Prison officials are investigating the death of a woman who was strangled during an overnight visit with her husband at a California prison last year.
Stephanie Diane Dowells, 62, also known as Stephanie Brinson, was killed in November, becoming the second person in a year to die during a family visit at Mule Creek state prison in Ione, the Los Angeles Times reported.
The previous victim, Tania Thomas, 47, was also strangled during a family visit, Amador county district attorney Todd Riebe said on Monday. The man she was visiting has been charged with her murder.
Dowells, a hairdresser, was visiting her husband, David Brinson, 54, who was convicted in the 1990s of murdering four men during a robbery and sentenced to four consecutive life terms without parole.
On 13 November, Brinson called prison officials, reporting that his wife had passed out. Officers began life-saving measures and called 911, but Dowells was pronounced dead shortly after. The Amador county sheriff’s office later confirmed she had been strangled and ruled her death a homicide.
Prison officials and the district attorney’s office are investigating, with charges pending autopsy and prison reports, Riebe said.
Dowells’ son, Armand Torres, 28, and his wife, Nataly Jimenez, told NBC News that Brinson’s account of events kept changing in the days following her death, including the time and location where he found her unconscious.
“He would say, you know, she passed out on the floor, or she was passed out on the bed,” Jimenez said in an interview.
Dowells lived in Inglewood, California, with Torres, Jimenez, and their three-year-old son, who called Brinson “Grandpa”. The couple had allowed their son to accompany Dowells on two prison visits in recent years.
“If I could trust him with my kid, I’m thinking, it’s a green light,” Torres said of Brinson. “You know, like, everything’s fine.”
Torres admitted he sometimes worried about his mother being involved with an incarcerated person but wanted to support her happiness. He was unaware Brinson, who is not Torres’s father, had been convicted of four murders.
“We really love our mom, and we just wanted her to be happy, you know, and she usually came back happy,” he said. “They talked on the phone every day, everything seemed good. I’m all for second chances.”
He recalled overhearing his mother and Brinson argue on the phone but didn’t think much of it.
“Stephanie always tried to see the good in people,” Jimenez added.
Thomas, the other victim, was found unconscious on 1 July 2024, in a family visiting unit while visiting her partner, Anthony Curry.
Curry, 48, is serving a life sentence for attempted second-degree murder and a separate 13-year sentence for carjacking with a firearm. He has been charged with Thomas’s murder but has not yet been arraigned.
The California department of corrections and rehabilitation allows certain prisoners to have family visits in private, apartment-like facilities on prison grounds, lasting 30 to 40 hours. The program aims to support positive family connections and rehabilitation. Death row inmates, sex offenders and those with disciplinary restrictions are excluded.
The practice of family visits began in the early 1900s at Mississippi’s Parchman prison, initially for Black prisoners under racist assumptions about labor motivation. By the 1990s, 17 states offered family visits, which advocates say help maintain relationships and reduce prison violence.
Currently, only California, Connecticut, New York and Washington allow such visits, with strict eligibility requirements. No federal prisons offer them. Each state has different program names and rules, such as Connecticut requiring a minor child and another adult family member to be present.
Research shows that conjugal and family visits benefit prisoners overall, with incidents of violence being rare. One study showed a 25% drop in misconduct by people while incarcerated, and another study found a 26% decrease in recidivism.
