Randy Herman is a killer from Florida who would murder his roommate Brooke Preston
According to court documents Brooke Preston was preparing to leave Florida and move to New York with her boyfriend and would return to the apartment she shared with friend Randy Herman. However soon after her arrival she would be stabbed multiple times causing her death. Herman would then hide her body underneath a blanket
Randy Herman would call police and tell them about the murder. However after he was arrested Herman would claim that he murdered Brooke Preston while he was sleepwalking following a drunken night.
Needless to say the jury did not buy the sleepwalking murder defense and Randy Herman would be convicted and sentenced to life in prison without parole
Randy Herman Now
| DC Number: | A80442 |
|---|---|
| Name: | HERMAN, RANDY A JR |
| Race: | WHITE |
| Sex: | MALE |
| Birth Date: | 12/28/1992 |
| Initial Receipt Date: | 05/29/2019 |
| Current Facility: | SOUTH BAY C.F. |
| Current Custody: | CLOSE |
| Current Release Date: | SENTENCED TO LIFE |
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Randy Herman Case
After about five hours of deliberations, a 12-person jury found Randy Herman Jr. guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday in the fatal stabbing of 21-year-old Brooke Preston in 2017, rejecting the defense that he was sleepwalking when he attacked her in suburban West Palm Beach.
After the verdict was read, both Preston’s family and Herman’s family teared up silently on opposite sides of the courtroom as Circuit Judge John Kastrenakes thanked the jury for its service of more than a week in the case. Before the judge sentenced Herman, 26, to the mandatory term of life in prison, Preston’s sister, Jordan, spoke briefly before the court.
As she tried to stifle her tears, she explained nothing has been the same since her sister was killed. The sisters and Herman had know each other since they were teenagers and lived together for more than six months at the home where she was attacked. Jordan Preston was not in the residence at the time of the fatal stabbing
“The last few years without her have been awful. Our lives are totally different,” she said.
Outside the courtroom, Preston’s father, John, walked surrounded by more than a dozen family members and friends who came down from Pennsylvania for the trial.
“There’s no winners in this whole situation. Everybody’s losers,” he said.
Herman and his lawyers had argued he was sleepwalking when he stabbed Preston more than 20 times on the morning of March 25, 2017, and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Prosecutors told the jury Herman’s actions were deliberate and not the product of an alleged sleepwalking episode.
Investigators said Preston had finished packing up and was ready to move to New York when Herman sent her a text message, asking her to pick up a shirt before she left to give to a friend. When Herman testified last week, he said he thought Preston had come back to the house that morning, he had given her a shirt, then they had hugged goodbye, she left and he went back to sleep.
“The next thing (I know), I’m standing over top of her and I have a knife in my hand, covered in blood,” Herman said. “I was confused. Scared. Didn’t know what to do. Didn’t know what happened.”
Herman then drove to a nearby park, called 911 and told them that even though he didn’t remember what had happened, he said he must have been the one that killed Preston because no one else was home.
Over the course of the trial, which began with testimony April 30, the jury heard from Palm Beach County sheriff’s detectives; Herman; Jordan Preston; Kyle McGregor, the man who last saw Preston alive; as well as from experts who testified both for against the sleepwalking defense.
In his closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant Public Defender Joseph Walsh said there was no logical answer to what happened. There was no motive, no history of violence and no issues between Herman and Preston.
“There is no other rational explanation for this killing other than this could have been sleepwalking,” Walsh said.
Dr. Charles Patrick Ewing, a forensic psychologist, testified Monday that he was “truly puzzled” by the case until he learned of Herman’s history of sleepwalking.
“That really made sense to me, because I really couldn’t make any other sense of the case,” Ewing said.
He said while sleepwalking is uncommon and sleepwalking homicides are even less likely, they do happen and Herman met the criteria: The person attacked was well-loved by the attacker, there appeared to be no motive in the case, Herman said he couldn’t remember anything from the attack and he had a history of sleepwalking.
Randy Herman’s mother, Kathi Adams, testified that she had witnessed several episodes as Herman was a child, but Jordan Preston said in the years she had known him and lived with him, she never saw him sleepwalk.
On Tuesday, prosecutors had Dr. Wade C. Myers, a forensic psychiatrist, testify and say that there’s no way Herman could have slept through the 20-plus stabs he inflicted on Preston because it was too complex of an action.
Instead, he suggested the motive in the killing may be sexually based, drawing from an alleged incident the night before the stabbing where Herman reportedly hid in Brooke Preston’s closet naked after a day of drinking heavily. No one saw the alleged incident and it was only known because Preston reportedly told McGregor and asked to spend the night with him.
Preston’s sister testified that there was no sexual or romantic interest between herself, her sister or Randy Herman.
Over the years, there have been several high-profile murder cases where those accused have claimed sleepwalking as a defense for their actions and have had their juries rule both for and against them.
In 2015, Joseph Mitchell was found not guilty of strangling his 4-year-old son to death after his attorneys argued he was sleepwalking at the time of the attack in North Carolina. In 1999, an Arizona man was found guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his wife after he claimed he was sleepwalking when he stabbed her and then dragged her to the pool and held her head under water.
During his closing arguments Tuesday, Assistant State Attorney Reid Scott said Randy Herman was not sleepwalking and that he knew what he was doing.
“This is skin, this is bone, this is muscle (he’s stabbing,)” he said. “You’re not going to sleepwalk through that.”
