The Smiling Confession: How Alyssa Bradburn Planned Her Father's Death

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[Music]

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Timothy Bradburn flew home from Hawaii to fix a leaking roof.

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His daughter told him that she was sick, so he'd have to walk through the door worried about her.

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She'd already been to the gun range. She'd already written the journal.

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She left it on the table for the police.

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And when officers arrived, she was sitting on the porch waiting for them.

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[Music]

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Most people coming home from a long trip,

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spend the flight thinking about their own bed,

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getting back to their own kitchen and whatever small comfort that they'd been missing.

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Timothy Bradburn was 68 years old, flying back to Spokane, Washington,

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from his condo in Hawaii.

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And based on everything we know about him, he was probably thinking about a leaking roof.

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That's who Timothy was, a man with practical concerns and a grief that he'd worked hard to move through.

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When his wife, Garland, died from lung cancer in 2019, he didn't fold.

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He got on a plane and built something resembling a new life in Hawaii.

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He found people to talk to, people who, and his daughter, Alyssa's own words, weren't as broken.

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He came back to Spokane in June of 2024, because the house on North Cochrane Street needed maintenance.

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And that was the sort of thing Timothy showed up for.

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He walked through his front door with his suitcase in one hand and his keys in the other.

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He never set them down.

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To understand what happened in that entryway, you need to know who the Bradburns were first.

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Timothy and Garland raised two kids in that house on North Cochrane Street in Northwest Spokane.

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Trace, the older one left for college in Idaho, and built a life there.

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Alyssa, born in 1992, stayed.

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That detail, the staying, is going to matter more than it sounds like it should.

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As the kids grew up and Timothy and Garland started traveling more, the family home gradually became

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Alyssa's world. They gave her the master bedroom, covered her financially and emotionally.

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And Trace would later testify under oath that his parents would do anything to make sure that she

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would be successful. He said it without bitterness, at least not yet. He said it the way you describe a

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fact about the weather. By any outside measure, this was a close family.

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Timothy went to Trace's wrestling matches when the kids were young, and he and Alyssa had a sword

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fighting hobby together. That's not something most dads sign up for, but Timothy was that dad.

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Garland was the center of gravity in the way that most moms are. And then in 2019, she was gone.

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Garland's death seemed to be the point where everything in this family quietly began to come apart.

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Timothy processed it by eventually finding his footing in Hawaii.

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Alyssa processed it alone and spoke in, and a house that had become hers by default.

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And somewhere in the years that followed, something started to shift in a way that would turn

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out to be irreversible. Trace had picked up on something years earlier. Back in 2015,

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he made what seems like a reasonable suggestion to his mother. Maybe Alyssa, a grown adult living rent

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free in the family home, should contribute financially. Alyssa left him a voicemail.

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She told him word for word, quote, "I tell people I'd never had a brother. I wish he were dead."

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After that, the siblings essentially ceased to exist to one another. Outside the family photos,

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they post for it during Garland's illness because their mother asked them to.

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That voicemail tells you something about how Alyssa handled conflict. She didn't negotiate or

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push back. She ended things entirely. Now, I'm not saying that that's a good way or a bad way to handle

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things. Honestly, it's pretty similar to the way that I handle conflict. But if you add that to

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what's to come, it becomes a little more concerning. And there's one detail in this case that I don't

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want to rush past. At some point before June 2024, Timothy told Trace that Alyssa was having, quote,

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"weird memories" and that he was worried about her. He didn't elaborate and Trace didn't expand

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on it at trial. But those two words do a lot of work in what comes next. Weird memories.

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Because on the night of the murder, when police arrived at the North Conqueron Street House,

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Alyssa told them her father had been abusive for years. She said he shot at her dogs with a

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BB gun. And then she said something that landed a little differently than the rest. And this is

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quoted directly from the court documents. Quote, "He never quite hurt me for a long time. He

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raped me when I was a baby girl. I blocked up the memory for so long." There were, she explained,

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repressed memories that had come back to her. No physical evidence supported any of it. Trace testified

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that he had no knowledge of any abuse ever and never saw his father hurt the dogs or anyone else.

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And Timothy himself had already told the son about Alyssa's memory distortion before ever boarding

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that flight back home. Her defense attorney would later describe her as someone who, quote, "sometimes

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blurs fantasy with reality." Alyssa had been planning this for roughly three weeks before Timothy

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came home. She visited a gun range and got some help loading the firearm. She practiced her aim

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inside the house with a safety on. In the same rooms where she lived every day. She wrote a journal

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documenting what she intended to do and then left it on the table for the police to find.

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She wrote it all down, staged it as evidence, and then waited for the man to walk through the door.

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That's the very definition of deliberate and cold. She told her father that she was sick,

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which is how she got him to walk through the door already worried about her. She locked her dogs

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in the laundry room because she loved those dogs. She put on safety glasses and ear plugs in her own

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home, which means somewhere in her mind she was approaching this the same way that you'd approach

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any task requiring focus and proper equipment. And then she waited. Timothy came through the door

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with a suitcase in one hand and his keys in the other, walking into his own house already worried

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about his daughter. And then she shot him four times before he could set anything down. Twice in the

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chest, once in the arm, once in the forehead. She would later tell detectives that she thought she had

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fired three shots. She lost count. The medical examiner confirmed four. She called 911 just before

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midnight, told the dispatcher that her father's body was in the entryway and said that she would be

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sitting outside waiting for officers. And then she went out and sat on the porch.

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The trial opened in February 2026. And if you're looking for where this case gets genuinely

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hard to categorize, it's here. Melissa smiled steadily throughout, consistently enough that

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prosecutors specifically noted it. She testified that she, quote, "enjoyed the trial experience"

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but felt that she deserved to be punished and would accept whatever came. From the stand, smiling,

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she said, "I killed Tim Bradburn and I am guilty. I'm not afraid anymore. I'm okay with going to

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prison for however long." She also said that she hadn't wanted to take a plea and slink off because

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that wouldn't have felt fair to everyone involved. She wanted the trial, the full public accounting,

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whatever it was giving her. Judge Julie McKay would later say from the bench that the proceedings

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it felt like as if Alyssa believed she was on a stage and the rest of them were just in the audience.

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On the stand, she also said this about her father. "Yes, he made mistakes and things were done,

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but he was a man who did the best he could when he was there. He lost his life. I'm not going to take

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his memory too." She said that while also smiling. After her brother Trace testified about a loving

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family, and parents who gave Alyssa everything, she withdrew herself to fence claim, saying that his

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testimony led her to decide she didn't need to defend herself. She didn't say the memories were false.

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She said she didn't need them. And that is a meaningful distinction. Whether what she described

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was real or the product of a mind that had been losing its grip on the line between memory and

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something else, she said it aside as a choice and left it there. Her attorney said to the jury,

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"What Alyssa Bradburn did to her father was heinous. It was terrible. You have every right to believe

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she's a monster. But the Alyssa Bradburn I've known for the past 20 months is not that. She's

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complicated, and there is very much more to her." Trace spoke at sinencing. He told the court his father

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never did anything to hurt anybody, and that the false accusations against Timothy had deeply

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tarnished his memory. He said it just guts him every single day. The judge sentenced Alyssa to

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340 months, just over 28 years in prison, along with a permanent no contact order with her brother

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and three years of community custody after release. At sinencing, Alyssa smiled. She declined to make

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a statement. Timothy Bradburn flew home from Hawaii to fix a leaking roof. He had moved through grief,

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found people in Hawaii who helped him feel less broken after his wife passed, and was worried enough

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about his sick daughter that he walked through his own front door, leading with concern for her.

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He was still holding his suitcase when she shot him. He knew something was wrong with her thinking

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before he ever came home. He told his son Trace, and he came home anyway.

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Thanks for listening to 10 Minute Murder, bingeable True Crime Stories. I'm Joe, hello,

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I'm the host, and here's an email subject. How many tabs do you have open?

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Hey Joe, when you're researching a case, how many browser tabs do you usually end up with by the end?

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I feel like mine would spiral out of control after about 20 minutes. I'm picturing one case,

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leading to six side stories, and 30 tabs before you ever even know what happened. Matt in Temecula,

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California. Matt, Tbh, this podcast could very easily be called OpenTabs with Joe, because I got

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hella tabs. Obviously, every story is different, the details, which you can find in research online,

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they're all different. But on average, probably between 20 and 40 tabs, and then I'll open the,

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I use a Mac, so I use the no tab in the Mac to type out notes. I'll have that one open also on

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another screen, so I'm just like typing and I'll have a whole browser open on the other side with

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all these tabs open, and it gets confusing, but that's the way I've done things from the beginning,

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so that's how I know how to do it. But yeah, a bunch of tabs, all the tabs. There's probably an

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easier way to do it, but I don't know about it, and even if I knew a different way, I probably wouldn't,

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because what I'm doing now seems to work. Thank you for the weird question, Matt, and I appreciate

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in general. It's called True Crime Blueprint. All right, that's going to do it. That's your

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episode for today. Thank you again for listening to 10-minute murder. See you next time.