Women Who Love Men Who Kill

by Sheila Isenberg

  She was attracted to this seemingly sensitive, caring man who could work with mentally ill patients, draw them out, communicate with them. Drawn only to these qualities, Mary denied his crime and fell in love. Al’s murder? Mary said his gun went off accidentally after he was shot by the owner of the store he was burglarizing. Al’s victim, who tragically got in the way of the bullet, was a clerk in the store.

  Mary never thought Al would serve his full term. “When we got involved, it was with the thought that in a matter of time, a few years, he would be out. But now, I don’t know.” The love she felt for Al was out of her control; it just happened to her. “I don’t think you make the choice to pursue it. It ends up unfolding in front of you and you move with it.”

  Perhaps because social workers counsel murderers in prison, a few of them fall in love with “their” inmates. District Attorney Howard R. Relin, in Monroe County, New York, told about a social worker who loved and planned to marry convicted killer James R. Moore. “Moore committed one of the most notorious crimes in the state. He saw a young girl, followed her, killed her, and then raped her. He was already on probation for abusing girls. He pleaded guilty to murder.” Moore, who has been in prison for twenty-seven years, has unsuccessfully appeared before a parole board four times. Relin believes the social worker loves Moore purely “out of sympathy.”

  When Francine met Charlie, she was smitten by his looks, voice, and presence. “I was thunderstruck. There was something about him that was so compelling. He’s a lanky-cowboy sort of looking person with a deep, deep Southern accent. He looks like he ought to be herding cattle on a Wyoming ranch. He looks like those mythical Western figures that you read about.”

  A professional woman who returned to college in her late thirties, Francine was dedicated to her career as a photographer. But after the day her job sent her into a prison and she ran into her Marlboro Man, love took precedence. “It threw my career so far offtrack, it was unbelievable. I remember him as one of the most attractive people I had ever seen in my life. Nothing I have ever found out has altered that image or changed it in any way. He’s over six feet, weighs about one hundred eighty pounds. He has large, luminous, expressive eyes and a very direct gaze; there’s something very hopeful in his face.”

  It was more than physical attraction, though. “I recognized him. I was not meeting someone who was a stranger. I felt an enormous affinity for him.” She echoes many other women who have fallen for murderers. It’s not just a quickening of the heartstrings and the hormones; their love is a deep feeling, a sense of coming home. “When he and I began to converse, it was as though we had known each other always. The first time that we spoke together… I was having a conversation with someone I had known all my life.” Of course, Charlie felt the same way. “No one he had ever met in his life had an impact on him like me.”

  In 1963, he shot and killed a store clerk during a robbery. He was twenty. Charlie was convicted of murder in 1963 and sentenced to death.

  His death sentence was later reduced to life imprisonment. A determined man who has filed many unsuccessful appeals, Charlie is still in prison despite recommendations by several parole boards that he be released.

  Francine admits Charlie killed the store clerk, but she doesn’t believe he intended to do it; she also thinks it was a form of self-defense since the clerk was a “big guy” and was coming at Charlie. “He killed the guy. He’ll say that and he’ll say he should have served a long time. He loaded the gun but he didn’t put a bullet in the loading chamber. [The victim] was a big guy. Although [Charlie’s] six feet, he was kind of a shrimp of a guy. He wasn’t very heavy.”

  Francine, forty-one and fairly sophisticated when she met Charlie, was aware that convicted murders are usually guilty. “I was not … bedazzled by some glamorous outlaw-convict type. This man had been convicted of murder. I gathered … all the information I could. I really cared what happened to him, but I didn’t want to be a fool.” It turned out that Charlie had a record. Francine was shocked. The murder, well, she could get around that. But she could not wish away his lifetime pattern of criminality. “If you’re looking at a man who’s done a murder and that’s the only thing he’s done—that’s one thing. But if you find out there are all these other convictions, that gives you pause.”

  But only pause. Swept away by her passion for Charlie, she overlooked his record, his past. “I looked at the number of years he had been in [prison]. He was totally rehabilitated and utterly trustworthy. He had a good prison record. If [he] were a violent person, he certainly would have engaged in violence while in prison [so] that proved he was a changed individual.” Most of his crimes were done when he was young, she rationalized, between the ages of seventeen and twenty. And the murder? Well, that was the result of a robbery he got “mixed up in” because of another man. “He had a friend … [who] was on the run. That’s how [he] got mixed up in this robbery. He had done other holdups, but this is the one in which the guy died. He did six years on death row.”

  As she became more and more involved with Charlie, Francine decided to leave her husband. Even though she hadn’t been in love with him for years—she had certainly never felt about him the way she did about Charlie—they had had children together, had been married for more than a decade. But the loyalty she felt toward her husband dimmed when compared to the bright glow of her intense passion for Charlie. Charlie is “something that happened” to Francine “like a plane falling out of the sky or a train running over me.” She believes that true love eliminates free choice. “It was not the kind of love relationship that you say to yourself, ‘I’m going to choose to be involved in this’ or ‘I’m going to choose not to be involved in this.’ If you have the ability to do that, then you’re not in love with the person. You’re not. Because you don’t have the depth of emotion or feeling—not if it is like what happened to me.”

  She fantasized that Charlie would eventually be released. “I never believed that he was going to do natural life.” She didn’t take into consideration his six years on death row, his sentence of life without parole, or the state he was in with its reputation for being extraordinarily tough on convicted killers.

  Lisa Petrocelli, a nurse, first contacted her murderer/husband Tracy through an inmate in the Las Vegas jail where she worked. Married in 1988, Lisa and Tracy want to have a baby. But since Tracy is on death row, prison officials will not allow conjugal visits. Nor, they said, are they planning to develop an artificial insemination program. The Petrocellis are suing the State of Nevada to force officials to allow either conjugal visits or artificial insemination. Tracy, thirty-eight, is in prison for shooting to death a Reno car dealer while on a test drive in 1982. This was not his first murder. He was also sentenced to life in prison for murdering his ex-girlfriend in Seattle in 1981.

  Nevada prison spokesman Glen Whorton said Tracy “likes to talk, likes sports … is extroverted and outspoken.” He described Lisa as “very demure, very introverted and quiet, a person who naturally does have compassion for the sick.” Said Lisa: “All Tracy and I have is love and time. We are running out of time. I want to have this baby, and I do not think God would think it is wrong to bring a new baby into the world.”

  SCAMS

  Convicted killers sometimes run scams on unsuspecting women that revolve around money and/or pornography. One woman was told by the inmate she loved to send $4,000 to an “early-release board” to buy him a pardon. She did, but the money really went to another inmate’s sister; then the two inmates divided it between them, according to Paul Decker, assistant warden at Florida State Penitentiary.

  “It is one of the scams among con men to try to find a woman. There are a lot of guys in [prison] who go through one woman after another,” said Alicia, who loves Bill, a murderer.

  Rochelle, married to a murderer, believes many of the women in love with murderers are being duped (but not her, of course). “First is the woman who met him through a mail-order catalog. She’s answering a
n ad and he’s sweet-talking her. She’s usually bringing in drugs. She’s called a mule. Ninety percent of the women are bringing in something. Another type of woman brings in money but not drugs. The inmate says, ‘Why don’t you just bring me a fifty-dollar bill this week? I can get more in the canteen if I have cash instead of just money on the books.’”

  NO REASONABLE EXPLANATION

  Then there are the stories that can’t be categorized, the free women who meet killers in unique ways. Mary Bain met murderer Joseph Pikul because their daughters attended the same school.

  Jennifer Bain and Claudia Pikul were privileged little girls who attended a private school in Manhattan. Mary, Jennifer’s mother, thought that Claudia’s Wall Street-analyst father, Joseph, was arrogant and standoffish. “He was a little snobbish and didn’t have much to do with anyone. One night we went to the ballet at Lincoln Center and my daughter ran into Claudia. The two girls were squealing with joy over seeing each other, but Joseph sort of whisked his daughter away and they got into a limousine.”

  Sometime later, Mary and Joseph met under circumstances neither of them could ever have imagined. In late autumn 1987, Joseph was arrested for the murder of his wife, Diane, after her body was found dumped in a drainage ditch on the New York State Thruway. In January, the girls’ school held a meeting to deal with the double tragedy: the death of Claudia’s mother and her father’s arrest for murder. Mary, a clothing designer, was struck not by Joseph’s being a suspected killer but by his wit, charm, intelligence—and his considerable wealth. They talked, began to spend time together, and after a short but heady courtship, Mary left her husband (the marriage was already in trouble) to live with Joseph in his time of need. (Jennifer remained with her father.) In July, only months after they met, Mary became the third Mrs. Joseph Pikul. To the skeptics who asked why Mary would wed a man about to be tried for murder, she replied, “I couldn’t walk away from love. It’s something I had fallen into. I got to know the children. I saw what it was for the first time to be loved and appreciated.”

  During a September 1988 custody hearing in which Joseph unsuccessfully battled his murdered wife’s relatives for custody of his children, Mary told a lawyer that she hadn’t planned on falling in love. “Love is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. You see something so real you can’t walk away from it.” Mary sacrificed her marriage, lifestyle, and daughter for Joseph Pikul. “I signed everything over to my husband. I literally walked out of the house with the clothes on my back.” She also lost her extended family because her relatives wanted nothing to do with her. By the time Joseph was found guilty of murder, in March 1989, Mary was alone in the world.

  Mary had not fallen for a convicted killer; she believed Joseph was innocent, that he killed Diane because she was trying to stab him, that he would not be found guilty and would remain free. But during the months they lived together, both before and during his trial, Mary made many terrifying discoveries. She found out that Joseph had indeed killed his wife and that her own life was in danger. There were incidents during those months: He chased her through the woods near their house, trying to hit her. He slashed a dress she wore with a knife. He told her he was digging a grave for her. Several times, she was forced to call in the local police for help. Perhaps most terrifying, Joseph showed her videotapes in which he revealed his darkest side: He claimed to be a victim of multiple personalities, some of whom were female, and one of whom had killed Diane.

  In July 1989, Mary privately expressed doubts about the relationship she had with Joseph, although, to the public, she maintained the facade of a loyal and loving widow. “I’m beginning to think I used poor judgment. I’m beginning to hate Joe.” A short time after his murder conviction, before he could be sentenced, Joseph Pikul became very ill. He was dying of AIDS. (He died June 2, 1989. Because he died before he could be sentenced, his murder conviction was vacated.)

  “Joe is screwing me again,” Mary said shortly before his final illness. “Joe is scum. He never told me he was homosexual. I just feel this man has screwed me royally.”

  Still loyal, though, she added, “I fell in love with somebody. I still don’t think I did the wrong thing.”

  5

  Hilary: A Case of Substitution

  “He even looks like my father”

  LUCAS

  One day in April 1983, Hilary walked through the hush of the coronary care unit in a large hospital on the outskirts of Pittsburgh, in white uniform and rubber-soled shoes. She saw that one of the patients had his ankle chained to his bedpost. She was shocked; she had never seen anything like that. And an armed guard stood next to the comatose man.

  “I felt sorry for him. That poor man. He has nobody here. I didn’t know what he did. Why is he chained to this bed? What is going on?” Hilary walked past the guard and read the patient’s chart: Lucas Milton, heart attack. The patient opened his eyes and Hilary talked to him. Happy with the attention, he asked her to come back. She did, and they spoke regularly during his stay in the hospital. When he was released and asked for her phone number, she was hesitant, though. She had long since found out he was an inmate at the state prison. “I gave him the Dial-A-Prayer number instead of my real number.”

  A few months later, Lucas was back in the CCU and the nurses there called Hilary to let her know. This time, when he was released, she gave him her real phone number. “The first time, I didn’t know if I really wanted to get involved. I thought he was really a nice guy, but I wasn’t sure. He was incarcerated and I never had any doings with anything like that.”

  But this time, Hilary agreed to write, and she and Lucas began to correspond. The first letters were chatty, friendly, but rapidly became more intimate. “I realized that I really liked this guy. Maybe I had been a little harsh. If this situation was reversed, if that was one of my family, would I want someone to turn their back on him?”

  Choosing not to communicate with Lucas because he was a prisoner would be just like shutting him out in the cold, she thought. Lucas, thirty-eight, and Hilary, forty-five, had a lot in common; when they read, both chose Stephen King novels, and they both liked the same sitcoms on television.

  More important, unlike the men she dated after she divorced her first husband, Hilary thought Lucas was perfect. “When I met Lucas, I just couldn’t find anything that he was lacking.” The only drawback, of course, was that he was in prison for murder. But that didn’t stop Hilary and she fell in love. “Lucas is a gentle person, a sensitive man. He’s not afraid to cry. He doesn’t come off with this big macho-image type thing. He’s not afraid to be a human being.”

  Six months later, Hilary asked Lucas’s lawyer if it would benefit him to be married when he filed his next appeal. Sure, said the lawyer. It would look much better for Lucas if he had a wife, an established residence, and a made-to-order family. Lucas demurred, though. “He told me, I hate like hell to tie you down. I don’t want you to sit at home and wait. I don’t know how long it’ll be before I get out of here.”

  Hilary said she’d live with him when he got released, but Lucas was too conventional for that. “Lucas said, ‘No, I ain’t gonna live with you without a piece of paper between us. I don’t go for that stuff.”’ He did not approve of flouting respectability by living in sin. He wanted it legal.

  Hilary, by now very devoted to this man, decided to stick by him no matter what. If it were better for him to be married, she would marry him. She was also determined to get him freed and promised Lucas, “I am going to get you out of here.”

  FAIRY TALE

  Hilary grew up in a sprawling house filled with humanity: her parents, grandfather, and her father’s eleven brothers and sisters. As soon as her teenaged parents married—mother, Grace, sixteen, and father, Bob, nineteen—they had moved into an old, three-story house on the outskirts of Pittsburgh to provide a home for Bob’s siblings—five of whom had been living in an orphanage—and his father. His mother was dead.

  When Grace was seventeen, Hilary was born.
The teenage mother stayed at home caring for her daughter and some of her young brothers- and sisters-in-law while Bob, his father, and two older brothers worked in a steel mill.

  How Grace managed this huge family, thrust on her when she was barely out of childhood herself, is a mystery to Hilary. “I don’t have the faintest idea how she did it. She must have had the patience of a saint. I know that she’s up in heaven now and she got a star for that one.” Hilary remains enthralled with the image of her young, but strong, mother taking care of everyone.

  Grace and Bob had taken in his family because Bob was “a very devoted family man.” With such a large family, holidays, everyday meals, laundry—just about every part of daily life was a huge undertaking. “I can remember my mother starting at five o’clock in the morning and cooking two complete Thanksgiving dinners. They would set the table and then one group would eat. Then they’d clear up and set it again and a second group would start in.”

  Hilary was happy. She had no siblings to fight with; her aunts and uncles, all older, acted as her protectors. She was the coddled, much-loved baby of the family, sharing a bedroom with an aunt who was only two years her senior. “It was fun. It felt like they were all my brothers and sisters. We looked out for one another. We all had to share everything.”

  Discipline in the family revolved around attendance at church and adherence to the Golden Rule, but no one was fanatically religious. If his brothers acted up, Bob “would take the belt to them,” but he never raised a hand against his baby, Hilary. Neither did her aunts and uncles hit her. The boys would threaten to put her in the closet if she misbehaved, but overall, “they were very protective of the girls.”

  Her adolescence was also unmarked by trauma. She was a B student who spent much of her time in roller-skating competitions. She got along with both parents. “Me and my mom talked a lot.” Her father, who was his high school valedictorian, had plans for Hilary to further her education—“He wanted me to be a lawyer”—but she showed no interest in school. She wanted to get married.