Myra Hindley

Posted on September 22, 2022 Posted in Uncategorized2 Comments

The third woman I will be covering is Myra Hindley.

Myra Hindley was born on July 23, 1942, in Crumpsall, United Kingdom. She lived in the suburbs of Manchester. Unlike the last two women I wrote about, Hindley did not grow up in any sort of traumatic or abusive household. Her father served in World War II, so he was absent for the first three years of her life. Hindley was the oldest child and had no siblings until her father returned from the war. At the age of four, Hindley was sent to live with her grandmother to give her parents space with the new baby. She never returned. Her grandmother was very lenient and often let Myra skip school. She was very intelligent and had an above-average IQ.

Growing up she had a deep and husky voice, and many considered her to be masculine. Often she was made fun of for her nose and her very aggressive personality. By the age of 18, she had a job working as a secretary in a Merchandising office. There she met a 23-year-old man by the name of Ian Brady. Hindley was love-struck by Brady from the moment she first laid eyes on him. Over time she became obsessive over him. Brady had a strange obsession with Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. Myra took it so far as dying her hair and changing her style to wear short skirts, high-heels, and waistcoats to look more German.

As much as she was in love and obsessed with Brady, she was also terrified of him. He had sick and twisted fantasies that she became wrapped up in. They fantasized about committing bank robberies, but that later turned into fantasizing about committing murder and sex crimes against children.

Their first victim was a 16-year-old girl named Pauline Reade. She was on her way to a disco when she vanished on July 12, 1963. Hindley pretended to lose an article of clothing, such as a glove and asked if Reade could help her find it. She was taken, raped, beaten, and stabbed by Brady. Her body was found over two decades later, still wearing her party dress from that night.

In December 1964, the couple committed their most monstrous crime. The couple found a little girl, 10 years old, at a fair by herself. Her name was Lesley-Anne Downey. They took her to Hindley’s grandmother’s house where she was gagged and tied up. Brady and Hindley recorded her for 13 minutes as she was begging for her mother, being forced to pose for photos undressed. Brady raped and strangled Downey.

David Smith, Hindley’s brother-in-law, heard Brady beating up one of their other victims with an ax and went to the police the next day to report them. On October 7, both Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were arrested. The police found a suitcase with photographs and audio recordings of Downey’s torture. They searched the area of Saddleworth Moor, where they found two of the five bodies.

They became known as the “Moors Murderers” and both were sentenced to life in prison. Myra Hindley was labeled “the most evil woman in Britain.” In 1987 she released a full confession of her involvement in the murders. She died of respiratory failure in the hospital on November 15, 2002, after spending 36 years in prison.

Sources:

https://www.crimeandinvestigation.co.uk/crime-files/ian-brady/crimes

https://allthatsinteresting.com/myra-hindley-moors-murders

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/the-moors-murderers-begin-their-killing-spree

Photo Sources in Order:

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/moors-murders-myra-hindley-accused-13279304

https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1001890/Moors-Murders-Pau line-Reade-necklace-Ian-Brady-Myra Hindley

https://www.imdb.com/name/nm8925914/

https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-39934966

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2022/feb/21/moors-murders-the-witness-review-these-heinous-crimes-have-nothing-more-to-teach-us

Dorothea Puente

Posted on September 14, 2022 Posted in UncategorizedLeave a comment

The next serial killer that I will be covering is Dorothea Puente.

Dorothea Puente was born on January 9, 1929, in Redlands, California. Like Aileen Wuornos, Puente grew up in an unstable household. Her mother was an alcoholic who would frequently abuse her children. Her father died of tuberculosis when she was only 8 years old, and her mother died a year later in a motorcycle accident. After both of her parents had passed away, Dorothea and her six siblings were orphaned and split up into different foster homes.

At age 16, Puente left the system and became a prostitute. Later, she met a man named Fred McFaul. They married and had two children within their three-year marriage. Dorothea was not a very involved mother, she gave her first daughter to a relative to take care of, and put the second up for adoption.

McFaul filed for divorce in 1948 and Puente moved to southern California. Her first arrest was for bouncing a check. She served four months in jail and was supposed to face probation, but fled instead. She then moved to San Francisco, where she met her second husband. Their marriage lasted fourteen years. However, she turned to drinking and gambling. Axel Bren Johannsen, her second husband, sent her to a psych ward.

She had two other marriages that did not last long before she thought herself to be a good caretaker. In the 1970s, she opened her boarding house. The only people Dorothea would take in would be what she called, “tough cases.” These would be elderly people, recovering drug and alcohol addicts, and mentally ill people. Her first boarding house ended up being shut down because she was caught writing her name on her tenant’s benefit checks.

She was sent to prison again in 1982 for theft and was diagnosed with schizophrenia. With this diagnosis, she still opened up another boarding house. This time, Dorothea took in people who were homeless and had no close relatives or friends, so no one would notice that they started to disappear. In 1988, Puente made a big mistake. She took in a 52-year-old man named Alvaro Montoya. At the time, Puente did not know that an outreach counselor named Judy Moise was watching him and was very curious when he went missing.

Moise notified the police because she knew that he stayed in Puente’s boarding house. When the police came, an innocent old lady opened the door. She simply told them that Montoya went on vacation and she had another tenant back her up. Little did she know that the tenant slipped the police a note that said she made him lie and that Montoya was not actually on “vacation.” The police searched her house and then dug up her yard, where they found seven bodies. By this time, Puente had already fled.

She went to Los Angeles, California where the police tracked her down. Dorothea Puente made herself out to be a sweet old-lady, grandma-like, but was known as the “Death House Landlady.” She ended up being charged with nine murders. She passed away at age 82 on March 27, 2011, in prison due to natural causes.

Sources:

https://www.crimemuseum.org/crime-library/serial-killers/dorothea-puente/

https://murderpedia.org/female.P/p/puente-dorothea.htm

https://www.investigationdiscovery.com/crimefeed/serial-killer/dorothea-puente-serial-killer-landlady

Photo Sources in Order:

https://murderousroots.com/episodes/dorotheapuente

https://www.abc10.com/article/news/local/sacramento/sacramento-serial-killer-dorothea-puente/103-64cb8c66-5f2a-49c6-95de-7350aebce6b8

https://www.radiotimes.com/tv/documentaries/true-crime/dorothea-puente-worst-roommate-ever/

https://www.sfgate.com/local/article/california-serial-killer-dorothea-puente-17318261.php

Aileen Wuornos

Posted on September 9, 2022September 9, 2022 Posted in Uncategorized3 Comments

Aileen Wuornos is the first woman serial killer that I will be covering in these blogs.

Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956, in Rochester, Michigan, and died on October 9, 2002, in the Florida State Prison. She grew up in a broken home and had an extremely tough childhood. Her parents separated before she was born and her father landed in prison for child molestation where he later killed himself. Her mother heavily neglected her children and that led to her abandoning Aileen and her older brother Keith. The children were then raised by their grandparents in another toxic household. Her grandmother and grandfather were alleged to be alcoholics and extremely violent towards the children. She made a statement saying that her grandfather would sexually assault her.

Wuornos left home in her early teen years and turned to prostitution. Since she was a ward in her state and was arrested several times, she decided to move to Florida. After she settled in Florida she met a woman by the name of Tyria Moore.

The two were in a committed and serious relationship starting in 1986. Aileen was open about her arrests and imprisonment in Michigan to Tyria. Between the years of 1989 and 1990, Wuornos killed at least seven men by pretending to be a hitchhiking prostitute and left their bodies on the side of the highways in Florida and southern Georgia. On November 30, 1989, their relationship took a turn.

Wuornos confessed to Moore that she killed a man. She told her that it was a client who raped her and she killed him out of self-defense. This was her first kill, a 51-year-old man by the name of Richard Mallory. He was shot multiple times in the chest and even though it was not revealed in court, he was a convicted rapist.

It was easy for her to claim that she killed him out of self-defense, so she became more confident for six other kills. Moore believed her, but after the murders kept occurring, she decided to go to the police. In court, Moore testified against her girlfriend in exchange for immunity. She got Wuornos to confess unknowingly and never saw Aileen again. The judge sentenced her to death and she was executed by lethal injection in 2002.

Her last words were, “Yes, I’d like to say I’m sailing with the Rock, and I’ll be back. Like Independence day with Jesus, June 6, like the movie, big mothership and all. I’ll be back.”