The final chapter of the Vincent Brothers murder trial played out Thursday and it was every bit as weird and tragic as all the other twisting turns this case has taken since the bodies of his family were found in July 2003.

As Brothers was being sentenced to death for the murders of his wife, mother-in-law and three sweet young children, he turned toward Californian photographer, Felix Adamo, and gave a big, fat wink, followed by a looney wide-eyed stare into the camera. (go to www.bakersfield.com and see for yourself, it’s the video called “Death sentence imposed”)

Judge Michael Bush was about to condemn him to death, and Brothers was winking at someone in the courtroom. OK, maybe the wink was for his mother or another family member. But with this guy, there’s an “ick” factor I just can’t get past, starting with his creepy and often smug testimony about his enthusiastically wide-ranging sex life.

It’s hard to believe Brothers rose to such a trusted position in this community.

Makes you wonder what else he did, you know, besides his full-throttle philandering, threatening a female co-worker and madly driving across the country to shoot and stab five human beings to death.

Talk about a real-life “Dorian Gray.” Somewhere there’s a portrait of Brothers where his face reveals all his sins.

I’d like to think if the people I’m close to are potential mass murdering, narcissistic psychopaths I’d have an inkling. But probably not.

Other than his two previous wives and the mother of his last surviving child who all said he was verbally or physically abusive and a few others, no one seems to have known how truly dark his heart was.

In a Californian profile in 1996, Brothers is described as caring and committed. He was a “father figure” to the mostly minority, low-income children of Emerson Junior High school.

“You know how some people say, ‘If I can just reach one of these kids?’ Not me. I want ‘em all,” he told our reporter back then.

Too bad he didn’t have the same soft spot for his own children Marques, 4, Lindsey, 2, and Marshall, just six weeks old.

Touting his own rise from poverty, Brothers says twice in that article that if it weren’t for a few key people in his life, he would have ended up dead or in prison.

Kind of ironic he’s getting both now, huh?

We first got a glimpse of Brothers’ audacious gall when he matter-of-factly answered prosecutor Lisa Green’s questions about his sex life.

“We didn’t have a relationship,” he testified about one of the many women he dallied with. “We just had sex, no agreements. ... We call each other and if we feel like having sex, we have sex.”

In describing the happiest day of his life:

“Well, actually the night before was the happiest day,” he said of the night before his marriage to Joannie Harper who he would later shoot and stab to death.

Green: Why?

“We had sex. It was fun that night. ... We had, uh, food,” he said — and smirked.

EW! EW! EW!

I’m pretty sure that’s the moment he sealed his own fate, given that the prosecution’s case otherwise was mostly circumstantial — no direct evidence. (Well, that and getting caught lying about his alibi.)

Other than the “wink,” Brothers was fairly stone-faced during his sentencing Thursday.

I thought I saw a flutter of emotion when his daughter, 18-year-old Margaret, told the judge she no longer has a father. For her, Vincent Brothers is already dead.

But he just looked away.

Kern’s tearful and articulate statement was hard to watch. But you had to admire her fortitude. I couldn’t have done what she did.

She took four years of confusion, pain, loss and some very hard realizations and she turned it into a manifesto for her future.

She loved the Harper family, her baby brothers and sister, and she had loved and respected her father, she said. But it was all gone now, incinerated by a man lost to his own self-obsession.

What should have been an exciting time in her life — high school and preparing for college — was instead clouded with fear and anger culminating in an attempted suicide.

But as of Thursday, Margaret told the world, she was moving on without her father, even shedding his name.

Goodbye Margaret Kern-Brothers. Good luck and best wishes to Margaret Kern.

Lois Henry’s column appears Wednesdays and Sundays. Comment at people.bakersfield.com
/home/Blog/noholdsbarred, e-mail her at lhenry@bakersfield.com or call her at 395-7373.