The man arrived at the office building at 7 a.m. and climbed the stairs to the second floor. He found a spot in the hallway where he could stand and stare out the window at the parking lot. People arriving for work would pass him in the hallway and politely nod “hello.” He never answered them. His face flat, his jaw set, he just stared at the parking lot. He was waiting.
The man had an hour and forty-five minutes to waver, to contemplate the consequences of what he was planning to do. He never cooled off. At 8:45 a.m. a familiar car pulled into the parking lot. The man stepped into a nearby alcove to hide.
Like she did every workday, the woman climbed the stairs to the second floor. She walked through the glass doors and approached her office. She had worked for the last eight years as the office manager to a psychiatrist and was usually the first one to arrive in the morning.
The man slipped an aluminum bat from his pants leg and charged from his hiding place. He raised the bat to strike.
He beat the woman 20 times, crushing her skull and breaking bones in her arms as she tried to defend herself.
According to witnesses, the man then turned and walked briskly out of the building. He didn’t run. He didn’t cry. He held the bat upright and kept his gaze straight ahead. He drove away as cool and collected as when he arrived.
Some murder stories aren’t mysterious at all. No one disputes that on May 12 Brent Stephens beat his ex-wife Denise to death with an aluminum bat outside her office in North Dallas.
There are no puzzling clues to ponder, no enigmatic motive to figure out. A 39-year-old man who wouldn’t take responsibility for his own failed life murdered the mother of his three daughters. He was going down, and he was going take her --- a bright light --- down with him. The facts are straightforward and, unfortunately, not that uncommon.
Some crime stories lack mystery, but they provide something else: a horrible, valuable lesson. Denise Stephens’ loved ones want people to know she didn’t have to die this way. And they don’t want it to happen to anyone else.
The man had an hour and forty-five minutes to waver, to contemplate the consequences of what he was planning to do. He never cooled off. At 8:45 a.m. a familiar car pulled into the parking lot. The man stepped into a nearby alcove to hide.
Like she did every workday, the woman climbed the stairs to the second floor. She walked through the glass doors and approached her office. She had worked for the last eight years as the office manager to a psychiatrist and was usually the first one to arrive in the morning.
The man slipped an aluminum bat from his pants leg and charged from his hiding place. He raised the bat to strike.
He beat the woman 20 times, crushing her skull and breaking bones in her arms as she tried to defend herself.
According to witnesses, the man then turned and walked briskly out of the building. He didn’t run. He didn’t cry. He held the bat upright and kept his gaze straight ahead. He drove away as cool and collected as when he arrived.
Some murder stories aren’t mysterious at all. No one disputes that on May 12 Brent Stephens beat his ex-wife Denise to death with an aluminum bat outside her office in North Dallas.
There are no puzzling clues to ponder, no enigmatic motive to figure out. A 39-year-old man who wouldn’t take responsibility for his own failed life murdered the mother of his three daughters. He was going down, and he was going take her --- a bright light --- down with him. The facts are straightforward and, unfortunately, not that uncommon.
Some crime stories lack mystery, but they provide something else: a horrible, valuable lesson. Denise Stephens’ loved ones want people to know she didn’t have to die this way. And they don’t want it to happen to anyone else.
Denise Stephens
Brent and Denise’s story starts in central Iowa, in a small city called Marshalltown. Denise was a devout Baptist who went to Christian schools. Brent played looser, ran faster. He was a big goofy kid with bleached blonde hair and a burgeoning drug habit. Good Girl met Bad Boy at Arby’s, where they worked together. Denise was a young 18. They fell in love.
What attracts two people with such different values? She likely provided a kind of ongoing alibi for him, a shield against total destruction, a way he could continue to screw up while still keeping one foot in normal life. As for Denise, she was a girl who believed the best about people; here was a guy who constantly tested that unwavering belief. Maybe it was thrilling.
Brent’s parents moved to Texas, and Brent and Denise followed. They married in 1995. Brent got a job with a bank in Richardson, working in vendor services. During smoke breaks on the loading dock he struck up a friendship with a co-worker named Sydney Miles, who worked in network support. Eventually Brent invited Sydney and her husband to have dinner with him and Denise.
Sydney didn’t think much of Brent either way, but she took to Denise immediately.
“I fell in love with her the first time I ever met her,” Sydney says. “Such a sweetie. Just the kindest, most non-judgmental person.”
A friendship sparked between the two women. At the same time, Brent began to trouble Sydney. He was erratic, she says, and unreliable. He thought he was funny but was often just crude, like the time he downloaded a pornographic picture onto Sydney’s computer and saved it as her screen saver while babysitting her kids. He got into trouble at work for harassing a female co-worker and implicated Sydney in it, even though she knew nothing about the situation.
He was manic, attention seeking, chaotic.
“He had a way of sucking the air out of the room,” Sydney says.
At first, Sydney recalls, Brent seemed to treat Denise well. Sydney and her husband tried to steer clear of him, but they didn’t think he was a danger to himself or others.
That changed in 1998, when Brent attempted suicide by overdosing on methamphetamine. Denise was pregnant at the time with the couple’s first child.
Sydney hadn’t known about Brent’s drug use; Denise told her friend everything. Brent was injecting meth regularly, a pained Denise told Sydney. That explained the erratic behavior and the uniform of long-sleeved fleece pullovers.
Sydney and her husband decided they could no longer associate with Brent and Denise, and the couples didn’t speak for about eight months.
Brent Stephens
What attracts two people with such different values? She likely provided a kind of ongoing alibi for him, a shield against total destruction, a way he could continue to screw up while still keeping one foot in normal life. As for Denise, she was a girl who believed the best about people; here was a guy who constantly tested that unwavering belief. Maybe it was thrilling.
Brent’s parents moved to Texas, and Brent and Denise followed. They married in 1995. Brent got a job with a bank in Richardson, working in vendor services. During smoke breaks on the loading dock he struck up a friendship with a co-worker named Sydney Miles, who worked in network support. Eventually Brent invited Sydney and her husband to have dinner with him and Denise.
Sydney didn’t think much of Brent either way, but she took to Denise immediately.
“I fell in love with her the first time I ever met her,” Sydney says. “Such a sweetie. Just the kindest, most non-judgmental person.”
A friendship sparked between the two women. At the same time, Brent began to trouble Sydney. He was erratic, she says, and unreliable. He thought he was funny but was often just crude, like the time he downloaded a pornographic picture onto Sydney’s computer and saved it as her screen saver while babysitting her kids. He got into trouble at work for harassing a female co-worker and implicated Sydney in it, even though she knew nothing about the situation.
He was manic, attention seeking, chaotic.
“He had a way of sucking the air out of the room,” Sydney says.
At first, Sydney recalls, Brent seemed to treat Denise well. Sydney and her husband tried to steer clear of him, but they didn’t think he was a danger to himself or others.
That changed in 1998, when Brent attempted suicide by overdosing on methamphetamine. Denise was pregnant at the time with the couple’s first child.
Sydney hadn’t known about Brent’s drug use; Denise told her friend everything. Brent was injecting meth regularly, a pained Denise told Sydney. That explained the erratic behavior and the uniform of long-sleeved fleece pullovers.
Sydney and her husband decided they could no longer associate with Brent and Denise, and the couples didn’t speak for about eight months.
Brent Stephens
Why did Denise stay? She had extremely traditional values, and believed, at least in the beginning, that it was disrespectful to speak badly about one’s spouse. Brent’s descent into hard-core drug use was gradual; an incremental change in him was probably easier to overlook or deny. She wanted to believe him when he said he would get better.
Despite her misgivings about Brent, Sydney missed her dear friend Denise.
“I could do without him,” Sydney says, “but not Denise.”
They resumed their friendship. By now the couples lived near each other in McKinney, a town about forty minutes north of Dallas. Denise had a daughter, and then another one. For a while Brent seemed like a good enough father --- he was the “fun” Dad, crazy, goofy and undisciplined.
But soon enough he was back to his old ways. His employment was sketchy. He began to undermine Denise with the children, sabotaging her attempts at order. He became more disrespectful and demeaning, throwing fits if the slightest thing didn’t go his way.
Denise liked to cross-stitch; Sydney did crochet. They would meet at the local Starbucks for what they called “Stitch and Bitch.” Denise didn’t confide directly to Sydney how unhappy she was at home, but Sydney guessed, mostly by witnessing Brent’s behavior.
Once, Denise called Sydney and asked her to go over to her house. She’d spoken earlier with Brent, and his voice had sounded weird on the phone. Now she couldn’t get a hold of him.
Sydney went over. She found the two older Stephens girls playing in the middle of the street alone; they were five and seven at the time. Sydney went inside the house and discovered Brent in one of the closets, curled in the fetal position. He was crying hysterically, shouting, “I can’t do this anymore!” Sydney grabbed the girls and left.
There was marriage counseling. There was rehab. Brent was suspected of having a borderline personality disorder, then was diagnosed as bipolar.
He threw a lunchbox through one of their windows. He told one of their daughters, “Kick your Mom in the ass because she’s being a slut.”
Finally, Denise had had enough. It seemed like the right time. She was turning 35. She was a hard worker, steadily employed. She had a support network of friends who loved her. Still, Sydney was a little surprised Denise was finally standing up for herself.
“I’m tired of being a doormat,” Denise told Sydney.
The couple separated. Brent moved in with his parents. At first he was not so much abusive as self-pitying. He played the victim and sulked.
But he was clearly unraveling. He attempted suicide again and spent time in a mental hospital.
The divorce was finalized in September 2007. The finality seemed to push Brent over the edge. He began sending Denise vulgar text messages and e-mails and harassing her by phone. Sydney watched as her friend, trying to be reasonable, would answer her cell phone when Brent called. Even from several feet away Sydney could hear Brent swearing and screaming at Denise.
He had the girls every other weekend. He wasn’t working at the time and would sleep all day. He neglected to care from them, forgetting to feed them and keep them clean.
The abuse began to escalate in late 2007. From December until January the McKinney police made six separate visits to the house. Brent was arrested on charges ranging from Criminal Mischief to Assault by Threat.
On January 21, he kicked in the back door when Denise and the girls were out. He slashed Denise’s bike tires, stole her cell phone bill from her nightstand, and left cigarette ashes on her bed.
Denise documented everything. She recorded a conversation with Brent a day after the break-in, in which he said:
“The game is escalated. I’m escalating it. I’m not going to allow you to have that kind of happiness in your life. You’re denied.”
Denise went to court and got a protective order. But the order only covered specific areas, so when one of the kids had a sporting event at another school, Denise would discover Brent sitting behind her in the stands, glaring at her.
She had a camera installed outside the house. One morning it recorded Brent’s truck ramming Denise’s minivan.
The McKinney police told Denise there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t be sure it was Brent’s truck, they said.
Ten days before the murder, Brent was convicted of harassment, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing. He was able to plea bargain the trespassing charge down from a felony to a misdemeanor. Ordered to stay away from Denise and seek psychological help, Brent was able to avoid jail time.
Sydney can't help but wonder if her friend would still be alive if Brent had been sent to jail.
Denise did everything right. She carefully documented Brent’s behavior, proving an escalating pattern of threats and abuse. Still, he got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Did she think he would eventually kill her?
Sydney says no. Denise was afraid, but not for her life.
“She always said he won’t kill me, because he’s a coward,” Sydney says. “He’s the type to slash tires, but he avoids violent confrontation.”
After Brent beat Denise to death, he drove to the George Bush turnpike overlooking Hwy. 35 in nearby Carrollton and parked his car. He got out and straddled a concrete guardrail, threatening to jump. Police negotiated with him for an hour before talking him down. He was arrested and charged with murder.
Denise had underestimated his violent streak, but she was right about one thing --- he was a coward. Brent later admitted he came down from the ledge because he was "chicken."
While Brent was in jail, Denise’s mother received sole custody of her three young granddaughters.
The trial began October 20. Brent’s attorney asked the jury to find his client not guilty by reason of insanity. Brent claimed a voice told him to kill Denise.
The trial lasted just two days. The verdict was delivered in less than 30 minutes; all 12 jurors were unanimous on their first votes.
Brent Stephens was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Brent’s fate was swiftly decided because his crime was brutal and straightforward. Faced with a wife he could no longer dominate, he tried to gain control with threats and intimidation. When that didn’t work, he turned to the ultimate form of control: murder.
Justice was served, but that doesn’t bring back Denise, the friend that Sydney misses everyday and dreams about at night.
“Of all the people,” Sydney says, and by that she means good, decent, and kind, “I can't believe it happened to her.”
Despite her misgivings about Brent, Sydney missed her dear friend Denise.
“I could do without him,” Sydney says, “but not Denise.”
They resumed their friendship. By now the couples lived near each other in McKinney, a town about forty minutes north of Dallas. Denise had a daughter, and then another one. For a while Brent seemed like a good enough father --- he was the “fun” Dad, crazy, goofy and undisciplined.
But soon enough he was back to his old ways. His employment was sketchy. He began to undermine Denise with the children, sabotaging her attempts at order. He became more disrespectful and demeaning, throwing fits if the slightest thing didn’t go his way.
Denise liked to cross-stitch; Sydney did crochet. They would meet at the local Starbucks for what they called “Stitch and Bitch.” Denise didn’t confide directly to Sydney how unhappy she was at home, but Sydney guessed, mostly by witnessing Brent’s behavior.
Once, Denise called Sydney and asked her to go over to her house. She’d spoken earlier with Brent, and his voice had sounded weird on the phone. Now she couldn’t get a hold of him.
Sydney went over. She found the two older Stephens girls playing in the middle of the street alone; they were five and seven at the time. Sydney went inside the house and discovered Brent in one of the closets, curled in the fetal position. He was crying hysterically, shouting, “I can’t do this anymore!” Sydney grabbed the girls and left.
There was marriage counseling. There was rehab. Brent was suspected of having a borderline personality disorder, then was diagnosed as bipolar.
He threw a lunchbox through one of their windows. He told one of their daughters, “Kick your Mom in the ass because she’s being a slut.”
Finally, Denise had had enough. It seemed like the right time. She was turning 35. She was a hard worker, steadily employed. She had a support network of friends who loved her. Still, Sydney was a little surprised Denise was finally standing up for herself.
“I’m tired of being a doormat,” Denise told Sydney.
The couple separated. Brent moved in with his parents. At first he was not so much abusive as self-pitying. He played the victim and sulked.
But he was clearly unraveling. He attempted suicide again and spent time in a mental hospital.
The divorce was finalized in September 2007. The finality seemed to push Brent over the edge. He began sending Denise vulgar text messages and e-mails and harassing her by phone. Sydney watched as her friend, trying to be reasonable, would answer her cell phone when Brent called. Even from several feet away Sydney could hear Brent swearing and screaming at Denise.
He had the girls every other weekend. He wasn’t working at the time and would sleep all day. He neglected to care from them, forgetting to feed them and keep them clean.
The abuse began to escalate in late 2007. From December until January the McKinney police made six separate visits to the house. Brent was arrested on charges ranging from Criminal Mischief to Assault by Threat.
On January 21, he kicked in the back door when Denise and the girls were out. He slashed Denise’s bike tires, stole her cell phone bill from her nightstand, and left cigarette ashes on her bed.
Denise documented everything. She recorded a conversation with Brent a day after the break-in, in which he said:
“The game is escalated. I’m escalating it. I’m not going to allow you to have that kind of happiness in your life. You’re denied.”
Denise went to court and got a protective order. But the order only covered specific areas, so when one of the kids had a sporting event at another school, Denise would discover Brent sitting behind her in the stands, glaring at her.
She had a camera installed outside the house. One morning it recorded Brent’s truck ramming Denise’s minivan.
The McKinney police told Denise there was nothing they could do. They couldn’t be sure it was Brent’s truck, they said.
Ten days before the murder, Brent was convicted of harassment, criminal mischief and criminal trespassing. He was able to plea bargain the trespassing charge down from a felony to a misdemeanor. Ordered to stay away from Denise and seek psychological help, Brent was able to avoid jail time.
Sydney can't help but wonder if her friend would still be alive if Brent had been sent to jail.
Denise did everything right. She carefully documented Brent’s behavior, proving an escalating pattern of threats and abuse. Still, he got off with nothing more than a slap on the wrist.
Did she think he would eventually kill her?
Sydney says no. Denise was afraid, but not for her life.
“She always said he won’t kill me, because he’s a coward,” Sydney says. “He’s the type to slash tires, but he avoids violent confrontation.”
After Brent beat Denise to death, he drove to the George Bush turnpike overlooking Hwy. 35 in nearby Carrollton and parked his car. He got out and straddled a concrete guardrail, threatening to jump. Police negotiated with him for an hour before talking him down. He was arrested and charged with murder.
Denise had underestimated his violent streak, but she was right about one thing --- he was a coward. Brent later admitted he came down from the ledge because he was "chicken."
While Brent was in jail, Denise’s mother received sole custody of her three young granddaughters.
The trial began October 20. Brent’s attorney asked the jury to find his client not guilty by reason of insanity. Brent claimed a voice told him to kill Denise.
The trial lasted just two days. The verdict was delivered in less than 30 minutes; all 12 jurors were unanimous on their first votes.
Brent Stephens was found guilty of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Brent’s fate was swiftly decided because his crime was brutal and straightforward. Faced with a wife he could no longer dominate, he tried to gain control with threats and intimidation. When that didn’t work, he turned to the ultimate form of control: murder.
Justice was served, but that doesn’t bring back Denise, the friend that Sydney misses everyday and dreams about at night.
“Of all the people,” Sydney says, and by that she means good, decent, and kind, “I can't believe it happened to her.”
