Victim's family relieved murder suspect in custody
| Tuesday, Feb 09 2010 02:30 PM
Last Updated Tuesday, Feb 09 2010 02:31 PM
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Michael Charles Brown in court for a pre-preliminary hearing, which was postponed until May.
A brother-in-law of a 2000 murder victim said Tuesday he is glad the suspect, Michael Charles Brown Jr., is in custody.
"This guy could be doing somebody else," Devon Harris said outside a courtroom where Brown's criminal case was delayed to May. "I'm happy as long as he's off the street."
Brown, 34, is charged with murdering Harris' sister-in-law, 39-year-old Ruby Lee Jackson-Meriweather, and he's also charged with raping four women between 2007 and 2008.
He told one of those four women that he has killed other women, according to police investigation reports.
Jackson-Meriweather was one of five women stabbed to death between 1998 and 2001 whose cases were sent to the FBI laboratory in Quantico, Va., in 2002 based on an FBI analysis that the cases may be linked, police said then.
The five women were either drug users or prostitutes, police reported.
The results of those tests have not been released and neither Bakersfield police nor prosecutor John Lua are commenting on whether Brown is a suspect in any other killing.
But the sheriff's department has said Brown has been questioned in connection with the 2001 stabbing death and sexual assault of a sixth woman -- 24-year-old Wendy Kyle in Oildale. He has not been ruled out as a suspect in that case, deputies have said.
Harris said he "feels pretty good" that they have arrested a suspect in Jackson-Merriweather's death. "But I hate that my sister-in-law had to pay with her life."
He said going seven years without an arrest left the family with no closure.
The murder charge against Brown in the Jackson-Meriweather case stems from DNA evidence developed by the Kern County Crime Lab, prosecutors have said. She was found by one of her four children nude and stabbed to death at her home in the 500 block of Grace Street.
Harris said, "They got the DNA and the DNA doesn't lie."
Brown was in court Tuesday for a pre-preliminary hearing in the 20-count murder and sexual assault case that is being prosecuted as a death penalty case. It was delayed to May 5 and 6 because possible DNA evidence is still being analyzed.
Brown has pleaded not guilty to the charges.
