Skinhead Arrested in Double Slaying
The “skinhead” police accuse of killing two people in a home in the Northeast Heights on Tuesday already served years in prison for the brutal, high-profile attack of a young Albuquerque man on Halloween night in 1996.
Police arrested Brian Pulliam, 38, early Thursday morning, saying he killed his ex-girlfriend and her nephew — 36-year-old Kirsten Landeau and 20-year-old Dillon Cearfoss — the day after she broke up with him.
Pulliam is a self-proclaimed member of the Aryan Nations gang and has a long and violent criminal history, police said at a news conference Thursday. That history includes the ambush and near fatal beating of Bryan Patterson, then 28, by Pulliam and an undetermined number of “skinhead” gang members Downtown. Patterson was in a coma for 53 days and has suffered lasting brain damage from the attack. Pulliam was sentenced to between four and six years in prison for his part in the assault. The gang never gave a motive for the ambush.
Patterson told the Journal in a phone interview Thursday that he has hoped for the last 16 years that his assailants recognized the pain they caused him and chose better lives for themselves.
“I hoped they would find a better path,” Patterson said. “What Brian Pulliam is accused of — that’s just sad beyond rationale.”
Pulliam was arrested Thursday morning in connection with the killings after a short standoff in a home in the North Valley near 12th and Candelaria NW.
Police said in a criminal complaint that Pulliam owned a gun and that an “ax or hatchet” was found near Landeau’s body, but they didn’t release the victims’ cause of death pending an autopsy.
Longtime family friend Eric Ward said Wednesday that the two victims were not shot.