This is the story of the murder of Earl Bramblett; someone the police determined to frame, the morning a crime of multiple murder was discovered in the small Town of Vinton, Virginia August 29, 1994.

The original murder was of the entire Hodges family, Blaine Hodges, his wife, Teresa Hodges, two daughters of the couple, Winter age eleven and Anna aged three. The two children had been shot in the head twice, the father shot once in the head and Teresa the mother had been strangled and set on fire. She was downstairs, all others upstairs in bed. The house had been closed up and the fire did little damage to the inside of the house. Teresa had been burned badly but it was still determined that she had been strangled and was wearing only a pair of turquoise panties, her white shorts were found across the room and she was lying on the rest of her clothing.

The Vinton police and the Violent Crime Unit of the Virginia State Police investigated the crime; Barry Keesee was the Senior Investigator for the case. Although Keesee testified he thought it was a murder/suicide for over ten hours, he went to Earl Bramblett's place of employment the morning of the crime. Keesee claimed he only knew Bramblett when Bramblett came to the Vinton Police Station later the day of the murders. Keesee claimed he only knew it wasn't murder/suicide late that same afternoon after the Medical Examiner had looked at the bodies of the murdered victims. This morning visit tp Bramblett's employer was not mentioned in Bramblett's trial and Keesee was never questioned as to why he was there. The reason being that it was only discovered when I got the FBI files through The Freedom Of Information Act.

There was a part of 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 because the manufacturer's specifications ruled it out. The manufacturers specifications inner barrel configurations did not match the bullets found in the victims. Later, approximately two years later, this same firearms expert wrote Keesee a letter indicating this gun could be the murder weapon, because of one he found like it had the required inner barrel configurations that matched the bullets in the victims. Why he would remember this particular case was never explained.  He was never asked about this at trial. Just one of the many anomalies that Bramblett's defense lawyers let slide. Later, William Conrad, the firearms "expert", would write a letter saying he lied. 

With this new "information" about the piece of gun the Commonwealth Attorney proceeded with a Grand Jury indictment. Earl Bramblett was arrested in Spartanburg, South Carolina where he had been living since his attorney told him to leave the Roanoke, VA area shortly after the crime. He was working at a trade in which he was a master, silk screen printing, and had bought a house and somehow acquired a three legged dog. The police had been watching him for a couple of days before this arrest and went in with their guns drawn as if he were some violent offender. Bramblett's only brush with the law was about twenty years back when he was found guilty of drunk driving, and writing a bad check at about that same time. There was no violence anywhere in Earl Bramblett's background.

Judge Roy Willett, an irascible twenty-five year veteran of the bench, decided there wasn't reason enough to change venue and the trial started in November of nineteen ninety-seven. Bramblett had been in the County of Roanoke Jail for a year as his court appointed attorneys, appointed by Willett, asked for delay after delay, ostensibly to gather more evidence for his defense. In the meantime, the attorneys asked for, and got, a Private Investigator paid for by the State to look into Bramblett's allegations that he was the victim of a conspiracy by the police and the adult victims. The "investigator" later wrote a letter 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 considerably by the lack of preparation and the inexperience of the defense attorneys. The year they had to prepare for the case was either wasted or they were too frightened by the jury trial and judge to present a case. It was a one-sided affair to say the very least. It was a rollover by the defense attorneys because Bramblett was difficult to work with and they believed him guilty also.  Bramblett was under represented and Willett sat and listened as about every rule of jurisprudence was violated. The trial was a pathetic attempt at theater to railroad an innocent man to Virginia's death row. In this instance, Virginia's fast track death row. Bramblett was executed April 9, 2003 at Greenville, VA at 9:09 PM. How many other capital murder cases do you know of that are "finalized" in five years?

 
This was not just several people gathering evidence and coming to a common conclusion, this was a conspiracy to imprison and 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 I show you here are indisputable because they are from the very people that framed Earl Bramblett and killed him. The pages with numbers on the left side are actual transcripts from the trial and others are either from the investigation or the FBI FOIA. They cannot be denied as facts.

All of these people thought that would be the end of their scam to kill this man, Earl Bramblett. Little did they know that this is just the beginning, since before, they had only imprisoned an innocent man, now they have killed an innocent man.

We may never know positively who killed the Hodges. These people took it upon themselves to shortcut the legal system by lying, making up evidence, perjury and all sort of 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 it has been up but no one with the influence or power to do anything about this crime has chosen to do so.



Doug Graham