MDOC, police knew Delta Twp. man had violated parole 4 days before two women killed

Lansing State Journal

DELTA TWP. — Parole agents and sheriff deputies knew a Lansing-area man with a violent history had violated his parole and been accused of assault four days before he allegedly killed two Ingham County women and targeted two others, records show.

Michigan Department of Corrections agents issued a warrant and contacted Kiernan Brown, 27, as soon as Eaton County Sheriff's Department deputies told them a domestic violence and assault report had been made against Brown on May 6, MDOC spokesperson Holly Kramer said.

But Brown replied that he “is in class all day and has finals” at Lansing Community College, according to records obtained under Michigan’s Freedom of Information Act. Instead, Brown offered to report to his parole agent the next day.

He never did.

By May 9, agents still did not have Brown in custody, according to records. An MDOC agent again texted Brown, who told the agent he would turn himself in to a mental institution for evaluation the next morning.

That would be too late.

In the early morning hours of May 10, Brown allegedly killed 26-year-old Kaylee Brock and 32-year-old Julie Mooney.

History repeats itself

Brown had been living with his girlfriend in Delta Township until they broke up in early May. Once he started to show violent tendencies and turned on her young son and dog, she filed a personal protection order in Eaton County.

She reported the assault to the Eaton County Sheriff’s Office on May 5, days after she said it occurred

She filed the protection order May 6, detailing violent behavior that had begun earlier this year. Reached at home Friday, she declined to comment further.

“He followed me and grabbed me I turned and begged him to leave me alone he grabbed my throat and squeezed until I couldn’t breath (sic) then shoved me by my throat I fell backwards over the dog crate and hit my head,” she wrote in the PPO.

Eaton County deputies did not arrest Brown that day because they felt they didn't have probable cause.

Such behavior wasn’t new for Brown. He’d just spent three and a half years in prison after pleading guilty to assault by strangulation and domestic violence. As a part of his plea deal, stalking and unlawful imprisonment charges were dismissed.

At the Eaton County Sheriff’s Office, Capt. Jeff Campbell said deputies handled the May 6 assault complaint properly.

“I honestly say this was a textbook case of how you should be handling a domestic,” Campbell said.

Brown wasn’t arrested because “he wasn’t charged with anything and there wasn’t a warrant for his arrest,” he said. But MDOC parole officers issued a warrant for Brown's arrest as a parole absconder and began looking for him that same day, Kramer said.

At the same time, the woman “was making the report for a reason,” he said. “I think she felt he was dangerous.”

Years prior, Brown told another ex-girlfriend that she "wasn't going to send him to jail," and that he would kill her first, according to a personal protection order filed in 2014.

He said almost the same thing to his then-girlfriend in 2019, she wrote in a court petition to have Brown involuntarily committed for mental health treatment. Brown said “his death is on my hands” and that he couldn’t take the pain anymore. He said he “will never go back to prison, he will kill himself first,” she wrote.

Eaton County Probate Court Judge Thomas Byerley approved the request for treatment May 6, saying Brown required immediate assessment because he presented a substantial risk of significant physical or mental harm to himself or others in the near future.

Byerley ordered a psychiatrist or psychologist at a Community Mental Health prescreening unit or a local hospital emergency room see Brown and hospitalize him. Brown had to be taken into custody for treatment by May 16.

'I took a mother from her daughters'

In the early morning hours of May 10, Brown stopped by his ex-girlfriend's house, knocked on her door, begged to come inside and sent her a few disturbing texts. He said he "loved her so he spared her, and she would know what that meant soon," Ingham County Sheriff Scott Wriggelsworth said.

Police believe when he left, armed with a knife and a hammer, his intentions were to kill four women.

He only got to two — Brock and Mooney — before Eaton County deputies caught up to him.

"There’s no doubt he was on a killing spree,” Wriggelsworth said.

Browned showed the deputies photos of the women's bodies on his phones, and police immediately set out to do welfare checks on the women.

"I took a mother from her daughters," Brown said after he was arrested. "She didn't do anything wrong she was just trying to help me."

He's charged with two counts of murder and two counts of armed robbery in Ingham County, along with assault with the intent to do great bodily harm less than murder, domestic violence-third offense and abandoning or cruelty to an animal in connection to the Eaton County incident from early May.

He was taken to the Eaton County Jail and examined by a psychiatrist and psychologist, Dr. Jennifer Stanley and Dr. Tonia Webster, on May 14, who both found him to be mentally ill. Stanley believed he had an unspecified depressive disorder and Webster diagnosed antisocial personality disorder. Both believed he struggled with substance abuse disorders.

Brown mentioned demons and spirits, Stanley noted in her report, and has had auditory and visual hallucinations since he was young.

Homicidal ideations

In 2011, when Brown was 19, a social worker filed a court petition for involuntarily commitment because Brown had “homicidal ideations,” according to the petition.

Just days before, Brown had spoken to the case manager at the Crossroads Program about wanting to be the “best serial killer people have ever seen,” according to the statement of events filed with the court petition.

He shared those thoughts with several people in the Crossroads Program, a transitional living program for young people who aren't able to live at home. That same month, Brown told the residential program manager that he was stressed and upset, and that some days he felt like he could kill someone, according to an email filed with the court petition.

Brown didn't have any serious violent criminal history until the assault charges in 2014.

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Contact reporter Kara Berg at 517-377-1113 or kberg@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @karaberg95. Contact Paul Egan: 517-372-8660 or pegan@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @paulegan4. Read more on Michigan politics and sign up for our elections newsletter.