VENTURA COUNTY, CA – August 15, 2026 – A former LAPD detective who served 26 years of a 102-year
prison sentence was arrested this week in connection with a violent 1994 assault in
Ventura County.
On the morning of August 12, Santa Maria resident Michael Douglas Brambles, 77,
was taken into custody by investigators with the Ventura County District Attorney’s
Office and officers from the Santa Maria Police Department.
According to Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff, Brambles is suspected of a violent
and traumatic attack that took place in April, 1994 that victimized a Thousand Oaks
gift shop employee during which he allegedly held her at gunpoint, restrained her,
sexually assaulted her and robbed the business before fleeing.
Sheriff’s investigators collected evidence from the crime scene at that time and
preserved it for more than three decades. Brambles was soon identified as the suspect in
the Ventura County attack, but the decision was made not to prosecute that case because
he had already been convicted of a series of similar crimes in Los Angeles County for
which he received a 102-year state prison sentence.
Brambles, who had joined the Los Angeles Police Department in 1971 and retired in
1994, was released from state prison in 2020 after serving 26 years, having qualified for
early release under a 2018 law allowing certain inmates older than 60 who had served
more than 25 years to be considered for release.
When the Ventura County District Attorney’s office later learned Brambles was no
longer incarcerated, authorities reviewed their earlier decision not to prosecute and,
with the collaboration of the Santa Maria Police Department, arrested Brambles at his
Santa Maria residence.
He was transported to the Ventura County Jail where he was booked on charges of
kidnapping to commit robbery while personally using a firearm. He remains in custody
on a no-bail hold.
– by F. Scott Faulkner
