Marceline Baldwin (1927–1978) was a trainee nurse in Richmond, Indiana, when she met Jim Jones, a hospital orderly four years her junior. Drawn to Jones’ concern for the less fortunate, she married him in 1949. Two years later, the atheistic Jones announced his intention to spread his socialistic ideals by infiltrating the church. Through a combination of faith-healing and social activism, Jones succeeded in establishing an interracial church, Peoples Temple, with Marceline acting as its maternal figurehead. During the ’60s, the Joneses relocated to California, bringing their congregation and their large family of mostly adopted children with them. Peoples Temple boomed over the next decade, becoming a major political force in San Francisco. When allegations of abuse, fraud, and embezzlement arose, Peoples Temple relocated once again — this time, to the remote jungle settlement of Jonestown, Guyana. In November 1978, Congressman Leo Ryan led a delegation of media and concerned relatives to Jonestown. The visit resulted in the assassination of Ryan, along with several members of the media and Temple defectors. Over 900 Jonestown residents subsequently perished in an act of mass murder-suicide, Jones and Marceline among them.
Veronica Compton (1957– ) was a twenty-three-year-old aspiring actress and writer when she contacted Kenneth Bianchi, a Los Angeles prisoner and one half of the ‘Hillside Strangler’ duo. They began a passionate correspondence, which led Veronica to attempt a copycat murder, with the intention of casting suspicion away from Bianchi. She was promptly arrested, and received a life sentence. During her imprisonment, Veronica attracted further media attention for an alleged relationship with another convicted murderer, ‘Sunset Strip Killer’ Douglas Clark. Veronica was released on parole in 2003.
Catherine Harrison (1951– ) and David Birnie were twelve years old when they befriended one another as lonely, troubled children in Perth, Western Australia. By fourteen, they were in a sexual relationship and regularly in trouble with the law. After a brief imprisonment, Catherine was encouraged by a parole officer to end her relationship with Birnie. At twenty-one, she married Don McLachlan, the son of her employer. They had seven children together, including a baby boy who was struck and killed by a car. In 1985, Catherine abandoned her husband and children after Birnie tracked her down. She became his de facto wife, and together they resumed their life of crime, raping and murdering at least four women in 1986. They were apprehended when a fifth victim escaped from their house. In 2005, Birnie hung himself in prison. Catherine continues to serve a life sentence.
Karla Homolka (1970– ) was seventeen when she met Paul Bernardo, a twenty-three-year-old accountant and serial rapist, on vacation in Toronto. They had sex within an hour of meeting and began dating, with Bernardo regularly visiting Karla’s family home in St Catharines, Ontario. In 1990, the pair became engaged and Karla became firmly ensconced in Bernardo’s criminal career, helping him to drug and rape her younger sister, Tammy, using anaesthetic obtained through her job as a veterinary assistant. When Tammy died from complications of the drugging, they successfully covered up their crime. Over the next two years, the couple abducted and murdered two other girls and raped several others, capturing their exploits on tape. After a brutal beating from Bernardo, Karla made a deal with the authorities that resulted in his life imprisonment and a reduced sentence for herself. The degree of Karla’s involvement was not revealed until video evidence was recovered and her immunity secured. Released from prison in 2005, Karla was last reported to be living in Guadalupe with her second husband and three children.
Wanda Barzee (1946– ) was forty when she met Brian David Mitchell, thirty-two, in a therapy group for divorced Latter-Day Saints. They began their rocky marriage soon afterward. Over the years, the pair’s religious beliefs became increasingly sectional and they began preaching on the streets of Salt Lake City. In 2002, Mitchell authored The Book of Immanuel David Isaiah, a series of ‘divinely inspired’ revelations that named him as a messiah and instructed him to take seven young wives. Later that year, they kidnapped fourteen-year-old Elizabeth Smart. She was held captive and sexually abused for nine months before the pair’s apprehension in March 2003. Mitchell received two life sentences. Wanda is currently serving a prison term of fifteen years.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
BOOKS:
Atkins, Susan and Bob Slosser. Child of Satan, Child of God. Menelorelin Dorenay’s Publishing. 2012.
Barrow, Blanche Caldwell and John Neal Phillips (ed.). My Life with Bonnie and Clyde. University of Oklahoma Press. 2012.
Battisti, Linda and John Stevens Berry. The Twelfth Victim: the Innocence of Caril Fugate in the Starkweather Murder Rampage. Addicus Books. 2014.
Brady, Ian and Colin Wilson (intro). The Gates of Janus: An Analysis of Serial Murder by England’s Most Hated Criminal. Feral House. 2001.
Crosbie, Lynn. Paul’s Cause. Insomniac Press. 1997.
Fondakowski, Leigh. Stories From Jonestown. University of Minnesota Press. 2013.
Furio, Jennifer. Letters from Prison: Voices of Women Murderers. Algora Publishing. 2001.
Görtemaker, Heike B. Eva Braun: Life with Hitler. Penguin. 2012.
Guinn, Jeff. Go Down Together: the True, Untold Story of Bonnie and Clyde. Simon & Schuster. 2010.
Gun, Nerin E. Eva Braun: Hitler’s Mistress. Bantam Books. 1969.
Jaffe, Harold. Jesus Coyote. Raw Dog Screaming Press. 2008.
Lambert, Angela. The Lost Life of Eva Braun. Arrow. 2007.
Layton, Deborah. Seductive Poison: A Jonestown Survivor’s Story of Life and Death in the Peoples Temple. Anchor. 1999.
Lee, Carol Ann. One of Your Own: the Life and Death of Myra Hindley. Mainstream Publishing. 2011.
McGuire, Christine and Carla Norton. Perfect Victim: The True Story of ‘The Girl in the Box’. Dell. 1989.
Moore, Rebecca. The Jonestown Letters: Correspondence of the Moore Family 1970–1985. The Edwin Mellen Press. 1986.
O’Brien, Darcy. The Hillside Stranglers. Running Press. 2003.
Pron, Nick. Lethal Marriage: The Unspeakable Crimes of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. Ballantine Books. 1996.
Reiterman, Tim. Raven: The Untold Story of the Rev. Jim Jones and His People. Tarcher. 2008.
Sanders, Ed. The Family. Da Capo Press. 2002.
Stan, Colleen and Jim B. Green (ed.). Colleen Stan: The Simple Gifts of Life: Dubbed by the Media ‘The Girl in the Box’ and ‘The Sex Slave’. iUniverse. 2009.
Smart, Elizabeth and Chris Stewart. My Story. St. Martin’s Press. 2013.
Smart, Tom and Lee Benson. In Plain Sight: The Startling Truth Behind the Elizabeth Smart Investigation. Chicago Review Press. 2006.
Vronsky, Peter. Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Murders. Berkley Trade. 2007.
Williams, Stephen. Invisible Darkness: The Horrifying Case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka. SDS Communications Corporation. 2013.
Wykes, Ruth. Don’t Ever Call Me Helpless. Clan Destine Press. 2013.
FILM AND TELEVISION:
Helter Skelter. Tom Gries. 1976. CBS. Television film.
Jonestown: The Life and Death of Peoples Temple. Stanley Nelson. 2006. Firelight Media. Documentary film.
Manson. Robert Hendrickson and Laurence Merrick. 1973. Documentary film.
Murder in the Heartland. Robert Markowitz. 1993. ABC. Television miniseries.
The Girl in the Box. 2008. Ermmm TV. Documentary.
The Honeymoon Killers. Leonard Kastle. 1969. Cinerama Releasing Corporation. Film.
‘The Killer Couple: David and Catherine Birnie’. Australian Families of Crime. 2010. Nine Network. Television documentary.
ONLINE SOURCES:
Alternative Considerations of Jonestown. The Jonestown Institute. San Diego State University Department of Religious Studies. http://jonestown.sdsu.edu.
Crime Library. truTV. Time Warner. www.crimelibrary.com/index.html.
R
eavy, Pat. ‘Wanda Barzee says she “learned to be submissive and obedient”’. Deseret News. 11/18/2010.
Reavy, Pat. ‘“He was a Great Deceiver,” Wanda Barzee says of her Husband’. Deseret News. 11/19/2010.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The Wheeler Centre/Readings Foundation, for granting me a 2014 Hot Desk Fellowship, without which I may never have had the confidence and structure to move forward with this book.
Kat Muscat, for bringing me into the fold of Voiceworks EdComm back in 2012 and making me an infinitely better writer as a result. You are dearly loved and missed.
All the precocious kids I met through EdComm, who’ve been some of my first ‘writer friends’, and always encouraging, brilliant, and hilarious.
Rafael Ward, Ellen Coates, and Chloe Brien for giving feedback on many first drafts of these stories, and for being such smart cookies, generally.
Victoria Marini, my agent, for your unflagging interest in my writing career from the other side of the globe.
The team at Scribe, for making this book real, and especially my editor, Marika Webb-Pullman, for taking such care with these words.
Mum and Dad, for being the kinds of parents who listen to Murder Ballads and read James Ellroy, and who are unquestionably proud to have a daughter who writes about ‘creepy’ things.
Kathy, Maggie, Nadia, and Wida, for being your wonderful, weird selves and some of my favourite people in the world.
Pepsi Max, for being such a delicious source of caffeine. Iris, for being fluffy.
Finally, I don’t know where I’d be without the love of a very good man, Kirill Kovalenko. You are all the birds, and more.
The Love of a Bad Man Page 16