‘Folie à Deux’

The Dark Side of Love

By Amanda Hallay

Love isn’t always a ‘good thing’. Occasionally, when two otherwise ‘normal’ people fall in love, their joint chemistry can have deadly results. Here’s a list of the world’s worst couples.

Myra Hindley and Ian Brady

England’s notorious ‘Moors Murderers’ met and fell in love in Sixties Manchester, their deadly union turning 27 year old Ian Brady and his 19 year old secretary into the personification of evil.  From ’62-’65, Hindley and Brady abducted and murdered eight children, torturing and raping them before burying their bodies on the desolate Yorkshire Moors.  They used a tape recorder to preserve the final moments of their young victims lives, their crimes as shocking today as they were at the time.  Whereas Brady had a history of reform school, juvenile detention centers and small-time crime, Hindley was said to have been a ‘normal’ young woman, convent educated and totally unremarkable. It was her obsession with Brady, which dragged her into his sick and twisted world, her collusion with his crimes a ‘testimony to her devotion’.  Both are still behind bars, with Hindley’s regular cries for appeal reopening old wounds and reminding the country that love isn’t always a ‘good thing’.

Pauline Parker and Juliette Hulme

The Parker-Hulme trial rocked ‘50s New Zealand with a grisly tale of teenage lesbian love, a ‘forbidden diary’ and – worst of all – murder.  Fifteen year old misfit, Juliette Hulme, met and fell in love with dowdy schoolmate Pauline Parker, the two of them creating a disturbed fantasy world in which to escape the doldrums of post-war Canberra.  Borrowing ideas from the ‘Film Noir’ movies they would watch at the local ‘flicks’, the distinction between fact and fiction grew blurry for the troubled teens, Parker’s diary (which proved damning at the trial) filled with fantasy plans of ‘murdering her Mama’.  In a scene reminiscent of the films they so loved, the couple bludgeoned Pauline’s mother, Nora, whilst the three were out for a Sunday stroll.  Although the couple only received a five year juvenile detention sentence for their crime, the forward-thinking judge forbade the girls to ever see each other again for ‘the rest of their natural lives’.

25, CROMWELL STREET

Rose and Fred West

The above address is well known to anyone living in England in the 1990s. Dubbed the ‘Gloucester House of Horror’ by the Press, the small, terraced house was home to Fred and Rose West, a ‘respectable’ married couple whose catalogue of crime was unknown to the police until 1994, when the bones ten young women (including the West’s two daughters) were discovered in their basement.  Rose and Fred West had been married for over twenty years, their sex life becoming increasingly bizarre.  Both blaming each other at their trial, it remains unknown as to which West first came up with the idea of abducting young women from bus-stops, raping them, torturing them and burying their dismembered bodies in the basement.  It is also a mystery as to why they turned their sexual attentions to their teenage daughters, whose remains were the last to be discovered.  Fans of hard-core porn, bestiality, fetishism, ‘swingers clubs’ and bondage, Fred and Rose West had many shared hobbies and interests.  One of them was not solidarity under pressure.  At the end, each blamed the other, and Fred – feeling betrayed by the woman he claims to have truly loved for twenty years – hanged himself in his cell before sentencing.  Rose is still incarcerated, serving the first of three life-sentences.

Kyle and Erik Menendez

Brotherly love took a wrong turn with ‘rich kid’ siblings Kyle and Erik Menendez, who in 1989 turned shot-guns on their parents in a hail storm attack of bullets and blood.  Pre-meditated and truly heartless, the motive to their double murder was a sinister ‘get rich quick’ scheme;  their father, Lyle, was a multi-millionaire, and within four days of ‘reporting’ the murder to the police, the brothers were hitting Rodeo Drive in a spending spree Imelda Marcos would have envied. When the ‘penny dropped’, the brothers were arrested and pleaded ‘extenuating circumstances’ at their trial.   However, their jumped up claim that their parents had sexually abused them fell on unsympathetic ears, and the brothers – both in their early twenties – were committed to two life sentences a piece.

Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold

Leopold and Loeb met at the University of Chicago in the Early ‘20s, and – feeling intellectually superior to the rest of mankind – decided it would be an ‘interesting experiment’ to take another  life, and set out to perpetrate what they hoped to be ‘the perfect crime’.  Choosing fourteen year old Robert Franks as their victim, the couple cold-bloodedly murdered the youngster, and then made the mistake of ‘showing off’ about it to anyone who’d listen.  The trial of Leopold and Loeb is one of criminal history’s most sensational, spawning movies such as Hitchock’s Rope and the recent Compulsion.  Whether or not they were lovers is anyone’s guess, but the couple showed solidarity throughout their trial and were deeply saddened by the other’s execution.

Karla and Paul Bernando

The most recent case of ‘Folie a Deux’ occurred in Canada in the ‘90s, when pretty supermarket clerk Karla Homolka met and married the young and handsome accountant, Paul Bernando.  They had already raped and murdered Karla’s younger sister before their lavish wedding, the knowledge that her ‘intended’ was a serial rapist an alluring prospect to his bride.  Evidently, Paul was ‘the man of her dreams’, and Karla was determined to do all in her power to keep him happy.  Helping him abduct, rape and murder a series of pretty young virgins, Karla held the camcorder with which they filmed their sadistic deeds.  Not overly burdened with intellect, Karla was easily persuaded to collude with Paul’s wishes, thriving on the praise she’d receive upon a successful abduction.  Leaving the grislier aspects of their crimes to his wife, Paul was more than happy to let the subservient Karla dismember and dispose of the bodies.  Mercifully, they were apprehended in 1993.  Karla ‘plea bargained’ for a reduced sentence of twelve years on the condition that she testify against her husband, which she did, the result being Paul’s life sentence without parole.

Bonnie and Clyde

When Bonnie Parker met Clyde Barrows, criminal history was made.  Although the short, spotty Barrows and the older, tubby Parker bore little resemblance to their glamorous movie counterparts, Bonne and Clyde were never the less destined to become the stuff of legend.  Depression hit America was the chosen ‘killing field’ of The Barrows Gang, whose hold-ups, heists and hijinx  struck terror into the hearts of a country until their killing spree was brought to a halt in 1934.  In a well known ‘blood bath’, Bonnie and Clyde were gunned down by police, each body allegedly hit be over one-hundred bullets. 

Bonnie’s mother wouldn’t bury her near Clyde, whom she felt had been a ‘bad influence’ on her perpetually wayward daughter.  Although Bonnie claimed never to have killed anymore, she was more than happy to see her boyfriend gunning down dozens of innocents, so I think we can safely say that they were both as bad as each other, a ‘classic’ case of ‘Folie a Deux’ taken to ruthless extremes.