On May 15, 1999, Andi Brewer was reported missing from her home, near Mena, in western Arkansas. She was last seen leaving her house in a small red pickup truck. Police initially thought that Andi may have run away from home. After a day or so, however, they decided that was unlikely, and they called in the FBI and the Arkansas State Police to help investigate. They first looked for people known to the family that drove small red pickup trucks. The only two people who fit that description were Roberts and Bobby Stone. Both men agreed to voluntarily go to the police station to be interviewed on May 17, and both submitted to polygraph examinations.
“It’s not going to be ok!
Andi can’t be brought back!
For 15 years this has been going on…
we’ve fed him longer than she lived!”
Karl Roberts. Lot of 2 ALS: (1) #10 Commercial (4.125” x 9.5”) envelope. Pmk: September 18, 2006. SEALED. Content unknown. Pristine; (2) #10 Commercial (4.125” x 9.5”) envelope. Pmk: September 20, 2006. SEALED. Content unknown. Pristine.
Roberts's polygraph exam was conducted by Corporal Ocie Rateliff of the Arkansas State Police. Rateliff read Roberts his Miranda rights prior to the exam and explained to him how the polygraph test worked. At the conclusion of the exam, Rateliff allowed Roberts to go outside to smoke a cigarette while he analyzed the polygraph. Before speaking with Roberts, Rateliff informed FBI Special Agent Mark Jessie that Roberts was being deceptive on the exam.
Rateliff then called Roberts back into the interview room and told him that the test revealed that he was being deceptive. Roberts immediately dropped his head and said, “I messed up.” He then confessed that he took Andi from her home, drove her out on an old logging road, raped her, and then strangled her to death.
Roberts was subsequently convicted of the capital murder of the young girl and sentenced to death, in an order entered on May 23, 2000.
The trial judge asked Roberts to tell him in his own words what he was asking for, and Roberts stated: “I want to die.” The trial judge then asked Roberts if he was asking that the death sentence be carried out without any further action by his attorney on direct appeal, and Roberts stated: “Yes.”
Child Rape
According to Roberts's statement, Andi asked him to take her home several times along the way. Roberts kept on driving. He eventually stopped his truck on an old logging road and told Andi to get out. When she asked him what he was going to do, he told her he was going to “fuck” her. He told her to take off her shirt and lay down. He then took off the girl's pants and raped her. While he was violating her, Andi tried to get away from him, but he was able to hold her down. He told police that when he finished raping her, he knew that he could not let her live, because he had ejaculated inside her. He then decided to kill her by mashing his thumbs into her throat. Once the child turned blue and passed out, he dragged her body off into the woods and covered her up with limbs and brush. He then took her clothes and threw them off a nearby bridge, into a creek. Associate Medical Examiner Dr. Stephen Erickson testified that the child's vaginal vault was bruised in three different areas and, in his opinion, the area was subjected to a significant amount of trauma. Erickson further stated that the sexual encounter would have to have been pretty rough to cause such “deep-seated injuries.”i
Karl Roberts, who brutally raped and murdered his 12-year-old niece Andi Brewer, alive and well 20 years after conviction
Rebecca Petty's daughter Andi Brewer would have been 32 this year had she not been snatched away by her own uncle who lured her away from her Arkansas rural home, raped her and strangled her till she bit her tongue in half before her death.
At the age of 12, Andi Brewer was kidnapped by Karl Roberts, who was then 32. On May 24, 2000, Roberts was sentenced to death for kidnapping, raping and strangling Andi to death. But 20 years later, he still remains on death row.
Andi was killed in a forest near Mena in western Arkansas. In December 2014, Petty's former husband Gregory Brewer (at the time of her daughter's murder, Petty was already divorced from Brewer) of Mena physically attacked Roberts in one of the courtroom proceedings.
Roberts had sought to waive his constitutional rights and accept the death penalty—this prompted his attorneys to contend that he is not mentally competent to waive his post-conviction rights.
In a chilling account, he had confessed in detail to the police the atrocities he committed on the young girl and how he killed his 12-year-old niece.
He described how he told Andi "I'm gonna fuck you" before he stripped and raped her. Then he "started choking her and mashing my thumbs on her throat" until she turned blue. Later, he hid her naked body in woodland, got rid of her clothes and fled the scene.
Now, Petty has had enough. Slamming the "disgusting" system that continues to keep Roberts alive two decades since his horrendous crime, she revealed the horrific details of Andi's murder to Sun Online. "Roberts confessed he did it, but he's been on death row for 20 years."
"It was a heinous thing Roberts did," she recalls. "Andi was a little kid, and she was scared and wanted to go home. When she was assaulted and brutally raped, she bit her tongue in half. That's pretty wrong... But that's the truth."
Despite the despair and anguish, Petty remembers her daughter with love.
VIDEO: In Regards to a Death Penalty Case: Back to Court AGAIN. Andi Brewer. | https://youtu.be/6iPa1fnAyec
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i FindLaw's Supreme Court of Arkansas case and opinions. (2023). Available at: https://caselaw.findlaw.com/court/ar-supreme-court/1274287.html (Accessed: 20 April 2023).