Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 29, 1995 TAG: 9508290051
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DIANE STRUZZI STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
The fire-blackened house is a haunting reminder of the Hodgeses' last moments.
It is quiet, void of activity. The yard is clear, the windows boarded. Tacked to each door is a "No Trespassing" sign. On the front stoop is a doll adorned in berry-pink satin.
Exactly what happened inside the house just before dawn Aug. 29, 1994, is unknown. What police found began the most intense homicide investigation in Vinton's history.
Who could strangle Teresa Hodges and shoot her husband, Blaine, and their daughters, Winter and Anah? Who would set the house ablaze to destroy evidence?
A year after their killings, police have disclosed few of their findings. The comments of those supervising the case have changed little since the discovery of the bodies.
"We feel the investigation is progressing," Vinton Police Chief Rick Foutz said recently. "I feel like releasing any further information can jeopardize the case. This case has been actively investigated every day since it happened."
Roanoke County Commonwealth's Attorney Skip Burkart, who has been reviewing the findings, said he meets regularly with the lead investigator. He would not discuss any of the evidence or talk about a suspect or suspects.
"This is a whole different ballgame than the case in Roanoke city," Burkart said, referring to the case of convicted murderer Robert May, who gunned down five people early New Year's Day.
"They had witnesses, a murder weapon and statements from the defendant," Burkart said. "That case was there, ready to prosecute. There was no question they had the person. In this case, we don't have any of those things."
Indeed, the only public knowledge of the investigation came in the form of two search warrants filed in Roanoke County Circuit Court shortly after the killings. The affidavits were sealed by a judge, then opened this year at the urging of The Roanoke Times.
The documents allowed investigators to search the motel room, truck and rented storage shed of the Hodgeses' closest friend. The affidavits focused on the two weeks immediately after the family's deaths and detailed the friend's statements and actions.
Earl Conrad Bramblett, a gray-haired wanderer who cruised around in his white pickup truck, was a regular at the Hodgeses' house on East Virginia Avenue. He built and sold wooden rose trellises with Blaine Hodges. He was seen often with Teresa Hodges and the children.
Bramblett is the last person to have been seen with the family before they were killed.
After the bodies were found, the first search warrant affidavit said, Bramblett refused to talk with police, contemplated suicide and appeared obsessed with the idea that he would be arrested.
Bramblett, 53, has not been charged with anything. Efforts to reach him for this story were unsuccessful.
Hours after the discovery of the bodies, neighbors and friends were asking, "Where is Earl?''
The pre-dawn hours were muggy. Next door to the Hodgeses' house, dogs began to bark wildly about 4 a.m.
Forty-five minutes later, just as he did every day at that time, Mark Stevens drove along East Virginia Avenue on his way to his job in Roanoke County. When he neared the Hodgeses' house, Stevens saw smoke drifting across the road. Flames were lighting up the first-floor windows.
Stevens and an unidentified man pulled off the road and tried to get into the house. They broke the glass of the front door. A burst of heat stung their eyes and kept them back.
Stevens, who is deaf, ran into the road to flag down motorists. Four people drove by before an off-duty officer stopped. Stevens remembers a pungent smell coming from the house as flames licked the windows.
Fire, rescue and police responded to the fire. Nothing could prepare them for what they found inside.
In the living room on the first floor was the badly burned body of Teresa Hodges, 37. An autopsy would reveal she had been strangled.
Upstairs in the bedrooms were more bodies, each shot with a .22-caliber gun. In bed was Blaine Hodges, 41, shot once in the head. In another bedroom were the couple's daughters, Winter, 11, and Anah, 3. The killer had reserved two bullets for each girl, shooting them in the head.
The telephone lines had been cut. There was no sign of a burglary. Hanging from one of the exterior doors was a handwritten note by Teresa Hodges. It said there was an emergency and the family would return late Aug. 28 or early Aug. 29.
After the fire had been extinguished, investigators quickly wrapped the area with yellow police tape, blocking off portions of East Virginia Avenue.
"Obviously, the person or persons who murdered the Hodges family is knowledgeable about the methodology of criminal investigations, which is [apparent] from the destruction of the crime scene," a source familiar with the investigation said recently.
Virginia State Police parked their evidence van near the house, where it stayed for much of the week while detectives swarmed the area, looking for any detail that might produce a lead.
Within 72 hours they got one.
Police interviewed everyone they could find who knew the Hodgeses - family members, friends, neighbors. They talked to more than 150 people. By Sept. 1, one person appeared to be the focus of their attention.
Bramblett was a close companion of the family, but he was reluctant to help investigators and became "evasive" when asked questions, according to the first of two search warrant affidavits.
Police interviewed Bramblett the afternoon the bodies were discovered. When they tried to find out the last time he had seen the family, Bramblett responded, "Why, are you going to charge me with murder?'' according to the first affidavit, filed in court Sept.1.
Bramblett told one investigator he had seen the Hodgeses the day before the fire. But when confronted by another investigator, he denied it. When pressed about the discrepancy, he responded: "Why don't you go on and charge me with murder and get it over with?'' according to the affidavit.
On Aug. 31, police talked with Bramblett at the Apple Valley Motel in Roanoke County. He wouldn't allow a Vinton police lieutenant to enter his room, but after a short discussion said, "I felt so bad about this, I thought about committing suicide. ... I even wrote a note."
He agreed to meet investigators later that day, but did not come to the door of his motel room when they arrived. According to the affidavit, investigators became worried that Bramblett might have tried to harm himself, so they entered the room. A short while later, Bramblett arrived in a cab and insisted that the officers leave.
"He then refused further cooperation with the investigation and said, `Why don't you just arrest me for murder,''' according to the affidavit.
Based on those statements and actions, police were granted a warrant to search Bramblett's motel room and truck. Among other items, they found a detective magazine, a .22-caliber revolver and some of his writings that implied thoughts of suicide.
Bramblett was given a copy of the affidavit. A month later, he wrote The Roanoke Times saying that the police portrayal of events was a lie and that they had fabricated his statements.
"I think I counted 6 or 7 total lies by the police," Bramblett wrote in his letter, postmarked Oct. 12, 1994. "They did not misquote me or misunderstand what I said. They totally fabricated the whole story of when I was in the Vinton Police dept. I saw the handwriting on the wall then. I was advised by several attorneys that the best I could do was get out of Va. and stay away from the Vinton Police as long as possible."
Those associated with the case will not respond to Bramblett's accusations. The letter was his last public comment.
Eight days after the first affidavit, police filed another to search a storage shed Bramblett had rented at Winter's Mini Storage in Vinton. In the Sept. 9 affidavit, police noted that Bramblett's sister had turned over to them audiocassettes by her brother. The affidavit says Bramblett talks on the tapes about his relationship with the Hodgeses, displaying hostility toward Blaine Hodges.
Bramblett's sister told police that her brother "gave her these tapes and photographs approximately one year ago with the instructions, `If anything ever happens to me, give these to the police,''' according to the affidavit.
A day before investigators opened Bramblett's storage shed, they searched a trash container at Roanoke's Brewco Sign Corp., where Bramblett free-lanced shortly before he disappeared. In it they found cassette tapes and notes by Bramblett referring to the Hodgeses.
Along with those items, they also found a hand-drawn illustration showing four stick figures. Three of the figures had lines pointing to their heads. Investigators say in the affidavit that the drawing may depict the deaths of the Hodgeses.
After searching Bramblett's storage unit the next day, police found items including cassette tapes, a .22-caliber Magnum cartridge and a typewriter case containing photographs.
Neither search produced the weapon used in the slayings.
To date, police insist that Bramblett has never publicly been named as a suspect. Chief Foutz contends that the warrants were filed to try to get information not readily available otherwise.
"Sometimes when people don't provide the answers, there are steps you have to take to attempt to get the answers," he said.
Commonwealth's Attorney Burkart would not elaborate on the searches. He said the affidavits speak for themselves and he will not try his case in the newspaper.
"When I get to the point where I say someone is a suspect, I expect the police to have warrants and that they're going to make an arrest," Burkart said. "I'm not accusing anybody."
Bramblett first met Blaine Hodges when Hodges was a track star at Jefferson High School.
Hodges held the indoor records for low and high hurdles in 1970. Bramblett was a volunteer assistant track coach, specializing in shot put and discus.
While Bramblett didn't coach Hodges much, he did befriend him. The relationship lasted. Hodges gave Bramblett the comfort of house and family. Bramblett shared his silk-screening skill with Hodges. The two often worked together.
Silk-screening was in Bramblett's blood. His father, Webb, taught him much of what he knew.
John Davis, co-owner of Brewco, has known Bramblett for nearly 20 years. Bramblett's attention to detail and his clean brush strokes made him one of the best silk-screeners Davis had ever seen.
During the 1970s and '80s, Bramblett ran a successful print shop in Southwest Roanoke. The business became a hangout and place of employment for many of the neighborhood children.
In 1984, one of those children accused Bramblett of sexually molesting her. The case came before a Roanoke Circuit judge but was dismissed because of lack of evidence.
Bramblett remained in Roanoke, where his family had settled, and continued to silk-screen and do odd jobs. But the road held a lure for Bramblett, who found it difficult to stay in one place for long. He often drove east to the coast, selling T-shirts with artful designs.
When back in Roanoke, he returned to the Hodgeses. In the past few years, he had given their Vinton address as his own to his free-lance employers.
"The Blaine Hodges family were my family and Winter and Anah were my daily joys," he wrote in his October 1994 letter.
After the family was found dead, Bramblett went to Brewco. He told a co-worker he couldn't trust the police and he wasn't going to cooperate.
Without the Hodges home to go to, Bramblett took to the road. In the weeks immediately after the slayings, he traveled around in his white pickup, cruising the Blue Ridge Parkway and staying off and on at a motel in Botetourt County.
On two occasions, police carried numerous trash bags from the room where he stayed. What they were looking for, or if they found anything, has not been disclosed.
Bramblett's connection with the police investigation and his whereabouts remain a mystery. One of his sisters, who lives out of state, would say only that she last saw her brother in September.
"The whole thing has been too upsetting," she said.
Bramblett's ex-wife declined to comment.
In his October 1994 letter, Bramblett said he knew police were watching him. That is no longer true.
One thing is certain, said a source familiar with the case: "Police are not looking for Bramblett."
Two accelerants began the fire in the Hodges house, gutting a good portion of it. On a recent dry day, a slight breeze in the air still carried a faint burnt odor through the back yard.
It's impossible to forget what happened at 232 E. Virginia Ave.
For Brenda Lugar, the last 365 days have been a time warp. Each day she relives the heartache of losing her sister, Teresa, her brother-in-law, Blaine, and her nieces, Winter and Anah.
"It's been hell and torment," she said.
But Lugar waits and hopes that someday there will be a resolution. "They say eventually they'll get somebody," she said. "But eventually is a long time. A very long time when they're your loved ones."
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