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The Killer Boy Scout · 10 Minute Murder | Bingeable True Crime Stories

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  Welcome to ten minute Murder, Brief and Bingeible True Crime. I am Joe,
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  I'm the host. Thank you for joining today, And if you're like
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  me, the allergy season is really getting ramped up, and your sinus cavity
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  is being held together with thoughts and prayers. So we're just doing the best
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  we can at this point. How does it feel if you don't have allergy
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  problems? How does it feel to be God's favorites? That's what I'd like
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  to know. I don't know what I've done to deserve this in my life,
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  but i'd like to apologize for it by some miracle. I sound okay
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  right now, But a little while ago, I didn't like in the worst
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  way. It was to the point where I thought, I'm just gonna skip
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  this episode because I can't talk right. You can understand what I'm saying,
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  but it sounds like, you know, like you just you shouldn't be saying
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  things to people. That's the way I sounded in a lot of sniffles and
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  you know, the whole nine yards. But I sound I sound fine now,
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  I feel great, sound fine, And it's going to go downhill after
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  this. So, like I said, thoughts and prayers for my sinuses.
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  new ones. Connect with me on social media see the visuals that go along
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  with what we're talking about in the podcast, And if you like this episode,
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  please leave a rating and review on Apple or any place that's possible.
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  Your positive feedback is appreciated and very helpful. Go to ten minute Murder dot
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  com for all things ten minute Murder. Now to today's story. In many
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  family annihilation cases, the perpetrator is the parent, often the father. Potential
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  motives from a discovered affair to a vicious custody battle or threat of divorce.
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  These cases often end with the tragic deaths of everybody involved, including the suicide
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  of the perpetrator. For every rule, there is an exception, and the
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  Browning family murders didn't follow any of these patterns. To begin with. The
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  Browning family didn't seem to have any of the turmoil that can lead to a
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  family annihilation. John W. Browning, the family's father, was a successful
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  attorney who had been happily married to his wife, Tamara for years. They
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  had their first child, Nicholas, in February nineteen ninety two, and later
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  had two more sons, Benjamin and Gregory. Despite his job, Key became
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  busy. John made an effort to stay involved in both of his son's lives
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  and the local community as well. He was committed to his role as a
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  leader in the local church and volunteered as a Scout master, hosting Boy Scout's
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  family meetings and helping to lead outdoor expeditions for the truth. John and Tamara
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  were rightfully proud of their sons. They had raised intelligent, kind boys who
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  were involved in sports and had a wide circle of friends and did well in
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  schools. Nicholas, their oldest, was a Boy Scout, but he was
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  working toward his gold of becoming an Eagle Scout. He was an honor student
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  at his high school, a well rounded, trustworthy kid. It was one
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  week before Nicholas's sixteenth birthday. He'd made plans to stay over to friend's house
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  that night, but he suddenly decided to leave the sleepover and returned to his
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  family home in the middle of the night. It was late in the evening
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  of February first, two thousand and eight, and the rest of Nicholas's family
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  were already asleep. Nicholas crept through the house and found what he was looking
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  for, one of John's handguns. Armed with this weapon, Nicholas located each
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  of the members of his family. Without hesitation, he shot them one by
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  one. There were no signs of a struggle. In fact, his parents
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  and brothers likely had no idea that they were even attacked. Even if they
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  had woken up and tried to run, there was no escape. Once he
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  was satisfied that his family had been executed, Nicholas left the house. He
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  disposed of the gun by throwing it into some nearby bushes, hiding it from
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  view. Then the fifteen year old returned to his friend's house and resumed his
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  sleepover as if nothing was wrong. The next day, Nicholas was dropped back
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  home by one of his friends. Even though he knew that the four dead
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  bodies waited for him inside, he kept up this act, pretending that everything
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  was fine. Nicholas knew that he had to stage a scene where he discovered
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  the bodies for the first time so that nobody would become suspicious. He'd rehearsed
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  exactly what he was going to do, he'd walk inside the house, pretend
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  to discover his father's body, the only corpse, which was downstairs, and
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  then called the police. The plan went off without a hitch, and Nicholas
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  placed his nine one one call, telling the operator that he found his father
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  lying motionless on the couch, not breathing, with blood coming out of his
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  nose. He said nothing about the bodies that were upstairs, and the responders
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  sent to the scene believed that they were arriving at the scene of some tragic
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  cardiac arrest with no idea about the horrors that waited for them inside the rest
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  of the house. Emergency responders rushed to the Browning house and discovered the extent
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  of the violence, as well as the body of forty five year old John
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  Browning on the downstairs couch, the bedrooms upstairs containing the bodies of forty four
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  year old Tamar Browning, thirteen year old Gregory, and eleven year old Benjamin.
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  Searching the property, police located the discarded handgun and the bushes outside.
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  On Sunday evening, one day after the murders, a candlelight vigil was held
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  outside of the Browning family home. The community was scared and also in shock.
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  Frances Daily, the pastor of the local church, expressed his disbelief,
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  saying, quote, I'm told this is not the kind of family this could
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  happen too, And he was right. John and Tamra adored each other and
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  had a stable marriage. The whole family was involved in the boy Scouts and
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  spent a lot of time exploring the outdoors together. But they had all been
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  murdered in their beds except for one. Immediately, investigator suspicion turned to the
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  one surviving member of the Browning family. Nicholas's story would never have held up
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  under scrutiny. The evidence was everywhere, despite his attempts to hide the gun
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  and pretend that he'd been at his friend's house when the family was killed.
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  It was sloppily planned and poorly executed. In other words, exactly the kind
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  of murder that a fifteen year old boy could be expected to carry out.
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  As it turned out, there was no need to pick at the holes in
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  the story to coax a confession out of Nicholas. In the early hours of
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  that Sunday morning, less than twelve hours after the bodies of his family were
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  discovered, Nicholas Browning confessed to all four murders. The resulting news release did
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  not provide many answers for the grieving community, who were left wondering why the
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  teenage boy they considered to be a friend and neighbor had violently ended the lives
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  of his entire family. In fact, the news release left locals with more
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  questions than answers. It simply stated that no signs of a confrontation had been
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  found at the Browning family home and revealed that Nicholas and John had been in
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  conflict recently. The cause of the conflict, how serious it was, was
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  left up to speculation. Liz las Laubach, a seventeen year old schoolmate of
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  Nicholas's, remembered hearing him complain about arguing with his dad. However, she
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  was certain that the fight had not been serious, and Nicholas had certainly never
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  implied that any kind of violent altercation had taken place. Like the rest of
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  Nicholas, Gregory and Benjamin's classmates, Liz was devastated. They'd lost two of
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  their peers in a matter of hours, and a kid their own age had
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  been the killer. It was a kind of trauma that must have been almost
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  impossible to process. Nicholas was held at the juvenile detention of the Baltimore County
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  Detention Center after being arrested for the murders and denied bail. Nobody quite knew
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  what to do with him, This tall, gangly teenage boy who had committed
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  such a horrific crime and naively believed that he could somehow get away with it.
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  Thinking that he could escape prosecution was just the beginning of Nicholas's naivety.
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  Nicholas might have mistakenly believed that his young age would provide some type of leniency
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  in his sentencing for single murder. Maybe it would have, but this was
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  a child who had deliberately annihilated an entire family, including two children, his
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  siblings. It was a unique case, and it required a unique approach from
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  prosecutors. It came as a shock to many, and possibly to Nicholas himself,
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  when the charges were revealed. Despite his young age, he was going
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  to be charged as an adult for all four counts of murder. His age
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  only provided one advantage. He could not be given the death penalty. The
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  motive for the killings remains hazy. Nicholas insisted that he had killed his father
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  due to the abuse he suffered at John's hands. However, even if this
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  argument was true, it didn't provide any explanation about the murders of Tamara,
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  Gregory, and Benjamin. The prosecution believed that there was no truth to this
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  version of events. Instead, prosecutors alleged that Nicholas had killed his parents in
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  a fit of rage because he resented being told what to do. The murders
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  of his brothers had been sort of an insurance policy, guaranteeing that the inheritance
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  money would go all to Nicholas. How Nicholas expected to get away with such
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  a sloppily planned murder in order to collect the inheritance in the first place is
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  also a mystery. In January of two thousand and nine, Nicholas Browning reached
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  a plea agreement with the prosecutors, pleading guilty to all four counts of degree
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  murder. He received his sentence four life terms in prison, with the first
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  two of these terms being served consecutively. Currently, Nicholas is imprisoned at the
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  Western Correctional Institution. His request for reduced sentence was denied in twenty fourteen,
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  but his release might be quicker than a four life term sentence suggests if his
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  good behavior continues in prison, Nicholas will be eligible for parole in two thousand
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  and thirty one, only twenty three years into his sentence. That's less than
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  six years total jail time for each murder.