Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers (25 page)

This case is atypical in that the children who killed got away with the murder for so long – most children are caught within hours or days of the homicide. Having immature and usually traumatised minds, they rarely think beyond getting rid of the abuser (or in this case the love rival) who is ruining their lives.

Karen and Laura succeeded in deflecting attention from themselves because both clearly loved Missy’s mother – and they seemed, until the year of her death, to love Missy. The fact that they were female also stopped the police from looking too closely at them. Indeed, detectives at first thought that Missy’s murder was a sexual assault from an unknown male that had escalated into a homicide.

Yet statistically a female killer or killers was more likely, for the FBI have noted that girls mainly kill acquaintances or friends or their own family. It’s boys who are more likely to kill strangers – and these strangers are usually other boys rather than girls.

The police should have been alerted by the fact that both Laura and Karen were incredibly unhappy teenagers who were desperate for love – and who would do anything to keep that desired love object.
(Such as getting pregnant at fourteen as Karen did or virtually stalking an ex-boyfriend as Laura did.) Such fear makes people suspicious to the point of paranoia so they saw Missy, in truth a good friend to them, as a rival who they had to kill. Their hate was such that they mocked her and damaged her face and hair before drowning her and covering her body with the log, as if afraid that she’d rise up to tempt away their supposed chance of happiness. A film loosely based on the crime,
A
Killer
Among
Friends,
suggested that Karen was the leader and Laura the follower.

In another case where one friend killed another, there wasn’t a prior history of jealousy towards the victim. Instead, the victim was apparently seen as a symbol of authority at a time when the soon-to-be-killer, Jennifer Tombs, was desperate to have fun.

Jennifer was born in 1981 to a mother who was unable to keep her. At eight months old she was adopted by Pastor Madlyn Tombs, a single woman who ran a Christian church.

Jennifer was a beautiful baby and Pastor Tombs gave her a beautiful home in Denver, but by Jennifer’s early teens there was trouble in this supposed Paradise. Clearly unhappy, the child had begun to steal. In turn, Pastor Tombs began to wear her jewellery at all times to ensure that it didn’t go missing. She also put a lock on her bedroom door.

Pastor Tombs had been raised in a family where she was constantly supervised and she brought her daughter up the exact same way. Perhaps Jennifer felt suffocated and needed more freedom. It’s clear that she suffered from low self-esteem as by fourteen she was having sex and by fifteen she’d had many boyfriends, most of whom treated her very casually.

Jennifer told one of these boyfriends, who was five years older than her, that she was pregnant with his baby. He faded out of her life after that but she phoned him several months later to say that she’d had the child. Again, he didn’t go to see her – but if he had, he’d have found that she’d invented the baby. She was clearly a very troubled girl. She also tracked down details of her birth mother and had the woman’s name tattooed on her arm.

The police often visited the Pastor’s home after one of Jennifer’s minor brushes with the law, but at fifteen her crimes became more serious when she stole a car. She was put on probation and given an electronic tag, which effectively put her under house arrest. Given that she had a poor relationship with her adopted mother – and had even stayed with a friend for several months in order to have more freedom – this possibly wasn’t an appropriate solution.

But in September 1996 Jennifer saw the chance to party when Pastor Tombs said that she was going away on a religious retreat for the weekend. At school, Jennifer invited several friends round promising that she’d cook them a shrimp dinner. Unfortunately
Pastor Tombs then added that she was arranging for a live-in babysitter for Jennifer.

The baby-sitter was a twenty-three-year-old woman called Tanya Lavallais who Jennifer thought of as her cousin. In truth, the two families weren’t related but they were both heavily involved with the same church.

Tanya arrived at Jennifer’s house – and shortly afterwards Jennifer’s friends arrived. She sneaked them upstairs into her bedroom, telling them to be quiet until Tanya went out. In reality, Tanya – a responsible young woman – had no intention of going out and was relaxing in the downstairs Recreation Room.

Jennifer now went downstairs taking her ex-boyfriend’s gun with her. Tanya was sitting on the couch with her arms stretched back behind her head. Fifteen-year-old Jennifer shot the innocent young woman six times, the bullets entering her upper arms and her head. She collapsed, bleeding heavily, back on the couch and Jennifer pulled her dead body to the ground.

At some stage Jennifer decided to clean the couch and poured detergent over the blood stain. She emptied the boot of her cousin’s car, probably intending to put her in there. But Tanya weighed a lot more than Jennifer did and she only succeeded in dragging her body a few yards across the room. Jennifer then phoned an ex-boyfriend several times saying that she’d done something bad, that she’d killed a female intruder. She was doubtless hoping that he’d come over and dispose of the body but he was ill and refused to visit her house.

Jennifer must have gotten blood on her clothes for she went and had a bath, leaving her friends playing records and cards. At some stage she appeared wrapped only in a towel and her friends told her to get dressed again. They had no idea that there was a cooling corpse in a downstairs room.

But Tanya’s family were concerned when they paged her and she didn’t answer. They phoned Jennifer’s house and even went round there but Jennifer refused to let them in, just saying that Tanya had gone out to a club.

Jennifer acted entirely normally for the rest of the night. Eventually most of her friends left but she asked one boy to come back later. He did and they had sex in the early hours of the morning. He, too, left and Jennifer and a female friend then retired for the night.

The next morning Jennifer pretended to discover the corpse. Telling her friend that she’d be blamed if the police saw the gun, she disposed of it in a nearby drain. This naturally made the police suspicious – and when they found out that someone had attempted to clean the couch they knew that this was an inside job.

The trial was unsurprisingly brief. Jennifer, by now sixteen, was tried as an adult and found guilty of first degree murder. She was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Her adoptive mother said that the judicial system wasn’t over and that Jennifer should pray – but the prayers didn’t help and she lost her subsequent appeal.

Both Karen Severson who helped to murder Missy Avila and Jennifer Tombs who murdered Tanya Lavallais were adopted as very young children. Statisticians have noted that a disproportionate number of serious offenders are adopted or foster children. In some regions 45% of all felonies committed by children are by adoptees. Some adults have made the leap to suggest that these children become violent because the ‘vital mother-baby bond’ is broken. As a result, they’re campaigning to abolish adoption. But the truth is doubtless more complex than that.

For starters, it’s a myth that a biological parent is automatically good to a child. Most of the children in this book suffered hugely at the hands of their biological parents. Some of these children flourished when taken away from their birth parents – most notably the younger children such as Robert Thompson, Jon Venables and Mary Bell. And Dr Dorothy Lewis has noted that young prisoners often change markedly if treated well by prison staff.

Second, sociologists would have to make a study of the adoptive parents before concluding what went wrong in the child’s life. Were the parents who adopted very strict or in some other way restrictive? Or were the adoptive parents older when they adopted and too set in their ways so that they continually criticised and restrained their energetic adopted offspring? Did these parents have fulfilling lives prior to adopting or were they underachievers
who put all of their own unfulfilled hopes onto the child?

Every one of the sex killers in the next chapter was raised by his biological parents and in almost every case there is a clear link between the lust murders and early parentally-caused abuse.

The teenage sex killer – like his adult contemporaries – has made a lethal connection between sexual pleasure and fatal levels of violence. He’s often highly sadistic and may enjoy picquerism (cutting and stabbing), inflicting most of the wounds on the pubis or breasts or, in the case of a homosexual killer, on the penis and the scrotum. Lust and rage have become so interlinked in his damaged psyche that he seeks to destroy the parts of the body which arouse him most.

As most of the following case studies show, the teenage lust murderer usually fits into the category of the disorganised killer. That is, the crime is often committed on impulse so he doesn’t bring a weapon with him, instead making use of bindings and implements available at the scene.

Such disorganised killers tend to leave the body at the crime scene. In some cases, this is the teenage lust killers bedroom or workplace, making discovery virtually inevitable. In contrast, an organised killer often takes the body to another place and disposes of it carefully.

Disorganised offenders often turn to religion after the crime, something that the organised offender (who has a higher IQ and is able to maintain relationships) avoids.

The following double murder, which took place in 1944, shows that teenage sex killings are not a new
phenomena. The case is also interesting because the fourteen-year-old killer was executed within weeks of being found guilty and was the youngest American electrocuted by the state in the twentieth century.

George Stinney lived in an agricultural region of South Carolina with his family. The fourteen-year-old could neither read nor write and appears to have been of limited intelligence. He was slender and just over five foot tall. George was black but his victims would both be white. (Black males who rape and kill white women are the most likely to be executed by the state.)

On 24th March 1944 he was walking along the railroad track when he saw Betty Binnicker, age eleven, and her eight-year-old friend, Mary Thames, looking for wild flowers. The girls knew George so had no reason to fear him. They were presumably unperturbed when he followed them into the woods.

But George wanted to have sex with eleven-year-old Betty – and determined he’d have to get Mary out of the way. Picking up a heavy metal railroad spike, he battered the younger girl over the head, fracturing her skull in several places. She collapsed on the ground, bleeding profusely. She had only minutes left to live.

George now turned his lust-filled rage on Betty as she turned to flee, battering the railroad spike into her head at least seven times. Two of the blows actually produced holes in her skull, whilst others produced
similar fractures to those endured by her younger friend. Betty also collapsed, seriously injured. The baby-faced killer remained unperturbed. It’s unknown if at this stage George sexually assaulted either girl. Sexually-sadistic killers often spontaneously ejaculate during the violence – and after this their lust may be temporarily spent.

George now threw the bodies into a ditch that had filled up with water and went on his way. Residents would later say that his demeanour was entirely normal, so he may have been too dim-witted to understand the enormity of his actions or else may have been a remorseless psychopath. Though the crime has been well documented, this author could find little about the youth’s childhood except that he lived with his parents and sister and that the latter continued to protest his innocence. In a photograph taken in jail he looks considerably younger than his fourteen years.

Early the next day the girls’ submerged bodies were found and autopsied. George had been seen in the area and within an hour had confessed to the crimes. He initially said that the girls had attacked him and that he’d battered them in self-defence but soon changed his story to admit that there was a sexual motive to the assaults.

Less than three months after being found guilty, a weeping George entered the Death Chamber clutching his Bible. There the double killer – now aged fourteen years and five months – died in the electric chair.

Twenty years earlier in Britain, a white teenager
called Harold Jones had also killed two white girls – but this case had a very different result.

Harold Jones gained notoriety as a teenage sex killer because he escaped justice only to immediately kill again. He lived in Wales with his father, who was an unemployed miner, and with his mother and younger sister. The family were poor so he had to share his bed with an adult male lodger. Harold himself had a job, working in a grocery store.

With his blonde hair, robust complexion and strong body he looked healthy and his visible hobbies of reading and harmonica-playing were laudable. He was also a hard worker – but dark passions were brewing beneath his pleasant facade. Whenever he went egg-collecting with his young friends, he’d pull the wings off the baby birds.

He may have been suffering from ongoing sexual frustration as presumably it was difficult to masturbate at night when sharing a bed with an adult lodger. But none of the crime writers of the day appear to have considered this.

On 5th February 1921 Harold was working in the shop when an eight-year-old girl called Freda came in to buy grain. The fourteen-year-old said that they kept it in the shed so Freda followed him there – but once he’d closed the door, he pounced.

Little Freda screamed and he grabbed her shawl
and stuffed it into her mouth. He tied her arms and legs with string, rendering her helpless. Then he pushed her juvenile underclothes aside.

Only now did Harold realise the difference between fantasy and reality – for raping an eight-year-old child is physically very difficult. He attempted to penetrate her again and again but failed. At some stage he may have digitally entered her as grain from the shed floor was found in her vagina and in her clothes.

Possibly overcome by frustration, he hit her on the head – but the blow didn’t kill her. Exhaustion and shock was the reason that the coroner would give for her untimely death.

That night Harold dumped the body a few yards from the shop then asked his friends to help him lock up the shed. He clearly wanted them to see that the building didn’t contain Freda’s body. He knew that the police would soon be asking questions as he was the last person to see her alive.

And indeed the police soon arrested him – but the nation thought that they were just using the teenager as a scapegoat because they couldn’t find the real murderer. The defence argued that Harold had left the shed door unlocked and that the killer had brought Freda there. In less than two hours the jury returned with a Not Guilty verdict and Harold was free to go home. It was a fateful ruling that would lead to another child’s death.

A fortnight later, Harold started chatting to one of his sister’s friends, an eleven-year-old girl called Florrie. He lured her into his house, knowing that his
parents and their lodger were going to be out for several hours. Locking the door, he immediately struck her on the head with a metal boiler lid, knocking her out. Then he tore at her knickers and tried, in vain, to penetrate her. During these attempts he ejaculated on his own clothes.

But Harold’s blood lust wasn’t spent. He fetched a knife and carried the unconscious child to the sink. There he cut her throat and left her there for a quarter of an hour whilst the blood drained from her. When she was dead he wrapped an old shirt around her head to avoid any blood stains smearing the walls or ceiling. Then he tied a rope around her body, went up into the attic and pulled her corpse up after him.

Whilst Harold was washing the blood from his body, Florrie’s mother called to ask where she was. Harold chatted to her quite amicably, saying that she’d been at his house but had left.

Several witnesses had seen Harold talking to Florrie so the following morning the police arrived at the Jones’s house. The child’s corpse was found in the attic and Harold confessed that he’d given in to the urge to kill again.

It’s likely that Harold was a teenage psychopath. He lied easily in court when questioned about Freda’s death – and he was totally calm when talking to people within moments of both murders. Psychopaths don’t learn from experience, which would explain Harold killing an eleven-year-old within a fortnight of being found Not Guilty for the murder of an eight-year-old child.

Harold Jones falls into the disorganised category – his crimes were impulsive and opportunistic and he left the bodies in his workplace and in his home.

He spent more than twenty years in prison then was released to serve in the Second World War. Incredibly, thereafter he returned for a visit to his home town. Again, this is the act of a psychopath, indifferent to the hurt that his presence might cause the victim’s relatives. Locals were amazed to see him drinking in the local pub, a man without a care. He remained in the area for the rest of his life and ultimately died in hospital in his seventies.

Ironically, after Harold’s first murder he could have enjoyed consensual relations with girls. Several had written to him after his trial declaring that they loved him, just as women do with adult male serial killers today. But Harold became aroused through totally controlling a girl – so an active, willing partner simply didn’t have the same appeal.