Testimony: Victim in 'canal killings' was set for a new work assignment when she vanished
In murder trials, victims are often reduced to the brutal circumstances of their death.
But on Tuesday, just for a few minutes, Angela Brosso was remembered for her life.
Her accused killer, Bryan Patrick Miller, is on trial, charged with murdering Brosso, just shy of her 22nd birthday, and Melanie Bernas, a high school student, in the early 1990s.
The young women had each gone out for an evening bike ride and were later found dead in or near the canals running through Phoenix.
The murders became known as the "canal killings" before going cold for decades. Miller, arrested in 2015 after a DNA breakthrough, has pleaded not guilty for reasons of insanity.
The last person Brosso saw before she went out cycling was her boyfriend, Joseph Krakowiecki.
He took the stand Tuesday, almost 30 years after that day, wearing a blue polo shirt tucked into grey suit pants. A folded pair of glasses hung from his collar just below a fluffy white beard.
"Hi, I'm Joe Krakowiecki," he said.
He called Brosso “Angie.”
They had met as students in New Jersey, Krakowiecki recalled in his testimony, striking up a relationship despite their different courses. But a four-year degree was not available to either to them at that campus, and toward the end of 1990, Krakowiecki moved to Phoenix, and Brosso to Los Angeles.
The young couple stayed together, Brosso joining Krakowiecki in Arizona after she graduated in June 1992.
They moved into the Woodstone Apartments by Cactus Road and Interstate 17 and settled into a happy rhythm.
Brosso worked 9-to-5 at a telecommunications company while Krakowiecki, yet to finish school, juggled studies and a job.
They took up bicycle riding together, picking out identical 21-speed Diamondback Topanga mountain bikes from a local store. Brosso’s was purple, her favorite color.
On Sunday nights, they usually caught "Star Trek" at 7 p.m., and at 8 p.m. had a standing date with the Fox sketch comedy show, "In Living Color." They didn't have a VCR, and only missed the show if one of them was out of town.
“It was a thing,” Krakowiecki said.
That’s how it was, until Nov. 8, 1992.
“Do you remember that day?” Elizabeth Reamer, the prosecutor, asked.
“It’s been many many years," Krakowiecki replied, "but it’s been with me that many years."
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No trace after several searches
It was a Sunday.
Krakowiecki said he and Brosso had gone to pick up their mountain bikes, which were in the shop for a tune up. They stopped by a restaurant for a meal.
As usual, "Star Trek" came on at 7 p.m. A short way into the episode, Brosso told Krakowiecki she might go out for a bike ride. He was busy baking her a birthday cake.
It was dark out, he said, but he wasn't troubled about her riding.
"At the time I really wasn’t as cautious as I am today so I really didn’t even think about it to be honest," he said.
She was wearing rings when she left, he remembered, and earrings and a watch.
“Purple Umbro shorts, if I can remember the brand. A grey sweatshirt that, at the time, she enjoyed wearing inside out. And white tennis shoes.”
The "Star Trek" credits rolled and "In Living Color" began. Brosso was still out. It was odd.
Krakowiecki went out searching for her on his bike around 8.30 p.m. But his 15-minute loop of the area revealed no trace.
He went out again at 9.30 p.m. And again just before 11 p.m. Still nothing.
Unable to raise Brosso’s mother, he dialed a friend, panicking.
“She’s like, ‘You know, at this point in time, call the police’,” he said. “And that was my very next call, 911.”
Police came to talk to him, Krakowiecki said. But they did not launch a full-scale search for Brosso, explaining that usually 24 hours had to elapse before an independent adult became a missing person.
The next day, Nov. 9, Brosso was supposed to instruct a training class at work for the first time. It was a big moment, one she had spent weeks practicing for. Officers suggested she might have gone into work to prepare.
But she needed an access badge to enter the building, Krakowiecki told them. Hers was still in the apartment.
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'I thought it was a mannequin'
The next morning, Nov. 9, 1992, police officer Robert Wamsley and his partner were sent out on a bike patrol.
They were told a woman had possibly gone missing in the canal area by 25th Avenue and Cactus Road, Wamsley said in court Monday.
They set out about 9 a.m. As they rode south, Wamsley said, they came across a trail of blood.
At the time, Wamsley worked the Cactus Park precinct. He made detective before retiring from the force in 2010.
As he testified on Monday, he referred to his report a couple of times, just for details. He found the body at 9:16 a.m. Pieces of Brosso's clothes were strewn along a trail of blood, which led up a small berm, to her body.
Despite all the time that has elapsed, the essence of what Wamsley saw is still in his mind.
“Do you have your own memory of finding the body that day?” Reamer asked.
“Yes ma’am,” he answered, a slight edge to his voice.
Brosso’s body was found close to the apartment where she lived, in a small field between the apartment complex and a diversion canal just south of Cactus Road.
After coming across the bloody trail, Wamsley said, he looked up and saw Brosso's feet. He didn't immediately know what it was.
"I thought it was a mannequin," he said. "It was very white."
He parked his bike and walked toward it, pausing 10 or 15 feet away.
"I was inching my way up to see the head, to see her eyes," he said. "Because then I could just determine if it was a mannequin or, you know, somebody playing a sick joke, or if it was a body.
"And I found the head was missing."
When he saw a nipple, he knew it was a body. "They don't do that kind of detail on mannequins that I'm aware of," he explained.
Brosso had been cut up badly, according to testimony from officers at the scene and a medical examiner who viewed her autopsy report. A stab wound to her back had been delivered before she died, piercing her lung and aorta. Her body was marked with multiple other stab wounds and incisions running around her waist and the length of her torso.
Her head was found 11 days later in the Arizona Canal, about a mile and a half away. It appeared to have flowed some distance with the water, said prosecutor Vince Imbordino, before being caught on a grate by the Metrocenter mall, next to a dead carp and a discarded drinking cup.
Miller's defense attorney said Monday he was suffering from complex dissociative disorders borne from severe childhood trauma, as well as autism spectrum disorder, at the time of the murders.
The bench trial, which is expected to last months, has already heard significant evidence on lighting, blood spatter, and how visible Brosso's body was from the bike path.
Such details could go to Miller's state of mind at the time of the murders, crucial to establishing whether he was insane.
Wamsley couldn't say whether the trail of blood would have been visible in different light.
“Do you know whether your partner also saw the trail of blood?” Reamer asked Wamsley.
“Yes ma'am,” Wamsley replied.
“How do you know that?”
“Because he turned away.”
A lasting image
Although she was found so close to home, Krakowiecki did not see Brosso's body in situ. But he wasn't spared the distressing scene.
The TV was on in the apartment as he spoke to police that day, and he saw the murder scene in news footage.
“The helicopter actually showed the body," he said.
He didn't have the TV on in hopes of an update on Brosso, he said. He's not a newshound. It was just background noise.
“I’m not a fan of watching the news still to this day," he said Tuesday.
Just before Krakowiecki finished testifying, Reamer asked him to identify Exhibit 270, a photograph.
Not from the crime scene. Just an old photograph of a young woman.
“That is Angie,” Krakowiecki said gently, studying the image.
“I actually still have that picture.”
Reach the reporter at lane.sainty@arizonarepublic.com. Follow her on Twitter @lanesainty.
This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Canal killings: Angela Brosso's boyfriend testifies at Bryan Miller trial
