Brown professes innocence in Breaw slaying

SANDPOINT - Tyrah Brea Brown says she falsely confessed to killing Leslie Carlton Breaw due to relentless prodding from investigators and a tendency to take the fall for others.

"I just felt like I needed to say it was me," said Brown, who is awaiting trial in 1st District Court on charges of first-degree murder and felony theft by possession of stolen property.

She is reportedly contemplating a plea agreement to resolve her case, although neither the defense nor the prosecution have disclosed the proposed terms yet.

Brown confessed to shooting Breaw to death after she and her husband, Keith, were apprehended in Fort Myers Beach, Fla., in the spring of 2007. Keith Brown, who faces the same charges as his wife, has stated he believes his wife's confession was meant to protect him.

Keith Brown, 48, has said Breaw was shot accidentally in a struggle over a .22-caliber rifle outside Breaw's Priest Lake home in January 2007. He said the tug of war over the weapon occurred during a confrontation over allegations Breaw had raped his wife.

The couple, according to court documents, took a $56,000 escrow check belonging to Breaw and fled to southwestern Florida. Breaw's remains were discovered within walking distance of his Coolin home several months after he was killed.

Tyrah Brown, 27, denies stealing from Breaw and insists she was not present when Breaw, also 48, was slain.

"I wasn't there. I didn't know what happened," she said.

A polygraph examination of Tyrah Brown appears to back up her contentions. During the exam she was asked if she killed Breaw, if she was present when he was shot, if she conspired with anyone to kill him and whether she stole funds from Breaw.

She answered each of the questions with a "no," and polygrapher Ted Ponticelli concluded her physiological responses to the queries were consistent with truthful answers, according to results from the May 2008 exam.

The polygraph also bolstered her contention that Breaw forced himself on her while he was driving her to see her probation officer in Montana.

In a recent interview at the Bonner County Jail, Tyrah Brown said she was unaware of Breaw's fate until she arrived in Florida and believes her husband's account of how Breaw died.

"I do believe it was an accident," she said.

During the interview, Tyrah Brown slammed press coverage of her case as "biased" and explained how she met her husband and Breaw. She said she met Keith after she was released from a women's prison in Montana, where she had served time on a theft charge.

In that case, Brown said she accepted blame for a friend's theft of a $700 money order in order to protect that person, court documents in Idaho say.

Investigators who interrogated her in Florida seemed to pick up on that trait.

"They knew I always take the fall for people," she said.

Keith Brown has been described in court records as a paralegal and Tyrah said she was contemplating suing the state of Montana over allegations that guards at the private prison in Shelby were sexually assaulting inmates. The two struck up a professional relationship which later evolved into a romantic one.

The couple married in 2005 and moved to the former Idaho Country Resort at Trestle Creek in 2006, where they met Breaw, who was also staying there.

Tyrah Brown said did not like Breaw, although he and Keith seemed to get along. Keith Brown has said he had done paralegal work for Breaw.

She said she kept her dislike of Breaw to herself. The couple and Breaw later settled into separate houses on Breaw's property in Coolin.

Tyrah Brown said Breaw would stare at her, touch her inappropriately and seemed unwilling to acknowledge her as Keith's wife.

"To me, the whole situation was weird," she said.

As for the escrow check, Tyrah Brown said she believed it was given to her husband in exchange for his personal law library or possibly as hush money to keep quiet about the alleged rape. She does not believe the check was stolen.

Tyrah Brown said she was in the process of turning her life around when Breaw was killed, a process which she never abandoned.

"I desire to have a family. I love to take care of people," she said. "I didn't wake up one morning and decide to drop all my dreams and goals."