A Time To Kill: Fast Food Cold Justice, a programme on Investigation Discovery, tells the story of the brutal killing of Terri Brooks, 25, in February 1984 at a diner in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. Before they were able to identify the murderer using forensic techniques, the investigators had to wait over two decades. We have all the information you need if you’re curious about the case, the identity of the offender, or their whereabouts right now. So let’s get started, shall we?
How Did Terri Brooks Die?
Frances Nathalie Wakefield and George Elmer Brooks welcomed Terri Lynn Brooks into the world on September 13, 1958 in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. In February 1984, she was employed as the night manager of a Roy Rogers eatery in Falls Township, Pennsylvania. On the morning of February 4, 1984, Terri’s fiancé knocked on their door to report their daughter missing, which caused Terri’s father and stepmother, Betty Brooks, concern.
Vicki Bartolino, Terri’s sister, remembered how the fiancé allegedly claimed Terri’s car was not in the driveway and he was worried for her security. After finishing her shift, George went to check his daughter’s room and discovered that she had not come home. The worried parent called the restaurant manager, who informed him that when he arrived to open the restaurant at 6:00 AM, he had discovered the body of the 25-year-old inside the locked establishment close to the kitchen. As a result, he called the police right away to report the murder.
According to police reports, Terri’s body was found with a butcher knife protruding from her neck next to the kitchen. She was being suffocated with a garbage can liner, which was wrapped around her face and contained moisture from her breath. The Night Manager was brutally murdered; according to the autopsy report, she was strangled, repeatedly hit in the head with a concrete floor, suffering a cerebral haemorrhage, and had a bone in the back of her neck severed.
The medical examiner also found bruises and black and blue marks all over Terri’s body, with the handprints on her neck indicating that she had been strangled. The stab wound likely paralysed her but did not knock her out, according to the coroner. The 25-year-official old’s cause of death was determined to be asphyxiation because she was still alive when she was suffocated by the trash bag. In addition, she was wearing a winter coat, the use of which was lying open next to her body with the contents spilling out.
Who Killed Terri Brooks?
A little distance from Terri’s body, against another wall, the detectives discovered her shoes. The drive-thru window was partially open when the officers arrived, and they later learned from Terri’s boss that the restaurant’s safe had been found to be missing approximately $2,500. Since a random robber would not likely use such extreme violence, the murder’s severity and overkill looked to indicate Terri knew the killer. After speaking with the victim’s coworkers, the police discovered that she had recently been responsible for getting a former Marine named Steve Daley fired from the restaurant due of the latter’s outbursts.
Steve was a Chef at the fast food restaurant and had started going there frequently only to irritate her. He was unable to give the cops a credible alibi when they questioned him. Yet, after Steve passed the polygraph exam, the investigators released him. Once each offered convincing alibis, the other coworkers who were with Terri on the night of the murder were eliminated as candidates. Under Terri’s fingernails and close to a defensive wound on the base of her right ring finger, the coroner discovered skin tissue.
As it was the 1980s, forensic technology had not yet advanced to the point where law enforcement authorities could analyse DNA from forensic evidence found at crime scenes. Several leads were pursued by the authorities, including one that looked promising when two female restaurant employees were attacked in seperate, unrelated events in the weeks that followed. The case was eventually closed after Terri’s murder, but Arnold Conoline, the previous police chief, revived it in 1998.
One of Terri’s acquaintances, Cindy Bradney, was questioned by the detectives, and they discovered a shocking information. She was not questioned in the initial investigation and gave the inquiry new information. The cops were not aware of Terri’s troubled relationship with her 36-year-old fiancé, Alfred Scott Keefe. They searched his home, according to news sources, and discovered he lived there with his brother Charles.
In accordance with a search warrant, the officers removed Newport cigarette butts from the trash. Scott smokes Newport cigarettes. Also, they found Charles’ cigarette butts in an ashtray from a restaurant, but his DNA was not a match. However Terri’s fingernail forensic evidence and Scott’s DNA matched, and in February 1999, Scott was summoned to the station for questioning.
Where is Alfred Scott Keefe Now?
Since Terri’s murder, the episode revealed that Scott had married, given birth to a child, and then divorced his wife in order to return to his parents’ home in Falls Township. Only because he had had just been detained for drunk driving in another location were they able to find him. Scott gave multiple incriminating statements after a harsh interrogation after failing a polygraph test. When Terri attempted to cancel the wedding and end their relationship, he allegedly lost it and confessed to the murder. Moreover, Scott acknowledged staging the event to give the impression that she was the victim of a chance robbery.
Additionally, Scott said that he travelled to the Brooks family house the morning of the murder in order to appear innocent, which prevented him from being apprehended for the following fifteen years. In February 1999, he was detained for the murder of Terri Brooks. In his trial in 2000, he entered a guilty plea to first-degree murder and robbery charges. Alfred Scott Keefe received a life sentence without the possibility of release. The 62-year-old is detained in the State Correctional Institution in Albion, Western Pennsylvania, according to official court records.
