Family, friends seek answers after apparent murder-suicide
DONNA – In the days before James Brown is suspected of killing his wife and himself, the Winter Texan couple finalized the sale of their trailer home and prepared for a new life near family at an assisted care facility in San Angelo.
The plans were already laid and the children were soon to be on their way to fetch 81-year-old Brown and 78-year-old Pauline from the Palm Shadows RV Park where the couple had lived since 1999, recalled Lorna Bywaters, the activity director of the park.
It was in the fall — when Winter Texans usually make their seasonal migration — that the Browns told Bywaters their plans.
“He told me we’re moving back to San Angelo to be closer to my children,” Bywaters said. “I didn’t realize (Pauline) had problems until she looked at (Jim) really sweet and said, ‘Is that where our children live? Is that where they are?’”
Early Monday morning, a property manager at the park opened the door to the trailer and found the Browns dead. Police suspect Jim Brown shot his wife through the head before turning the revolver on himself.
There will never be any definitive answers as to what led the retired Southern Baptist minister from Oklahoma to allegedly kill his wife and commit suicide. Perhaps, as police suspect, Brown was sparing himself and his wife a painful death from terminal disease.
Brown had recently learned he had terminal cancer, according to police and friends. His family apparently didn’t even know.
Pauline Brown had been slipping into the void of Alzheimer’s disease for more than three years.
At the park Tuesday at 200 N. Val Verde Road, a woman sorted through the Brown’s trailer home. Park residents expressed remorse and empathy for Pauline and Jim Brown, whom they said adored his wife. Jacqi Rexwinkle, the couple’s granddaughter, was unable to understand.
“My grandfather was the most patient man to ever walk the planet. He loved her so much,” Rexwinkle said by phone from Wyoming. “He stood by her every step of the way. They would laugh together when she would forget things.”
Jim and Pauline Brown married in 1947.
Jim Brown worked at churches all over Oklahoma before stepping down from the pulpit about two decades ago, Rexwinkle said. In retirement, the couple opened a crafts store, selling wooden carvings and clothing.
The Browns first visited the Rio Grande Valley in 1999 and were soon hooked, Rexwinkle said.
“They loved the camaraderie of people at the park,” she said. “They went bowling, they went square dancing, they played bingo.”
Three years ago, Pauline Brown was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, a progressive and fatal brain disease. It destroys brain cells, causing memory loss, but it often robs people of their identity to a point where loved ones hardly find them recognizable, said Jose Gonzalez, director of the Area Agency on Aging.
He called the case of the Browns a classic end-of-life situation in which Jim, who had been his wife’s caregiver, suddenly must cope with the possibility that he might die before his wife. Gonzalez said that in similar situations, the caregiver might take a life out of mercy and out of fear that no one else would be around to care.
“For him, it wasn’t murder; probably, it was more mercy,” he said. “It’s a daily struggle that we see with some of our clients.”
Ultimately, the answers died with Jim Brown and the family will be left to piece together the bits of verifiable fact. Rexwinkle said her grandfather had gone to the doctor as recently as Thanksgiving but that he never told anyone in the family that he had cancer.
“This was not done out of anger. It couldn’t have been,” Rexwinkle said. “Whatever his reasoning, I’m sure that he felt God was telling him this was the best thing to do.”
