From killing for money to twisted abuse and psychopathy, each of these serial killer couples will make you sick to your stomach.
As well as being illegal and morally repugnant, committing murder is risky. The chance of getting caught is high enough when only one person does it; adding a second perpetrator only heightens the potential for error, and thus the likelihood of imprisonment.
Since spouses in the United States and Canada can’t be forced to testify against one another, enlisting your betrothed might seem like a smart move, but as these infamous and horrifying serial killer couples show, things can and still do end badly…
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka
Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka.
A gruesome pair even among serial killer couples, Paul Bernardo met Karla Homolka in mid-1980s Toronto, at which point Paul had already committed multiple rapes, Karla was 17 at the time; Paul was 23. The story goes that the two were drawn to each other almost immediately, but there apparently was a problem: Karla wasn’t a virgin.
To “solve” it, Karla said in subsequent testimony that she wanted to give her sister Tammy’s virginity to Paul that Christmas. One night, Karla decided to drug and bind her 15-year-old sister so Paul could rape her.
Somehow, the end result was even worse than what the pair had planned. After filming themselves raping and abusing Tammy’s inert body for hours, the couple retired to bed, leaving Karla’s sister tied up and unable to move. Sometime during the night, Tammy Homolka choked to death on her own vomit and died. The inquest found no evidence of foul play, despite the binding marks and violent rape, which were apparently overlooked during the autopsy.
Paul and Karla repeated the grotesque act twice more, killing 14-year-old Leslie Mahaffy and 15-year-old Kristen French. Paul also continued to rape other women in the meantime, which is how his DNA wound up in authorities’ hands.
He also made the mistake of beating Karla in 1993, after which she struck a deal with the authorities and started giving testimony, leading police to the videotapes of the murders.
Paul is currently serving life in prison, while Karla (who claimed she was abused and forced to help Paul in his murderous schemes) served 12 years from 1995 to 2007. She’s free now, and the mother of three kids, while Paul is eligible for parole in 2018.
Ian Brady And Myra Hindley
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.
Ian Brady and Myra Hindley killed five children in England between 1963 and 1965, in what became known as the Moors Murders, a string of crime that stands out even among those of other serial killer couples. Brady was born in 1938 and raised by a chaotic sequence of foster homes and juvenile detention centers throughout his early years.
By 1961, when he met Hindley, he already had dozens of convictions for burglary and assault.
This serial killer couple fell in love and stayed up late into the night reading stories about Nazi atrocities to each other. They also rented a van and robbed a few banks. Sometimes, Ian would drug Myra and rape her, which she confessed to her sister made her feel more in love than ever before.
The couple killed their first victim, 16-year-old Pauline Reade, in July 1963. After raping and beating her, the couple dug a shallow grave on the moors outside Manchester and buried her body. On November 23, 1963, they killed their second victim, John Kilbride, in much the same way. In December 1964, Myra enticed 10-year-old Lesley Ann Downey into her van and brought her home to Ian for what, by now, was their usual routine. This time, Myra made an audio recording of the murder.
As often happens among homicidal lunatics, Ian and Myra eventually took things too far. In October 1965, Ian brought home 17-year-old Edward Evans, a boy he had picked up at the train station. Once home, Brady beat him to death with a shovel in front of his 17-year-old brother-in-law, David Smith. Smith helped dispose of the body, but then he went home and told his wife. And then he told the police.
Both killers expressed remorse after getting their life sentences. Myra claimed it was all Ian’s fault, but told the court she regarded herself as worse than her partner since she had done most of the enticing. Ian took responsibility for what he had done, never asked for parole, and refuses to seek release from the secure mental hospital he’s been confined to since 1985. Myra died of pneumonia in 2002, aged 60.
Serial Killer Couples: Gerald And Charlene Gallego
Gerald And Charlene Gallego
In just a two-year period, from 1978 to 1980, Sacramento-area couple Gerald and Charlene Gallego, who rank among recent memory’s deadliest serial killer couples, murdered at least ten young people, often two at a time. Their usual method was to cruise area malls looking for teenage girls, whom Charlene would lure into their van with promises of free marijuana.
Once the girls got into the van, they were confronted with an armed Gerald, who forced them into the cargo area and bound them up for a ride out to the countryside. The victims were invariably raped, beaten, and murdered, with their bodies dumped in scattered locations from the Sierras to the Nevada desert.
The last killings were of 22-year-old Craig Miller and his fiancée, 21-year-old Mary Elizabeth Sowers, who were kidnapped at gunpoint from the Arden Fair Mall. Gerald forced the young couple into his van in plain sight of the victims’ friends, who managed to catch his license plate number and alert the police.
Gerald shot Craig right away, then he and Charlene took Mary to their apartment, where they raped and tortured her for several hours. Eventually, they drove her out of town and shot her three times.
It wasn’t long before Gerald and Charlene’s relationship hit the rocks. Shortly after their arrests, Charlene struck a deal to testify against Gerald – who she said was 100 percent to blame for everything – in exchange for a change of venue. In 1984, Gerald was given the death penalty, but the sentence was later commuted to life. He died of colorectal cancer in 2002.
Charlene served 16 years, always insisting she was practically an innocent bystander who couldn’t have done anything to stop Gerald. Today, she’s back out and living under an assumed name in Sacramento.
According to a 2013 CBS interview, Charlene is active in veterans’ charities and maintains she had no choice but to commit such atrocities as burying a pregnant woman alive and leaving bite marks all over several victims, one as young as 13.
Ray And Faye Copeland
Ray and Faye Copeland.
One of history’s worst serial killer couples, Ray and Faye Copeland were, at the time of their sentencing, the oldest people ever sent to death row. Aged 76 and 69, the two were convicted of committing five murders on their Missouri ranch in 1989. Unlike the other couples on this list, there doesn’t seem to have been a pathological element to their killings; the Copelands appeared to have been motivated by old-fashioned greed.
Ray Copeland was born on an Oklahoma dirt farm in 1914. Like many other men his age, he drifted around the Dust Bowl during the Depression, looking for work. Unlike many men, he financed his travels with small-time check fraud, usually moving on before he was caught.
Eventually, Ray graduated to cattle rustling, buying animals at market with fraudulent checks and selling them for cash as quickly as possible. This act got him thrown in jail over and over during the 1950s and ’60s.
The couple got married in 1940 and spent much of their married lives moving from town to town, trying to stay one step ahead of their reputation. Sometime in the 1970s or ’80s – nobody knows for sure – they worked out a scheme for making money without having to live like fugitives.
Since Ray was a known fraud who couldn’t sell his stolen cattle anymore, the couple would hire drifters to unknowingly pass bad checks on their behalf, then do the heavy lifting of taking the cattle to market. After the transaction, Ray shot the men with his Marlin .22 and buried the bodies in his barn. Mrs. Copeland used scraps of the victims’ clothing to make a quilt.
The couple was caught in 1989 after one of their employees reported seeing human bones on the property. Faye turned on her husband, claimed to have spent 50 years as a battered victim of his terrible temper, and tried to cop a deal. The jury wasn’t having it and sentenced both of them to death.
Ray died of natural causes in 1993. Faye’s sentence was commuted to life in 1999. In 2002 she was paroled, following a stroke. She died in hospice care a few months later.
Fred and Rosemary West
Fred and Rosemary.
Fred and Rosemary West were twisted, even by married-serial-killer/rapist standards. The details of Fred’s childhood read like a horror story whose author who has no sense of proportion. Fred’s father beat and raped him, then introduced him to bestiality. His mother may have joined in the abuse when Fred was around 12 years old.
According to his later testimony, Fred may have gotten his sister pregnant at 14. Unsurprisingly, he grew up violent and badly adjusted, with a history of sexual assaults aimed at young teen girls. His first murder was of a pregnant mistress who demanded he leave his second wife.
Rosemary was 12 years younger than Fred, and she came from a similar background. Strictly disciplined and often raped by her father, Rosemary was a promiscuous teen who charged money for sex with her parents’ adult friends. Her incestuous relationship with her father and career as a prostitute continued well into her married years, with Fred’s approval, and she bore seven children, some by her husband, some by her clients, perhaps one by her father.
In 1971, while Fred was serving time for robbery, Rosemary became angry with one of his daughters from a previous marriage, Charmaine. She beat the girl to death and disposed of the body under the family’s porch.
Once Fred got out, the couple lured at least eight young women to their house, then raped and killed them. In 1973, Fred began raping his eight-year-old daughter, who wound up pregnant at 14. The pregnancy was ectopic, and after her abortion, the girl ran away from home, after which Fred and Rosemary turned their attention to the girl’s younger sister.
In May 1992, Fred videotaped himself raping one of his younger daughters, who later confided in a friend. Police searched the home and found dismembered remains buried all over the place. Fred hanged himself while pending trial for 12 counts of murder, while Rosemary protested her innocence all the way to her ten murder convictions. She is currently serving life in prison.
Henry Lucas And Ottis Toole
Wikimedia CommonsMug shots of Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole. April and June 1983.
Henry Lucas and Ottis Toole are among the most prolific serial killer couples in the world. In a crime spree that spanned nearly half the country, the pair traveled around murdering, raping, burning, and sometimes eating anyone who came into their path.
When Lucas was arrested at the end of the pair’s massacre, he admitted to thousands of murders.
Lucas and Toole both faced horrible childhoods filled with abuse and rape from their family and those who they trusted. When the two men met in 1976 at a soup kitchen, the kindred spirits hit it off.
Shortly after meeting, the pair took off on their killing spree, which covered 26 states. Anyone who they came across was fair game. The couple attacked hitchhikers, prostitutes, and migrant workers, luring them away from other people and then killing them in cold blood.
Their grisly crimes often involved more than just murder. Oftentimes they would sexually assault their victims before killing them, and once the deed was done, the men would mutilate the bodies beyond recognition.
YouTube/Serial Killer DocumentariesLucas and Toole. Date unknown.
Toole would also cannibalize the bodies that they had killed. In one conversation between the couple over a prison phone, Toole nostalgically recalled to his lover one particular incident saying:
“Remember how I liked to pour some blood out of them? Some tastes like real meat when it’s got barbecue sauce on it.”
The pair’s murderous relationship came to a deadly end when Lucas started seeing Toole’s 12-year-old niece. Toole was allegedly so upset by the betrayal that he killed nine people in a fit of rage.
Lucas ended up murdering his young companion after they got into an argument and soon after he was arrested. Toole’s reign of terror came to a close as well once he was arrested in a separate incident where he burned a 64-year-old man alive.
Lucas gleefully confessed that he and Toole committed thousands of murders together but it is widely believed that he inflated the number. Toole was a bit more reluctant to confess to the crimes and put the final body count somewhere around 108 people.
Caril Ann Fugate and Charles Starkweather
Bettmann/Getty ImagesCaril Fugate and Charles Starkweather before their killing spree.
Caril Ann Fugate was only 13-years-old when she met 18-year-old Charles Starkweather, and from the beginning, the teenager was enamored by his charm. Shortly after meeting, Fugate’s infatuation with Starkweather would lead her down a path that led to her become the youngest woman ever tried for first-degree murder.
Not long after the two first met in 1956, Fugate came home to find her mother and stepfather killed – and Starkweather was the murderer. Next, he killed her infant half-sister.
It is unknown just how much Fugate was involved in the murders and if she was driven by her own homicidal rage or if she was a captive. But shortly after the death of three of her family members, Fugate fled with Starkweather and their murder spree officially began.
The pair crossed the country from Nebraska to Wyoming and racked up a body count of six people. The couple was eventually arrested in 1959 and they quickly turned on each other.
Carl Iwasaki/Getty ImagesCaril Ann Fugate in prison in 1958.
Fugate maintained her innocence, saying that the only crime she committed was holding a gun on a high school couple while Starkweather robbed them. Her companion told a very different story.
Starkweather claimed that while he did the bulk of the killings, Fugate’s hands were not clean and he said that she had done her fair share of murder.
Starkweather was sentenced to death by the electric chair for his murders and Fugate, who had always said she was innocent, escaped the death penalty and was sentenced to life in prison.
This serial killer couple ended like many others with the pair turning on each other to save their own skins, but it is unique in the fact that to this day Fugate maintains her innocence.
With Starkweather long gone, it seems like the world may never know the truth behind the couple’s nine murders.
Gruesome Serial Killer Couples: Alton Coleman and Debra Brown
Bettmann/Getty ImagesAlton Coleman and Debra Brown express little emotion as they are arraigned on Jan. 9, 1985.
The two-month killing spree carried out by Alton Coleman and Debra Brown was so horrendous that the FBI added a special eleventh spot on their Ten Most Wanted List for Coleman.
The pair met in 1983, but Coleman’s criminal record started long before then. He had abducted and raped a woman in Illinois and he was charged with rape twice more in 1976 and 1980.
Brown was 21-years-old when she first met Coleman and had lived a pretty quiet life until then. When she was a child, she had experienced severe head trauma and was considered borderline mentally disabled.
The pair’s murder spree began on May 29, 1984, in Wisconsin when they abducted and killed nine-year-old Vernita White. Her body was found on June 19, the day after Coleman and Brown abducted two other young girls in Indiana. One survived and escaped but the other girl was killed.
Bettmann/Getty ImagesPortrait of Coleman and Brown for Coleman’s addition to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list.
The couple made their way to Michigan where they committed a series of car thefts and assaults. Next, they went to Ohio and on July 7, the bodies of a mother and her 10-year-old daughter were discovered hidden inside of their home’s crawlspace.
The deadly pair killed three more people and abducted two others by the time their rampage had come to an end on July 18. Coleman was sentenced to death in three separate states and was executed in 2002, while Brown still remains in an Ohio prison.
Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez
Seymour Wally/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesRaymond Fernandez (left), attorney Herbert Rosenberg and Martha Beck hold hands after court adjourned on July 13, 1949.
Serial killer couple Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez became known as the Lonely Hearts Killers because they targeted victims who placed and answered personal ads. It started out as just a scam but ended in bloodshed.
Fernandez was a con artist who suffered a horrible skull fracture during World War II and thought of himself as master of voodoo who could entice any woman. He started his life of thievery in 1946 by writing letters to various women in lonely hearts clubs.
Preying on their vulnerability, Fernandez would gain their trust, rob them blind, and then disappear without a trace. The victims were usually too embarrassed by the situation that they chose to not report him so Fernandez’s spree continued.
His lonely heart scamming didn’t turn deadly until he met Martha Beck. Their relationship started like the rest of Fernandez’s relationships did with written correspondence and the intent to rob her, but once they met in person the couple fell in love.
Ed Jackson/NY Daily News Archive via Getty ImagesStraining at the handcuff, Martha Beck reaches over to kiss Raymond Fernandez in corridor of Supreme Court Building on Mar. 23, 1949.
Fernandez revealed his scamming business to Beck and even admitted that he married some of the women he conned to complete the fraud. Beck was an overweight, homely woman who had craved love her whole life s she looked past Fernandez’s crimes and joined in the rouse.
Beck posed as his sister or sister-in-law and they continued scamming those with lonely hearts, focusing their efforts on older women specifically. Despite the fake nature of Fernandez’s relationships with the women, Beck couldn’t handle her jealousy and soon it turned deadly.
Their first victim was Janet Fay and after her death, murder and scamming went hand in hand for the couple. For the next few years, they continued their pattern and the exact number of their victims is still unknown.
Their operation came crashing down after they killed a woman and her two-year-old daughter. The police arrested them and they gleefully admitted to killing as many as 20 women, but there was only enough evidence to convict them of three.
They were both sentenced to death and died by electrocution in 1951. Beck’s eerie last words were:
“What does it matter who is to blame? My story is a love story…but those tortured with love can understand what I mean… In the history of the world, how many crimes have been attributed to love?”
For more of the macabre after these stories about serial killer couples, be sure to check out these bone-chilling serial killer quotes and the ten most horrific execution methods throughout history.
