Karla Homolka Not a First For Serial Killer Couples

"Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters" a history of serial homicide by Peter Vronsky recently published by Penguin Berkley Books, reports that the Bernardo Homolka case in Ontario, Canada, is relatively typical for serial killer couples.

(PRWEB) April 19, 2005

"Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters" a book by Peter Vronsky recently published by Penguin Berkley Books, describes several cases of male-female serial killer couples in the USA, Canada, and England, including the case of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, who videotaped the rapes of their victims before killing them. (See: http://www.petervronsky.com )

As Canada prepares for the upcoming release from prison of serial killer partner Karla Homolka, Vronsky reminds us that there is nothing especially new or unique to the Bernardo Homolka crimes. “The case is similar to the Moors murders in England in the 1960s, when Myra Hindley and Ian Brady, tortured, raped, and killed several children, recording their cries on audio tape,” Vronsky says. “Nor is Homolka’s rape of her younger sister particularly unique; husband and wife serial killers Fred and Rose West in England raped and murdered their own daughter.”

In his book, along with the Homolka case and others, Vronsky describes the case of husband and wife serial killers Charlene and Gerald Gallego in California and Nevada in the late 1970s. Exactly like Homolka, Charlene lured teenage female victims in shopping mall parking lots into her husband’s van. The couple would then rape and torture the girls before driving them out into the desert and killing them. In one case Charlene had bitten off the nipple of one of her victims. Another victim was buried alive by the couple. They killed at least ten girls between 1978 and 1980, sometimes murdering pairs of teenage victims. They were identified after their car was linked to a kidnapping and murder of a teenage couple on their high school prom night outing but police at first could not believe that a married couple were capable of such horrific murder rapes.

After their arrest, Gerald Gallego was convicted and sentenced to death with the help of Charlene’s testimony, who exactly like Homolka was given a much lighter sentence in exchange. Like Homolka, Charlene claimed to have been battered by Gerald into assisting him in the murders.

And exactly like Homolka, Charlene took university courses in psychology while in prison, served out her sentence without parole and was released in 1997, continuing to claim that she was herself a victim. Upon her release, Charlene said, “There were victims who died and there were victims who lived. It’s taken me a hell of a long time to realize that I’m one of the ones who lived.”

Two years after Charlene’s release, a Nevada farmer in 1999 uncovered a shallow grave containing two of the couple’s ten known victims “who died”--thirteen-year-old Sandra Colley and fourteen-year-old Brenda Judd, missing since 1979. Both girls were kidnapped, raped and tortured before being shot in the head.

In another case from the 1980s described in Vronsky’s book, Carol Bundy [no relation to Ted Bundy] would accompany her boyfriend Douglas Clark in his car and sitting in the back seat watched him murder prostitutes he would pick-up on Los Angeles’ Sunset Boulevard. On one occasion, when Clark brought a severed female head home, Carol washed and set the victim’s hair and applied fresh make-up to the head. Carol eventually killed a male victim and severed his head in a futile attempt to impress Clark, whose interest in her she feared was waning.

Vronsky reports that female serial killers are not as rare as we think: 16 percent of known serial killers in the United States between 1800 and 1995 were females and accounted for between four hundred and six hundred victims. Seventy-five percent of these female serial killers appeared on the scene since 1950 and a third committed their crimes with an accomplice, frequently a male.

Vronsky is currently writing his next book for Penguin Berkley, “The Female Monster”, a history of homicidal females that will be published in 2007.

"Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters" is a definitive 430-page book covering the historical, cultural, psychological and investigative aspects of serial homicide around the globe from the Roman Empire to the Washington Beltway and the Green River murders.

Peter Vronsky is currently completing his doctorate in history at the University of Toronto. He is a former international investigative television documentary producer.

For more information or to contact the author: http://www.petervronsky.com

Serial Killers: The Method and Madness of Monsters

Peter Vronsky

New York: Berkley Publishing Group, 2004.

432 Pages, Illustrated

ISBN: 0425196402

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