[somber music playing]
[Patrick] I could hear what was going on.
I was right next door, inside of the house.
I could hear the screaming of the girl.
And that's when my heart sunk, because I knew it was Lance.
I wanna be here, and I wanna be talking about this.
And it's very hard, very -- makes me nervous,
and it makes my mind run a million miles an hour.
[somber music playing]
Wow.
Here, this picture here,
you could see the rage coming out.
And you can see the anger in this man.
I've seen that look before, right before everything goes
drastically wrong.
I've seen this look right before he explodes.
It was very ugly.
There would be no stopping him, short of killing him.
It's terrible to say.
People call him a monster, call him evil.
It's probably 'cause it's true.
[The Paper Chase's "What's So Amazing About Grace?" plays]
[strings continue playing sinister tune]
[static crackling]
-[knock at door] -[creaking]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[water dripping]
-[banging on door] -[creaking]
[sinister chord strikes]
Oh.
This is the most recent picture of my brother, Lance,
in prison.
That looks scary right there.
I've never seen this.
This is that look after he's done something bad.
This is that, you know, I really don't give a F
or what you do or what you think about it,
or what the cops plan on doing.
That's the look of "I do not care about anything
in this world." It just looks scary.
It just looks empty.
I think it's a good thing that he has been caught
and locked away.
I hate that he actually had to kill someone
for that to happen, but...
it's a good thing that this guy is locked up.
He's very dangerous.
Very.
[somber music playing]
[sinister music playing]
I've never been able to talk about what it's like
to live with my brother.
So I was very young when I realized my brother Lance
was capable of evil.
It was very scary to grow up with.
I was born and raised in Columbus, Ohio.
There was me and I had three other brothers
and my mother and father lived with us.
And Lance was the oldest.
My father was there for us. He was a hard worker.
He worked most of his life, and, um...
he was not at home all the time.
He went to work, and then he went out
to do his own thing.
My parents, they would go out to this certain club,
and they'd play cards
almost every day, and Lance was there
supposed to be babysitting us.
That's when the abusive stuff would happen.
Lance had the reign of the house.
Everyone looked up to him
because he was a star football player.
But Lance drank.
When he would start to drink, then you would see him
kind of turn... scary.
You know, everything would get more dangerous.
Everything would get more edgy.
You either did what he said to do or you're gonna get beat.
That's just the way it was.
Then there's...
one time he threw me on the couch.
It started off as playful, and then...
it got into more brutal.
He'd subdue you and put pillows over top of you.
Lance was a very big guy.
He would sit on top of the weight of his whole body
on these pillows on top of you
'till you felt like you were smothered
and you couldn't breathe.
[actor as Patrick] Get off me! Get off of me!
[Patrick] I'm telling him, you know, "I can't breathe.
I can't breathe."
And he's just sitting on top of you, just laughing,
thinking it's funny, you know.
You're crying and can't, you know, breathe.
It was not funny.
Being such a young child, you know, your mind goes
right to that. It's instant panic.
I was screaming to get up, you know, "Get off of me,
get off of me, let me up."
[as Patrick] Lance, please!
Once he heard you crying and screaming,
then he'd let you up.
It was almost as if that's what he wanted to hear.
[grim music playing]
One time for Christmas, my parents got me
and my brothers boxing gloves.
With the boxing gloves came, um,
other kids from the neighborhood,
being interested in boxing also.
They would bring their boxing gloves,
and we would hold little matches on our porch.
It was kinda like a boxing ring.
My brother, Lance,
got the idea to hold some boxing matches.
[as Lance] I wanna see you guys fight.
[Patrick] It started off as good, clean fun.
I had learned a little bit about boxing,
and my friends didn't know anything about boxing.
And sometimes it would get ugly.
They would make me box my friends.
I had a friend named Frankie that lived down the street.
There was no beef between me or him or anything,
and Lance just made us box just out of --
just 'cause we were there.
"Hey, how about you two get it on this time?"
[Patrick] My friend knew nothing about boxing.
When my brother Lance was like, "Get him, get him."
[as Lance] Take him out.
And I hit him with a couple of good ones.
I mean, I could see he wanted to quit.
And Lance is standing there, why?
Encouraging you. "Beat him.
Beat him up."
I would do what Lance told me to do.
Lance was too scary to say no to.
Now, I remember my friend taking off
and going home crying that day.
He did not want to be my friend too much longer after that.
I lost a friend that day.
Lance was in his element.
He was getting off on this.
To see you fight.
I'm sure he just liked the violence of it.
Lance was always kinda devious,
thinking of new ways to do some evil stuff.
There was this one morning where
I had woken up and my middle brother was still asleep.
And he was laying in the bed.
Lance got my parents' shotgun out of the back of the closet.
And he said, "Hey, let's put it on our brother's face.
Wouldn't that be funny when he wakes up?"
I didn't know any better.
I didn't know what a gun would do to you,
you know, at that time.
This is the first time I had ever held a gun
or touched a gun,
and the gun was very heavy.
It was very big.
I actually needed Lance to hold the gun.
We both have a hold of it like this.
We just tapped my brother on the bridge of his nose
with the double barrel shotgun, like, "Hey, wake up."
And he woke up, and his eyes opened.
He was terrified.
When I saw my brother and how terrified he was,
it was not funny anymore.
The whole time, Lance was holding this gun,
he had a devious laugh.
If you heard that laugh, then he was enjoying it.
[sinister laugh]
When I think about that now, you know, I feel terrified
for my brother and for us.
What if that gun would have went off?
You know, that'd be terrible to live with.
You know, I was so young that it did not even
register in my mind
the aftermath that could have happened.
That's the terrifying thing of it.
I didn't even know if it was loaded or not.
This particular day, right after school,
when I come home and...
I would play with my little brother.
Lance and his girlfriend were arguing in the next room.
[Lance yelling indistinctly]
And we could hear them.
He was always arguing with the women,
always fighting with his women.
And then I heard a gunshot.
[muffled gunshot firing]
Lance is supposed to be babysitting
me and my little brother at this time.
Instead, he's arguing with girls,
putting guns to their head.
When I heard the gunshot, I just instinctively look up,
and I could see the bullet go over top of our heads,
went out one wall, and through the other wall.
It was chaos, you know,
pandemonium -- total chaos.
And I immediately jumped up and just ran and...
kicked in the bathroom door, you know, push the door open...
Get out!
...to see, you know, Lance and the girl in there,
the girl screaming, Lance standing there
with the gun, I was afraid.
[as Lance] Shut up now!
[dark chord strike]
You know, I was thinking, like, "Oh, my God,
he shot this girl in her face."
But he did not.
What had happened, he had shot right by her head.
And the gunpowder, and all of that hit her in the face,
and burnt her face.
And that's why she was bent over
crying like that.
She did not say anything.
It's like it never happened.
There was no consequence for him in that whole situation,
which only fueled
the evil things he could do.
He had gotten away with that one.
When that happened, you just knew in your mind
and your heart that he was capable of this.
You always kind of had your mind and your heart
prepared for...
what craziness is gonna come next.
You know, by now, he was, uh,
getting in trouble, getting locked up
a lot, drinking a lot.
I knew that he was committing burglaries.
He would never tell me exactly where and what
these burglaries were, but I just knew.
There was this one night that my brother Lance
and some of his other friends, they just were out late night.
I seen them come home, and they went into the garage.
So I snuck out of the house to see what they had.
I seen that they had
six or seven big bags of marijuana.
Big trash bags full.
There was a part of me that wondered
where they got this from,
but I knew they had broken in
and stole it from someone.
And I sat there and watched the whole thing.
I'm sure him breaking in had a lot to do
with just thrill of it.
He just did it out of pure just... adrenaline
just 'cause he could.
Just the simple fact of it being the wrong thing to do,
I knew they were out doing bad things, but I was just glad
that my big brother made it home.
I did not want him to get arrested again,
even though I knew it was wrong,
'cause I still wanted him
to make it home and be safe.
[sad, eerie music playing]
[sirens wailing]
[Patrick] Lance broke into the house right next door to our house.
And the girl that used to do babysitting and house sitting
for 'em saw Lance going into the window.
Someone called the cops.
Lance was in the house when the cops came.
So he ran down in the basement and barricaded himself
down in the basement.
Lance was big and he was strong,
full of rage, and had no fear.
Once they broke through to go get him, he'd beat them all up,
five or six cops.
They can't get him under control.
They had to call the SWAT, you know, riot gear.
[indistinct chatter over radio]
[Patrick] I just remember that day.
They hog tie him to a stretcher
and carry him out.
And they carried him out of there,
and the neighbors were all looking.
It was very embarrassing.
I'm not sure what was in the mind of my parents
at such a young age.
I think they wanted to all just chalk it up to,
"We're just young."
I'm sure that my family was disappointed
and a little bit heartbroken.
Then almost every time after that he got arrested,
that's how many cops it took to arrest him.
Almost every time.
He got arrested a lot after that.
By the time this incident happened,
it was starting to become the norm.
So you just kind of knew, in your mind, like,
well, you can forget to see him the next year or so.
He'll be gone for a year.
[somber music playing]
[siren wailing]
There was just one day that I was coming home from school,
I saw that the police had the whole neighborhood
taped off.
And what I had learned was my friend
who lived up the street,
she had been decapitated and dismembered.
The whole neighborhood was devastated.
We did not ever find out what happened.
Even today, murder unsolved.
The next morning, I looked at my window,
and written in the frost of the window were the words,
"You're next."
Later on in life, I talked to my other brother,
and almost at the same time, we asked the same question,
"Do you think Lance had anything to do with that back then?"
When I look back now, I get kind of terrified
thinking about it.
I could have been killed at, you know, anytime.
I would have never seen it coming.
[Patrick] Knowing what I know of Lance now, it makes me wonder,
did he do that murder?
Lance might have been bad,
but we didn't think he was that bad.
We didn't think he was capable of anything like that.
We did not think that about him.
Looking back now,
I question it.
Lance had a very secretive side to himself.
You know, he'd go off and do devious things by himself.
He didn't need a crowd of people or people to follow him.
He'd just do it himself.
So maybe he could have done it back then.
He'd done so much wrong, and evil stuff.
The next criminal step for him was to kill someone.
It was the only thing that he had not been caught for.
[ominous music playing]
[Patrick] Lance would get drunk and get angry or aggressive.
[indistinct yelling]
The more he drank, the worse he would get.
He would say, "I'm gonna kill you,
or I'm gonna do this to you, or I'll do that to you."
It was always to the extreme.
[as Lance] You're dead!
[Patrick] I would always see the remnants of whatever happened.
The bruises and the black eyes, and he would beat her
'til she was unrecognizable.
He would do that a lot.
I felt very sad for her also.
I felt heartbreaking for her.
She was very nice to me.
She was a very wonderful person.
[ominous music playing]
[as girlfriend] Stop, you're crazy!
There was this one day, they were arguing.
The next thing I knew,
he had thrown her down in the basement
and locked the door.
[door banging loudly]
The basement was very scary. It was very dark and damp.
And we had a rat infestation.
And he'd throw you down there with the lights off.
[as girlfriend] I know you're there. Let me out.
I could hear her yelling through the door
to let her out.
[as girlfriend] Patrick!
She was like my babysitter. She took care of me.
She cleaned for me. She cooked for me.
You know, she was kinda like a second mom, actually.
So that made it even more hurtful.
[as girlfriend] Please, you gotta let me out!
But I knew what would be waiting if I did let her out.
[as girlfriend] Patrick!
[Patrick] I told her, I said, "No, I cannot let you out,"
'cause I knew in the back of my mind, if I let her out,
then he'd throw me a beating, a worse beating.
I just walked away and was watching TV
in the living room.
I could still hear her begging for someone
to let her out the basement.
I just tried to act like it wasn't happening.
Yeah, I knew in my heart that I should have helped her,
but I just could not do that.
I was afraid of Lance beating me.
[ominous music playing]
[Patrick] One time, he was upset at his girlfriend.
She just had the baby.
My parents were telling him to get out of the house.
Well, he said, "I'll go,
but I'm gonna take my baby with me."
And my mom was like, "No, you're not taking that baby."
My dad's a very big guy, too,
and he has that kind of blind rage himself.
You know, you don't wanna push him there.
He ended up throwing Lance out the door.
Well, Lance got a big, giant metal rake
and came and threw it through this plate glass window we had.
[glass shatter]
You know, that glass went flying everywhere.
You know, just the sound, it just
sounded like a bomb went off.
And I remember they called the police on him that night,
but he had taken off.
We moved different sides of town,
north side, east side of Columbus.
We moved, but Lance was still living at home.
My other older brother that came to live with us
had a girlfriend, then it was getting pretty serious.
She had moved from another state to stay with my brother.
They had a little relationship that went on for a while.
She was really good friends with my mother.
She's really good friends with the whole family, you know.
We took her in, just like she was one of our own.
Lance had his eyes on her.
Lance was just kind of like that.
He kind of had his eyes on everybody.
I think Lance stayed pretty clear from her
while her and my other brother were dating.
But once they broke up, maybe in his mind,
he thought she was fair game.
But she did not want him.
To some degree, he could control himself.
But, you know, once her and my older brother broke up,
there was no controlling Lance about that situation anymore.
It was beginning to get worse.
When he raped her,
I didn't understand the nature of the crime,
but I knew the person he had done it to.
I was still so young, I didn't understand the repercussions
of what a rape is.
I didn't know this is something that would stick with you,
your whole life.
There was never much discussion about what Lance had done,
'cause it was so full of hurt and disappointment.
You just knew he was gone, and that was it.
But as I began to get older,
this girl, I would see her once every couple years.
And as I began to understand what rape was and all about,
every time I would see her, it would just kind of make me
feel sad for her.
You know, it was kind of heartbreaking.
I began to understand what that means to live with for years,
that it's forever, you know?
Something that can affect somebody forever, and...
a lot of bad repercussions can come from it.
To be afraid of Lance and at the same time still have love
for him as a brother is just --
you know, love does strange things, you know?
A person that could beat on you and get taken away,
you still loved him and missed him.
So I was kind of conflicted between the two.
This was the first time he got locked up for a significant
period of time.
Everything up to this point was small potatoes.
But now he's going to the big house.
Big crime.
This was the first time that we knew Lance
had committed rape and was convicted of it.
What craziness is gonna come next?
[sad, eerie music playing]
[Patrick] This photo here, is me and my brother, Lance.
This is in West Virginia.
I'd just gotten a brand new home,
and this is probably the first time,
Lance and all my other brothers
and their children and my mother,
they all come down to see my house,
kind of like a housewarming kind of thing.
Lance had just got out of prison,
not too long before this picture was snapped.
Lance had already done 20 years in prison.
Half his life, he spent in prison
already in that picture.
And now we were coming together, and I'd pretty much
forgotten all the traumatizing stuff from as a child.
He got a job and someone introduced him to his wife.
Everything was going great for him.
It was starting to feel
like everything was gonna be OK.
Him and his wife and my other brothers,
they would all come down and see me
every once in a while.
We'd have, you know, cookouts, bonfires at night,
laughing, joking.
It felt good, you know, to have my brothers back,
you know, where I was feeling for so long
that I had lost brothers.
All of that bullying stuff, it's all over with now.
[ominous music playing]
[Patrick] He called and said he was over at this girl's house.
Once I got there, he was already asleep.
And I was trying everything I could to wake him up.
I was shaking him. I was screaming at him.
I was hollering at him. Kept trying to shake him.
He would not wake up.
It was like he was in a coma, or something.
He was just asleep.
Checked on him the next day. He was still asleep.
Came back and did the same thing again.
Tried to shake him and wake him.
The next day, he would not wake up.
Called the next day.
He was still sleeping.
By now, this is three days he's been asleep.
So I really didn't understand.
I thought maybe he was just sleeping a binger off,
or something like that.
But every time I come knock on the door,
she's like, "He's still asleep."
I go home, give it a couple hours, I call.
She's like, "I tried to wake him up.
He's still asleep."
I was concerned of what he, whatever it was,
he went through to be like that.
He finally woke up and give me a call.
I rushed right down and got him.
I did ask him
the night he come to the house, "What was going on?
What's wrong? What are you doing here?"
He told me that him and his wife,
they got into a fight.
Lance said that, you know, he's having some problems
at home, and I just...
basically believed it, you know.
It was easy to chalk it up to that.
You know, yup, he's just got in a fight and just,
you know,
getting away from the problem, whatever it was.
It did make sense to me then.
It sounded like something...
you know, it sounded like Lance.
[ominous chord rises]
He came in like, "Hey, man, hey, dawg, I gotta go."
I didn't understand why he just took off,
just like that, in an instant.
He was hanging around for three months,
and then now he just leaves, just like that.
And that actually was it. That was it.
No explanations, no anything.
I felt like he had used me as soon as he left, you know?
Not really a thank you or anything.
He was just quick handshake and tried to walk out the door.
So I was just kind of like, "Whatever, man, just go on."
I was hurt. I was hurt by that.
Maybe less than a week later,
someone from the family called me and was like,
"Hey, man, your brother's on the news."
I'm like, "What?
What's he on the news for now, you know?"
Turned on the news, and that's when I seen
that the cops had Lance's home
surrounded.
And the caption on the news story was a SWAT standoff
with a murder suspect.
[sinister chord strike]
[Patrick] He was accused of murdering three women.
I was just totally blown away, like, what?
Like, you know, they was telling me they'd been
looking for him the whole time where he was at my house.
I was like, oh, my gosh, Like, I had no idea.
Just totally clueless and just blown away.
You know, it was the furthest thing from my mind
that I thought was going on.
So, that's when I started to put two and two together.
At the time, he had did these crimes and come down,
and he was staying at this girl's house
and he slept for three days straight,
it made me concerned about why he slept so much.
But knowing what I know now,
they call it "the murder sleep."
That's where you let out all the stress, and the strain,
and the guilt of doing these crimes.
That's what happened.
So that's why he took off and came to my house,
'cause they had been looking for him to question him
about these murders.
Just hit me like a ton of bricks, and I was like,
"Oh, this is it."
He's finally reached
the final plateau of crime.
[sobs softly]
Sorry.
[birds chirping]
[Patrick] The investigators came to the house,
and they asked me the questions.
And I said, "Now, let me ask you guys a question."
I said, "Do you really think he did this?"
Are you sure?
And one of the investigators, and he turned around
with a very serious look.
And he looked down his glasses, and he said, "You think we'd
drive five hours if we didn't think he did this?"
Then I knew this was it.
Just always seemed like a matter of time,
but he was out and doing so well,
it was the furthest thing from my mind.
I didn't think that would happen.
I definitely developed hope that he was past the worst.
There were no discussions
that I was included in about that.
And it was such a bad crime that people were hesitant
to talk about it.
So I was basically just clueless
in whatever was going on.
I had no idea what was going on,
when he was going to...
court, or exact charges he was charged with.
I was in the dark.
[reading newspaper] "David Lance Bruce
"might be spending the rest of his life in prison.
"A Fairfield County jury of five women and seven men
"found Bruce guilty
"of two counts of aggravated murder,
"one count of murder, one count of kidnapping,
"and two counts of aggravated robbery.
"The maximum sentence
he could be given is life in prison without parole."
Wow.
What a monster!
"Bruce's mother is sad about the guilty verdict,
"and that her son is going to prison,
but is relieved he didn't get the death penalty."
I didn't know my mom was there every day.
I didn't know he was
on trial for, um --
sentence could have been the death penalty.
I didn't know.
I separated myself from that situation.
It makes me very sad for my mother
to know that she went through that now,
and she was there by herself, you know.
I'm sure she went there every day by herself,
drove there herself, sat there herself,
afterwards, by herself, probably cried about it by herself.
That's heartbreaking when you think about it.
[somber chord rises]
[Patrick] I was just so blown away from it and just wanting
to just separate myself from the whole thing
That I did not, I did not wonder about the trial.
I did not watch it or participate in it.
It was just too much.
I separated myself from that situation just 'cause,
you know, I had family and I had kids and I just,
I could not have them be a part of that.
He wasted a lot of his life.
He could have done something.
He could have stopped going to prison.
He could have helped himself.
But there was always this thing that he just couldn't stop.
I'm sure everyone that knows him
is wondering the same thing.
"Did he have it in him?
"Did he do it before?
Did he do it again?"
It's a big question.
There was a lot of evidence against him.
I don't know.
[somber, eerie music playing]
He's reached out. We have spoken a couple times.
Just can't, I can't afford to put my feelings inside of it.
I have to keep going on with my life.
[producer] And what is it like to hear from him?
[sighs deeply]
It's sad to hear from him.
It's really sad to hear from him.
Knowing that he's gonna be gone forever, and...
It feels like helpless, you know?
Like, there's nothing I can do for you.
I can't help you.
You've put yourself there, you know?
And I can't get you out.
Like, there's nothing anyone can do.
You know, I could go and visit him.
I could talk to him on the phone.
But to talk to him about everything he'd done
in life, and to me,
no, that's still a challenge for me.
I think there was a little bit of part of me that just,
you know, was thinking, like,
"How could you do that, you know?
I just don't wanna be a part of you anymore, you know?"
I was done.
There are a lot of victims there,
not just with this case,
all the other cases before.
Think about how many families are victims
that he's just destroyed and devastated.
Being a brother is someone you, you know, you look out for,
you protect, and you educate them, and help them grow up.
Teach them the right and wrongs of life.
That's what being a brother is.
[producer] Did Lance do any of that for you?
No, Lance did not do any of that.
He did all the opposite of everything I just mentioned.
The things he did were definitely wrong,
and they can never be forgiven.
There is no fixing that.
I would not wanna see harm come to him,
but he's definitely where he needs to be,
you know, paying for his crimes.
I feel like I'm able to move through life
pretty good
because of all of the stuff
that I've been through.
And the stuff that Lance did kinda shook me to my core
and made me realize I better get myself together
or I might end up in the same position one day.
That I can be better than that in life,
and gave me a goal to go after,
to make me the person who I am today.
[somber music ends]
Our daughter said "Mommy, why is daddy's picture on TV?"
And I saw his picture on the news and I lost my [bleep]
And that there was a manhunt currently looking for him.
I was terified that he knew where I was at.