couldn't understand
how you can come out, and say it just like that. But I guess she
was in shock, too. And that's when we
decided that we were going to drive to his house. Well, when I talked to the
police officer at the scene, I asked him what was going on. And he told me that
Ron had been murdered. And it was just unbelievable. And they said that we
need to leave the area. So we did, we stayed
for just a few minutes, and then we went back home,
and didn't do anything. When we see a victim with
that much severe trauma, that's typically what we
would consider to be overkill. Typically somebody that's
perpetuated by somebody that knows the victim. Overkill is when
there's more done to kill a person than is necessary. So this is evidence of
aggression, violence, hatred. Typically things that are
very interpersonal in nature. The other thing is it may be
sadistic, where somebody really gets pleasure out of
the torture and pain that they're inflicting
on somebody else. But in all of these
circumstances, far more is done to a person
than is necessary to kill them. In any investigation, there's
a component of victimology. Trying to decide
what type of victim you're working with here,
what ties they may have had, individuals they may have
been associated with. BENJAMIN HATFIELD:
Ronald Browning was an incredible person. He was a family man. He had a wife and family
that loved him very much. He was a local
pastor of a church. He volunteered at
a local hospital, and he had a lot of
people that loved him. MORGAN BRAGG: One
of the first steps that we take in
investigation of this nature, is a canvass of
the area in hopes that someone saw a vehicle,
saw a person on the street. Didn't glean a whole
lot of information from that canvass at that point. BENJAMIN HATFIELD:
At the commencement of an investigation, one of the
things we look for is possible suspects. And in order to obtain that
list of possible suspects, we explore motive. So this case was unique in
that, at this point in time, we didn't have a motive. We didn't have a rationale,
and we didn't know if we needed to connect some dots, or
there was a connection that we didn't know about. The original
FBI profilers used to say, what plus y
equals who in any type of crime such as this. And so when you don't understand
why, trying to understand who did it was even more difficult.
And in this case, when police had no understanding
of the motive, and they had no idea why
this crime was committed, that meant that anybody
could be a suspect. MORGAN BRAGG: There
were some information that we were able to
glean from the crime scene itself pretty early on. One of the first things is
that we recognize that whoever had done this to Mr.
Browning had clearly injured themselves in the process. And from the amount of
blood that we found strewn throughout the residence,
we could tell that they were injured pretty severely. So one of the things that
we initiated early on was checking the
hospitals to see if anybody had come in
with these severe injuries that we would expect. KERRY DANES: Globally, 96%
of all killers are male. So the police would
be thinking that it's more likely to be a
man who was inflicted this level of violence because
this is really very brutal. But the crime scene is chaotic,
and the manner of death is incredibly chaotic, as well. It's looking really
disorganized, and that is a clue to
who might be responsible. They might be chaotic,
and they might be disorganized themselves. Hundreds of photographs
were taken at the scene. It was such an extensive
scene that the processing took hour upon hour. I would say, in the range
of probably 12 hours total, just, just processing the
scene and taking photographs. In this case, the
photos gave a glimpse of the level of violence,
and the level of evil that was present in Ronald
Browning's house that night. My brother was the kind of
guy that didn't bother anybody. And it should never
happen to him. He'd do anything for
anybody to help to bring him to be killed this way. Just unbelievable. REXANNA BROWNING: We are at
Cool Ridge Community Church. This is where Ron was pastor,
and this is also where we got married on April the 19th, 2014. This is a picture
of our wedding cake which was made by my
niece that were cutting. Me walking down the aisle with
my brothers which gave me away. We were all in pink and white. This is where me and Ron
just had got married, and we're holding hands. He had married Rexanna
which was a good marriage for both of them. They both needed somebody
in their life at that time. And they had a good marriage. She went to church
with him all the time, and was very devoted as
far as being with him. It was nice to reconnect
with Ron later in life. He was a joy to be around. He was my best friend. I never expected to
find love like we had. MORGAN BRAGG: This is probably
the best photograph to show what I saw when I arrived. The scene had been secured with
this yellow crime scene tape. Rexanna Browning's car
was in the driveway. And at that time,
his wife Rexanna was seated in this
vehicle, the rear seat of this vehicle awaiting
the detective's arrival. And this would be the door
that we believe the suspect exited from the basement door. At about 8:45 that
evening, we had the opportunity to speak with
the victim's wife, Rexanna. You know, in a general sense,
everybody was a suspect because we were
unable to determine anybody that would logically
do this to the 69-year-old man. And due to the extent
of the assault, we certainly felt that it was
somebody connected to him, or a family member,
right off the bat is something that we would expect. So she was, I would say,
a person of interest is how we would describe her. The fact that she was gone
during the day, the fact that she was rather
emotionless in that shocked state at that point in
time was a little bit suspect. We certainly didn't think
that she was physically capable of doing what
was done to Mr. Browning, but we wanted to make sure that
nothing else had played a role. BRYANNA FOX: When police first
meet with Rexanna, the wife of the victim, there
are a lot of reasons that they thought she was very
unlikely to have done this. Due to her size, stature. But at the same time, given that
she was in his inner circle. And the statistics show people
that are closest to the victim are most likely to have
committed the crime, police felt like
they really can't eliminate her as a
suspect until they have hard evidence to do so. What we learned about
their relationship was that Mr. Browning and
Ms. Browning have been married for about nine months. Had known each other
for 14 years prior to that, knew each other
through the hospital, I believe. And, really, there was no
indication that they had ever had any sort of conflict,
or any kind of violence, or anything of that nature
that would make us suspicious. Ms. Browning did advise
that she had an alibi. We were able to verify that
through other people who had attended that
same family reunion. She was cleared
as a suspect quite early in this investigation. In relation to the
crime scene itself, we wanted to find out if there
was anything that Ms. Browning had noticed that stood out. I did not notice
anything wrong right away. It was once I got into the house
and into the kitchen that I had noticed that the milk
jug, and the hair in the floor, which
I picked up, and I laid it on his recliner chair. The house was tore up, there was
blood everywhere in the house. Once I started noticing the
curtains in the living room was tore off of
the wall, there was blood on the curtains
in the bathroom, there was blood in the
sink in the bathroom. There was blood in the
toilet in the bathroom. The attic ladder
was pulled down, and a white cabinet
had been knocked over. Throughout our conversation
with Ms. Browning, obviously, one of the things
that we wanted to determine is, could she think of anyone
that would do this kind of violence to her husband? No, I did not know of
anybody who did not like Ron. He was very happy,
people just loved Ron. I don't think anybody would
have harmed, harmed him. We noticed the braided
hairpieces pretty quickly on. And that was for a
number of reasons, but primarily because
they were so commingled with the victim's blood. They were literally
underneath his body. There were-- the hair, braided
hair pieces were there. So we knew that was significant. As the crime scene team
processed the scene, they indicated that it appeared
the murder weapon in this case was going to be a large
glass jar full of change, just based on the scene itself. It appeared that this
person that did this crime had entered the attic, they
had entered the basement. They had gone through every
drawer that we could find, they had been at
the kitchen sink. They had used the shower, they
had been in all the restrooms. This person spent a
good deal of time there, and that was interesting
to us as well. And they indicated that
they had located things such as a bloody gas
can in the basement, and it appeared
that a person had spread gasoline
around the residence in, in an attempt
to set it ablaze. BRYANNA FOX: Based upon the
evidence found at the scene, police were able to
determine that this was a very frenzied, haphazard,
and spontaneous scene. The fact that the murder weapon
used to kill Browning was all taken from this house,
they're all objects that were available, show
there was no premeditation. The person that
was the killer did not bring a weapon with them. It just suggests that there
was something a little more spontaneous that went
on, but at the same time there's a lot of passion
and anger involved in it. At some point in
an investigation, there comes a time
when you almost have to get together and have
a little brainstorm session. We mentioned that there were
braided hair pieces discovered amongst this, this
violent attack, and underneath
the victim's body. A uniformed patrol
officer advised us that he had just recently
taken a missing persons report. A worried mother had called
the police had advised them that her adult daughter was in
the process of having her hair braided, the mother
had left the room for a short period of time. When she returned,
the daughter was gone. She wandered from the room,
left her phone in the room, and was unable to be contacted
by anybody after that point. Of the other things that we
discovered during this kind of putting our minds
together at the office, some of the other officers had
overheard our conversation. And that we suspected the
person to be very injured, the suspect in this case. An officer approached me, and
told me that he had been aware that a female, a
19-year-old female, had been arrested in a
neighboring jurisdiction, Mabscott, West Virginia. As we looked into the
investigation of the Mabscott Police Department, we
determined that the suspect had actually forced herself
into two other homes. In the first one, she
approached a very elderly man. And she subsequently went into
another residence of a family who was able to,
basically, dissuade her long enough that they
could contact law enforcement. [RINGING] When we initially heard the
description of the individual that Mabscott police had
arrested, to be honest, we were quite skeptical
that, that could be our suspect just
because it's not what you would normally expect. The 19-year-old female would
not have matched the suspect that we would intend
to expect to see in such a violent incident,
is what we encountered. At the time of her arrest,
she had severe, very severe injuries to her hands. Particularly
lacerations and cuts, which is exactly what we
expected our suspect to have. [MUSIC PLAYING] As soon as we determine
that Mabscott had arrested that female, and her
physical description matched the hairstyle that
we were looking for, we traveled to the hospital and
make contact with her there. And that's when we discovered
her name was Camille Brown. One of the key pieces of
evidence from the crime scene was the braids that
was intermingled in Ron Browning's blood. That's specifically significant
because Camille Brown was in the process of getting
her hair braided when she went missing earlier in the day. I observed Camille sitting on
a gurney inside the hospital, just acting erratic. I was shocked to see
a 19-year-old girl in that condition, but she
was basically incoherent. She wasn't making
a lot of sense. We did not attempt to really
talk to her about our incident at that time. At first, Camille
Brown was being treated at Raleigh General Hospital. Ultimately, she was so combative
and violent at Raleigh General, they refused to treat her. These are some photographs
from the hospital. We did have a
significant struggle with her at the
hospital in attempts to take her into custody. She fought very violently
in that parking area. And it was a unique
situation, in that, her family arrived at the hospital. So this was the first time they
had seen her since they had filed a missing persons report,
which led to a very emotional, emotionally charged situation. As we were trying
to restrain her, they were trying
to retrieve her. And it was a bad situation
all the way around. Ultimately, the Beckley
City Police Department was left with no
choice but to take her to Beckley Appalachian Regional
Hospital where she was treated. But she had to be physically
restrained in order to do so. And this is a hospital
that specializes in restraining violent
individuals or mentally unstable individuals. And they had to use sedatives
and physical restraints. And it took five or
six officers just to hold her down long enough
to get her injuries treated. The jacket that
Camille Brown was wearing when she was
arrested actually belong to Ronald Browning. The jacket was
his Chaplin jacket from Raleigh General Hospital. That belonged to him. Ultimately, that was a
key piece of evidence. The fact that she was wearing
it not very long in time after the commission
of the crime. A lot of times when
there's a murder that they do suspect that it was
somebody in the family. We were told that they had
already talked to Rexanna, and that she hadn't got there
till after he was murdered. But they had
apprehended a young lady in the neighborhood who had
been to four different houses. And that they had apprehended
her, and talked to her. As soon as she got in the
car, she made the comment she had killed this old,
gray-haired, white man. We were unable to establish
a motive because we knew that Ms. Browning,
the victim's wife, was unaware of Camille Brown. There was no connection there. And we didn't know what her role
could have been at that point. We began to canvass the
area for security cameras. We knew that Ms. Brown
lived near in the area. We knew that, the likely
way she would travel to the victim's residence. We secured some
video footage that showed Ms. Brown
jogging down the street prior to the homicide. In the process of
canvassing the area, we realized that
this trail existed. And in that process is when we
discovered droplets of blood, and we believe that
this is the trail that the suspect took after
she committed the homicide. We believe she walked
this trail to Mabscott where she was later arrested. The police told me that a
girl had been into the house, and had been into several
houses in the neighborhood. Just walked in and
terrorized people. And I couldn't believe that
somebody had went in the house and did what they done. In this particular
case, I feel like there was enough physical
evidence to arrest her but we certainly didn't
want to leave it at that. So what we chose to do is to
attempt to interview Ms. Brown so that we could find
out more information and see if she may
confess to this. She then told
investigators that she even kicked the man in the chest area
because he just wasn't dying. After the commission
of the crime, she told investigators that
she rummaged through the house, even looking at mail and
several other items that were scattered about the home. She then later told the
police that she ultimately sprayed gasoline through
the basement area because the plan, or her plan,
was to set the house on fire. To try to hide evidence of
the commission of the crime. One of the things that
we noted pretty early on is that there was no
connection between Camille Brown and Ron Browning. We found that to be kind of
surprising, to be honest, because there was so
much violence here that we expected
our suspect to have a connection to the victim. In this instance,
that wasn't the case. In my experience,
stranger murders, specifically, in
Southern West Virginia, are a statistical improbability. You're far more likely to be
killed by someone you know. And typically, the
statistics would indicate that those
individuals are likely male. This is the least
likely suspect. First of all, of
course, she is a woman. So she's in that 4%
of women who kill. And she's only a young woman. There's no connection between
Camille Brown and Pastor Ron. Of course, there was a
wealth of forensic evidence that they could rely on
to prove that she was the person responsible,
but I think that the whys and wherefores
of it, that was all to do with her behavior. And her behavior was
very, very strange. The suspect in this
case is quite a paradox. Is a 19-year-old girl, she has
an impeccable history as far as the community goes, she had
not been in any trouble, had not had any previous arrests. But there again, she's
probably committed one of the most
gruesome, heinous crimes that this city has ever seen. This girl had
knocked on the door and asked for a drink of water. And when he opened the door,
evidently, she had more in mind than getting a drink of water,
that she had killed him. [MUSIC PLAYING] The funeral
happened in Beckley. There were so many
people that the church couldn't even begin
to hold the amount of people that showed up. There was a lot of
things said about Ron. What a great guy he was,
and how giving he was, what a good preacher he was. It was hard being at
my brother's funeral. We was always so close. [SOB] It feels like the big
part of me was lost. [SNIFFS] Because he was so
important to me. [MUSIC PLAYING] After my brother
had been killed, we had heard from
the news and on TV that this was a 19-year-old
girl, that was a good girl, went to college. She had lived with
her mom and dad. And it was like,
hearing about her and knowing what happened,
just didn't add up. There were some things that
were troubling about Camille's lifestyle that we
discovered as we began the prosecution process. One of the things
that we discovered is that she had kind of
been leading a double life. And what I mean by that is that,
she had gone away to school, to West Virginia University. Unbeknownst to her
family, she had actually dropped out of
school shortly after arriving. Began to work in a gentlemen's
club in that area, was not attending classes, was not
going to school in any fashion. All she was doing
is, the family was continuing to send her money. And as a-- instead of
it going to the school, it was going to
her personal life, and she was living a different
life than she was suggesting. The kind of
character she showed was kind of what she
proved when she'd done what she'd done to my brother. She showed that she
didn't have any morals, that it didn't matter to her as
long as it was all about her. And that's what it
turned out to be. All about her. [SIREN WAILING] Obviously, there was some,
some suspicion that Ms. Brown had been involved in some
sort of drug activity just by her very
erratic behavior. We had nothing to support
that at that time, but through our
conversation with Ms. Brown, she indicated that the
only illicit substances that she was involved in
during that period of time was marijuana. She stated that she had
smoked a marijuana cigarette approximately 30 some hours
prior to this incident, and that, that was the only
drug activity she had been involved in, in that period. In the early
days of this case, I felt the case would
be primed for trial, and that we had a statement
from the defendant indicating that she had
committed the crime. We had a litany of items
of physical evidence that pointed to her
committing the crime. And I felt that this was
going to be pretty much sell through without a problem. Due to the
diagnostic testing that was done by mental
health experts, there was conflicting ideas. We knew there would
be an uphill battle to counteract these opinions
of some of the doctors. There was two forensic
psychological evaluations done of Ms. Brown. And at the very
least, this was going to present a
problem with a trial verdict on first degree murder. You know, we could
not get a competing expert to go against what the
defense experts were saying. So ultimately, the reason a
plea was offered, to begin with, is because they had
expert witnesses that were going to put
forth a mitigation defense for the defendant. A mitigation
defense is essentially where somebody admits to
having committed a crime, in this case, murder,
but says that there were some mitigating
reasons for why it occurred. This could be things
like self defense, or that there was some
mind altering reason for why they had done it. Essentially, that they did not
have the ability to either form intent to commit
the crime the way, otherwise, well-adjusted
person would have. Or that they didn't
know the difference between right and wrong
for a variety of reasons, typically, mental disorders
or other issues in their life. Brown's case
didn't go to trial. She pled guilty to two counts
of burglary and second degree murder in May of 2016. Camille Brown was in a
state of agitation, paranoia, and she was incredibly violent. She is clearly somebody who
was in an extremely disturbed and disturbing dangerous state. And yes, that can
happen with psychosis. It's not common,
but it can happen. And it's incredibly
frightening, isn't it, to think that somebody can
go from literally zero to 100 in a very short space of time. Because if you had met
her, maybe even just a day, or two days before
she killed Pastor Ron, you would think,
what a lovely girl. There's nothing particularly
unusual about her. People don't understand
how quickly people can switch when they've
been taking substances, if they have psychosis. It can be, on rare
occasions, incredibly rapid, and incredibly,
incredibly dramatic. And that was the case here. [MUSIC PLAYING] The sentencing was a pretty
emotional time for everybody. The family was-- both
families were there. The family of the victim,
the family of Camille. They were all present,
and they were both highly emotionally charged. Camille's family did
not want to see her go away for any amount of time. And Mr. Browning's
family wanted to see what they would
feel would be just, which would be a life sentence. It was hard to sit there
and watch her put on a show that she put on knowing
that she killed my brother. How she acted like
nothing was wrong. It's all about her. She never turned at
any time and look us. She spoke straight to the court. She didn't look at her mom and
dad, and she did look at us. It was all like she rehearsed
what she was going to say, and how she was going to say it. At sentencing in this matter,
Rexanna Browning spoke, which was Ronald Browning's wife. Also, his brother Ralph spoke,
and it was very emotional, very raw in the courtroom. And you could just tell how
much they loved Ronald Browning. I was asked to
give a statement, and I told him, in my
opinion, that this girl should never be let out of jail. To know so somebody that was as
good as he was that had to die like that, it's just unreal. I mean, for somebody
to treat you like that. And she didn't know
him from anybody. That he never harmed
anybody, ever. And he have to die like that. It was unreal. [MUSIC PLAYING] In the end, Camille was
agreed to a 40-year sentence to first degree homicide. And also to two
counts of burglary, which would have been one
to five sentences each. The judge chose to reduce
that sentence on his own. He reduced the homicide
sentence to a 30-year sentence. My hopes in obtaining justice
for Ronald Browning's family would have been life in prison. I believe that
examining this case, some five years after it was
pled, in some seven years after it happened,
the sentiment is that, within the
criminal justice system, the punishment was
insufficient for the crime that was committed. And I believe the victim's
family feels that way. I believe certain members of
law enforcement feel that way. Honestly, in this
particular case, I don't think we'll
ever know why Camille Brown killed Mr. Browning. It's unfortunate,
and it's particularly frustrating for an investigator
because we typically want to get the answers. We want to know why
something happened. At the end of the
day, I don't think we're ever going to know why. This was a complete,
senseless loss of life. Ronald Browning was a
pastor, a volunteer, a husband, a brother. And his life was taken
without motive or rationale. Ronald Browning's family has to
live with unanswered questions for the rest of their lives. I think that's probably
the saddest part of this entire chronicle for me. Camille Brown is an animal. She is cold, ruthless. My life changed
February the 7th, 2015. Ron would have-- Ron would have
probably forgave her. He was just that type
of person, but I don't. The time I spent with
Ron was too short. I think that we would
have accomplished a lot more than what we
did if he was still alive. Well, I just like to say
that I love my brother. And I would like to
be with him again. And I will. [SOB] We'll be in heaven together. [SNIFFS] I'm 75 years old. So I don't live forever,
but I'll see you. I just want everybody to
know what kind of man he was. He loved to help. He'd do anything for anybody. I go to his grave
site to remember Ron. I remember Ron as being happy,
him singing in church with me. He was just a very happy person. [MUSIC PLAYING]
