There's an increasing population of women who want to date, have sex with or marry death row prisoners. Some women actually find that sexy. So I did some research in trying to understand more about why a woman would be turned on by that.
We all know women are turned on by the bad guys. Most women are turned on by bad guys because we're biological organisms, we're mammals, and a bad guy is strong (or perceived to be that way), and able to protect her because he's dangerous. The worse a guy is, the more attractive he may become to a woman. Remember the musical "Grease"? Sandy is a nice girl and she falls for Danny who is a bad boy rebel. So there's a huge physical aspect to the attraction; it's animal. A lot of times the women who seek out these inmates suffer from a variety of psychological problems like depression or poor self-esteem and they seek out the unconditional love of someone who has less than they do to make themselves feel validated.
Women also become fixated with these pieces of scum because of the popularity the media gives them. I mean, Ted Bundy became a celebrity. So did Scott Peterson -- it was all Scott Peterson all the time on television for a while. A lot of these women just cannot find love, so they pretend this is love. And a lot of women don't want to have to deal with a guy every day.
I found some information on some two sisters who did this. Two middle-aged, Christian sisters, Avril and Rose, left long-term, boring marriages for men in prison. One man had been convicted of a string of minor property offenses and the other man had killed his previous wife. His new wife, Rose, said, "I have faith that if you're genuine with the Lord, you're a new person. A lot of people have said I should be worried about him because of what he did in his background, which is pretty awful and violent, but I have no fear." Despite the women's faith, both relationships ended tragically. A week after his release, the thief blungeoned Avril to death with a hammer. The other husband ended up back in prison after trying to cut off Rose's ear and trying to pull out her teeth with pliers.
One of the realities of women being attracted to these men isn't often expressed, because it's not politically correct, but it happens to be a reality: hybristophiliacs. These are people sexually excited by violent outrages performed on others. These women often send porn pictures of themselves to the prisoners. These women are not necessarily "sit back and just get horny" about violence. A playwright, Veronica Lynn Compton, began a torrid affair with one of the Hillside Stranglers. You remember those guys? They were two cousins who abducted, raped, and mutilated very young women and then they ritualistically displayed their corpses on hillsides in Los Angeles in the 70s. Yeah.
As part of an elaborate defense strategy, one of the stranglers, Kenneth Bianchi, asked Compton to kill a woman using his M.O., because then he could say, "See. It wasn't me. I'm in here." DNA evidence was not available then. Only the blood type could be determined from the fluid samples, so he asked her to sprinkle the dead body with his sperm and passed her a sample in a rubber glove. Compton tried but bungled the attempt to murder the woman and the prospective victim got away. By the time Compton was in prison for attempted murder, Bianchi had married somebody else. And then Compton found another sexual, serial killer to romance. One year he sent her a photo of a decapitated female corpse as a Valentine's Day card.
Vicarious murder is sometimes a motivating factor. It's easier for these women to overlook the violence that offends all the rest of us if they have seriously considered it themselves. Even while the woman is the creep's culpability, it is his ability to murder that attracts her. He acted out on his rage. The woman just couldn't get around to doing that because, "I don't know, I just can't...I just can't murder." But what a turn on that he can! "I can live in the glow of his being able to let go of that inhibition when I can't." Pretty sick...pretty scary, pretty sick.
As I've always said, there are always women around to embrace evil. There are infinite numbers of stories you've heard of women who stay with their husbands after the husbands have molested the children or somebody else's children. They will defend them and they will send their own kids off to go somewhere else to keep that man. I remember one call in particular (thank God I cannot crawl through a phone line). She called to see if it was okay now that her husband (the step-father who molested both her daughters severely) was getting out of prison, if she could take him back because she "thinks he's learned his lesson". They deny what they don't want to know so they can have what they want. There's something sleazily erotic for these women. It's not just "they're dainty and scared". Wow.
I guess a lot of women use these situations as an escape route. It's tough to be something, to be someone, to build...that's tough. There's a lot of failure, frustration, and loss along the way. Success requires a lot of work, and some people don't want to work hard, so they join gangs and they steal and kill or push dope. And the women gain a sense of power and position by being associated with this sort of stuff. You become important and powerful by proxy.
So, it isn't about compassion. It isn't about really believing they're innocent...they know they're not. It's about getting off on it emotionally, sexually, psychologically...it's about those 15 seconds of fame. It's about somebody so trapped in a prison he can't fool around on you. You're safe and you own him, and all you have to do is show up with cigarettes. It's drama...it's sick. It is seriously sick. And I feel the women who do this are evil. Not pathetic, not pitiful but equally evil. They want to make an allegiance with evil because it's like being reborn with the position and power, the strength and importance and total control. But it's still evil.
