#RememberThem: Brenda

“Woman found dead of drug overdose,” read the small headline on the right rail of a newspaper page when Brenda was found inside an abandoned house on West Grand in Highland Park, Michigan, in April 1992. Her mom took exception to that. And yes, she was correct -- it was not a drug overdose, it was a cold-blooded killer. 

Brenda was born in the early 1950s to Booker and Maggie. She had an older brother, Fred, and an older sister, Dianne, as well as a younger brother, Frankie. They grew up on Detroit's east side, on Dean Avenue between Outer Drive and Eight Mile Road. Brenda graduated from Central High School. She seemed headed in the right direction, completing training to become a nurses’ aide. But soon after she moved out of the house at age 19, things started to go in another direction for Brenda.

Brenda's autopsy was later corrected to reflect her true cause of death. She is one of the women we honor in the #RememberThem series. Look for other posts on this same blog to learn more about each and every one of the women assaulted by Benjamin Atkins, because they were much more than names in a news report.

The police sketch from the scene where Brenda was found on West Grand. She was lying face down with a mattress and box spring on top of her. 

This post is part of a series on this blog that I am calling #RememberThem, a chance to honor the women who encountered the two Detroit serial killers I have researched, John Eric Armstrong and Benjamin ("Tony") Atkins. In this continuing series, with installments dropping every week or so, we first learn more about the women Armstrong was known to have killed in Detroit, plus two of his survivors, then we turn to the women who encountered Atkins. Click on the "Honoring the Victims" label on the left to see all of the parts in the series. Also see the #RememberThem series on YouTube.

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Above photo is a copyrighted image of a case file and specifically for use in The Crack City Strangler: The Homicides of Serial Killer Benjamin Atkins; any other use prohibited without permission.

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Murders in the Motor City Series

(And yes, that photo on the book's cover is actually a photo of Atkins; see this blog post on the confusion over his photos.)