Reluctant hero steps up in Brake case

GRAND RAPIDS, Mich. (WOOD) - Mary Louise Parker is an accidental hero -- reluctant -- the kind who is pushed into the role.

But, after nearly losing her life, she won't back down.

Parker, 44, of Grand Rapids , is a young grandmother who worked for years as a prostitute. She suffered a brutal attack in October, allegedly at the hands of Troy Brake.

If not for her screams for help -- and the response by Grand Rapids police -- Brake might still be free.

Instead, on Monday, Brake is expected in Kent County Circuit Court for the first of three trials.

Among those who plan to attend Monday's trial are Brake's relatives.

"I'm as curious as anybody," his father, Tad Brake, told 24 Hour News 8. "We talk to him (at the jail), but he doesn't say much. Everything's recorded. The truth will come out, we hope."

In May, Brake is to face his biggest trial -- for the killings of four people in Wright Township .

Parker is the victim and key witness in the first trial. Brake, 31, of Grant, is accused of raping and trying to kill her. "It's like a dream, like I dreamed it, dreamt it, or something," she told 24 Hour News 8.

For Brake, the beginning of the end started at South Division Avenue and Andre Street in Grand Rapids, when Parker walked up to his pickup truck.

It was 2 a.m. on Oct. 16 -- several weeks after four people were found dead in a burning Wright Township home. For Parker, the man in the pickup was just another customer.

"He seemed nice," she said. "We talked. I got up to his truck. He let me know he wasn't police. No problem. He knew what to do. He knew how to let me know. So, I get in."

He asked her to drink beer with him. He didn't seem like a killer, she says.

"He didn't look like the type that would do something like that, but you never know who's who, you know? Nowadays."

They headed east on Burton Street SE toward Kalamazoo Avenue . To a garage next to a vacant home where she takes customers.

But he had other plans.

He grabbed her in the truck, and she fought back, swinging her arms. She escaped, but he chased her with a gun, she says. He kicked her, she says, grabbed her hair.

She ran behind a nearby building and hid.

"I was quiet 'cuz I'm thinking he left," she said. "He couldn't find me."

In the dark, she peeked around the corner. The man was peeking around at her. "Here he comes," she said. "I can still see that. It's weird. It's like, 'Oh, my God, he's nuts.'"

He choked her with her jacket, pushed her to a picnic table, smashed her face over and over again onto the table, raped her, she says.

"All he would tell me was to shut up," she said. "That's all he would tell me was to shut up." With a gun to her head, she screamed for help from passing motorists. Nobody stopped.

He forced her to undress, then demanded she leave with him in his truck, she says. It was then she saw a police car, then more police cars. She broke free.

"He probably would have killed me," she said. "I don't know for sure, but my guess is where he was probably going to take me, kill me, rob me, rape me. Kill me -- beat me up and kill me. I don't know. Set me on fire. I don't know."

Brake ran, leaving his pickup. Police later arrested him in a cab, with a gun.

Doctors used eight staples to close gashes on Parker's head, three stitches on her right ear. Her face was badly bruised, and a rib was broken.

The arrest led police to search Brake's pole barn, where they say found evidence tying him to the Sept. 29 murders of Shar Zimmer, her sons Jeremy and Tyler and Jeremy's girlfriend, Katherine Brown.

Now, five months later, as Mary Louise Parker prepares for Brake's first trial, she still has flashbacks -- of the man peaking around the building.

"I fear, like, his face," she said. "I don't know. I see him."

Still, she says, she won't back down. "I got to do this," she said. "So they let him know he can't do this."

A jury is to be picked Monday, followed by opening statements on Tuesday. Prosecutors expect the trial to last a week.