Fiendish Killers

by Anne Williams

  Jones was sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison and eight months later a further sixty years were added, when she was convicted of injuring Rolando Santos in 1981. She was suspected in at least ten other homicides, but was spared further prosecution when Bexar County hospital inadvertently shredded medical records, destroying many pieces of evidence that had been under subpoena by the grand jury.

  Terri Rachals

  The early years of Georgia-born Terri Eden Maples paint a benign figure far removed from the label ‘murderess of the century’ she would later receive. When she was a young child, her parents divorced and after five years’ alleged sexual abuse by her stepfather, she began experiencing blackouts, losing hours, sometimes days, at a time.

  Life improved, however, and as an adult Terri married Roger Rachals, a local printer in her hometown of Albany. They had a son, Chad, and became a typical American suburban family, attending church every Sunday, with Terri even teaching in Sunday School. It appeared the dark days of her youth had thankfully had little effect.

  Seen as a caring, sensitive member of their community, Rachals went into nursing and after two years’ training began work at nearby Phoebe Putney Hospital in 1981 where she was soon regarded as one of the best nurses on the staff.

  It was not until November 1985 that hospital administrators noticed a sudden rise in cardiac arrests in ICU, the department to which Rachals was assigned. A subsequent review of records showed six suspicious deaths. Police were quietly notified and post-mortems were performed. Traces of potassium chloride were found in the systems of all six; a drug more commonly used on death row inmates. It now became a homicide investigation.

  By March 1986 authorities had focused on Terri Rachals as their prime suspect and when arrested she reportedly confessed to injecting five patients with lethal doses of the drug. Later that month, Rachals was indicted on six counts of murder and twenty counts of aggravated assault against nine patients. Many had received multiple injections, some up to six. This Florence Nightingale was more ‘Nurse with a Needle’ than ‘Lady with the Lamp’.

  Terri Rachals took the stand on September 23, 1986, at Dougherty County Superior Court where she recanted her earlier confession, saying she did not remember administering the medication. To corroborate this lack of recall, a psychiatrist testified Rachals suffered from chronic depression and other related disorders that made her unaware of her actions.

  On September 26, despite strong evidence against the defendant, the jury found Terri Rachals not guilty on all except one count of aggravated assault. On that count the jury found her guilty but mentally ill. Members of the jury later explained that the prosecution had not proved its case and that her defence succeeded in proving she suffered from ‘fugue states’ – a condition whereby the afflicted would be unable to recall past events. She served her time and ‘the murderess of the century’ was released from Savannah Women’s Transitional Center in April 2003 after seventeen years’ incarceration.

  Bonnie and Clyde

  You’ve read the story of Jesse James

  Of how he lived and died

  If you’re still in need for something to read

  Here’s the story of Bonnie and Clyde.

  The above is part of a poem written by Bonnie Parker in the final weeks of her life. Ironically, the last verse in her poem predicted this couple’s demise in a particularly accurate manner:

  Someday they’ll go down together

  And they’ll bury them side by side

  To few it’ll be grief, to the law a relief

  But it’s death for Bonnie and Clyde.

  Bonnie Parker and Clyde Barrow were sweethearts who captivated the readers of the American newspapers in the 1930s with their bungling efforts to rob banks, small grocery stores and petrol stations. Even when their exploits turned to killing, they still had a band of loyal followers, with many people elevating them to the status of heroes as a massive manhunt was launched nationwide.

  BONNIE

  Bonnie Elizabeth Parker was born on October 1, 1910, in Texas, the second of three children. Her father died when she was only four, which necessitated a move to Dallas, where the family lived in relative poverty with Bonnie’s grandparents. Bonnie was an exceptionally pretty teenager with strawberry-blonde hair and freckles, and just under 5 ft tall. By the time she was fifteen she was married to a man named Roy Thornton, but the marriage was doomed from the start and they parted just a couple of years later. Desperate for money, Bonnie took a job as a waitress but quickly tired of the tedious work, knowing in her heart that there was something much better out there.

  CLYDE

  Clyde Chestnut Barrow was born on March 24, 1909, in Ellis County, Texas, into a poor farming family. When he was still a child, the family moved to Dallas where his father ran a petrol station. He hated the overcrowded conditions they were forced to live in and vowed as he grew older that he would find an improved way of life. Although not very tall, Clyde grew into a handsome young man who was the envy of many of the local girls.

  the two meet

  Bonnie and Clyde met in 1930 when Bonnie was still working as a waitress. Bonnie was nineteen and still married to Thornton, who had been imprisoned for stealing. Clyde, who was twenty-one, had never been married and had already gained a reputation along with his brother, Buck, for theft. The police were keeping a careful eye on the Barrow boys, but Clyde was unaware of this when he went to visit one of his friend’s sisters who had fallen on some ice and broken her arm. Clyde couldn’t believe his eyes when he first caught sight of Bonnie Parker making hot chocolate for her friend. They were both smitten right from the start and talked into the early hours of the morning. Over the next couple of months they were almost inseparable and Bonnie, not wanting to be apart from her lover, even agreed to drive the getaway car while Clyde and his gang robbed the local stores.

  On February 12, 1930, the police caught up with Clyde and he was removed to Waco County to face trial for past crimes. He promised to write to Bonnie and in return she promised to wait for him for as long as it took. Although they wrote regularly, Bonnie missed Clyde with a passion and decided to get nearer to him by visiting her cousin, Mary, who lived in the city. From here she was able to visit Clyde on a regular basis and became acquainted with his cellmate, Frank Turner, who had big ideas about escape. He convinced Bonnie to go to his parents’ house in East Waco, describing precisely where he had hidden a gun. If she promised to smuggle the gun into the prison, then Turner said he would take Clyde with him.

  With the prospect of being reunited with Clyde, Bonnie didn’t need asking a second time and convinced her cousin to drive her to the address she had been given by Turner. The two girls broke into the house and found the gun concealed in one of the drawers, just as Turner had said. The following day, with the gun hidden in her purse, Bonnie managed to pass it to Clyde right under the noses of the guards and then returned to Dallas to wait for him.

  Bonnie was delighted when she read the headlines about the jailbreak out of Waco, but with police cars constantly patrolling the petrol station owned by Clyde’s father, she was well aware that it would be too dangerous for him to return to Dallas. Clyde and Turner fled to Illinois, where they went back to their old ways of stealing.

  However, it wasn’t long before the police caught up with Turner and Clyde, when they were too slow to change the number plates on a stolen car. Once again the two men were returned to Waco, Texas, where Clyde waited to hear his fate. Miserable and lonely, Clyde’s punishment was worse than he feared. Because of his recent escape, the judge decided to hand out a fourteen-year sentence of hard labour and he was sent to the fearsome Eastham Prison Farm on the Texas plains. Clyde found the life unbearable under the strict rules of Eastham and the only highlight of his days was when he received a letter from his beloved Bonnie.

  Clyde was unaware that his mother had caught the attention of a sympathetic judge with her sob story. She told him that she needed an extra hand to help tend
their property as she could no longer manage. Meanwhile, Clyde was instigating his own sob story and managed to convince a fellow prisoner to let the axe slip while they were out on work duty, which resulted in him losing two of his toes. Amazingly, the ruse worked and Clyde was released a week later, hobbling on crutches but with a wide grin across his face.

  the gang

  As soon as he was a free man, Clyde headed straight into the arms of Bonnie and their love affair was reignited. Even though he was happy to be back in the arms of the one he loved, Clyde could not shake the bitter taste that Eastham had left in his mouth and he decided to form a new gang and seek revenge against the prison system. Contacting old friends and former Eastham prisoners Ray Hamilton and Ralph Fults, the gang set about stealing as much money as they could. Determined that she would never again be parted from Clyde, Bonnie went along and at the beginning it was all one big adventure.

  Although the first outing with the gang started out as exciting for Bonnie, when she saw that the boys were armed with weapons she became nervous. While she waited outside, the gang rushed into the shop but a nightwatchman had managed to raise the alarm, and Clyde rushed out of the front door motioning Bonnie to climb back into the car. Directly behind Clyde were Fults and Hamilton carrying money bags, nearly tripping over the threshold in their hurry to get away. Inside the car the men were quiet and ashen-faced, nervously looking behind them to see if they were being followed. As soon as they were clear of the town, Clyde turned to Bonnie and shouted at her to get out of the car, stuffing a load of stolen money into her purse.

  ‘I don’t want you involved!’ he shouted, forcibly pushing her out of the car, and she stood open-mouthed as the stolen car drove away taking her lover with it.

  Bonnie felt rejected and walked back into town surrounded by the sound of police sirens. Clyde, Hamilton and Fults went their separate ways and laid low for a few days. When Clyde met up with Hamilton after several days, he found out that Fults had been arrested, which meant it wouldn’t be long before the police were hot on their heels. They decided to make a run for it, but not before taking a share of the takings from a grocery shop run by John and Martha Bucher.

  Once again the two men bungled the robbery and ended up by shooting John Bucher in the chest. As he fell to the floor, his wife screamed, and Clyde and Hamilton grabbed what money they could and fled. Clyde made the decision that he was going to run until the police eventually caught up with him, and decided to get a message to Bonnie that she could either join him or stay behind out of trouble.

  Although he hadn’t wanted to implicate Bonnie in his life of crime, Clyde was beginning to realise that he couldn’t live happily without her. When Bonnie managed to dodge road blocks and police cordons to be by his side, Clyde was over the moon and they vowed they would stay side by side until the bitter end.

  overstepping the mark

  Huddled beside Clyde in the front seat, Bonnie was unaware that events were about to take a turn for the worse. After driving through the night with Hamilton and another man by the name of Everett Milligan in the rear, the foursome decided they needed to stop for a break. They had hardly stepped out of the car when two patrolmen approached them for drinking illicit alcohol. Of course the desperate men thought their past had caught up with them and pulled out their guns.

  The first patrolmen fell to the ground clutching his throat, while the second fell over with a gaping wound to his stomach. Bonnie, Clyde and Hamilton ran to the car, but Milligan in the confusion was grabbed by several angry men, who held him until the highway patrol arrived on the scene.

  Even if the killers thought they had a chance of getting away, when Milligan blurted out the name of ‘The Barrow Gang’, he had helped seal their fate.

  Unsure of where to run, Bonnie remembered that she had an aunt, Nettie Stamps, who lived on her own on an isolated farm in New Mexico. Driving as fast as he could towards Carlsbad, Clyde’s erratic speed caught the eye of another patrolman, Joe Johns, who had the forethought to write down the number plate. Johns soon found out that the car had been reported stolen several days earlier and spent the rest of the evening driving round the area with his eyes peeled.

  Johns noticed the stolen car parked on the property of Nettie Stamps. His suspicions were immediately aroused as he knew the lady well and she had always been a law-abiding citizen. He decided to investigate and went to knock on the front door. As the door opened and he went to speak he found himself staring down the barrel of gun. Clyde and Bonnie bundled the officer into their car and drove away, while her aunt, who didn’t like the men that her niece had become involved with, telephoned the police.

  The police started an all-out search for Johns, but when they could find no trace they assumed that he had been killed. However, to their great delight he telephoned headquarters several days later from San Antonio in Texas, where he had been released by his kidnappers unharmed. The media soon got hold of the story and the front pages of the newspapers carried the names of Ray Hamilton and the now infamous Bonnie and Clyde.

  bigger fry

  Ray Hamilton parted company with Bonnie and Clyde to visit his father in Michigan, but was subsequently arrested. Clyde was becoming short-tempered, weighed down with the severity of the crimes that he had committed and his anger was becoming a problem. When he robbed a small grocery shop in Sherman, Texas, with Bonnie at his side, the owner foul-mouthed him and within seconds Clyde had pulled out his gun and shot him dead. However, there were witnesses in the shop who were able to identify the killer, and the names Bonnie and Clyde were once more headline news.

  Aware that they would be caught if they spent too long in one place, Bonnie and Clyde were permanently on the move. Clyde was starting to tire of the small change he was getting from his robberies and decided to move on to bigger fry.

  His first bank job was at the prosperous Oswego Bank on November 30, 1932. Bonnie had checked the bank out the day before on the pretense that she wanted to open an account and was able to give an accurate description of the layout. However, their first attempt at a bank robbery was a failure when Clyde was confronted by an armed guard and only managed to grab a mere $80 lying on the counter.

  The couple took the risk of returning to Dallas to spend some time with their families at Christmas in 1932. While there, Clyde told Bonnie that they needed to recruit a new member into their gang now that Hamilton was out of the picture. He chose an immature sixteen-year-old by the name of William Daniel Jones, who idolised Clyde and had followed their stories in the newspapers.

  However, their latest recruitment proved to be lethal. The time had come to steal another vehicle as the one they had been driving was known to the police and they thought it would be a perfect job for Jones. Clyde spotted a Ford Coupe V-8 parked outside a house on a street in Temple, Texas. Clyde drew up next to the car and told Jones to jump out and see if the keys were still in the ignition. Jones’s hands were shaking so much he was unable to start the engine and his futile attempts woke the neighbours. Clyde by this time had lost his patience and had pushed Jones out of the way and had managed to start the engine. When the owner, Doyle, looked out of his window and saw someone trying to steal his pride and joy, he rushed out and managed to grab Clyde by his tie, while his other hand tried to get the key out of the ignition.

  By this time the rest of the street was awake and was filling up with people coming out to assist Doyle. Bonnie yelled at Clyde to leave the car, while Jones sat shaking and whimpering, not knowing what to do. Clyde took out his gun and went to hit Doyle in the head, but Doyle managed to grab the end of the revolver which caused Clyde to accidentally pull the trigger. The barrel of the gun had been facing Doyle’s chest, and he slumped to the side of the car. Clyde wasted no time in accelerating away from the scene, with Jones still crying beside him.

  Everywhere the gang turned the streets were literally crawling with police and on one occasion they were caught in a road trap and had to shoot their way out, leaving another
police officer dead. They went from town to town, robbing banks, becoming more experienced with each hit.

  two more members

  Clyde’s brother, Buck, was released from prison in March 1933 and, as his parole officers feared, he joined up with his brother to become a member of the Barrow Gang. His highly-strung wife, Blanche, reluctantly accompanied him, having had high hopes that he would now go straight.

  Clyde was overjoyed to be reunited with his brother and decided it was time to take a break from their escapades. They rented an apartment over a garage in a quiet area called Freeman Park. However, some of the neighbours who were watching them move in, were concerned when they saw them carrying rather a large number of guns out of the car. They called the police and they decided to put the place under surveillance. As they watched from unmarked cars they were suspicious of the lack of activity inside the apartment, and the fact that the curtains remained closed both day and night.

  Occasionally the 1932 Ford Sedan would leave the premises, notably on the night of a local bank robbery. When they realised that the occupants of the apartment fitted the descriptions of the Barrow Gang, the police decided to make their move. They blocked the exits from the apartment and placed cars in strategic positions to stop them from driving away. Clyde heard a sound outside the window and looked out, then turned and yelled to the others that the law were outside.