all right good afternoon um we're here to discuss um a homicide that occurred over the weekend um I'm going to run through the scenario for you and explain what happened and and where we are um on June 8th uh at about 5:15 uh at 5403 Oak first Road in seminal uh the penel County Sheriff's Office received the report of a body floating in the inter Coastal waterways it was this past Monday shortly after 5 the body was recovered and was brought to the shore uh the victim had very serious head injuries and skull fractures uh that were caused by bondt trauma the victim was identified as charlyy Brooks also known as Charlie Madison and she's a white female uh with a date of birth of February 8th 1979 uh through investigation detectives learned uh that uh Charlie had arrived in Florida uh early Sunday morning from Fort Morgan Colorado which is just outside of Denver which is where she had been living until recently she pre previously lived here in penis County in the Largo seal in St Petersburg area uh we learned through the investigation uh that Charlie came to Florida to visit Joseph Pope who is a 36-year-old white male Pope and Brooks grew up together and at some point in the past had a romantic relationship we know from video footage at the Tampa International Airport which you see here to my right that about 5:40 a.m. this past Sunday morning is when Charlie arrived at Tampa Airport and she was picked up by Pope so from the photographs Pope is the male that you see in the photographs and the female is Charlie Brooks as she got off the airplane she took a redey flight from Denver to Tampa arriving here at about 5:40 on Sunday morning after they left the airport we know that they went to uh Pope's residence which is at 5426 Oakhurst Road in seol which is one house away from where Brooks's body was found in the inter Coastal Waterway on Monday evening a witness on Sunday morning saw a female who is later identified as uh Charlie andent her Pope's residence Pope lived at this address at 5426 Oaker Road um and he lived there with his mother and his father who were both out of town over this past weekend he occupied a garage apartment uh that would be characterized as a separate room or a separate apartment if you will uh within the home Pope's 23 and 16-year-old sisters also lived at this location uh with him and his parents Pope also had another adult sister who lives in pelis park during the day on Sunday both sisters who live at that residence left for several hours so Pope and Brooks arrive there early Sunday morning um the two sisters are there they leave late morning um and there are times during the day on Sunday when both sisters are not at the residence during the evening on Sunday uh Pope was watching television in the living room and not in his bedroom which is des his sisters described as highly unusual because when he was at the home he stayed in his room again which is kind of a separate part of the residence on Monday uh Pope went to work at a local pool cleaning company and then as I mentioned about 5:15 p.m. on Monday evening is when we receive the call of Brook's body floating in the inter Coastal Waterway because Pope lived a door down and as part of our normal investigative process and the neighborhood canvas that we do detectives interviewed everybody in the area including Pope Brooks had a distinct appearance in that her head was partially shaved we know from talking to family members out in Colorado in fact she just had that done at a local hair salon last week out in the Denver area Pope was asked by the detectives if he knew Brooks and whether anyone matching her description again this female with a partially shaved head had been in his home and he denied both so this was on Monday evening when a neighbor um had told us previously uh that the neighbor had seen somebody matching U Charlie's description enter the home and he was confronted with this Pope dismissed it and and said it must have been one of his sisters Pope also had a scrape on his leg that he claimed came from something that happened at work Pope gave detectives other very inconsistent statements and with other evidence we developed Pope quickly became a suspect in Charlie Brooks homicide we established surveillance on Pope's residence from the land and the water because the home sits right on the inter Coastal Waterway we also learned that Pope's sister noticed that the bed sheets from his bed were missing which was very unusual on early Tuesday morning detectives obtained a search warrant for Pope's residence uh pope did not leave for work on Tuesday morning as he was scheduled to at about 7:25 yesterday morning uh one of our marine unit deputies recovered a black plastic trash bag floating in the inter Coastal Waterway behind Pope's residence now it's unknown whether Pope saw the Marine unit Deputy pick up that black trash trash bag out of the water and collect it or not he was home at the time and we don't know whether he did and that black trash bag is the one you see depicted here in the photograph and you can see the items at least some of the items I'll talk more about them in a second that were recovered in that black trash bag uh the furthest to my left or the furthest to your right right is a big rock that is covered in blood and you can see in this photograph which is closest here uh to on my left um these items here are plastic gloves you can see uh some sheets you see the rock you see other pieces of clothing again that are covered in blood that were found in the inter coaster Waterway right behind uh his house the rock that you see there depicted over on your far right is what we believe is is the murder weapon at about 10:00 a.m. yesterday morning as detectives were preparing to execute the search warrant Pope's sister the one who doesn't live there arrived at the residence and shortly after that detectives saw that she came running into the front yard yelling and screaming and was very upset uh we were conducting the surveillance we saw that she was upset detectives approached her and she told them that Pope was lying on the ground on the side of the residence and that he was dead he had committed suicide and shot himself in the head detectives entered the residence determined that it was safe no one was there and they in fact found Pope uh deceased uh on the side of the residence and he had used a 45 caliber handgun shot himself in the head and killed himself the forensics evidence that we found at the scene um reveals to us that Pope killed Brooks by bashing her head with that rock and it appears after he did that that he dumped her body in the inter Coastal Waterway there was blood found found inside Pope's bedroom and evidence that he attempted to clean the scene of some blood there's also blood found outside near where Pope killed himself that doesn't belong to him we believe that's Charlie's blood and that's probably where the homicide occurred we will not know uh for sure until the medical examiner office releases its report but from what we know now uh it appears that she was killed and then her body was dumped into the inter Coastal the pelis County Sheriff's Office di dive team responded to the area yesterday afternoon and in addition to this plastic bag that you see here they recovered a second plastic bag that was weighted down with a boat anchor uh into some additional rocks and it had yet more bloody clothing in it and that was found by the seaw wall right behind Pope's residence so this is an ongoing investigation uh and frankly we will probably never know what caused Pope to kill Brooks and what was really a tragic and very brutal way U her skull was bashed in uh the other thing that we found in the bag not this bag but the bag that we found yesterday afternoon that the dive team recovered were pieces of her skull pieces of bone were actually in the bag uh he brutalized her when he hit her with that rock he hit her several times and it was not good um we probably never going to know what caused this and why you can see here from these photographs it appears to me uh that she was excited to see him you can see that they're holding hands uh when they left the airport at 5:40 on Sunday morning and from the best that we know is that her body was probably dumped in the inter Coastal Waterway sometime late Sunday sometime Sunday evening so something happened between this um looks like enthusiastic greeting here at 5:40 a.m. on Sunday morning and sometime during the day on Sunday um and there's a window there again where the other sisters who live at the house were not there and sometime late Sunday most likely when he dumped her body in the inter Coastal so um but we don't know uh we know from talking to Charlie's mom that she had recently again been in contact with Pope they were exchanging Facebook texts they were back and forth in social media and that she was coming to Florida to see him so uh Pope's criminal history is very minimal uh he had one misdemeanor arrest for possession of marijuana uh Charlie Brooks does have a very extensive criminal history a variety of charges she's been in the Ford State Prison System uh most likely in her past and maybe even recently probably pretty serious drug user um she has several kids uh throughout the area um and it probably lived a pretty pretty hard life there's no evidence that anybody else other than Pope who I said is now deceased himself is responsible for this murder uh but the investigation will continue it is ongoing uh but I'm comfortable in telling you that there's nothing that the public or anybody else has anything to worry about we believe that the person who committed this very brutal murder with that rock um is dead himself so