I am against the death penalty. I would have rather seen Ross sit in jail. That was more mental torture for him. I believe Connecticut assisted him with his plan of suicide. It’s a shame! I truly pray that he really did become a Christian. I wrote a letter to him but I don’t know if he got it. Well, God is his final judge. I have no feelings of ‘justice has been served’, or ‘he got what he deserved’. State-assisted suicide is just wrong!
Barbara Emery-Willard, Paula Perrera’s best friend.
* * *
Michael Ross was the boy-next-door who turned into a monster, and his own words to the author leave an indelible mark:
You know, they [the medical examiners] found strangulation marks around the neck of Wendy Baribeault. They called them ‘multiple strangulation marks’, ’cos they were kinda all around her throat. An’ they got confused. I knew that she was struggling and my hands kept cramping up. I kinda laughed at them for that. I thought that was funny.
Yet Michael’s chilling sense of priorities was masked by the impression he gave to outsiders. Karen B. Clark, an experienced New York journalist, who visited him in Somers, said, ‘Michael Ross looks so normal he could be the guy next door. If I was walking down a dark alley at night, heard footsteps behind me, and turned around, well, I would have been relieved to see Michael Ross. That’s how normal the guy looks.’
Michael Ross is buried at the Benedictine Grange Cemetery, Redding, Fairfield County, Connecticut.
* * *
This chapter is based on video and audiotape Death Row interviews between the author and Michael Bruce Ross on 26 September, 1994, within the Osborn Correctional Institute, Connecticut, and several years’ correspondence.
SUMMARY
Each and every one of the killers featured throughout this book has been, or still is, bombarded with letters and photographs (often sexual in nature) from men and women wishing to strike up relationships, and even marry them and have their children. For the most part, serial killers – or any type of incarcerated killer – are only after funding. One only has to browse the internet pen-pal sites to confirm that these monsters are only after one thing: your money.
This book highlights just two examples: Mr Robinson and Mr Jablonski, while LeRoy Nash, Melanie McGuire, and Keith Hunter Jesperson don’t ask for a penny. For that matter, neither did Michael Ross, when he was alive.
I recall Kenneth Bianchi, with whom I corresponded with for many years, culminating in me interviewing him for a TV documentary years back. He married several times in prison, and he had the gall to send me his wedding photos, after he had fleeced these women hook, line and sinker. This animal became an ‘ordained priest’, for a short while, and also a member of the American Bar Association.
I recall another moron, called Ronald DeFeo Jr (‘the Amityville Horror’). This old punk ended up marrying a woman who runs a web site for him, while he continues to milk her for money for small prison luxuries. As God is my witness, how can any woman fall in love and marry a man who has blasted to death his family of six, including four of his younger, terrified siblings, in their beds? It defies belief.
It goes on and on, specifically from somewhat deranged women who write to Keith Jesperson. Flashing their photogenic attributes, they pledge their love to a serial killer, who, if they, themselves, had ‘pissed him off’, would have beat them to death in a second.
My book Murder.com, also published by John Blake Publishing, highlights the very real dangers of trawling for love and sex over the internet, specifically the final chapter, ‘Men and Women Behind Bars: Internet Lovebirds’.
* * *
For every convicted control freak of a serial killer, man or woman, there must be at least fifty misguided souls who want a serious relationship with them. In some cases this twisted form of morality runs so deep that a woman will kill another person, by proxy, to please her loved one.
This was the case with Veronica ‘Verlyn’ Wallace Compton; an incredibly beautiful creature with looks and a body most men and women would die for, and she almost did die, thanks to sexual-sado serial killer, Kenneth Alessio Bianchi. In attempt to prove that he was not one of the notorious ‘Hillside Strangers’, Ken smuggled his semen out of prison secreted into the finger of a rubber kitchen glove which he hid in the spine of a book, which his dominatrix pen friend, and lover, took out of jail after a visit.
The plan was that she would travel to Bellingham, Washington State (where Bianchi had murdered two co-eds – Karen Mandic and Diane Wilder – and lure a woman called Kim Breed to a motel room. Here, Verlyn would kill Kim, and drip Ken’s semen into the dead woman’s vagina, to make it appear that the true killer was still at large, thus it could not have been Mr Bianchi.
Kim Breed, however, was a martial arts expert, and the result being that Verlyn was soon arrested to spend 15 years in prison. I actually met and interviewed Verlyn at the Washington Corrections Center for Women (WCCW). By this time, she had been writing to one of the subjects in this book. She and Douglas Clark talked about love, and opening up a mortuary and having sex with the dead, if he were to be released.
Ronald DeFeo, of Amityville infamy, Richard Ramirez, ‘The Night Stalker’, Kenneth Bianchi, and Arthur Shawcross, are among hundreds of serial killers who have married while in prison. Thousands more killers, including Michael Ross, Aileen Wuornos, in fact every serial killer alive or dead, is, or has been inundated by people seeking love with a monster. Thousands more write as pen friends to the ‘Legion of the Damned’, and among them are the apple-pie-making, sweater-knitters and Bible-readers who believe that God has ordered them to save these killers’ souls.
It makes one want to weep!
And, I can tell you that Keith Hunter Jesperson has more than his fair share of blue-chip fruit cakes writing and pledging their love to him, too. Around 80 plus. Take it from me, 50 per cent of these women are drop-dead gorgeous. A small percentage are gay, while the remainder, as far as I can determine, are of undeterminable gender. Some of these social strays can read and write; some struggle with simple words like, ‘common sense’. Some have a brain, others half a brain; while others obviously have a ‘To Let’ sign inside their skulls. A minority can actually think, and one of them is ‘Laci’ (name changed to protect her identity).
Astute, street-wise, drop-dead gorgeous, with a figure to die for, erotic and into ‘stuff’ that will make the older reader’s hair fall out, part-time entertainer of gentlemen with the discreet use of a pole, Laci has also been writing to serial killers since she was 18. At the time of writing she is 29. Indeed, she has some 84 of the most heinous killers in her little ‘black book’, and the correspondence from them amounts to over a thousand pages.
Laci fell in love with Keith Hunter Jesperson, then, somewhat predictably, six years later, she fell out of love. Below is her completely unedited story, and if Keith had been executed he would turn in his grave. Her story is disturbing yet insightful, all providing food-for-thought for anyone seeking love with a monster behind bars:
It was 1995. I was 18, and in high school, when I first heard of Keith Hunter Jesperson, and that he’d been arrested for multiple murders. Initially I was attracted to the fact that he had killed so many people for no good reason. I also thought he was good looking and that was a huge plus for me. I remember watching him on TV and reading about him in my many true crime books and thinking, ‘I would love to know him’. At the time, I had no way of knowing that in a few years I would know him as a person and not just a vicious killer. I would be his friend and eventually be his lover.
My attraction to killers and extreme violence goes as far back as I can remember. When I was a little girl, I loved seeing killers on TV, watching horror movies and even got enjoyment from looking at car wrecks. I have been this way for so long that it is a natural, normal thing to me. I always knew that I had a love for deviant things, but it did not come full circle until I reached high school. When I was 14 years old, I bought my first crime book. In high school I
was known as ‘the girl that knows everything about serial killers’. It was a title that I did not mind having. Most people thought it was just a phase, but I knew it was no phase. It is part of who I am. It started with my crime books, and then I started to watch ‘shockumentaries’ - actual death caught on tape. Films like Faces of Death, Traces of Death, World of Death, became my favorite type of films.
Fantasizing about serial killers and mass murderers became part of my daily life. I wrote about them in my diary. I was obsessed with them to say the least. These feelings would not come and go, they were constant. I feel that I have a lot in common with them. I can understand why they kill people. I am a lot like them in some ways. I consider myself to be a mean, cold-hearted bitch. I have no feelings or sympathy for other people. I have more consideration for a dead animal on the side of the road than I do to suffering people. I do have a lot of friends but the majority of them mean nothing to me. I have a few that I do love and care about. These people are my lifelong friends. I don’t allow myself to get close to people. In the end, everyone will screw you over. I have been married twice and I walked away from both of them without a second thought. The marriages were meaningless to me. They were something to do at the time. I have no compassion for people at all. So, in this way, I have a lot in common with the serial killer. The only difference between them and me is that I have not killed anyone – yet!
I put myself into dangerous situations hoping to meet a serial killer. When I was a teenager, I would hang out with a bad crowd. I ran away from home often. I would hitchhike a lot hoping to run into one. I wanted to die and I thought the best way to do that is to find me a serial killer. I tried. In the beginning, my dream was to meet a serial killer that would kill me. A serial killer is a professional at killing and he would get the job done. When this did not happen as I hoped it would, I began to have a longing for wanting to know them as human beings. I knew there was another side to them than being a monster. I knew this is who I was and there was no way to ever escape from it. I do have two distinct aspects of my personality. One side of me is a country girl that loves animals and cartoons. The other side of me loves everything that is dark and sadistic. This is where I feel at home.
When I was 18 years old, I wrote to my first serial killer. He wrote me back. And that is how it all got started. Soon, I was corresponding with all the people that I had read and studied about for so long. I was writing to killers all over the USA and in other countries. I was stunned at the number of them that did write back to me. I was only 18 years old and they still wrote to me, and I was just a lonely kid. Sure, I had a job, a boyfriend and friends but I preferred to be locked in my room writing to my killers. It became a natural part of my life and I stay in touch with them till this day. Sharing with them things that I had never shared with anyone before. I felt comfortable and safe with my killers. They understood me in a way that no one ever had. They accepted me the way I was, and they liked who I was. These killers actually understood everything that I had went through in my life. It felt good to know someone that is just like me in a lot of ways.
As I got older, I realized that I was into even more extreme things than serial killers. I love things that most people would never think of. I enjoy a variety of sexual fetishes. I am a hybristophiliac, which means that I am sexually aroused by outrageous or extreme violence. I literally get off on it. If I see a murdered victim, or a rotting corpse I will get aroused. Even hearing about violence will turn me on. I want to see the gruesome crime photos, and hear all the grisly details of murder because it will turn me on. I am also into sexual things like vincilaginia, BDSM, bondage, chains, rope, gags, role play, rape, porn, group sex, bisexuality, rough sex, ECT. The most extreme thing I am into sexually is necrophilia. I have never tried this, but I did go to Mortuary College and have worked at funeral homes just to be close to dead bodies. I do have a respect for the dead and that is the only reason why I did not perform any indecencies on them. I have other fetishes that many would not consider to be sexual but I do because I get turned on by it. Things like cannibalism, vampirism, bloodletting, self-mutilation, torture, gore, graveyards, decomposition of a corpse, senseless murder, violence; it all drives me into a sexual frenzy.
While I was discovering all of this about myself, I was also discovering things about my serial killers. Of course, I loved all their details of rape, murder, necrophilia and cannibalism. I would often masturbate to their words. But I was also learning about who they are as people. They soon started to call me on the phone. I have even visited a few of them in prison. Many of them asked me to be their girlfriend and to marry them. I have only been with a few of them romantically. I treat them as I would any other boyfriend. They receive no special treatment from me just because they have killed people. They know that I get off on what they did and that is all they get. Honestly, being with a killer is no different than having any other guy doing a life sentence. There are a few of them that I love as people and I will always love them. I wrote to one infamous killer when I was 23 years old. He is a necrophile and killed many. I did not even think he would respond back to me but he did. He is not one of my very best friends in the world. I love him and I adore him. He is the real Hannibal Lecter. He is a brilliant man, but yet he killed many people to satisfy his needs. He is a lot like me; he has two sides to him. We have never been together as a couple. We love each other and that is all we need. I know that he is the one for me, but we can never be together and I accept that because I do truly love him as a person.
In January of 2002 I wrote my first letter to Keith Jesperson. I wrote to him because I remember seeing him back when I was 16 years old. I wanted to know him as a person. I read a book on him titled, ‘I’ - The Creation of a Serial Killer, by Jack Olsen. I felt sorry for Keith. I thought he had a bad childhood, like me and that women took advantage of him. I did not know if he would write me back, but he did. A week later I received a great, long letter.
That is how it started with me and Keith. We wrote on a regular basis for six years and I considered him to be a good friend. Out of all my killers, he really was one of my favorites. Eventually he asked for my phone number and he would call me on the phone. He called a lot. So much that I had to start hanging up on him when he called. I was not trying to be rude but he was calling multiple times a day trying to reach me.
The first couple of years we basically talked about everyday things. I told him about the jobs I had, my fiancé at the time, the travelling I did. He told me about his job at the prison, his family, his art work, and his cell mates. He did tell me several times that he was in the ‘hole’ for fighting. Most of the time it was because some inmate wanted to be known as the guy that hit ‘the Happy Face Killer’, some nobody trying to make a name for himself had hit him. In one letter of June 2005 he said to me, ‘I’m in the hole, a guy attacked me out in the yard and I had to protect myself. Ruled a mutual fight. So, I get 60 days.’ It seems like Keith was in the hole often. He did not talk about his case much with me, and I did not ask him anything. He would tell me little things in passing. When I did ask him something he would always tell me what I asked of him and he never held back.
When we were engaged, I began to ask him about the murders. I figured if I am going to marry the guy then I want to know why he did it. I asked him, ‘Did you really do what you’re accused of’, and he wrote back to me and said, ‘Yes! I killed them all.’ From the way he wrote it, I got the image of him dancing with glee: ‘Yes I did it, I killed them all.’ I also asked him why he killed them. He told me it is because these women did something to make him angry. He also blamed the killings on stress and lack of sleep. I did like the fact that Keith did not sugar coat things, he said it like it was. He did talk a lot about the media and all the book deals and interviews that he had lined up. I swear if every book that Keith talked about got published there would be an entire shelf of Keith Jesperson at the book store. Keith truly is a media hound. He will talk to anyone that will listen
.
I also recall that he tried to reach out to other serial killers with not much luck. He wants to be known as a serial killer. At this point, that is all he has going for him. That made me nervous about him. I am a very private person. I don’t want my life out there for everyone to know. I prefer to keep things to myself, and live my quiet country life. I asked Keith more than once NOT to give my information to the media and he promised me that he would not. Obviously he lied because here I am writing about him. I see now that friendship and loyalty mean nothing to him. He only cares for himself and no one else. He wants the world to see him as a violent serial killer no matter what the cost is.
In the six years that I knew him, Keith and I got along great. Only one time did he express anger toward me. He had sent me some of his art work for my birthday as a gift. I was extremely busy travelling at the time with my fiancé and working so I didn’t write him back right away. Perhaps that was wrong of me. I received a letter from him in June 2005 telling me: ‘It’s been a while. I have called and the phone goes dead when I hear your voice. What gives? So you didn’t like the art I sent? Or were you just waiting for it to come so you didn’t have to pretend any more. Did I do something wrong? Say something wrong? Suggest something wrong?’
I wrote him right away to explain that I had just been busy. When he wrote back he said it was ok and he told me that he is moody at times. No kidding. That is the only problem that we ever had.
After a couple years he started to say that he loved me and asking me to be his girlfriend. He would draw little hearts on his letters to me. At the time I did not know if he was serious or just being cute. I would always thank him for the compliments but turned him down for love. My main reason was because he is so attention, and media hungry. I always trust people until they give me a reason not to but it is the way he craved the attention that made me nervous. I thought I was safe as long as I was his friend and nothing else.
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