"Cowboy" Mike Braae Sentenced to 48 Years for Rape and Murder

July 30, 2008

The ladies seemed to always like Mike Braae, now 48.  The wanderer and suspected serial killer who became known as "Cowboy Mike," and who never seemed to have any problem impressing the women he encountered, was finally sentenced to 48 years in prison on Thursday, July 24, 2008 for the 2001 rape and murder of a Lacey, Washington woman.  He was a real lady-killer-literally.

Braae, who commonly wore cowboy boots and hats and made money playing his guitar and singing in bars, was initially suspected in the disappearances and/or deaths of several women in Oregon and Washington since 1997.  Cowboy Mike's name always seemed to come up in connection with the missing women as having been seen talking with them shortly, often in a bar, before they disappeared.  He typically carried a guitar with him and was fond of serenading the women he picked up.  His drink of choice was a "snakebite," which consists of Yukon Jack and a shot of lime juice.

"He's known as a womanizer, known to pick up women in taverns," Yakima County Sheriff's Lt. Dan Garcia said back in July 2001, shortly after 50-year-old Marchelle Morgan was found shot in the head, alive but in critical condition, alongside a road in Washington state.  "He's not from anywhere.  He's from here and there."

Braae was also known to have a volatile temper, especially after he had been drinking.

Morgan had last been seen with Braae in a Yakima bar around the middle of July 2001.  Although Morgan survived the shooting, she was left with severe brain damage that forced her to live in a nursing home after partially recovering from the shooting.  She was able to identify Braae as the person who shot her, but by the time the case went to trial in 2006 Morgan's condition had deteriorated to the point that she was unable to testify against him.  As a result, the jury deadlocked 11-1 and the judge declared a mistrial.  That wasn't the end of Cowboy Mike's legal problems, however.

Susan Ault, Braae's girlfriend, had disappeared in June 2001 following an argument with Braae and has not been seen since and, about a week before Marchelle Morgan was found left for dead at the side of the road, the naked body of Lori Jones, 44, was found stuffed beneath the bed inside her Lacey, Washington apartment.  She had been raped and strangled.  Jones had been involved in a last-minute e-mail quarrel with a man she was supposed to have gone out with that evening, Friday, July 6, 2001, and instead ended up going to Bailey's Lounge, a local dive in nearby Olympia, where she met Braae.

Two other women that police were able to connect with Braae disappeared in the late 1990s.  Valina Larson, 37, a homeless woman, was last seen arguing with him outside a storage locker in Clackamas County, Oregon in September 1997, and her bones were found the following January by school children playing in a field.  Another Oregon woman, Debra Van Luven, 45, was also last seen with Braae in 1997 and has not been seen or heard from since.

The authorities in both Oregon and Washington badly wanted Braae behind bars, especially after Lori Jones' body was found and she had been connected to him, but they first had to find him.  To their surprise, the cops did not have to wait long.  On Friday, July 20, 2001 Braae was seen at a truck stop on I-84 in Idaho, just across the border from Oregon.  When he realized that he had been spotted, he took his pursuers on a 13-mile high-speed chase back into Oregon.

Anticipating his route from Black Canyon Junction back to Ontario, Oregon, sheriff's deputies placed tire spikes onto the road in an effort to stop him.  Nevertheless, Braae somehow managed to get around the spikes without damaging his vehicle's tires.  The police fired shots at him at various points along the way, but they could not seem to stop him.  It was not until one of the cops shot out a tire on the blue Nissan pickup he was driving that everyone thought the chase was over.  However, Braae, not willing to give up that easily, managed to drive to the center of a bridge that crossed the Snake River along the Oregon and Idaho border where he stopped, got out of his pickup, and hurled himself across the railing and into the river some 40 feet below.  Two and one-half miles downstream later a sheriff's deputy in a jet boat, using a long leash, placed a police dog into the water to go after Braae.

When the dog reached Braae, he attempted to drown it, according to sheriff's deputies.  However, the dog bit at Braae and his clothing, and it was obvious that Braae was too exhausted to continue trying to fight off the dog.  Deputies used the leash to pull the dog, which had a tight grip on Braae's clothing with his teeth, and Braae into their boat.

"He hollered, 'My name isn't Cowboy,' but that's the only thing he said," according to Malheur County Sheriff's Detective Rich Harriman, who was in the jet boat.

"I hadn't had my summer swim yet," Braae said later.  "I figured I better get it since I probably wouldn't have another chance for a long, long time."

At that time, Braae was held on charges of eluding police officers, criminal mischief and interfering with a police animal.  The Malheur County District Attorney's Office had also received a warrant for a first-degree attempted murder charge related to the shooting of Marchelle Morgan in Washington State in the case that would ultimately end in a mistrial nearly five years later.  After the legal tangles were combed out, Braae was sent back to Idaho, where the chase began, for prosecution.

In January 2002, an Idaho jury found Braae guilty of one count of aggravated assault on police officers and one count of eluding an officer.  He was sentenced to 9 ½ years in prison.  After being linked to Lori Jones' rape and murder, in which forensic evidence clearly placed him inside Jones' bedroom, preparations were made to extradite him to Washington State.  This, of course, had been after the declared mistrial in 2006.  However, it would take until 2008 to bring Braae to trial for Jones' rape and murder.

At one point Braae granted a reporter for the Ontario, Oregon Argus Observer a jailhouse interview in which he claimed that the police had arrested the wrong man for the crimes with which he had been charged.  The reporter asked him at one point if he had ever killed anyone, but it was a subject that he did not want to talk about.

"I am not a violent man," Braae said.  "I love women...I don't break their hearts and abuse them.  Usually it is the other way around...."

Braae was originally from Bonney Lake, Washington, near Seattle, and had four children from a failed marriage.  He claimed that he was never called Cowboy Mike, and accused the news media of making up the name and tagging him with it.

Braae was characterized as a man who has a hatred for women, perhaps because of his failed marriage and several subsequent failed relationships.  He was also portrayed as controlling, and could not handle being in a relationship where he was not permitted to call all the shots.

On May 22, 2008, a Thurston County, Washington jury found Braae guilty of murder and first-degree rape in connection with the death of Lori Jones.  At his sentencing last week, Superior Court Judge Richard Strophy told Braae that he was a "truly dangerous" man as he sentenced him to nearly 48 years in prison, the maximum allowed under the state's sentencing guidelines.

"That's your epitaph," Strophy said, "and you're proud of it so you can swagger on to the Department of Corrections."

Braae, in brief remarks to the judge, denied killing Jones and blamed his defense attorneys for not interviewing witnesses, whose names he had provided.  He claimed that if they had interviewed those witnesses, he would have been cleared.

"I wouldn't be standing here convicted of this crime today," Braae said.

Braae testified during his trial that he'd had sex with Jones, but that he had not killed her.  He claimed that another man had picked her up in a dark-colored SUV, but was unable to provide any other details.

Following his sentencing in Washington, Braae was sent back to Idaho to finish serving his sentence there.  Upon his release in Idaho in 2012, Braae will be returned to Washington to begin serving his lengthy sentence there.

Photo credit:  Police Mug Shot