Sheila Isenberg - Women who love men who kill

WOMEN WHO LOVE

MEN WHO KILL

Sheila Isenberg

Women Who Love Men Who Kill
All Rights Reserved 1991, 2014 by Sheila Isenberg

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the author.

First Edition published 1991 by Simon & Schuster. This digital edition published by P and E Press c/o Authors Guild Digital Services.

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Excerpt (to be used as an epigraph) from Holy the Firm by Annie Dillard. Copyright 1977 by Annie Dillard. Reprinted by permission of Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.

ISBN: 9781625360953

Finding answers to questions about women who love men who kill has been a long but exciting quest, one I could not have undertaken without the help of many people. My mainstay throughout this process has been my husbandalways supportive, optimistic, and willing to listen, read, and reread. My thanks to my agent and editor on the original hardcover, Richard Curtis and Susanne Jaffe, to my current agent Will Lippincott for his continued support, to my friend Jed Home, whose reading of the manuscript and suggestions were invaluable, and to the Radical Debutantes for their love and support.

I am deeply grateful to the numerous professionals in psychiatry, psychology, social work, criminology, and journalism who helped and advised: Neil Kaye, M.D.; Park Elliott Dietz, M.D.; Janet Warren, DSW; Emanuel Tanay, M.D.; Jane Caputi, Ph.D.; Carl Rotenberg, M.D.; Streamson Chua, M.D.; Charlotte Kasl, Ph.D.; Michael Baden, M.D.; Abe Halpern, M.D.; Joseph Faulkner, Jr., MSW, whose thesis was the only dissertation I found on the subject; reporters Diane Albright, Angela Aiello, and Pat Plarski; Lt. Cammy Voss at Folsom Prison; and FBI Supervisory Special Agent William Hagmaier. My thanks also to colleague and friend Joan Byalin, to Helene Weinstein for her patience, to computer wizard Sarah Beaver, and to librarian extraordinaire Judy Fischetti. I am also very grateful to the many other individuals too numerous to name who graciously took the time to return phone calls, look up information, and patiently answer my endless questions.

Finally, my deepest gratitude goes to the many women who shared their stories. This book is possible only because of them.

For my father

As a news junkie and former reporter, I follow certain news items with great interest, always seeking the story behind the story. During late 1987 and 1988, Joseph Pikul, a successful Wall Street analyst suspected of having murdered his second wife, Diane, was much in the news. The story heated up when Pikul, to the dismay of many, was awarded temporary custody of his two young children. Headlines sizzled when Pikul remarried and his third wife, Mary Bainblond, attractive, twenty years his juniortestified during a custody hearing that hed slashed her dress with a hunting knife.

When I first read that Mary Bain had left her husband and young daughter to live with Pikul and his children, I became intrigued. Why did she marry a man charged with murder? Wasnt she afraid? Then, after he slashed her dress, why didnt she leave him? Mary told a Newsday reporter that she couldnt walk away from love, and on televisions A Current Affair, she described how much she loved Pikul. But why did she love him? He didnt appear particularly handsome or charismatic. He was about to stand trial for murder. What did Mary see in Pikul? Was there something within her that made her want to get involved, to take on his cause?

Marys romance with Pikul reminded me of another woman in love with a murderer, Naomi Zack. Zacks husband, the notorious murderer and jailhouse author Jack Henry Abbott, was on parole for a prison murder when he stabbed a man to death in 1981. Abbott was doing time in an upstate New York prison when Naomi became involved with him. She left her hometown and family to live near his prison. A Ph.D. in philosophy from Columbia University, Naomi was intelligent and talented. What was it about Abbott that attracted her? He had spent his life in institutions, had committed a murder only weeks after he was released, and might, one could easily assume, murder again. I had heard that Naomi was passionately in love with Abbott and viewed him as a hero, not a criminal. I wanted to know why.

As a reporter, I had often seen women in prison visiting rooms, waiting patiently to see their husbands or boyfriends. How many of those inmates were in for murder? Of the women in love with murderers, had they fallen in love after the mans conviction? If so, how did they meet?

Were these women the most passionate women of all, who would not allow even prison walls to separate them from their lovers? Were they thrill seekers? Did they find it erotic and exciting to be involved with killers? Were they damaged individuals, seeking a continuation of their pain?

I wondered: Is it possible that the men who commit an arbitrary, sordid, pathetic, and ugly crime such as murderin the words of writer P. D. Jamescan be lovable, attractive, and desirable? Or is their beauty solely in the eyes of the beholder?

Since the murderers we hear the most about are those who end up behind bars, it seemed that these women were also reacting to the prison situation; they wanted a relationship with an inmate. But would any convict do? Did women also fall for burglars, white-collar criminals, drug dealers? Or was it only murderers who drew them? If so, why? Was it something in their pasts that led them to love men who had killed?

When I started looking for answers to these questions, I found there werent any. No one had examined the phenomenon of women who love murderers. Everyone knew about these women and questioned their motives, but no one had tried to understand those motives. Police, attorneys, and prison officials were all too familiar with prison groupies. Forensic psychiatrists and social workers, who study the behavior of murderers, were well aware that many were attractive to women and formed relationships after they were convicted.

But no one knew what proportion of convicted murderers attracted women. And no one knew anything about those women. Psychiatrists and psychologists have been too busy studying the murderers themselves. It is only now that they are starting to look at murderers relationships in hopes theyll shed some light on their behavior and motives.

Apparently my curiosity is timely. As I finished the manuscript, the movie Miami Blues was released. Its plot pivots on the relationship between a charming con-man murderer and a woman who wants to believe he is really a knight in shining armor. And forensic social worker Janet Warren, DSW, like many other professionals I interviewed, said she believed it was time for specialists to look closely at the relationships between murderers and their womena crossover, she calls it, between criminology and psychology.

Using techniques I learned as a reporter, I managed to find dozens of women all over the country who were in love with murderers. I realized it would be impossible to talk to anyone involved with a murderer who was not yet convicted. Indeed, I was not able to interview Mary Bain Pikul until her husbands trial was just about over. So I limited my interviews only to those women in love with men already convicted of murder. Surprisingly, they were not hard to find.