The Bad Seed: They got away with murder in a Leonardtown alley, where a new generation gathers to listen to music, sip smoothies, and gaze at murals next to where Whitey Woodburn was beaten to death.

The Bad Seed
FATHER AND SON MURDER, ARSON, AND ASSAULT MIGHT BE A GENERATIONAL DNA PATTERN

By Ken Rossignol
THE CHESAPEAKE TODAY

DAVID ALLEN BROOKS III

St. Mary’s County Grand Jury issued an indictment on July 17, 2023, for David Allen Brooks III. Brooks (DOB 1/25/1997) of 42762 St. Johns Road, Hollywood, Maryland, appeared for a bail bond hearing before Circuit Court Judge Amy Lorenzini on July 20, 2023. Judge David Densford will preside over a hearing status on August 25, 2023. The criminal counts placed against Brooks are felony first-degree assault, misdemeanor second-degree assault, misdemeanor arson threats, and felony use of a firearm in a violent crime.  An arrest warrant was issued by Judge Joseph Stanalonis on July 18, 2023, which was served on July 19, 2023, resulting in his arrest and incarceration.

DAVID ALLEN BROOKS JR

David Allen Brooks Jr (DOB 8/21/1961) of 42762 St. Johns Road, Hollywood, Maryland, was brought to St. Mary’s Circuit Court on March 20, 2006, for non-payment of child support of a minor child on behalf of Tammy Lynn Wathen, of Leonardtown. During the course of the time the case was before the court, Judge Michael Stamm twice ordered bench warrants for the arrest of David Allen Brooks Jr. Circuit Court Judge Stamm ordered a body attachment for failing to appear in court on July 21, 2008, and on February 17, 2009, ordered a body attachment for Brooks for failing to pay his child support. Judge David Densford was scheduled to participate in two hearings in Circuit Court for his former client in this matter, one on May 2, 2012, and again on June 20, 2012. Court records show that on May 2, 2012, Judge Densford recused himself and advised that the hearing would have to be heard before another judge.

The May hearing for contempt was held in Court Room 3, and the contempt hearing set for June 20, 2012, was canceled, according to court records. On November 12, 2008, in Circuit Court, Brooks admitted being in arrears on his child support payments in the amount of $8,296.71 and was sentenced to 179 days in jail.

A foreclosure action was initiated against David Allen Brooks and Shirley Ann Brooks at 42919 St. Johns Road, Hollywood, Maryland in St. Mary’s Circuit Court on December 8, 2008. The outcome took place on April 11, 2011, when David Allen Brooks transferred the property to HSBC Bank USA.

St. Mary’s County States Attorney Walter Dorsey filed murder charges against David Allen Brooks and James Aubrey Bowles Jr.,

David Allen Brooks must have been wondering what he entered a guilty plea to doing after learning that the man he testified had brutally and viciously taken the life of John Jackson Joy, Joseph Joy, was found not guilty in a retrial in Calvert County Circuit Court in 1980.
Brooks had another opportunity to see a courtroom trial on a murder charge when he was charged on March 19, 1993, in St. Mary’s District Court with first and second-degree murder in the death of Francis Abell “Whitey” Woodburn Jr. Brooks was represented by David Densford, who successfully won an acquittal for his client.

This trial was yet another case of a jury not wanting to take the word of gypsies, tramps, druggies, and thieves. Not that the witnesses in this case of alleged murder were members of that group.
The prosecution put forth the scenario that Brooks and his associate James Aubrey Bowles Jr. decided to teach Woodburn, the town drunk, a lesson and beat the stuffing out of him in the alley next to the Town Inn bar.

The fundamental problem is that often, the only witnesses to a crime are not Sunday school teachers or the local pharmacist but instead are folks of somewhat untrustworthy reputations.
The attorney for Brooks hammered the lack of veracity of the witnesses and the changing stories, but it was the work of Richard Fritz doing much the same in pretrial motions that set the tone for the trial.

The Town Inn burned one icy winter night and was never rebuilt. Today, the vacant lot has been turned into a small park. One can sit on a bench there and imagine the fatal beating that two men delivered to the head and face of Woodburn that Memorial Day weekend.
Brooks and his cohort, James Aubrey Bowles Jr., were alleged to have taken Woodburn’s body and dumped it along the roadway on Rt. 5 going up the hill on the southbound side and left it. When found, the first autopsy revealed that Woodburn must have been struck by a vehicle as he staggered along Rt. 5, as he was often seen doing.
Being fairly down low on the society stratus of Leonardtown, not too much attention was paid to how he was killed or who killed him, or if it was even a murder at all.

See the rest of the story about the murder trial with exclusive comments from Rick Fritz in MURDER USA.

SEE MORE of the details of the murder and the rest of the story now available in Kindle and paperback, and hardcover, coming soon in Audible, at Amazon MURDER USA: True Crime, Real Killers https://amzn.to/2EymMdr