11 SECRETS AND LIES
AMY GROSSBERG & BRIAN PETERSON
Couples who kill babies are understandably seen as especially reprehensible. Most such deaths occur when violent parents try to ‘discipline’ a crying or defecating infant (who is far too young to control such automatic reflexes) and go too far. And chapter fourteen, British Couples Who Kill Children, looks at another form of deliberate cruelty where adults let babies starve to death for monetary gain. But occasionally a couple murder a baby and it’s possible to feel a modicum of sympathy for them, as in the following case.
Amy Suzanne Grossberg
Amy was born on 10th July 1978, the second child of Sonye and Alan Grossberg. Amy, her parents and her three-year-old brother lived in an attractive four-bedroomed house in New Jersey. Her mother, a former teacher, stayed at home until Amy went to school then she joined her husband as a furniture sales representative. The couple were very successful in their careers so Sonye was able to take her daughter on frequent shopping trips. Amy was intelligent and artistic and expected to excel academically. Throughout her junior school years, she was a model child.
When Amy was twelve, the family moved to a much larger house and hired a maid. Amy continued to do well in school and also made great strides in her religious studies, the family being Jewish. But at thirteen she developed irritable bowel syndrome which can be brought on by – and later exacerbated by – stress. Like most IBS sufferers she tended to worry excessively about everything and was terrified of letting her family down. It was vital to Amy’s mother that she got good grades and once, when she got a B, Mrs Grossberg phoned the school and persuaded them to increase it to an A.
Fortunately the slightly shy girl had a few close friends to take her mind off these academic expectations and her IBS symptoms. And her happiness increased at age fourteen when she met Brian Peterson. The slender blonde boy was popular and athletic, only one month her senior. He was impressed by her cuteness, sweet disposition and artistic talent and they soon fell in love.
Brian Carl Peterson
Like Amy, Brian was an intelligent and sensitive teenager. He was born on 10th June 1978 to Barbara and Brian Peterson who lived in Long Island. His mother was a maths teacher who also had an evening job and his father was a computer programmer. The couple worked long hours so he came home to a babysitter every night. He was somewhat lonely but filled his time as best he could, attending classes in Catholicism, walking his dog and playing with friends.
Gradually his parents saw less and less of each other and when he was ten they separated and his mother moved to New Jersey. The couple agreed that Brian should remain in his childhood home with his father so that he could keep the same friends and attend the same school.
When he was fourteen he went to live with his mother and her second husband who ran a video distribution service with seven million dollars worth of sales per annum. Home was a large mock-Tudor house.
For the next three years Brian and Amy attended school dances, went to the cinema and had frequent meals with Amy’s family. By seventeen they were ready to become lovers but they’d had very little sex education at school and the subject had never been raised in Amy’s home. Amy’s mother always took her to the doctor and she was too embarrassed to go there on her own and ask for the contraceptive pill. Similarly, Brian was worried about being seen buying condoms so they didn’t always use them. Like many teenagers, they were playing Russian roulette with pregnancy.
A terrifying nine months
Eventually nature took its course and in March 1996 seventeen-year-old Amy didn’t have a period. She didn’t have one in April either and wrote to Brian suggesting she might be pregnant. By May the couple were discussing the topic regularly, still unsure if Amy was really expecting or if the worry about getting into the ‘right’ college was making her menstrual cycle irregular.
In June they graduated from high school and took summer jobs. Both of them turned eighteen that summer but emotionally they were still children, out of their depth.
They talked about getting an abortion and even drove past a clinic – but Amy lost her nerve and Brian was determined to support her in whatever decision she made, rationalising that it was her body. The following month Mrs Grossberg took her to the doctor for her pre-college medical and, though he palpated her stomach, he didn’t detect the pregnancy. He asked her if she was pregnant as he wanted to give her an immunisation that can harm a growing foetus. But her mother was standing beside her so Amy said that she was menstruating and accepted the dangerous shot.
The couple now booked an abortion at a clinic and Brian withdrew the money from his savings account but again Amy was unable to go through with it, fearing that if she developed a post-termination infection, her mother would find out. By now her mother had noticed that she was gaining weight and hiding her figure inside baggy clothes, but she still saw Amy as her little girl rather than the sexually active – if immature – young woman that she actually was.
In August they left home for their respective colleges, Brian going to Gettysburg whilst Amy travelled to Delaware, a hundred miles away. Almost immediately another student asked Amy when her baby was due. Suspecting that she was the subject of campus gossip, she wrote to Brian ‘I’m going insane.’ Equally distraught, Brian began to speak to her on the phone several times every day. His new friends noticed that he was withdrawn and was finding it hard to concentrate. Small wonder as Amy was writing to him ‘this is killing me, mentally, physically and emotionally.’ She even hinted that she was considering suicide.
As the season turned into autumn, her condition worsened. By now, unknown to her, she’d developed toxaemia of pregnancy, which is potentially fatal. Her ankles swelled, her body ached all over and she lost her appetite.
Amy had been brought up to believe that there was a god and that he answered prayers, but though she prayed and prayed for her pregnancy to go away, it continued. By mid-October she was reduced to writing a letter which said ‘Dear God, why does it seem like I just do everything wrong… Please help me. My life is ruined… I’m sorry that I did what I did but don’t hurt me anymore.’ She pleaded again and again for forgiveness, for the pregnancy ‘not to go any further.’
But the pregnancy continued. Her parents visited her that month and noticed that she looked unwell and was still swathed in baggy clothes. She admitted that she wasn’t feeling too good and was tired. Maybe if they’d asked her outright she’d have burst into tears and told the truth. But her well-meaning parents put her condition down to the stress of being away from home for the first time.
Incredibly, the too-good Amy was still studying hard, dragging her seriously ill body to all of her classes. By now she had terrible headaches and was constantly fighting back nausea. Worse, she could feel the baby kicking and her stomach was hurting constantly.
Birth and death
On 12th November her waters broke and she called Brian who immediately drove the hundred miles to be with her. The couple then drove to a motel, reaching it in the early hours. Brian had a fake ID in his wallet but booked into the motel under his own name. This suggests he didn’t anticipate exactly what would happen next.
Shortly afterwards Amy went into labour and an equally terrified Brian started to hyperventilate. The young couple had been so intent on hiding the pregnancy from Amy’s parents that they hadn’t given much thought to the actual birth. Now the exhausted eighteen-year-old was giving birth for the first time without any medical intervention or pain-killing drugs.
Brian begged Amy to let him drive her to hospital, but she was still petrified of disappointing her mother. So they stayed in the sweat-drenched confines of the motel bedroom and he pressed on her stomach a couple of times to try and ease the baby’s passage. Neither teenager knew what they should be doing medically, but soon Amy gave birth to a six pound son.
Exactly what happened next will probably never be publicly known. Amy had a cloth over her eyes (the pre-eclampsia she was suf
fering from ensured she had to shield her eyes from the light) so claimed she didn’t see the baby. Brian said that it looked blue and didn’t appear to be breathing. The umbilical cord allegedly tore when he picked the infant up. Amy begged him to ‘get rid of it’ (the baby) so he went out to the car to get bin bags to enclose the infant’s body and the blood-soaked towels. Journalists would later wonder if Amy kicked her newborn son with her heel at this point – or if Brian came back and tied a bin bag around the little boy, suffocating him. What’s definite is that they made no attempt to get medical help for the sickly infant. Weeping, Brian took the bag containing the tiny body to a nearby Dumpster and tossed it in.
Aftermath
Two hours later, Amy and Brian left the bloodstained motel bed and drove back to her college – and two hours after that she tried to get up for her first class of the morning. Brian persuaded her to rest but she still went to her midday class. By now she was getting terrible abdominal pains as her condition had worsened into full blown eclampsia.
Back in her room she collapsed and began to have seizures. When she regained consciousness she pleaded with her room-mate not to phone an ambulance, but thankfully the teenager called one. At the hospital she had another seizure and became too ill to talk.
Later she revived slightly and the medics asked her about her recent pregnancy but she continued to deny it. She went into a third round of seizures, her blood pressure dangerously elevated. They removed the placenta from her womb and gave her anti-epileptic medication plus Valium. She had every one of the symptoms caused by post-eclampsia – including tongue and eye swelling – and was at high risk of lapsing into a coma leading to death.
Meanwhile the hospital had contacted Amy’s parents and told them that she was very ill, phoning them again to confirm that she’d recently given birth. The couple were devastated. But they rallied and phoned Brian who eventually admitted that Amy had been pregnant and that they’d gotten rid of the child.
Admission
The police soon brought Brian in for questioning and the exhausted young man admitted that Amy had given birth in the motel room. The police asked if the infant could still be alive and he said no, that it was dead. His first concern was still for his critically-ill girlfriend and he told police ‘I felt so bad for her.’ He wept, terrified that his brief attempt to help deliver the baby had made Amy ill. The police asked ‘Was the baby born alive?’ and the trembling teenager replied ‘I’m not sure.’ He was charged with concealing the death of a child.
A police dog found the male infant and the autopsy found air in the lungs and bowels, suggesting that he had been born alive. There were also injuries to the skull but it was debatable whether these had occurred before or after he was thrown into the Dumpster. The skull injuries were probably the cause of death. Later examination also showed that the baby had been born with schizencephaly which can cause retardation and paralysis.
Amy was taken in handcuffs from the hospital to the police station then taken to a correctional facility to await trial. Brian was also kept in custody and refused bail.
Culpability
The next few weeks saw a frenzied media and judicial system trying to lay blame. Pro-choice groups argued that there was a clear need for better sex education and abortion facilities so that teenagers no longer had to endure such trauma whilst anti-abortionists argued the reverse.
Doug Most, an award-winning journalist who wrote a detailed book about the case, interviewed numerous youth representatives. Most noted that affluent teenagers like Amy and Brian were well-educated but emotionally immature, having never made any important decisions for themselves. The parents of such children tended to have very high expectations for their offspring and had never given them the message that it was okay to fail occasionally, that it was better to seek help than try to hide a pregnancy.
Sadly, there was still a lot of denial going on, for Amy’s parents said that Amy had done nothing wrong, a stance which unfairly suggested that Brian alone was culpable. The defence said that the baby had been born dead and that the skull injuries had occurred in the Dumpster post-mortem. But the prosecution contended that the injuries were pre-mortem and said they would seek the death penalty.
For the first few weeks of awaiting trial, Amy and Brian still wrote to and phoned each other, their love as strong as ever. But Amy’s mother was afraid that Brian would give information about her daughter’s legal case to his lawyers so gradually the phone-calls stopped.
The rift between the lovers was complete when one of Amy’s lawyers said that Amy hadn’t even known she was pregnant, that Brian was wholly responsible. It was a cruel attack on the young man – and an outright lie. Brian’s defence could prove that he’d withdrawn money from his savings account to pay for an abortion, which meant that Amy had to have known about her pregnancy. And the numerous letters she’d written to him begging for the pregnancy to ‘go away’ were found in his room.
Brian pleaded guilty to manslaughter and agreed to testify against Amy if she went to trial. Amy eventually followed his lead and plea bargained her charge down to manslaughter. She would be given a slightly heavier sentence than her boyfriend because he pleaded guilty from the start.
On 9th July 1998, the day before Amy’s twentieth birthday, the couple were sentenced. Amy was given eight years but most of it was suspended. She would spend two and a half years in jail and serve three hundred hours of community service, counselling pregnant teenagers.
Brian was sentenced to two years. Both he and Amy were initially put into isolation for their own protection. Later Brian was given work in the prison laundry and Amy taught handicrafts to her cellmates. The youngsters lost weight in prison and aged visibly.
Update
Amy and Brian are now free and remain close to their respective parents. They have not seen each other since the trial. Their unwanted baby was buried beneath a headstone which bears the dubious message Always In Our Hearts.
12 THE AWAKENING
MYRA HINDLEY & IAN BRADY
Myra Hindley was an ill-educated teenager until Ian Brady awakened her interest in books and philosophy. Unfortunately his philosophy was one of moral relativism and he eventually convinced her that ‘laws and externally enforced moral and ethical norms are put into their proper secondary perspective in affairs of emotion when it makes one feel good to break the law.’ Put simply, this translated into the couple luring three children and two teenagers to their deaths.
Myra Hindley
Myra was born on 23rd July 1942 to Hettie and Bob Hindley in Crumpsall, Manchester. Her father – a hard-drinking aircraft fitter – didn’t like her and her mother was too busy working as a machinist to spend much time with her, so by age four she was sent to live with her gran. That same year the Hindleys had a second daughter, Maureen, whom Myra adored.
Unfortunately the Hindley household remained deeply divided. Bob frequently hit his wife, and Myra saw some of that violence. She also received it. And she saw that the relationship between her mother and grandmother was very poor.
With no good role model in her life, she grew up to be an awkward child, old beyond her years yet emotionally vulnerable. But this made her an excellent babysitter as she was desperate to be liked. She’d spend hours caring for the neighbourhood infants and toddlers, basking in their approval and in the appreciation of their parents.
Myra had been brought up to believe that education didn’t matter for girls, so left school at fifteen and drifted from one unskilled job to the next, her life increasingly dreary. But when she was eighteen she started her fourth office job and immediately noticed Ian Brady, the handsome clerk. He ignored her completely – just as her father had done when he wasn’t hitting her – but soon she was writing in her diary that she was in love.
Ian Stewart Brady
Ian was born on 2nd January 1938 to Margaret Stewart, an unmarried waitress. (Years later she married and became Peggy Brady.) She lived in the Gorbals, a slum area in Glasgow
, Scotland, and had to work nights to support herself and newborn baby Ian, so he was frequently left alone. Babies who aren’t cared for in their first few months of life often become psychopaths as the neural pathways which ensure that they bond with other people remain unstimulated. Brady would later show classic psychopathic traits.
At three months he was unofficially fostered out to a couple who already had four children. But as he matured he felt different to them and remained withdrawn. Peggy visited him every weekend, but he was merely told that she was a family friend. At eleven, desperate for stimulus, he broke into a house but didn’t steal anything. The following year Peggy moved to Manchester and he felt increasingly adrift.
He began to play truant from school and wandered the streets for hours on his own. He committed further burglaries and ended up, at age thirteen, before the juvenile court. At fourteen he faced the juvenile court again and was bound over for nine months, but he continued to steal.
At sixteen he was put on probation and sent to live with Peggy in Manchester. She’d now married a meat porter named Patrick Brady and Ian was given his surname. It was an awkward reunion as he’d hardly seen his mother for the past four years and his stepfather was soon threatening him with violence if he didn’t shape up. The man found him a labouring job (which was beneath him as he had a high IQ) where the Mancunians laughed at his Scottish accent. Increasingly alienated, he retreated into his room.
Couples Who Kill Page 19
