Ernest Brendel’s sister didn’t believe her brother’s friend, who came to tell her, one fall day in 1991, that Ernest had been kidnapped-along with his wife, Alice, and young daughter, Emily-as part of a mafia scheme. But Christopher Hightower insisted that they needed ransom money, and as proof, he took her outside to Ernest’s Toyota, the car he’d driven there. He pointed to the backseat, which was soaked through with blood. There was more blood in the trunk. Eventually, police would match that blood evidence to Ernest Brendel. But they’d also prove that Hightower-not the mafia-was to blame for Brendel’s death.
To most people, Chris Hightower was a commodities broker with ties to his Rhode Island community. He taught Sunday school and worked with at-risk kids. But one fall day in 1991, he went on a murder rampage, killing his friend Ernest Brendel and Brendel’s family. Facing financial trouble and estranged from his wife, Hightower purchased a crossbow and drove to Brendel’s house. He hid in the garage and fired an arrow into Brendel’s chest when the man arrived back home. While trying to escape, Brendel was shot twice more. He managed to crawl into the second car in the garage, a Toyota, where Hightower smashed his skull with a crowbar.
Hightower then picked Emily up from an after-school program at the YMCA by offering Brendel’s license as proof that he was a family friend who could be trusted to take the girl home. When Alice Brendel arrived home that night, she and Emily were drugged with sleeping pills. It was the last time anyone from the Brendel family was seen alive.
The next day Hightower bought a brush, a hose, some muriatic acid, and a fifty-pound bag of lime. He scrubbed the garage with muriatic acid to clean up the blood. He cleaned the car with baking soda and washed away more blood.
Six weeks later a woman walking a dog stumbled over two shallow graves. One housed the remains of Ernest Brendel. The second held Alice Brendel-found with a scarf wrapped around her neck-and Emily, who was believed to have been buried alive. In the grave was an empty bag of lime. In the Toyota that Hightower had been driving, police found the torn corner of that bag of lime, as well as the Home Depot receipt for the lime and the muriatic acid.
Hightower was convicted and is serving three life sentences. With friends like that, who needs enemies?