PREVIOUS COVERAGE | Briles' son recalls slaying

Curtis Briles had already been to Iraq once with the U.S. Army, and he was preparing for a second tour last August when a shattering call came in the middle of the night to his North Carolina base.

His mother was dead — savagely bound and beaten to death in the Terra Ceia home where he had grown up.

The serviceman stood this week in the Briles home, next to the spot in the living room where Kathleen Briles’ body was found the evening of Aug. 3, and recalled learning the terrible news from his father.

Asleep in his bed at Fort Bragg, the 23-year-old’s phone rang hours later at 3 a.m., but he didn’t answer. The ringer went off a second time and he answered, hearing his brother Calvin’s voice.

“Dad needs to talk to you,” Calvin Briles told him.

As Calvin passed the phone to their father, Dr. James Briles, Curtis knew bad news was coming.

“I knew something was wrong because Mom would always be the one calling me if something had happened,” Curtis recalled.

At first, Dr. Briles struggled to tell his son.

“Something has happened,” Dr. Briles said.

“What, Dad?”

“Something has happened,” his father repeated.

“What, Dad?”

Then the horrible news came out. Dr. Briles told his son he had come home from making hospital rounds and found Kathleen bound and bludgeoned to death on the living room floor.

Manatee County Sheriff’s Office detectives have charged Delmer Smith III with murder in her killing, saying he beat her to death with a cast iron sewing machine.

“I just remember saying, ‘No, Dad, no, that’s my mother, no, Dad.’ I guess it was just disbelief,” Curtis said.

‘Take care of business’

The Brileses had already contacted the U.S. Army before making the call to Curtis, securing his release to come home from the base because of the tragedy.

Curtis hung up the phone and ran downstairs to a guard watching his building. In tears, he couldn’t think of what to say.

“I just kept saying, ‘My mom is dead.’ I am standing there in my shorts crying and she is trying to help me,” Curtis said.

After a few hours waiting on paperwork, clearance for his release from the base was completed, and Curtis flew to Tampa, where a friend picked him up for the ride to Manatee County.

He joined his family, including his wife Amanda, and began trying to make sense of what happened.

For days after Dr. Briles found his wife, sheriff’s crime scene technicians processed the Briles’ home for evidence.

Horror turned to shock in the first days, according to Curtis’ sister, Kristen Venema.

Kristen had been at a Green Day concert in Tampa when her phone exploded with frantic calls about her mother.

“It took me three days to cry, and I am an emotional person. I cry all the time,” Kristen said. “The loss is just so great that at first it feels like it is happening to someone else.”