Another son, Eric, was born into the Woldt household two years later while they still lived in Korea, but Song-Hui’s attention was focused on her eldest child. She was obsessed with his appearance—every hair had to be in place, his hands scrubbed, his clothes immaculate. He didn’t even eat the same meals she cooked for his father and brother; instead, she made special foods for him.
However, being the prodigal son was not always a good thing. Song-Hui was prone to extreme mood swings and bouts of delusional ranting that, his being the one closest to her, were often directed at young George. Song-Hui ascribed her temperament to being “nervous.” But her son never knew when she might scream at him and try to hit him over some small transgression, or hold him tight, cooing what a perfect child he was.
There was only one thing that marred his physical perfection. When he was five years old, George’s index finger on his left hand got caught in a bread-making machine, tearing it off near the second joint. Throughout his childhood, he wore a Band-Aid on the injured finger, though it wasn’t necessary, and also wore one on the index finger of his other hand.
The family eventually moved away from Korea when Bill Woldt was transferred to other bases in Germany, then Indiana, and finally the Fort Carson Army base south of Colorado Springs, Colorado. Being separated from her home and family did nothing to improve Song-Hui’s mental stability. She believed that other people, especially the police, were following her, intending to do her harm. She was convinced that their neighbors plotted against her, and she accused her husband of having affairs.
In 1991, the psychosis was so severe that she was involuntarily committed to a psychiatric unit, diagnosed as suffering from depression “with psychotic features.” The psychotropic drug Haldol helped, but as soon as she was released from the hospital she stopped taking the medication because “it hurt.”
Her husband tried taking her to a psychiatrist as an outpatient. However, the paranoid delusions continued unabated—only now she thought that her husband was having an affair with the psychiatrist, who was female, and that the two were colluding against her. She refused to go back for follow-up treatment. Instead, she accused her husband of trying to get rid of her by “locking me up.”
As he grew older, George Woldt’s peculiarities picked up where his mother’s left off. As a teenager, he spent hours in front of mirrors making sure that his hair was just so, and that his fingernails were clean and well-trimmed with the ever-present nail clippers he carried in his pocket. Perhaps as a lingering manifestation from the traumatic experience of losing a finger, he developed a fascination with Band-Aids, wearing them stuck to his clothes and body regardless of whether they were needed. Afraid of germs, he wouldn’t eat off of plates that he suspected— whatever their appearance—of being less than sterile. And he sniffed things he came into contact with, as though always trying to locate the source of some odd smell.
No matter what he did to make himself presentable, it was rarely good enough for his mother. She got on him about his skin, his hairstyle, his clothing, and the way he stood or sat. If he did not meet her criteria, she lashed out with her tongue. However, at the age of ten, he laughed if she hit him and infuriated her by saying, “It doesn’t hurt.” The balance of power in their relationship was beginning to shift.
The treatment he received from his father wasn’t any better. Unhappy in his marriage, Bill Woldt thought of his wife’s side of the family as “crazy” and “overemotional.” But it wasn’t as if his family had a clean bill of mental health, as there were branches of schizophrenia and alcoholism in the family tree.
Bill drowned his sorrows by going to bars every night after work with his Army buddies. Then he’d come home drunk, angry and explosive. He never hit his wife, but he certainly had no such compunctions about his sons. Twice the army’s child protective services agency investigated allegations of abuse, but both parents denied that there was a problem.
The Woldts transferred to Colorado Springs just prior to George’s senior year in high school. He didn’t like the move, and it seemed to exacerbate his destructive fits of rage and the frequent screaming matches with his parents.
George Woldt
George complained to friends, as well as teachers and employers, that his father beat him. One day when he was seventeen, he left the house and found a police officer to whom he complained that his father had assaulted him. The officer followed George home and asked about the boy’s allegations. Bill Woldt admitted that he’d struck his son in the past, but denied the current allegation. The matter was dropped.
Shortly thereafter, George moved out of his parents’ house and in with his pregnant girlfriend, Becky. She saw her boyfriend as someone who desperately needed the attention and affection that he didn’t get from his parents. But she discovered, as would many others, that there were two different sides to George Woldt.
At times, he could be outgoing and charming, a popular student at Harrison High School. Intelligence tests placed him in the exceptionally bright range, and he’d done fairly well academically in high school until his final semester as a senior, when his grades fell noticeably. He was far more interested in being the center of attention, and was as slick around young women as the pomade he used in his hair. He bragged to his friends that he’d had sex with more than two dozen young women. Then again, he also claimed to have been a contract killer and, noting his Korean heritage, a tae kwan do martial arts expert. Not that anyone could remember him ever getting into a fight—at least not with anybody his own size.
Woldt’s charisma did not work on everyone. One of his teachers later described his behavior in school as “sporadic and bizarre.” He and others noted that sometimes when they spoke to Woldt he was unresponsive and would stare right through them as though they didn’t exist. It was as if he had some internal light switch on his personality that he turned on and off depending on his mood. But Harrison High had a reputation in the city for gangs, violence and drugs—teachers complained that they spent more time disciplining students than instructing them—and so one more troubled teenager like Woldt did not stand out among the many others.
While he often turned on the charm with women, Woldt talked a different story when he was around his male friends. Females, he said, were all “bitches” and good for one thing—sex. He’d started young watching pornographic films he took from his father’s collection and it influenced his perception of a woman’s place.
Girlfriends like Becky learned that the charm he used to woo them disappeared after he had them hooked. The worst of his misogyny he reserved for his mother. His friends were often surprised by the vehemence he sometimes turned on Song-Hui. He seemed to enjoy goading her into screaming matches, and friends stood slack-jawed as he would curse at her or slam doors in her face. Sometimes she would curse him back and leave. Other times she’d meekly obey when he’d order her to perform some service, such as taking him and his friends to lunch.
Becky was no stranger to his violent outbursts, either. She even tried to get him to go to counseling to deal with his anger, but he wouldn’t. Instead, she learned to do what he said or suffer the consequences. He was a master manipulator, threatening to leave to get his way, and he was not above getting rough with her. In fact, he seemed to enjoy it.
Woldt’s desire to control others didn’t stop with women. Many of his male friends were strong enough to laugh off his manipulations, but there were others who fell into his snares, especially Lucas Salmon.
The two met in April 1994 when Woldt got a job with Future Call, a telemarketing firm where Lucas was already working. Woldt took it upon himself to educate the Bible-quoting, shy Salmon, who was nine months older, about women. He invited him over to smoke pot, drink beer, and watch pornographic films. Bragging about his sexual conquests, he constantly mocked his new friend about being a virgin.
The unofficial sex-education classes continued after they graduated from high school in June 1994, when Salmon moved in with Woldt and Becky. H
e was planning on attending a small Christian college in southern California that fall, but in the meantime, he was learning all he could from the more worldly George Woldt.
When not teasing Salmon about his sexuality, Woldt seemed determined to assist him in finding a woman to have sex with. He and Becky even tried to fix Salmon up with one of her friends, Angela. The stage was set for Salmon’s deflowering when the four went out of town one weekend and rented a hotel room with two double beds.
After a few beers, Woldt got on one of the beds with Becky and the two began to have sex. They only paused long enough to suggest that Salmon and Angela do the same on the bed next to them. Angela was willing, but Salmon left the room. When he returned later, he slept on the floor, leaving Angela alone in the bed. He later explained that he didn’t believe in premarital sex, which as the last straw for Angela, who decided that while he was okay looking, he was “too nice” for her tastes.
After the incident, Woldt gave his friend a hard time. He acted like he was angry with Salmon after all Woldt had tried to do for him, but he then came around and resumed the usual “good-natured” teasing about his friend’s virginity.
In the fall, Salmon left for California to attend school, but he was back in Colorado Springs that next summer. He again moved in with Woldt, Becky, and the couple’s newborn son. However, Becky and her child soon moved out. She’d learned that her boyfriend was seeing other women.
However, Woldt told Salmon that she left because Salmon had left the toilet seat up. Making his friend feel guilty about imaginary transgressions was a typical example of how Woldt manipulated Salmon. One minute he’d tell Salmon they were best friends, the next he’d be making fun of the size of his penis or his virginity in front of others.
Sometimes Salmon didn’t know which way to turn. After Becky left, Woldt would dance around the apartment in his bikini underwear and demand that his friend look at him. If Salmon gave in, Woldt would then accuse him of being “a faggot.” Sometimes out of the blue Woldt would declare that they weren’t friends anymore, then delight in making Lucas find ways to crawl back into his good graces.
Salmon still went to church regularly and tried to get his friend to go with him, with no luck. Woldt didn’t like the rules of the church, and he was also afraid of Salmon’s father, Robert, who regarded him as a bad influence on his son.
Woldt seemed determined to shape Salmon in his own image. After an evening of watching pornographic films together, he’d declare that it was time they got Salmon laid, despite his friend’s protests that he didn’t want to have sex before marriage.
In August 1995, Woldt was dating a young woman named Karen, and he talked her into bringing a friend, Allison, over to the apartment to introduce to Salmon. When the girls arrived, Woldt announced that he had something special planned for the evening: a game of strip poker in the bedroom.
Woldt had no compunction about cheating at poker, and soon both young women were nude. Karen thought it was strange that her boyfriend seemed to be making a point of showing off her body to his friend, though she didn’t resist when Woldt pulled her onto the bed and they began to have sex in front of Salmon and Allison. Allison was willing, but again Salmon turned down the opportunity.
Karen thought Salmon was strange. It wasn’t so much his rejecting Allison, but the way he clung to Woldt. One evening she and Woldt got into an argument that had nothing to do with Salmon. He’d remained quiet through the discussion, but all of a sudden Salmon scowled and yelled at her, “Bitch!” The remark surprised both her and Woldt, but Salmon went back to sitting quietly as if nothing had happened.
For all of Woldt’s self-assured behavior in most situations, there were some who thought it was all a front. Coworkers at Future Call noticed that when someone got the best of him teasing, he’d slip into some fantasy character out of a movie or a television show. One of his acts was doing a routine with Salmon modeled on Beavis and Butthead—an MTV cartoon about two “loser” adolescent males who spent most of their time parked on a couch in front of a television making wisecracks about other people, especially women.
There were other times when the veneer cracked entirely. One day a supervisor at work, Johnny Lopez, noticed that Woldt had come to work with a split lip and marks on his face. When Lopez inquired about the injuries, Woldt burst into tears and blurted out that his father had struck him during an argument at his parents’ house.
Others, however, wondered if even those emotions were real or just another way Woldt had of manipulating others. There were times, especially when talking to women, when he would get tears in his eyes as he spoke about his “mean” former girlfriend who’d left him and wouldn’t let him see his son. But the next minute, he’d be flirting or suggesting that he and the female object of his attention get together some time.
There was also a streak of meanness in him that, at times, he couldn’t seem to control long enough to consider the consequences. One day one of his managers, Yusef Cinlemis, received an anonymous telephone call in which the caller said, “Fuck you, Yusef, I’m going to kill you,” and then hung up. However, Cinlemis pressed star 69 and was told the telephone number of the caller, which he turned over to the police along with a report on the threat. The number turned out to be Woldt’s, who at first denied making the call, then finally admitted it. He was fired. But he told Salmon he was dismissed because he’d had sex with Cinlemis’s wife and got caught.
In the fall of 1995, Salmon returned to California to go back to school. So Woldt turned to new friends. One of them was James Wilson, whom he met in September.
When he first met Woldt, Wilson thought his new friend was quiet and shy, but he soon learned that a different personality lurked beneath the surface. For one thing, Woldt bragged a lot. One story was that he’d been awarded a million dollars because of the injury to his finger, but that the money was in a trust and his parents were stealing it. He also claimed that his former girlfriend, Becky, had taken $60,000 from a joint account they shared.
Sometimes in public, Woldt would pretend to be a homosexual—stereotypically mincing his walk, talking effeminately, and even grabbing Wilson’s buttocks. It was all an attempt to embarrass Wilson, who mostly just laughed it off and told him to quit.
Woldt told Wilson that he was his “best friend.” But Wilson knew that Woldt, who was his roommate from December 1995 to March 1996, had a habit of backstabbing his “friends.” Sometimes he spoke fondly of another pal, Lucas Salmon, who was living in California, but other times laughed about him, calling Salmon a “bum” and “a loser.”
Wilson also learned that beneath the kidding, fun-loving exterior, Woldt had a darker side. In addition to rape-oriented pornographic films, Woldt liked obscure, violent movies and introduced Wilson to his favorites. One was Faces of Death, a documentary depicting a variety of dead and dying animals and people, including the assassination of a French politician. Most of the “eyewitness” deaths of humans were staged, but the film was full of bodies from airline crashes and drownings.
Woldt’s favorite, however, which he insisted on watching repeatedly until he knew every line, was A Clockwork Orange, the disturbing 1971 Stanley Kubrick film version of the 1962 novel by Anthony Burgess. Although the film seemed to have a message about moral choices, on the surface it was about Alex, the leader of a gang of thugs who spent their evenings assaulting people, “ultraviolence,” and raping women or, as Woldt gleefully recited, “the old in-out, in-out.”
The films seemed to inspire Woldt. He was always talking about sex, especially anal sex. And he did more than talk. Several times Wilson watched as Woldt wrestled with his current girlfriend, Jessica, pinning her down or twisting an arm until she cried out in pain. He’d only let up if she begged him to use his “big dick” to have anal sex with her.
Woldt also had a fantasy that went beyond tormenting his girlfriends. One night in 1995, he and Wilson were at a nightclub when Woldt nodded toward an attractive young woman and suggested that the
y kidnap and rape her.
Wilson didn’t take him seriously that night. However, Woldt kept bringing up the subject and Wilson began to wonder whether he was kidding or not. After a while, every night they went out, his friend would point out some attractive young woman, especially blondes, and say something to the effect of, “What do you think about raping that girl?”
Male friends weren’t the only ones exposed to Woldt’s weird views on sex. A young woman, Mandy, began hanging out with Woldt in late 1995. She fell in love with him, but while she was more than willing, they had sex only once. The strange thing to her was that they would lie on the couch and watch pornographic films together three or four times a week. She was sexually aroused by the movies, but Woldt would get bored after a bit and simply turn off the television and go bed. Sometimes he let her stay in his bed but, except on the one occasion, wasn’t interested in having sex with her.
Woldt’s lack of sexual interest in Mandy might have been that she was too willing. He told a friend that he preferred sex with women who would “put up a fight” and that “it’s no fun getting it from somebody who will just give it up.” But when the disappointed Mandy asked why he wasn’t interested, he told her a sob story about wanting to get back with his former girlfriend, Becky, because he missed his son.
However by the spring of 1996, Woldt was living with another young woman, Lori, in a trailer with Lori’s sister, Lisa, and mother, Samantha. Sifting for weaknesses, Woldt knew how to pick his victims. Lori had been raped when she was fifteen years old, and he came on initially as the champion who would protect her from all harm. He’d charmed her, took her places, and bought her things. Only after she fell in love did he begin to change for the worse.
Woldt frequently criticized and humiliated her in front of others, including her family and friends, for her looks or things she said. He was very controlling—getting angry and accusing her of sleeping around if she went out with her girlfriends for an evening—even though he frequently went out without her. Her friends noticed that he treated her like his property. He even insisted that she dress like him when they went out together, which meant nearly always wearing white shirts and black slacks. And those were just the things that other people noticed.
A CLOCKWORK MURDER: The Night A Twisted Fantasy Became A Demented Reality Page 2
