Upon hearing this, Diane Zamora went berserk. She attacked him with a brass bar then began to batter her head off the walls, screaming hysterically for a full hour. She kept begging him to ‘kill her’ (meaning the other woman) and eventually he said yes. He was unwilling to admit that he’d invented the adulterous union – or perhaps he knew that the obsessively jealous Diane wouldn’t believe him if he now told the truth. The teenagers’ love hadn’t made them as happy as they’d hoped. How could it, when they had so many unresolved issues from their difficult childhoods? But now they could blame a third party and convince themselves that killing her would restore the purity of their love.
The murder
On 3rd December 1995 David put a rope, barbells and his pistol in a bag, phoned Adrianne and asked her to sneak out of her house to meet him after her parents had gone to bed. (Adrianne often sneaked out late to meet friends.) Shortly after midnight she did just that. They drove off together to the lake, Adrianne still in her gym wear as she’d earlier worked out with her mother. The luckless sixteen-year-old had no idea that he planned to kill her and that an equally vengeful Diane Zamora was in the trunk of the car. The plan was to break Adrianne’s neck then weigh her body down with the barbells and put it in the lake but David got lost and couldn’t find the water, so he parked in a quiet lane instead.
At the same time he signalled to Diane to leave the trunk and slide into the back seat. When she did, he grabbed Adrianne by the neck and she started screaming, asking what he was doing. Her neck was becoming bruised but it didn’t snap.
Diane now struck her rival on the back of the head with one of the weights and struck her again, shattering her skull and driving pieces of bone deep into her brain. Adrianne’s left hand was also smashed when she raised it to deflect another blow.
Somehow she managed to push herself backwards out of the car window, stumble away from her tormentors and climb over a barbed wire fence, collapsing on the other side of it.
David followed then ran back to Diane and said that she was dead – but Diane told him to play safe and shoot her. So David Graham went back with his pistol and shot the badly injured teenager twice in the face at close range.
Shortly afterwards, they noticed Adrianne’s blood all over the car. David became nauseous but Diane remained controlled enough to clean it up, then the trembling killers made their way to one of David’s friends and swore him to secrecy about their visit. They were blood-spattered and obviously upset as they hurried into the shower. The friend assumed they’d been in a motor accident and helped out as best he could. Now it was Diane’s turn to go to pieces, and she lay there in the friend’s bedroom, crying and shaking. Both teens expected to be arrested at any moment so for the next few days they were unnaturally quiet.
The investigation
Police knew that Adrianne had talked to someone called David on the phone late the night she was killed so they asked David Graham for his alibi. He replied truthfully that he’d been with his fiancée, Diane. The police had also heard that Adrianne had been kind to a troubled young teenager who used to hang about the fast food outlet where she had an after-school job. After a couple of interviews, they battered down his parents’ door in the early hours of the morning and took him into custody. The innocent seventeen-year-old, who was on medication for a bi-polar condition, was sick twice on his way to the station and his parents were in shock.
Meanwhile Diane and David kept going to church and praying for forgiveness. But their religion didn’t prick their consciences sufficiently for them to tell police that they’d jailed the wrong boy.
The boy spent the next three weeks in jail, being held in squalid conditions. But at the end of the third week he was polygraphed, passed with flying colours and was released.
By now the strain of being murderers was beginning to tell on Diane and David, who continued to hit each other. He told his friends not to mention other girls in her presence. They both applied for afterschool jobs but when only he was accepted she persuaded him not to take up the post.
Diane found it impossible to keep the murder secret and told one of her schoolfriends, but the teenager kept her counsel. It’s also rumoured that she told several of her relatives.
A new beginning
A few months later the star-crossed lovers went off to their respective colleges, she to the Naval Academy and he to the United States Air Force Academy. Interviewed about her success, she said that she attributed much of it to David and added ‘I owe so much to God.’
But on a more earthly plane, she had crying jags whenever David didn’t answer her emails. She found the physical arduousness of her new course difficult and soon forged an increasingly strong friendship with another man. She swore him to secrecy then told him that her fiancé David had killed a girl. Unsure whether or not to believe her, he didn’t pass her confession on to the authorities.
Increasing mind games
Diane now told David about her new friend and he tried to get the young man charged with sexual harassment. In turn, David invented a girl at the airforce base who he claimed fancied him. When she heard about this supposed new threat, Diane sent back an email referring obliquely to Adrianne’s murder, reminding him of ‘the secret they shared.’
When David didn’t hear from Diane for a few hours he’d begin to pace the room. Eventually his weary room-mate asked for a transfer. Both Diane’s room-mates also found her impossible to live with as she talked about David constantly and kept hinting that he’d killed a girl. Unsurprisingly, she went through several changes of room-mates in a matter of months.
Arrest and trial
But Diane continued to talk, eventually telling her third set of room-mates that ‘someone is dead because of me.’ The next day the worried teenagers went to the chaplain and the police were called in.
Incredibly Diane was given a plane ticket home – but she swapped it for one which took her to the airforce base where David was stationed. The young couple then spent three days together, days in which it seems they rehearsed their stories which would then sound almost identical. She then flew back to her parents’ house but they’d been evicted so she moved in with them at her grandfather’s home.
David and Diane were arrested separately on 6th September 1996, nine months after battering and shooting Adrianne. Diane now retracted her story, claiming that she’d made it up to impress her room-mates – but she had a motive of sorts and so did her boyfriend David Graham.
He initially denied the murder and said that he’d never heard of Adrianne Jones. Only after he took a polygraph and failed spectacularly did he admit to killing her because ‘no one could stand between me and Diane.’ Ironically, no one was standing between him and Diane. Both were their own worst enemies. Their pathological jealousy had caused them to invent an enemy and brutally slaughter her.
Diane also admitted to the crime, saying that she and David were jointly responsible. She showed no remorse for the pointless killing, and spent her nineteenth birthday in the county jail.
Celluloid couple
Inevitably the couple’s story was turned into an entertaining film, Swearing Allegiance. But the film gave the impression that Diane’s motive for wanting Adrianne dead was all about restoring the purity of Diane and David’s love. Though that was certainly a motive, the fear of others finding out was probably far stronger. Diane had seen her mother shamed through her father’s infidelity and she’d told everyone at school how perfect she and David were, so she risked a loss of face if he publicly admitted being attracted to Adrianne.
Both teenagers shared a fear of splitting up. Their families were disintegrating and Graham had lost the respect of his peers and superiors at the Cadet Air Patrol because he spent so much time with Diane Zamora. They literally only had each other. The right thing to do would have been to forge new friendships and build themselves a new peer group – but they opted not to do the right thing.
As usual, the media portrayed them as the ‘perfect coup
le’ and said that the murder was completely out of character. But the reality is that both teenagers were deeply troubled before they met and their relationship was increasingly violent. They simply looked for a scapegoat and took their confused rage out on her.
A death wish
Hours after being found guilty, Diane Zamora allegedly slashed her arm with a razor in prison. She told a psychologist that it wasn’t an attempt to take her own life, but the prison played safe and placed her on suicide watch for twenty-four hours.
In her cell she wrote David endless letters, read her Bible and sang hymns. She wrote that ‘God has forgiven us’ and that ‘everything that happens, happens for a reason.’ She seemed incapable of recognising that the murder had happened because she battered Adrianne’s skull in and David shot her dead.
Meanwhile David’s lawyers said that he’d only confessed after thirty hours of interrogation and that the confession might be unsafe. When a reporter asked him if he had a message for Diane he said that he loved her and he made it clear to his legal team that he still expected to marry her.
David also wrote to a friend quoting Biblical tenets and adding ‘God forgives people for anything.’ He told his friend that he was optimistic about the trial and asked him to hold onto his gear.
Sentencing
But David was unduly optimistic – for in February 1998 Diane Zamora blamed David Graham at her trial, saying that he had manipulated her into helping kidnap Adrianne. The jury found her guilty and she was given life imprisonment. She now works as a clerk in the prison warehouse and is regularly visited by her family.
Five months later David Graham went on trial. It then transpired that he hadn’t had sex with Adrianne Jones after the track meet as he’d claimed: indeed, another youth had given her a lift home from that particular event. David and Adrianne knew each other from their cross country runs but they hadn’t had the full sex that he’d told Diane had taken place.
David’s separated parents were very supportive of him and jointly paid for his defence. Diane briefly took the stand at his trial but only to say that she was taking the Fifth Amendment and would not testify. He was subsequently sentenced to life. He has since become co-editor of a prison newspaper, ironic as his initial statement about loving Diane was described by reporters as ‘pure Mills and Boon.’
Under Texas law both killers will serve forty years before they can be considered for parole. Unless this is changed by a later appeal they will both be over sixty when they get out.
Update
Diane had lost David through testifying against him so the love affair that she’d sworn would last ‘forever’ was over. In early 2003 she petitioned to marry a prisoner called Steve Mora. The couple had become close through exchanging letters but had never met. Steve had served previous sentences for auto theft and burglary and was on the last few months of a four year stretch for threatening someone involved in one of his previous crimes.
On 17th June 2003 the marriage took place in a double-proxy ceremony, with Diane’s mother standing in for Diane and a male friend standing in for Steve Mora. A judge in San Antonio performed the ceremony. Meanwhile the happy couple remained in their respective jails, Steve at Texas’s Ramsey Unit and Diane at the Mountain View Unit of the maximum security Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
It’s unlikely that the couple will live happily ever after as Steve was due for release within months of the marriage whereas Diane won’t be free until 2038. A criminal justice professor commented that ‘They’re kind of naïve about realities. That’s really not surprising. If they were realistic, they probably wouldn’t be where they are.’
7 NEW WORLD ORDER
LEONARD LAKE & CHARLES NG
Male-male couples who kill tend to be more sadistic than male-female or female-female partnerships. But Lake & Ng plumbed new depths of depravity in killing babies as well as adults, and by the end of their lethal partnership at least sixteen people had died appalling deaths. Leonard Lake managed to convince himself that he was kidnapping women whom he could breed with and create a post-Holocaust society, but his true motivation was a combination of lust and rage.
Leonard Thomas Lake
Leonard was born on 29th October 1945 to Gloria and Elgin Lake. His father was in the Navy and the family resided in San Francisco. Unfortunately it was a poor marriage during which Elgin Lake anaesthetised himself with drink. Five years after Leonard the Lakes had a daughter and a year after that they had another son.
But the family remained in discord and shortly after the birth of this third child, Elgin left the marriage and Gloria understandably found it difficult to cope with three young children. The fatherless family now moved to the projects and were constantly hungry, frightened and cold. Leonard would later recall that he had no toys and would fantasise that he’d been sent to an orphanage instead.
When Leonard was six, his mother decided to follow her ex-husband to Seattle and ask for a second chance. Leonard apparently said that he didn’t want to go, and as he was settled at nursery school she decided to leave him with his grandparents. But at the railway station he changed his mind and clung hysterically to her skirt. She had only booked places for her other children so had to leave him – and he would never forgive her for this.
Yet his life improved dramatically when he moved in with his grandparents, for he was no longer hungry, had pocket money and his own room. He was also allowed to breed pet mice.
Within a year his mother, brother and sister returned to San Francisco but Leonard remained with his grandparents. He was polite to his mother but no longer close to her. When he was eleven she remarried and asked him to live with her, but he said no, though he was civil to the two daughters she subsequently had.
Leonard didn’t just have misgivings about his mother but also about his younger brother Donald who had been hit by a train and suffered brain damage. The older boy despised his younger sibling who he saw as a burden on their mother and on the state. He would retain this viewpoint throughout his life, being openly contemptuous of anyone who needed welfare aid.
In his teens, the boy who wanted revenge on his mother became erotically charged by John Fowles’ classic book The Collector. The novel explores the life of a dull man who kidnaps a girl for sexual pleasure. Fantasies in which young women were debased and kept captive began to dominate his masturbatory dreams. He hadn’t been able to control the first woman in his life, but could endlessly control his fantasy lovers. They always did exactly what he said.
Bored with living at his grandparents and already possessed of a prodigious sexual appetite, he joined the US Marine Corps on 27th January 1964. He was eighteen years old, six-foot tall and fighting fit, but his mental health was somewhat less robust than his physical health, something which became apparent as his love life and military life progressed …
Marriage and mental illness
Leonard became fascinated with guns whilst in the marines, a fascination which would remain with him. For the next six years he learned field survival techniques and aircraft radar technology. He travelled throughout the states and to Asia with the marines and won four medals – two for good conduct, the others for exemplary service whilst on a tour of duty in Vietnam.
When he was twenty-four he married a young woman, Karen, in California whilst home on leave, and almost immediately began to dominate her. He also joked constantly in front of his friends about selling her to them.
The following year he returned to Vietnam but soon began to crack up, becoming paranoid that his wife was being unfaithful. He also talked of having killed numerous Vietnamese, but as a radar technician he hadn’t seen active service. Eventually he asked to speak to a psychiatrist who thought that he was on the verge of schizophrenia. Sent home after only a month of this second tour of duty, he continued to act strangely and was discharged on mental health grounds in January 1971.
Often out of work or doing menial driving jobs, Leonard Lake now had time on his hands and becam
e increasingly obsessed with sex, and for him that meant control-based activities. He persuaded Karen Lake to take a job in a topless bar and to meet with other couples to discuss partner swapping. He also met with other women and took nude photos of them. He started to beat his wife – and when she left him he continued to stalk her. From Leonard Lake’s point of view, he had now been deserted by the first two women in his life.
Numerous failed relationships
Later that same year he began a love affair with a young woman he met through a contact ad. Again, he followed the same pattern that he had with his spouse, being incredibly sweet and attentive throughout the early dates and lovemaking. Only when his new girlfriend was deeply in love with him did he ask her to become a prostitute and start taking numerous nude photographs of her in bondage sex. He dropped the mister nice guy act and began to dominate every facet of her daily life, expecting her to account for all of her time and give him all of her money. When this verbal abuse turned to violence she, too, left.
Lake moved to a rural retreat 130 miles from San Francisco known as The Ranch. His new house was surrounded by miles of woodland: this inspired his already active survivalist fantasies. But, though he enjoyed his own company, he also wanted sexual partners and started relationships with various local woman. He was still an attractive man and an interesting one, but in time each of these girlfriends left him due to his controlling behaviour and overwhelming misogyny. He had so little sense of appropriate boundaries that he suggested a friend’s ten-year-old daughter pose nude for him – and he dated a fifteen-year-old until her parents sent her away to boarding school.
Couples Who Kill Page 10
