Latest Victim of Stockton Serial Killer Was Beloved Dad With ‘Golden Smile’
The widow of a Northern California man shot dead last year by an accused serial killer says she had a gut-wrenching—but non-specific—premonition about it shortly before his unexpected demise.
Prosecutors on Tuesday filed an amended complaint in San Joaquin County Superior Court listing additional charges against 43-year-old Wesley Brownlee, a sometime trucker accused of carrying out a string of seemingly random killings around the Bay Area.
The amended complaint identified Mervin Lacy Harmon, 39, as an additional victim of Brownlee’s on top of the initial six. He was gunned down on April 16, 2021, it says.
“Three days before he passed away, I could not stop crying,” Tiffany Lucas, who had two daughters with Harmon, told The Daily Beast on Wednesday. “I knew something terrible was about to happen. Everybody said, ‘What do you mean?’ I could just tell something was not right. And I could not stop crying.”
Mervin Harmon
Following Brownlee’s arrest in October, prosecutors filed charges against him for three murders—21-year-old Jonathan Hernandez Rodriguez, 52-year-old Juan Carlos Carranza-Cruz, and 54-year-old Lawrence Lopez Sr., who were killed on Aug. 30, Sept. 21 and Sept. 27, respectively. At the time they suspected him of six murders. Tuesday’s court filing formally charged Brownlee with the killings of 35-year-old Paul Yaw, 43-year-old Salvador Debudey Jr., and 40-year-old Juan Alexander Vasquez, who has also been identified in the media as Juan Miguel Vasquez Serrano.
The lone survivor of Brownlee’s alleged spree, Natasha LaTour, was shot the same day Harmon died. Most, if not all, of the victims were experiencing homelessness when they were killed, police said.
Mervin Harmon
Lucas said she and Harmon, who went by Merv, had separated not long before his death, and that he alternated between couchsurfing with family and staying in a local shelter. In addition to sharing two daughters with Lucas, Harmon was a stepdad to Lucas’ two sons, she said.
Lucas woke up on Apr. 16, 2021—her late mother’s birthday—to a flood of missed calls, she said.
“I come to find out that he had passed away at 1 in the morning,” Lucas told The Daily Beast. “At the time, he was standing in front of his cousin’s house,” she added, noting that Harmon wasn’t sleeping rough at the time, like some of the other victims.
Lucas said she was devastated but that her first concern was for the kids, one of whom had been named after Harmon, and how to tell them what had happened.
“They did not take it well,” said Lucas, who also was in such a state of disbelief that she didn’t accept Harmon’s death until she heard the news directly from the coroner’s office.
Lucas remembers her late husband as having “a golden smile.”
“He had the best smile I’ve ever seen in my life,” she said, adding, “He didn’t deserve that. He did not deserve that at all.”
Wesley Brownlee
Her experience mirrored somewhat that of Greta Bogrow, a Texas nurse whose son, Paul Yaw, was another of Brownlee’s alleged victims.
Bogrow and Yaw had been estranged for five years, with Bogrow telling The Daily Beast in a previous interview that her son “chose a different life.” Still, she always thought things would turn out alright for Yaw until she got a call from her nephew that he had been shot dead in Stockton.
“I thought, ‘No way,’” Bogrow said. “But it was true… Even until the day that we had his service, I kept thinking, ‘Maybe they have the wrong person.’ Because I’m in a different state, I never got to see the body until that day. And I saw him, and I knew.”
No motive for the killings has yet been revealed, and police said none of the victims appeared to have been robbed. Johnny Brownlee, a cousin of the suspect, told The Daily Beast in the days after Brownlee was apprehended that he “thought he was driving trucks, like I do.”
Shot Woman Says Stockton ‘Serial Killer’ Could Have Been Stopped
Brownlee grew up in Oakland, and was first arrested in 1994 at the age of 14. In that case, he and two others were accused of sexually assaulting a 14-year-old girl, according to court records obtained by The Mercury News. In 1995, Brownlee’s older brother was shot dead in a “drug-related” incident, KTVU reported. Brownlee went on to drop out of high school in 11th grade, amassing a rap sheet that included prison time on drug charges and assorted low-level infractions.
Brownlee’s own cellphone data placed him at or near the scene of at least three of the murders, according to prosecutors, who said Brownlee had an untraceable “ghost gun” on him when he was arrested.
The newest charges against Brownlee were a welcome development for Lucas, who told The Daily Beast she hadn’t known until now that Harmon’s death was in any way linked to the “Stockton Serial Killer.”
“I was really surprised that he was connected to that,” Lucas said, “but I was also relieved that someone had been caught for it.”
Brownlee, who is charged with seven counts of murder and one count of attempted murder in addition to various weapons charges, is being held without bail. His next court appearance is scheduled for Jan. 3.
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