Female Serial Killers

by Peter Vronsky

  In certain situations, however, partners from different dominance groups mate, and a very severe dynamic emerges in the relationship. The reason that such mating occurs is usually some type of emotional disorder that leads an individual to seek a mate from a different dominance class. High-dominance individuals with personality disorders, needing to sadistically dominate their mate, may seek out partners in lower-dominance categories. While lower-dominance individuals, also suffering with personality disorders, compelled perhaps to act out an abusive scenario, may seek out higher-category mates. Often the result is a slavelike, almost hypnotic relationship between the two parties, where one partner totally dominates the other, yet both are desperately dependent upon each other. Sometimes, the one vital element that a dominant partner lacks in order to unleash homicidal fantasies is provided by the submissive partner.

  Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez—the Honeymoon Killers

  Ironically, the first case study offered here of a serial killer male-female couple defies the norms described above to some extent as it appears that the female in this team might have been the dominant figure in a relationship in which the male thought he was the dominant.

  Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, the so-called “Lonely Hearts Killers” of the late 1940s, became the subject of a 1970 cult film, The Honeymoon Killers, written and directed by American composer, pianist, film writer, and director Leonard Kastle. Just completed at this writing is a new movie about them, Lonely Hearts, starring Salma Hayek, John Travolta, and James Gandolfini.

  Martha Beck was born as Martha Julie Seabrook in Milton, Florida, in 1919. Her father was the editor of a local newspaper, but he abandoned the family when Martha was an infant. Martha suffered from a childhood glandular disorder, which caused her to mature so rapidly that by the age of ten she had an adult’s body and sexual drive. Along with that came a weight problem, typical in the childhoods of so many female serial killers.

  During her murder trial in 1951, Martha stated that she had been raped when she was 13 years old. When she told her mother about the rape, her mother beat her and subsequently kept a close watch on her, chasing away any boys that came close to her. At school, the overweight girl was ridiculed and scorned. She had no friends and withdrew into her own reclusive world of fantasy and romance, and perhaps darker fantasies as well.

  Martha was a clever girl, and at the age of 23 she graduated first in her class from a nursing school in Pensacola in 1942. Despite her academic credentials, her excessive weight made it impossible for her to find employment as a nurse. The only work her nursing credentials got her on graduation was working in a funeral home preparing female bodies for burial. At her trial, she would later say of that period, “In a bizarre fashion, I was learning something about disconnecting through my observation of death.”

  Lonely Hearts

  With the war, however, Martha managed to find work as a nurse in a military hospital in California. There she led a lonely, sexually promiscuous life, picking up soldiers and sailors on leave for casual sex. In 1944, she became pregnant. When Martha approached the father of her child about marrying her, he instead committed suicide.

  The pregnant Martha returned to Milton, claiming that she had married a naval officer. She even had a ring to prove it. But shortly before the birth of the child, Martha sent herself a telegram announcing that her husband had been killed in action in the Pacific. The small town mourned for her loss and her story was featured in the local press.

  Soon Martha was pregnant again by a Pensacola bus driver named Alfred Beck. He married her, but they were divorced after six months. Weighing 250 pounds at this time, a single mother with two children, Martha settled into a lonely life fed by the true romance and confession magazines of the period. She was employed as a pediatric nurse at a Pensacola hospital, where her excellent performance eventually led her to a series of promotions, culminating with her appointment as the hospital’s Chief of Nurses.

  In 1947, as a cruel joke, some members of the staff who worked under Martha’s supervision sent her an ad to join a lonely hearts club—Mother Dinene’s Family Club for Lonely Hearts. Before the age of Internet dating, hundreds of agencies provided services for lonely single people to correspond with each other by mail in search of marriage, love, or companionship. Unperturbed by the joke, Martha placed an ad with the club. She made no mention of her weight or the existence of her two children.

  In the weeks that followed, Martha did not get a single response to her ad. She had almost forgotten about it when suddenly, just before Christmas, she received a response from a club member, 33-year-old Raymond Martinez Fernandez. Raymond wrote that he was a successful businessman of Spanish origins in the import-export business and that he lived in New York City on West 139th Street “here in this apartment much too large for a bachelor but I hope someday to share it with a wife.” Fernandez wrote that he chose to correspond with Martha because she was a nurse and he knew that she would have “a full heart with a great capacity for comfort and love.”

  For several weeks, Martha and Raymond carried on a passionate correspondence. Martha sent Raymond pictures of herself in group photographs where the bulk of her body was hidden behind other nurses. She purchased expensive stationery and sprayed her correspondence with perfume; she carried her letters from Fernandez with her everywhere she went. The letters Fernandez wrote in a fine handwriting were refined and romantic, full of literary references. Finally, Fernandez made the most romantic request that Martha could imagine: Would she send him a lock of her hair? The starry-eyed Martha obliged.

  Martha, unfortunately, had no way of knowing that Fernandez did not want her hair for a romantic keepsake, but as part of an occult voodoo ritual, which he believed would enslave her in a bondage of love. Fernandez was a full-fledged nut job!

  Raymond Martinez Fernandez—the Voodoo Spy

  Born on December 17, 1914, in Hawaii, Raymond Martinez Fernandez was indeed of Spanish descent. When he was 3, his family moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where Fernandez grew up. He was a frail and gentle child, but he grew to be a well-built and handsome young man. When he was 18 he went to live with his uncle in Spain and there he married a local woman and they had a son. During the Second World War he served in the Spanish merchant fleet and spied for British intelligence.

  After the war, in late 1945, Fernandez decided to return to the U.S. to seek work and then send for his wife and two children. He secured work on a freighter bound for the Dutch West Indies. But during the voyage he had a horrific accident—a heavy steel hatch smashed shut on his head with such force that it caused an indentation in his skull and irreversible brain damage. Fernandez was hospitalized from December 1945 until March 1946.

  When Fernandez emerged from the hospital, his personality had been completely altered. He was distant and moody and quick to anger. He also lost his hair around the region of his injury, where there was an indented scar on his head. He soon took to wearing a wig to cover it. On his journey to the U.S., Fernandez inexplicably stole a quantity of clothing and items from the ship’s storeroom. They were discovered by customs upon his arrival and Fernandez ended up serving a one-year prison sentence in Tallahassee Florida. He cellmate was a practitioner of a fringe type of voodoo and introduced Fernandez to the practice.

  Fernandez became convinced that voodoo rituals would give him power over women. Plagued by headaches and violent mood swings, Fernandez began corresponding with women through lonely hearts clubs, always asking for a lock of their hair with which he would conduct a ritual. He would seduce dozens of women, gain their trust, and steal their money, jewelry, and anything else he could lay his hands on. The victims were too embarrassed or ashamed to complain.

  The apartment in New York belonged to one of Fernandez’s victims—one that had ended up dead. Jane Lucilla Thompson was a wealthy divorcee who began corresponding with Fernandez in 1947. The two met and had a whirlwind romance. In October 1947, Thompson purchased tickets for them to go on a
cruise to Spain. In Spain, Fernandez introduced Thompson to his Spanish wife and the three were seen frequently dining together in the town, although what they knew about each other is unknown. On October 7, 1947, some kind of argument occurred in their hotel room, and Thompson was found dead in her room the next morning, apparently from a drug overdose.

  Fernandez, in the meantime, returned to New York with a forged will and took possession of Thompson’s apartment, ejecting her widowed mother from the premises. Within weeks, he had established correspondence with dozens of lonely-hearts club women, including Martha Beck.

  Having performed his voodoo ritual with Martha’s lock of hair, Fernandez took the train down to Pensacola on December 28 to meet his intended next victim. Fernandez had assumed that Martha, as a chief nurse, would have money to steal.

  If Fernandez was surprised by Martha’s appearance upon meeting her at the train station, he did not show it. Martha was pleased with Fernandez’s good looks. She took him home and introduced him to her two children. She made dinner that night. After the kids were put to bed, convinced of his voodoo power over Martha, Fernandez made sexual advances toward her. Who really seduced whom is debatable, but for the next day and night they stayed together. At some point, Fernandez must have realized that Martha had nothing of worth to steal; he announced that he needed to return to New York.

  Martha had other plans. She professed her undying love to Fernandez and hysterically demanded that he remain in Florida to marry her. Fernandez, no doubt convinced of his own frightening voodoo power, barely managed to extricate himself from Martha’s grip by promising to return for her or send her money so she could join him in New York. Martha took this as a proposal of marriage.

  While Fernandez was hightailing it back to New York City, Martha was telling everybody in town she was engaged to be married. She even threw herself a bridal shower. Fernandez attempted to break things off with Martha, but she threatened suicide. Fernandez relented and allowed her to visit him in New York for two weeks. Upon her return from her visit, Martha was fired from the hospital—probably because she left her job without permission. There was nothing holding her in Florida.

  On January 18, 1948, Martha returned to New York, but this time with her two children and her suitcases. She showed up unannounced at Fernandez’s door. Fernandez appreciated Martha’s slavish attention to all his needs, from feeding to sex, but he told her he wanted her to get rid of her kids. Without much hesitation, Martha abandoned her children at a Salvation Army hostel on January 25, 1948. She never gave them another thought.

  “In the History of the World, How Many Crimes Have Been Attributed to Love?”

  Raymond confessed his lonely hearts cons to Martha, who had no objection. She saw it as “her duty” to assist him, and together they read through all the lonely hearts mail to pick a suitable victim for Fernandez. On February 28, 1948, Fernandez married a retired schoolteacher from Pennsylvania he had been corresponding with and brought her back to the apartment in New York. Martha posed as Raymond’s sister-in-law from a previous marriage. The schoolteacher eventually heard rumors about the death of Fernandez’s “wife” in Spain, and after Fernandez began to berate her for failing to sign over to him her teacher’s pension and insurance policies, she returned home, minus her car and a large sum of cash Fernandez appropriated from her.

  On August 14, 1948, after marrying and robbing several other women, Fernandez married Myrtle Young from Arkansas, a woman who was younger and more active than the previous victims. This time, Martha posed as Fernandez’s sister, but she was so jealous at the possibility of Raymond having sex with his latest lonely hearts bride that she insisted on sleeping in the same bed with the newlywed couple—between them! After a few days of this wackiness, Myrtle began to protest, at which point Martha insisted that he render her unconscious with some sedatives. They then carried the unconscious Myrtle to the bus station and sent her back to Arkansas asleep on the bus, after relieving her of four thousand dollars in cash. Unfortunately, they miscalculated the dosage, and Myrtle died upon her arrival in Little Rock.

  Martha and Raymond continued with their scam, but failed for a long time to find any suitable victims. Martha would veto any victim she thought was still young enough to have sex with Fernandez. The couple’s money had almost run out when they finally hit upon Janet Fay, a 66-year-old widow in Albany, New York.

  Janet Fay was a wealthy woman with a large apartment in the center of Albany and money in the bank. She was a pious Catholic so Fernandez took care to make lots of religious references in his correspondence. On December 30, 1948, Martha and Raymond arrived in Albany. Fernandez introduced Martha as his sister and soon Janet allowed the two of them to stay with her in the apartments. It took Fernandez approximately five days to convince Janet to marry him, clear out her account of six thousand dollars in cash, and agree to go to live with him and Martha in an apartment they had already rented in Long Island. By January 4, 1949, they had arrived by car at the apartment.

  What happened after dinner that night is unclear. Apparently Martha walked into the bedroom and saw Janet naked with her arms around Fernandez. She flew into a rage. Janet challenged Martha’s right to walk in on them in that matter and began to yell. According to Martha, Fernandez told her, “Keep this woman quiet. I don’t care what you do! Just keep her quiet!”

  Janet was bludgeoned into unconsciousness with a ball-peen hammer and then strangled using a scarf. According to Martha’s testimony, she blacked out and does not recall who did what. Martha and Fernandez then wrapped Janet’s body in towels and sheets, stuffed it into a closet, and went to sleep.

  The next day they bought a trunk and dumped the body inside, storing it at Fernandez’s sister’s home. They rented a house, then retrieved the trunk and buried it under a layer of cement in the basement of the home. They cashed Janet’s checks and typed letters to her family, declaring her happiness and announcing plans to go to Florida. The only problem was that Janet Fay did not type or own a typewriter, and suspicious relatives notified police.

  But Beck and Fernandez were already on the move, having lined up their next victim in Grand Rapids, Michigan. Fernandez was corresponding with a 48-year-old widow named Delphine Downing, who had a 2-year-old daughter, Rainelle. When Raymond wrote to her near the end of January that he was going to be passing through Grand Rapids on business with his sister, Delphine responded that she was looking forward to meeting them both in person.

  Delphine was so impressed with Fernandez’s courteous ways and considerate manner with her daughter that before the month was out she was having sex with him. Martha, in the meantime observing all this, was seething in a jealous rage. But one morning, Delphine accidentally walked into the bathroom to discover Fernandez without his wig, exposing his baldness and horrific scar. She became hysterical and accused Raymond of deceiving her. To calm her down, Martha convinced her to take some sedatives. But while she was unconscious, her daughter, Rainelle, began to cry. Martha grabbed the child and choked her into silence, leaving her throat badly bruised.

  Fernandez was upset, fearing that when Delphine woke up she’d find the bruises on her daughter’s throat and call the police. Apparently, Martha ordered Fernandez to “do something.”

  Fernandez took Delphine’s former husband’s handgun and after wrapping it in a blanket to muffle the sound, he shot Delphine once in the head as her daughter looked on. Martha and Raymond then wrapped her body in some sheets and buried her in the cellar of her home. Later they covered the hole with a layer of cement.

  For two days they prepared for their escape, cashing Delphine’s checks and looting her house of property as the 2-year-old Rainelle cried for her mother nonstop. When Martha could no longer stand the girl’s crying, she drowned her in a tub of dirty water in the basement. Raymond dug another hole for the child.

  After the murder of Rainelle, instead of leaving town Martha and Raymond went to the movies. Shortly after they returned to the house that evenin
g, police showed up at the door, having been called by suspicious neighbors. They were arrested on February 28, 1949, and quickly confessed to their crimes because they were convinced that, since Michigan had no death penalty, if they confessed they would serve a maximum of six years.

  To their shock, in March 1949 they were extradited to New York State, which had a death penalty. They stood trial there. Martha and Raymond were tried together in July 1949. Each attempted to defend the other loyally in a manner rarely seen when serial killer couples go to trial. After forty days of sensational and salacious testimony, the couple was convicted and sentenced to death. Interestingly enough, their bond of loyalty was only broken when they were on death row and Fernandez heard rumors that Martha was having an affair with a jail guard. Each began to give interviews to the press accusing the other of being a cold-blooded killer.

  Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951, along with two other convicts. It was tradition in Sing Sing that in cases of multiple executions, the weakest convict goes first. Martha was the last to die. Martha Beck’s last words to the press before she was taken away to the death chamber were, “What does it matter who is to blame? My story is a love story, but only those tortured with love can understand what I mean. I was pictured as a fat, unfeeling woman…I am not unfeeling, stupid or moronic…In the history of the world how many crimes have been attributed to love?”

  Myra Hindley and Ian Brady—the Moors Murderers

  In England, between 1963 and 1965, the young couple Ian Brady and Myra Hindley murdered five victims, children and adolescents, and are suspected of killing as many as possibly ten. While Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez could be considered profit-motivated serial killers, Brady and Hindley were ushering in the phenomena of male-female, serial sex killer couples. Their kind of depraved, sexual predatory killing had been largely unheard of before in a male and female serial-killing team.