In the summer of 1974, Doris Ethel Brown, a 49-year-old woman, was embracing a new chapter in her life in Guelph, Ontario. A recently divorced mother of five, she was known to her loved ones as "Dodi." In her daughter Colleen’s memories, she was a woman who loved her children and animals, could be stubborn about things that mattered to her, and was navigating the world as a single woman after a long marriage.
Her life, full of the textures of family and personal reinvention, was quietly unfolding in her second-floor apartment.
On the morning of August 9, 1974, one of Doris's daughters, Laura, went to wake her mother after hearing her clock-radio alarm going off unanswered. She found her mother in bed, the blankets tucked neatly under her chin, seemingly asleep. But Laura knew immediately that something was terribly wrong. There were no overt signs of a struggle or violence in the room. In the initial examination, despite the pathologist noting minor abrasions and traces of blood in her throat and rectum, Doris Brown's death was officially attributed to natural causes, specifically pulmonary edema, a condition involving fluid in the lungs. The family, left with an "unexplained" death that resembled an adult crib death, had no reason to suspect foul play.
For three years, the quiet tragedy of Doris Brown’s sudden passing remained just that—a sad, but seemingly natural, event. The truth, however, was far more sinister. Across the cities of Guelph and London, a predator was at large, a man who would come to be known as "The Bedroom Strangler" and "The Balcony Killer." He stalked women, scaled the walls of their apartment buildings, and slipped through unlocked balcony doors to attack them as they slept. His early crimes were often mistaken for deaths by natural causes, as he was meticulous in leaving his victims tucked in their beds, the scenes cleaned of any obvious evidence of his horrific acts.
The killer was Russell Maurice Johnson, a former auto factory worker and bodybuilder. Between 1973 and 1977, he committed at least seven murders and numerous sexual assaults. His reign of terror began to unravel after a series of more overtly violent attacks left police with no doubt they were hunting a serial killer. Johnson was finally arrested in July 1977, after the murder of Donna Veldboom, who lived in the same building as him.
During his interrogation, Johnson began to confess, and the true scope of his depravity emerged. He admitted to the murders of three women for which he was initially charged, but then shocked investigators by confessing to four other killings that had been closed as natural or accidental deaths. One of those victims was Doris Ethel Brown. He admitted to entering her apartment on the night of August 8, 1974, and strangling her as she slept, while her teenage daughter was in the next room.
In January 1978, Russell Maurice Johnson went on trial for the three most recent murders. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity and ordered to be confined indefinitely to a secure mental health facility, the Waypoint Centre for Mental Health Care in Penetanguishene. He was never tried for the murder of Doris Brown or his other three initial victims, though his confession left no doubt as to his guilt.
The revelation transformed the Brown family’s private grief into a public horror story, one where Doris was often reduced to a name on a list of a serial killer's victims. Her youngest daughter, Colleen, who was only eight when her mother was killed, grew up with fragmented memories and second-hand stories. Determined to reclaim her mother's identity, Colleen later wrote a memoir, "If you lie down in a field, she will find you there." The book is an effort to remember Doris Brown not for the spectacle of her death, but for the life she lived—a mother in her Guelph home, at the family cottage, a woman who was much more than the final, violent moments of her life. Family members, including Doris's niece Janet Maxwell, have continued to attend Johnson's periodic review board hearings, ensuring that the women he murdered are not forgotten.
