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    Serial Killer Couples: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder
    Serial Killer Couples: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder
    Serial Killer Couples: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder
    Ebook230 pages3 hours

    Serial Killer Couples: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder

    By R. Barri Flowers

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    SERIAL KILLER COUPLES: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder chronicles the true crimes of sexually motivated serial killers who are intimates. In this latest true crime book from award winning, bestselling criminologist R. Barri Flowers, nine gripping tales examine killer couples from America, England, and Canada whose murderous reign of terror knows no end till they are brought to justice.

    Chapter 1: Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, Chapter 2: Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, Chapter 3: Fred West and Rosemary West, Chapter 4: Gerald Gallego and Charlene Gallego, Chapter 5: Douglas Clark and Carol Mary Bundy, Chapter 6: Alvin Neelley and Judith Ann Neelley, Chapter 7: Alton Coleman and Debra Denise Brown, Chapter 8: James Gregory Marlow and Cynthia Coffman, Chapter 9: Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

    Bonus material includes excerpts from the author's international bestselling true crime book, THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS; historical true crime short, MASS MURDER IN THE SKY: The Bombing of Flight 629, Jack the Ripper thriller novel, DARK STREETS OF WHITECHAPEL, and medical mystery and police procedural, MURDER IN MAUI.

    PRAISE FOR R. BARRI FLOWERS:

    "Selected as one of Suspense Magazine's Best of 2011 books." -- John Raab, CEO/Publisher, Suspense Magazine on THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS

    "A gripping account of the murders committed by husband-and-wife serial killers Gerald and Charlene Gallego." -- Gary C. King, author of BLOOD LUST on THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS

    "Flowers always relates an engrossing story in a hard-hitting and fast-paced manner." --Robert Scott, author of SHATTERED INNOCENCE

    "A compelling and powerful account of Jack the Ripper.... Flowers has captured the sights and sounds of New York City and London's East End in 1888." -- MysteryAbout.com on DARK STREETS OF WHITECHAPEL

    "R. Barri Flowers has done a tremendous job, and if you are looking for a true crime read this book should not be missed." -- RAWSISTAZ.com on THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS

    "Incredible story and a very, very good read." -- Dan Zupansky, host of True Murder on Blog Talk Radio on THE SEX SLAVE MURDERS

    "Would appeal to public library true-crime buffs." -- Booklist on MURDER IN THE UNITED STATES

    "A model of crime fiction.... Flowers may be a new voice in modern mystery writing, but he is already one of its best voices." -- Statesman Journal on JUSTICE SERVED

    A masterful thriller set in the dark underbelly of Maui, with lots of fine action, down and dirty characters, and the vivid details of police procedure one would expect from an author who is also a top criminologist." -- Douglas Preston, author of GIDEON'S SWORD

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherR. Barri Flowers
    Release dateJan 1, 2012
    ISBN9781465971951
    Serial Killer Couples: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder
    Author

    R. Barri Flowers

    R. Barri Flowers is the award winning, bestselling author of mystery and thriller novels, true crime books, relationship fiction, young adult mysteries, and children's books. Follow R. Barri Flowers on Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Goodreads, LibraryThing, and YouTube. Learn more about the author on Wikipedia and www.rbarriflowers.com.

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      Book preview

      Serial Killer Couples - R. Barri Flowers

      INTRODUCTION

      SERIAL KILLER COUPLES: Bonded by Sexual Depravity, Abduction, and Murder examines the true crimes of sexually motivated serial killers who are intimates as opposed to killer pairs who are neither romantically involved nor killing with a strong sexually deviant element.

      The nine male-female serial killer teams explored in the book include some of the worst in history, with abduction, rape, torture, murder, and warped love common themes among the merciless, sadistic perpetrators. Yet each serial killer couple has their own unique background, style, circumstances, and methods for committing their violent serial crimes.

      Two ruthless British serial killer couples, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley and Fred West and Rosemary West are chronicled as well as one infamous Canadian serial killer pair, Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.

      Six notorious American serial killer duos are examined. These include Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, Gerald Gallego and Charlene Gallego, Douglas Clark and Carol Mary Bundy, Alvin Neelley and Judith Ann Neelley, Alton Coleman and Debra Denise Brown, and Cynthia Coffman and James Gregory Marlow.

      The term serial killer was first introduced in the 1980s and refers to killers who kill a series of persons over a course of time.¹ A serial killer typically targets and systematically kills victims one by one until no longer able to, usually due to being captured by authorities.²

      By definition, serial killers must kill two or more persons in the process of their homicidal criminality. Within this context, according to law enforcement, such individuals tend to be nomadic, sexual sadists who operate with a strict pattern of victim selection and crime scene behavior.³ Some criminologists view the serial killer as one who acts out as a result of some individual pathology produced by traumatic childhood experiences.⁴

      When two people join forces to become serial killers, the outcome is often even more devastating than with solo serial killers, with two sets of eyes able to scout new victims, locations, burial grounds, and orchestrate their killings. Where it concerns male and female serial killer tandems, the male is typically the aggressor and the female the compliant partner in their crimes of violence, often acting as the lure for unsuspecting victims. However, the female serial killer partner is often just as heartless and brutal in the participation of serial killings, as is evidenced in the pages to follow.

      This is especially true when dealing with sexually driven serial killers, which tends to involve the killing of a person in the context of power, sexuality, and brutality.⁵ Sexual homicides often comprise murders where there is a sexual element, motivation, relationship, or perversion involved such as rape, molestation, prostitution, intimacy, battering, and sexual jealousy.⁶

      Most sexual serial killings fall under the category of lust murders and are characterized by intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies generally involving non-human objects, the suffering or humiliation of one's self or one's partner, or children or other non-consenting persons.⁷

      In Serial Killer Couples, the sexual motivation and impulse to kill go hand in hand, making the killers all the more terrifying and their true stories gripping as they perpetrate their reigns of terror before justice can be served.

      Chapter 1

      Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck

      Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck were unlikely serial killers in the 1940s. The physically mismatched lovers, dubbed by the press as the Lonely Hearts Killers, found their victims through advertising and notices in lonely hearts clubs sections of newspapers and other publications. Motivated largely by financial gain, the murderous couple took advantage of gullible victims through confidence schemes, with sex and jealousy key factors in their homicides. It is estimated that as many as twenty women may have been targeted and killed by the serial killer couple.¹

      Beck and Fernandez, who came from decidedly different backgrounds, perpetrated their deadly crimes during a time when such seemed hard to grasp by the public compared to later years when other serial killer intimates operated. The shocking killings, arrests, trial, and fate of the infamous killers captivated the nation and continues to fascinate criminologists and the public.

      * * *

      Raymond Martinez Fernandez was born on December 17, 1914 in Hawaii. He was three years old when his Spanish parents relocated to Bridgeport, Connecticut. In 1932, Fernandez moved to Spain where he worked on his uncle's farm. At age twenty, he married Encarnacion Robles, fathering four children.

      During World War II, Fernandez was a merchant marine before he joined the British Intelligence. According to the Defense Security Office, he was seen as entirely loyal to the Allied cause and carried out his duties, which were sometimes difficult and dangerous, extremely well.²

      After the war, while aboard a freighter en route to America to secure employment, Fernandez was seriously injured when a steel hatch fell and hit him on top of the head. He suffered a fractured skull, and sustained damage to his frontal lobe. This apparently caused him to undergo a change in personality that some believe had a profoundly negative effect on him socially and sexually.

      When he was released from the hospital, Fernandez spent a year in prison after stealing clothes. While incarcerated, he learned voodoo and black magic from a cellmate, later purporting that black magic made him irresistible to women.

      Once he had completed his sentence, Fernandez moved to New York, where he started responding to personal ads posted by lonely women. After charming and seducing these women, he stole money, jewelry, and other items before fleeing. Many victims were too ashamed to report the criminality.

      Fernandez reportedly romanced and wed one such victim named Jane Lucilla Thompson, with whom he traveled to Spain. Thompson died under suspicious circumstances in her hotel room and Fernandez used a forged will to claim her property.

      In 1947, Fernandez responded to a personal ad that Martha Beck had placed.

      * * *

      On May 6, 1920, Martha Beck was born Martha Jule Seabrook in Milton, Florida. A glandular condition developed in early childhood that caused premature puberty, obesity, and an increased sex drive. A victim of incest, Beck was often ridiculed by classmates and an overbearing mother, leading to loneliness and depression.

      Upon finishing school, Beck went on to attend nursing school in Pensacola, Florida, and in 1942, graduated first in her class. She gained employment at Pensacola Hospital, and would go on to be promoted to supervisor.

      Beck would eventually relocate to California, where she was employed as a nurse in an Army hospital. Promiscuity led to pregnancy, but the father refused to marry her and Beck moved back to Florida.

      She claimed that her child's father was in the service, and lied that they had gotten married and he had been killed during the Pacific War, which led to the tragic tale being featured locally in the newspaper.

      Not long after Beck gave birth to a daughter, she became pregnant again by Alfred Beck, a Pensacola bus driver. After a quick marriage, they divorced six months later and Beck's son was born.

      As an unemployed single mother of two young children, Beck sought escape in a world of fantasy through watching romance movies and reading romance magazines and fiction. In 1946, she found work at the Pensacola Hospital for Children. An ad she had placed in a lonely hearts column in 1947 was answered by Raymond Fernandez.

      * * *

      The two started corresponding and the nearly three hundred pound Martha Beck was happy to have a long distance involvement with the handsome and charming Fernandez. At some point, Fernandez allegedly requested a lock of Beck's hair, which was to be used as part of his voodoo practice. In December 1947, they met for the first time in Florida. Beck would then go to New York to visit Fernandez.

      It was his intention to break off their relationship, but after a distraught Beck was terminated from her job, she wound up at Fernandez's door accompanied by her two children on January 18, 1948. Fernandez, who had abandoned his own children, was willing to take Beck in, but not her son and daughter. So Martha Beck left her children at the Salvation Army a week later and began a full-time romance with Raymond Fernandez.

      He soon let her in on his secret of being a gigolo and thief in conning numerous lonely women he met through the personals out of their savings and possessions. Fernandez went so far as to admit to marrying some of his victims as part of the confidence scheme, as well as having a family he had turned his back on in Spain.

      Beck, whose own personal life had been a disaster, took it all in stride, smitten by Fernandez and his apparent willingness to accept her for who she was. She joined forces with him as a con artist, thief, and lover, often pretending to be his sister or sister-in-law to entice victims to let their guard down.

      * * *

      One such lonely hearts victim was Esther Henne, who lived in Pennsylvania. Fernandez and Beck went to meet her. Soon after, on February 28, 1948, Henne married the smooth talking Raymond Fernandez in Fairfax, Virginia at the County Clerk's Office, before the two, along with Martha Beck, went back to Esther Henne's West 139th Street apartment.

      The honeymoon ended quickly before things went downhill for the newlyweds. In an interview later, Henne said, For four days he was very polite to me. Then he gave me tongue lashings when I wouldn't sign over my insurance policies and my teacher's pension fund to him.³ A fearful Henne would ultimately get away from Fernandez and Beck and live to tell about it, albeit having lost hundreds of dollars and a vehicle to the con artists.

      A string of other victims would follow as Beck and Fernandez honed their improbable criminal alliance to support themselves.

      On August 14, 1948, Raymond Fernandez charmed Greene Forest, Arkansas resident Myrtle Young into marrying him in Cook County, Illinois. Though Martha Beck pretended to be Fernandez's sister, as his real and jealous lover, she had no desire to see him consummate the marriage, even if it meant she had to sleep in bed with the newlyweds.

      Acquiescing to Beck's constant insecurity and jealousy, Fernandez gave Young a drug overdose, causing her to lose consciousness. After he and Beck stole four thousand dollars from the victim, they put her on a bus bound for Little Rock, Arkansas. The police removed Young from the bus and took her to the hospital, where she died the next day.

      Fernandez and Beck had upped the ante from scamming lonely women looking for love to murder for profit scheming.

      * * *

      As Beck and Fernandez struggled to make ends meet in spite of their success in taking advantage of gullible, lonely women, they continued to seek out new victims, setting their sights on sixty-six-year-old widow Janet Fay of Albany, New York.

      Fay, who had a nice downtown apartment and an even nicer bank account, was a perfect target for Fernandez and Beck. Aware that Fay was a devout Catholic and regular church attendee, Fernandez, who frequently went by the alias Charles Martin in his lonely hearts correspondence, wrote to her accordingly, and peppered his letters with religious jargon.

      On December 31, 1948, Fernandez met Fay at her apartment, while Beck stayed behind at their hotel. Beck would be ever present in the coming days, posing as Fernandez's sister, as the threesome became acquainted. Fay felt comfortable enough with Fernandez and Beck to invite them to spend the night in her apartment.

      When the anticipated marriage proposal came, Fay eagerly agreed to become Fernandez's wife, oblivious to his and Beck's dark history and their plans for her. Arrangements were made for Fay move to Fernandez and Beck's Long Island rented apartment at 15 Adeline Street. But not before Fay emptied her bank accounts of more than $6,000.

      The threesome drove to Long Island on January 4, 1949, where Beck admitted to just burning up with jealousy and anger, when seeing Janet naked with her arm around Raymond.⁴

      In a murderous rage, Beck bludgeoned Janet Fay till she lost consciousness with a ball-peen hammer and then [either she or Fernandez] garroted [her] using a scarf as a tourniquet around [Fay's] neck.⁵

      After the serial killer con artists cleaned the room, they used sheets and towels to wrap Fay's body up before stuffing it in a closet for the night.

      The following day, Fernandez and Beck purchased a large trunk, put Fay's corpse inside, and took it to the house where Fernandez's sister lived. She allowed them to keep the trunk in her basement temporarily, presumably having no idea as to the contents.

      On January 15, 1949, Fernandez picked up the trunk. He buried it in a rented house's cellar, covering the area with cement.

      Over the next week, Beck and Fernandez cashed checks belonging to Janet Fay and hoped to throw off her family as to her whereabouts by typing letters that indicated she was having the time of [her] life and would soon be Mrs. Martin and will go to Florida.⁶

      Since Fay did not have a typewriter, her family instantly became suspicious and contacted the authorities.

      By that time, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck had already moved beyond their latest victim and were in search for another.

      * * *

      Toward the end of January 1949, the killers made their way to Byron Center Road in Wyoming Township, Michigan, a Grand Rapids suburb, where they met with forty-one-year-old widow Delphine Downing, who had a two-year old daughter, Rainelle. Fernandez had been corresponding as Charles Martin with Downing for a few weeks, claiming to be successful in the export trade business and that he was fond of children.

      Beck once again pretended to be Fernandez's sister as the three got together, with Downing allowing them to stay with her. And, as had been the pattern previously, when Downing and Fernandez began to have sexual relations, Beck became inflamed with jealousy. Meanwhile, Downing had begun to grow suspicious of Fernandez. When she caught him without his toupee and saw the conspicuous and unsettling scar atop his head from the accident, she accused him of fraud.

      Either Beck or Fernandez gave Downing some sleeping pills to calm her. While she slept, Beck became fed up with the nonstop crying of Downing's daughter, so she strangled her into unconsciousness.

      Fearing that the bruises on Rainelle's neck would further arouse Downing's suspicions, Fernandez grabbed a handgun belonging to Downing's late husband, wrapped a blanket around it, and shot her pointblank in the head, killing her instantly.

      The killers wrapped Downing in some sheets before carrying her body to the basement. There, they dug a deep hole and tossed the corpse inside. While Fernandez used cement to cover the victim's remains, Beck did her best to clean up any evidence of the homicide.

      Fernandez and Beck remained in Downing's house for a few more days. They stole whatever money and checks Downing had, along with any other possessions of value, while plotting their strategy for fleeing successfully.

      One obstacle was Rainelle, Downing's daughter, who was still alive and continued to wail incessantly and was in no mood to eat. After some discussion, it became clear what needed

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