Soon after he was arrested and charged with murdering his girlfriend, Robert Walters asked for help. But the Iraq war veteran, then 23, didn't turn to the military, his lawyers, his parents, or even his friends. Instead, prosecutors allege, he sought out a man whose reputation matched the task he had in mind.
Brittney Brashers and Robert Walters met in the Air Force and had a tumultuous relationship.
Brittney Brashers and Robert Walters met in the Air Force and had a tumultuous relationship.
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Help me kill my wife, he implored his jail mate. She knows too much.
Walters had been two-timing his wife with Brittney Brashers, a pretty, athletic fellow U.S. Air Force member he'd met overseas. Now Brashers was dead, the victim of what appeared to be a drunk-driving accident. When police responded to the scene, they found Brashers bloody and unconscious in the driver's seat and Walters beside her. Brashers's head was in his lap. He was screaming.
Walters told police that he and Brashers were driving home to Colorado Springs after spending the evening at a Denver club where Brashers participated in a photo shoot. During the shoot, he said, she'd taken her top off, which made him "sad." But until the crash, he said, the drive home had been uneventful; with Brashers behind the wheel, Walters said he'd fallen asleep and awoke only when her Pontiac Vibe collided with a sedan and minivan parked on a dead-end street in west Denver at 1:40 a.m. A neighbor who'd heard the crash — and Walters's cries of "Brittney! Brittney!" — called 911.
In the days after the accident, Walters returned to his parents' home in Ontario, California, where his wife also lived. Within minutes of reuniting, he asked her to go for a walk. Then he started talking — and didn't stop for months.
After his arrest, as he sat in a Denver jail cell, Walters decided his best shot at freedom was to destroy the police's most crucial piece of evidence.
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[Walters] says there was just so much rage, and his body was boiling. ... He states that it was all emotion bottled up. Anger, rage and wrath. He states that he just looked over and took a shot in the dark where her head would be, and boom.
— From summaries of recordings of Walters secretly made by his wife
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Robert Walters is slim and good-looking, with a long face and brown hair that he keeps short on the sides, a bit longer on top. Everyone calls him Robbie. On January 22, 2009, at the age of 22, he married a girl named Elena. Court records indicate the two had known each other forever. But they didn't have much of a marriage. Walters deployed to Iraq a few days later, assigned to a security detail on a base there.
It was the same job assigned to Airman First Class Brittney Brashers, a baby-faced 21-year-old brunette with a small, upturned nose and a sweet smile who was from a tiny town in western Illinois. A romance developed. Brashers's best friend, Tiffany Feliciano, told police that Brashers liked Walters because he was a "good bad boy." In a recording obtained by police, Walters calls Brashers "the most important person in the world."
Adultery is against military law, especially flagrant adultery that has a "divisive effect on unit or organization discipline, morale, or cohesion." The maximum punishment is dishonorable discharge, forfeiture of pay and confinement for one year. Feliciano, who was deployed with Brashers in Iraq, told police that the Air Force issued a no-contact order for Brashers and Walters after he was found in her room.
Evidence suggests that they disobeyed that order and continued to do so when they returned stateside in June. At first Walters headed to North Dakota, where he was stationed, and Brashers was sent to Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado Springs. But within weeks, prosecutors say, Walters was discharged (Air Force representatives have declined to say why) and began bouncing between California and Colorado Springs.
Elena Walters knew about the affair. In late September, documents say, she called one of Brashers's superiors, Master Sergeant Arthur Figeroa, and told him that Brashers was planning to visit Walters in California. Figeroa confronted Brashers, who denied it. He warned her that she could get in trouble for messing with a married man, but Brashers assured him that Walters was planning to get a divorce. Later, however, she admitted that she had in fact gone to California — and brought Walters back to Colorado with her. They moved into a house off-base, where they lived with a roommate.
But their relationship was far from harmonious. They fought constantly, friends told police after her death, especially when they were drinking. Walters himself relayed one such fight in an interview with police the day he was arrested. It started because he'd continued to smoke cigarettes after he returned from Iraq, a habit Brashers hated. He and Brashers were at a club, and, frustrated, she'd danced with another man. Walters called her a whore and asked, "What the fuck are you doing? Like, why you actin' like a slut?" He later admitted that he "finally called her a slut like one too many times" and said she "ended up punching me in the face." He said he started to call the police on her but then hung up.
