Something Wicked This Way Comes by M.P. Pellicer

Something Wicked This Way Comes

11/26/2024

by M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
In a duplex across from a pre-school and middle school, police made a disturbing discovery in 1990. Three strange people lived there. They were self-proclaimed satanists and killers for hire.

A quiet duplex at 4450 Coral Springs Dr. was the home of satanists and alleged killers-for-hire c.1990

Coral Springs police closed a 5-month investigation, which they opened when neighbors complained of disturbances and drug activity at a 3-bedroom duplex located in a quiet, residential neighborhood. An undercover detective named Robert Vernon infiltrated the small group, perhaps seeking to discover a drug trafficking hub, but it blossomed into something unexpected.

The occupants of the duplex were: Linda Barszcz, 34, who described herself as the "high priestess" of the coven; her husband, Michael Barszcz, 29, who shared his wife with Julian Samaniego, 18, a Colombian teenager who was described as Linda's "slave" and was her constant companion, including sharing the same bed every night with her.

Linda Barszcz moved to Florida from Massachusetts 6 years before, and had lived at the address for about a year.

The group was involved in selling drugs, stealing religious objects and recruiting new members mostly juveniles. In preparation for contact with the group Vernon studied a satanic bible, so there must have been some intel that they were into the occult.

The day of the arrest, Vernon was to be initiated into the cult which would take place after he buried a valuable object in the woods, desecrated a holy object or building and the evening would end in a "Night of Lust".

The group told Vernon they had "no problem killing people or slitting their throats." They even alluded to being involved and witnessing other murders.

Linda Barszcz and Samaniego offered to set up a meeting to help Vernon murder a person for $20K — $10K before and the other half afterward. They were unaware the person Vernon wanted to knock off was fictional and didn't exist.

Inside a closet officers found an altar, with a bowl filled with coins, medallions, human teeth and locks of hair. There was also marijuana, a knife and yellow, black, blue and red candles. Police also found a picnic basket used to carry tools for outdoor rituals.

Authorities seized a gold chalice and bowl that were stolen from St. Andrews Catholic Church, which was situated 2 miles away from the duplex.

Linda Barszcz and Julian Samaniego were charged with conspiracy to solicit first-degree murder. Samaniego was able to bail out, but a judge denied bail for Linda. She begged the judge she needed Valium, which she had been taking for 5 years. The judge ordered a medical check for her.

Michael Barszcz was charged with possession of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia, and bonded out for $100. He said his wife was a paralegal who had been out of work for a year because of depression.

In October, 1990 Linda Barszcz pled guilty to conspiracy to solicit 2nd-degree murder and was sentenced to a year and a day in state prison. She was given credit for the 5 months she had been sitting in jail. If she would have faced her original charge of conspiracy to solicit first-degree murder she would have faced a sentence of 12 to 17 years in prison.

The defense lawyer said his client never planned to carry out a murder, only to scam Vernon out of the money.

Michael Barszcz denied that they were satanists, and were only involved in earth worship. Considering they were stealing and desecrating religious objects, that was probably a lie.

Patricia "Patty" Lanza, a 4-year-old was killed in 1988. Her case remains unsolved

Only a year before, South Florida had a rash of murder mysteries with occult overtones. On July 2, 1988 the nude body of Patty Lanza, age 4 was found in some bushes on Little Torch Key. Police found her jump suit and underwear in the woods, not far from the body. The child had been sexually assaulted with a blunt object, then clubbed on the head with a different weapon.

Two weeks later Sherry Perisho, 39, a one-time beauty queen known in the neighborhood as the Rainmaker was murdered. She talked about the magic of Saturn, and claimed she could make it rain, which is how she earned her moniker. Known to live on the streets, she slept on a green dinghy. She had been drowned, her throat was slashed with so much brutality her spine was severed. Her body was cut up and the heart removed. She was reeled in by a group of fishermen at Big Pine Channel Key, who thought they had landed a large fish.

Five months later the nude body of Lisa Sanders, 20, was found on No Name Key. She was a small woman, 4'9" in height and weighing 105 pounds. The victim was raped, her organs, heart and eyes had been removed. She was dragged with a rope or chain around her neck down a coral-rock roadway behind a vehicle for about half a mile, while she was still alive. Ironically Lisa had beat leukemia, which she had been diagnosed with when she was 9 years old.

In October, 1988 she moved into a trailer at Big Pine Key, near her parents’ winter home.

It was December, 1988 when Lisa Sanders arrived at a party on No Name Key about 7:30 p.m. There were about 120 teenagers and young adults attending, and two hours later Lisa wanted to leave, however her friends wanted to stay and refused to drive her home. They saw Sanders walk away from the party alone. There is only one way into the small island that measures a mile wide and two miles long.

That was the last time she was seen alive. Her family reported her missing that night.

Later there was debate if her organs had been removed by vultures who were pecking at her remains when she was discovered, however the extent and method of the organ removal could not have been done by animals.

"Missing from the body were most of the heart, brain, eyes, neck muscles, appendix, colon, vagina, left Fallopian tube, ovaries, bladder, thyroid gland and parts of the lung."

Sanders' parents lived next door to the Glendennings, Patty Lanza's grandparents.

In 2015, Crime Stoppers offered at $2,500 reward in the case, but as of 2024 it remains unsolved.

The main road on No Name Key c.2010 (Source-M.C.BAND)

A few days later, a pentagram was found sprayed on the ground about 2,000 feet from where the body was found. The Sheriff said several satanic groups practiced throughout the Keys.

By the summer of 1989, police were looking at Stephen "Michael" Bologna, a 35-year-old treasure hunter who had known two of the victims. He had taken Patty Lanza's mother to a party on Little Torch Key, the day before the child's body was discovered. He also dated Sherry Perisho. Bologna said he was elsewhere when both murders occurred.

When the investigation was ongoing, Bologna left town for an undisclosed location supposedly due to the rumors floating about his possible involvement in the crimes. A few years later he legally changed his surname.

The police did not find any evidence to tie him directly to any of the murders.

Sherry Perisho grad picture

Buck Sandige, his landlord said it was just a coincidence he knew both women, and described him as a "lonely guy", who was always on the lookout for a good wife, but at times ended up with women "with a lot of problems". He was known to pick up girls hitchhiking on the highway (U.S. 1), but most of them were usually tramps, and he would just say bye. He motored about in a small boat looking for treasure, and had a yellow tow truck he drove around fixing people's cars. Bologna had his 5-year-old son living with him.

Sherry Perisho had lived with him for about 3 weeks, and the landlord said that Bologna felt sorry for her. He fixed the small dinghy where she slept. It was anchored beneath a bridge; this was where she was killed.

Bologna also fixed things for Deborah Glendenning Lanza, Patty's mother. She was known never to wear shoes, because she just didn't like them. The day Patty was murdered, he had taken Deborah Lanza and her four children along with his son to the party on Little Torch Key. Some reported that Patty's mother seemed disoriented or under the effects of drugs, when the realization was made her daughter was missing.

Patty Lanza's grandparents and Lisa Sanders' parents believed the murders were linked in some way to a satanic cult.

Lisa Sanders with her still thinning hair due to cancer treatments c.1980s

Rev. Daniel Knox, pastor of the Big Pine Christian Center said he had pentagrams formed in stone on the porch outside the church, and someone had once hung a dead chicken on their church door.

It was noted that the murders had brought attention to the problem of satanism in the Keys. Rhonda Poor worked at a church in Marathon. She said she had had counseled six or seven "recovering cultists" who were once active members of satanist groups in the area.

None of the organs removed from the victims were ever found.

According to Dade County Medical Examiner Joseph Davis, who was a consultant on one of the Keys murders he said: "There's a very compelling link in these three murders; geography and time."

However despite the small population in the area, the leads dried up, and so did any answers as to who had committed these grisly crimes.

Darlene Toler was killed in 1995. She is believed to have been a victim of Charlie Brandt

In 1996, a decapitated corpse was found floating in a rock pit in Oakland Park, a city in Broward County, Florida. He was a man estimated to be between 20 to 30 years old, and his hands were missing as well. Coincidentally the city is located about 11 miles from Coral Springs, where the cult operated from in 1990.

Police then started to piece together other similar murders. In Hillsborough County, they also had a body with no head or hands. The unidentified male was 30 to 50 years old, and he had a small, homemade tattoo known as a pachuco on his inner left ankle. Three other Florida counties would end up calling the authorities at Oakland Park homicide department, because they had similar murders committed in their jurisdiction.

In Miami, detectives had no leads in the murder of Darlene Toler, 35, a prostitute and mother of three. She was killed in November, 1995 and the corpse was left without a head and heart. Her body was stuffed in a black, plastic bag and left along a road in the remote, western end of Dade County.

The murder of Sherry Perisho was recalled, and that she had been killed in a grisly murder, where someone had cut "her body from neck to pelvis and removed her heart." Seven years later her killer walked free.

Sketch made from eyewitness' description of a man leaving the area of where Sherry Perisho was murdered c.1988

In 2004, investigators were looking at these older cold cases from South Florida to see if they were similar to recent slayings in Seminole County.

Don Eslinger, Seminole County Sheriff said: "The M.O. and type of behavior at this scene was very similar to those in Monroe and Dade."

The crime he was referring to her were the stabbing death of Teri Brandt, 46, and her niece Michelle Jones, 37. Carl "Charlie" Brandt, 47, committed the horrendous crime as Hurricane Ivan bore down on the Florida Keys, and he and his wife had evacuated their home in Big Pine Key. Jones, an executive at The Golf Channel, had opened her home in Maitland to her aunt and her husband.

Brandt's body was found hanging in the garage by a yellow bedsheet. He left no note. It would take many months for the police to unravel the secret life of Charlie Brandt (1957-2004).

What many in the area where he lived did not know, is that Brandt had killed his 8-month, pregnant mother Ilse, his unborn brother and seriously injured his father Herbert, when he was 13 years old. He had used a Luger pistol he took from his father's nightstand drawer. Then he attempted to kill his sister Angela as well, but he had run out of bullets. He then tried to strangle her. She was able to soothe her brother, and then ran off to a neighbor's house screaming for help.

Carl "Charlie" Brandt

The only motive police could find for the teenager's berserk behavior was that his father had shot an ailing dog earlier that day.

Up to that moment the family was ordinary. Mr. and Mrs. Brandt immigrated from Germany after WWII in 1955. Herbert Brandt went on to work for International Harvester, a German-based company. By 1971, the Brandts and their four children lived in a tree-lined neighborhood in Fort Wayne, Indiana at 6208 Stony Brook Drive.

Carl Brandt never offered an explanation for his acts. He told the judge: "I didn't really want to. It was like I was sort of programmed. I hesitated, but the next thing I knew I had shot them." A 13-year-old using the word programmed was very unusual.

His sister Angela described where he had a glazed look in his eyes when he was attacking her. For the remainder of her life she would remain afraid of her brother.

Three separate psychiatric evaluations failed to determine what triggered the shooting. Charlie Brandt had no diagnosable mental illness, and it was determined he was not hallucinating at the time. He was evaluated to be mature for his age and did well in school, with no behavioral issues, at least until the day of the murders.

Due to his age Brandt was never criminally charged, and he spent a year in a state-run mental health facility. A year later, his father petitioned for his release and he was turned over to his care. Brandt's two younger sisters were unaware he had killed their mother. They were told she had died in a car accident, and did not learn the truth until 2004.

Herbert Brandt had remarried, and to escape the notoriety of his son's actions, he moved the family to Ormond Beach, Florida in 1972. For some unknown reason, two years later he moved back to Indiana with his daughters and new wife. Charlie Brandt, already 17, stayed behind in Florida with his sister Angela at their grandparent's home.

One has to wonder if Herbert Brandt feared his son would murder his wife and two young daughters, and felt only hundreds of miles could safeguard them?

Michelle Jones and Teri Brandt

After the double murder in 2004, the authorities questioned if during the intervening years, Charlie Brandt had claimed other victims. His passport, credit card receipts any other record that could be retrieved, were scoured by police to determine the details of his life in Florida, after spending one year at Central State Hospital. Something that aided the police was that Brandt kept meticulous mileage records.

Authorities received inquiries as far away as Germany and Holland. Details were not disclosed, but it's believed they were comparing cold cases with any visits from Charlie Brandt in their country.

It was surmised that Teresa Brandt was aware of her husband's past, and in fact suspected him in the death of Sherry Perisho. She had even confided her suspicions to Jim Graves, who was once married to Angela Brandt. Authorities later found that Teri Brandt kept a diary that confided some marital troubles, but no violence.

Both women were repeatedly stabbed. Teri had defensive wounds on her left hand. She was found on the living room couch. Her husband pulled down her panties, and posed her body.

Her niece's body was found in the master bedroom. She had been raped ad decapitated. Brandt had also used a kitchen knife to cut on her body with the skill of a surgeon. He had removed her breasts, abdominal wall, liver, a segment of the colon and intestines. The left leg was removed at the femoral head and her upper left arm had been partially removed. He cut her chest cavity open and removed her organs, including the heart.

Police believed Brandt had fantasized about committing this act for years.

After killing the women he had cut apart Victoria's Secret bras and underwear, and left them scattered around Jones' room. He also left his bloody clothes at the foot of the bed. Several knives used in the crime were found in the house. He changed into clean clothing before hanging himself.

During the search of the Brandts' home in Big Pine Key it was found that Victoria’s Secret catalogues, were addressed to Charlie, not Teresa.

The savagery of Brandt's attack on his wife and her niece were used as a comparison to unsolved murder cases.

Carol Lynn Sullivan

One of the unsolved cases police examined was the death of Carolyn Sullivan on September 20, 1978. The 12-year-old disappeared from a school bus stop in Osteen. Two weeks later her head was found in a paint can in a remote area of Deltona. Her body was never recovered. By then Brandt had moved in with his best friend's family, after his own returned to Indiana, and he left his grandparent's home. While having dinner, the family talked about death of the girl, and he started laughing maniacally spitting food from his mouth. The family was so disturbed they asked him to move out.

Around that time Brandt had graduated from Seabreeze High School and went on to Daytona Beach Community College, where he earned an Associate's Degree. He was working in Flagler County.

In the intervening years Brandt had met and married Teresa Helfrich in 1986. They had moved to Big Pine Key the month before Perisho's murder. Their house was 4 blocks from the bridge.

Serial killers, Otis Toole, Jeffrey Dahmer, Gerard Schaeffer and Henry Lucas were all operating around the same time period in Florida. Gerard Schaeffer specifically mentioned No Name Key as a location where women were taken for the use of a resident satanic cult.

Some believed it was no coincidence that Brandt bought a property in Big Pine Key.

Brandt worked as a tech for Lockheed Martin Corp., and later during the investigation, Hans Kemmler, one of Charlie’s co-workers, said there was no hint of anything seriously wrong in Brandt’s past.

When Darlene Toler was killed in 1995, Brandt worked as a radar technician on Cudjoe Key, a job that required him to travel to Miami from time to time. Later when police reviewed his travelogue they found a 100-mile trip to where Darlene was last seen. Authorities believed that Charlie drove from the Keys to Miami to hunt for a victim.

Initially the police said that a search of the Brandts' home on Big Pine Key uncovered evidence that confirmed the theory that he was involved in other murders. His computer records showed he visited internet sites having to do with death fetish erotica, snuff films and erotic horror. There was also an anatomy poster of the female skeletal and muscular systems on the back of the couple's bedroom door.

Angela Brandt divulged the "family secret" to police that her brother had committed murder at the age of 13.

By October, 2005 the police had pored over Brandt's records including journals his wife kept. Their search had them look at 26 unsolved murders in Florida that were committed since he moved to the state in 1973. These cases were selected by an FBI computer program as being similar to Brandt's M.O. There were also 400 cases of missing women.

A co-worker of Brandt's who worked on a radar blimp facility in Cudjoe Key, told police that Brandt often talked about his wife's niece and how beautiful she was, however he only referred to her as "Victoria's Secret."

In 2006, authorities pinned the murder of Sherry Perisho on Charlie Brandt, and the case was closed. This was based on a combination of similarities between the stabbing deaths, and eyewitness identification of a man crossing the road shortly after the murder. Teri Brandt had also told acquaintances that she saw him wet and bloody the night of the murder. When she asked him what happened, he responded that he was fishing, and cleaning the fish he had caught.

Were there occult overtones in the murders of Perisho and Sanders?

Before he married Teri, Brandt worked at Ford Aerospace, an electronic warfare range in Daytona Beach.

One big job was known as "Fat Albert", a drug intervention project military surveillance system, developed in the early 1970s. Big balloons transmitted information about drug smugglers who tried to fly under the radar.

Brandt also worked on a private military base in the Bahamas. He would be flown in by helicopter, and lived on housing provided by Raytheon.

There was a suspicion that he worked with the CIA. He traveled all over the world for his work, supposedly in his tech capacity.

Though later it was denied, his employers were fully aware of his background, since he was turned down for a pilot's license by them.

By 1985, Charlie Brandt had quit his job in the Bahamas and moved to Astor, Florida. He had bought a house, with funds it's believed he made from selling cast-off shipments of cocaine he located with the help of Fat Albert. Left floating on the water, he would retrieve them, while claiming he was out fishing.

It seemed no one ever questioned, including the IRS, how Charlie Brandt was able to build a house in the Florida Keys which cost him approximately $250K in 1987.

Reporters were told to leave out details about him, and just report the crime when the murders splashed the front page in Florida newspapers. One can only surmise this was done to save face for his employers, past and present.

Charlie Brandt's father tried to keep his psychiatric records hidden, and he did not release any of the information, however the investigators finally obtained them. What was on them has never been revealed, and there is a suspicion they were covering something up that happened in the asylum in Indiana. However it was Angela Brandt who told authorities about the family secret, and how her brother had become a murderer at the age of 13. In a taped interview with police in 2004, she said that now she could sleep at night.

She also filled in gaps about her brother's childhood and their family. She revealed that she herself was a product of an affair between her father and their aunt. Charlie also had an intimate relationship with their aunt. She described where Charlie had been abused by both of his parents. Angela Brandt also described where there was a family history of mental problems.

In the days before Charlie Brandt killed his wife and her niece, he visited with his father Herbert, and a younger sister Jessica, who later told police he seemed anxious to return to his home in Big Pine Key.

In the aftermath of Michelle Jones' murder her father succeeded in passing Michelle Lynn's Law in Florida, which unseals homicide records involving juveniles.

The house where Charlie Brandt committed his last crime has been sold five times since 2004, the last transaction took place in 2020.

Early resident of Big Pine Key c.1943

As to the murder of Lisa Sanders, the Monroe County Police Department at one time had a "person of interest" in the case, who was imprisoned for a murder in Ohio. His name is Guy Billy Lee Scott, and he lived on Big Pine Key in 1988. He was present at the parties on No Name Key where Sanders was last seen, and on Little Torch Key where Patty Lanza was taken from.

Two years later, in July 1990, Scott had moved on to Ohio. He attended a lakeside party in New Paris with a friend, Lesa Buckley. The following day her battered body was found floating at American Aggregates Lake on Guy Murray Road. She had been assaulted and sodomized. The Buckley family sought the help of a private detective and Scott was eventually charged and convicted in Lesa's murder. Some point out that it was similar to the Sanders' murder since they both had the same name, and they were killed after a party. However there was an element of torture and evisceration that lacked in the Buckley crime.

In 2020, Scott was denied an appeal of his sentence of 20-years-to-life after conviction for murder, rape and assault by a Butler County jury. Scott based his appeal that an eyewitness lied in court as part of a revenge plot by the Buckley family, and a family member of one of two men he shot and killed in New Paris a year before.

"In July 1991, Scott was found guilty of voluntary manslaughter following a Preble County trial for multiple New Paris shootings. He was acquitted of murder in the fatal shooting of the second man and not guilty of attempted murder for the shooting of the third man."

Was it coincidental that these set of Florida murders had such an occult flavor? Were these perpetrators unknown to each other, or were they members of a network who not only killed, but did so in the name of a dark lord?