Convicted ax killer David Brom says ‘cloud of depression’ impacted his thoughts in 1988

Jul. 18—ROCHESTER — David Brom said he felt like depression had been clouding his thoughts and emotions when he used an ax to kill his parents and two younger siblings in 1988.

Members of the Minnesota Department of Corrections Supervised Release Board had to reconcile those acts carried out by Brom at age 16 with the 53-year-old man who appeared before them with a nearly spotless 37-year incarceration record.

Brom had “changed everything about myself,” he told the board in a January 2025 hearing reviewing his eligibility for release.

Brom said he understood that the effects of his actions went beyond the lives he took and that his crimes affected the community and well as his family — “the family,” as he referred to them. He said he understood his actions affected law enforcement, the community, people in the courts and the church his family attended.

“I caused tremendous loss, incredible grief and pain left them with confusion and unanswered questions,” Brom said. “I apologize for the ripple effects of losing an entire family in such a horrific way.”

“The gravity of this offense is enormous,” said Paul Schnell, Minnesota Department of Corrections commissioner of corrections.

However, Schnell and release board members noted that Brom has continued his education while incarcerated, and mentored other people in custody by working toward becoming an inmate chaplain. His only infraction in more than 37 years of custody was a single incident in which he had more people than permitted in his cell at one time.

Schnell asked Brom to describe his crimes through the lens of his years of counseling, education and model inmate behavior.

Brom said depression had “clouded his thoughts” and hampered his ability to process emotions when he carried out four brutal murders while he was a Lourdes High School student.

“I had grown to a short sighted view that I thought these things were going to last forever,” he said. “In the cloud of depression, I started to believe that other people were at fault for how I felt.”

Brom was convicted in 1989 of the four murders and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences — each carrying a minimum of 17 years in prison. Counting his time served in jail leading up to his trial, Brom was not eligible for release until 2037. However, a 2023 Minnesota law gives offenders convicted as juveniles a chance for review after they serve 15 or more years of a sentence. Although Brom had only started serving time for his third sentence at the beginning of 2022, he is eligible for parole or supervised release.

Brom will be eligible for release July 29 to a supervised work release program at a Twin Cities halfway house. He will remain in state custody and be monitored by GPS, according to Aaron Swanum, Minnesota Department of Corrections media information officer. After six months, he will be reviewed for eligibility for parole.

Complicating the decision to allow Brom to move toward release was the effect the decision would have on the community.

Ultimately the board decided not to have Brom return to Olmsted County.

In the January hearing, members suggested getting feedback about the decision. That’s something Olmsted County Sheriff Kevin Torgerson was more than willing to provide.

As a deputy with the Olmsted County Sheriff’s office in 1988, Torgerson was one of the first law enforcement officers on the scene of the murders . He responded to a call from Lourdes High School officials about a rumor Feb. 18, 1988, that Brom had hurt and possibly killed his father. Torgerson discovered the bodies of all four family members in the upstairs of the Brom home on the north outskirts of Rochester.

“(I)t is still hard for me to accept and forget the sights and smells of what I saw that Thursday evening in 1988,” Torgerson wrote in a statement Wednesday, July 16, 2025 responding to the SRB’s decision to begin Brom’s transition to parole.

Togerson said he was asked in December prior to the hearing to provide written input about the decision to release Brom and that he spoke with one of the Department of Corrections commission members.

In that written statement to the board that Torgerson later echoed in the public statement he made Wednesday, Torgerson said Brom has twice benefited from leniency.

The first time was when his sentence for killing his youngest sister Diane was made concurrent with his sentence for killing his younger brother Ricky.

“With the vicious severity and the needless nature of the killings of his little brother and sister it seemed he should have been expected to serve full sentences for both,” Torgerson said.

Brom’s second break came with the 2023 legislation, Torgerson added.

Torgerson said the sentencing decision disregarded community sentiment in 1989 and that the SRB’s decision allowing Brom to move toward release at the end of the month likely does as well in 2025.

Torgerson said he heard about Brom’s new release date from local media. Although Torgerson said he feels his input didn’t influence the SRB’s decision, he said the decision has been made and that whatever happens next is up to Brom.

“I hope and pray he has changed, can control his anger, and other emotions,” Togerson said. “At this point we must trust he will.”