Love to Death: How a Couple Killed Lonely Women

Serial killers don't always wait for their victims in dark alleys or vacant lots. They often operate online, via social networks and instant messengers. Before the digital age, danger lurked for regulars of the dating sections of newspapers. In the US, criminals loved the "Lonely Hearts" section the most. It was there that the "laughing killer" Nannie Doss found her husbands. It was there that the series of sinister events involving Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck began.

From 1947 to 1949, Raymond and Martha are believed to have killed up to 20 women. The exact number of victims remains a mystery, but three murders are considered proven. Their victims were lonely women who were trying to find love through newspaper ads. For this criminal duo, human life meant nothing at all. For just a few hundred dollars, this couple did not hesitate to kill not only adults, but also children.

When the killers were caught, many refused to believe that such crimes could have been committed by mentally healthy people. The two had no sympathy at all - the death of other people did not touch them at all. However, several psychiatric examinations confirmed that Martha and Raymond were sane and fully aware of their actions. As a result, the court made the only possible decision - the death sentence.

Martha Jule Seabrook, known as Martha Beck, was born in 1920 to a large family. Her hometown is Milton, Florida. She had a congenital disease that caused her body to lack iron and her metabolism to be disrupted. Because of this, Martha suffered from excess weight all her life.

The Beck family was dysfunctional. The parents drank and showed little interest in raising their children. At 13, Marta was raped by her older brother. When she told her mother about it, she blamed her daughter for everything and then beat her. It is not surprising that Marta left home as soon as she finished school.

Living on her own was not easy for Martha. Martha had no profession, and she was not hired for unskilled work because of her excess weight. The girl was clumsy and slow, and was not particularly beautiful. With great difficulty, in 1938, Martha got a job at a funeral home as an embalmer's assistant. Her duties included applying makeup to the faces of the dead and doing their hair.

At the beginning of World War II, Martha Beck moved to California and got a job as a nurse in a military hospital. She was extremely promiscuous in her relationships and by the age of 20 she was leading a stormy and promiscuous sex life. The girl became pregnant by one of the hospital employees, but he did not recognize the child and refused to marry Martha. After the birth of the baby, she quit and returned to her native Florida.

In 1940s America, society frowned upon women with children born out of wedlock. To avoid gossip, Martha Beck lied to everyone that she had been married to a soldier who had died during the Pacific campaign. Later, she met a local driver, Alfred Beck, and soon became pregnant with his child. They decided to legalize their relationship, but their marriage lasted only six months and broke up in 1946. As a result, Martha was left alone with two small children on her hands.

Martha Beck began working as a nurse at a Pensacola hospital, where she cared for disabled children. During the day, she performed her duties, and in the evenings, she immersed herself in reading women's novels, dreaming of true and bright love. In 1947, she decided to place an ad in the newspaper's "Lonely Hearts" section. Soon, a man named Raymond Fernandez responded.

Raymond Fernandez was born in 1914 in Hawaii to Spanish immigrants. His father was a lowly employee, prone to alcoholism and domestic tyranny. He regularly beat his wife and two sons, calling them slackers and parasites. When Raymond had to leave school and get a job, his father began taking all the money he earned and spending it on booze.

At 16, Raymond Fernandez and two friends were arrested by the police. They stole some chickens from a farmer. The families of Raymond's accomplices hired lawyers and paid damages, which allowed them to go free. But Fernandez Sr. refused to pay, which led to his son spending two months behind bars.

Shortly after this incident, the Fernandez family moved back to Spain. There, his father's affairs improved and he even became mayor of the small town of Orgiva. At the age of 20, Raymond went to Gibraltar, where he got a job as an ice cream seller. In the mid-1930s, he got married and soon four children were born into his family one after another.

By the start of the war, Fernandez was working on a ship in the Spanish merchant navy, and was later recruited by British intelligence. In 1945, he returned to his family, but soon left his wife and children and went to the United States on a merchant ship. During the voyage, he had an accident. When a storm broke out near Curacao, a heavy steel hatch fell on Raymond's head. He suffered a serious skull fracture and almost died.

The injury changed Raymond's life dramatically. The surgery left visible scars on his skull, and his hair almost stopped growing. Because of this, he began wearing a wig. Fernandez's psyche also suffered: he became hot-tempered and aggressive. He also had problems with work - because of his disability, people were reluctant to hire him, and his conflictual nature prevented him from staying even where he was hired.

In 1946, Fernandez was arrested in Florida for reselling stolen goods and sentenced to six months in prison. While in prison, Raymond met a Latin American who claimed to be skilled in voodoo magic and hypnosis. Mentally unstable, Raymond sincerely believed that he was now able to control people and subjugate women through suggestion. At the end of that year, he was released and left Florida, moving to New York.

Believing in his supposed magical powers and irresistible charm, Fernandez decided to give up his job. He planned to live off lonely women dreaming of a soulmate. Raymond charmed women by posing as a wealthy man. His first victim was Lucila Thompson. Together with her mother, she owned a boarding house where Raymond rented a room. Not long before they met, Lucila had divorced her husband and was actively looking for a new love.

Fernandez and Thompson began a romantic relationship. In 1947, Raymond convinced his girlfriend to move to Spain. Everything started off well: the couple traveled at Lucila’s expense and visited Madrid, Granada, Malaga, and La Linea de la Concepción. However, later the man made a mistake: he introduced his mistress to his wife and children. Upon learning that her chosen one had abandoned his family, but was still formally married, Thompson created a scandal and announced that she wanted to break up.

The next day, the woman's body was found in a hotel room. According to the police, she died of a heart attack caused by serious stomach problems. After that, Fernandez returned to New York and showed the mother of his deceased fiancée the will. Of course, the document was fake, but the elderly woman did not notice the trick. In this way, the criminal took possession of some of the victim's money and property.

At the end of 1947, Raymond responded to Martha Beck's ad. They began an active correspondence. Having learned that his new acquaintance had neither money nor real estate, Fernandez told her that they were not made for each other. In response, Beck said that she was going to commit suicide. What exactly pushed the inadequate killer to the next step remains a mystery, but he took pity on Martha and invited her to visit him in New York.

Marta took matters seriously: she quit her job, packed her things, and took the children. Fernandez was stunned when he saw Beck at the door with suitcases and boxes, with two children peeking out from behind. Nevertheless, he began living with Marta, but she sent the children to her mother in Florida. The couple moved into the boarding house where the murdered Thompson had lived. Over time, they succeeded in evicting Lucila's elderly mother.

A month after Marta moved in, Raymond laid all his cards on the table. He told his partner that he intended to meet women and kill them for money. Beck was not afraid and agreed to help Fernandez. Fernandez was a classic psychopath - charming, lacking empathy, and able to easily manipulate people. Beck suffered from low self-esteem and a pathological attachment to her lover, which made her ready to commit any crime for the sake of their union.

On February 28, 1948, Raymond went on a "business trip" to Fairfax, Virginia. There he met a teacher, Esther Henn, through an ad and promised to marry her. The marriage swindler and his victim got married and began living in Henn's house. Later, Martha, posing as a lonely relative, moved in with them. The criminals convinced Henn to move with them to New York. But the woman became suspicious when the groom insisted on taking out a large life insurance policy on her. She made inquiries and learned of Thompson's strange fate.

After this, Esther Henn decided to file for divorce and demanded that Fernandez return her car and the three hundred dollars she had lent him. The woman came to her senses in time, which allowed her to avoid death. Meanwhile, the criminals sold the boarding house in New York and went to Arkansas, where they had already found a new victim – Myrtle Young.

Fernandez married Young, and Marta moved back in with them as a poor relative. She even went with the newlyweds on their honeymoon to Chicago, where the couple decided to get rid of Young. On the third day of their vacation, the young wife made a scene and demanded that Marta live separately. Then the criminals gave her a sleeping pill, took four thousand dollars, and while she was unconscious, sent her back to Arkansas by bus.

In late 1948, Fernandez met a widow from Albany, Janet Fay. He introduced himself as Charles Martin and soon arrived with his "sister" to propose. He immediately reported that he had lost his wallet, and the bride allocated two and a half thousand dollars for the wedding expenses. Later, Fay gave the criminals another three and a half thousand dollars from her savings.

Shortly before the wedding, the bride began to have doubts. She found it suspicious that the "brother" and "sister" had such different memories of their childhood together. Faye also didn't like the fact that Beck was planning to live with them. When the woman shared her concerns with Raymond, the killers decided to act immediately. Beck bludgeoned the woman to death with a hammer, then filled the body with cement in the basement.

The cement over May's body had not yet set when Fernandez met Delphine Downing, a young widow from Grand Rapids, Michigan. The woman had a two-year-old daughter, Rainella. This time, the killers arrived together again, posing as brother and sister. But Beck soon became jealous of Raymond and Downing and began to insist on a quick execution.

On February 27, Beck slipped Delphine sleeping pills, passing them off as birth control pills. When the woman fell asleep, Fernandez shot her with a gun that belonged to her ex-husband. The body was taken back to the basement and filled with cement. Beck drowned two-year-old Rainella in a pool in the yard, after which the child was buried in the basement next to her mother.

The criminals planned to sell the house and forge documents in order to take over the murdered woman's accounts. In the meantime, they lived peacefully in someone else's house and even made friends with the neighbors. They told them that Delphine and her daughter had gone to visit relatives. This seemed suspicious to the neighboring couple, who had lived next to the Downing family for many years.

On March 1, 1948, Raymond and Martha returned from a movie to find themselves ambushed by police in their victim's home. They were reported by neighbors who found it strange that strangers were in charge of Downing's house. The police conducted a thorough search and found evidence that incriminated the criminals. But even when the bodies of mother and child were pulled out of the cement, Fernandez and Beck continued to deny all charges.

At first, they categorically denied their guilt, but under the pressure of evidence and witness testimony, they began to accuse each other. Beck insisted that she acted solely out of love, and Fernandez tried to shift all responsibility to his accomplice. During the investigation, the scale of the couple's criminal activity became known. It turned out that they operated in several states, leaving behind a long trail of deceived and murdered women.

Michigan police handed the men over to New York City, where they were charged with Janet Faye's murder. In June, the pair tried to feign insanity, but tests showed no signs of insanity. Their prospects were bleak: Unlike Michigan, New York had a death penalty law.

The trial began in July 1949 and quickly became one of the most high-profile of its time. The press dubbed the defendants the "lonely hearts killers," and the name stuck with the couple for a long time. The defense relied on proving the insanity of both defendants. The lawyers claimed that Fernandez suffered from the effects of a head injury, and Beck was mentally unstable due to pathological jealousy.

After a 44-day trial, Fernandez and Beck were found guilty of Faye's murder and sentenced to death by electric chair. Police were able to prove their involvement in one death, and Beck confessed to three murders. In total, the duo were suspected of 20 counts, but no evidence was found in these cases. Their lawyers filed appeals, but all were rejected. The criminals spent almost two years on death row, continuing to exchange letters and declarations of love.

On March 8, 1951, the executions were carried out at Sing Sing prison. First, Martha Beck was executed, and a few minutes later, Raymond Fernandez. Until the very end, the woman insisted that her only crime was love.

History clearly shows that even ordinary acquaintances can be deadly dangerous. Today, manipulators and predators have learned to use modern technologies, having mastered social networks and messengers. Do you think it is possible to learn to recognize such people at the early stages of communication? Share your opinion and experience in the comments!