Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Alvin had left Jo Ann after he met the younger Judith, so she had another reason to make him look bad in court. (Alvin Neelley was tried separately from Judith for the murder of Janice Chatman. He was found guilty and given two life sentences.) Jo Ann would claim in court that he’d beaten her over eight hundred times, often using heavy implements. The prosecution queried this as she had never had a broken bone. Whatever the reality of the relationship, it was clear that she detested her former spouse. The prosecution suggested that Jo Ann’s story was a lie or at least hugely exaggerated, the words of a woman scorned.

  Prior to her trial, Judith had never alleged that Alvin had abused her - but now she followed Jo Ann to the stand and gave a defence that amounted to Battered Wife Syndrome, even though she didn’t fit the true definition of a battered wife.

  The syndrome was coined to describe women who kill their abusive partners - not women whose abusive partners allegedly tell them to kill someone else who they’ve abducted for sexual kicks. Moreover, studies of battered women who have killed their violent men show that the women had tried to escape on numerous occasions but been tracked down and re-abused. And they’d been beaten more severely than the battered wives who didn’t go on to kill. In other words, these women had tried hard to escape their particularly violent abusers and had only killed them as a last resort.

  Judith Neelley didn’t fit this pattern at all. She had been free at times when Alvin was locked up. She could have gone anywhere she wanted - indeed, in one letter she had told him so, stating that she only waited for him to leave jail because she wanted to be with him. She wasn’t dependent on him for her livelihood - she had taken a cashier’s course whilst in the youth correctional centre so could have taken legitimate shop work anywhere in the states.

  Judith produced just one photograph where she was bruised and claimed that Alvin had hit her, bit her, kicked her and raped her, but a mental health expert said that she could have gotten these injuries in many ways. He said that she retained her free will, that she hadn’t been brainwashed by Alvin. Other photographs showed the couple smiling happily as they posed with various guns. Judith had been au fait with guns for years and owned several weapons of her own. She now said that Alvin had made her smile for each of the photographs but neither the prosecution or the jury were convinced.

  Judith explained Lisa’s abduction by saying that Alvin had decided he wanted a virgin. She was allegedly afraid not to comply with this request, so duly got thirteen-year-old Lisa for him. She would at first give the impression that Lisa was happy to stay with the Neelleys - but later slipped up and mentioned handcuffing her to the car. She said that Alvin had made her help him beat Lisa at the motel whilst their babies watched.

  She gave a similar story when it came to Janice Chatman’s sexual assault and death, saying that Alvin had made her do it. But John Hancock was able to assert that Judith had shot him. At the time Alvin was out of sight so if Alvin was truly the instigator she could just have pretended to fire at John and let him go. Under questioning, John admitted that she’d fired the shot when Alvin told her to hurry up - and that it was Alvin who had determined where the two cars would meet up. But Judith Neelley had done the actual shooting - she’d taken a malicious pleasure in taunting him in the previous moments and hadn’t appeared at all intimidated by her spouse.

  Her defense suggested that if one of the women she’d approached had given her ‘Christian witness’ (talked to her about religion) then Judith - already an armed robber, persistent thief and mugger - wouldn’t have gone on to kill. In reality, more serial killers come from deeply religious areas of the world than from more secular ones. And Alvin Neelley’s possessions included tracts from a TV evangelist - but that hadn’t stopped Alvin having sex with underage girls.

  The jury now recommended that Judith be sent to prison for life without possibility of parole - but in Alabama the final decision is the judge’s and he sentenced her to die in the electric chair. It was the only time she cried throughout the trial, and the tears were clearly for herself.

  The death penalty

  At eighteen, Judith Neelley was the youngest woman ever to be sentenced to death in the states. But then she wasn’t like most young woman - she’d tortured a thirteen-year-old child and ultimately murdered her. And she’d sexually assaulted and killed a twenty-three-year old woman of limited mental ability and shot her companion, leaving him for dead.

  She’d also fired bullets into one house, probably knowing it contained children as well as an adult careworker. She’d firebombed the home of another careworker, again having no control over who was potentially maimed or killed. She’d mugged a student and had scammed money from many of the convenience stores that gave her work. She’d often stolen cheques from people’s mailboxes and she’d tried to entice other teenagers and women into her car.

  By the time she was eighteen she’d had three children, all born whilst she was incarcerated. She’d driven the first two - the twins - around the country, never giving them a stable home.

  Death row

  Judith was sent to a prison for women in Alabama to await execution, and spent much of her time there reading and lodging various appeals. She had a cell to herself, an improvement on the car-based living she was used to. She took her exercise periods and her meals alone, presumably because child killers are often assaulted by other prisoners. She might also have been seen as a risk to other young women given her aggressive tendencies.

  She continued to be visited by her defense attorney Bob French, by now an expert on Battered Wife Syndrome. Local feeling against her was high, and people understandably turned against Bob too and stopped being his clients. Eventually he had to file for bankruptcy.

  Meanwhile Judith’s appeals - including one which alleged that Bob French had failed to represent her properly and that he’d already decided to write a book on the subject at the time of her trial - were turned down. Her final appeal was heard in 1998, after which she was left with no further legal redress.

  A convenient conversion

  Suddenly Judith decided she’d seen the light and became a Christian Fundamentalist. Alabama’s governor was also a Christian Fundamentalist. He only had a few days left in office, so had nothing to lose in voting terms when he commuted her sentence to life imprisonment. He added the term ‘without possibility of parole’ - and the local newspapers then reported that she would spend the rest of her life behind bars. In reality, a governor cannot prevent the parole-consideration process, so she will eventually be eligible for parole.

  Other victims

  Occasionally crime encyclopaedias state that Judith Neelley tortured fifteen young female victims to death in Alabama, Georgia and Tennessee, but fail to give names beyond those known; Lisa Ann Millican, Janice Chatman and the wounded John Hancock. One sociology book started that Neelley claimed six victims. Again, no concrete details were given.

  It’s certainly true that serial killers are often tried for far fewer killings than they are believed to have actually committed, but I contacted various true crime writers in the states and they were unable to find names or any other details of these deaths.

  This author read what is considered the definitive book on the subject, Early Graves by Thomas H. Cook, which only names the victims profiled here.

  Why she did it

  Although the crimes were of a sexual nature, it’s apparent that Judith Neelley’s motivation was power. She clearly took pleasure in hearing her victim’s plead for their lives and in watching them writhe on the ground. Alvin, police and other witnesses would say that ‘Judy liked to be in charge.’

  It’s also possible that she was trying to kill an earlier version of herself. She’d written to Alvin when she was in the youth correctional facility, describing his other women as ‘a little bunch of nothings.’ She doubtless saw the abused, impoverished Lisa and the low IQ Janice as being akin to the trailer trash background she so despised.

  Judith had dreamt of a nice
home and a career, a life a million miles away from the crowded trailer with its endless fornication and drinking. Yet here she was, driving from state to state, staying in cheap motels and conning stores out of cash. The girl with the high IQ had fallen low - but through a mixture of cruel words and even crueller actions she could make her victims seem even lower than herself. To the women who passed her in the shopping malls, Judith Neelley was an unwashed drifter with an equally shiftless husband - but to Lisa, Janice and John she became omnipotent, holding the key to their immediate wellbeing and having power over whether they lived or died.

  It’s a well known fact that the person who has the most menial day job is often the person who is a despot and a sadist to his family - and indigent Judith Neelley was sadistic enough to inject drain cleaner into a thirteen-year-old child and watch the child’s flesh bubble and liquefy.

  Update

  The fact that Lisa was tortured and killed in the Grand Canyon of the South upset the local people and made the canyon seem more sinister than it had before. In the early 1990’s various volunteer groups banded together and worked hard to clear it of trash and restore it to its natural beauty. Locals also started an energised campaign called Save Our Land.

  Judith’s sister and three brothers launched a ‘save Judith’ statement in January 1999, claiming that she too was a victim of Alvin’s alleged violence. ‘Domestic violence goes more deeper than just a beating,’ (sic) one of her relatives said. They added that her family loved her very much.

  And of Judith’s own much-travelled offspring, all born in custody? Her twins have been adopted by Alvin’s mother, whilst her third son - whose middle name, at her request, is Alvin - is being cared for elsewhere in the states. She has been appealing to have the children returned to her. Her own mother is now dead.

  Coming to a shopping mall near you?

  Judith Neelley will be eligible for parole in Alabama in 2014, assuming she doesn’t manage to file a successful appeal before that. She will be fifty years old. However, she may remain behind bars because she was also sentenced to life in Georgia for kidnapping when she abducted Janice Chatman there.

  8 Giving it up for your love

  The dependent world of Catherine Margaret Birnie

  Catherine was born in Australia on 31st May 1951. She was only ten months old when her mother died, at which stage she went to live with her father in South Africa. This arrangement lasted for two years, after which she was sent back to Perth, Australia to live with her controlling grandparents who wouldn’t allow other children into the house.

  Given few treats and little fun, Catherine had such a loveless and lonely childhood that people who knew her would report that she rarely smiled. She also endured the trauma of watching her grandmother die in front of her during an epileptic fit. She would remain in poverty throughout her life.

  By the time she was eighteen, Catherine was burgling factories and shops with her friend and next door neighbour David, who was the same age as her. Both were convicted, though Catherine received probation for the early breaking and entering charges. The third time she was imprisoned for six months and the previously-jailed David Birnie got two and a half years.

  The pair of them were at one stage caught with wigs, coshes, gelignite and guns, everything needed to cause serious damage to property. Their criminal kit was chillingly similar to that owned by female serial killer Judith Neelley, profiled previously.

  Catherine gave birth in prison and the baby was taken from her until her release. The child wasn’t David’s and indeed it isn’t known who the father was. It’s likely that, like most unloved young women, Catherine was desperate to be held and cared for and tried to achieve this by being promiscuous. When she and David drifted apart he married someone else.

  The thin, pale Catherine now got herself a job as a couple’s domestic help in Freemantle, Western Australia - but found herself more interested in their adult son, Donald. When she was twenty-one she married him and soon had a child by him. She was outside with the boy when he was seven months old and saw him crushed by a car. He died immediately.

  Catherine went on to have another five children by her husband, but he refused to get a job and she had to work hard to support him plus their offspring. She also helped to support two of her adult relatives.

  Catherine hadn’t been parented well so she had few parenting skills of her own. She also hated housework and had very little energy left for it by the time she finished work for the day. It was an impoverished and unrewarding life - but the only type of life that she had ever known.

  This exhausting marriage lasted for sixteen years, after which she again met up with David Birnie. His own childhood had partly been spent in care as both his parents were out of control alcoholics. He’d been brutalised all his young life. Catherine resumed her love affair with David and he wooed her with chocolates and flowers and made her feel that she mattered to someone. Within two years she had left her husband and moved in with him.

  David was no knight in shining armour - but then embryonic female serial killers rarely manage to attract knights in shining armour. He already had a failed marriage and numerous failed relationships and career starts and had been fired from a previous job because of sexual assault. He sometimes saw sex as a weapon and would inject numbing chemicals into the head of his penis so that he could thrust into a female for hours. He was so highly sexed that if a woman wasn’t available he would make do with a male.

  Catherine now convinced herself that she loved him more than anything else and that she would do anything for him. This ‘perfect’ love gave meaning to her otherwise unfocused life, a life without her children and without educational or career prospects. She changed her surname to Birnie by deed poll so that he became her common law husband, but they were never officially wed. The couple set up home in Willagee in a modest old house that they rented from the local authorities. As with her previous household, Catherine let the place get very untidy and the garden hopelessly overgrown.

  In fairness, she had other things to think about. David wanted sex all the time - and when he wasn’t having it he was watching videos that depicted it. He was insatiable with a preference for very young women, and he had enjoyed many before settling down with the thin, clingy Catherine.

  She was a low dominance female and he was a high dominance male, so before long she wasn’t enough for him. He began to dream of kidnapping a girl who could become his sexual slave.

  The first victim

  David worked as a labourer in a car-wrecking yard. When a twenty-two-year old psychology student, Mary Neilson, called at the yard to buy tires, he suggested she come to his house where he could sell her them cheaper. When she did so, he dragged her inside and held her at gunpoint. It’s not known whether this was all his own idea or whether he and Catherine had discussed it first.

  Whatever the original sequence of events, thirty-five-year old Catherine now watched approvingly as her common law husband chained the younger girl to the bed, stripped her, gagged her and repeatedly raped her. Catherine had no time for her own gender - after all, her mother had deserted her by dying and her grandmother had abused her horribly. All that she cared about was that her beloved David was enjoying himself. She noted exactly which acts with the girl were giving him most pleasure and she would later emulate these acts, possibly as a way of retaining his love.

  Mary, the psychology student, did what she could to please the man who was raping her and the woman who was watching, doubtless drawing on all her knowledge of human behaviour to try to save herself. But the couple discussed the situation and decided she had to die.

  Late that night they drove her to the Glen Eagle National Park where David raped her again before he strangled her with a nylon cord. The killing too, was sadistic, as he used a tree branch to slowly tighten the noose. He and Catherine then took turns in stabbing the lifeless body so that the air would escape and it wouldn’t bloat excessively and burst out of its shallow grave. Cath
erine helped him dig such a grave and cover up the mutilated corpse. The date was 6th October 1986 and within four weeks they’d kill another three times.

  The second killing

  A fortnight later Catherine and her common law husband cruised around for hours in search of a second victim. Finally they espied Susannah Candy, a fifteen-year-old hitchhiker who was pleased to accept a lift. When she entered the car she was held at knifepoint and her wrists were tied. She, too, was driven to the couple’s squalid home. There, Catherine forced Susannah to write to her parents assuring them of her wellbeing. She would make the teenager write a second such letter later in her ordeal.

  In a chilling reconstruction of what had happened to Mary Neilson, the fifteen-year-old was now chained to the bed and repeatedly raped. This time Catherine actively participated in the teenager’s ordeal. She got into bed with David and sexually molested the girl. She also took photographs of David raping the teenager, something that he did again and again over several days.

  Finally, David Birnie forced a sleeping draught down Susannah’s throat and told Catherine to strangle her. Catherine did so, seemingly jealous of the length of time her common law husband had kept the pretty girl alive.

  She now helped him bury the fifteen-year-old’s body near to the previous girl they’d killed. So far no one had suspected them and they were on a high.