California's Deadliest Women

David Kulczyk

Description

We like to think of women as nurturers, not murderers, but women do kill. California’s Deadliest Women is the definitive guide to the murderesses of the Golden State, a horrifying compendium of women driven to kill by jealousy, greed, desperation, or their own inner demons. From Brynn Hartman, who killed her husband, comedian Phil Hartman, to chemist Larissa Shuster, who dissolved her husband in acid, to dominatrix Omaima Aree Nelson, who cooked and ate her husband, the 28 women profiled in California’s Deadliest Women show that the fairer sex can be as evil―and as deadly―as any man.

Informations

• Publié par: Linden Publishing
• Date de parution: 01 septembre 2016
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781610352932
• Langue: English

Extrait

C ALIFORNIA S D EADLIEST W OMEN
Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms

C ALIFORNIA S D EADLIEST W OMEN
Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms
David Kulczyk
California s Deadliest Women: Dangerous Dames and Murderous Moms Copyright 2016 by David Kulczyk. All rights reserved. Illustrations copyright 2016 by Olaf Jens.
Published by Craven Street Books An imprint of Linden Publishing 2006 South Mary Street, Fresno, California 93721 [phone] / [phone] CravenStreetBooks.com
Quill Driver Books and Colophon are trademarks of Linden Publishing, Inc.
ISBN 978-1-61035-280-2
135798642
Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data on file.
This book is dedicated to James A. Kulczyk .
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank April Moore, who edited this manuscript, and whose humor, skills, and grace guided me through the creation of this book. I would also like to thank Lorraine Clarke, Richard Sinn, James Van Ochten, Monica Downs, Mark Staniszewski, Tobi Shields, Amy Scott, Dana Wackerly, Brian Crall, Lisa Tuttle, Joan Renner, Jackie Koppell, John Massoni, Joseph Palermo, Theo Dzielak, Martin Imbach, Roberta Greene, Sherilyn Powell, Jody Marx, Marta Trevino, Esty Randolph, Angela Larson, Bob Pfeifer, Marilyn Sterrett, Michael Perry, Daniel House, Jen Picard, Rebecca Perry Damsen, Michelle Kapp, Becky Hoffman, Grant Eckman, Jessica Ashley, Bob Perry, Lisa Manzer, Joe Piecuch, Diane Parker, Jack Stanis, Jeff Engelstad, Avery Cassell, Michael Ravage, Eric Cooley, Eric Bergland, Mik Nei, Bill Forman, Sun Sachs, Michael Galligan, Carol Christopher, and William Burg. And, as always, I thank my wife Donna for giving me the time, space, and patience to do this project.
Contents
Introduction
Teenage Satan Worshipper
The Evil Twin
One Mean Swede
The Bad Detective
The Doctor s Wife, Part I
The Doctor s Wife, Part II
Not So Rosy
Batgirl
Murder in Kings Canyon
She s a Man Eater
Life of Crime
The Shopping Spree Killer
A Mother s Love
I Remember Mama
He Who Laughs Last
The Doctor s Wife, Part III
What s a Girl to Do?
The Grifter
The Acid Queen
Oh My Mama
Going Postal
Really Bad Mom
Lost Little Girl
The Doctor s Wife, Part IV
An Arm and a Leg
Not So Happy Campers
She Was Boiling Mad
It Worked Once Before
Bibliography
Index
Introduction
Women have been called the gentler sex, and for the most part this is true. We don t think of women as killers, we think of them as life givers and nurturers, so when a female does kill, it shocks us. In California, murderesses are so rare there are fewer than a hundred documented cases. I did not write about every woman murderer in California, because, frankly, most cases are not interesting.
It may seem that California has more murders than anywhere else, but according to the Death Penalty Information Center report of 2013, California ranked twenty-first in the United States with murder rates at 4.6 per 100,000 people. The estimated 2014 population of California was 38.8 million people. You have a better chance of being a murder victim in twenty-one other states. As of 2016, there are twenty women on California s Death Row. Out of those, eleven are Caucasian, six are Hispanic, two are Asians and two are African-Americans.
There are few heroes in this book and no happy endings. These cases are so bizarre, so puzzling, so corrupt, so disgusting, so gory, so inhumane, and so despicable, you will never forget them.
For this collection of crimes, I created some rules. I left out poisoners and child killers. I omitted females who were taking orders from their male counterpart. No Manson Family members in this book. Angels of Death were of no interest to me as the crimes were not violent. I wanted to write about the woman murderer who got her hands bloody, who left a mess. She had to commit the murder herself. Many women, who have been charged with murder, have an accomplice or two who did the dirty work. Of the four females officially executed by the State of California-Barbara Graham, Juanita Spinelli, Louise Peete, and Elizabeth Ann Duncan-only Peete did the actual killing.
Juanita Spinelli, who I wrote about in Death in California: The Bizarre, Freakish, and Just Curious Ways People Die in the Golden State , led a gang of young thieves in San Francisco and ordered the murder of gang member Robert Sherrod after he witnessed the accidental murder of a robbery victim and could not stop talking about it. With San Francisco police searching for them, the gang fled town and hid out in a Sacramento hotel. Spinelli spiked Sherrod s drink with a narcotic and, after he passed out, had her minions beat him to death in their hotel room. They dumped him in the Sacramento River, hoping the strong current would carry him far downriver. Instead Sherrod s body got hung up on pilings, and was fished out of the river the next day. The gang was caught near the Nevada state line after Albert Ives, the man who killed the robbery victim and murdered Sherrod, realized that he was going to be Spinelli s next victim and called the police.
Louise Peete was a lifelong con artist, prostitute and thief. According to legend, Peete killed oilman Joe Appel in Waco Texas around 1912, but was acquitted because she claimed Appel sexually assaulted her. Aside from some early newspaper rumors and speculation, no other documents could be found to support this story. Also according to the legend, Peete left a trail of ex-husbands and lovers who committed suicide after she left them. I only authenticated one suicide attributed to Peete s aptitude for making her discarded lovers kill themselves. Peete served prison time for the 1920 murder of Jacob Denton, a wealthy Los Angeles mining engineer. She was released in 1939 to the custody of social do-gooder Jessie Marcy, who had lobbied the prison system for her release. Peete worked for Marcy as her caregiver and housekeeper until Marcy died of natural causes. Peete s probation officer, Emily Latham, took her in until Latham died of a heart attack in 1943. Peete married her fifth or sixth husband, Lee Borden Judson, a much older man who worked as a banker, and moved in with Arthur and Margaret Logan, a wealthy couple who had cared for Peete s daughter while Peete was incarcerated. Peete was to be the caregiver to Arthur, who suffered from Alzheimer s disease. Once Peete settled in, she shot Margaret in the head and buried her in her yard. She put Arthur in a mental hospital and started spending the couple s money. Judson did not know his wife had been in prison, and had no idea what she had done to the Logans. When police arrested Peete for Margaret Logan s murder, Judson committed suicide by jumping off the roof of an office building.
Barbara Graham is one of the saddest instances of an innocent person being condemned to the gas chamber. She was a third-generation Oakland prostitute who grew up in foster homes. As an adult she took up the family business to support her and her husband s heroin addictions and was at the wrong place at the wrong time with the wrong people. She was framed for a murder she did not commit. The mother of three was executed on the testimony of career criminals and murderers, Jack Santo and Emmett Perkins, who went into the gas chamber a few hours after Graham. Santo and Perkins were the leaders of a murder/robbery gang that operated in Northern California for almost twenty years.
Elizabeth Ann Duncan, a drifter, bigamist, and prostitute, was deeply devoted to her son, Frank. Her life revolved around him, even as he grew up and became an attorney in Santa Barbara. He made her proud, except when he secretly married Olga Kupzyck, a nurse. She wanted her boy all to herself, even though he was twenty-nine years old. Duncan was desperate. She hired a man to portray her son, while she posed as Olga, and appeared in court to have the marriage annulled. Her scheme backfired when the clerk remembered the real couple. When Olga became pregnant, Duncan could not handle it. She hired twenty-five-year-old Augustine Baldonado and twenty-two-year-old Luis Moya, two inept hitmen, to murder her daughter in-law. They tricked Olga, who was seven-months pregnant, telling her Frank was drunk and they needed her to help him out of the car. Moya clubbed her on the head with a .22-caliber pistol. They tied her up with rope and tape and drove down the coast. They originally planned to dump her body in Mexico, but the men decided that Ojai, in Ventura County, was far enough. Dumping Olga down a culvert in the mountains outside of town, and intending to shoot her, Moya discovered he broke the gun when the beat Olga with it. Moya and Baldonado took turns choking the poor woman until they thought she was dead. The two dug a shallow grave with their bare hands. Olga s autopsy disclosed she had been buried alive. Elizabeth Ann Duncan was the last female executed in the state of California. Moya and Baldonado sat down in the same gas chamber before the seat was cold.
Why were Graham, Peete, Spinelli, and Duncan sentenced to death, while other female murderers were sent to prison? What all four women had in common is they were all unconcerned with the moral values of the times and comfortable with their sexuality. Peete was allegedly married six times, Graham five, Spinelli twice. And Duncan possibly wed over twenty times. Judges and juries saw them as hooch-drinking, dope-taking loose women with sticky fingers and homicide on their minds. While that is true, three of the four technically did not kill anyone and certainly did not deserve to be executed.
There are a number of