Mistrial possible after accused Cary strangler acts out killing mother and girlfriend
From the witness stand Tuesday, accused strangler Brandon Lee pantomimed choking his mother and ex-girlfriend to death, telling jurors that he screamed “Die! Die!” as his mother expired on the floor.
But the case took a twist when the Cary man would not answer any questions on cross-examination, telling the prosecutor, “You’re the real criminal. ... I’m not scared of you.”
Superior Court Judge Graham Shirley sent jurors home and said he will consider whether to declare a mistrial because of Lee’s refusal to cooperate..
“I’m sorry, your honor,” Lee said, leaving the courtroom.
“No, you’re not,” Shirley said.
To you, I am,” Lee said.
“Mr. Lee,” Shirley said, stopping him. “Don’t apologize to me after you just disrespected me and this courtroom.”
Vodka and pills
Lee took the stand in his own defense, testifying that his drug and alcohol-addled mother had tossed a $20 bill on the floor and encouraged him to buy a bottle of vodka and use it to commit suicide with her pills.
She came at him several times with a knife, berating him as worthless and insisting they watch online videos of mass suicide together, Lee testified.
He finally grabbed her by the neck, he said and re-enacted the scene, yelling, “If you want to die, just die!
“I’m just sitting there,” he continued, “looking at her, saying, ‘Stupid. What are you making me do?’”
Lee has confessed to choking his mother to death, keeping her body on ice in a bathtub and then strangling his ex-girlfriend when he came to her apartment to say goodbye.
He was 34 at the time of his arrest in 2015, and he acted out of anger over a lost job, a fed-up girlfriend and a sputtering life, the prosecution argued last week.
While Christa Lee’s body lay in the tub, her son then broke into his ex-girlfriend’s apartment, choked her, then slept on her sofa overnight with Krystal Hylton dead on the floor, Assistant District Attorney Patrick Latour said in his opening statement last week.
“You killed your mother and your ex-girlfriend because you were angry,” Latour told Lee Tuesday. “Like you are now.”
Childhood trauma and depresssion
Lee’s attorney, Jonathan Broun, said his client suffers from chronic alcoholism stemming from childhood trauma and depression. Broun has argued that Lee “snapped” and his crime does not constitute first-degree murder.
A forensic psychiatrist testified Monday that Lee had witnessed domestic violence as a child, grown up among alcoholics and developed a severe drinking problem — losing jobs and running into legal trouble after blackouts. But in happier days, he graduated from Rutgers University, worked on Wall Street and appeared in GQ magazine as a model.
Throughout his long and sometimes tearful testimony Tuesday, Lee said he waited a week after killing his mother before turning himself in because he needed to work up courage and he wanted to find someone to care for his Yorkshire terrier, Jake.
Hylton took his dog for a few days before Lee turned his attention to an affair he suspected she was having with a Durham man.
On the night he killed her, he said, he planned to catch them in the act at Hylton’s apartment and stop their affair.
“I’m gonna fight this dude,” he said. “This will be my last sort of macho thing.”
Questioned by Broun, Lee said he had no plans to hurt Hylton when he went through her window. Finding her alone on her couch, they smoked a cigarette and he explained that he had come to say goodbye.
He had already told Hylton three times that he killed his mother, but she didn’t believe him, he said. When she nonchalantly said “goodbye” back to him, Lee said he snapped again.
“I choked her ass and I’m thinking ... ‘This is your fault! This is your fault!’” Lee said. “Once I come out of that phase, I’m like, ‘Oh my God, what am I? What have I become? What am I?”
This story was originally published October 1, 2019 at 1:50 PM.