Teresa’s parents flew to Acapulco and found her in a hospital ward with terrible injuries. Her jugular had been slashed, her front teeth were broken and her eyes badly blackened. Tranquillised by the nursing staff, she claimed that she didn’t know what had happened; she appeared to suffer from amnesia. Meanwhile, Ken’s business partners in his dental practice alleged that he had stolen thousands of dollars and they angrily dissolved the partnership.
Later, Ken told another woman at the hotel that he and Teresa had had a row, that he had beaten her and she was in the hospital. He also told her that he had spent four days in jail but Teresa had decided not to press charges against him.
Another child
Ken soon found work in a new practice, though he continued to treat patients whilst he was stoned or drunk. He claimed that cocaine helped him to relax and said that the job was unbearably dull if he wasn’t taking drugs. He and Teresa moved into a new house – she had remained withdrawn since the shocking incident on their honeymoon – and decided to have a child together. In June 1984 she delivered a healthy baby boy. Ken wrote her a love letter and went overboard on the celebrations but he continued to sleep with Rosalind, his ex-wife. The following month he took out life insurance on Teresa with her blessing: the money would be used to pay for a live-in babysitter if anything happened to her.
On 11th November of that year, Teresa failed to meet a friend. On the 12th, a Monday, Ken phoned her parents and said that she had a bad drug problem, and that she had gone away for a while to get herself sorted out. He had taken her to the airport but she had refused to give him her destination. Bewildered by this story, as Teresa hadn’t shown any signs of addiction, her parents insisted that he report her disappearance to the police.
Friends visited the house and found a half-eaten cake, unboxed, on the kitchen counter, left there from several days before. This just wasn’t typical behaviour for the house-proud Teresa. Even more bizarrely, her house and car keys were in their usual place. The only unusual thing about the house was the fact that some grey carpet in the spare room had been removed.
Body found
On 15th November, a birdwatcher was walking through a remote sanctuary fifty miles from the New Jersey border, when he found a woman’s body wrapped in a piece of grey carpet inside a sleeping bag. She had been badly beaten about the face and head. Police investigated and found that she had been killed elsewhere, as there was little blood at the dump site, and that the cause of death was repeated blows to the head. They were confident that she’d soon be identified as she was wearing several pieces of distinctive jewellery.
Two days later, she was identified as Teresa Taylor by her father and brother. Ken sounded distraught when he was informed of his wife’s death over the phone.
Detectives went to the house and found an earring with dried blood on it in the garage. It matched the other earring on Teresa’s corpse. In the interrogation room, a detective said, ‘I think that you killed your wife,’ and Ken broke down and admitted he had. He said that he’d been provoked, that he’d walked into the nursery to find Teresa fellating Philip, their infant son.
According to the violent dentist, his wife had been touching herself whilst sexually abusing the infant. He’d run downstairs and she’d followed him and leapt on him, striking out with a dumbbell from their home gym. He’d grabbed an unweighted dumbbell and smashed her on the head with it but she’d been so high on cocaine that it hadn’t had any discernable effect. He’d struck her again as she went for him with renewed fury, then felt shock when he realised she was dead.
He had put her body in the boot of her car, cleaned up the mess and had driven for many miles, staying overnight with his baby in a motel room. The following day he visited his parents, leaving the body in the boot of the car. He drove on to his ex-wife Rosalind’s house and spent the night with her, though she noticed that he looked preoccupied. Finally driving to Pennsylvania, he saw the signs for the bird sanctuary and dumped Teresa’s corpse.
The investigation
Detectives applied luminol to the Taylors’ house and were able to ascertain that a body had been dragged across the floor from the back room to the garage. The luminol also revealed bloody footsteps and handprints that someone had tried very hard to clean up. They talked to Rosalind and she told them about the chloroform incident.
The Taylors’ phone records revealed that someone in their house had phoned several sex lines on the night of the murder and Ken said that Teresa had done so. The police asked him why she’d had Vaseline smeared around her anus and vagina and he said that she’d done that to herself, that she was fondling herself whilst performing a sex act on their five-month-old son.
Later, police looked at the couple’s historical phone records and found that someone had called a brothel three times whilst Teresa was in hospital giving birth – and that the same brothel had been phoned three times on the night of her murder. Clearly, Teresa couldn’t have made the first set of calls…
Ken agreed to take a lie detector test, during which he was injected with the truth serum, sodium amytal. As the drug took effect, he answered more loquaciously, admitting that he’d planned to rape his second wife Rosalind after chloroforming her. He had never mentioned this as a motive before. Later, he said that he might have psychosexual difficulties and he referred to ‘the Acapulco thing,’ where Teresa had been brutally beaten up. The doctor administering the test said, ‘You said that people had broken in,’ and Ken opened his eyes and said, ‘That’s right.’ He continued to assert that Teresa had sexually abused their child, but some people manage to lie whilst under the influence of the drug so any information given isn’t admissible in a Jersey court.
Detectives now tracked down Ken’s first wife, Lynn, and she described an incident after they’d separated when he’d come to the apartment and thrown a basketball with such force that it broke the back of a wooden chair. They also spoke at length to a witness who had been at the Acapulco hotel and had befriended Teresa and Ken. The latter had said that he and his wife had had an argument and that he’d beaten her. Paramedics called to the scene had found that she’d been brutalised so badly that she had lost control of her bowels. Ken had believed she was dead but the ambulance crew had found a slight heartbeat and rushed her to hospital. They had also examined Ken, who claimed to have been attacked by male intruders, but he only had a few light scratches on his forearms and a tiny red mark on his head.
Trial
The dentist’s trial began on 30th May 1985. The prosecution alleged that Ken had killed his wife and dumped her body, then spent time at a topless bar. They dismissed the theory that she had been high on cocaine and had sexually abused their son; only a tiny recreational amount of the drug had been found in her system. The defence, however, noted that the drug wears off quickly. They admitted that the dentist had misled the police in reporting his wife as a missing person and fabricating stories about her disappearance but described her death as ‘a family tragedy’. They said that Ken had been defending himself and his baby when he had struck his wife repeatedly over the head.
The defence had an expert take the stand to testify that there was no injury to the victim’s genitalia and no sperm in her cavities. Despite the presence of lubricating Vaseline, she had not had sex. The prosecution wondered if Ken had lost his erection and become enraged but it was pure supposition on their part.
The jury was shown a video of the young mother playing with her baby, after which many had tears in their eyes. They also heard from Rosalind about the chloroform attack. Ken took angry, immature notes throughout the trial, writing, ‘Maybe I’ll come out of this trial with a minimum sentence to serve. Then what? You know that I’ll come back to see my girl…’ He was referring to his daughter, but ended the note, ‘Goddamn you, Rosalind.’ It was a chilling insight into a puerile but rage-filled mind.
The testimony about the incident in Acapulco was also damning. Ken alleged that both he and Teresa had been beaten up by int
ruders, that afterwards he’d crawled over to where his wife lay, covered in blood, on the floor, and had taken her pulse. He’d proceeded to look over the balcony to see if he could locate the culprits and had fainted. When he regained consciousness, he’d washed his legs. Ken wanted to testify but his legal team talked him out of it. The jury were out for two days and returned to find him unanimously guilty of her murder.
In September, he returned to court for sentencing and was given a minimum of thirty years but he was determined not to serve this. The following year, he managed to saw through a window bar, using a smuggled hacksaw, and was close to escaping when the attempt was discovered and shortly afterwards he was moved to a higher security New Jersey jail. A year later, he was suspected of masterminding another escape and was sent to a tougher prison in Virginia. He made further bids for freedom, each resulting in a period of solitary confinement, before settling down. It is likely he will be in his mid-sixties before he is eligible for parole.
PART FIVE
LETHAL PARAMEDICS
These profiles delineate bizarre thinking patterns. Gavin Hall killed the child that he loved in order to wreak revenge on his wife, whilst Kristin Rossum allegedly murdered her husband (whom she could just as easily have divorced) in order to pursue a work-based affair. Bruce Moilanen’s motives were ugly but understandable as he benefited financially from his wife’s death. Chante Mallard is hard to fathom, for she let a man die rather than spend some time in jail on a drink-driving charge.
23 Gavin Hall
Though this paramedic loved his baby daughter, he chose to kill her in order to devastate his estranged wife.
Adultery
Hospital radiographer Gavin Hall met his wife Karen, a cardiac nurse, whilst they were both medical students. They married in 1999 and set up home together in Irchester, Northampton, but the relationship later began to break down.
In September 2005, Karen logged on to an Internet dating site for swingers and was soon exchanging naked photographs with another libertarian, a deputy district judge who was also married. She met him for two sex sessions in a hotel.
In October 2005, Gavin found out about the affair by reading some of Karen’s sexually explicit emails, began to suffer from depression and was given time off work. At some point during this time he decided to hurt her as deeply as possible by murdering their two children, three-year-old Amelia, known as Millie, and baby Lucy. He hadn’t originally wanted children but doted on Millie, a daddy’s girl, though he had never bonded with her younger sister.
On 26th or 27th November 2005, in what might have been a practice run, he chloroformed two of the three family cats to death – despite the fact that he had previously referred to them as his ‘babies’ – and hid their bodies in the family shed.
Bizarre behaviour
On 29th November, a mere two days before Millie’s fourth birthday, Gavin waited until his wife and Lucy were asleep upstairs in the marital bedroom before bringing the cats’ corpses into the lounge and surrounding them with the children’s toys. He wanted Karen to come downstairs in the morning to a scene of unimaginable horror.
Gavin gave Millie one of his antidepressants, waited until she was asleep, and then suffocated her with a cloth soaked in chloroform whilst holding her in the crook of his arm. He pressed the cloth hard against her face, leaving scratch marks on her skin. He also strangled her before putting her under a duvet on the lounge floor.
Leaving a previously written suicide note next to the dead child and cats, he sent a text message to his sleeping wife, telling her what he’d done. Finally, he slashed his wrists and chloroformed himself.
Karen came downstairs the following morning to find her oldest daughter and the cats dead, surrounded by teddy bears, and a rambling suicide note filled with quotations from Shakespeare. Her husband was bleeding heavily and unconscious. She called the emergency services and he was revived, arrested and charged.
The radiographer pleaded guilty to manslaughter but denied murder, stating that he was suffering from diminished responsibility. Spectators were angry that Karen’s emails were read out in court, noting that her affair in no way justified her husband’s homicidal act.
Gavin Hall wept at his trial – held at Northampton Crown Court in November 2006 – when listening to the details of his beloved elder daughter’s death. He was jailed for life and told that he must serve a minimum of fifteen years.
Karen later paid tribute to Millie and said that she would plant a cherry tree in their village to honour her memory.
24 Kristin Rossum
As she became increasingly addicted to methamphetamine, this toxicologist resented her husband for standing in her way.
Ruined dreams
Kristin Rossum was born on the 25th October 1976 to Constance and Ralph Rossum, a market researcher and university professor respectively. She was their first child but they went on to have two sons. At the time of Kristin’s birth the family lived in Memphis, but they moved around the country to further their careers and by the time Kristin started school, they were living in Maryland.
Kristin studied ballet and wanted to be a dancer, even moving to an Episcopalian boarding school to be near the best dance troupe. (Her parents were devout Episcopalians.) She showed exceptional promise and was allowed to dance with the Boston Ballet during one exciting summer holiday. However, in her mid-teens, Kristin tore several ligaments and had a bad stress fracture, which led to a lot of downtime, during which she gave up on her dream and began to use alcohol. Her self-esteem plummeted and she thought she was overweight and began to take diet pills. By sixteen, she was experimenting with crystal meth. In the short term, it made her feel confident and happy, but, as she continued to use it, she felt ill and tired.
Domestic violence
Kristin’s parents went on holiday, leaving Kristin in charge and, when they returned, they found that she had hosted a wild party and that a cheque book and credit cards were missing. They also found a suspicious-looking white powder in their mailbox and her father found a glass pipe and razor blades in her bag.
Kristin told her school counsellor that she wasn’t close to her mother and that her dad had grabbed her to prevent her leaving the house. She showed him a bruise on her arm and he duly reported the matter to the police.
The family had a heart-to-heart talk and the seventeen-year-old promised that she wouldn’t use drugs again. Returning to ‘dutiful daughter’ mode, she took up choir singing. But, within weeks, it was obvious that she was once again smoking meths. Her parents called the authorities, who arrested her and put her in a cell for a couple of hours.
She was soon released into her parents’ care and they enrolled her at a university thirty miles away. They also went to family therapy in an area where no one knew them. Everything seemed fine until the Rossums arrived to bring Kristin home for the Christmas holiday, only to find that she wasn’t there.
Escape
Unable to face the holidays without drugs, Kristin and a group of friends travelled to Tijuana, just over the Mexican border. There, she met Greg de Villers, a college student. They had sex the night they met, after which Kristin moved in with him and his flatmate, though she didn’t pay rent. It soon became apparent that she was using drugs but Greg loved her and was convinced that she could turn her life around.
For a while, it seemed that she had. She enrolled at a different university and studied chemistry, getting good grades, and in June 1997, she took a summer job at the Medical Examiner’s Office as an assistant toxicologist and they were very impressed with her. The office stored impounded drugs in evidence envelopes when they were believed to have been connected with a suspicious death, so it was an ideal place for a drug addict. But none of her colleagues or fellow academics were, as yet, aware of Kristin’s problem. Nor were her academic tutors, and, the following year, she was voted Most Outstanding Chemistry Student at university.
Marriage
In June 1999, Kristin married Greg, though fr
iends privately thought that she was partially trying to please her parents, who’d virtually adopted him as their third son. By the end of the year, she was complaining that he was clingy, though her spirits revived in January the following year when she found that she’d earned a good degree.
In March, a married toxicologist called Michael Robertson joined Kristin’s workplace and there was an immediate spark between them. That same month, Kristin became a full-time employee at the Medical Examiner’s Office and the two spent a great deal of time together. By May, they were having an affair.
Later that summer, Greg found one of Michael’s many love letters to Kristin. Furious, he phoned the man and warned him to stay away from his wife. That October, Michael’s wife left him and the affair escalated. Greg may have confronted Kristin about her drug-taking at this time, telling her that, if she didn’t stop, he would inform her workplace. She would lose her job, and her daily access to Michael, unless Greg wasn’t around to carry out his threat…
Sudden death
In early November 2000, Greg began to complain of feeling unwell and, on the morning of the 6th, Kristin phoned his workplace and said that he was sick. She went to work looking tired and upset, and left the office several times saying that she was going to check on Greg. On her return, she still looked emotional and withdrawn. She also spent some time with Michael and, after she left his office, her co-workers thought that they saw traces of tears.
Doctors Who Kill Page 17