When Lucas was eight, his father remarried and moved to Oregon amidst rumours that he’d sexually harassed a local woman. Lucas retreated further into his shell and, though academically capable, he was an outsider in the playground. Meanwhile his mother increasingly suffered from depression and withdrew into herself.
When he was twelve, he and one of his brothers went to live in Oregon with his father. By now his father’s relationship with his second wife was failing and Bob was dating another woman. When Lucas was fifteen, his father announced that he planned to divorce for the second time.
Two years later he uprooted the family again, moving them to Colorado Springs. Bizarrely, he wanted to be near a Fundamentalist Christian programme which believed that marriage was for life no matter how unhappy. Ironically, his mother and her second husband had also moved to the area.
Seventeen-year-old Lucas attended yet another school and kept up with numerous church activities. He was told that sex before marriage was wrong and that everything in life is predestined. When he questioned this he was given the anti-intellectual reply ‘ours not to question why.’
The unhappy schoolboy took an after-school job at a telemarketing firm. Employees noticed that he stared hungrily at the women and that he was difficult to talk to. But he got on well with one equally strange telemarketer, George Woldt.
George Woldt
George was born on 8th November 1976 to Song-Hui and Bill Woldt. Song-Hui was Korean and the family spent the first few years in Korea, living near the American army base where Bill worked. Two years later the couple had a second son, but by then the marriage was already a troubled one.
Song-Hui loved both of her sons in her own way, but she became obsessed with little George’s appearance and would groom him for hours. If his posture didn’t look quite right to her, she would hit him and shout at him. Bill also beat both children and was twice investigated for child abuse.
His work eventually took him away from Korea and the Woldts moved to Germany and then to the States, eventually ending up in Colorado. His wife’s mental health continued to deteriorate and Bill Woldt coped by turning to drink. By now George was ten and was standing up to his mother, telling her that her punches and slaps no longer hurt.
George was an exceptionally intelligent child, but his unhappy home life eventually led to a deteriorating academic performance. Other pupils and teachers noted that – like many abused children – he sometimes went into a fugue state.
He moved into his teens and his compulsions increased: he feared germs and cleaned obsessively. He also screamed back at his parents and was becoming as violent as them.
Psychotic
When George was fifteen, his mother was sectioned under the mental health act and diagnosed as suffering from clinical depression and psychosis. It was noted that his father’s side of the family included schizophrenia. George was now so enraged at his treatment that he told friends he wanted to kill his mother, and said that all women were bitches who were only to be used for sex.
At seventeen, after one beating from his father too many, George went to the police but they decided not to take his complaint any further. He also told his teachers about the beatings but again nothing was done.
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Lacking control of his external surroundings, George Woldt became desperate to control his appearance and spent hours grooming his hair and fingernails. Steve Jackson, who wrote an insightful book on the subject, Partners In Evil, noted that George was so desperate to look symmetrical that if he had a sticking plaster on his right hand he felt compelled to put another on his left.
He left school and got a job in a telemarketing company which is where he met his eventual co-killer Lucas Salmon. Lucas saw George as sexually experienced and worldly and George saw in Lucas a friend he could both easily impress and dominate.
For the next three years, Salmon and Woldt would meet up whenever Salmon was in Colorado and would sometimes share a house, albeit usually with one of Woldt’s many girlfriends. The rest of the time Lucas was away at Christian college or doing missionary work overseas.
Marriage
In February 1997 George married his latest girlfriend Bonnie who by now was six months pregnant. She already had a three-year-old son from a previous marriage which had ended in violence. The three of them lived together in Colorado Springs.
A lethal combination
Soon Lucas moved in with George and his wife, and the two men began to sit up at night watching violent pornography together. Christianity forbids sex before marriage, so at twenty-one Lucas was still a virgin. It also forbids masturbation so he was incredibly frustrated, and he couldn’t repress his desires with alcohol as fundamentalism forbids that too. Like most people who try to be ‘too good’ he eventually rebounded in the opposite direction and began to make obscene comments to female workers. He was promptly fired.
But his misogyny continued. One night when George got into an argument with a teenage girl, Lucas Salmon screamed that she was a bitch. He watched George have sex with a woman who he wasn’t married to and doubtless wished that it was him.
Eventually he broke his religious code and masturbated into a pair of woman’s shoes, having bought several pairs to feed his fetish. He also began to fantasize about having sex with girls age nine and ten.
By now George Woldt was equally adrift as he’d been fired from his work for making nuisance phone-calls. His marriage was unhappy and he was sometimes so threatening towards his wife that she feared for her safety. Neighbours heard him hitting her throughout her pregnancy. He got another job in a store but was fired for poor timekeeping. He was increasingly lost and full of rage. He began to hint to various male acquaintances that they should abduct, rape and kill a female. Some thought that he was joking, but others realised that he was serious and they kept away. But when he talked to Lucas Salmon about his plans, Lucas didn’t appear quite as shocked or recriminatory. Rather, he stayed close to George who he now thought of as his best friend. Over the ensuing weeks, George elaborated on the abduction scenario until Lucas agreed to join in.
Several practice runs
The young men began to stop their car for various females, offering them a lift. All refused and hurried away. But it was enough to keep their fantasy going. They elaborated on how they would rape and sodomise a girl – then kill her so that she couldn’t tell. Lucas kept a knife in the front seat of his car in order to subdue any suitable female. He also kept his Bible in the back.
On the afternoon of 29th April 1997 they went out driving with George at the wheel. He deliberately knocked a young woman off her bicycle then rushed out of the vehicle to help her. Lucas followed and they asked her how she was. George offered to drive her to hospital but she sensibly declined, an offer that probably saved her life. Lucas Salmon kept the woman’s sunglasses as a masturbatory trophy. They would later be found in his chest of drawers.
Immediately afterwards the men relived the fantasy, knowing how close they’d come to finding a teenage victim. Next time, they decided, they’d strike in a quieter area after dark.
Rape and murder
That night they succeeded in their obscene plan, driving around until they spotted a car driven by a lone female. They followed her a short distance until she drew up close to a block of flats and parked. Jacine Gielinski, a twenty-two-year-old student, was going to her boyfriend’s flat for a meal and was only a few yards from his apartment block when the deviant duo pounced.
One of the men grabbed her around the waist and the other took hold of her legs and started carrying her towards their vehicle. They tried to gag her with a hand but she freed her mouth and began to scream.
Jacine did everything right, fighting to stay in the street rather than be taken away to a quiet location. She also made lots of noise, attracting several onlookers – but none were close enough to physically intervene in time. As they raced towards the scene, the twenty-two-year-old was still holding onto the
car door, trying to prevent being pushed inside it. But Lucas Salmon battered her arms, George Woldt punched her in the face and they forced her into the back seat, whereupon Salmon drove away at speed. An alert witness was able to jot down their car licence plate and reported it to the police.
Within the hour the authorities knew that the abduction victim was Jacine, as her handbag containing her identification had fallen to the ground during the struggle. They also ran checks and found that the car she’d been kidnapped in belonged to Lucas Salmon. The registered address was Lucas’s dad, who was able to give them George Woldt’s address.
Meanwhile, Salmon & Woldt took their weeping victim to a car park and George Woldt raped her on the back seat. He then traded places with Lucas Salmon who also raped her. Then they pushed their naked victim to the ground and discussed who would stab her first.
They decided that Salmon should make the first incision so he cut her throat then Woldt cut equally deeply into the same area. As Jacine was still breathing, they discussed how to hasten her death. Salmon stabbed her in the chest and she screamed. He handed the knife to Woldt who stabbed her near the heart, but she kept moving. They each stabbed her again, noting dispassionately that she was automatically lifting her hands to cover the wounds.
Finally, Salmon attempted to smother her with her own shirt whilst Woldt cut one of her wrists twice. The unfortunate young woman was still gasping for breath so George Woldt stamped on her stomach to force the air out of her. Her combined rape and murder had lasted for a horrifying hour.
Woldt now suggested removing her vagina and hiding it so that there wouldn’t be a forensic trail, but Salmon came up with the idea of forcing earth into her vulva. They’d hoped to contaminate their semen – but some viable traces remained.
Afterwards they drove around for a while, smoking cigarettes and talking about the crime. Both believed that a place called hell existed and they decided they were destined to go there when they died.
Confession
By the time law enforcement arrived at George Woldt’s house, the men had returned and gone to bed. When woken, they at first said they’d been playing pool till late but after further discussion Salmon reluctantly allowed them to search his car. The officers found his Bible plus a blood-spattered shirt which had belonged to Jacine. The men had used the garment to wipe blood from their hands and had unthinkingly thrown it into the boot. They also found the blood-stained murder weapon which had bent under the strain of the multiple thrusts. Confronted with the evidence, Lucas Salmon admitted that he and George had stabbed a girl and left her naked body under a car in a parking lot.
Formally interviewed, it was apparent that both men were psychopaths. Neither seemed aware of the enormity of what they’d done and they had no interest in the victim. Rather, their response veered between indifferent (they ate heartily at the police station) and self-pitying.
Lucas Salmon later told his psychologist that ‘it was God’s will for Jacine to die…Everybody dies. It’s not right to question God.’ His victim was now ‘with God’ he said, and stated that he too would be in time.
Salmon’s trial
In February 1999 Lucas Salmon pleaded guilty to kidnapping, sexual assault and murder. The jury listened with horror to details of the double rape, throat-slashing, multiple stab wounds and suffocation attempt.
The defence said that Lucas suffered from Dependent Personality Disorder and that he had the maturity of a five-year-old. They didn’t add that Lucas was only easily led in directions which suited him – if George Woldt had told him to jump off a cliff, he’d doubtless have refused. He wanted to lose his virginity, and had admitted to others that murder had become part of the men’s shared rape-fantasy.
The court heard that Lucas had been devastated when his father’s name was sexually linked with several teenage babysitters. He was being told to lead a celibate life (or a married one, for the Bible says it’s better to marry than to burn) yet was seeing other religious adults have sex outwith marriage. The anger had built in him until he took it out on an entirely innocent girl. He’d now reinterpreted the rape so that he referred to it as ‘having sex’ and he told his psychologist that he still felt sexual pleasure when reliving the act.
His parents were very supportive throughout the trial. His father said he partly blamed himself and his mother said she was praying that the jury would make a just decision.
Lucas Salmon was found guilty of all the charges against him, but one of the judges said that he didn’t fit the profile of the usual killer on death row, so his life was spared and he was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. In truth, Salmon shared many killer traits – he’d been subjected to harsh corporal punishment throughout his childhood, had had a repressive upbringing, had various stepmothers and stepfathers and was moved around geographically.
Woldt’s trial
Three years after the murder, on 3rd February 2000, George Woldt eventually went to trial. The jury heard that he was an embryonic sexual sadist with psychopathic tendencies. The defence countered by saying that he wasn’t responsible as he had calcium deposits on his brain, alternately described as a bleeding lesion. He also had scars on his back from the numerous childhood beatings he’d received.
But apparently a bleeding lesion doesn’t necessarily result in violent acts – and many of us survive abusive childhoods without going on to murder as adults. (Abused children who kill are, of course, much less culpable and so are more deserving of help rather than further punishment.) George was a twenty-year-old married man and killing Jacine Gielinski was a choice he made.
The court wanted to hear Lucas Salmon testify as to whether George Woldt had appeared mentally ill that night, but Salmon refused to take the stand. He was given an additional six months for contempt of court.
Incredibly, the defence suggested that Woldt had gone into a disassociative state during the rape and believed that the victim was mounting him. This made no sense as the crime wasn’t a momentary mental lapse – Salmon and Woldt had planned for weeks to rape and kill, had even had practice runs at it. They knew exactly what they were doing and why.
Woldt had already believed that there was a deity when he carried out the rape and murder, but in jail he got religion big time. He told the jury that, if they spared his life, he would ‘honour God.’ He was subsequently sentenced to death.
Update
On death row, George Woldt lost weight and his boyish good looks began to fade. But his lawyers argued that his death sentence was invalid because it had been imposed by the trial jury rather than by the judge, something which has retrospectively been deemed unconstitutional. The Supreme Court agreed in February 2003 and his sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.
Lucas Salmon is also serving out his life sentence, though his defence team now argue that he is suffering from high-functioning autism and only killed because he mimicked the murderous actions of George Woldt. But Lucas chose who to mimic – he could equally have copied the acts of a charity worker or a selfless carer. Instead, he copied a misogynistic rapist and took part in a cruel sex act which he admits he enjoyed.
Salmon may now pose a danger to gay prisoners. Whilst on the outside, he belonged to a Christian organisation which abhorred alternative sexual lifestyles and focused on helping gay people see ‘the error’ of their ways and ‘convert’ to heterosexuality. He still considers all forms of sex outwith heterosexual marriage to be a mortal sin.
10 EXILES
JAMES DAVEGGIO & MICHELLE MICHAUD
Most of us read about torture killers and cringe at man’s inhumanity to man – but the following couple were turned on by reading about the exploits of killer team Charlene & Gerald Gallego. Charlene, who helped her husband lure ten young victims to their deaths, is profiled in my book on female serial killers, Women Who Kill.
James Daveggio & Michelle Michaud didn’t murder as many victims as the Gallegos, but they sexually assaulted seventeen females, o
ne of whom was only twelve years old.
James Anthony Daveggio
James was born on 27th July 1960, the second son of Darlene and Jim Daveggio. He was born with additional tissue on his larynx, a congenital condition which would ensure that he’d have a husky voice throughout his life.
Darlene was only nineteen when James was born, but his twenty-three-year-old father had been married before and had deserted the three children from that previous marriage. It was a pattern which his father would repeat again and again. The four Daveggios lived in poor quality housing in San Francisco. Jim drove a truck for a living and money was scarce.
Shortly after James’s birth, the couple moved to Santa Rosa and Darlene became pregnant again. But before their daughter was born, the Daveggios had split up. Jim swiftly remarried and started his third family – and James wouldn’t see his father again until he was twelve.
When James was three and a half his mother moved her three toddlers to Nevada and remarried, but their lives remained precarious. James almost died at age four when he set himself on fire whilst playing with matches, having to undergo extensive skin grafts to his shoulders and back.
Couples Who Kill Page 16
