David Brom, Who Ax Murdered His Family at 16, Was Released Early Because of This Controversial Minnesota Law

On a snowy Minnesota day in February 1988, a disturbing rumor spread among the students of Lourdes Catholic High School. It was about sophomore David Brom: that long before the school bell rang that morning, the 16-year-old had killed his family with an ax.

Eventually, the rumor made its way to Lourdes’s front office, and administrators called local authorities. Police who were dispatched to the Broms’ Rochester residence were informed David had been a no-show for class that morning.

Deputies arrived at the grisly scene and found the slain bodies of Bernard Brom, his wife, Paulette, and two of their children, Diane, 13, and Rick, 11. All four victims had deep gashes to the head and upper body. In the basement, detectives located a blood-smeared ax, and the following day, David was apprehended.

Investigators believe he killed his father and younger brother first as they slept. He then attacked his mother and sister when he met them in a hallway.

Brom was tried as an adult in 1989, and in court, his lawyers blamed his depression for his murderous actions. A jury found him guilty of the quadruple killings, and a judge condemned him to four life terms—three consecutive and one concurrent—with no chance of ever becoming parole eligible. This, despite the court-appointed psychiatrist’s recommendation that David not receive a life sentence.

This summer, David was released from the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Lino Lakes at the age of 54. David could only be freed under a work release program because of a 2023 state law that scrapped mandatory life-without-parole sentences for juvenile offenders and made it retroactive. Twenty-seven other states have banned juvenile life without parole sentences, according to the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth.

The law was introduced more than 10 years after the U.S. Supreme Court deemed mandatory life-without-parole sentences for teen offenders “unconstitutional.” David currently lives in a Twin Cities halfway house and wears a court-ordered GPS ankle monitor.

Although Speaker of the Minnesota House Rep. Lisa Demuth previously said that the law “doesn't ensure safety in the state of Minnesota,” Rep. Sandra Fiest praised passage of the 2023 law. “No one should have to spend their entire life behind bars for something they were convicted of as a child when they've spent decades being rehabilitated,” Fiest said in a statement to A&E Crime + Investigation. “The Supreme Court of the United States agrees, and now Minnesota statute reflects that decision.”

Riya Saha Shah, CEO of the Juvenile Law Center in Philadelphia, tells A&E Crime + Investigation that lawyers from the center served as counsel in the two key court cases that led to the elimination of mandatory life-without-parole. Shah explains that “harsh sentences,” like mandatory life-without-parole sentences, “completely fail to recognize the mere fact of childhood.”

Shah lauded the law changes, and says already, over 1,000 prisoners have been resentenced and reentered their communities. “There are still 3,000 incarcerated people who thought they were going to die in prison but now have a chance of coming home,” Shah says. “It is really remarkable to be where we are today, but there are still many, many individuals who are inside and waiting for their time, waiting for the opportunity to be heard by a parole board to be released. We have come very far but there is still quite a bit to go.”

Perry Moriearty, co-director of the Child Advocacy and Juvenile Justice Clinic at the University of Minnesota Law School, where she’s also a professor, notes that the human brain doesn’t fully develop until a person is in their mid-20s.

“By virtue of their reduced maturity, teenage offenders have diminished culpability,” Moriearty explains to A&E Crime + Investigation. “They should not be punished to the same degree as adults for the same conduct.”

She says she has colleagues who’ve worked with David and know him now, “and nearly everyone would say yes, something acute and catastrophic happened when he was a kid, and his record in the nearly 40 years since has been pretty unblemished.”

Josh Rovner, senior research analyst for the non-partisan Sentencing Project in Washington, D.C., says all available data shows that, when given a second chance at freedom, inmates previously serving life-without-parole sentences imposed during their teenage years are “extremely unlikely” to reoffend.

“They have exceptionally low recidivism rates, and that’s because people change from their teenage years,” Rovner points out to A&E Crime + Investigation. “That’s why people generally age out of crime as they get older. The arrest rate for 54-year-olds is vastly lower than the arrest rate for 24-year-olds. People change when they reach adulthood, so the idea you can make a decision at 16, of what the future holds for any individual, that’s the flaw in such sentences.”

Moriearty agrees. “Because they’re still developing, kids are far more amendable to rehabilitation,” he says. “Kids grow out of unlawful conduct, or are more likely to.”

Of course, these re-sentencings can be excruciating for the victim’s relatives.

“Here, they are told the person who killed their loved one would probably die in prison, and they’ve moved on with their lives to some extent,” Moriearty says. “These families hadn’t heard anything about these cases for years and years and are left to fend for themselves. They don’t look back.”

Then, without warning, “they’re being contacted by the Department of Corrections, by the courts, and it’s incredibly shocking for them,” she continues. “It has been very, very difficult for the victim’s family members to experience.”