A Utah man made his initial court appearance on Thursday for the kidnapping of a 19-year-old college student, who authorities say was found naked and covered in coal in his basement, five days after leaving her dorm room to meet him.
Brent Brown, 39, pleaded with a Sixth District Court judge to release him on bail so that he could spend Christmas with his children. He was speaking via video link from the Sevier County Jail, where he has been held from the time of his arrest on Saturday.
Brown faces charges of obstruction of justice, aggravated kidnaping, rape and object rape targeting 19-year-old Snow College student Madelyn Allen, whom he had met in an online fetish chatroom, according to court documents.
Brown allegedly took away Allen’s wallet and phone, forced her to strip naked and tied her up while he was at work, later claiming that it was part of kidnapping role-play. The teen also accused her captor of threatening her family.
Judge Wallace Lee appointed an attorney to represent Brown and ordered him held without bail, citing his being wanted on a felony warrant from another county and posing a possible threat to the community.
When given a chance to weigh in on the bail, Brown said: ‘it would be nice to be home for Christmas. I don’t get to see my kids.’
Brown is due back in court for a combined detention and preliminary hearing on January 10.
Court records indicate that Brown has had multiple run-ins with the law over the years stemming from a wide range of charges, including traffic violations, assault and witness tampering.
In March 2018, a warrant was issued for his arrest in Box Elder County after he failed to appear before a judge in a witness tampering case.
He racked up two additional warrants in the intervening years, including for failure to appear on a traffic citation in Cache County, and for an unknown charges last year in Wasatch County.
Brown’s social media presence paints a picture of a self-styled macho cowboy with a day job working as an equipment operator.
His Facebook profile picture displays a young Clint Eastwood brandishing two guns, accompanied by the caption: ‘The West wasn’t won on salads. East Beef.’
The page is brimming with right-wing memes glorifying Donald Trump, law enforcement and Second Amendment rights, criticizing Barack Obama and President Joe Biden, and mocking COVID-19 restrictions
One image, posted on November 7, shows a young girl holding a sign that reads: ‘human trafficking should scare you more than C-O-V-I-D.’
During a press conference on Saturday night, Allen’s overjoyed parents recounted how they fell to their knees after getting a call from the police, telling them their daughter has been found alive.
Allen met Brown in a group chat on the messaging app KIK and agreed to have him pick her up in Ephraim on December 13, the affidavit stated.
Snow College security video showed Allen leaving her dormitory after 9.20pm last Monday.
While police were looking for Allen, she was at Brown’s home in Loa, nearly 90 miles away, where, according to the court records, the relationship between the college student and her date became nonconsensual and violent.
The affidavit stated that Brown took away Allen’s Phone, allowing her only to text her family the words ‘I love you!’ on December 14 – a message that alarmed her parents and siblings, prompting them to go to the authorities.
Brown allegedly tied up Allen while he was at work, took away her wallet and threatened to ‘come after her family and sister’ if she were to tell anyone about him.
After Brown learned that police were looking for Allen, he threw away her phone, but not before the authorities were able to use cellphone tower data associated with her December 14 text message to track her to Loa.
As police officers were scouring the small town of 500 inhabitants, according to the affidavit, they spotted a petite woman with blonde her in the basement of a home on Main Street. To be countinued…
