Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Death wish

  Turning to James, she said she wished the old lady was dead. James seemed to have acted as peacemaker at first, suggesting she try again, but Wendy’s subsequent phone calls to Betty failed to resolve anything. She repeated that she wanted to kill her – and James tried to change the subject suggesting that they get married as soon as they were old enough and live far away.

  Wendy continued to talk about murdering Betty Gardner. This was probably the equivalent of fantasising out loud – many who’ve suffered for years at the hands of a violent parent or guardian have lain in bed night after night and imagined killing them. Finally, James said he’d kill Betty if that was what Wendy wanted. Wendy agreed it was, but said she didn’t think he had the guts.

  Further fantasising took place, with the teenagers planning grisly ways to dispose of Betty Gardner. In the end, James decided that snapping the old woman’s neck would be easiest.

  Killing time

  The young lovers walked the few streets to Betty’s house and went downstairs to the TV room to confront her. They’d rehearsed that Wendy would say ‘You abused me. Now it’s your turn.’ But Wendy – like most children faced with their abuser – lost her nerve.

  Betty told James to get out. Ignoring her, James kept asking Wendy what she wanted to do – and in the end Wendy shouted ‘Just do it.’ As he lunged at Betty, eleven-year-old Kathy began to scream. Wendy grabbed her younger sister, dragged her to their bedroom and rammed her head into the wall. She held onto Kathy to prevent her racing downstairs to her grandmother’s aid.

  James yanked at Betty’s neck, but it didn’t obligingly snap the way it had in his fantasies. He managed to get her onto the carpet and pulled a kite string from his pocket, looping it around her neck. He also put his foot on her back to keep her in place as he desperately tightened the string.

  Betty continued to shout and scream – and Wendy started singing songs upstairs to help drown out the noises. After a few minutes the sixty-seven-year-old’s face changed colour and blood seeped from her throat where the string was cutting into it. Ugly death gurgles began to emanate from her convulsing body. Only when her bladder let loose its contents was James sure that she was dead.

  When he confirmed that he’d killed Betty, Wendy started to sob. She hadn’t actually believed that he’d go through with it. Neither wanted to look at or dispose of the body. Like most children who kill, they hadn’t planned what they’d do after their nemesis was dead.

  Wendy cried several times that night and the next day. James was also shaken and tearful. Wendy deliberately cut herself with the scissors and James had bad dreams. Kathy would later say that she overheard Wendy moaning so she thinks the teenagers had sex (as usual, that particular detail was the one emphasised by the prurient press).

  Unable to sleep with the corpse in the adjoining room, James and Wendy carried Betty Gardner’s body to her car. They hid it in the trunk then returned to the house and swore Kathy to silence. For the first time in years they could do what they wanted. They even had money, for they’d taken the seven-hundred dollars that Betty had in the house.

  Life after death

  The next day Wendy and James took Kathy out for a pizza. Later they took her bowling. At other times, when the eleven-year-old was tired, they locked her in the house and went shopping at the mall.

  They drove the car to various fast food joints with the corpse still locked inside the trunk. At one stage they drove to the Catskill mountains where they could easily have dumped the body, but for some unknown reason they brought it back home again. They also showed the body to at least one of James’s friends.

  On the third day Kathy left the house whilst the young lovers were asleep and ran to a neighbours’. She told them of the murder and the neighbour phoned the police. The body was found and the teenagers were immediately arrested. Buzz was located and raced to Wendy’s side.

  He was shocked that his daughter had encouraged James to kill Betty – but he could understand her motivation. He told a journalist that the Child Protection Services had failed to investigate reports that Betty was abusing Wendy. He said that he’d tried very recently to get custody but had been turned down.

  James’s mother and older sister gave him emotional support but both children were refused bail and remained in youth detention centres until their trials.

  James’s trial

  James went on trial in July 1995. He had no money so was reliant on the public defender’s office. Wendy would fare better, with Buzz getting her a lawyer who he’d used in the past.

  A psychiatrist testified that James had murdered Betty in order to protect Wendy. He had been unable to protect his mother from his father’s violence but was determined to be protective this time round. He also spoke about how terrible James’s early years had been.

  It wasn’t until little James was six that his mother had been a consistent presence in his life – and by eight he knew that he might lose her at any time as his father had been granted custody. As an eleven-year-old he’d had to be physically carried to his father’s house and had run away numerous times.

  James had been clinically depressed before he met Wendy. He often couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep and was frequently tearful. Their relationship gave him love and acceptance, a reason to get up in the morning. He was also planning a future with her and couldn’t bear for Betty to separate them.

  James’s lawyers said that Wendy had been the mastermind behind the murder, that James was a troubled boy rather than a cold-blooded murderer. The prosecution argued that he was a sociopath who would kill again.

  Yet whatever James’s faults, he doesn’t appear to have been a sociopath. He was capable of loving Wendy and adored his disabled grandmother. He didn’t lack empathy – instead he empathised with Wendy’s unhappiness to such an extent that he was willing to do anything to alleviate it. He was traumatised after the murder and still found it hard to eat and sleep.

  The jury deliberated for a few hours then found him guilty of second degree murder rather than the lesser charge of manslaughter. A month later he was sentenced to the harshest penalty available, nine years to life.

  Wendy’s trial

  It was February 1997 before Wendy had her day in court. She’d been thirteen when she heard the homicide being committed – but she was now tried, at age fifteen, as an adult.

  The prosecution made the trembling teenager out to be a scheming Jezebel who had charmed her lover into carrying out the murder. But her defence pointed out that her grandmother’s treatment had amounted to physical and psychological abuse. The defence lawyer admitted that ‘This is the hardest case I ever tried in my life because she is such a little kid.’

  The defence also gave the impression that the murder was all James’s fault. This was hardly fair as Wendy had asked him to do it and had restrained Kathy whilst he choked the old woman to death.

  James agreed to testify for Wendy’s sake. As he’d already been found guilty of murder, his presence in court was likely to make her look the less culpable teenager. He had told his psychologist that he was still in love with her.

  Wendy insisted on testifying in her own defence, believing that if the jury heard what she’d been through at her grandmother’s hands they’d be more understanding. Unfortunately, like many abuse survivors, she sounded flat and cold.

  She also said that James had been violent towards her and that she’d stayed with him out of fear after the murder. Unsurprisingly, the jury weren’t convinced by this.

  Her defence was further undermined by her sister Kathy who said that the beatings with the paddle and the fly swat hadn’t been so bad. She admitted under questioning that Betty had gotten physical in other ways, including slapping Wendy’s face.

  Buzz testified in Wendy’s defence. This essentially meant that he had to sever all ties with Kathy, as she was living with other relatives. And Betty’s relatives were hotly contesting the abuse.

  Buzz said that Betty’s hit
ting Wendy had been a bone of contention between them for a long time – and that it had also distressed some of their relatives. He agreed that he’d failed her by leaving her with his disciplinarian mother. Looking over at Wendy in the dock he added ‘I should be sitting where she is.’

  It seems that Wendy was badly advised in several ways, as she was seen carrying a teddy bear after her arrest and she turned up at court in a little-girl dress. These made her look false and manipulative. Yet she was very young in some ways as Betty hadn’t liked her going out with other teenagers, instead taking her out socially to see relatives. Indeed, a psychologist testified that she had an emotional age of eight. Her mother Jann had finally died a few months previously, adding to her distress.

  That April, Wendy wept as she was found guilty of second degree murder. Her sentence was seven years to life.

  Stereotypes

  As they so often do, many laypeople bought into the traditional stereotypes of James as a remorseless teenage psychopath and Wendy as the perfect child who was led astray by him. But Wendy’s problems began long before she met James. She was so desperate for love that she came close to having sex with two previous boyfriends – and when they broke up she wrote about killing them violently. She also wrote that if anyone read her diary, she hoped they’d ‘burn in Hell.’ She was clearly a mixture of fear and despair and rage, living with a woman who constantly told her that she was turning out just like her dying mother. Eventually, something had to give.

  The feminist interpretation took a different tack, suggesting this was statutory rape with Wendy as the clear victim. But, though both teenagers were underage, the sex was consensual. James wasn’t using Wendy as a sex object. His mother said that they were clearly devoted to each other and tried not to spend a single moment apart. He bought her gifts and talked about their future and kept every one of the troubled letters she sent.

  Meanwhile those who subscribe to a wholly genetic basis for crime said that Wendy was violent like her mother was. But studies have shown that if animals are removed from an aggressive mother and placed with a non-aggressive foster mum, the young animals’ own aggression significantly diminishes. (One example of such a study is The Effect Of Maternal Environment On Aggressive Behaviour In Inbred Mice, a research paper by C.H. Southwick, published in a biology journal in 1968.) Similarly, studies have shown that animals are more likely to fight if they see the animals in the next cage fighting. Wendy was being hit by her grandmother and saw her grandmother and father have regular shouting matches, factors surely more pertinent than biology.

  Betty Gardner had her good points, giving her grandchildren physical care and helping to run a support group for widows. But her repressive parenting made both her son Buzz and grand-daughter Wendy deeply unhappy and desperate for fun.

  Update

  James passed several exams in a young persons institution. As his sentence was nine years to life, his time in prison remains indeterminate. His 1999 appeal was turned down.

  Wendy is currently incarcerated in a detention facility near Albany where Buzz visits her weekly. Assuming that she isn’t released early on appeal, she will be eligible for parole when she is twenty-one.

  12 Nobody’s Child

  Sean Richard Sellers

  Sean was born on 18th May 1969 to Vonda and Rick Sellers. Vonda had been only fifteen when she became pregnant with Sean and was sixteen when he was born. The family lived in Concoran, California but by the time Sean was three the marriage had broken up. This did nothing to improve Vonda’s volatile temper and she often hit the little blonde boy, frequently slapping him across the face.

  By the time he was five his mother had met Paul Bellofatto, a former Green Beret. Paul told Sean that he had killed the enemy whilst on duty in Vietnam. He was now a cross country trucker and Vonda decided to join him on the road.

  She gave Sean to her father and his second wife. At other times he was cared for by his great-grandparents. His mother and stepfather came home every few weeks for a short visit then left again. Each time Sean would wave them goodbye then lock himself in the bathroom and cry.

  At school he had to explain that his surname was Sellers after his natural father although his parents had the surname of Bellofatto. Plus his grandfather who he lived with had yet another surname. He knew that he was different.

  Sean was a bright little boy who liked animals and said that he wanted to be a vet when he grew up. He loved his pets but was sometimes separated from them when his mother took him away to her latest living quarters. He’d stay with Vonda and Paul for a few days or weeks then be shipped back to his grandfather or to other relatives. He had virtually no stability in his life. To the outside world he seemed unusually self-reliant – but deep down he was filled with fear, low self-esteem and an increasing rage.

  Sexual abuse

  When Sean was eight his parents again took him to live with them, this time in Los Angeles. The couple were living with relatives in an apartment block that was supposed to be childfree so he was constantly being told to keep quiet. Various relatives shouted at him and one of them made the child give him oral sex. Like most abused children, Sean thought that this was his fault. Within weeks it was clear that they were never going to play happy families so his parents shipped him back to his grandfather’s house in Oklahoma and he returned to school there.

  The next seven years passed in this way. Every so often Vonda and Paul would take Sean to live with them in their latest house. They never stayed in the one town for more than a year so he often had to cope with new schools and new friends. By now Vonda’s violence had increased and she hit her son with a belt, a hairbrush and wooden spoons. Sean tried very hard to please her then opted for trying to avoid her by staying in his room. Meanwhile Paul spent little time with his stepson and Sean came to the conclusion that the man – who he thought of as Dad – didn’t like or admire him at all.

  Vonda and Paul smoked dope and by age twelve Sean had joined them in this. He also started playing Dungeons & Dragons games.

  By the time Sean reached his teens he was filled with rage. He turned to the martial arts to improve his self-esteem and read up on how to kill people. During this period he was sent to live with an aunt and uncle who laughed at him for his interest in Ninjutsu. But Paul took him to see the film Rambo and said that soldiers should be able to kill people and not worry about it.

  When Sean was fifteen they moved him again, this time to Colorado. For the first time in ages he was happy. He joined the Civil Air Patrol and became a cadet commander. This pleased Paul and their relationship improved. But the couple decided to move back to Oklahoma which would mean Sean losing everything he’d built up. Sean begged them not to go – or to let him stay on his own – but they made him return, showing his wishes didn’t matter. Like many children, he was being given no respect.

  His needs ignored once too often, the boy gave up trying to be part of everyday life. He no longer tried to make friends and began to read up on Satanism in the hope that it would give him some control over his days.

  He and his friend Richard would talk about what it would be like to rape and kill people. They also planned robberies but didn’t carry them out.

  In pursuit of power

  The teenage Sean increasingly turned to the occult in the hope of acquiring power. He wrote in his own blood that he served Satan and added ‘to my enemies, death.’ He told his schoolmates that he saw flying demons. This isn’t unusual in poorly patented individuals. Under intense stress, people often hallucinate and see or hear things – usually of a frightening nature – that aren’t actually there.

  He got into a fight at school about satanism and when a teacher intervened she discovered he had the occult book The Satanic Bible. She called his parents who discovered he’d set up a satanic altar in his room. Sadly, this started yet another shouting match during which his stepfather yelled ‘You don’t exist.’

  Sean was now even more desperate to prove that he did exist
, to exert some form of power. He decided he’d enhance his satanic status if he broke the Ten Commandments. His seventeen-year-old friend Richard was also interested in murder and the two youths decided to kill a shop clerk called Robert who Richard knew.

  The first murder

  On 8th September 1985 the boys entered the convenience store where thirty-six-year-old Robert Bower was working the night shift. Richard was angry at Robert who had previously refused to sell him beer because he was underage.

  The boys went to the store and spoke to him for the next hour. They joked that he was at risk because the store didn’t have a security camera but Robert explained that there was only fifty dollars in the cash register at any one time. He had no reason to fear Richard and had no idea that Sean – who he didn’t know – was toting Richard’s grandfather’s gun.

  Moments later, Sean aimed the gun at the clerk’s head, fired and missed. The shocked clerk ran and Sean fired again. This shot also missed as Robert had slipped and fallen to the floor. He screamed and grabbed hold of a jacket, trying to hide behind it. Sean could see his terrified eyes. Nevertheless, he fired a third time, hitting the man and sending blood spurting everywhere. Laughing, the youths raced from the store.

  Aftermath

  No one connected the brutal killing with the withdrawn teenage boy. Sean didn’t think about the death for days – but when he did he felt superior. He wondered if his stepfather would be pleased with him for taking a life and not feeling upset about it. Paul had given him the impression that soldiers who suffered from post traumatic stress were weak.

  Sean got a job as a bouncer for a youth club. There he met a teenager called Angel and for the first time, he fell in love. Unfortunately, Sean’s mother couldn’t stand the girl who smoked and was a high school drop out. Sean thought that Angel reminded his mother of herself as a girl, acting tough but feeling lost. Vonda called Angel a tramp and a bitch and tried to split the couple up.