Was Brandon Woodruff Wrongfully Convicted of His Parents’ Murder Due to Anti-Gay Bias?

The last time Brandon Woodruff claimed he saw his parents, Dennis and Norma Woodruff, he indulged in pizza with them at their new, manufactured home in Royse City, Texas, just outside of Dallas. It was the night of Sunday, October 16, 2005, and afterward, the 19-year-old student had to make the four-hour drive back to Abilene, Texas, where he was a freshman at Abilene Christian University.

Days passed, and loved ones were unable to get a hold of the couple. By Tuesday, a family friend found Dennis, 43, and Norma, 42, dead on their couch inside their double wide. Norma’s throat was slit and her body was riddled with five gunshot wounds, while Dennis was shot once and stabbed nine times in his face, neck and chest, per court records citing the autopsy. There were no signs of struggle or forced entry, leading investigators to believe the pair knew their killer.

Six days later, Woodruff—the last known person to see Dennis and Norma alive—was arrested and charged with capital murder in the deaths of his parents, after investigators found several inconsistencies in his whereabouts at the time of the slayings.

The startling allegations sent shockwaves throughout the quiet, north Texas community, and details about Woodruff’s purported secret life began to unravel.

“The unfortunate thing about all of this is he really is the most gentle soul that you'll ever meet,” Woodruff’s friend and host of the American Justice Podcast, Scott Poggensee, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “He has such an affinity for animals—taking care of them and training them. And he just has such a big heart.”

Throughout the investigation, detectives learned that although Woodruff had a girlfriend, he frequented gay night clubs and secretly dated men, according to court records. He also traveled to Florida to appear in adult movies under the pseudonym “Bradley Rivers,” OutSmart Magazine reported.

According to ABC News, eight of the 12 jurors in Woodruff’s 2009 trial admitted they believed homosexuality was morally wrong, but they vowed not to let Woodruff’s lifestyle have any bearing on their decision to convict. Still, Woodruff’s supporters believe prosecutors used the information of his secret life to sway the Hunt County jury.

“What the prosecution did is they used his sexuality to paint a picture that he's not a good person,” Poggensee alleges. “They [jurors] believed the prosecutors who said, ‘Well, if Brandon can lie about being gay, he can lie about killing his parents,’ and that was a mantra throughout the investigation and throughout the trial.”

The state alleged Woodruff was motivated to murder his mom and dad after informing them about his attraction to men that weekend.

“So much of what happens in a courtroom is storytelling; and if the storytelling painted the defendant as somebody who was suspect, who was morally bankrupt, in part because of his sexuality, I have a hard time believing that can sway the jury one way or the other,” Dr. Janani Umamaheswar, an associate professor in the Department of Criminology, Law and Society at George Mason University tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “I suspect that if conversations about a double life, and the fact that he was gay and he wasn't out—it paints a picture of somebody who is inherently suspicious.”

Umamaheswar believes that this “particular kind of story” can be “pretty damning” to “average people” who aren’t looking at a case “from a broader standpoint.”

Dennis’s sister, Kathy Lach, testified that while her brother expressed he was “very sad and hurt” over Woodruff’s reveal and concerned about the risk of AIDS in gay men, there was “no evidence, though, that Norma and Dennis, while disappointed, threatened to disown Brandon,” court documents stated.

Prosecutors alleged tensions between Woodruff and his mom and dad about his hidden sexuality, mounting credit card debt and failing grades, coupled with his desire to take over his mother’s truck and a payout from his parents’ life insurance policies, were enough motivation to kill.

“To ever say that Brandon had any kind of contentious relationship with his parents is just false,” Poggensee says. “There was no animosity or anything.”

During trial, Michelle Lee, the mother of Woodruff’s ex-girlfriend, testified a .45 caliber revolver and bullets were missing from her home before the murders occurred. Prosecutors alleged a bullet recovered at the crime scene was identical to the missing bullets. Lee’s revolver was never found, however investigators believe Woodruff used it to murder his parents.

Separately, Woodruff’s aunt alleged she discovered a dagger with Dennis’s blood in the barn of the family’s previous home in Heath, Texas, in June 2008. His former roommate testified it was the same dagger Woodruff kept in their dorm, but the prosecution could not definitively determine if it was the murder weapon.

Woodruff denied using both the gun and dagger.

The defense argued the lack of a murder weapon, witnesses and DNA evidence tying Woodruff to the crime proved his innocence. But, following a 12-day trial and five hours of deliberation, the jury delivered a guilty verdict.

“Jury members are asked to make a decision based on evidence that they’re presented with, and even though the standard should be beyond a reasonable doubt, how they interpret that is often not contingent on the availability of physical evidence,” Umamaheswar explains.

It’s difficult to say with certainty that Woodruff’s sexual orientation did not play a part in his conviction.

“Many parts of America, including Texas, are still very socially conservative when it comes to sexuality, so people often forget that jury members are susceptible to the same human biases as the rest of us,” Umamaheswar says. “And to pretend otherwise, I think, is to turn a blind eye to some of the faults in our criminal justice system.”

A judge sentenced Woodruff, now 39, to life in prison without the possibility of parole at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in Huntsville, Texas.

In 2010, Woodruff’s appeal to the state was denied.

Advocates believe Woodruff was set up and the real killers are still roaming free. Poggensee has his own suspicions about who pulled the trigger and drove the knife into Norma and Dennis that fateful night. He alleges it was a group of people who conspired against Woodruff—including his own older sister, Charla Woodruff, and two ex-friends. He suspects the group killed the couple and framed the former college student. Poggensee alleges Charla had a tumultuous relationship with her father and was motivated by the payout from her parents’ insurance policies to murder.

“I believe they all conspired together to make sure that all three [Norma, Dennis and Woodruff] of them died,” he speculates. But when they realized Woodruff wasn’t there, “then the next best thing is, ‘if we can't kill Brandon, I guess we'll just frame him.’”

Charla did not respond to A&E Crime + Investigation’s request for comment.

However, Poggensee’s personal speculation is not sufficient enough to get Woodruff’s case back before a judge.

“Once you've gone to prison, the standard for an exoneration is incredibly high,” Umamaheswar admits. “The defense would need something as close to conclusive as possible, if not actually conclusive. And that, to me, is something scientific, an actual confession or discovery of a murder weapon that exculpates him.”

In the meantime, the Innocence Project of Texas has taken on Woodruff’s case and they continue to work toward his exoneration.