One such pariah was Arthur J. Shawcross, who, paroled from prison in 1987 after serving fifteen years of a twenty-five-year sentence for manslaughter, was hounded out of two communities. Shawcross, convicted in 1972 of sexually molesting and strangling an eight-year-old girl in his hometown of Watertown, New York, and believed to be responsible for killing a ten-year-old boy, tried living in Binghamton, New York, after his parole.
Driven out of Binghamton by outraged citizens, Shawcross then moved to Delhi, a small nearby town. There, inhabitants were again angry and fearful, and police officials told Shawcross they were watching him closely. Four weeks later, he moved to Rochester, New York.
Unfortunately, the people, press, and police of Rochester were not so vigilant. Shawcross settled down, waited a few months, and then began killing. In January 1990, he was arrested for strangling at least eleven women. After a ten-week trial, in December 1990, Shawcross was found guilty and convicted of murder.
Shawcross has found a woman to love him—actually, two women. He has a wife, his fourth, Rosemary, whom he met while he was in prison; they were pen pals. When he was paroled, they married. After they moved to Rochester, he also began seeing another woman, Clara. According to the Monroe County district attorney, Howard R. Relin, it is likely that Clara also knew of Shawcross’s murderous past. She may even have suspected that he was busy killing during his months in Rochester. Clara “was very helpful with the investigation,” said Rochester police spokesman Sgt. Ronald Marchetti. Since Shawcross’s arrest on charges of strangling the eleven women, both his wife and his girlfriend have continued to visit him in prison, said the district attorney.
MURDERERS
Convicted murderers, the love objects of the women described in this book, have been found guilty of taking at least one life. Although society scorns these killers, a totally different view is expressed by the women who love them: Most believe their men to be innocent—or if not totally innocent, then not completely responsible either. Told by their men that either they did not commit murder—or did, under extenuating circumstances—their women claim to believe them. Not one woman interviewed for this book said that her husband or boyfriend had murdered. They spoke of accidental killings, self-defense, manslaughter, “an unfortunate accident.”
Here’s the tricky part. Even though these women deny their men have murdered, underneath the denial, there is a place where each woman knows that her man is a killer. She sees him imprisoned for murder; she closely reads every word of his trial transcript and every news clipping she can get her hands on. So she knows that he is a murderer. But what she subconsciously has knowledge of and what she’s willing to admit are two different things.
So even though she denies that he’s a murderer, he can, at the same time, appeal to her as a murderer. His bloodlust, his killing, is enormously sexual and erotic to her—at the same time she’s telling the world that he’s innocent.
In our culture, murderers have enormous allure. Here is Robin Morgan’s description of the appeal of a terrorist (substitute murderer) in The Demon Lover: On the Sexuality of Terrorism: “His mystique is the latest version of the Demon Lover. He evokes pity because he lives in death. He emanates sexual power because he represents obliteration. He excites the thrill of fear. He is the essential challenge to tenderness. He is at once a hero of risk and antihero of mortality.”
Murderers find love relationships with women no matter how, why, or whom they have killed. To cover the attraction they feel toward the men’s violence, the women focus on their men’s normalcy. These may be convicted murderers, but they eat, sleep, talk, walk, do all the things everyone else does. Since most people think they can look at a person and tell if he’s a murderer, these women evaluate the men they love and say: “He could have been my next-door neighbor”—therefore he’s not capable of murder.
CAREER CRIMINALS
Some men murder during the commission of another felony: They kill owners of businesses, clerks, or other employees, hapless customers, bystanders, passersby. They kill police officers who try to arrest them. Most career criminals take up crime as simply as other men take up any other work: It’s there, and in the circles in which they travel, it’s socially acceptable. Career criminals begin at an early age with petit larceny, auto thefts, small burglaries, and then work their way up to larger crimes such as armed robbery, assault, possibly rape and murder.
Career criminals spend a major portion of their lives in prison. Jack, 57, is serving a life sentence in Colorado for a murder he says he did not commit. In 1983, he married a high school teacher ten years his junior, Annette, who is passionately in love with him. Asked how many burglaries he committed, in 1984 he told a reporter: “I couldn’t even begin to count—maybe 350 to 500, something like that.” Convicted of only a tiny percentage of these crimes, he’s been in and out of jail since he was twelve. He served his first term in state prison in 1958. Now, three decades later, he is still in prison, but there is a likelihood he will be paroled in the near future.
He never said he robbed because he needed the money. He described his burglaries as an addiction. Even though he held down a regular job, he would pull burglaries on his lunch hour just for the thrill; for that reason, Jack is an anomaly. Most career criminals commit crimes in order to make money. His wife, Annette, explains why Jack robbed and killed: “He was a child in the Kentucky hills. His dad had black-lung disease and was an alcoholic. His mother was fourteen when she got married. I think there was no supervision… They were so poor, there was no bathroom… The first thing he can remember was stealing Christmas presents for his family when he was ten.”
Jack, in an essay published in a Colorado newspaper, explained “career” criminals. None of the thousands of men he had seen “come and go into and out of jails” since his initial exposure in 1951 “liked” being imprisoned. “Why, then, the continued involvement with antisocial acts that can only lead to incarceration? Are we merely ‘criminals’? I honestly don’t know one single criminal. Not one. Some come close to fitting that classification, but none is firmly in that column. Are we just a bunch of ‘sickies’ who can’t be helped? I’d tend to favor that analogy, for there is a sickness involved and we can’t, under the present system of mishandling the problem, be helped… Man is a victim of his own environment. When restriction, abuse, condemnation, isolation, and despair become a way of life, those enemies no longer frighten a person. They make him angry, and it’s that anger that becomes the driving force in his life and dooms him to return to jail time after time.”
Others tend to have a less sympathetic view of career criminals. “A man who kills a holdup victim is a psychopath, with little conscience, a macho kind of guy who likely beat up his girlfriends before,” said Dr. Tanay. Women who love killers are usually involved with these sadistic, macho, career criminals, he believes. For the most part, my interviews bear him out. The majority of women in this book are in love with men who became involved in crime when they were very young and then evolved into murderers: They were and are “bad boys.”
But there are many exceptions.
EMOTIONAL MURDERERS
Some of the women in this population are romantically involved with men who have killed out of passion, such as Phil in Chapter 1. So-called family or emotional killings are far greater in number than other murders because they include domestic murders. Men who kill women—girlfriends or wives—and other family members, such as parents or children, are categorized by police and psychiatrists as emotional killers, as opposed to those men who murder as part of their crime careers. Generally, these men are seriously psychologically damaged and have great problems dealing with reality. They are less dangerous to the world at large than is the career criminal, but are far more dangerous to the people they “love.”
“A person who has been involved in family conflict is usually … very passive and submissive and has had an explosive episode [during which he murdered]. He would have an underdeveloped conscience…
There would be a certain kind of woman who needs that kind of man,” said Dr. Tanay.
Psychiatrist Park Elliot Dietz, M.D., Ph.D., agreed that murders within the family typically involve a person who is noncriminal but “disturbed in some way, including intoxicated, depressed, psychotic, under pressure, and unable to cope.” These disturbed states don’t last; at other times, a month, a week, even a day later, these people can be quite normal.
“Someone who ends up killing within the family is often either psychotic or has problems with dependency, loss, or separation,” said forensic social worker Janet Warren, DSW. Very often, these family murders take place when a wife or girlfriend says she is leaving or wants to end the relationship. (Tina wanted to break up with Phil; he killed her.)
From 60 to 80 percent of all murders are these emotionally charged family killings, according to Dr. Tanay in The Murderers: “Homicide, so to speak, is most often an affair of the heart … a family affair because family members both love and hate one another, and the hate, if it becomes excessive, may explode in murder … there are those among us who are fury-driven to passions they cannot endure and who will lift the knife, the gun, the tormented hand…”
SERIAL KILLERS
A third category of murderers is comprised of serial killers and mass murderers: Ted Bundy, the two Hillside Stranglers, Richard Ramirez, John Wayne Gacy. In the scores of books about them and their sensational crimes, they are described as pure evil, psychotic, criminally insane. Despite these labels, each of these men has had a woman at his side after his conviction, loving him, believing in him, willing and eager to marry him!
Veronica Lynn “VerLynn” Compton is in prison for life because her passion for Kenneth Bianchi, one of the Hillside Stranglers, made her into a criminal herself. VerLynn started writing to Bianchi while he was in jail in L.A. An attractive model who had just won a contract to represent a company, it’s not clear what prompted her to contact the notorious killer except, perhaps, his notoriety. Bianchi began romancing her, and they were soon seeing each other daily. She followed him to Bellingham, Washington, where he was about to stand trial for the murder of two coeds.
Sitting close together in the prison visiting room, the two hatched the plan that would lead to VerLynn’s life sentence. I want to help you, VerLynn told Kenneth. If you want to help me, he said, kill someone. That will prove you’re really willing to put yourself on the line. They decided she had to kill a woman using the Strangler style. It wouldn’t be easy. There were insurmountable problems. She left the prison that day and drove away thinking how she could pull it off.
During their next visit, the couple tried to come up with a method for her to lure a woman into trusting her. They thought of all sorts of crazy plans, even one in which she would dress as a nun. Finally, Bianchi said to her, Just do it. Then after the body is discovered, I’ll tell detectives that obviously I’m not the Hillside Strangler since the slayings are still going on.
VerLynn loved Bianchi so much she was willing to kill for him. But they had one logistical problem they couldn’t solve: How could she anoint the victim’s body with semen? She had to, in order to imitate the sexual abuse that always accompanied the Stranglers’ torture-murders. Finally, they decided VerLynn would go to a sperm bank and obtain some semen.
Two nights later, VerLynn was set to try her first murder. She took a room at the Best Western Heritage Inn in Bellingham, then went to a bar near the motel and chatted with a woman who was sitting alone. VerLynn said she was staying nearby and would the woman like to come back to the room with her for a drink? The woman, a tall redhead, agreed. Once inside VerLynn’s room, VerLynn leaped on her would-be victim, hands around her throat, squeezing tight. But the woman was sinewy and pushed her attacker off, escaping into the night.
Limping—she had lost her black high heeled shoe—sobbing, her neck raw and painful, the redhead managed to get to a pay phone and called the police. She told them a woman had tried to strangle her. They came to pick her up and get her statement; in the meantime, VerLynn fled back to California. It was obvious she didn’t have what it takes to be a Hillside Strangler. She didn’t contact Bianchi.
Bellingham detectives, working with the L.A. Sheriff’s Department, identified VerLynn, piecing together the Bellingham woman’s description and what they knew of the model’s relationship with Bianchi. VerLynn was arrested, tried, and convicted and is now serving a life term in Bellingham for attempted murder. But VerLynn is still kicking. About two years ago, she and another women escaped from the Washington State penitentiary where they are housed. The escape was brief, though. They were quickly caught and returned to prison.
There is speculation among law enforcement agents that VerLynn’s escape was an attempt to get free so she could contact her beloved Kenneth Bianchi; she may have heard through the prison grapevine that he was planning to marry. But she never got to him, and in 1989, he married another woman.
MURDER CONVICTIONS
If convicted, the criminal court system of the state in which he committed his crime sentences a murderer to either life without parole, death, or a long prison term. For many women, the length of a murderer’s term is intrinsically tied up with his appeal. She can become involved, certain he will remain in jail either for the rest of his life or for decades to come. Murderers are not quickly or easily released. Eighteen states have life without parole, and thirty-eight have the death penalty.
But on occasion, a murderer is convicted of a lesser charge because he is allowed to plea bargain. This happened in the William Shawcross case. Although in 1972 he admitted to killing two children, he was never charged with murder. The New York Times of January 13, 1990, reported that Jefferson County district attorney Gary W. Miles said Shawcross was originally “spared a murder charge and a life term in exchange for telling authorities where he had hidden the body of a 10-year-old” boy. He was charged only in the killing of a girl, and for that crime, was convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to twenty-five years. Shawcross was released to kill again after serving only fifteen years for “good time.”
In cases where the evidence is inconclusive and prosecutors feel they would have a tough time convincing a jury of a defendant’s guilt, prosecutors rationalize that a lighter sentence is better than no conviction, and no sentence, at all.
In the Preppie Murder case in New York City in 1987, the killer, Robert Chambers, was allowed to plead guilty to first-degree manslaughter as the jury, deciding whether or not he was guilty of murdering young Jennifer Levin, entered its ninth day of deliberations.
Linda Fairstein, the New York City assistant district attorney prosecuting Chambers, allowed this plea bargain because the jury process appeared to be breaking down and the result could easily have been either a mistrial or a hung jury. Fairstein didn’t think Jennifer Levin’s parents could go through the torment of another trial; neither did they.
Chambers’s defense attorney, Jack Litman, obtained for his client not the lengthy sentence for first-degree manslaughter but the five to fifteen years generally given for second-degree manslaughter.
DANCING WITH THE MASTERS OF DEATH
Ironically, while untold numbers of single men and women can’t seem to meet the right person or can’t sustain meaningful relationships, men convicted of murder appear to attract women easily. As a matter of fact, some murderers seem to be so attractive that women flock around them, vying for their attention.
The men are generally charming and seductive. “These guys are incredible con men,” said social worker Lois Lee, who works with teenage prostitutes in California and played a role in assisting investigators in the Hillside Strangler case. “I get letters from them; they want to start a correspondence with my kids—which I don’t let them do.”
“These guys are never without women,” said one law enforcement officer. In psychiatric jargon, some murderers, the charmers, fit into the psychopathic or narcissistic categories. “These men have a great appeal to women,” said for
ensic social worker Dr. Warren. “Whether these men are criminals or whether they’re heads of corporations, they have a charming, powerful quality that draws people to them.”
These charismatic murderers are totally different from the type of killer who murders his wife or girlfriend. In a three-page letter to this writer in November 1989, Hillside Strangler Bianchi was disarming, intelligent, articulate. In suggesting a collaboration on a book about his life, he wrote: “It should come as no surprise that I’m in the process of writing my story—from childhood to the present… Thus far, five chapters are completed, along with a preface… Although I received A’s in English classes here, I’m no experienced nor professional writer. My chapters are rough, but truthful and require a creative, albeit honest, continuing touch.”
Charismatic murderers are expert con men. Francine, married to a convicted killer, said: “Ninety-nine percent of the men are narcissistic. They have no depth, no understanding of how to survive in today’s world, which is one reason why they are where they are, and they are learning nothing from the experience. But a lot of them are pretty adept con artists.” (Her husband, of course, is different: “He has never, ever, lied to me, not one time.”)
“They don’t call them con men for nothing,” said Maria. Murderers are often so captivating, women forget why they are in prison. Lorraine met an inmate through her brother, who was also in prison. She married him because he had an “almost hypnotic hold on me… The guys in prison really know how to get what they want.”
Women Who Love Men Who Kill Page 5
