Table of contents for Women Who Kill in Women Who Kill

SANTERIA Africa Originating in the Yoruba religion of Africa, it is a worship of that land’s elemental spirits, or Orisha, disguised as Roman Catholic saints. It was brought to America by Yoruba slaves who wished to honour their traditional practices without their masters’ knowledge. Its practices include fortune telling and the use of trance, drumming and dance as a means to communicate with their ancestors. Initiated priests and priestesses may also ritually sacrifice animals during the ceremonies. Santeria was originally an insulting term meaning ‘saint’ that was used by the slave masters to indicate the slaves’ supposedly easy conversion to Christianity. Practitioners prefer to call their religion Regla de Ocha or ‘Reign of the Orishas’. PALO MAYOMBE The Congo Developed in the Spanish Empire among Central African slaves who had…

Dear Sadie I think you should know that Ian has been cheating on you for over a year. He’s been having an affair with me since returning from Camp Suisse in August 2013. By his own admission, Ian is not in love with you, never has been and never will be … We have been sleeping together and everything else that goes with it, week in and week out for some considerable time now. Have a look around the house, there’s plenty of my things around the place. Has he even changed the sheets since we were last in there?… The sex is unbelievably fantastic, the best he’s ever had by a really, really long way. We have never been able to get enough of each other. It satisfied a…

WHAT IS A FOLIE A DEUX? Folie a deux was once a distinct, rare, recognised mental disorder/condition. It was first described in 1877. In the original description, which was a social not a psychiatric one, one person generates the delusion and imposes it on another; the other becomes resistant but gradually succumbs and the delusion has a degree of plausibility. Both are very close (usually a parent-offspring or sibling-sibling relationship) and one is usually the dominant, driving agent and the other is submissive. About 90 per cent of cases are family members and the average age is 46-53. It has been removed from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (version five), which is an indicator of its validity as a diagnosis and a condition – there is little…

Commonly referred to as ‘cyanide’, the poison ingested by Kakehi’s victims is a chemical containing a carbon nitrogen bond. While there are many places that cyanide can be found, from cigarettes to apple seeds and apricot pips, as well as burning coal, exposure to cyanide is not always instantaneously deadly. Scientists estimate that it can take only around half a gram of cyanide to kill a fully grown adult. Kakehi fed her victims poison in health drinks and capsules. The effects of such a strong chemical on the body were deadly following ingestion, which is the most dangerous kind of exposure to cyanide. In the humans, cyanide prevents the human body from fusing oxygen to make energy molecules, the tissues in the body that require energy for day to day…

When I left my home on Tuesday, Oct. 25, I was very emotionally distraught. I didn't want to live anymore! I felt like things could never get any worse. When I left home, I was going to ride around a little while and then go to my mom's. As I rode and rode and rode, I felt even more anxiety coming upon me about not wanting to live. I felt I couldn't be a good mom anymore, but I didn't want my children to grow up without a mom. I felt I had to end our lives to protect us from any grief or harm. I had never felt so lonely and so sad in my entire life. I was in love with someone very much, but he didn't love…

FAUSTINA SETTI KILLED IN 1939 An older lady, Ms Setti was a life-long romantic who simply wanted love. On giving Leonarda her life savings, she was told she would be smuggled to Pola (north-east Italy) to meet a new sweetheart and have a spell cast to secure the union. FRANCESCA SOAVI KILLED IN 1940 Miss Soavi was a teacher who had money worries. For 3,000 lire, Leonarda told her that she had arranged for her to take a new position in a girls’ school in Piacenza. Miss Soavi was murdered when she went to bid Leonarda goodbye. VIRGINIA CACIOPPO KILLED IN 1940 Ms Cacioppo was an ageing opera singer who had seen her parts diminish as she became less able to perform the roles. For 50,000 lire and decadent jewellery,…

CHURCH-GOER Dorothea used taxis to go everywhere she went. Tipping generously and developing a friendly ‘woman to woman’ relationship with her driver, this included trips to the church on Sundays. CASH DONATIONS Known in Sacramento’s political circles, Dorothea donated (some of her tenants’) cash to good causes and was regularly honoured with songs dedicated to her name on local radio. ELDERLY ADOPTEE Dorothea was ‘adopted’ by the family who owned the hostel. They grew so close as to visit her in prison after she was convicted of the murders. GOOD SAMARITAN Generous to a fault, she provided bar tabs for those she termed important citizens in the hope of using their professional services – knowledge or criminal networks – to support her empire. GOODWILL GIVEAWAYS Hosting a hostel meant managing…

300 Rounds of ammunition were discovered in Spencer’s home following her arrest 30 Shots had been fired before police blocked her view of the school with a truck 2 Innocent victims were killed, 56-year old custodian Mike Suchar and 53-year-old principal Burton Wragg 30 METRES The distance between Spencer’s home on Lake Atlin Avenue and Cleveland Elementary School 8 Children were shot as they lined up outside the school gates on Monday morning 1 Police officer, 28-year-old Robert Robb, was shot in the neck as the cops arrived on the scene…

Dr Jack Drescher was asked by court to comment on Donna Perry’s crimes because he contributed to the development of the fifth Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, known as the DSM-V. The manual describes symptoms to enable doctors to diagnose patients’ mental health issues. However, as academics such as Paula J Caplan have noted in her article “They say you’re crazy: How the world’s most powerful psychiatrists decide who’s normal”, the experiences the Manual classifies as ‘disease’ can be argued as reflecting what the people who wrote the Manual think of as mental illness, rather than being proof of something fundamentally ‘wrong’ in the body. At the time of writing, gender dysphoria is considered to be a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association. Key symptoms include ‘a…

02/06/08 Yreka, California At approximately 6am, Arias Leaves to travel to Utah. She heads to Redding to collect a rental car. 06/06/08 Salt Lake City, Utah Arias makes three purchases using her credit card at a Tesoro at approximately 4am equating in total to 15 gallons of gas. 07/06/08 Redding, California Arias returns the rental car to Budget Rent A Car after 1pm. 02/06/08 Redding, California At 8am, Arias collects a car from Redding Budget Rent A Car. 02/06/08 Monterey, California Arias stays with friends and borrows two gas canisters from them. 03/06/08 Salinas, California Arias buys a third gas canister, but apparently returns it. 05/06/08 West Jordan, Utah Arias arrives at Ryan Burns’s home at around 11am. 03/06/08 Pasadena, California Arias stops in Pasadena to buy gas at Arco…

The Sadist (1963) Directly inspired by the case, black and white shocker The Sadist keeps its inspirations carefully concealed. Kalifornia (1993) Unhinged parolee Early Grayce torments a writer on a roadtrip around serial killer murder sites. Badlands (1973) Terence Malik’s retro-tinged crime film gives the boy/girl killing spree a fairy tale quality. Hugely underated. Natural Born Killers (1994) Oliver Stone’s ultra-violent black comedy is powerfully satirical. OTHERS: Stephen King’s The Stand (1978) Bruce Springsteen’s ‘Nebraska’ (1988) Murder in The Heartland (1993) The Frighteners (1996)…

A video played to the court conclusively showed that during Van Doren’s final jump a series of deliberate malfunctions resulted in her death. As the ground drew closer, Van Doren watched as her team’s canopies safely deployed. At a height of approximately 1,000 metres she looked up at the white spare parachute that hung over her but remained closed. She looked down and back up again as she waited for the parachute to deploy. She pulled on her belt but nothing happened. In the court the video stopped there – the jury were spared the final panic-stricken seconds before Van Doren crashed into the ground.…

INSULIN USED BY: Beverly Allitt VICTIMS: Four dead, many more injured High doses of the drug, used in the management of diabetes, can lead to hypoglycemic (low blood sugar) coma and death. Allitt injected high quantities of insulin into her tiny victims. EPINEPHRINE USED BY: Kristen Gilbert VICTIMS: Four dead, two hurt A stimulant that causes the heart to race out of control when used in overdoses. Kristen Gilbert murdered four patients at a Massachusetts veterans’ hospital in this manner. She was convicted of the murders in 2001 and is serving a life sentence without the chance of parole. DIGOXIN USED BY: Charles Cullen VICTIMS: At least 29-35, possibly hundreds Used in the treatment of heart failure and to regulate the rhythm of the heart. Overdoses are lethal to people…

What is battered person syndrome? It’s a constant feeling of dread and, at worst, a fear for your life if you don’t do anything your abuser wants. What they want changes every day, so what is considered acceptable one day results in abuse the next. They belittle and manipulate you, isolate you from others, and control every aspect of your life. It makes you question everything you ever believed about yourself and you will agree to do things even against your will or values. How does it feel? It depends how long the abuse has been going on. It is a vicious cycle. The lows are followed by highs and promises that it will never happen again, and those highs become addictive. When you are abused you really can’t see…

Wigginton, aged 24 at the time of the murder, was diagnosed with Multiple Personality Disorder and was said to have five different personas. One was Bobby, a butch, man-hating lesbian that protected the other personalities of Tracey as a child, an insecure adult and an impassive witness to her life. Bobby was the murderer, but why? Tracey said she had suffered a traumatic background including being raped by her grandfather and beaten by a harridan grandmother. In a bizarre switch of Albert Bandura’s Bobo doll experiment, Bobby butchered Baldock as revenge for the abuse Tracey had suffered. Bandura had found that children learned aggression by copying and would attack the Bobo dolls after witnessing violence, literally play acting their emotions out in a context they considered socially appropriate. The fantasy…

HOW IS VX TYPICALLY ADMINISTERED TO A PERSON? VX is a liquid with the consistency of motor oil. It is not very volatile. It evaporates at a rate near that of motor oil, so it is most likely to be delivered by direct contact, as seems to have been the case in the killing of Kim Jong-nam, or as an aerosol – liquid droplets suspended in air. It is absorbed by the skin and is known to be lethal from skin contact. IN THE ATTACK ON KIM JONGNAM, THE SUSPECTS WERE NOT AFFECTED BY THE NERVE AGENT. WHY DO YOU THINK THAT IS? My understanding is that the VX was on some sort of cloth that was then wiped on Kim Jong-nam’s face. Because VX is not very volatile, it…

The old baby farmer, the wretch Mrs Dyer At the Old Bailey her wages is paid. In times long ago we’d have made a big fire And roasted so nicely that wicked old jade. THE OGRESS OF READING, EARLY-20TH CENTURY She was an unassuming, middle-aged woman, living in suburban Caversham, near Reading, in England. Many people must have passed her every day, thinking, if they thought of her at all, that she was just another mother doing her shopping, visiting family members, or carrying out her domestic chores. But behind that genteel façade was a truth that would shock and scandalise Victorian England. The woman’s name was Amelia Dyer – and she was one of England’s most notorious baby farmers. Dyer was not the ‘type’ to commit murder, and so…

“Listen, do what you gotta do… I’m not gonna let you go to jail… listen, if I have to confess, I will” COURT APPEARANCE IN 1992 A taped telephone conversation between Aileen and ex-girlfriend Tyria is played to court. It was a set-up and Ty talks Aileen into taking sole responsibility for the crimes. She does, implicating herself while painting a florid portrait of Moore as an innocent and the only kindness in the killer’s ugly world. This is a very different Aileen from the one we expect, but this glimmer of redemption – love and selflessness – is instead distorted and repurposed to feed a different narrative, that of the man-hating lesbian she-devil. “I have made peace with my Lord and I have asked forgiveness. I am sorry that…

September 2014 Sarah came round so got caught up in endless murder plots for Ian’s other half. June 2015 We’re also seriously talking of getting rid of her opponent. I agree is probably a good play… she does seem to be a totally evil bitch. August 2015 Wow, I may get to be instrumental in helping remove the awful woman! This may happen. Wow!… Am unexpectedly excited by it. Was so buzzing so much I needed a Southern Comfort to wind down a bit. A lot of texts from Sarah, Kev (Kitt’s ex-husband) not going for the idea of being a hitman after all, scuppered that idea. Plan B will be needed. When my mobile went off, Sarah, So I could say yes to her coming round and we could…

After an intense three year wait, the first day of the trial for Japan’s most prolific female killer had finally arrived. The media, which had dubbed the defendant the ‘Black Widow of Kyoto’, had speculated that her victims had been as many as 14. Each one had been – according to the prosecution – poisoned by this femme fatale who had coerced her wealthy and elderly victims into loving her. Playing the doting wife or fiancée who promised them she would be with them forever, only for multiple male companions to die suddenly and inexplicably. As the defendant took a seat, all eyes settled on the most dangerous woman in the country. Some in the gallery must have scrutinised the investigators’ instincts and as they witnessed the accused take her…

Is the term ‘black widow’ an FBI classification for serial killers? ‘Black Widow’ is a popular term. It’s not an official term or a scientific term, it’s a term the public use and it’s based on the fact that the female Black Widow spiders eat their male partners. The FBI categorises serial killers and Kakehi is what is known as a comfort/gain killer. The majority of female serial killers kill for some sort of need – a financial or emotional gain of some sorts. Kakehi was killing because she wanted her husbands’ and lovers’ money, so that was her motivation and why she killed. Female serial killers are very different from male serial killers; they kill for different reasons and typically use different methods. Female serial killers are more likely…

“CROCODILE TEARS” According to Dr Glass, Susan Smith cried “crocodile tears” when she was talking about her children on TV. “There were no tears and her recovery time from her mock ‘sad’ facial expression was too quick for it to be genuine.” TONE OF VOICE “Her inflection was upwards when she presented her plea to the public that the children needed to ‘come home with their mommy and daddy,’” said Dr Glass. “As she said this, she shook her head ‘no’. If she was telling the truth she would have nodded her head ‘yes’ as she said this.” When Smith denied having killed her children during her final interview, Dr Glass commented that the sound of her voice was the most telling aspect of all, as it was monotone. TELL-TALE…

Sacramento has made a killing from its grisly history and has no less than incorporated the property into a local sight-seeing tour. As showcased on KCRA News, guests will be greeted by none other than the multiple-murdering ‘madam’ herself – Dorothea Puente: a mannequin complete with wig, specs and a fetching overcoat just like the real thing. Her former abode was a ‘steal’ at $215,000 when bought at public auction by Barbara Holmes. It now has a pleasant sun terrace, retiled front steps, new kitchen accessories, a shower curtain of faux crime scene tape and a sign reminding all trespassers that they risk being buried in the old back yard, just like Dorothea’s victims. There’s even a grinning demon statue for those all important Instagram pics.…

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE THE TRIAL OF JODI ARIAS? I would describe it as long: we started taking the jury in December and the verdict came in May – it took months. The way it started out, she claimed that she acted in self-defence. Actually it was a very difficult case because, with the individuals involved, one of them is dead and in this instance, [self-defence] is very difficult for me to dispute. She comes across as very believable. YOU FOUND EVIDENCE THAT SHE DID NOT RETURN THE THIRD GAS CAN TO WALMART, HOW SIGNIFICANT WAS THAT TO PROVING HER GUILT? That was the defining moment because there was no way she could say that she hadn’t planned to go to Mesa, and all this proved she had gone there.…

It has been said that the Starkweather crime spree was the first killing spree in the TV era. What role do you feel television may have played in this crime? The Starkweather crimes were covered extensively in the true crime magazines of the time, and they struck a chord with readers for several reasons: first and foremost, this was the time period when anxiety and fear about juvenile delinquency and youthful criminality was running high in the nation, just after World War II. As the first wave of the baby boomers hit adolescence in the late 1950s, law enforcement authorities began to warn of a coming crime wave, as it was understood even then that younger people tended to commit more crimes. 18-year-old Starkweather and his 14-year-old girlfriend, Caril Ann…

Psychologists who evaluated Clottemans argued that she displayed signs of an Electra complex. This psychosexual condition, coined by Carl Jung in 1913, is described as the feminine counterpart of the Oedipus complex (a male’s desire to eliminate the father to take his place). Clottemans, who was approximately 20 years younger than both Van Doren and Somers, had described her relationship with the pair to psychologists. It rang true to them as that of a mother/father relationship. With Clottemans having lost her father at a young age, her relationship with Somers was thought to be highly sexual and dependent. When it was clear that Van Doren came between her and Somers’s affections, she saw no choice but to get rid of her. The complex derives from Greek mythology, taking inspiration from…

The condition was identified in 1951 and named after an 18th Century German baron who used to entertain dinner guests with tales of ridiculously exaggerated heroic deeds. Dr Richard Asher identified the syndrome in 1951 and details of the unusual condition intrigued the medical world: “The most remarkable feature of the syndrome is the apparent senselessness of it… Many of their falsehoods seem to have little point. They lie for the sake of lying.” Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy has been recognised as a form of abuse where a person either fakes or produces illnesses or symptoms in someone else. It is mostly seen in parents harming their children and is now more widely known as ‘fabricated or induced illness by carers’. It was always controversial when it was suggested by…

Her plea – guilty of the charges of manslaughter – saw Karla sent to prison where she was kept away from the general prison population for her own safety. She had a larger room and access to a university degree course in Sociology. Karla’s plea bargain was used to buy her co-operation to testify against her husband, a rapist whose crimes were proved by DNA evidence. The use of the blonde, beautiful ‘battered wife’ may have helped to convince the jurors of Paul’s misdeeds by creating a narrative that could be construed as a realistic indication of the couple’s own turbulent relationship and, by extension, an indicator of how terribly Paul might react to women he was not supposed to love. Paul would be seen as a monster of proportions…

Heroin is an opium drug derived from morphine, a medicine used to relieve pain from medical procedures. On the street, it is typically sold as a white or brownish powder that is cut with sugars, starch, powdered milk or quinine. In its purest form, heroin is a white powder with a bitter taste that is commonly produced in South America and south-east Asia. Brown heroin can be smoked or snorted as opposed to injected. Black tar heroin is sticky like roofing tar or hard like coal and is mass-produced in Mexico. Impure heroin is usually dissolved and diluted before being injected into veins, muscles, or under the skin. Users typically experience a high when the opium-based substance blocks pain receptors in the brain, leaving the user with a euphoric feeling…

What is vampire fetishism? Sexual arousal, pleasure and excitement from the act of drawing blood from a living object (typically human, but [it] could be an animal). There are overlaps with sexual cannibalism (in which blood is consumed but the sexual focus is the eating of human flesh). Other related conditions have been documented, such as odaxelagnia (deriving sexual pleasure from biting), haematolagnia (deriving sexual satisfaction from the drinking of blood), and haematophilia (deriving sexual satisfaction from blood in general), and auto-haemofetishism (for example, deriving sexual pleasure from sight of blood drawn into a syringe during intravenous drug practice). What causes it? Vampirism is rarely a single clinical condition, and may or may not be associated with other psychiatric and/or psychological disorders (e.g., severe psychopathy, schizophrenia, hysteria, and mental retardation).…

Back in the 1870s, Dyer had killed babies through neglect, either starving them or failing to get them medical attention for illnesses or diseases until they wasted away. But she was also aided by opiates. Laudanum, a solution containing morphine, was used in Godfrey’s Cordial – one of the syrups known as ‘mother’s friend’, which was often used by mothers to quieten babies. It is believed Dyer used an opiate such as laudanum to keep her babies quiet as they were dying. After receiving a prison sentence for neglect, Dyer returned to her old tricks but now took active steps to kill the children she looked after, strangling them with fabric tape. Later, she proudly told police that ‘her’ babies’ bodies would be easily recognisable because of the tape she…

Michelle Carter’s trial was one of the most controversial of 2017. The sweet-looking 20-year-old Massachusetts defendant stood accused of the involuntary manslaughter of her boyfriend, Conrad Roy III, who in 2014 committed suicide by shutting himself inside his black Ford pickup truck and inhaling a lethal amount of carbon monoxide. He was 18 years old. Carter had been in a neighbouring county when the incident occurred. But when police investigated Conrad’s death they found thousands of messages between the two. The correspondence showed that Carter had at one stage attempted to prevent a suicidal Conrad from taking his own life, but almost at the flick of a switch she began to advocate his mission. Between the pair of them they planned Conrad’s death. Carter walked Conrad through every step leading…

The Slavic people in the regions of Russia tell tales of the crone, Tamara Samsonova. Hers is a modern day reworking of the adventures of Baba Yaga, the mythological creature, perhaps a witch, who killed and (some say) ate her victims, placing their skulls on the posts of her home. Baba Yaga still looms large over the family fireside, a caution to adventurous children, but in Samsonova’s real-life case, it is the adults who should have been more wary. The murderous madam did not care to hold her temper when she thought others had contravened acceptable standards of courtesy, and she would set her society on the straight and narrow, even if it meant killing the discourteous – roughly translated as anyone who annoyed her. THE ORIGINS OF BABA YAGA…

Sara Aldrete is a woman of contradictions. With the body of an Amazon, this blonde bombshell stands at over 1.8 metres tall and was a star student at her college. When classes finished, however, she would drive across the border to Mexico to become La Madrina – High Priestess of the Narcosatanica drug cartel cult. Together with her former lover Adolfo de Jesus Constanzo, she led rituals torturing then cooking human sacrifices to protect the henchmen who shipped their organisation’s marijuana far and wide. Convicted in 1990, Sara claims she was actually held prisoner and forced into participation while Constanzo led the rites, but former friends were later freaked out when remembering her knowledge of the occult long before the brains hit the pan. HUBBLE BUBBLE, DOUBLE TROUBLE! Sara grew…

“The night is dark” and “full of terrors” are the lines from Game Of Thrones that Sarah and Kitt took to heart in preparation for the murder. Sarah claimed she was reading the second book in George RR Martin’s fantasy drama series A Song Of Ice And Fire, on which Game Of Thrones is based, on the evening that Sadie Hartley was killed, but the connection runs deeper. Kitt stated that Sarah idolised the show’s character Melisandre – the Red Woman – a priestess who plays on her sexual allure to ingratiate men in order to control them. It has been reported that Kitt and Sarah engaged in a game where Sarah would draw a knife along Kitt’s throat, with Kitt ‘playing’ Sadie being intimidated or killed. At one of…

14 Male suitors that have been linked to Kakehi 135 Days the murder trial ran for before it was concluded with a guilty verdict 20 The total number of years Kakehi is believed to have operated as a killer One Billion (YEN) The amount of money Kakehi received from insurance payouts after her lovers died 1 Man survived 3 Marriages that ended in the sudden death of Kakehi’s husband…

If you were to look at pictures of Brenda Spencer as a child, you would see a freckle spotted young girl with pale white skin and fiery red hair. You would also notice her beaming smile as she lovingly holds a kitten in both hands. It is a stark contrast to the pictures that dominate the media some years later, when that same girl, now a teenager, is frogmarched away from a her San Diego home just metres from a murder scene. On a frosty Monday morning Spencer had killed two men, injured several young children and a police officer with a semi-automatic rifle. What was her reason for committing such a horrific act? “I don’t like Mondays.” The glib response sparked outrage from the public (and a number one…

The Spokane river runs through northern Idaho and Eastern Washington. It slinks through Spokane city and clatters cold around its valley. Lying in its wake were the bodies of three women. Found in 1990, they were sex workers. It took 27 years and until July 2017 for their killer to be brought before justice. In the intervening period, defendant Donna Perry (who was no stranger to a rap sheet) had undergone gender reassignment surgery after being named Douglas Perry at birth, but identifying as a woman. Donna outright denied the murders and then claimed that she had gender reassignment surgery to distance herself from the mayhem. Why did she do it? Douglas Perry was a criminal, and not a particularly petty one either. He had convictions for reckless endangerment in…

“STARKWEATHER PASSED SEVERAL POLYGROLYGRAPHS SUPPORTING TALES OF CARIL’S INVOLVEMENT” Few killing sprees have endured in the same way the Starkweather/Fugate murders have in the American media. There are many reasons for this morbid public fixation on the killings. First, the murderous spree was one of the first to be broadcast via television. Second, the brutality of the crimes took place in an unlikely place and time – in the solemn Midwest of the USA in the bitter cold of the winter. The crimes began in the same year that Sputnik was launched and when Bobby Fischer became America’s chess champion. America was attempting to wrestle with its identity on the world stage, while rock and roll music was upsetting the social balance and societal norms. The 1950s were a pastoral…

In Britain, the phrase “killer nurse” is synonymous with one name: Beverley Allitt. Her victims were some of the most vulnerable – children she was entrusted to care for in her duties as an enrolled nurse. Hiding behind the caring guise of her profession, Allitt did the unthinkable and harmed the youngsters in her care, time and time again. Four children died and several others almost lost their lives and were left disabled after Allitt gave them injections of insulin. The plump and rather unremarkable teen had started nurse training in 1988. She had many absences due to “ill health” and this meant she failed her final exams. Allitt struggled to find a job at the end of the course but the overstretched Grantham and Kesteven Hospital (now known as…

The faces in the photograph show a gorgeous young bride and her groom, just married. However, a short distance away, the girl who had been murdered by Canada’s infamous ‘Ken and Barbie’ killers had just been found. The Ken and Barbie killers, or Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo, were so named because both were visually beautiful. They had halos of blonde hair, and eyes as azure as the sea. At their hands lay the sexual assault and murder of three girls, one being Karla’s little sister, and the sexual assault or rapes of 19 or more others. The case has an enduring controversy because, while the victims were treated as little more than toys by the pair, there’s dispute as to which of them did what, why and to whom.…

Just days before Thanksgiving, on the eve of 22 November 2013, Alix Tichelman and Forrest Hayes stepped on board his luxury yacht, ‘Escape’. Hayes was a middle-aged married father of five and a high-ranking Google executive, while Tichelman was an exotic dark-haired hooker, hired for the evening by Hayes. After the pair ducked inside the lavish hideout, they stopped for a quick embrace. They began to talk and laugh, but this story was not fated to have a Pretty Woman happy ending. A short while into their meeting, Tichelman produced an array of drug paraphernalia used for administering heroin. As she cooked up the concoction, Hayes looked on nervously. The 26-year-old call girl then faced her ‘sugar daddy’ and injected herself with the substance. Feeling secure in the knowledge the…