FRANKLIN COUNTY, Va. – Our 10 News Exclusive continues on the story of Michael Brown, a Marine deserter whose mangled RV sparked a weeks-long manhunt, capturing national attention.
For the first time, Brown reveals why he went AWOL from the Marines and the events leading up to the killing of his abusive stepfather back in 2019.
The Franklin County home is the center of former the Marine’s story. That’s where his stepfather was shot and killed, where abuse was a regular occurrence according to Brown, and where Brown was hiding when police arrested him being on the run for two weeks.
Let’s pick up the story when Michael had just graduated high school and was thrown out of the house.
“At some point a few days after I graduated high school, he actually left ... going to kick me out of the house, and literally kicked me through the screen door into the yard and told me never come back after that,” Brown said.
Brown was homeless and lived in a park in Rocky Mount.
[10 NEWS EXCLUSIVE | PART ONE: AWOL Marine who killed his stepfather in Franklin County speaks out]
Eventually, he got a few odd jobs, but the Marines were on his mind – a way to prove something.
“I was always told that I was worthless ... that I wasn’t gonna be much ... and when I knew I wanna join the military, I wanted to do something that was going to challenge me in a way that nobody thought I could complete it. You know, that I want to do something complete, something that nobody thought I could ever do. So that’s what I picked,” Brown said.
The young marine got married, then divorced. Around that time, he started having blackout episodes.
His mother had suffered from mental illness and he didn’t want to follow her path into psychiatric wards.
“I was afraid I would end up like my mother and lose everything that I worked so hard for,” Brown said.
Then came a big one.
“I had a hallucination that I saw my stepfather trying to attack me through the window. He was huge. He was like deathly scary. And out of fear, I pulled my weapon that was on my hip and fired at his hip. After I fired, I came out of the hallucination and realized there was something seriously wrong with me,” Brown said.
He was afraid he would hurt someone. Target shooting was a hobby. It usually calmed him. Instead, he says he shot a stray dog in the nearby woods.
“I had no idea what had happened in that time and it was very scary. That was my first dissociated amnesia episode,” Brown said.
He went AWOL, bought an RV and tried to hide from society until his demons calmed – or didn’t.
“So my plan was – I was going to get this RV and leave camp, go somewhere that I couldn’t hurt anyone else and stay there until I lost time for good or got better,” Brown said.
[ROLLING STONE: The Insanity Plea That Shook a Small Town]
He came back to Franklin County to say goodbye to his mother and to explain why he was running, but he had trouble finding the words.
“I wanted to tell her that I was going to go up there and tell her, ‘Hey mom, I’m going to go live the woods until it either passes or kills me. I love you, goodbye,’” Brown said.
He said he was looking for her the night Rodney was shot and killed.
We asked Brown, “Was it was it revenge that took you back to where you grew up?”
His response?
“I drove down into the driveway and ended up dissociating several times. In that time is when the incident happened that Rodney ended up being killed, but I was hoping to avoid Rodney altogether that day,” Brown said.
Brown said he has no memory of the killing.
His lawyer said that police found the victim had been shot with two different firearms.
In court, the defense argued successfully for a finding of not guilty by reason of insanity – citing a condition called dissociative amnesia.
Brown is now in a mental health rehab facility and has big plans to help others struggling with mental health.
See our previous coverage on the incident, manhunt and updates on the case here.