During their second year of rooming together, Sinedu spiralled into a clinical depression and became increasingly untidy. She left food to spoil in their room and this attracted an insect infestation, but when Trang confronted her about the situation Sinedu became both defensive and aggressive. She plotted to kill some of Trang’s friends and anyone else who she thought was deliberately ignoring her.
The twenty-year-old prayed every morning but her prayers, to have friends, went unanswered and she wrote in her notebook that she was unable to make people respond to her. She was almost autistic in her inability to understand human relationships and her angst grew and grew.
Desperate to reach out, she wrote a letter saying that she lived in her own shell, afraid to express her opinions. She wrote, ‘All my life I have been plagued with social problems… When I am with one person I shake with nervousness fearing that we will run out of things to say.’ She photocopied this letter and sent it to random names she picked out of the phone book. One woman responded but Sinedu sent her a rambling cassette tape in which she spoke only of her numerous troubles. Alarmed at this level of self-obsession, her potential new friend didn’t respond.
In the spring of their junior year, Trang told Sinedu that she didn’t want to room with her again in the new academic year, that she’d chosen others to share accommodation with. Sinedu was devastated and begged the twenty-year-old to reconsider, saying that she was already distraught because Trang spent some of her time with other friends. Trang replied that she respected Sinedu but that their living requirements were different.
The Ethiopian student’s resources were now at an all time low – she had no one to live with for the coming academic year so would be allocated a room-mate at random, probably someone who was equally unpopular. She was failing her science classes and could see that her future as a dermatologist was slipping away.
However, Sinedu cheered up briefly when she decided to commit suicide and, now that the pressure to interact had been taken away, she started to wear make-up and trendy clothes. More chillingly, she also bought two large knives and a length of nylon rope. She skipped her neurobiology and chemistry exams, acts that were completely out of character as she normally arrived first for all of her exams. As her mental health declined further, she sent a photograph of herself to the student newspaper with an anonymous note that said there would soon be exciting gossip concerning the girl in the photograph…
The murder
On what was to be the last night of her life, Trang watched a video with a female friend called Thao and at 2 a.m. they returned to Trang’s room, where the friend stayed over, sleeping head to toe. Sinedu was lying on her bed with the light on but didn’t acknowledge them.
At breakfast time on 28th May 1995, Thao awoke to find Sinedu stabbing Trang with a huge knife. Trang was trying to defend herself with her hands, so shocked that she was beyond speech. Thao tried to grab the blade but only succeeded in cutting her palm. During the struggle, Sinedu also stabbed Thao in the foot. Bleeding heavily, she ran to get help but, to her horror, the heavy door shut and self-locked behind her. She alerted other students who summoned the emergency services. They arrived to find that Trang had been stabbed repeatedly in the neck, chest and arms. Medics found a total of forty-five stab wounds to her slender body: in other words, overkill. Strangely, Trang’s body was found lying next to Sinedu’s bed and Thao was convinced that the murderer had carried her there.
Entering the shower room, police found that Sinedu had hanged herself from a rope secured to a heavy curtain rod. She had premeditated her suicide, cutting the rope to length on her bedside cabinet and leaving the excess coiled there.
A bitter irony
Sinedu Tadesse was much more popular in death than she was in life, with several thousand people attending her funeral. Thao, who was stabbed whilst trying to save her friend Trang, subsequently had two operations to repair the deep wounds to her hand.
9 Virginia McGinnis
Four people died in mysterious circumstances whilst in the presence of this home care nurse, including her mother, daughter and second husband, but it was only when she killed a non-relative that her life of crime was brought to an end.
Early hell
Virginia was born in 1937 to Mary and Christie Hoffman. He had been drummed out of the police force for drunkenness so the couple now ran a small farm in Ithica. They also had a son, Tom.
The family lived in squalor and Virginia was so dirty and unkempt that she was ostracised by the local children. She often came to school without a packed lunch and sometimes stole food from the other pupils. She also ate food intended for the pigs. At home, she and her brother were frequently beaten and she was sexually assaulted by a male relative. Virginia was known to torture small animals and was later suspected of poisoning her mother’s pet dogs; she was becoming a psychopath.
At seventeen, she married a local boy, Dick Coates, and they had a son but she was soon having sex with other men and the marriage descended into mutual violence, yet they went on to create a second son together. The relationship remained volatile and Dick woke up one night to find the house in flames. He and the children were lucky to get out alive.
Virginia was determined to put her appalling childhood behind her and began to dress as a lady and tell strangers that she’d had a wealthy upbringing. She passed bad cheques in clothing shops and was arrested at the age of twenty-two. She was put on probation but this did nothing to quell her need for excitement and her peers were suspicious the following year when her marital home again went up in flames. Dick stayed in the marriage until their oldest child was eleven, then ordered his wife to leave. She did so and, much to everyone’s surprise, went back to her father. Dick continued to pay maintenance for his sons. Two years after the split, Virginia was living in California and gave birth to a girl, Cynthia, by another man.
Cynthia’s death
In June 1972, Virginia married Bud Rearden, who was in the navy. By now she was working as a homecare nurse, tending an elderly woman. Her mother was also working as a nurse at a veterans’ hospital. Virginia told some of her neighbours that she was a registered nurse but this would later prove to be a lie; her nursing skills were basic and she was more interested in her patients’ valuables than in maximising their health.
On 6th December 1972, Virginia contacted the authorities to say that she’d found her three-year-old daughter, Cynthia, dead in the barn, hanging from some gardening twine. Though detectives were suspicious, the official line was that it was a tragic accident.
Bud’s death
Bud was later diagnosed with cancer and Virginia nursed him at home; she regularly gave him his painkilling injections. She often struck his teenage sons from a former marriage, but on 7th September 1974 was nice to them and gave them money to go out for the day, though she warned them that their father could die at any time.
They arrived home late that night to find Bud dead – and, by the time that the authorities were contacted, Virginia’s mother had washed and cleaned the body rather than waiting for the doctor to attend. Bud’s death was attributed to the cancer that had been stealing his energy. Shortly after his burial, Virginia’s house burnt down; by now, almost every house that she had ever lived in had gone up in flames. Psychologists would later speculate that these arson attacks fed her need for excitement, a need that is common in those with sociopathic tendencies.
Another marriage
In 1983, Virginia met a small-time crook called Billy Joe McGinnis – known as BJ. He’d spent most of his life as a hustler on the gay scene but had married five times hoping to live off the latest woman in his life. In time, they had all seen through him and thrown him out. Virginia excelled at putting on airs and graces, and wore good jewellery, so he wrongly deduced that she had cash.
The couple married on 14th April 1984, after which Virginia gave up work and Billy found that her only income was a small disability cheque. Virginia was equally dismayed to find that BJ wa
s broke and without prospects, just a good-looking drifter. They’d hoped to scam each other but now they’d have to dupe someone else.
Another suspicious death
The McGinnis tribe remained unusually accident-prone, telling their insurance company in 1985 that Virginia’s mother’s home had burnt to the ground. The company reimbursed her. Virginia’s mother, Mary, bought a new home for herself and let Virginia live there. The latter told the children that Mary could die at any time. They were surprised as, though she was a diabetic, she was responding well to insulin; indeed, Virginia often administered the stabilising shots. Within hours of Virginia warning that Mary might die, she did so. Virginia had her cremated the day after and soon collected the insurance policy.
In March 1986 a windstorm allegedly damaged Virginia’s home and the company again paid out, but the family’s misfortunes continued in October of that year when they were burgled and lost thousands of dollars’ worth of property. Two days later, their house was flooded and again they received large sums of compensation from their insurance company.
Deana’s murder
Virginia now befriended a younger woman, twenty-year-old Deana Hubbard Wild, who had moved to the area after her marriage broke up. Deana had dated Virginia’s son James a couple of times whilst he was out on parole – he’d murdered a drug dealer – but he violated the terms of his release and was soon returned to jail. Deana was a friendly, learning-disabled girl in a new area, so she was very glad of the McGinnis’s company. She moved in with the older couple and regarded them as her family.
In early 1987, the homecare nurse began the process of insuring Deana. The young woman accompanied her but showed little interest in the proceedings, though she answered various questions about her health. On 1st April 1987, Virginia returned alone and paid for the policy: if Deana died, Virginia’s son, James, would benefit to the tune of $35,000. Virginia had told the insurance people that James was soon to become Deana’s fiancé, though Deana had described him to her mother as a friend.
The following day, Virginia suggested that BJ should drive herself and Deana to the cliffs at Big Sur for a picnic. The threesome enjoyed strolling between the boulders and took photographs of each other in which they all looked happy and relaxed.
Shortly afterwards, however, Virginia contacted Search and Rescue to say that she and her husband had gone back to the car because they were cold, after which Deana had slipped in her high heels and fallen over the cliff. Rescuers soon located her, but she was dead.
Drugged
The autopsy showed that Deana had no alcohol in her system but she did have the components of a prescription drug, Elavil, used to treat depression, and it could have made her weak and drowsy. BJ had a prescription for the drug as it helped him sleep.
Strangely, the young woman’s fingers were bruised and her nails broken, as if she’d clung on to the cliff edge and someone had stood on her hands to force her to let go.
There were also inconsistencies in Virginia’s story. She’d said that they’d pulled over in the car to take photos of the sunset, and that this was when Deana fell to her death. But she’d fallen at around 4 p.m., and the sun sets later than that in April in California.
Several months later, Deana’s mother contacted a local lawyer called Steve Keeney in Louisville because her insurance company wouldn’t pay for the funeral until the coroner had issued the death certificate, but the coroner was still looking into the death.
Keeney examined Virginia’s past and discovered that several of her relatives had died in mysterious circumstances whilst alone with Virginia, and her first husband had described her propensity for violence and how he’d woken to find the house ablaze whilst Virginia stood watching the flames from the safety of the lawn. The police were also unhappy with the circumstances surrounding Deana’s death and were putting together a case.
Arrest and trial
A few months after Deana’s death, BJ and Virginia separated and were soon divorced, but police tracked them down to their new abodes and arrested them. Virginia went on to share a cell for months with Betty Broderick, a woman scorned who murdered her ex-husband and his new wife because she resented their happiness.
Meanwhile, an ex-girlfriend of Virginia’s son came forward with a chilling tale. Apparently, Virginia had told her son that BJ was supposed to push Deana over the cliff but she’d fought back valiantly and Virginia had had to help throw her over the precipice.
In late November 1991, jury selection finally began. The following month, BJ died in hospital of Aids so was spared his day in court. The defence said that the then-fifty-year-old practical nurse had been a victim of unfortunate circumstances, that a combination of high winds and high heels had led to Deana’s fatal fall.
The defence produced witnesses that spoke of the girl’s marijuana use – they hoped that this would make the jury see her as a girl who might also have taken Elavil of her own volition. They noted that three of her boyfriends had been ex-cons, giving jurors the impression that she liked to live dangerously.
In contrast, the prosecution witnesses described her as a lonely girl who missed her ex-husband and was considering a reconciliation, and Virginia McGinnis had described her as being like a friendly puppy who just wanted to be liked. The prosecution showed the snapshots taken at the scene, lingering on one where BJ had his hand on Deana. He was looking at the highway, as if to check that the coast was clear. The jury, having observed Virginia for two months, thought that she was equally culpable and some had privately nicknamed her the Ice Lady.
On 2nd March 1992, they returned with their verdict: guilty of first-degree murder, conspiracy, insurance fraud and forgery. The defendant stared straight ahead, emotionless as ever. Later, she was sentenced to life without the possibility of parole.
10 Edna Chubb
The following case, that of Edna Chubb, understandably elicited public sympathy. Edna was a hard-working nurse who also had an intolerable number of domestic and financial demands made on her. Eventually she snapped and murdered her sister-in-law.
A strained friendship
Throughout the 1950s, Edna Chubb lived with her husband Ernest in a council house in Broadstairs. She had a heavy workload, caring for the couple’s five children (the eldest of whom had a hole in the heart) and her own disabled mother. It was a workload that increased when Ernest’s unmarried sister, Lilian Chubb, arrived for a week and ended up staying for the next seven years.
Ernest hoped that the women would become firm friends and Edna did her best to make this happen, but Lilian was not the easiest of guests. She watched Edna do all of the housework, cooking and gardening and never offered to help in any way and she only contributed a small sum towards her lodging, despite the fact that she could have afforded to pay more.
Unable to make ends meet, Edna took a series of part-time cleaning and factory jobs. From October 1955 to January 1958 – a few days before the murder – she also worked twelve-hour nursing shifts at Haine Hospital, Ramsgate. The hospital matron noticed that Mrs Chubb was living on her nerves and was on the verge of a breakdown, but she never took her stress out on the patients and the matron described her as a ‘ministering angel of the night’.
The murder
On 6th February 1958, Edna’s sister-in-law sat and enjoyed a leisurely breakfast whilst she listened to Edna racing around the house, tidying the bedrooms, making the beds and starting the washing-up in the kitchen. Eventually Lilian put a dirty coffee cup down on the counter that Edna had just cleaned. Lilian then got up to go – and Edna followed her into the hallway and grabbed hold of her scarf from the back, twisting it hard and pulling the woman backwards. Miss Chubb’s head hit the wall and she began to make noises, sounds that Mrs Chubb instinctively silenced by putting her hand over the badly injured woman’s mouth. The noises ceased, whereupon Mrs Chubb realised that her relative was dead. She remained in shock for a few minutes then fetched a wheelchair they kept in the garden and wheeled the still-warm
corpse to the garden shed.
The following day, she waited until her husband had left for work then pushed the body into a hedge by the roadside, where it was discovered almost immediately.
At first, Edna Chubb expressed surprise that her sister-in-law had been murdered, and said that the woman didn’t have any enemies. But inquiries showed that Lilian Chubb hadn’t left the house on the day of her death, and the police noted that the marks on her neck were sufficiently slight as to have been caused by another woman. When Edna was questioned further she admitted that she’d tugged at the woman’s scarf in a moment of rage, but that the death had been an accident.
The trial
In May 1958, Edna pleaded not guilty at the Old Bailey. The defence noted that her workload had been so great that she often survived on two hours’ sleep. Witnesses testified that she was a woman without malice. In turn, the prosecution alleged that the victim’s neck had been compressed for some considerable time.
Edna Chubb broke down when she took the stand, but admitted that she’d wanted to give her undesirable guest ‘a shaking’. After the incident, her sister-in-law had been blue in the face.
Doctors Who Kill Page 6
