This is the story of the murder of Earl Bramblett; someone the police  framed the morning multiple murders were discovered in the Town of Vinton, Virginia August 29, 1994.

The murders were the Hodges family, Blaine Hodges, wife Teresa Hodges, two daughters , Winter age eleven and Anna aged three. The children had each been shot in the head twice, the father shot once in the head and Teresa had been strangled and set on fire. She was downstairs, the rest upstairs in bed. The house was closed up tight and the fire did little damage. Teresa was burned badly, but it was  determined she had been strangled. She was wearing a pair of turquoise panties, her white shorts were found across the room. The rest of her clothing underneath her charred body on the couch.

The Vinton police and Violent Crime Unit of the Virginia State Police investigated; Barry Keesee was the Senior Investigator on the case. Keesee testified he thought it was a murder/suicide for over ten hours, but he traveled to Earl Bramblett's place of employment that morning. Keesee claimed he only knew Bramblett when he came to the Vinton Police Station later that day. That was a lie. Just one of many that Keesee would tell to witnesses, relatives and on the stand under oath. Keesee claimed he knew it wasn't murder/suicide after the Medical Examiner had looked at the bodies. The morning visit to Bramblett's employer wasn,t mentioned in Bramblett's trial and Keesee was never questioned why he was there. It was discovered when I got the FBI files through The Freedom Of Information Act.

There was a handgun found in the upstairs bedroom on the floor beside Blaine Hodges bed that was missing a barrel. The forensic firearms examiner ruled it could not have been the murder weapon, not because of the missing barrel, but the manufacturer's specifications ruled it out. The inner barrel configurations did not match the bullets found in the victims. Two years later, this same firearms expert wrote Keesee a letter saying this gun could be the murder weapon, because he found one like it that matched the bullets in the victims. Why he would remember this case was never explained and was never asked about this at trial. Just something Bramblett's lawyers let slide. William Conrad, the firearms "expert",later wrote he lied. Earl Bramblett was arrested two years later in South Carolina where he had been living since leaving  Roanoke. He was working and had bought a house and acquired a three legged dog. The police watched  him for a couple of days before his arrest and went in with their guns drawn.  Bramblett's brush with the law was twenty years back for drunk driving and a bad check. There was no violence anywhere in Earl Bramblett's background.

Judge Roy Willett, an irascible twenty-five year veteran of the bench, claimed there wasn't any reason to change venue. The trial started  November of nineteen ninety-seven. Bramblett had been in the County of Roanoke Jail for a year because his attorneys, appointed by Willett, asked for delay after delay, ostensibly to gather evidence for his defense.  The attorneys asked for a private Investigator to look into Bramblett's allegations of a conspiracy by the police and the adult victims. The "investigator" later wrote saying none of the witnesses would talk with him.  That's as far as his investigation went.

The trial was supposed to be the longest in the history of Roanoke County, but it was shortened by the lack of preparation and  inexperience of the defense attorneys. The year they had to prepare was either wasted, or they were too frightened by the jury and judge to present a case. It was a one-sided affair to say the least. It was a rollover by the defense attorneys because they believed Bramblett guilty also.  Bramblett was under represented and Willett sat and listened while every rule of jurisprudence was violated. The trial was a readily apparent scheme to railroad an innocent man to Virginia's fast track death row. Bramblett was executed April 9, 2003 at Greenville, VA at 9:09 PM. How many capital murder cases do you know of that are "finalized" in five years?

This was not several people gathering evidence and coming to a common conclusion, this was a conspiracy to kill Earl Bramblett for crimes they believed he committed. This was a conspiracy by the Commonwealth Attorney of Roanoke County Skip Burkart, his assistant Randy Leach, the Virginia State Police Investigator Barry Keesee asking/coercing the state firearm forensic expert Bill Conrad, inmate Tracy Turner, and a witness, Mrs. Dorothy McGee to commit perjury. These people were aided and abetted by Mac Doubles and Terry Grimes, Bramblett's defense attorneys, and Will Lindsey, Bramblett's habeas attorney. The facts  here are indisputable because they are from the people that framed Earl Bramblett and killed him. The pages with numbers on the left are actual transcripts from the trial and others are either from the investigation or the FBI FOIA. They cannot be denied as facts.

These people thought that would be the end of their fraudulent scheme to kill Earl Bramblett. This was just the beginning since they have killed an innocent man.
We may never know who killed the Hodges. These people took it upon themselves to shortcut the legal system by lying, making up evidence, perjury and other nefarious means.

These people may have committed the perfect murder. There have been many thousands of hits on this website in the last ten years but no one with influence or power has chosen to look into this. I still have hope.

Would someone set up a murder/suicide scene and then remove the barrel of the gun they were attempting to show as the weapon used?

If someone shot three different heads with a gun with no barrel would there be blood and flesh on the gun and shooter?

Would a pedophile make audio recordings and send them to a sibling asking to turn them over to the police if someone killed him?

Why did Blaine Hodges steal  from the post office twice? Where did it go? Why wasn't he asked?

Why did State Police Investigator Barry Keesee go to Bramblett's workplace the morning of the crime if he thought it was a murder/suicide?