When Angelo Buono’s trial finally got under way in Los Angeles, prosecutors were afraid they would fail to convict him because of insufficient evidence and because much of their case rested on the testimony of the obviously unstable Bianchi. They asked to have the charges against Buono dropped. But Judge Ronald George refused to honor the prosecutors’ request and the trial proceeded; after two years, Buono was convicted of nine murders. He was sentenced to life without parole, even though the jury had the option of sentencing him to death.
Both Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono, convicted and in prison for life, are, or have been, married men. Their victims are long dead, and the families of those victims have suffered incredible trauma and loss. But the killers have been allowed to marry, and each enjoys the comfort, warmth, and affection of a woman who loves him. And while their victims’ names have faded into oblivion, Bianchi and Buono are still celebrities.
When Kenneth Bianchi married Shirlee Book on September 21, 1989, news of the wedding was flashed over the Associated Press wire service. The thirty-six-year-old Louisiana woman’s romance began when she wrote to Bianchi, now thirty-eight, after she saw a picture of him looking lonely during his trial. On television’s “Hard Copy,” Shirlee described her husband as “affectionate, loving.” On the same show, Bianchi says, “I killed those broads.”
According to a neighbor who spoke with Diane Albright, a reporter, at one time Shirlee tried to become romantically involved with Ted Bundy, but apparently he wasn’t interested and she moved on to Bianchi. “She’s always writing to prisons. She wrote to Ted Bundy, to several prisoners. She reads a lot and her house is filled with books about killers and serial killers,” said the neighbor.
Richard Bauer, assistant superintendent at Washington State Penitentiary where Bianchi is serving his sentence, described Shirlee as “very timid and a plain-looking lady with reddish-brown hair, about five feet five inches.” Shirlee never believed that Ted Bundy was a serial killer. She told Albright, “They killed him, an innocent man. They weren’t Christians who done that to him.” Book—who never had a relationship with Bundy—said, “I would still be with him if they hadn’t fried him.”
During the three years that Shirlee and Bianchi corresponded, she expressed her fantasies in letters—her dreams, what she wanted out of life, what their life would be like once he got out of prison. Intent on marrying Bianchi although they had not yet met, Shirlee bought a trousseau and a fancy white wedding gown and sent wedding invitations.
Shirlee Book married serial killer Kenneth Bianchi wearing floor-length white satin, a veil, and white gloves. The couple expected to receive conjugal visits, but Washington State Penitentiary denied their request. Shirlee was very happy. “His future is bright. He’ll be a free man and it won’t be long,” she told Albright. “I got me a good one.”
It’s possible that to Shirlee Book, who like Sue Terry has had a hard life, marriage to Kenneth Bianchi represents a way out because of his notoriety and celebrity. Shirlee’s first husband, Billy, with whom she had a son when she was seventeen, “was as crazy as she was. They would take nerve pills and things like that. He was kind of mental. He drank cleaning or lighter fluid after they split up,” said neighbor Betty Day. After this marriage, Shirlee became involved with a much younger man. “He treated her okay, but he stole things. He was in trouble with the law.”
Shirlee is extremely close to her mother. Day described a family in which the father did all the caretaking at home, including housework, because Shirlee and her mother are not functional much of the time. “Shirlee stays up all night and sleeps all day; she’s temperamental. She’ll rant and rave all night and then take pills to sleep all day,” said Day. Shirlee “has always been interested in notorious people” but does not now grant interviews because Bianchi won’t allow her to. Since the Book family has no telephone, many of Shirlee’s conversations with Bianchi are made on Day’s phone. Day believes that Bianchi, thousands of miles away and imprisoned, controls his wife. “He won’t let her give interviews. Kenneth won’t let her. What I really believe is he wants control over her. If she talks to people and makes any money, then he won’t control her.”
Sgt. Frank Salerno said that Bianchi can only relate to unattractive women he can dominate and control. Shirlee reportedly has no teeth and is extremely thin. “The fact that she is unattractive does fit with Bianchi. Most of his close relationships were with women who were maybe homely or overweight. The woman who mothered his child, Kelli Boyd, was overweight during their relationship. But the women Bianchi attacked were attractive and well built,” said Salerno.
Both Shirlee Book and Sue Terry are attracted to the serial killers they love for their notoriety. And even while these women deny that the men they love are guilty, they are exploiting the situation—making appearances on television and granting interviews for books and articles. Shirlee and Sue are also attracted to violence. These women may not be able to go out and commit murder themselves, but they have had murderous thoughts and fantasies. Erroneously equating power with violence and strength with cruelty, they live vicariously through their killer/lovers and feel, just for a moment, that they, too, are strong and powerful.
The other Hillside Strangler, Angelo Buono, remarried a woman he divorced years earlier, according to Lt. Cammy Voss, spokeswoman at Folsom Prison. They have since been divorced again, she said. He has also had at least one other woman interested in him who moved from southern California to be near the prison where he is incarcerated, said Sgt. Frank Salerno. Right now, Buono is not married or involved with any woman, but it’s probably only a matter of time before some woman on the outside starts feeling sorry for him and ends up in love.
DAVID BERKOWITZ, THE SON OF SAM
In New York City in 1976, David Berkowitz shot eight people; six died and two were paralyzed. His random, serial attacks, usually against young women sitting with their dates in parked cars, gave New York the feeling of a city under siege. Many residents recall being too terrified to leave their apartments.
Since he shot his victims instead of strangling them, Berkowitz didn’t have the twisted machismo of a Buono or a Bundy, but appealed more to the nurturing, maternal side of women. Maury Terry, author of The Ultimate Evil, recalled that Berkowitz received numerous letters from women after his arrest in August 1977. “They wrote, ‘I think you’re sexy and handsome and misunderstood.’ One signed her letter, ‘David’s girl,’” said Terry. The letters focused on his blue eyes and his innocence.
David Abrahamsen, M.D., the psychiatrist who testified that Berkowitz was competent to stand trial, said Berkowitz had a woman in love with him. The woman knew Berkowitz before he was arrested and stood by him after his conviction, making the tedious bus trip from New York City to Dannemora Correctional Facility near the Canadian border every three weeks for seven years, from 1977 to 1985, according to Maury Terry. “There, in the motel where she stayed, she would act like Greta Garbo because her boyfriend was Son of Sam—like she could get whatever she wanted, like she was important,” said the writer. Although this woman wanted to marry Berkowitz, the relationship didn’t work out. He’s now incarcerated in New York State’s Sullivan Correctional Facility, and a fellow inmate has said Berkowitz has a new girlfriend.
MASS MURDERERS
In addition to serial killers, the FBI’s National Center for the Analysis of Violent Crime also studies mass murderers, defined as those who kill four or more victims at one location within one event. Spree killings are murders at two or more locations with no cooling-off time in between. From 1977 to November 1989, the FBI Academy library reports 112 known mass murderers who are responsible for killing 657 people, and 50 known spree killers who murdered 306 people. Mass murderers are more likely than serial killers to commit suicide after they’ve taken their victims’ lives.
One such killer, Ramon Salcido, lives on. And he lives on in a relationship with a loving, supportive woman who believes in him.
On April 14, 1
989, in California’s Sonoma Valley, Salcido wiped out seven people: his twenty-three-year-old wife, Angela; two of his three daughters, Sofia, four, and Teresa, one; his mother-in-law; and his wife’s two young sisters, ages twelve and eight. He also ambushed and shot to death the assistant manager at Grand Cru Winery where he worked. Salcido unsuccessfully tried to murder two more people: a supervisor at the winery and his third child, Carmina, three. Salcido, from jail, is battling his wife’s father for custody of Carmina; he wants his family to have her.
Salcido’s girlfriend, Barbara Pater, is loyal, loving, and faithful. “She wants to marry him. She says, ‘I love this man.’ She’s young, fairly attractive. She looked like she may be normal. She is in love with him, saying he couldn’t have done these things,” said Lt. Cammy Voss at Folsom Prison. At the Sonoma County Jail, a spokesman for the county sheriff’s department said Pater began showing up in court in May 1989 during Salcido’s preliminary hearings. Pater said she was interested in helping people and has seen Salcido once or twice a week since, although he’s under tight security and the couple is separated by a glass wall during visits. Pater, described as almost thirty, lists her occupation as “finder of lost people.” After she began her relationship with Salcido, she moved from southern California to live in Sonoma County to be near him.
On December 17, 1990, Salcido received the death sentence and was scheduled to die in the San Quentin gas chamber for the six murders he committed.
14
Conclusion: Beyond the Walls
“We might not even like each other in
the real world”
Women who love killers were often little girls lost, reared in dysfunctional families where they were victims of abuse at the hands of harsh, dictatorial fathers aided by passive mothers. A large percentage were raised as Catholics and were severely affected by oppressive church teachings, including sexism, subjugation of women, and repression of sexuality.
Fathers were missing: divorced, dead, always working, drunk, withdrawn. Occasionally, mothers took on father’s role and behaved like demanding authoritarians. Women who love killers frequently found that their relationships with men mimicked the one they had with their fathers. Married young, their first husbands were often violent, alcoholic, sexually and/or emotionally abusive.
Although the women interviewed say they were not looking for love when they met the convicted murderers they eventually fell for, all the women were somehow drawn to this population of society’s outcasts. Writing letters through pen pal programs, answering ads, volunteering, working—they all managed to meet a convicted killer one way or another. “Love” grew quickly in prison visiting rooms, and against her will, each woman was soon obsessed with her beloved/murderer.
BUT IS IT LOVE?
As it was between medieval maidens and the courtly knights who protected them, sex and true intimacy between women and the killers they love is usually forbidden by prison systems. These women feel deeply, but what they feel is not mature love or adult sexual passion. It is romantic passion—a passion fueled by deprivation and suffering, enhanced by anguish. These women have found the key to never-ending romance: suffering and pain.
Because many women who love killers have real difficulties with intimacy because of the damage done to them in childhood, they have chosen to live a fantasy. The majority of these women don’t love real men but an illusion that is based on denial. Each woman separates, or compartmentalizes, the murder from the man she loves. She denies his crime.
For women who love serial killers, or other notorious murderers, there is the added thrill of fame. Each serial killer’s status gives a woman with low self-esteem a sense of importance; her prestige rises in direct proportion with the heinousness of his crimes.
KILLERS: THE MOST MACHO MEN
In our patriarchal culture, murderers are often viewed as more than male: the most macho, strong, violent, and brutal of all men. In a majority of movies and television shows, the violent mystique of the murderer—or the cop, spy, undercover agent, etc.—is the erotic centerpiece. Murderers “represent the most profound, extreme kind of fear… They become culture heroes and are portrayed as very erotic. In a patriarchal culture, in a male supremacist culture, violence itself is eroticized. The murder itself becomes an erotic art,” said feminist theorist Dr. Jane Caputi. Murder becomes sexy so a murderer becomes a superstud.
For some women, it is thrilling to dance with a master of death. If a woman is seeking excitement, passion, a meaning to life, loving a murderer can make her feel intensely alive. She becomes important, perhaps notorious, because she loves a man who has killed.
As we have seen, some of these women take orders from their boyfriends or husbands even though the men are behind bars. Criminologist and author Dr. James Fox visited convicted serial killer Douglas Clark (the Sunset Slayer) and his wife, Kelly: “He’s very controlling. In the visiting room, he’ll smoke a cigarette and the smoke will get in her eyes. She’ll put up with it for a while. Then she’ll get up to put the cigarette out. By the time she gets back [from walking to the ashtray], he’ll have another one lit.” The couple, married for five years, met after Clark was convicted of the sexually sadistic murders of several women in L.A. “Kelly thinks he’s innocent; she wants to prove his innocence, free him,” said Dr. Fox. But, he added, if Clark should ever be freed, their relationship would not endure: “He’d be gone.”
A murderer is often a con man who wins a woman by manipulation and lying. Some women, gullible, vulnerable, and needy, are ready to believe these charmers. Each woman hears a story that fits her needs: If she needs to believe that he’s religious, he’ll tell her that. If she wants sweet talk, he’ll woo her. If she needs a brilliant existential hero, he’ll sweep her off her feet with his verbiage. Some murderers are unbelievably charismatic. These men exude self-confidence. The narcissistic and antisocial personalities of these murderers cause them to act as though rules don’t apply to them. They act tough and superior. They believe in themselves (or pretend they do) and easily convince susceptible women (little girls lost) to believe in them also. But in truth, these are deeply disturbed men who, by murdering, have irrevocably broken one of our most basic laws.
Having killed and been caught and imprisoned, would they kill again? Most people believe so, but to women in love with killers, women who deny the crime, the answer is definitely no. My man is rehabilitated, says each woman. Moreover, he is gentle, intelligent, sensitive. Kill again? He is no more likely to kill than you or I, she says.
Every relationship between a woman and a killer is based on the hope he will be freed. At the same time that she denies his crime, she also believes he is rehabilitated. He will never do anything like that again, she thinks. I will work, I will sacrifice, I will do whatever I have to in order to secure his release so we can live happily ever after … beyond the walls.
BEYOND THE WALLS
Sometimes the dream shared by these women, that their men will be freed, does come true. A murderer is paroled or pardoned, and he and the woman who loves him—who has sacrificed for him and fought like a mother bear protecting her cubs to secure his release—can walk off together into paradise. But how often does this happen? Of the women interviewed for this book, only one had succeeded in reaching nirvana with her freed killer/lover. The majority of men remain imprisoned no matter how impassioned the fight for their freedom. And the women who love them remain beside them, giving, nurturing, supporting, sacrificing, denying.
Each woman in love with a convicted killer fantasizes that on that day which is her entire focus, her reason for being, the day he walks out of prison a free man, they will begin to share a life of unending romance, undying love—with no intrusion of reality, such as bills, kids, and laundry.
The problem with this dream is that convicted murderers are unlikely to be released. We know that some are paroled—sometimes to kill again, such as Shawcross in Rochester, New York—but generally, nothing ever materializes for these
men. There is no parole for serial killer Kenneth Bianchi, no new trial for Duane, no pardons for Alan or Charlie. In short, only failure and frustration for these dreamers, men and women alike.
Occasionally, a woman in love with a killer will make an interesting assessment of what life after prison would be like. Maria (Chapter 1) told television interviewer Sally Jesse Raphael how she would react if Phil was released: “I’d do what anyone in love would do… But we only know each other three hours a week. We might not even like each other in the real world.” (Emphasis added.)
“Some marriages break down when the prisoner is released and both parties have difficulty adjusting to the changes they have undergone,” wrote Tricia Hedin in a Newsweek article. Geraldine and Nathaniel Grimes, Jr., who married with so much optimism and enthusiasm in 1978 while he was doing life for murder, are now separated and planning to divorce. He was paroled on May 21, 1985, and according to his mother, the marriage lasted two years after that.
ENDINGS
Two stories now, about women who fell in love with killers. One has a happy ending. The other, with its grim and tragic finale, can serve as a cautionary tale. The first murderer killed his father but never went to prison for his crime. The second man spent seventeen years behind concrete and steel for murdering his mother and father, then was paroled. Both killers found women to love. One woman is still alive.
Fran, a registered nurse in Houston, Texas, always read the letters to the editor in The Houston Post and was rapidly becoming fascinated with one writer, David, an inmate serving a life sentence. “I was truly amazed at David’s intelligence and articulate skills on almost every topic from classical music to women’s rights.” She decided she had to meet this man, and when she did, it was love at first sight. David, thirty-five, had been in prison for fourteen years for the 1969 murder of his mother and father. “He looked like a walking zombie. It went right to my heart. I knew this person had been terribly mistreated.” Fran recognized a kindred spirit, another victim of soul murder.
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