The Garden City Telegram
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Headlines from 1989 — Trouble signs surfaced early
Published 8/8/2009 in History Page : Historical Page
By MICHAEL BATES
Associated Press Writer
GARDEN CITY (AP) — It took 10 years for Gregg Francis Braun to change from a stocky, popular high school football player into a frail, erratic man suspected of shooting five people to death in four states.
His friends in this booming southwest Kansas cattle town say drugs, alcohol and a frightening temper were the signposts along that downhill road.
Braun, 28, is charged with three killings of convenience store clerks in Kansas and New Mexico and is the primary suspect in two other slayings in Texas and Oklahoma.
Although another man was briefly charged with two of the crimes, authorities later dropped the charges and said it was a case of mistaken identity.
... Braun's real brother, Glenn Braun, a prosecutor in Hays, makes no effort to defend Braun.
"If the news reports are accurate, and I assume they are, then it would be unproductive to try to look at this all as some big mistake," he said.
Eddie Partin, who has known Gregg Braun since junior high school, said his friend was well-liked in school. Classmates and teachers said Braun, the youngest son of Lelyn J. Braun, a successful lawyer, was quiet and didn't particularly stand out.
But signs of trouble surfaced early.
Expelled from Thomas More Prep, a Catholic school at Hays, as a freshman, Braun started having serious problems with drugs and alcohol while at Garden City High School.
A report from a substance abuse treatment center at St. John's Hospital in Salina states that Braun first got drunk at age 13 and first smoked marijuana at 15.
Braun spent a month at the Salina center, in central Kansas, after being arrested for drunken driving following his freshman year at the University of Kansas. Braun got a bachelor's degree in administration of justice from Wichita State University in July 1988 after attending classes there six years.
He spent time in various odd jobs, quitting a feedlot the day after the Garden City killings.
... Partin remembers seeing Braun in January for the first time in several years. He didn't recognize his old classmate at first. "He'd probably lost 50 pounds," Partin said. "He didn't look healthy."
Twice during the next few months, Partin, a Hilton Inn night manager, had to order Braun to leave the hotel after he fell asleep on a couch outside the lounge.
The first killings took place July 19 in Garden City. Two convenience store clerks were abducted from separate stores and shot to death, their bodies dumped three miles apart outside the city. On July 20, the owner of a Pampa, Texas, photo processing shop was killed. On July 21, a flower shop employee in Ardmore, Okla., was killed and two co-workers were wounded. On July 23, a convenience store clerk in Springer, N.M., was slain.
... Braun is charged with double counts of murder, aggravated kidnapping and aggravated robbery in the Kansas case, and with murder in the New Mexico case. He is the prime suspect in the Texas and Oklahoma killings.
What motive could Braun have had for killing five people he apparently never knew?
"There isn't any explanation," Glenn Braun said. "It's futile to look for that answer. And in its own way it's maddening."
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