MMA fighter turned porn actor Aaron Franklin Brink had an immediate reaction when he learned his 22-year-old son had been charged with killing five people and injuring 18 others last weekend during a a mass shooting at a Colorado Springs nightclub. the LGBTQ community.
A defense attorney called Sunday night and told Brink, who lives in Southern California, that Anderson Lee Aldrich was under arrest for the Club Q massacre.
“They started telling me about the incident, a shooting involving multiple people,” Brink said Tuesday in an interview outside his San Diego home with CBS 8. “And then I go on to find out it’s a gay bar I said, ‘My God, is he gay?’ I was scared, ‘Damn, is he gay?’ And he’s not gay, so I said, ‘Phhhewww…’”
Brink, who starred in films such as My Milf Boss 8, I want to get fuckedand Latina Slut Academy, told CBS 8, “You know, Mormons don’t do homosexuality. We don’t do homosexuality. There are no gays in the Mormon Church. We don’t do gay. (The Mormon Church confirmed that Aldrich was a member but had not been active for some time.)
In a filing late Tuesday, lawyers for Aldrich, who in 2016 changed his name from Nicholas Franklin Brink to escape his father’s sordid past, said Aldrich was not binary, saying “they use them/ them pronouns”.
However, booking records indicate that Aldrich’s gender is male. Additionally, in text messages from the day of the shooting, which were shown to The Daily Beast by a source close to Aldrich, Aldrich’s mother referred to her son as him and him.
The Daily Beast could not reach Brink for comment. A call Wednesday morning to a number in the name of Brink’s wife was answered by a woman who declined to give her name but said she was a “relative.”
“We just take it one day at a time,” she told The Daily Beast. “There’s really nothing to do, once all is said and done.”
Aldrich allegedly opened fire on Club Q shortly before midnight on November 19 before being subdued by two bystanders. Aldrich was initially hospitalized with unspecified injuries but was transferred to the El Paso County Jail on Tuesday, authorities said.
Anderson Lee Aldrich appeared in court on Wednesday, via video link.
El Paso County Court
Aldrich, Brink and Aldrich’s mother, Laura Voepel, have long raised red flags among other family members, a relative told The Daily Beast shortly after Aldrich’s arrest.
“I don’t want anything to do with that part of the family,” the relative said, asking that his name not be used to avoid getting tangled up with them again. “They’ve always had issues, lots of issues…I’m totally disgusted with that side of the family right now.”
In Brink’s interview with CBS 8, he apologized for Aldrich’s alleged actions, saying there was “no excuse to go out and kill people. If you kill people, there is something wrong. That’s not the answer.
Meanwhile, Brink, a recovering meth user who once appeared on the reality show Interventionsaid he “praised [Aldrich] for early violent behavior. I told him it works. It’s instant and you will get immediate results.
Brink also said he didn’t realize Aldrich was still alive, telling CBS 8 that Voepel called him in 2016 and said their son changed his name to Anderson Lee Aldrich, then had committed suicide.
“I thought he was dead,” Brink said. “I mourned his loss. I had gone through a crisis and thought I had lost my son… His mum told me he changed his name because I was in Intervention and I had been a porn actor.
A notarized affidavit filed in a Texas court almost exactly a month before Aldrich, still Nicholas Brink, turned 16, states, “Minor wishes to protect himself + his future from his biological father + his criminal history. The father has had no contact with the minor for several years.
Isaiah J. Downing/Reuters
Six months ago, Brink said a very lively Aldrich called him out of the blue. The two hadn’t spoken in six years, but the conversation quickly turned into a practice match, according to Brink.
“He’s pissed,” Brink, who described himself in the interview as a conservative Republican, told CBS 8. “He’s pissed at me. He wants to sting the old man.
Even before the Club Q shooting, Aldrich had been accused of using violence.
Last year, Aldrich was arrested after cops said they threatened to blow up the Colorado Springs home where Voepel lived. The charges were later dropped and Colorado’s red flag laws, which would have allowed cops to seize Aldrich’s weapons, apparently were not triggered. (The rifle used in the Club Q shooting was purchased legally, according to reports.)
Brink, who served a federal sentence in the late 1990s for importing marijuana, said he still loved Aldrich in light of the charges and apologized to the victims.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” he told CBS 8. “Life is so fragile and it’s precious. These people’s lives were precious. You know, they’re precious. They’re good people. , probably. It’s not something you kill someone for. I’m sorry I let my son down.
Aldrich made his first court appearance on Wednesday afternoon. He was sentenced to detention without bail.
