Fiendish Killers Page 12

  the ruse

  Kenneth was arrested on October 22, 1979, in Washington for the rape and murder of two university students. However, having recently seen a movie called Sybil, which was about a schizophrenic who suffered from multiple personalities, Kenneth thought he had found the perfect ruse to avoid the death penalty. He immediately claimed that he suffered from multiple personality disorder and that one of these personalities had committed the crimes. Kenneth was careful when talking to his lawyer, to leave large gaps in his stories, and a memory expert, Dr John Watkins, was called in to take a look at him. Watkins put Kenneth under hypnosis and sure enough as soon as he went under, an evil persona emerged calling himself ‘Steve Walker’. Walker quite openly admitted to killing in Bellingham in what had become known as ‘The Hillside Murders’, due to the fact that many of the bodies had been dumped on the side of a hill. He also implicated Angelo Buono in the killings, and Dr Watkins was totally convinced that he did in fact suffer from multiple personality syndrome.

  However, the hypnosis session had been video­taped and LA detective Frank Salerno asked if he could study the tape. He watched it over and over again until he found a discrepancy. He noticed that ‘Steve’ referred to himself as he and not I, and he managed to convince the court to get a second opinion. The second psychologist was Dr Ralph Allinson, but he was even more convinced than Dr Watkins, and added that Kenneth was in fact scared of his other persona ‘Steve’. They sought a third opinion and this time Dr Orne explained to Kenneth that multiple personality disorders usually involved more than just two personas. That did the trick. In the next hypnosis session, Kenneth quickly introduced the third persona, a man named ‘Billy’, and also two others. He was exposed as being a fake and, as soon as he realised that things were getting serious, Kenneth turned evidence against his cousin so that he could be spared the death penalty.

  Kenneth explained that the two men had found the prostitutes easy prey; posing as police officers with fake identity badges they had had no problem luring them into their car. The victims were then raped, tortured, strangled and dumped, all in a similar fashion.

  attempt to deceive

  While Kenneth was in jail he received a letter from a twenty-three-year-old woman by the name of Veronica Lynn Compton, asking his advice on a play about a female serial killer. The pair continued to correspond over the next few weeks and they formed a strong bond. Compton suggested that she should murder someone in the same way as he had done, proving that the serial killer was still on the loose. She visited Kenneth on September 16, 1980, and took away with her some of his semen hidden in a rubber glove concealed in a book. However, her murder attempt failed and Compton was arrested in California on October 3, 1980, and convicted of attempted murder the following year.

  When Compton’s ideas failed, Kenneth decided to write a ‘letter to the world’ in which he stated that he was the innocent party and that Angelo Buono was the true killer.

  During his trial Kenneth tried his hardest to confuse the judge by constantly changing his story, but his ploy was seen for what it was. They were both eventually found guilty, Kenneth of five of the murders and Angelo of nine, and they were sentenced to life imprisonment without the chance of parole. Angelo Buono died of heart failure in Calipatria State Prison on September 21, 2002, at the age of sixty-seven. Kenneth Bianchi is still serving his sentence in Walla Walla State Penitentiary in Washington, the sole survivor of a truly evil killing team.

  The Honeymoon Killers

  The antics of this bizarre couple had the newspaper reporters in New York City working overtime to try and keep up with a story that was so perverse, the editors even considered taming it down so as not to upset their readers. The couple in question were smooth-talking Raymond Martinez Fernandez and the emotionally vulnerable Martha June Seabrook. The unlikely partnership was ignited through a ‘lonely hearts’ column in a local newspaper, but it was a love affair that was soon to spiral out of control, culminating in murder.

  raymond fernandez

  Fernandez was born on December 17, 1914, in Hawaii, USA, to Spanish immigrant parents. When he was three years old, the family moved to Connecticut, but his father, with his dark complexion and broken English, struggled to find work. Unable to support his family, Fernandez’s father took to drinking, which ultimately led to the young boy taking the brunt of his father’s anger. A frail, weak child, Fernandez was a deep disappointment to his father who had always wanted a macho son whom he could be proud of, and this left the young boy feeling totally inadequate and fearful of his dominant father.

  To try and compensate for his appalling home life, Fernandez took to stealing and by the age of fifteen had served a term in prison. Determined to mend his ways, Fernandez, on his release, decided to try and make a fresh start and went to live in Spain, the country of his ancestors. When the Great Depression hit the USA in 1929, his parents joined him and were astonished at the change in their son. The shy, underdeveloped teenager who had left the USA, had grown into a handsome, self-assured young man, who had many friends. His genial manner won him many favours with the ladies and by the time he was twenty years old he was married to Encarnación Robles, with a young son of his own. Financial problems caused a rift between the couple and Fernandez decided to return to the USA to see if he could better himself. However, a phone call from his wife informing him that his son was very sick, forced him to return to Spain.

  Fernandez found Spain torn apart by civil war and decided to enlist in Franco’s army. After Franco’s victory, Fernandez went back to being somewhat of a drifter, taking menial jobs as a gardener and a dustman, struggling hard to try and support his family. At the onset of World War II, Fernandez came up with the harebrained scheme to travel to Gibraltar and sell ice cream to the troops stationed there. It was while he was selling his wares that he was approached by a man who claimed to be working for the British Intelligence. The man told Fernandez that he felt he would be ideal for espionage, provided he was able to be discreet and obey orders. Fernandez jumped at the chance and assured the man that he had the necessary qualities, and so for a while he became a low-level spy for the Allies. Although it is uncertain what his activities were during this period he received a glowing testimonial for his services and after the war Fernandez found it hard to return to a normal way of life.

  Fernandez decided to take employment on board a ship but a nasty accident changed the course of his life. While working on board, a hatch cover slammed shut on top of his head, cracking open his skull. The accident left him with horrific scars and very little of the thick, black hair that he was once so proud of. He started to suffer from severe headaches and everyone close to him noticed a drastic character change. The once calm and controlled man became sullen and flew into violent rages at the slightest provocation. Unable to work, Fernandez decided to return to the USA and went to live with his sister in Brooklyn. She noticed the change in her brother and became even more concerned when he started to practise voodoo worship.

  With his marriage now in tatters and his childhood insecurities rearing their ugly heads, Fernandez found it hard to form a meaningful relationship and turned to the column of the ‘lonely hearts’ advertisements in the local newspaper. Ashamed of his scars and shiny pate, Fernandez took to wearing a thick, black toupee to cover his bald patch. He met several women whom he wooed with his charm, only to swindle them out of their money and jewellery, in fact anything he could get his hands on. This went on until he came across a lonely, well-built nurse by the name of Martha Beck, a woman who was to change his life completely.

  MARTHA BECK

  Martha Jule Seabrook, as she was born, came into this world in May 1920 suffering from a glandular problem. This illness caused her to be greatly overweight which resulted in her being constantly teased by her schoolmates. To add to Martha’s lack of confidence, her father deserted the family while she was still a toddler and her brother sexually abused her when she was still in her early teens.

&n
bsp; Martha wanted to make something of her life and dreamed of becoming a nurse. Her dream turned to reality when she graduated top of her class in 1942, but Martha struggled to get a job and ended up taking second best. She accepted a position with an undertaker, helping him to prepare the corpses, and to hide her disappointment she took to reading the lonely hearts columns. Aware that she was grossly obese and fearing she would be totally repulsive to the opposite sex, she fantasised about meeting her perfect man.

  When Martha heard that there was a shortage of nurses in California, she decided to take her chances and left Florida, managing to find a job working at a hospital. Spurred on by the romance novels she frequently read, Martha had an affair with a bus driver. However, when she became pregnant and demanded that he marry her, her hapless lover attempted to take his own life and then promptly disappeared into thin air. Martha attempted to track him down, but the shame of being an unmarried mother made her crack and she had to spend a spell in a psychiatric hospital.

  After she pulled herself together, she decided to pretend she was married and bought herself a wedding ring. She also sent herself a telegram saying that her husband had been killed in action. Now a respectable widow with a new baby, Martha met her second love, a man named Alfred Beck. They married, but he divorced Martha after a year and when she was carrying her second child.

  Although her home life had taken a downward spiral, her career had taken a turn for the better. She was employed by the Pensacola Crippled Children’s Home and impressed them so much with her caring, attentive nature that she was soon promoted to superintendent. Encouraged by her success, Martha decided to take one more chance on love and joined Mother Dinene’s Family Club for Lonely Hearts, which is where she met Raymond Fernandez. She was immediately charmed by the thin, black-haired gentleman and she quickly fell hook, line and sinker. Surprisingly, Fernandez, who was used to using and abusing his women, fell for Martha despite her weight problem and they spent many hours of passion in hotel rooms.

  However, Fernandez’s ardour started to wane when he realised that Martha had very little money and he decided to return to his more ‘prosperous’ dates and wrote her a goodbye letter. Although Martha was devastated by the news that her new-found lover had dumped her, she was even more distraught when the Pensacola children’s home dismissed her on moral grounds, having learned about her illicit liaisons with Fernandez.

  Determined that Fernandez wasn’t going to slip the noose, she packed up her belongings and went to his house in New York accompanied by her two small children. Although Fernandez was shocked to find them standing on his doorstep, he did not turn them away and allowed them to stay in his house. However, she could only stay on one condition, and that was that she had to get rid of her children. Still besotted with Fernandez, Martha agreed and shipped her children off to live with some relatives back in Florida.

  Fernandez decided to be up front about his swindling practices via the lonely hearts route and instead of being appalled, Martha told him that she would help in the deceit by posing as his sister. The first victim to be taken in by this terrible twosome was a schoolteacher from Pennsylvania named Esther Henne. Fernandez started to woo Henne and despite the fact that their dates were always chaperoned by his rather overweight sister, Henne was convinced she had found true love and agreed to marry her suitor. The honeymoon was as strange as the courtship for, instead of sharing a bed with her new groom, Henne had to share her bed with her sister-in-law, too. Although Henne objected to this bizarre arrangement she soon backed down when Martha became intimidating and the threesome returned home. However, back in New York, Henne discovered that her bank account had been bled dry, but rather than have to confront her husband and his very scary sister, she decided to do a runner instead.

  For another two years the scary duo continued to attract gullible victims into their web of deceit. They would drain them of all their wealth and then make life so unbearable that they left without making a fuss. However, one day they met a bird that was not prepared to fly from the nest.

  a sinister twist

  Myrtle Young of Arkansas was a middle-aged widow who had been looking for someone to fill an empty void. She felt rejuvenated by the love letters she received from the rather dashing Fernandez and when he proposed marriage she eagerly accepted. They married in Illinois but she became outraged when told that she would have to share her honeymoon bed with her sister-in-law. Unable to pacify the situation, Martha forced her to take a powerful dose of barbiturates and then put the semi-conscious Myrtle on a bus heading back home. However, when the bus pulled in to Arkansas, the rest of the passengers realised that the woman was in no ordinary sleep and called an ambulance. By the time Myrtle Young reached the hospital she was already dead.

  Fernandez and Martha Beck continued to inveigle their way into women’s hearts, homes and back accounts but problems began when Martha made fanatical demands on Fernandez’s fidelity. She would go to extreme lengths to make sure that her lover never consummated any of his ‘marriages’, but Fernandez found it hard to be faithful and became the focus of Martha’s violent temper. Added to her obession with Fernandez, Martha also held a long-felt grudge against women from her constant taunting as a child and so she egged on her partner into more and more liaisons which gradually took a sinister turn.

  In December 1948, Fernandez, using the alias ‘Charles Martin’, befriended a sixty-six-year-old widow by the name of Janet Fay. Before meeting with Fay, Fernandez made the effort to make himself look older by putting white streaks in his hair and adding makeup to give the appearance of facial lines. By New Year, Fay was totally smitten, so much so that she agreed to hand over all her cash, bonds and jewellery to the man whom she believed would soon be her husband. Fernandez invited her to stay at the Long Island apartment that he shared with his ‘sister’, but the situation became volatile when Fay told Martha that she was going to write to her step-daughter. Martha flew into a rage and started shouting at Fay. Then Martha grabbed a hammer and starting hitting Fay around the head, cracking open the woman’s skull. Blood flowed freely from her head and as she gasped her last breath, her mouth fell open and her false teeth fell to the floor. Martha bundled the body into a cupboard, disposed of the dentures and then went to find Fernandez to discuss how best to dispose of the body. They decided to rent another house that had a cellar and Fay was later buried in the basement and covered over with a layer of cement. After the cement had dried, Fernandez returned to the estate agent and told him that they had changed their mind and no longer wished to rent the house.

  Their next victim was Delphine Downing, who was a young widow with a two-year-old daughter. She was a war widow and was delighted that her new beau was not put off by the fact that she already had a family. She introduced Fernandez and his ‘sister’ to her daughter, Rainelle, and invited the couple to stay in her home. Everything went well until Downing returned home one evening to find Fernandez relaxing on her sofa in front of the television without his concealing toupee. When she saw that he was not the young, debonair man she had believed him to be, she called him an imposter and demanded that they left her home. Attracted by the commotion, Martha came into the room and, although there are differing accounts as to how she died, it is believed that Fernandez shot Mrs Downing through the head. When Martha heard Rainelle crying upstairs, she reportedly went up and drowned the child in the bath. Mother and daughter were buried in the cellar covered by a new layer of cement.

  Having carried out their deadly deed, Martha comforted Fernandez by telling him he was still young and handsome, and they spent the remainder of the evening at the cinema. When they arrived home, tired and ready for bed, just as they were about to settle for the night they heard a knock at the door. To their astonishment they faced two policemen who wanted to question them about a woman named Janet Fay.

  Martha lost her cool and, being ever protective, told the police to leave Fernandez alone. Before she could protest any further she was handcuffed and t
he pair were taken down to the police station to answer questions.

  the end of a fine romance

  The trial of Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck took place in the summer of 1949 during a heat­wave. The court was full of intrigued spectators as the news of the ‘Lonely Hearts Killers’ hit the headlines. Martha was incensed by the comments made in the press regarding her size, described by one paper as an ‘obese ogress’. She protested by saying that she was still a human being and that insults hurt, and became famous for her outbursts in court.

  They were both extradited to New York when it was realised that Michigan could not implement the death penalty and the case went to the jury on August 18, 1949. They were both convicted of first- degree murder and were sentenced to death in the electric chair. They were both executed at Sing Sing prison on March 8, 1951, still claiming their undying love for one another. Fernandez and Beck were a truly terrifying twosome who showed complete disregard for their victims but who never wavered in their devotion towards each other.