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In her third true crime compendium, COUPLES WHO KILL: PROFILES OF DEVIANT DUOS, Carol Ann Davis profiles joint killers. This book is a disturbing but vital wake-up call, particularly for politicians who talk big about getting tough on crime. Why do people conspire to commit murder, particularly murder of random strangers and serial murder? Profit, jealousy, mental illness, and megalomania can be motives. However, in most of the most notorious 20th century cases, Davis argues, the killers were from abusive or deeply dysfunctional family backgrounds. The authorities failed to intervene, and the children wound up in dead-end jobs, with nothing to give them the sense of self-worth their families denied. They grew up to repeat, and escalate, the cycle. Lest you dismiss Davis's contention as woolly-liberal apologism, let's run through a short roster of the cases profiled in COUPLES WHO KILL. Rose and Fred West were both battered and sexually abused by their parents throughout their childhoods. Marlene Louise Olive's adoptive father allowed her mentally ill, alcoholic mother to belittle and brutalise their daughter, whom he introduced to business colleagues as his 'date.' She and her boyfriend conspired to murder them. The serial killer Alton Coleman was prostituted as a child by his mother. Another serial killer, Kenneth Bianchi, grew up in serious neglect. So did Frances Schreuder, who conspired with her son to kill her father. That son, Marc Schreuder, had been neglected and abused by his mother from the time he was born. It is possible for the abuse survivor to escape from the cycle before he or she becomes homicidal, Davis concedes, but the people who do tend either to find something healthy to be passionate about or to internalise the abuse instead of radiating it outward. Most of the crimes Davis surveys took place in the 20th century, and the earliest killers profiled were Victorian. However, the patterns she identifies have nothing to do with 'modern culture', as one legendary case that Davis does not mention demonstrates. The Renaissance woman Beatrice Cenci, a 22-year-old daughter of one of the more powerful and influential aristocratic families in 16th century Rome, conspired with her stepmother, her brother and her reputed lover to murder her father, a powerful Count whose reputed father was Pope Alexander VI. In 1599, after the lover was murdered by the command of a priest who then fled the city, the regime of Pope Clement VIII subjected the remaining members of the conspiracy to torture, trial, ultimately convicting and executing them. During the trial, the Cencis' lawyer revealed that the Count had raped his daughter, and had terrorised his entire household for years. Indeed, earlier judicial records show that sexagenarian murder victim had been in and out of the courts, charged and sometimes convicted of violent crimes, including numerous sexual assaults, since he was 11 years old. Davis's profiles suggest that, although the technology of murder has in some respects changed, human psychology and the failure of politicians to recognise domestic violence as a catalyst for supposedly inexplicable crimes has not. Davis's repetition of certain phrases, such as 'leastways,' becomes mildly annoying. In one instance, that phrase turns up twice on the same page. The cases are only analysed in comparison to each other in the final chapter, but it should have been the introduction, especially as the book does not have an introductory chapter, but only a one-page preface. However, COUPLES WHO KILL remains an eye-opening, if horrifying, read. A copy of it, along with copies of Davis's WOMEN WHO KILL and CHILDREN WHO KILL, should be posted to all politicians. If they really want to reduce violent crime, they should resolve to be tough on domestic violence, child neglect, and prostitution.
Reviewed by Rebecca Nesvet, April 2005
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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