A Cheating Spouse and Infidelity End in Violence

A series of 911 calls might simply be a series of prank calls, or a series of mistaken dialing, but in one town in Connecticut, the calls were real, and they were anything but mild. The series of calls began with a woman screaming frantically that her husband had a gun. The line then went dead. The 911 dispatcher, who had already traced the call, called back a few seconds later, and heard the woman yelling for police to come. The dispatcher then heard a gunshot, and again, the line went dead. For a third time, the dispatcher called up the number; this time, it was a man who answered the phone, and very calmly, at that. The dispatcher promptly asked for the man’s wife; the man promised that she would come to the phone. For the fourth time in that series of phone calls, the line went dead.

Police officers took the man’s answer as a sign of real trouble, and they immediately rode to the home, which was set in ranch-style in an upscale neighborhood. The result: a murder-suicide, in which the husband, Jonathan Brookner, killed his fifty-two-year-old wife Rita Joyce, before turning the gun on himself. Brookner had also apparently told a good number of people that he had been planning to kill his wife because he had found out that she was unfaithful. According to police reports, several of Brookner’s friends received rambling e-mails from him, explaining what would later be the crime.

The couple both held MBA’s, and had been together for around twenty years. They had no children. Brookner worked for J.D. Power and Associates, while his wife worked for Acxiom Digital, a company in New York specializing in digital marketing services. According to neighbors, they seemed to be interesting people who had a lot of fun together: they traveled together, listened to classical music together, and even had a shared interest in Egyptology. In the summer, the Brookners would hold barbecues in their backyard. Neighbors found them intelligent and bright, even sociable.

All this, however, came to an end when Brookner discovered communications pointing to his wife’s infidelity. He did not confront her, and instead sent his will to his relatives, and started to plot revenge. He also sent out e-mails about his suspicions, and revealed plans to kill Joyce. Because the e-mails were sent only minutes before the shooting occurred, the friends who had received it had no time to call the police .