Farmer Brown captures Murder Suspects

[pwd72s]

A long time fried here caught a pair of California bad asses. This is one of the stories you don't read in the anti-second amendment press, so thought I'd publish it here. I can add that this "Farmer Brown" is a former National Guard Captain. Both his sons are West Point Grads. Paul knows how to shoot...these suspects are lucky. Here's the story as published in the local paper:






Thursday, December 23, 2004
Last modified Wednesday, December 22, 2004 2:29 PM PST




Couple helped capture suspects

BY GEORGE PETROCCIONE
ALBANY DEMOCRAT-HERALD

LEBANON n When Paul Brown returned home from feeding cattle on his property near Stayton Monday afternoon, he found an Oregon State Trooper with a spike strip down the hill from his driveway on Ty Valley Road.

"I asked him what was going on," Brown said. "And he told me that they were looking for a couple of criminals."

Brown decided the best thing to do was to go home to the house he has shared with his wife, Lynden, for 32 years, load the guns, and lock the doors. He couldn't know he and his wife would have a hand in capturing the fugitives the following day.

Earlier Monday afternoon, officers from the Lebanon Police Department, Linn County Sheriff's Office and the Oregon State Police had begun searching the area south of Lebanon and Rock Hill Drive when they found an abandoned car that they believed two murder suspects from California had been driving.

The green Ford Escort had been found in a wooded area on Dogwood Street at the top of Tyler Hill.

Monday afternoon police and a K-9 unit from the U.S. Forest Service scoured the area south of Lebanon but were unable to locate the fugitives. The search was called off shortly before 10 p.m., but officers remained in the area.

Meanwhile down the hill, the Browns' 2-year-old dog, Chief, was back behind the house barking his head off.

Brown said it was sometime between 9 and 10 p.m. Monday when the dog started acting up.

Brown got out of bed, grabbed a flashlight and his .38-caliber handgun and went out to see what was getting the dog so upset.

As he walked back behind the house, Chief was concentrating on an old trailer that the family calls "The Pig." Realizing that it could be the two fugitives, Brown decided to go back in the house and brought the dog with him to keep him from barking all night.

He went back to sleep, putting the gun next to the bed.

The next morning when they got up, the Browns went and sat in the hot tub for a while, but again the dog started barking.

"When I heard the dog start whooping, I knew they were still here," said Mrs. Brown, a science teacher at Lebanon High School. "We got out of the hot tub, got dressed, and Paul went out to get some wood."

"That's when we saw her," she said. "She had come out of The Pig."

Paul went over to the woman and asked her what she was she was doing. Lynden went and called 9-1-1.

"Paul wasn't going to challenge them when he didn't know what they had or what state of affairs they were in," Mrs. Brown said. "He just tried to coax them out."

Paul said he told the woman to get her boyfriend out of the trailer and he would get them a cup of coffee.

"I decided to give them a few minutes, to see what they were going to do," Paul said. "So we walked down the driveway to get the mail.

When the Browns returned, both the man and woman were standing by the corner of the house.

"We could see their hands and that they had no firearms," Lynden said.

The pair looked miserable.

"They looked like they were ready to meet Jesus," Brown said. "They were cold and wet and only had one pair of shoes between them."

Mrs. Brown: "That's when Paul unlocked the pickup and pulled a gun out from behind it and set it on the seat."

Paul also had a gun in his pocket.

"He told him his troubles were over and for him to just stand right there," Mrs. Brown said.

"He kind of made a believer out of him," she said.

As Lynden went to get the woman a cup of coffee, Linn County sheriff's deputies arrived to make the arrest.

The two suspects, Anthony Dale Coyne, 45, and Jennifer Janel Erskine, 32, are accused of killing an Antioch, Calif., Man, Bill Dorrian, 54, whose body had been found bound with tape and wrapped in a sheet in a bedroom of his childhood home on Dec. 2.

A deputy coroner in Contra Costa County told the Contra Costa Times that Dorrian had been strangled and had trauma to his head, torso and extremities.

As of this morning Erskine and Coyne were being held in the Linn County Jail awaiting extradition to California.

As for the Browns, they are looking forward to Christmas and a visit from their son and daughter-in-law, Jason and Robin Brown, both captains in the Army who are returning home after serving as helicopter pilots in Afghanistan.

"We're going to have a wonderful Christmas, Lynden Brown said. "It couldn't be any better."

George Petroccione can be reached at 258-6441 or george.petroccione@dhonline.com


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[Hugh R]

He thought they were in the trailer at night and he went back to sleep? In the morning he thought they were there and went in the hot tub? WTF?

[david914]

Your friend sounds like a pretty level headed fella. I doubt most people would have remained that calm under the same circumstances. Another good example of Second Ammendment rights put to proper use!

[pwd72s]

Originally posted by Hugh R
He thought they were in the trailer at night and he went back to sleep? In the morning he thought they were there and went in the hot tub? WTF?

Ahhh, you gotta know Paul to understand that. He was probably more worried over the thought of a SWAT team disturbing the livestock he keeps on his 40 acre home place than he was about the suspects. (He also has a few hundred acres near Stayton, where his main livestock biz takes place.) A chilly December Oregon night kept them hiding out in the trailer, so he probably figured they weren't going anywhere until he chose to deal with them. Back to sleep? You can bet he was fully dressed, with his boots on. Chief would have let him know if anybody was close to the house. The hot tub was a little off the wall, but I'm thinking a gun was handy. Like I said, you gotta know Paul. I'm sure he had things well under control, was choosing his time and place for any confrontations. Oregon police often let momma nature help them in fugitive situations this time of the year. They surround the area and wait. One frigid Oregon night in the brush without the proper gear, and many fugitives find themselves begging for a warm jail cell.

[RoninLB]

Oregun is wet & cold at night 3 seasons/yr. Not like Colorado dew at all. A lot of Oregun needs at least 3hrs of daylight to burn it off, if your lucky. Those two must have been sorry campers in the am.

or the jerks should have found a hot spring.