North Carolina to execute MIKEL BRADY- He Murdered 4 Helpless officers in attempted prison Escape…

North Carolina to execute MIKEL BRADY- He Murdered 4 Helpless officers in attempted prison Escape…

Introduction: The Failed Escape

“I stabbed him like four to eight times. I hit Jeffrey How until he stopped moving. I don’t know how many times I hit him with the hammer.”

“That man, Michael Bray, beat that man, George [expletive], like he was trying to bust concrete. I’m up here to tell the truth. You can ask me anything you want. I’m going to tell the truth, whether it hurts me, whether it helps me. I don’t care about that.”

“You don’t believe you’re crazy, do you?”

“No, I don’t think I’m crazy, no.”

“And you do know the difference between right and wrong?”

“Yes.”

“Do you know murder is wrong?”

“Murder is a different name for a death, but yes.”

“Your freedom meant more than their lives?”

“Yes.”

On the afternoon of October 12th, 2017, four inmates at a North Carolina State Prison set a fire in a sewing plant, picked up hammers and scissors, and killed four prison employees during a failed escape attempt that lasted less than two hours.

Mikel Edward Brady II was 28 years old. He was the one who planned it. He had spent three months studying the guards, mapping the layout, and choosing the day based on who would be working and which areas would be unmonitored. He had used his job in the prison sewing plant to gather tools, hammers, scissors, screwdrivers, metal from shelving, and had sewn four backpacks from factory materials, packed them with food and clothing, and stored them in plain sight.

He had recruited three other inmates. He had told them there were only two ways this could end: they would escape, or they would die trying. They did not escape.

The Victims and the Attack

The first person they attacked was Justin Smith, a 35-year-old correctional officer, and the only guard assigned to watch 30 inmates in the sewing plant. He was stabbed 67 times. His radio was taken, so he could not call for help.

The second was Veronica Darden, the 50-year-old woman who ran the sewing plant and had trained the very men who turned on her. Her keys were taken because the plan included using her car as the getaway vehicle.

On the loading dock, they found Wendy Shannon, a 49-year-old correctional officer who was not even assigned to the sewing plant. She was struck in the head repeatedly with a hammer. She held on for 18 days in a hospital before she died.

Jeffrey Howe, a 31-year-old maintenance mechanic, stepped out of his office near the loading dock and walked into the middle of it. He was not armed. He was not trained for confrontation. His job was to fix things. He died 22 days later, leaving behind a fiancée and a 3-year-old daughter.

None of the four inmates made it past the prison fence. They were captured in the yard, pulled off the razor wire, and taken into custody. Brady was tried in Dare County two years later. He took the stand and told the jury everything: the planning, the weapons, the attacks—calmly, without emotion.

When the prosecutor asked him whether he chose escape over four people’s lives, he said, “Yes.” The jury deliberated for 52 minutes and sentenced him to death on all four counts. He was 30 years old. He was transferred to ADX Florence in Colorado, the highest-security federal prison in the United States, where he awaits his execution.

The Roots of a Criminal Life

To understand how a boy born to a teenage mother and an abusive father in a small Vermont town—a boy who was in counseling by seven, who lost his father to a stabbing at 12, who was stealing dynamite by 18, and who shot a state trooper in the face by 23—ended up planning the deadliest prison escape in North Carolina history, we have to go back to the beginning.

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In 1989, in the small town of Bethel, Vermont, a teenage girl named Tina Hicks gave birth to a boy she named Mikel Edward Brady II. Tina was just 16 years old at the time, a sophomore at Whitcomb High School. She had been dating the baby’s father, Mikel Brady Sr., since she was 14. He was 21. By the time Tina graduated from high school in 1991, she had already married Mikel Sr. and was expecting their second baby, a girl they named Elizabeth. A few years later, their third, a boy named Ryan, came along.

The Brady household was far from stable. Mikel Sr. was a deeply troubled man. He was physically, mentally, and sexually abusive toward Tina and the family. Tina later described how he would lock them in rooms and hold them down. She tried to leave him on more than one occasion, but he would drag her back. It was a home defined by fear and control.

Even before Michael Jr. could understand what was happening around him, the damage was being done. As a very young boy, his father would punish him harshly over the smallest things. When he was still barely old enough to know better, his father became frustrated by the mess in his son’s bedroom. He stripped the room of everything except a mattress and a blanket, then attached a sliding bolt lock to the outside of the door and locked him in. Mikel Jr. eventually figured out how to escape through a hole in the closet wall, but when his father found out, he beat him for it.

Tina, for her part, was not a strict disciplinarian. Elizabeth, Mikel’s sister, later recalled that their mother rarely raised her voice and never spanked the kids. The contrast between the father’s violence and the mother’s passive nature created an environment with no balance, no boundaries, and no safety. The home swung between extreme control and none at all.

Growing Up in Chaos

As a single-income household, money was tight. Tina worked as a gas station cashier, then moved to an office supply store, and later found a job as an inventory specialist at Gifford Medical Center. A kind neighbor occasionally bought the family groceries. The Bradys were surviving, but just barely.

Mikel Jr. showed troubling signs early. At 7 years old, he told a teacher at school that he knew how to end his own life. The school alerted Tina, and she took him to the Clara Martin Center, a state-run mental health facility in the area. This was against the wishes of Mikel Sr., who did not want his son in counseling and did not believe in medication. It was the beginning of a long and complicated relationship between Mikel Jr. and the mental health system.

Over the years, he would be assessed for various conditions, including ADHD, bipolar disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder. Despite the diagnoses, consistent treatment never took hold. At times, his father actively discouraged him from taking prescribed medications. At other times, the family simply couldn’t afford them, and at other times, Mikel himself refused, saying the drugs made him feel like a zombie. This cycle of being on and off medication would follow him for the rest of his life.

At 10 years old, Mikel struck his 8-year-old sister Elizabeth with a knife during a game. The blow cost Elizabeth the sight in her left eye. It was not clear whether the act was intentional or the result of reckless play, but the severity of it underscored just how unstable things had become inside the Brady household. Despite this, the family stayed together, and Mikel continued to grow up in the same chaotic environment. But the worst was yet to come.

In 2002, when Mikel was 12 years old, tragedy hit the family in the most devastating way possible. His father, Mikel Brady Sr., and his uncle traveled to Connecticut to help protect a relative who was being threatened by an aggressive ex-boyfriend. During the confrontation, both Mikel Sr. and the uncle were stabbed to death.

The man who had terrorized his family was now gone, and with him went whatever fragile structure the household had left.

Spiraling into Crime

After the death of his father, Mikel Brady’s behavior deteriorated rapidly. The structure that was already barely holding together collapsed. Tina did her best, but she was now a single mother with three kids, a low-paying job, and a son who was spiraling out of control.

By his mid-teens, Mikel had found a new family of sorts—a group of young men in the Randolph area who were involved in drugs and theft. What started as petty crimes grew quickly. Mikel became part of a drug and burglary ring that would eventually be linked to more than 100 break-ins across the region. They targeted homes, businesses, and vehicles, stealing anything they could sell: electronics, tools, cash, and drugs.

Tina had no idea what her son was doing. When Mikel came home with money and offered to help with groceries or rent, she believed him when he said he was hauling scrap metal for a local salvage yard. In her mind, her troubled son was trying to step up. He cooked omelets for the family on weekends. At 18, he bought two pigs and raised them on discarded pastries from Dunkin’ Donuts to help feed the family through the winter. To Tina, these were the acts of a young man trying to be responsible. She did not yet know that the money behind those acts was stolen.

Mikel’s criminal activity was far from small-time. In 2008, he was arrested on federal charges for stealing 209 sticks of dynamite from the Rock of Ages Quarry in Bethel, Vermont. The theft was so significant that it triggered a federal anti-terrorism investigation. 209 sticks of dynamite in the hands of a teenager with a criminal record and a history of mental health issues—it was the kind of case that drew attention far beyond the town of Randolph.

Around the same time, the burglary ring was being dismantled. Police connected Mikel and his associates to a long list of break-ins, including a December 2008 burglary at Lucky’s Motorsports in Royalton and a June 2009 break-in at a McDonald’s near Exit 4. Mikel was charged in connection with more than 30 separate crimes, ranging from burglary to assault to possession of stolen property.

Escalating Violence and the First Federal Stint

Before many of those charges could be processed, Mikel committed what would be his most violent act yet. In 2009, he and another man broke into a home in South Royalton looking for marijuana and cash. When they found the homeowner, they beat the occupants with baseball bats. The female resident, who used medical marijuana to control pain from a previous injury, later narrated that Brady had cut her arm repeatedly with a knife while demanding money. She suffered severe brain injuries from the attack and was left permanently affected.

The home invasion was a turning point. This was no longer a story about a troubled teenager stealing car stereos; Michael Brady had become someone capable of extreme violence against innocent people. He was 19 years old.

Rather than face the growing list of charges, Michael and another suspect named Josh Hill did what Mikel would become known for: they ran. The two fled Vermont entirely and made their way to Mexico. For a brief time, they were off the radar, but federal authorities were tracking them. United States Marshals eventually located and captured both men in Mexico, extraditing them back to Vermont to face trial.

Mikel was now facing a mountain of charges: the dynamite theft, the burglaries, the home invasion, and the assault. His criminal record, despite his young age, was already extensive. By the time his sentencing came around in January 2011, he had been charged with more than 30 crimes.

But something unexpected happened in court. By the time of his sentencing, Brady had somehow managed to convince prosecutors and even the court that he was no longer a threat. He had served time while awaiting trial and had reportedly been a model inmate, remaining calm and cooperative behind bars. His legal team argued that he had matured, that the violence was behind him, and that he was ready for a second chance.

The court, persuaded by this transformation, sentenced him to a term that allowed for relatively early release. After serving his minimum sentence, Brady was released from prison in 2012 on furlough for good behavior, with a judge specifically citing his positive conduct behind bars.

A Brief Reprieve and Another Escape

When Mikel Brady walked out of prison in 2012, there were genuine signs that things might be different. He returned to Randolph, began working at a local butcher shop, joined a softball league, and started taking his prescribed medications. For the first time in years, he appeared to be settling into something resembling a normal life.

He also started a relationship, and within a few months, his girlfriend became pregnant with his son. Mikel, who had never had a stable father figure in his own life, now had the chance to become one himself. People around him, including his mother Tina, dared to hope that maybe this time the cycle had been broken.

But the calm did not last. While on furlough, Brady was caught attempting to poach deer in Royalton. On the surface, it seemed like a minor offense and an illegal hunting violation, but for Mikel Brady, it was much more than that: he was a convicted felon. Under federal law, a convicted felon in possession of a firearm faces serious prison time. The deer poaching incident meant not just a state charge for the violation, but a federal firearms charge as well. If arrested, he was going back to prison, not for months, but for years.

Brady knew what was coming. Rather than turn himself in and face the consequences, he did what he had done before: he ran. He left Vermont while still on furlough, violating the terms of his release, and abandoned his pregnant girlfriend, his job at the butcher shop, and whatever fragile stability he had managed to build.

Vermont authorities issued a warrant for his arrest, but Brady had already disappeared. For the next several months, Mikel Brady was a ghost. He dropped completely off the radar of Vermont law enforcement, leaving no forwarding address and making no contact with his probation officer.

The Shooting of Trooper Michael Potts

He eventually made his way south to North Carolina, trying to put as much distance as possible between himself and the outstanding warrants in Vermont. He settled in the Durham area, keeping a low profile for a while. Then, on February 18th, 2013, everything changed again.

Brady was driving on US Highway 70 near Durham when he was pulled over by North Carolina State Highway Patrol Trooper Michael Potts for a routine seatbelt violation. Trooper Potts approached the vehicle unaware of who he was dealing with. What happened next shocked even the most seasoned law enforcement officials in the region.

Brady, knowing there were active warrants for his arrest in Vermont and that being identified would send him back to prison, made a split-second decision that would alter the course of multiple lives. He pulled out a firearm and opened fire on Trooper Potts, shooting the officer four times—twice in the face, once in the hand, and once in the body—before driving away and leaving him on the side of the road critically wounded and believed dead.

Trooper Potts, against all odds, survived. His jaw was shattered, and bullets lodged in his head remained there for months. He endured multiple surgeries and a long, painful recovery, eventually returning to duty with chronic pain and lasting effects that he carries to this day.

Brady fled the scene but was captured the following day in Raleigh after an intense manhunt. When authorities searched his apartment in Durham, they made another alarming discovery: Brady had been building a bomb, and they also found a map of the Raleigh-Durham area with circles drawn around the locations of local police departments.

Prison Life and the Gathering of Co-Conspirators

The shooting of Trooper Potts was prosecuted aggressively. Brady was charged with attempted first-degree murder at the state level and felony possession of a firearm by a convicted felon at the federal level, receiving a 24-year state sentence and a 40-year federal sentence from Chief United States District Judge William Lindsay Osteen Jr. The federal sentence was set to run concurrently, meaning he would serve his state sentence first in the North Carolina state prison system.

Brady was sent to Pasquotank Correctional Institution in Elizabeth City, North Carolina. He was 23 years old. He had shot a police officer in the face, attempted to build explosives, and had a criminal record stretching across multiple states and countries. Now, he was sitting inside a medium-to-high security prison in Eastern North Carolina with more than two decades ahead of him and nothing to lose.

Meanwhile, while Michael Brady was building his criminal record across Vermont and North Carolina, another man was carving out his own path of violence in Elizabeth City: Wisezah Te Ton Buckman. Born on November 12th, 1987, Buckman was the only one of the four eventual perpetrators who grew up in the same area where the crimes would take place.

Buckman came from a troubled family background that contributed to cognitive difficulties he experienced later in life. In 2014, at age 26, he was charged with first-degree murder for the fatal shooting of 36-year-old Thermon Deant Davis in Charlotte, North Carolina. Through a plea agreement in 2015, Buckman pleaded guilty to second-degree murder and was sentenced to 26 to 32 years in state prison at Pasquotank Correctional Institution—the exact same facility where Mikel Brady was already housed.

Buckman was known to be aggressive, volatile, and difficult to manage in prison. By mid-2017, Brady and Buckman were not only associates, but co-conspirators. Brady saw something in Buckman that he could use, and Buckman, facing decades behind bars with nothing to hold him back, joined forces. Together, they would recruit two more men for an unprecedented prison escape.

The Final Two Co-Conspirators: Monk and Frazier

The third member of the group was Jonathan Michael Monk, born on February 2nd, 1987, in North Carolina. His life was marked by instability, neglect, and domestic abuse. Despite struggling through school, he joined the United States military, which temporarily gave him structure and purpose, serving alongside fellow soldier Justin Dupree.

However, in 2011, Monk snapped and attacked Tabitha Dupree, the wife of his friend, slashing her with a knife at least 15 times. Convicted of attempted first-degree murder after claiming a PTSD-induced delusional episode, Monk was sentenced to 13 years in prison and sent to Pasquotank Correctional Institution.

The fourth and final member was Seth Jameson Frazier, born in 1984. In 2006, Frazier committed a sexual offense against a 14-year-old girl, receiving a light 24-month sentence. After his release, he reoffended in 2011, convicted of burglary and the attempted sexual assault of another 14-year-old girl in Onslow County after breaking into her home where she was sleeping. Sentenced to 84 to 110 months plus an additional 17 to 21 months for being a felon in possession of a firearm, Frazier was designated a registered sex offender and sent to Pasquotank.

By the time Frazier arrived at Pasquotank, Brady, Buckman, and Monk were already there. All four men had histories of extreme violence, all four were serving lengthy sentences, and all four were assigned to work near the prison’s sewing plant.

The Work Environment and the Daily Staff

The sewing plant was operated by Correction Enterprises, producing embroidered items, safety vests, and other products for government agencies and nonprofits. It gave the inmates access to tools—scissors, hammers, screwdrivers, sewing kits, wooden handles, and metal shelving components—as well as relative freedom of movement.

Supervising them was Veronica Darden, who oversaw about 30 inmates at a time with the help of just one correctional officer assigned to security: Justin James Smith.

Justin Smith was 35 years old and had been working as a correctional officer at Pasquotank since 2012. He was a dedicated family man who simply showed up, did his job, and went home. Being a correctional officer in North Carolina was a dangerous job; in 2016 alone, there were 1,160 recorded assaults on prison staff across the state. Smith was the sole correctional officer responsible for overseeing the roughly 30 inmates in the sewing plant—a one-to-thirty ratio that critics later highlighted as a critical systemic failure.

Smith interacted with the inmates daily, unaware that four of them had been watching him for months. Brady later admitted during his trial that he had specifically observed that Smith was not a strong communicator and had targeted him in part because his radio could be taken to delay the response time of other officers.

On October 12th, 2017, Smith reported to work as usual, walking into the sewing plant with no idea that he was marked to become the first victim in the deadliest prison escape attempt in North Carolina history.

The Staff on Duty that Morning

Alongside Smith was Veronica Skinner Darden, who ran the entire operation. Darden was 50 years old and had spent more than a decade working within the North Carolina prison system, serving as Correction Enterprises Manager at the specialty sewing plant since 2007. She trained inmates in industrial sewing techniques and was known as a professional who was firm but fair. Even Mikel Brady acknowledged during his trial that he cared about Mrs. Darden and called her a great woman, making the horror of what he did to her all the more difficult to understand. Outside of work, she was a wife waiting to return home to her husband, Eric Darden.

Elsewhere in the facility, Wendy Shannon, a 49-year-old correctional officer with four years of service, was going about her duties. Though not assigned to the sewing plant, her path crossed with the four inmates in the worst possible way on that fateful day.

Working just steps away inside a small maintenance office was Jeffrey Howe, a 31-year-old maintenance mechanic who had celebrated his one-year anniversary with the Department of Public Safety just two months prior. His role was entirely behind the scenes—to keep the building running—and on October 12th, 2017, that was enough to cost him his life.