THE NIGHT OF NOVEMBER 13th
On the evening of November 13, 1980, 17-year-old Deborah Ann Brooks -- who was called “Missy” by her family -- left her home in Northeast Washington, D.C., to go to the pharmacy a few blocks away.
Deborah’s brother Paul Brooks told Dateline he remembers that night like it was yesterday. “We were in a living room, my mother just come home from work, it was almost 7:00 o’clock or 7:30,” Paul said. “My sister had to go to the local drugstore -- it was called Peoples Drug Store back then -- it was about three blocks up the street on 12th Street.”
Paul says he offered to accompany his sister there. “Even though I was younger than her, I often felt like, you know, one of her big brothers,” Paul said.
Paul says he often felt protective of Deborah. “Often got into some situations because of her,” he said. “While we’re in high school, I remember one instance, some young fellow was bothering her, and we were in a lunch room, and she said, ‘Well, I’ll get my brother on you.’ And I’m looking at her as small as I am, ‘You’re going to get me?’ Yeah, that was something we used to joke about.”
Paul and Deborah’s brother Frederick was in the Army, stationed in Germany at the time, so it was just the two of them. “We leaned on each other,” Paul said. “We grew up together, we were each other’s best friends.”
Frederick had been gone for about nine months when Deborah vanished that November evening in 1980.
“She had to go fill up a prescription, and my mother told her ‘Hey, you know, the drugstore is about to close,’” Paul said. “She said ‘Well, Mom, you know, I can make it there in time if I run.’ And I was going to go with her.” But Deborah told him she would be stopping by her boyfriend’s house, too, which was just around the corner, and she didn’t need Paul to come with her.
The Charles County Sheriff’s Office details the events that followed on their website. “On Thursday, November 13, 1980, at approximately 8:20 p.m., Deborah Ann Brooks came home to her residence [on] Monroe Street in Northeast Washington, D.C., and asked her mother, Constance Canty, about a prescription that Canty had picked up for her at the People’s [sic] Drug Store on 12th Street in Northeast,” the website states. “Deborah opened the bag and saw that the prescription had not been filled properly. She said she was going to go to the drug store to get the correct prescription but had to hurry because the drugstore would be closing soon.”
According to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office’s website, “Deborah was reported as having worn blue jeans, a brown sweater, a green waist-jacket and brown shoes when she left her home.”
Paul Brooks says after Deborah left their house that night, he sat down on the couch to watch TV and fell asleep. He woke up around 10:30 p.m.
“I woke up in the living room, and my mother was still sitting in the living room, pacing back and forth. She was worried,” Paul remembered. His mother told him his sister hadn’t returned home and that she had called Deborah’s boyfriend’s house, where she learned that Deborah had left a while earlier. “It was uncharacteristic for her to be out, you know, past 10:00-10:30 on a school night,” Paul said.
Paul added that Deborah’s boyfriend’s family confirmed that Deborah had stopped by their house. “His mother, father, sisters, they all saw her.”
Whatever happened to Deborah, must have happened within the five-minute walk home from her boyfriend’s house that night.
THE NEXT DAY
“My mother stayed up all that night, and I was up intermittently checking on her, calling around waiting to hear from her. And that next morning, I got up, and I said, ‘OK, well, maybe she’ll meet me at school,’” Paul recalled. “So my mother went to work, and I went to school that morning, and she wasn’t there.”
Paul told Dateline that on his way home from school that day, he ran into a man who used to do maintenance around their neighborhood. He told Paul that one of the property owner’s family members had found Deborah’s prescription bag on the sidewalk. The bag was torn.
If that was not alarming enough, there was blood on the bag.
“I knew right then -- something happened to my sister,” Paul said.
Paul immediately went to see their mother, who was still at work.
“She asked me, ‘Have you heard from, you know, Missy?’ And I just showed her the bag, and she just started crying and dropped to the floor,” Paul said. “Of course, we called the police, and then that started everything.”
According to Paul, the family hadn’t yet reported his sister missing since it was still less than the required 24-hour absence for reporting. However, he said, finding the prescription bag changed everything. They called the Metro Police Department right away.
“The family kind of came together — my aunt -- my mother’s sister, folks in the neighborhood. And they came and, kind of, comforted us because, you know, this is the first time our neighborhood had gone through something like this, and it was very traumatic,” Paul said.
A GRUESOME DISCOVERY
The next day after Deborah was reported missing, the family’s worst nightmare came true.
“That’s when they found her body -- in the state of Maryland,” Paul said. Deborah was found in Waldorf, Maryland, about an hour’s drive from where she was last seen.
According to the Charles County Sheriff’s Office website, “Two hunters were operating a four-wheel-drive vehicle in a wooded area off Sharpersville Road in Charles County looking for a place to hunt deer. When they were about three-quarters of a mile off the road, they observed what appeared to be a body lying face-up under a pile of drywall.”
Dateline spoke with Lieutenant Frank Tona of the Charles County Sheriff’s Office, who says Deborah’s body was found on November 14 around 3:00 p.m. “The two hunters on the 14th contacted the Prince George’s County, Maryland Police Department. And then when those officers got to the scene, they realized there’s a creek that separates our county, Charles County, and Prince George’s County,” he said. “So, the south side of the creek is actually Charles County, and she was found on the south side of that creek, and that’s when the police officers called the Charles County Sheriff’s Office.”
According to Lt. Tona, Deborah’s remains were positively identified by her family on November 16.
Paul Brooks says his grandfather and his aunt went to identify the body. “They couldn’t describe what they saw, it was so traumatic for them. My grandfather cried for a long time. It broke him,” Paul said.
Paul says his aunt told him Deborah had been stabbed, and there were patches of hair torn off her head. It appeared as though Deborah had fought back against her attacker. “That’s something my sister always said, you know, if anyone ever tried to, you know, rape her or assault her, that she would fight back with everything she had,” Paul remembered. “My sister also had long nails. She would keep her nails long. All of her fingernails were broken because she was fighting back.”
Lieutenant Tona confirmed Paul’s information, adding that Deborah’s official cause of death was “multiple injuries as a result of blunt force trauma and sharp objects.”
A DECADES-LONG QUEST FOR ANSWERS
Investigators interviewed Deborah’s boyfriend and his family who confirmed Deborah stopped by on her way home the night she disappeared. From them, they were also able “to find out more about her, more about victimology, that kind of thing,” Lt. Tona told Dateline. But nothing they learned led them to a suspect. “We’ve ruled people out, and these were just names that were found in the initial investigation back in 1980, but we’ve already ruled them out through forensic science.”
Dateline also spoke to Noelle Gehrman, the Deputy Director of Forensic Science at Charles County Sheriff’s Office. “Over the years, especially picking up early 2000s and even continuing to even this week, there has been more than 40 items of evidence collected in this case. And more than 25 items of evidence have been either processed, tested or analyzed,” she said. “Technology has advanced quite significantly.” As of yet, it has not provided the answers Deborah’s family so desperately wants.
It has now been 44 years since Deborah was murdered. “I was 16 when this happened. I’m 60 now, you know? How much longer do I have to wait?” Paul asked.
In an interview with NBC 4 Washington in 2017, Paul said his mother passed without learning what happened to her daughter. “Right before my mother passed, she said that she regretted that we were never able to find out what happened to my sister,” he said. “It won’t bring her back, but it will give my family the satisfaction of knowing the persons responsible have been dealt with.”
“We are applying every method of advancement in technology that we can to this case.” Noelle Gehrman stressed. “We have a list of names from -- who we know were associated with her. But, obviously, she may have friends that we didn’t know. So, anybody that thinks that they know something -- even something small -- that could be such a break in the case if they just come forward and share it,” she said.
Anyone with information is asked to contact Charles County Crime Solvers by calling 1-866-411-TIPS, by texting CHARLES + your tip to CRIMES (274637), or by submitting a web tip. Crime Solvers is offering a reward of up to $1,000 for information that leads to an arrest or indictment. All individuals who provide tips through Crime Solvers will remain anonymous.
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