Convicted Rochester ax killer set for limited release at end of month

Yahoo

17-07-2025

Jul. 16—ROCHESTER — A 53-year-old man who as a teen committed one of the most heinous crimes ever seen in Rochester will be transitioned from a state prison to a halfway house for work release later this month.
David Brom, then a 16-year-old high school sophomore, took an ax in the middle of the night and killed his parents, his 13-year-old sister and 11-year-old brother. He will be released July 29, 2025, according to Minnesota Department of Corrections officials. The acts took more than 60 blows from an ax, officials said. Brom was convicted and sentenced to three life sentences in 1989.
Under Minnesota guidelines put in place in 2023, Brom is now eligible for monitored release.
Later this month, Brom will be moved to a Twin Cities halfway house where he will remain in state custody and be monitored. A case manager will supervise his release. It will include GPS monitoring, according to Aaron Swanum, Minnesota Department of Corrections media information officer. Brom's release date is listed as July 29 on the state DOC website.
In most cases, people who are released from prison return to the county of their conviction. The DOC Release Board decided at Brom's most recent release hearing that Brom would not be released to Olmsted County for work release or any other future parole release, Swanum said.
Despite a highly publicized trial and decades of speculation, what motivated Brom to take an ax and kill his family members at their home in the early hours of Feb. 18, 1988, remains a public mystery.
Brom was convicted of the murders on Oct. 16, 1989, and sentenced to three consecutive life sentences. At the time of his conviction, Minnesota law required anyone convicted of a life sentence to serve a minimum term of 17 years in confinement for each life sentence.
He has been at Lino Lakes Correctional Facility since.
Initially, Brom would have been in his 70s before being eligible for parole. However, a 2023 Minnesota law gives offenders convicted as juveniles a chance for review. The new law allows for parole or supervised release review for offenders who have served 15 or more years of a sentence after being convicted of crimes committed as juveniles.
Olmsted County Sheriff's deputies discovered the bodies of the four Brom family members on Feb. 18, 1988, in the family's Cascade Township home, just north of Rochester's city limits at the time. Deputies went there after Lourdes High School administrators called the sheriff's office regarding rumors circulating in the school where Brom was a student. Deputies found the four family members had been dead for hours and immediately began an investigation and search for Brom. He was taken into custody the next day after he was spotted at a Rochester post office.
As Brom headed to trial in 1989, it appeared he might have had a chance for freedom much sooner. In the lead-up to Brom's trial, on April 22, 1989, Judge Gerald Ring decided to try Brom in the juvenile system. That meant Brom would have been released from prison before his 19th birthday in October 1990.
The decision to try Brom as a juvenile sparked public outrage and was reversed by the state appeals court and the reversal was upheld later by the state Supreme Court.
Brom's next appearance before the Supervised Release Board is scheduled for January 2026.