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Real Murders of Orange County's new episode, titled Campus Killer, will revisit the murder case of Saddleback Community College student Robbin Brandley, on Oxygen at 9 p.m. ET.
The official synopsis of the episode, as per Rotten Tomatoes, reads:
"When an ambitious college student is stabbed to death after a campus concert, the brutality of the attack leads police to believe it must have been personal; the resolution nine years later, however, proves darker than anyone could have imagined."
The death baffled the police and it was labeled as a cold murder case for over 11 years. Despite the gruesome nature of the death, which in present times would be easily solved due to the abundance of DNA evidence, remained unsolved due to lack of technological resources at the time.
The police force's first instinct was to investigate a potential motive behind Brandley's murder. However, they could come up with nothing, leading the case to remain a mystery for over a decade.
Due to the consistent efforts of the police force and the technological advancements in the forensic evidence field, they were finally able to catch the culprit - serial killer Andrew Urdiales. He was later handed two life sentences for committing the murder, but it was only in 2018 that his sentence got changed to the death penalty.
Who was Robbin Brandley and how did she die?
Robbin Brandley was a 23-year-old Saddleback Community College student in the late 80s. She was pursuing a communications arts degree and was also working at the campus radio station KSBR. On January 18, 1986, Brandley had gone out to a jazz piano concert in the hopes of researching it and reporting about the same through the medium of the campus radio station.
As she left the venue, it is reported that Andrew Urdiales stalked Brandley home and stabbed her 41 times in the hands, neck, chest, and back in the Saddleback College's lot. The killing terrorized the community and the police were unable to find the motive behind her seemingly "random" killing. However, her parents were convinced that the murder was committed by someone that she knew.
Perhaps the most disturbing part of the killing is the fact that when Andrew Urdiales confessed to the murders, he revealed that he had no rational motive behind them, and was just "agitated" when his victims would beg for their life. When asked specifically about Robbin Brandley's murder, he revealed that he was simply wandering around Mission Viejo until he ended up in the dimly lit parking lot where he encountered Brandley. He continued by saying:
"It could have been anyone. She was just a random female."
However, Robbin Brandley's murder was just the start of the serial killer's streak as he then went on to commit several other murders over the period of the next 10 years. Andrew Urdiales was finally arrested in the year 1997 during a procedural gun test in the community. Despite the test results being still in the process of release, he confessed to all the murders, which led to immediate arrest and interrogation.
However, shockingly, the trials for the killings did not start until 2001, four years after Urdiales's original arrest. The delay in the legal proceedings was because of a political dilemma at the time about Urdiales' sentence in Illinois as the prosecutor on the case had asked for the death penalty. This became an issue because a study by Northwestern University claimed that the judicial system does not have the power to judge someone's innocence and give decisions related to life and death.
It wasn't until the year 2018 that Urdiales was finally given the death penalty under the Californian judicial system. However before the state could go through the punishment, Urdiales was found unresponsive in his cell and had reportedly committed suicide by hanging.
Catch the upcoming episode of the Real Murders of Orange County on July 7, 2023, at 9 p.m. ET, exclusively on Oxygen.
