A Michigan man prepped his basement to be his personal chamber of horrors — where he tortured and killed a pregnant woman two years ago, newly released surveillance videos show.
In one video, Brady Oestrike can be seen hanging rope from the ceiling of his basement in Wyoming, Mich., where authorities say he killed Charles Oppenneer, 25, and Brooke Slocum, 18, in July 2014, after meeting them on Craigslist. Clothes are also piled atop a dog cage, where Slocum was held captive for five days in what the local police chief has called “one of the most brutal” cases he’s ever seen.
“I think it was pure evil from start to finish,” Wyoming Police Chief James Carmody said Thursday, when police finished releasing records in the case showing that Oestrike has multiple whips, swords, bondage tools and other weapons in his home.
Detectives also found sex toys, stun guns, firearms, ammunition, knives, electronic items and possessions from both victims among at least 400 items inside Oestrike’s home. Police have said Oestrike, a 31-year-old energy company lineman, killed the couple after arranging a sex-for-cash deal on Craigslist.
The recordings of Oestrike, who videotaped most of his gruesome assault on Slocum, were shot on four surveillance cameras he set up in his home. Police tracked him down after locating the Craigslist ad posted by Oppenneer and Slocum, MLive.com reported.
Detectives found a message with “Hard Mike” asking Oppenneer and Slocum to meet Oestrike on July 12. A state police forensics trooper was then able to link the email address associated with “Hard Mike” to a Facebook account used by Oestrike. Police then obtained a search warrant to search Oestrike’s home, but he fled and later killed himself.
Just eight years earlier, Oestrike held Bible study for children in the same basement where he killed Slocum. Police Chief James Carmoody has said Oppenneer was found decapitated in a park on July 16, 2014, some five days Oestrike killed Slocum.
During those Bible study meetings, Oestrike or his roommates would lead the group, with first-time attendees having to write their names on the wall with fluorescent markers. Black light would make their names appear, witnesses said in police reports cited by MLive.com.
The meetings ended after Oestrike accidentally fired a high-powered handgun through a wall.
“Once word got out that Brady had guns in the house the parents of the kids that attended Bible study refused to let them come over anymore,” investigators said.
Carmoody said the case has had such a deep impact on the department that it made a crisis intervention stress management team available for all investigators in the two-year investigation.
“It definitely had a profound effect on all of us,” Carmoody told MLive.com. “It’s very disturbing. There’s no way you can say that you get used to that stuff, because you don’t.”
Police also recovered a children’s sippy cup, a baby doll with a noose and children’s cutlery during a search of Oestrike’s home, but investigators did not find any evidence that he had children there.
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