May 10, 2021- 10:05 p.m.
A serial killer who stalked downriver New Orleans neighborhoods after Hurricane Katrina pleaded guilty to three counts of first-degree murder on Tuesday, finally following through on a confession he made in exchange for avoiding the death penalty.
After years of courtroom outbursts and delays, Joseph Brant gave another expletive-laden rant on Tuesday but agreed to formally enter his plea.
Relatives of two women he killed will be allowed to give victim-impact testimony at a later date, but authorities have never identified a third.
“Me and my sister look alike,” said Jana Wood, the sister of Jody Johnson. “I want him to think he’s seeing a ghost. I just want him to know how much he took from me.”
Brant, a 51-year-old who says he had an eighth-grade education, had already been sentenced to life after pleading guilty to second-degree murder in the August 2008 killing of 32-year-old botanist Jessica Hawk in her Bywater home.
After his conviction in that case, he was sent to a Texas prison to serve out the remainder of a conviction in that state for burglary.
Then, Brant came forward with a chilling confession, which he gave to an investigator for the Orleans Parish District Attorney’s Office after prosecutors agreed not to seek capital punishment.
Hawk was not his only victim, Brant said. In the chaotic, crime-ridden years after Katrina, he had also killed three times more.
Finally, Brant said that he killed San Francisco-based activist Kirsten Brydum, 25, after he spotted her riding a bicycle in the 9th Ward.
Again, Brant said that he forced her to perform oral sex on him at gunpoint. Brant said that he was driving to get gasoline to set Brydum’s body on fire when he got in a car accident, which prevented him from following through.
Her body was found in the 3000 block of Laussat Street on Sept. 27, 2008.
Brydum had only recently arrived in New Orleans on a tour of underserved communities she was making to inform her activism, according to a close friend, Frank Lindsay.
“She was just an amazing individual that did things all directed at helping our planet peacefully coexist,” Lindsay said.
“That’s really hard to explain to people, until you witness a soul who has that as their being.”After his February 2018 confession and indictment, Brant appeared to be a on a fast-track to formally pleading guilty.
But at a series of court hearings after he was transferred from Texas to New Orleans, he shouted at the judge and his court-appointed lawyers. He also refused to sign a formal plea document, for unexplained reasons.
Brant agreed to plead guilty after a Black attorney with the Orleans Public Defenders, Brian Woods, joined the hearing.
He also seemed eager to wrap up the case, confirming with Woods that he wouldn’t return to the Orleans Justice Center or court “for no other reasons.”Brant is scheduled to make at least one more appearance.
In a statement, Orleans Parish District Attorney Jason Williams said victim-impact testimony will be given on June 1.
“The District Attorney’s Office is pleased to have secured guilty pleas for three horrendous murders in our city by expediting the hearings, after much recent re-engagement by our team,” Williams said.
“The office has been working for years to no avail on these matters, and (Tuesday) was a breakthrough moment to securing justice.”
Lindsay and Brydum’s boyfriend made an annual pilgrimage to New Orleans in the years after her death trying to turn up clues that would solve her murder. They felt like they had reached a wall just before Brant finally confessed, Lindsay said.
Lindsay admitted to feeling frustration during the years between Brant’s confession and his formal guilty pleas this week.
He’s long been prepared to serve as a family representative at a sentencing hearing.“I was prepared to come back,” Lindsay said.
“And in between, I knew that he would be going nowhere, and that public safety would be assured that Joseph Brant wasn’t going to kill anybody else.”
