Killing With Company

by Carol Anne Davis
 

Gerald and Charlene Gallego

Britain's best known killer couple Ian Brady & Myra Hindley have recently been in the news, with Brady publishing his first book and writing his autobiography for posthumous publication. Myra Hindley has also written the first thirty thousand words of her life story though she has chosen not to offer it up for print. The world's second best known deadly duo are also British, namely Fred & Rose West.

But America has also seen its share of romantically-involved killer couples and it's not a modern phenomenon. All that has changed is the general public's awareness of such crimes.

Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez were lovers who killed in New York and Michigan in the 1940's. He would woo rich women he met through lonely hearts club adverts and pretend to them that Martha was his sister. The couple originally planned to milk these women of their savings then move on to another American town. But the obese Martha became jealous of one of the women and brutally battered her about the head with a hammer. Raymond obligingly finished off the injured victim by strangling her with a scarf.

They drugged another of his conquests, a widow, then he shot her twice in the head. Martha then murdered the widow's baby daughter by drowning her in the sink.

They also battered a widow in her mid sixties to death. Raymond had bigamously married the elderly woman but she became suspicious that Martha wasn't really his sister and the ensuing argument ended in deadly violence. The old woman was no match for the strong sailor and the huge angry nurse...

Martha Beck had endured the classic abused childhood of the serial killer. She had been regularly whipped and verbally taunted by her mother - and this mocking increased when nine year old Martha developed a severe hormonal problem which made her very fat. At thirteen she was repeatedly raped by her brother but her mother's response was to tell her that it was her own fault and that she was full of sin.

Martha had a high IQ and eventually gained top nursing qualifications - but her 250 pound weight kept her from being accepted by the hospital boards so she ended up working with corpses in the mortuary.

Her co-killer, Raymond Fernandez, had had an equally unhappy life. His Hawaii-based father criticised everything that he did and took so little interest in his education that he didn't even register him with a junior school. The man beat the little boy frequently and forced him to do manual work that he simply wasn't strong enough to endure.

Fernandez eventually escaped to a life at sea but was struck on the head by a hatch door which clearly caused lasting brain damage. His hair fell out and he began to suffer from migraines. For the first time in his life the handsome young man looked ugly - but ironically the brain injury made his sex drive increase to the point where he needed constant relief. So he bought a wig, courted numerous desperate women and robbed them of their savings. He was a persistent criminal - but it was only after he met the wildly jealous Martha Beck that he began to kill.

Similarly, Martha had merely been a sexually frustrated single mother who spent most of her time reading romantic novels before she met Raymond Fernandez. She'd had one child through a brief affair and another as a result of a marriage which quickly ended. It's unknown how fond she was of her children - but when Raymond Fernandez asked her to, she gave them both away to her own cruel mother and never saw them again.

Separately, they were very flawed people - but together they were lethal as few women were afraid of a couple they believed were brother and sister. As such, they let their guard down and died as a result.

But the couple continued to see their relationship as a positive thing. In court, Martha screamed out that she loved Raymond Fernandez, and later, when they were languishing on Death Row, he wrote a letter saying that he loved her too. Unfortunately their love had resulted in at least four deaths and they were found guilty and went to the electric chair in Sing Sing in March 1951.

Australia is another country with a particularly notorious killer couple, Catherine and David Birnie. They too endured loveless and abusive childhoods but they made an active choice to pass that misery on. In the space of five weeks - October and November 1986 - they abducted five girls and held them in chains at their Freemantle home. David raped them all numerous times whilst Catherine sexually assaulted them. When they tired of each victim they took her to the forest, battered or strangled her to death and buried her in a shallow grave. Thankfully the fifth victim escaped through a window and ran, near naked and hysterical, to a supermarket where she raised the alarm. The couple were given life sentences which in Australia means that they will eventually be given parole.

The author of this article, in her book Women Who Kill: Profiles Of Female Serial Killers profiles several women who killed in conjunction with a man, namely Catherine and David Birnie, Myra Hindley & Ian Brady, Rose & Fred West, Charlene & Gerald Gallego, Judith & Alvin Neelley, Karla Homolka and Paul Barnardo, Carol Bundy and Doug Clark.

Members of the public aren't surprised by the male part of these killing teams - but they tend to make excuses for the woman, seeing her as a victim of her partner. In truth, both the male and female have usually come from equally abusive backgrounds and are similarly full of fear and hate.

This is not to suggest that everyone who has been abused becomes an abuser. Many abused children grow up to become compassionate adults who fight against the violence in our society. But others choose to pass on the violence that their parents meted out to them.

So what else do we know about the female half of these killer couples? Their abusive childhoods will have left them with very low self esteem and this often manifests in promiscuous behaviour. Carol Bundy would pay men to have sex with her and Judith Neelley married one of her prostitute mother's clients. Myra Hindley posed naked for Ian Brady's camera with whip marks across her buttocks, despite the fact that she was too shy to even let her sister see her in the bath. As a teenager Rose West was widely believed to have had sex with the lorry drivers who visited a relative's cafe and Charlene Gallego boasted of having a black lover when she was still at school.

Most of these women are aggressively bisexual. Rose West often went to bed with girls she'd lured from a nearby children's home - and she sexually assaulted her stepdaughter Anne Marie with a sexual aid. Charlene Gallego bit the nipples of the teenage slaves that she and husband Gerald abducted. And Judith Neelley sexually assaulted a thirteen year old girl then drove her to a remote location before repeatedly injecting her with liquid drain cleaner. She eventually shot the teenager dead.

Similarly, Karla Homolka helped her husband Paul sexually assault three teenagers, one of whom was her own sister, Tammy. The couple videoed most of the assaults and Karla was seen to instruct the terrified girls on how to give her pleasure. She was later heard on video saying that she wanted to abduct lots more girls.

Because their unhappy childhoods have left them with little emotional resource, these co-killers often have a history which includes suicide attempts. Karla Homolka came to school with razor marks on her wrists saying that she didn't want to live anymore. Charlene Gallego took an overdose when a married lover left her. Carol Bundy ingested poison as a teenager and tried to kill herself again with insulin as an adult when Doug Clark ended their relationship.

Ironically, when these couples are arrested its often the woman who holds up longest under interrogation. Catherine Birnie said nothing until David Birnie confessed. She was then happy to lead police to their victims bodies. And Fred West quickly told all under pressure whilst Rose refused to say anything significant.

Charlene Gallego continued to maintain her innocence stating that she didn't actually deliver the fatal blows - but she had lured the girls into her van knowing that Gerald was waiting there with a gun. She had tied them up, bit them and sexually assaulted them. She was contemptuous of the courts and continued to be sexually aggressive towards young women in her Nevada prison. Her husband Gerald died there recently of cancer - but Charlene was released in 1997.

Karla Homolka also said nothing about the three deaths she was involved in until she believed the damning sexually-explicit video tapes had been found. She then said that Paul had made her do it. In court she remained cool as she claimed Battered Wife Defence Syndrome but, though there had been violence at the very end of her marriage, she does not fit the profile of a battered wife. And when police took her back to the death house she asked if she could give the perfume bottles in the bathroom to her remaining sister and seemed immune to the fact that innocent young girls had been murdered within these walls.

Carol Bundy also remained calm and collected in court, afterwards writing to the judge and asking him out on a date. Needless to say, he didn't take the necrophilia-killer up on her romantic offer. In contrast, her co-killer Doug Clark was so incensed that at times he had to be restrained.

As solo operators, these men and women are violent towards themselves, their partners and their children. But when they team up together they have the physical power to abduct strangers and take their violent fantasies to greater heights.