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Brush had taken a key to Kaake’s home from her brother and copied it. Obviously obsessed with Kaake, Brush would enter her home when she wasn’t there.

He knew her work schedule and expected her to be out that night. He figured he’d have enough time, as the judge described it, “to enter her residence in some state of perverse sexual excitement, relieve himself and slink away.”

Instead, Kaake came home to find a pile of clothing on the living room floor. When she began to call out, ‘Who’s there,’ Brush threw a blanket over her head and punched her.

They broke furniture in their struggle. Brush bludgeoned Kaake with a table leg, threw her back into a chair and choked her.

As Brush told police in his videotaped confession, Kaake seemed unconscious when he went to the kitchen to get a knife to “finish her off.”

Finding the first knife too dull, he returned to the kitchen to get a “better knife.”

Brush slit Kaake’s throat. As the judge pointed out, “He took a shower in her home while she bled to death on the floor.”

In his police interview, Brush expressed surprise at how long it took Kaake to die.

After the murder, Brush went to the LaSalle home he shared with his mother and stepfather, retrieved cleaning supplies, a gas can and a pair of shears. He returned to Kaake’s home to cover up his crime.

Kaake had scratched him in the face and eyes, so Brush cut off her fingertips to prevent police from finding his DNA under the nails. He doused Kaake’s body in gasoline and set fire to her house.