The a to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers by Harold Schechter

Author:Harold Schechter
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Non-Fiction, Psychology, Reference
ISBN: 9780671020743
Publisher: Pocket
Published: 1996-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

MARRIAGE

That some of the most notorious serial killers in history have been husbands and fathers is a striking testament to the grotesquely divided personalities of these psychopaths—their ability to lead outwardly “normal” lives while secretly engaged in the most depraved activities imaginable. The roster of homicidal family men includes Albert Fish, John Wayne Gacy, Albert DeSalvo, and Andrei Chikatilo. It comes as no surprise to learn that their marriages weren’t exactly made in heaven.

Though DeSalvo’s wife never divorced him, his unslakable sex drive (reputedly, he insisted on lovemaking as often as six times a day) turned her life into an unremitting ordeal. Other women haven’t displayed Mrs. DeSalvo’s tolerance. After being driven to distraction by his incessant sexual demands, Earle Leonard Nelson’s sixty-year-old wife finally kicked him out of the house (at which point he began venting his libido by raping and strangling elderly landladies from coast to coast).

Three wives abandoned Angelo Buono—one of the “Hillside Stranglers”—in rapid succession because of his brutal sex habits (one wife alleged that Buono sodomized her in front of the children). After putting up with his “peculiarities” for almost twenty years—such as his tendency to stroll around the house naked while screaming, “I am Christ!”—Fish’s first wife, Anna, finally ran off with a young lover. Fish proceeded to woo and wed a string of desperate widows, each of whom dumped him the moment she discovered his fondness for such nuptial pastimes as flagellation and coprophagy.

Gacy’s first wife filed for divorce on the day he was sentenced to prison on sodomy charges. His second marriage likewise fell apart after it became clear that Gacy’s preferred form of sex involved young male pickups. His wife had no idea, of course, that the crawl space beneath their suburban home contained the corpses of several dozen of these victims. She herself escaped unscathed. The wife of British sex slayer John Reginald Christie wasn’t as lucky. She ended up as one of his victims, her body stashed beneath the dining room floorboards of their London flat (see Homebodies).

By contrast, some serial killers actually manage to remain contentedly married to women who never suspect that their husbands are anything other than ordinary, if slightly eccentric, individuals. This was true of Peter Kürten, one of the most appalling lust murderers of the twentieth century, whose devoted wife had no inkling that her husband was the infamous “Monster of Düsseldorf.”

Even more unbelievable are those cases in which the wives are not only aware of their husbands’ depravities but also actively participate in them. Gerald Gallego’s seventh wife, Charlene, helped lure young female victims into his clutches by promising them free marijuana. And the British sex slayer Rosemary West allegedly helped her husband, Fred, torture and murder ten people—including their own sixteen-year-old daughter (see Killer Couples).

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