Female Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

  4

  MURDERING FRIENDS AND INTIMATES

  Black Widows and Profit Killers

  The Black Widow is the female serial killer we all imagine we know best—the female that charms and seduces males, takes them as lovers, marries them, and then kills them for profit. (Insert your own joke here.) It’s not only men that snicker; women, too, but for different reasons. Phyllis Chesler chuckled that female-perpetrated serial murder is, “Everywoman’s most forbidden fantasy, and Everyman’s worst nightmare” when she asked, “Did female serial killers really exist on earth?”161

  They do, Phyllis. And not only do female serialists kill men, but they also kill women and children—their own and those of others as well. They kill acquaintances, relatives, siblings, the young and the old, patients and clients, and they can do it for no reason other than profit.

  We imagine the Black Widow as a thing of the past, belonging to an entirely different age and different world—a world of crushing poverty, mail-order brides, and handwritten or manually typed index cards instead of digital databanks—a time when people could slip in and out of identities like worn-out shoes. It was as easy to marry and disappear as it was to kill.

  We think of Belle Gunness, killing perhaps as many as forty-eight people in Illinois and Indiana from 1900–1906, or Nancy Hazel Doss, who was arrested in 1955 in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and charged with murdering with arsenic in a thirty-three-year period four of her five husbands, and suspected of killing her two sisters, her mother, two of her children, a nephew, and a grandson—a known total of eleven victims between 1921–1954.

  We imagine that such creatures no longer exist—not these days…But they do, and two cases, one from the 1970s and the other from the 1980s are described in detail in this chapter.

  The Black Widow is really a subspecies of profit-motivated female serial killers—the female equivalent of the male hedonist comfort serial killer. The term Black Widow really describes her MO—the seduction of males to render them helpless—more than her signature or profile. Black Widows may kill for different reasons, not only for profit, for example, and may target not only male suitors or husbands. Sometimes the motive is vengeance, sometimes control, and sometimes even a manifestation of Munchausen by proxy syndrome (which will be dealt with further below). Because Black Widows are sometimes driven by demons other than profit, the taking of the victim’s property can be an expression of the final control over the victim rather than necessarily materialistic desire. Thus we have cases where some Black Widows appear to kill for ridiculously minor sums of money.

  Likewise, not all profit-motivated female serial killers are Black Widows. Some come in the guise of Angels of Death, killing their patients for their property. Others escape definition entirely, killing intimates, acquaintances, and strangers for a variety of reasons.

  Velma Barfield—the Death Row Granny

  In September 1976, Stuart Taylor, a North Carolina farmer in his fifties, was going through marriage difficulties. He and his wife had separated and were considering divorce. That autumn, Taylor went to visit his aunt and uncle, Dollie and Montgomery Edwards. Montgomery was 94 and suffering from advanced diabetes, which had cost him his sight and his legs. His wife, Dollie, was 84 and suffering from intestinal cancer; she had recently undergone a colostomy. Unable any longer to care for her husband, Dollie had hired a local woman to take care of him for seventy-five dollars a week plus room and board. That is how Stuart Taylor met Velma Barfield.

  Taylor was immediately attracted to the 45-year-old Velma. She was a widow with two adult children: a son, Ronnie, and a daughter, Kim. Both her children were married and had kids of their own. For a grandmother, Velma was still relatively young and good-looking and Taylor was feeling lonely and abandoned. He and Velma began to date, going out mostly to dinner or fishing trips on weekends. But after about a month, Taylor and his wife decided to reconcile and he stopped taking Velma out. Not that Velma seemed too upset—she understood and wished him well.

  In January 1977, Montgomery died and a month later in February, Dollie died, too. Velma went to work for another aged couple, John Henry and Record Lee. The 76-year-old Record had fallen in her carport and broken her leg. Confined in a cast she had difficulty moving around while her 80-year-old husband, John, was not able to give his wife the care she needed. Their daughters, looking for somebody to take care of their aged parents, were given Velma’s name by the local church. Velma moved into the Lee’s house for fifty dollars a week. But in June, John Henry Lee became sick with a severe case of gastroenteritis and died in the hospital emergency ward when his heart apparently gave out. The Lee daughters were so impressed with the care Velma gave their parents that they continued to employ her to care for their mother.

  Suddenly that summer Stuart Taylor reappeared in Velma’s life. After an eight-month reconciliation his marriage was definitely over. He and his wife were getting divorced. Would Velma like to go out again? Yes, of course. The couple began dating seriously, sneaking off for sex in motels in the strictly religious Robeson County where they lived. Taylor was a tobacco farmer with two daughters and a son from his first marriage, which ended when his wife died in 1970 from kidney disease. Six months later, Taylor married a woman he knew from childhood and another six months later the marriage ended in divorce. Several years later he married for a third time, but that marriage did not work out, and it was just a matter of time before the divorce was to be finalized.

  Stuart Taylor was described as an exuberant man with a love for life—the type that got up every morning singing. He had loved his first wife deeply and her loss had depressed him. The failure of his second marriage further depressed him and Stuart developed a habit of binge drinking, something frowned upon by the Pentecostal and Baptist churches that dotted that part of North Carolina like so many stars in the sky. Stuart was also aware that this might be a problem for Velma, who despite her liberal attitude to unmarried sex, was a pious churchgoing woman who did not tolerate drinking. She would say that a drink of alcohol was a way of letting the devil into a person.

  At first he kept his drinking habits from her, but later he learned that others had warned her of his binges. She still seemed interested in him, and this gave Stuart hope. He courted and wooed her. Much to the amusement of his friends, because Stuart was not particularly a religious man, he took her to church and gospel meetings, laughing, “I’m going out with my Christian woman tonight.”

  In October Velma quit her job taking care of Record Lee, explaining that it was too confining. She moved into a trailer park while taking a job at a local nursing home. Her son, Ronnie, would recall that near the end of October Velma showed him a diamond engagement ring; she and Stuart would be getting married in the springtime when his divorce would be finalized. Ronnie was somewhat taken aback. He remembered growing up in a house torn by bitter and violent argument over drinking between Velma and his father. If she felt so strongly about it, how could she consider marrying Stuart? His mother assured him that Stuart would overcome it.

  That was not the only thing that troubled Ronnie. His mother’s past had a few skeletons of its own. His mother fell in and out of tranquillizer and painkiller abuse and she had not conclusively kicked the habit. She had overdosed numerous times, with Ronnie and his wife, Kim, and his sister, Kim, and her husband, Dennis, having to take her to the hospital emergency ward. Once they had left her for a brief period at their house only to return to find her passed out overdosed on the floor with her collarbone protruding through her skin. There was also the small matter of Velma’s stint in prison—she had attempted to forge a prescription. She received a provisionary suspended sentence if she stayed out of trouble but then was arrested for forging checks. That landed her with an automatic prison sentence of six months. Was Stuart aware of all this? Ronnie wanted to know. Velma told her son to mind his own business. Stuart was aware that she took pills “for her nerves.” She told Ronnie that she loved Stuart and was intent on living with him. L
ater she would confess, “Deep down inside I never really cared for him. I never felt close to him at all. I can’t comprehend why I wanted to be with him. Sometimes we’re just lonely. Somebody to talk to, you know.”162

  In November, Stuart called at Velma’s trailer to pick her up to go out, but she did not respond. When he heard moans coming from inside he tried the door and found it unlocked. Inside he found Velma on her bed in her underwear, gagged and bound with duct tape. After freeing Velma, he called the police.

  Velma was visibly upset and crying. She said that she had risen to take a shower that morning but the moment she entered the bathroom, a man had thrown a towel over her head and had forced her back to the bed where he had bound and gagged her. He left her there and departed.

  The investigating officer, Lumberton Police Detective Benson Philips was perplexed. The assailant did not say anything. He did not molest her sexually. He did not hit, choke, or hurt her in any way, nor did he take anything. There were no signs of a break-in. How did he get in? Velma suggested maybe he was a past tenant who kept a copy of the key to the trailer. It made no sense and led nowhere.

  When Detective Philips heard Stuart tell Velma not to worry, she was not going to spend another night in the trailer but would come live with him in his house, he felt he had gotten a hint of what might have really taken place. He quickly forgot all about Velma and the break-in.

  Velma took her belongings and moved into Stuart’s house. The arguing began almost immediately. Several times Velma phoned her daughter, Kim, or her husband, Dennis, crying and asking for them to pick her up. Stuart would then come by apologetically and take Velma back home.

  One day Velma came back from her shift at the nursing home and found Stuart upset and angry. Velma had made some friends during her time in prison and exchanged letters with them. She had brought some of those letters with her when she moved into Stuart’s house and he had found and read them. They argued bitterly. Stuart accused her of covering up her criminal past; Velma accused him of snooping among her things and reading her letters. He responded that he had the right to know what kind of person he was marrying.

  In a book Velma wrote on death row, she claimed that Stuart had taunted her, telling her he would reveal her prison record to people at church, and that whenever they would argue he would always bring it up. Whatever love she felt for him died, she said, and she would never feel comfortable with him again.163

  Things got worse in December when Stuart discovered Velma had taken one of his checks, forged his signature, and cashed it for one hundred dollars. Velma claims in her book that when Stuart found out he was enraged and had threatened to turn her over to the police. This was a violation of her probation terms and the consequences would have been severe—Velma would be returned to prison. Although apparently Stuart forgave the debt, Velma claimed that he would constantly bring it up and threaten to have her arrested whenever they argued.

  Stuart’s daughter Alice testified later that after discovering the checks, her father cancelled his plans to marry Velma, but that she continued to live with him and wear the diamond engagement ring. He was not planning to break up with her, he told his daughter, but he was not going to marry her now.

  Stuart and Velma raged on in this manner—breaking up and making up—over and over again. Every time they fought, Velma would go to stay with her daughter and wait for Stuart to bring her back home.

  The Murder of Stuart Taylor

  On Tuesday, January 31, 1978, Stuart drove Velma into town to fill a prescription. Velma was very worried. Unknown to Stuart, she had cashed a second forged check of his and the bank statement would be arriving in the mail soon. According to her recollections, while waiting for the prescription to be filled, Velma went to buy some hairspray. As she walked through the household section of the store, her eyes fell upon a bottle of ant poison. Velma would claim that she only wanted to make Stuart sick long enough to buy time so that she could replace the money in his account. She states:

  That afternoon I knew what I was going to do. But the seriousness of it didn’t get through to me. My thinking was so distorted by years of heavy medication that even though I knew what I was doing, I couldn’t connect poisoning him with the suffering he would go through. By that time, the ant and roach poison was my antidote to the unbearable. I knew it would help.164

  The years of heavy medication might have facilitated Velma’s deeds, but her inability to “connect poisoning him with the suffering he would go through” was one of the most predominate symptoms of APSD—antisocial personality disorder—an inability for empathy, as she says, “even though I knew what I was doing.” Stuart Taylor had brought a psychopath into his home without knowing it.

  Before returning home, the couple turned up at Alice’s house for a surprise visit. Alice was home with the flu and would later recall she was sure that her father had broken up with Velma for good and was surprised to see them together again that morning. But she liked the affable, grandmotherly Velma and welcomed her into her house. Alice had just had a baby and they were looking at snapshots when Velma asked to see the “dead” photo of Stuart that she had heard about. This was a joke photo that Alice had snapped of her father as he lay sleeping on the couch with his hands crossed. It became a family joke when Stuart said he always wanted to know what he might look like when he was dead. Alice brought the photo out and they all laughed about it.

  That evening Stuart had promised to drive Velma into Fayetteville to see TV evangelist Rex Humbard, who was passing through with his crusade. Around five Stuart had put on his good clothes and sat down for a dinner Velma had prepared. He had a beer with his meal but she did not object. They drove the twenty miles to Fayetteville and entered the Cumberland County Civic Center where Humbard was preaching. Almost as soon as the service began, Stuart doubled over with severe stomach pain. He told Velma to stay while he would go lie down in his truck in the parking lot. Again, Velma recalls thinking that she was in a religious meeting yet she had just poisoned a man. Oh my God, what have I done? But it didn’t change anything. She didn’t suddenly rush Stuart to a hospital. She sat and sang and prayed with Rex.

  Emerging from the service, Velma found Stuart prostrate in the truck. He was in so much pain that Velma had to drive them home. Along the way, she stopped so Stuart could vomit by the side of the road. According to Velma, she urged Stuart to allow her to drive him to a hospital but he refused. Velma called Alice in the middle of the night to tell her that her father was very ill but that she was looking after him. It looked like the same flu that Alice was suffering from.

  Stuart’s friend and neighbor Sonny Johnson came by the next morning. On Monday they had gone out together to check their tobacco beds. Sonny knew Stuart for nearly forty years and knew that he was in robust health. He was surprised to see how weak and terrible Stuart looked. He offered to take care of Stuart’s pigs until he got over the flu. Alice kept calling. Velma told her there was no improvement but not to worry, she was taking care of Stuart. Alice, herself bedridden from her flu, was relieved to hear that.

  On Thursday, Velma brought Stuart into the emergency ward of a hospital in Lumberton. He had pains in his chest, stomach, and arms, was severely dehydrated, and his blood pressure was low. When asked for Stuart’s medical history, Velma reported that he was healthy except for his drinking binges. The doctor diagnosed Stuart’s condition as gastritis triggered by excessive drinking, even though Stuart had denied drinking recently. He prescribed Mylanta and lots of fluids and told Velma she could take Stuart home. He seemed to be improving.

  Velma would later claim that the medicine the doctor prescribed made Stuart worse after she took him home. He got so ill the next day on Friday evening that she had to take him back to the emergency ward by ambulance, where he promptly died. Witnesses would recount a different story. Sonny Johnson came by to see Stuart the day before, when Velma brought him to the emergency ward, and remembers seeing Stuart sitting up on the edge of his bed smoking
a cigarette.

  According to Alice, on Friday Velma had told her that Stuart was doing much better. He was sitting up and able to go to the bathroom by himself. In fact, he was doing so well that Velma said he had asked her to make him his favorite dish—oyster stew—and that she was going to run into Lumberton to buy some. Alice was relieved. If her father was asking for his favorite dish he must be feeling much better.165

  Yet on Friday night Velma called another neighbor, John McPherson, and told him that Stuart needed an ambulance urgently. McPherson was over to the house within five minutes and found Stuart on his bed, the sheets covered in feces. He was moaning and flailing in pain, and when asked where he was hurting, Stuart was unable to respond. Velma had put kitchen chairs around the bed so he would not roll off.

  Stuart Taylor was pronounced dead an hour after arriving in the hospital that Friday night. He was 56 years old and in good health. His children had gathered at the hospital and were stunned to hear about their father’s sudden death. The doctor suggested an autopsy and the family included Velma in their decision. She agreed that it would be a good idea.

  “Gentlemen, I Think We Have a Serial Killer on Our Hands.”

  That weekend Lumberton Police Detective Benson Philips received a call at 5:30 a.m. at his home. The caller was a woman, who sounded drunk and hysterical. She claimed that a murder had occurred the night before and that “somebody must stop her.” The woman was making no sense. Philips tried to persuade her that if there had been a murder he would have been called out, but he suggested that she call back later that morning at his office when she was more calm and could give him more details. After getting into work and assuring himself that no murder had indeed occurred, Philips was convinced that the caller was some drunken crank and he would not hear from her again. He was surprised when the caller phoned him at his office.