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In February 1984, Terri Brooks was found brutally beaten, stabbed, and strangled to death at a Roy Rogers restaurant in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, where she worked as a night manager. The safe at the establishment was left open and empty, and the contents inside the victim's purse spilled out. The case stumped law enforcement for nearly 15 years before they got a breakthrough.
Using DNA evidence found underneath Brooks' fingernails, authorities were able to link the 25-year-old victim's fiance Alfred Scott Keefe to the killing. Afterwards, Keefe confessed to the crime and was charged with first-degree murder and robbery.
Terri Brooks' decades-old killing is set to feature on ID's A Time to Kill in an episode titled Fast Food Cold Justice. The synopsis of the episode reads:
"A late-night break-in at a Pennsylvania chain restaurant leaves assistant manager Terri Brooks brutally slain; when another female restaurant employee is murdered in a nearby town, detectives fear there's a serial killer on the loose."
The all-new episode will air on the channel this Thursday, April 6, at 9 pm ET.
Terri Brooks was beaten, stabbed, strangled, and died of asphyxiation in what seemed like a robbery-gone-wrong
Terri Brooks, 25, was the manager at Roy Rogers in Falls Township, Pennsylvania, in February 1984 when she was viciously attacked at the restaurant. Her family noticed that she hadn't returned home when her concerned fiance Alfred Scott Keefe showed up at the house early on the morning of February 4, informing them that her car was not in the driveway.
Reports state that Brooks was last seen by her family when she was leaving the house for her shift the previous evening. They then called her workplace only to find that she had been murdered and that her manager found her body near the kitchen inside the locked restaurant after the opening hours at 6 am. The manager then called law enforcement to report the discovery.
At the crime scene, Terri Brooks' body was found close to the kitchen with a butcher knife protruding from her neck. She was suffocated with a trash can liner wrapped around her face. The moisture inside it from her breath suggested that she was still alive when it was placed over her head.
An autopsy confirmed that she was strangled. She had multiple black and blue marks and bruises all over her body, especially the hand marks around her neck. Her head was also repeatedly banged on the concrete floor, causing severe brain hemorrhage. The stab wounds, however, only paralyzed her, and she only died of asphyxiation, which was the official cause of death.
The victim was still wearing her winter coat, and the contents of her purse spilled out near the body. The safe was open and empty, with around $2,500 stolen. Her manager also told authorities that the drive-thru window was partially open when he arrived at the restaurant that morning. The crime scene indicated a struggle between the victim and her attacker during the burglary.
How was Terri Brooks' cold case solved, and why was she murdered?
Police initially suspected one of the cooks at the restaurant, a former Marine named Steve Daley, whom Terri Brooks had recently gotten fired after he threw a tantrum in the kitchen, calling her "a bitch." He later returned to the restaurant as a customer to "annoy" her. Although Daley's alibi was weak, he passed a polygraph test and was ruled out as a suspect, similar to all the other workers.
But a critical piece of evidence - skin tissue under Terri Brooks' fingernails and from near a defensive wound on the bottom of her right ring finger - was later used to find the killer after the case went cold for nearly 14 years. Until then, authorities followed pointless leads and even believed that a serial killer was involved after two female restaurant employees were attacked in unrelated incidents.
Years later, DNA found on the victim's body matched a sample collected from cigarette butts smoked by Brooks' then-fiance Alfred Scott Keefe. He failed a polygraph test and eventually confessed to the crime. Keefe admitted that he snapped and killed Brooks because she wanted to break up with him and then staged the crime scene to make it look like a robbery gone wrong.
Keefe was arrested in February 1999 and was charged with first-degree murder and robbery. He pleaded guilty the following year and was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
A Time to Kill on ID will further delve into the case this Thursday, April 6.
