Rapist who 'terrorized' young mother while her baby slept pleads guilty 30 years after attack
Thomas Brodie, 49, will be sentenced in the new year
As Thomas Brodie walked home after drinking at a Calgary strip club on May 4, 1991, he spotted a woman in her home, broke in through a basement window and raped her twice as her baby slept upstairs.
Brodie was 18 years old at the time and since then he's led an unassuming life. But 30 years after the crime, he was arrested by cold case sex assault detectives. On Thursday, he pleaded guilty to break and enter to commit a sexual assault.
It's not clear what lawyers will propose for a sentence. The case was adjourned so a forensic psychiatrist can prepare a risk assessment and other reports.
The victim is now nearly 60.
Victim 'terrorized'
At the time of the attack, she was a 28-year-old mother of an 18-month-old baby. Her husband had a job that required long hours, often working overnight.
"I was terrorized for 20 minutes, 30 years ago, but impacted for a lifetime," the woman wrote in a victim impact statement read aloud to provincial court Judge Allan Fradsham as part of the guilty plea.
"On May 4, 1991, I was sentenced to life for a crime I did not commit."
The victim is identified in court documents as DG in order to comply with a publication ban.
Details of the crime come from an agreed statement of facts (ASF) prepared by prosecutor Pam McCluskey and defence lawyer Elena Ryland.
The break-in
The night she was attacked, DG was home alone with her baby. Around 1 a.m., she heard a noise at the back of her house.
When DG went to the back door to investigate, Thomas Brodie came running up the basement stairs having broken in through a window.
With his face covered by his T-shirt, Brodie yelled, "I want to f--k you, bitch."
At first, DG was able to keep Brodie away by closing and locking a door between the kitchen and back door.
She called 911 from the living room as Brodie kicked his way through the door.
As the operator picked up, Brodie had reached the victim. That call was played in court and all that could be heard was screaming before the call was disconnected.
'She was defeated'
Brodie then began to punch his victim in the face. He slammed her body into the front door and started punching her in the head again, demanding she remove her pants.
"She was defeated," reads the agreed statement of facts. "She complied."
Brodie raped the victim and threatened to kill her if she told anybody.
He was about to leave when he decided to rape DG a second time.
Brodie then left out of the back door after wiping down surfaces he had touched, issuing more death threats.
By then, a 911 operator was calling back. Within minutes, the police arrived. They took the victim to the home of a relative so she could drop off her baby.
DNA websites help investigators
Then, officers took her to hospital so a rape kit could be used.
After the attack, the victim said she had to sell her home immediately because she couldn't stand to be there, and her husband had to quit his job because she couldn't be alone.
Despite the initial police investigation, the case went cold.
Decades later, detectives Michelle Moffatt and Trish Allan reopened the investigation, and with advances in DNA technology, they were able to get a DNA profile from the original evidence.
They then took their findings to genetic genealogy analysis, looking for relatives of the suspect who'd submitted their DNA to websites.
Brodie confesses to 'evil' acts
Eventually, Brodie was identified, and the more they looked into him, the more sure they became that he was the rapist.
Brodie was the right age, his description matched what the victim had told police and he lived near her back in 1991.
The detectives surreptitiously got a DNA sample from Brodie that came back as a match to the rapist's DNA profile.
When they arrested him, Brodie confessed.
He said he'd been drinking at a strip club and was walking home when he spotted DG through a window. He took off his shirt, covered his face and broke in through a basement window.
Brodie called what he did to DG "evil" and asked that the detective tell the victim that he felt remorse.
By then, Brodie had a family of his own.
Months after DG returned to work following the 1991 attack, one of her co-workers said, "you never smile anymore like you used to."