On today's episode, we will explore the psychology behind the relationships and examine the motivations of individuals who write to and marry serial killers behind bars. What draws them to these dangerous and often notorious criminals? Is it a desire for attention and notoriety, a fascination with the macabre, or something else entirely? Whether you are a true crime enthusiast, a psychology buff, or simply curious, join me as we delve into this unusual phenomenon and seek to understand what drives these women, and men, to pursue relationships with convicted murderers.
CONNECT WITH JULIE MATTSON:
• Website: https://pushinguplilies.com
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/pushinguplilies
0:06 Welcome to Pushing Up Lilies.
0:08 I'm your host, Julie Mattson.
0:10 Pushing Up Lilies is a weekly True crime podcast with spine tingling, unusual and terrifyingly true stories from my perspective as a forensic death investigator and a sexual assault nurse examiner.
0:24 Do I have some stories for you?
0:26 Are you ready?
0:30 I'm sure that many of you are like me and that you wonder why someone would marry a serial killer or why someone would marry someone who is in prison.
0:42 So did a little research and some of the women who have married or dated serial killers said that one reason they did it is because they either had very low self esteem.
0:58 They didn't have a father figure.
1:01 They somehow believe that they could change the person they seek to nurture that little boy that the killer once was.
1:12 But in some cases, they really just hope to share in the media spotlight and get a movie or a book deal.
1:23 The one thing that they also mentioned as far as an advantage of being married to someone who's in jail or being married to a serial killer is that they knew where they were at all times.
1:36 And they didn't have to worry about the day to day issues in a relationship.
1:41 They didn't have to do his laundry.
1:43 They didn't have to cook for him.
1:46 They didn't have to wonder where he was.
1:48 Wonder why he wasn't home by nine.
1:51 Wonder who he was with.
1:54 It took a lot of that away.
1:56 It gave him a little bit of assurance.
2:00 That number one, you're not being cheated on.
2:03 Right?
2:04 Because he's in jail, he can't go anywhere.
2:08 You don't have arguments so much about money and laundry.
2:13 You don't have to worry if you're cooking something that they like or if they're not gonna like it and you just are free of a lot of those worries and arguments that you sometimes have with someone when you're married, a lot of women who marry men when they're in prison only see them for occasional visits.
2:38 And those times the men are usually on their best behavior.
2:43 Drug and alcohol use is never an issue normally.
2:47 I mean, we know that people have access to drugs in prison sometimes, but as a general rule, you don't have to deal with the everyday issues of someone overdrinking or the everyday issues of someone's drug use.
3:03 It gives women a feeling of being needed.
3:08 They know that chances are because he's in prison and has not a lot else to do.
3:14 He's probably thinking about them women also like the fact that these are dominant men.
3:21 A lot of them are very masculine, not many, but they feel like they are because they have committed murder or committed major crimes.
3:31 They feel like that they are dominant in their personalities and they're also very masculine.
3:38 Serial killers appear charming but they are very much so master manipulators.
3:48 We know this, we've seen this in trials when we see them testify many times, they know when to turn on the emotion, they change their appearance to make themselves look like an innocent person.
4:04 We know how it happens.
4:06 And women have a lot of control over the relationships when their man is imprisoned.
4:14 It's a powerful position for a woman to be in.
4:18 She has a little bit of control over him again.
4:21 No worries about him cheating, no worries about accountability.
4:28 And so this is why a lot of women become very attracted to men who are imprisoned.
4:36 And I know that I told y'all many, many times about the Museum of Death and this is in New Orleans, Louisiana and there are a lot of different exhibits there.
4:46 But one of them is the variety of letters that are there for Jeffrey Dahmer.
4:54 So he's known to have killed 17 men and this occurred between 79-91.
5:01 Of course, he kept the body parts in his freezer and other areas of his apartment.
5:06 But there are many letters there that were written by him and to him by women who were enamored by him in some way, there are a lot of photos on display and video footage and real life autopsies.
5:27 There's just a lot of really neat things to see there.
5:31 So again, I highly recommend that it's one of the very first museums that I actually walked through and read almost everything because a lot of times, I mean, I'm not a history buff, but many times I'll go into a museum and the people that I'm with will just like stop and read everything.
5:48 And I'm like, oh my God, can we get out of here, please?
5:51 But this museum was interesting to me.
5:55 I actually wanted to read all these letters because I was trying to figure out what on earth would draw a woman to Jeffrey Dahmer.
6:04 What on earth would draw a woman to Ted Bundy?
6:08 Why would you want to be married to a serial killer?
6:11 And of course, you don't have to worry about them killing you because they're in prison.
6:16 You really don't even have to see them again.
6:19 Some people just went through with the marriage for a little bit of fame and maybe they could write a book or maybe they could be interviewed by Oprah or interviewed by someone and get a little bit of attention drawn to themselves.
6:34 Hybristophilia is actually being turned on by someone who commits a violent crime and that explains why some people willingly marry people who are in prison.
6:47 So I know we all remember Charles Manson.
6:51 He masterminded the brutal killings of Sharon Tate and six others.
6:57 But Susan Atkins was a Manson family member.
7:02 She was serving life for her role in the Tate, LaBianca murders.
7:07 She married Donald Lee Laisure at the California Institution for Women in frontier California.
7:16 And he was an eccentric self described millionaire.
7:20 He loved to tell everyone how much money he had.
7:24 Well, Atkins annulled the marriage when she found out that he wasn't quite as rich as he said he was.
7:31 And this is a bit of a turn off ladies.
7:35 He had been married about 35 times.
7:38 So something's wrong with this guy if it's not working out after 35 attempts.
7:44 She married again in 1987 to Harvard law student James Whitehouse.
7:51 Now he was 15 years younger than her.
7:55 These two were married until she died in 2009. Laisure that she was married to previously had signed his name with a dollar sign in it.
8:07 And he claimed to have met Susan while he was taking pictures along a California freeway.
8:14 Back in 1965.
8:17 He said that she drove up in a Corvette and it was love at first sight.
8:22 He also said that they communicated by E S P, which I mean, I don't know how you feel about that.
8:31 But anyway, he was 52 at the time and she was 33.
8:37 He was quite a bit older than her and he was from Texas and he drove up in a shiny Cadillac wearing an orange leisure suit and a cowboy hat and a gold belt buckle.
8:49 We all know that.
8:50 We hear the stories about Texas men that have the big gold belt buckles bigger than their head.
8:55 So this is Laisure.
8:58 He had a fat cigar and a money clip full of $100 bills.
9:04 He designed a $6000 blue satin gown back in 1981 and that's what Susan wore to their wedding.
9:15 Susan Atkins part of the Manson family imprisoned all of a sudden, meets this super rich guy from Texas who has a satin gown made just for her and she wore cross earrings with her wedding gown.
9:31 Now, he claimed that Susan was innocent.
9:35 She at that time revoked her confession of killing five people.
9:41 He claimed that he had over a dozen lawyers working on her case and that he would spend $50 million to get her out of jail and he planned to build a $12 million solar house near the prison while he was waiting for her to get out.
9:58 Now, this sounds a little eccentric.
10:00 I mean, ok, go ahead and tell people that you have a lot of money, but why would you build a solar house that costs that much money near the prison?
10:10 So they did have a ceremony on September 9th and this was back in 1981 and it lasted about an hour.
10:19 Her ring was 3.9 carats and his was 12 carats.
10:25 So they divorced again in 1981, 3 months later.
10:32 So we're guessing around December when she realized he wasn't quite as wealthy as he said he was.
10:39 She also said at that time that she was not aware that he had been married so many times before.
10:47 Apparently she didn't know him too well because they didn't even discuss his previous marriages.
10:52 But a few years later, he claimed that she stabbed him during a conjugal visit and that his rib deflected it.
11:01 Then three months after he divorced her, he said he was marrying a flight attendant before that marriage.
11:10 When Susan Atkins was first incarcerated, she was engaged to a Laurie White who she met back in 1968 but he met another woman and moved to Hawaii.
11:23So after this time is when she actually met Donald.
11:28 Now in October of 78 she was engaged to John Dyer who started writing her back in 1976 while she was in prison.
11:40 He broke the relationship off because he didn't think he should have to wait for her to be released.
11:46 And then again in 79 she was engaged to a Michael Holbrook and she broke that off because she said he was unstable and she was a little bit afraid of him.
11:57 He kept trying to reach her and she asked the jail to eventually stop taking his calls and stop taking his mail basically just not enable him to contact her at all.
12:11 So James Whitehouse, the attorney that she met after she divorced Donald, he read her book and he connected with her somehow and they became friends and he would visit her regularly.
12:27 Now he was a drug user and he was living with a bunch of people, but he wanted to get his life together.
12:35 So he moved to Hollywood and he was playing in some heavy metal bands.
12:40 And then back in 87 he spent a couple of days in jail after his band was caught with drugs.
12:46 But he moved in with his grandmother and started college and he realized he was actually in love with Susan.
12:55 So he asked her to marry him four times and they finally married in December of 1987.
13:02 And then after they got married, James Whitehouse waited three months to tell his parents.
13:09 Well, this guy is super smart.
13:11 So he was accepted into Harvard in 1989.
13:16 And then the two would have three day conjugal visits every 90 days.
13:21 So he visited her two times a week on holidays.
13:25 And also during the summer, now, after she was denied parole in 2000, he hired an attorney to help with her release and it was denied again in oh five.
13:38 Then in 2008, she developed brain cancer.
13:43 Now they had been married for 21 years before she died.
13:49 And again, like he saw her two times a week for three day conjugal visits every 90 days holidays, summer.
13:59 So he obviously loved her.
14:01 He committed a lot of his time to spending with her whenever he could.
14:06 He drove seven hours two times a week just to see her.
14:11 Now, eventually, after she was diagnosed with brain cancer, she ended up having to have a leg amputated and she was having trouble speaking.
14:21 She eventually died in oh nine and he got her ashes after she was cremated, he continues to practice law to this day.
14:31 And I don't believe from what I can tell that he keeps it a secret that he was actually married to Susan Atkins, but he realized he was in love with her before he started Harvard and again was super committed to going to see her.
14:48 And then we look at Ted Bundy.
14:50 So he murdered at least 30 women between 1973 and 1978.
14:55 And his killing spree spanned seven states.
14:59 He actually had a longtime girlfriend who was the one who turned him in.
15:04 And then he later married Carol Anne Boone.
15:07 Now she allegedly helped him escape prison in 1977.
15:11 And then they got married.
15:13 Now Bundy was not permitted conjugal visits, but Boone became pregnant and named Bundy as the baby's father.
15:22 So Boone and their daughter Rose actually changed their name and haven't spoken out since he was executed back in 1989.
15:31 She did not visit her husband in the last two years of his life.
15:35 It's kind of strange because like Bundy got several marriage proposals and some of his group, he even showed up at the courthouse during his trial dressed to look like his victims.
15:48 These women all kind of thought the same.
15:51 I mean, many of them probably felt like they didn't have a father figure.
15:55 Their self esteem was low.
15:57 They thought they could change him.
15:59 They wanted to be in the spotlight, who knows what their thoughts were?
16:03 But all these women proposing to him to me is super strange.
16:08 We also look at the Menendez brothers and Lyle Menendez has been married twice since he was imprisoned for the 1989 murder of his parents along with his brother, Eric.
16:20 Now Anna Erickson and Lyle met after the first murder trial in 1993 she felt bad because it seemed like his brother was receiving more letters.
16:32 So she started writing Lyle because she felt like Eric was more popular and she didn't like that.
16:39 They married in 1996 over a speakerphone and then, oh, 1, 2001, they divorced after she found out that he'd been writing another woman.
16:52 He wasn't necessarily seeing the other woman, but he was writing her.
16:56 That is somewhat an emotional relationship which I think we would all agree that that's not ok in a regular situation.
17:05 However, I don't know.
17:07 I'm curious to see how people would feel about that if their significant other was imprisoned.
17:13 But in 2003, Lyle, wed Rebecca Snead, who was a magazine editor and they are actually still married and she visits him every weekend.
17:25 Now, Eric also married an admirer who was Tammi Ruth Saccoman when she started writing him back in 1993 after watching the trial.
17:36 So they wrote once a month and he supported her when she discovered that her husband was having a sexual relationship with her teenage daughter, which started when the daughter was 15.
17:48 And then her husband actually committed suicide.
17:51 Shortly after that, Eric and Saccoman met in person in 97 they married in 99 their wedding cake was a Twinkie and the two of them were actually never allowed conjugal visits.
18:11 And Eric's wife, Tammy wrote a memoir called, they said we'd never make it my life with Eric Menendez.
18:19 And she kind of described their strained marriage.
18:23 She said that she cried herself to sleep a lot and that it was very difficult.
18:29 She is now 56 years old.
18:32 She blamed the prison system for the distance in her marriage to Eric.
18:36 She did say that she felt like the guards actually treated her like an inmate.
18:42 But Tammy wrote this novel.
18:45 And even though Eric is serving a life sentence in the Donovan Correctional facility in San Diego, California, he and Tammy have been married for 19 years.
18:57 Lyle and his current wife, Rebecca have been married since 03.
19:03 There's something to be said again about the women who marry these men in prison again.
19:11 I think it gives them a sense of stability.
19:13 They don't have to worry about them going anywhere.
19:15 And it's a little bit interesting though how they meet.
19:18 It's crazy how many women actually write them while they're in prison.
19:24 And these are women who are really interested, who really want to meet them and who really think that their life would be better somehow if these prison inmates were a part of it.
19:37 So, I'm a little curious, would you marry a man who committed a heinous crime?
19:44 And would you be able to actually establish a nurturing lasting emotional relationship with someone like that?
19:53 Thank you so much for joining me today on Pushing Up Lilies.
19:57 If you like this podcast and would like to share with others, please do me a quick favor and leave a review on Apple podcast.
20:04 This helps to make the podcast more visible to the public.
20:08 Thanks again for spending your time with me and be sure to visit me at PushingUpLilies.com for merchandise and past episodes.