Jon Yount and Diane Brodbeck

[crystaldawn]

For those of you who remember this story (I don't think Lifetime has ever aired it) I found an interesting article about them:

By DEEPIKA C. REDDY

Collegian Staff Writer

With his piercing blue eyes and silvering hair, Jon Evans Yount is a distinguished-looking, middle-aged man who could look like any professor at Penn State. And if it weren't for a few moments in time almost three decades ago, he might have been a professor at some university.

The 1958 University graduate is now in his 26th year of imprisonment for murder, and he and everyone else involved have relived a thousand times over those 28-year-old moments that so drastically and irrevocably changed the lives of so many people.

His account of the ordeal begins on a dreary spring evening in 1966 when a slight drizzle muddied the rural country roads. Yount was a young math teacher at the DuBois Area High School and was anticipating a summer fellowship in Montana.

Yount said he was driving around the countryside looking for property to invest in, when he stopped to pick up Pamela Sue Rimer, a student in his advanced math class who was walking home in the rain.

As they talked, the topic of old farmhouses for sale in the area came up, and Yount said he asked Rimer if she would show him where those farmhouses were. He said she became frightened and asked him to stop the car. As she tried to get out, Yount said he grabbed her sleeve to stop her and to correct the misunderstanding. He said she panicked and struck him with her umbrella.

"You have no idea what it's like, unless you have been in a situation with a hysterical 18-year-old," Yount said.

Yount said he felt a rising anger for Rimer's misinterpretation of his intentions, and in the ensuing struggle, he reached for a wrench and hit her.

He said the rest of the night is hazy in his memory. But Yount thinks he followed her when she ran out of the car, still trying to calm her down.

Her body was found later that evening with shallow stab wounds to the neck that caused her to suffocate on her own blood.

Yount turned himself in to the authorities the next day.

"I've never denied my guilt, only the degree of my guilt . . . but I never perceived that to be an intentional killing," said Yount, who was convicted of first-degree murder. Intent to kill is the difference between first-degree and third-degree murder.

In Yount's account of that night, he denies having more than a student-teacher relationship with Rimer, despite an initial murder conviction that included that count, said John Reilly, who was the prosecuting attorney for Yount's murder trial in 1966 and is now a Clearfield County judge.

"(The rape charge) was dismissed but it set the tone in the community," Yount said. "In a rural community, a schoolteacher charged with homicide is like an O.J."

A mistrial was declared after the initial verdict because jurors admitted they were affected by extensive media coverage. The case eventually went before the U.S. Supreme Court, where the initial ruling was upheld because he never pleaded innocent.

Yount was assigned to the State Correctional Institute at Rockview and it took him several months to adjust to prison life and establish himself in the pecking order.

Although Yount is still conservative with respect to some things, the process of adjusting to prison life has had some impact on his personality and made him much more liberal in his views of other people.

"You wouldn't survive here if you couldn't tolerate some of the things other people do," he said.

Prison is a microcosm of a society, Yount said, describing how there is a kind of social order in which robbers see the killers as the real bad guys, and the killers in turn see themselves as superior to those "purse-snatchers" who were too cowardly to face their victims.

"It's human nature that we look for someone to take our sins," he said, attributing the overcrowding of prisons to that tendency. "Penitentiaries are necessary because people like to drive by them to reassure themselves that they are the good guys," he said, quoting from the movie Mississippi Burning.

Yount has taken his case before a state pardon board several times, but he has not been successful yet, due mainly to his escape in 1986, Reilly said.

After serving nearly 20 years of his sentence, Yount walked off the grounds of Rockview, where he was working at the time. He met his sweetheart, Diane Brodbeck, down the road.

"After 20 years I felt I had paid my debt, and if I was to be able to capture any meaning to the rest of my life, it was necessary," he said.

Yount and Brodbeck, who left her husband and children, drove around the country touring through various states while working odd jobs.

"I felt like Rip Van Winkle, waking up after 20 years to a different world," Yount said, describing how simple things like fast food restaurants and self-serve gas stations were foreign to him.

Two-and-a-half years later, Yount and Brodbeck were found in Boise, Idaho, when a neighbor saw a program about them on "Unsolved Mysteries." Yount was returned to the maximum security Huntingdon State Prison. Brodbeck was charged with assisting his escape, a charge for which she served five years.

Today, 56-year-old Yount regrets the pain caused to both his and Brodbeck's families because of their two-year disappearance, but said he would trade the rest of his life to have those years of freedom again.

"I don't think that students or young people really understand what a life sentence means," he said.

Yount now spends his time listening to a wide variety of music -- from country to rap -- between visits from his son, daughter, sister and mother.

His days in prison follow a steady routine beginning in the morning when he reports to his job as clerk with the activities office between 8 and 9 a.m. He helps organize sporting events for the inmates and usually spends the rest of the day reading. Yount spends a lot of time in the library, especially the law section.

Since his return to prison, Yount has had a lot of time to reflect on the 28 years of freedom he lived before the murder -- from his graduation from the University with a bachelor's and a master's degree in education to his childhood when he attended a one-room elementary school.

"The most memorable thing about my childhood is that my father was my hero," he said, talking about his bricklayer father from whom he inherited his love of the outdoors.

Yount is still trying to obtain a pardon from what he and other "lifers" jokingly refer to as "a living death."

But the victim's mother, Lavonne Rimer, has been unceasing in her efforts to ensure that he stays in jail.

"What he did just didn't end my daughter's life; it ended my life and my husband's life," said Rimer, who lost her son in a farming accident three years before the death of her daughter.

Her husband went insane and died as a result of their children's deaths, and so Rimer said she does not pity Yount's life sentence.

"I have nothing, no children, no grandchildren. No one calls me to say, 'How are you Mom?' My life is over since then," she said, adding that the only reason she stays alive is to take care of her mother.

Rimer said people in her community remember Yount as a cruel individual and that her daughter was trying to get out of his class when she was killed.

"I asked her what's so bad about Mr. Yount, and she said, 'Oh, Mom, you ought to see his eyes,' " Rimer said.

Visitors to her farm remember seeing Yount's car around there many times before the incident, she said, although Yount said that he did not know where Pamela Sue lived. Rimer added that she has no doubt that he intended to kill her daughter.

"Anybody that could kill like that isn't fit to walk the streets," she said.

But after 26 years, Yount said it has become an issue of vengeance.

"The government should never get involved in the business of vengeance," he said. "When you've finally come to grips with what you've done, you want to give something back."

Yount said he did just that during the two years he was free by helping everyone he could. That has been attested to by the people back in Boise who have offered Yount a job and a home if he ever gets released, he said.

His return to prison put an end to his helping other people and has made things worse for him.

"It's not just the (prison) environment, it's about your self-respect," he said. "When you do something that's out of character and so beyond what you think you're capable of, it can destroy you. But time can heal."

[mphs95]

This dude is a sociopathic nut! How Diane Broadbeck ditched her family for him.......she's lucky her family took her back. Jon Yount is where he belongs.

[sdb4884]

I can't believe that idiot husband of hers actually took her back, I wouldn't want that deserting bitch around my kids anymore.

[justins5256]

Yeah, I never understood why she would do that - basically throw away a husband and children for this scumbag. I can't stand her stupid smirk in the update about her arrest. It's so nauseating.

[nohwheregirl]

Typical. It's all about him.

[sdb4884]

Originally Posted by justins5256

Yeah, I never understood why she would do that - basically throw away a husband and children for this scumbag. I can't stand her stupid smirk in the update about her arrest. It's so nauseating.

yeah what the hell was that about?

so i'm to believe she got off her charges?

[Drakken]

Originally Posted by justins5256

Yeah, I never understood why she would do that - basically throw away a husband and children for this scumbag. I can't stand her stupid smirk in the update about her arrest. It's so nauseating.

She was bored. It's not the first time a housewife with an easy life runs off with some loser, bum and convict because she isn't satisfied slavishly remaining home to cook dinner for her husband and pretending to be a good girl at the church, with him totally unaware (or uncaring) on how dissatisfied and unhappy his wife was behind his back. And from personal experience, married housewives are one of the easiest female population to score with if they are unsatisfied and tempted to fool around to find some personal satisfaction they cannot find at home.

And you'd be surprised how much usually "normal" women get off fantasizing onto bad boyish alpha males, including total crooks and convicts, and sometimes even running away with them leaving their "loving", doting partners behind because these guys provide something sorely lacking in their lives: excitement and passion. And in truth, I can't really blame them, that is why we males must never take our love partners for granted.

But Diane Brodbeck went even further than that. She was so bored and so in lust for that man that she went as far as commit a felony for it, and show total lack of remorse even after her arrest for humiliating (and cuckolding) her husband and shaming her family. I agree that her husband shouldn't have taken her back, but it's not because people lie and cheat that there aren't some genuinely kind souls who forgive their cheating wives out of love and compassion. Kudos for her husband, then, if he can put with her passed antics and succeeding in changing her ways.

But of course, women never cheat and never fantasize about people other than their spouses if we believe UM and/or Lifetime. If they do, they must crazy or have a different unknown personality alltogether, or her husband must be some total egocentric monster deserving to get horns on his forehead. But the simple truth is, quite a few women do cheat, lie, and defraud, and sometimes without caring for people who love them. And not always with the good-hearted neighbor, sometimes it can be with a total jerkass.

[Drakken]

Originally Posted by sdb4884

yeah what the hell was that about?

so i'm to believe she got off her charges?

She got five years.

[justins5256]

Originally Posted by Drakken

She was bored. It's not the first time a housewife with an easy life runs off with some loser, bum and convict because she isn't satisfied slavishly remaining home to cook dinner for her husband and pretending to be a good girl at the church, with him totally unaware (or uncaring) on how dissatisfied and unhappy his wife was behind his back. And from personal experience, married housewives are one of the easiest female population to score with if they are unsatisfied and tempted to fool around to find some personal satisfaction they cannot find at home.

And you'd be surprised how much usually "normal" women get off fantasizing onto bad boyish alpha males, including total crooks and convicts, and sometimes even running away with them leaving their "loving", doting partners behind because these guys provide something sorely lacking in their lives: excitement and passion. And in truth, I can't really blame them, that is why we males must never take our love partners for granted.

But Diane Brodbeck went even further than that. She was so bored and so in lust for that man that she went as far as commit a felony for it, and show total lack of remorse even after her arrest for humiliating (and cuckolding) her husband and shaming her family. I agree that her husband shouldn't have taken her back, but it's not because people lie and cheat that there aren't some genuinely kind souls who forgive their cheating wives out of love and compassion. Kudos for her husband, then, if he can put with her passed antics and succeeding in changing her ways.

But of course, women never cheat and never fantasize about people other than their spouses if we believe UM and/or Lifetime. If they do, they must crazy or have a different unknown personality alltogether, or her husband must be some total egocentric monster deserving to get horns on his forehead. But the simple truth is, quite a few women do cheat, lie, and defraud, and sometimes without caring for people who love them. And not always with the good-hearted neighbor, sometimes it can be with a total jerkass.

Oh yeah, I get and totally agree with all of this. I guess what I don't understand is why she actually did it. I mean, it's one thing to fantasize, and I'm sure she did a ton of that, but at what point did she begin thinking it was a good idea to put this whole thing into action? Also, how much was Yount pressuring her? I'm not making excuses for her, I'm really not, but I would be curious as to who suggested the escape and how it came up. Also, what made her think she could get away with it? I can only assume that she was so consumed with Jon Yount and as the letters went on, she was blinded by lust and she stopped thinking rationally.

[Drakken]

Originally Posted by justins5256

Oh yeah, I get and totally agree with all of this. I guess what I don't understand is why she actually did it. I mean, it's one thing to fantasize, and I'm sure she did a ton of that, but at what point did she begin thinking it was a good idea to put this whole thing into action? Also, how much was Yount pressuring her? I'm not making excuses for her, I'm really not, but I would be curious as to who suggested the escape and how it came up. Also, what made her think she could get away with it? I can only assume that she was so consumed with Jon Yount and as the letters went on, she was blinded by lust and she stopped thinking rationally.

People seldom act rationally when they are head over heels in love/lust for someone.

Else why would some women actually woo convincted rapists through the prison pen pal service, or even marry a serial killer like Richard Ramirez or Ted Bundy in prison? Something in these turn them on.

[jojo_D]

When I first saw this segment I thought, at least for the first couple of minutes, that Yount had abducted her or threatened her in some way, forcing her into helping him. But no, she betrayed her family for a piece of sh*t.

Her family have more forgiveness in them than I do, because if my mum had phoned me, years after she'd dumped me for a convicted murderer, the conversation would have went like this:

'Hi, it's mum...'

'I don't have one.'

*Click*

Bottom line, she's scum, just like her murdering boyfriend, imo.

[dynoguy88]

I'm glad Yount is in jail where he belongs. But the situation with Diane Broadbeck is much more interesting.

Her family takes her back just like that? Do things get back to normal after she serves her 5 years in prison? This is crazy. I could never see myself forgiving my mother if she ever pulled this on me and my family.

I wonder how the family has been the last 20 years.

[crystaldawn]

Originally Posted by dynoguy88

I wonder how the family has been the last 20 years.

Yea me too. I do know that after a search a few months back Kadrmas discovered that Diane's husband Chester has since passed away. I am curious if Diane and Jon still correspond with each other.

[kadrmas15]

Well, I mean to be honest, they seemed like (her family) devout Christians. Now I am not saying people that are not Christians cannot forgive and stuff but these folks being devout Christians it is not really surprising to me they chose to forgive her even if they did not like what she did. I think sometimes people have trouble differentiating between forgiving and condoning. Two very different things.

Yes, I would be interested to know too if Diane Brodbeck and Jon Yount still correspond with each other? My guess is they probably do not allow him to correspond with her because of what happened in the past but who knows? I am actually not even sure if they can stop him from writing her. They can stop inmate correspondence but the person they are writing to has to request it be stopped.

From my research, Chester Brodbeck died in 1995 at the age of 54. It would be my guess that he probably died of either cancer or a heart attack but who knows? I just guess the two above causes because they are the two most common causes of death. From what I can tell Diane Brodbeck is still alive and it would not surprise if she has since re-married.

I think she did all this stuff with Yount because well, truth be told, I think she was bored. She had been married for 25 years, she was middle aged. So basically all of her adult life she had been a wife and mother and I think she was bored. I think she found Jon Yount very exciting and having an affair itself very exciting. Obviously she was having an emotional affair with him long before it was able to turn physical.

[wiseguy182]

this segment (at least I think it was this segment, unless it was one of the similar cases) said that the reason why some of these women fall in love with prisoners is that the prisoner has so much time on his hands and they sometimes have no one/no where else to channel their attentions to, so they are able to focus vast amounts of time and attention to these women, time that their husbands and such wouldn't have. The women are appealed because the prisoner is telling them how special they are, which they might not normally hear. Not saying I agree with it, but that's what was said in the segment.