Killer Women (13 page)

All she could see out of the corner of her eyes was the belt. It seemed to have a mind of its own. She could feel the heavy breath of her assailant but she could not see any part of her face. Then nothing but bars of light and darkness. Stars floating in front. The soft felt of the interior lining of the roof of her car went out of focus, merged with the light, closed in around her.

Pathetic whimpers squeaked out from between her lips. Little gasps that would have been screams but for the tightness of the belt. She tried one last desperate claw at her assailant. In the process she managed to draw blood from her own neck where her finger nail had pierced her skin as she tried to shake free.

Her head felt like it was coming away from the rest of her body. Her arms went limp.

‘Bitch. Fucking Bitch.’

The venomous words spat from behind her echoed large and loud in Lisa’s head. They were the last thing she ever heard.

Lori quickly realised Lisa was either dead or unconscious. She snapped out of her murderous trance and found herself facing the slumped body of her rival in love. But she had no time to consider the enormity of what she had just done. She had to know one thing – was Lisa alive or dead?

With the cold calculating calm of a professional hitman, she leant over and opened her rival’s handbag and scrabbled through the contents of the bag until she found Lisa’s make-up kit. She took out the tiny vanity mirror and held it up to Lisa’s mouth for a few moments. No mist. Nothing. Then Lori pulled the engagement ring off Lisa’s limp finger and put it in her pocket …

On 24 August 1990, Lori Esker was sentenced to life in prison for the murder of Lisa Cihaski. The judge at the court in Marathon County, Wisconsin recommended she serve at least 14 years.

Lisa’s father Vilas Cihaski – referring to the first degree murder charge – said after the verdict, ‘Lori always wanted to be number one and she got number one.’

‘Just do it for me, honey.’

It was as a result of those immortal words that Maxine O’Neill allowed herself to become the rather unpleasant object of her husband’s sick sexual desires.

They’d both worked late at the bar they owned, when the ever-so-drunk Jerry O’Neill had come up with an outrageous bedtime plan for that night. He wanted his attractive brunette wife to have sex with
another man while he watched. Then he intended to make her watch him doing it with the stranger.

The depressing thing was that 46-year-old Maxine was not in the least bit surprised by her husband’s sordid sexual appetites. She had long suspected he was bisexual. But, as is so often the case in marriages across the globe, she could not actually confront him with her suspicions. Instead, she kept them bottled up, afraid that if she started accusing him then he would turn on her and beat her, like he usually did for the slightest reasons.

Jerry O’Neill had already chatted up a man in the bar earlier. He had arranged for the stranger to come back at closing time so that the ‘happy’ threesome could head off to the O’Neill farm in Pike County, Arkansas. He did not even consider his wife’s feelings in the matter. He certainly did not expect her to object. On the contrary, Jerry O’Neill reckoned his wife would have a ball in bed with two men. He could not have been more wrong.

Maxine was very worried. By suggesting the
ménage à trois
, her 44-year-old husband had finally confirmed her deepest suspicions. Now she had to face the emotional upheaval of discovering her husband was bisexual – and being forced into a sexual scenario she most certainly did not want to act out.

‘I won’t do it, Jerry. It’s sick.’

Maxine could not believe she had actually had the
courage to tell him, but she had. Now she had to face the full wrath of her husband. He considered her opinions to be irrelevant. He certainly was not going to take no for an answer.

‘It’ll be fun.’

There was no way that Jerry O’Neill was about to change his master plan for a perverted orgy. She had no choice in the matter as far as he was concerned.

Then she saw him walk in the bar just as they were locking up. Maxine froze in her tracks and looked at him. She turned her eyes away the moment she caught his gaze. The last thing she wanted to do was encourage this stranger – this man who was expecting to share her with Jerry.

She could feel his eyes panning across her body. Looking at her legs, her breasts. But there was little or no interest in her face. If he had bothered to examine her, he would have seen pretty features framed by thick, shoulder-length brown hair. Lips loosely parted. A neat nose. But this wasn’t about people being attracted to each other. This was the preliminary round in the build-up to a sexual threesome that was filling Maxine with equal amounts of fear and loathing.

They sat in silence on the ten-mile journey back to the O’Neill farm. With Jerry at the wheel, Maxine was jammed between the two men on the bench seat in the front of the pick-up. She pointed out that she
would prefer to sit out in the open on the back. But Jerry gave her one of those evil looks that she had seen so many times before, so she agreed to sit sandwiched between the two men who planned to have sex with her.

Every time the other man’s knee touched her, she blanched and went rigid. There was no way she was going to encourage the inevitable. Even when Jerry pulled her towards him and French kissed her as they waited at a set of traffic lights, she did not respond.

She felt his rough tongue probing deeply into the back of her mouth. Her husband smelt of whiskey, and lots of it. But he didn’t care. He was just showing off in front of his new best friend.

When they untangled after that lingering kiss, Jerry O’Neill turned to the stranger sitting next to them and winked. It was an unsubtle gesture, deliberately designed to intimidate his wife into realising that there was no escape from what he had planned. Maxine tried to nuzzle close to her husband even though she hated him for what he was about to put her through. She reckoned that at least the other guy might get the message and have second thoughts after seeing she was so obviously not interested. But all it really did was make Jerry believe that she was more than happy to have sex with both of them.

By the time they rolled up at the farmhouse, Maxine was resigned to her fate. She did not have the
strength to fight them. He had won yet again. She shut her eyes tightly and thought about the rest of her miserable life, while a hand moved up her leg. Then another hand moved over her breasts. It was only the beginning of a night of sexual torture. Jerry O’Neill and his friend had bigger, bolder plans for their sex-slave Maxine.

By the time Maxine finally got to sleep, she could feel virtually every bone in her body ache. Her insides felt as if they had been ripped to shreds. She had endured hours and hours of sexual molestation, all in the good name of marriage. Every orifice in her body had been penetrated. She turned away from her slumbering husband and his new best friend and sobbed into the pillow. This was truly a marriage made in hell.

The next morning, Maxine woke up good and early and slipped out of the house before she had to face either her husband or the man he had encouraged to rape her the previous evening.

She had work to attend to on the farm they owned. It also gave her the perfect excuse to talk to the two labourers they employed as helpers on the luscious green spread of Arkansas countryside.

Harold Hamlin and Paul Jenkins were nothing like her husband. They were hard-working hired hands who spoke few words but had a philosophical outlook on life. They had both seen a lot of the
world – good and bad – and would no doubt move on to fresh pastures within a few months.

But at least they offered Maxine an ear to listen to her woes. They were the only two people she could speak candidly to about her husband’s activities. Naturally, she did not go into explicit detail. She did not need to. The two men lived on the farm and they knew perfectly well what was going on.

Maxine had grown particularly fond of Paul Jenkins. He was a tall, sinewy man with a drooping moustache that made him look like a character from
Bonanza
. He felt really sorry for Maxine. It seemed so unfair that a woman of such kindness, such vitality should end up this way. He could not understand why she put up with so much.

‘I’ve got no choice. If I left I’d have nothing.’

That was her stock reply every time Paul tried to suggest that she would be better off out of the farm and her husband’s life. He found it particularly frustrating because he was growing increasingly fond of this vulnerable woman.

Sometimes he would find himself alone with her in one of the outhouses and he would feel the urge to grab hold of her and kiss her. To start with, he did not have the courage to do it. He was afraid she might take offence, and that it would cost him his job. But eventually they would grow so close it would not matter.

And Maxine was definitely becoming aware of Paul’s interest in her. It flattered her. It made her feel wanted. It also took her mind off that awful marriage to Jerry.

As Maxine’s relationship with Paul Jenkins developed, so did her out and out hatred for her husband. She was at last beginning to see the light. All those years of drunken sexual perversion had finally taken their toll on her. Every time she saw Jerry she felt sick in the stomach. He physically disgusted her now. She kept asking herself: how could I ever have loved this man?

For his part, Jerry O’Neill was pickling his liver in alcohol so constantly that he had already sentenced himself to death from cirrhosis of the liver within a year at the most. But a year was much too long for Maxine to wait. The build-up of hatred for her husband had reached boiling point – and it was about to manifest itself in a grisly act of murder.

‘I’m gonna do it. I can’t take any more of him. It’s the only way.’

Jerry O’Neill was slumped in bed still fully dressed when Maxine saw her first chance. He had got so drunk the previous evening that he could not even manage to remove his shoes before falling on top of the duvet.

She prodded him hard with her finger to see if there was any response. Nothing. Not even a change
in his breathing pattern. He was dead to the world. She wished he was dead outright, then it would make her life much easier. But he had passed out from over-drinking, nothing more. However, he had presented her with an opportunity to escape from his sick and twisted ways.

Ever so quietly she crept to the bathroom and opened the medicine cupboard. Inside was a huge syringe already filled with what looked like blood. But it was all bubbly. None of the air had been gently pressed out. It looked like a strange concoction. Maxine hoped it would prove to be a lethal cocktail; in fact she had painstakingly prepared it the previous day. First she took the blood from one of the many chickens in the farmyard. Then she deliberately ‘gassed it up’ with air bubbles, just to make sure it would cause maximum damage.

Now she was standing over her husband with this massive syringe, hopefully about to sentence him to a very painful death. She leant down over him, wondering where was the best place to insert the needle. She had to be fast. If he woke halfway through, she knew he would probably explode with anger and then she would be the one looking death in the eye.

After a few hesitant moments, she plunged the syringe into his stomach. It just seemed the biggest area, so she reckoned she could not fail. As she pressed the syringe down hard with her thumb she
could feel the rumbling of the bubbles of air blocking the rush of the chicken blood into his system. But she just kept pressing hard, determined to empty every last drop into his body.

Jerry O’Neill did not stir an inch. Whatever he was dreaming about, it must have been good. A warm smile came over his lips halfway through Maxine’s desperate bid to murder him. Jerry O’Neill obviously knew something she did not.

Maxine pulled the syringe out with a slight jolt and took it to the rubbish bin in the kitchen. Then she wandered back and, ever so casually, peeked down at her husband still lying there in a different world. That smile was still on his face. There was no sign of the mask of death contorting itself around his features. She could even hear his snoring getting irritatingly louder and louder. It was almost as if he was telling her she had failed. He was mocking her in his sleep. Maxine was very irritated. She stomped out of the bedroom and decided not to return for a few hours. Maybe it would take that long for the chicken blood and air bubbles to clog his system up for ever. Anyhow, she could not just stand there looking down at his pathetic heap of a body waiting for him to die. It would be much better if she returned later.

But when Maxine peeked in at her hubby after a few hours had passed, the only thing that had changed was his snoring. It was even louder than earlier. She
would have to think up another way to get rid of him.

‘Honey, this coffee tastes real good. Just what the doctor ordered.’

Maxine looked over at her husband at the breakfast table and couldn’t help watching him take another sip of that piping hot drink. This time it might actually work. She was lucky that all those years of heavy drinking had completely destroyed his tastebuds. Basically, he couldn’t have tasted whether his food and drink was laced with rat poison. Strangely enough, that was yet another substance – together with crushed sleeping tablets – which Maxine O’Neill mixed in at every opportunity.

After more than a week of feeding the man a staple diet of enough poison and sleeping tablets to send a herd of elephants to heaven, Maxine finally began to see some hopeful signs. Jerry O’Neill kept slurring his words – even before he’d had his first drink of the morning. He kept stumbling over things. And, best of all, he was falling asleep in the most unlikely places – he seemed to have a particular fondness for choosing the toilet.

Maxine prayed that he might do the dirty deed to himself by falling asleep at the wheel of his truck. But he tended to avoid driving whenever he could, so it was unlikely.

Then it happened. One morning Jerry O’Neill
literally could not get out of bed. At last, the poison had done its work.

‘I can’t get up, honey. I think I’m sick.’

She couldn’t resist allowing herself one long snigger in the kitchen as she made him a coffee, laced with yet more sleeping tablets. No point in wasting them. Still half a bottle left.

For two long weeks, she pretended to nurse her bedridden husband while feeding him more and more poison. But he still hung on. Maxine was starting to lose her cool.

‘When the hell is he goin’ to die?’

She surprised her friend Paul Jenkins with her frankness. For the first time, she was admitting she had sentenced her husband to death. And Paul sympathised with her. After all, she had put up with more abuse and sick sexual desires than any woman could be expected to tolerate.

‘Well. Let’s kill him then.’

He felt no doubt about the task that lay ahead. In any case, Paul Jenkins was by now so fond of Maxine that he wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. And all the cash they could get from selling the farm and the bar was an attractive proposition – kill off Jerry O’Neill and collect on his wife and his property.

10 October 1989 seemed like a pretty ordinary working day on the farm. The grey skies opened up
with heavy rainfall about breakfast time as labourers Harold Hamlin and Paul Jenkins toiled hard in the outhouses, organising the cattle.

Inside the main house, Maxine was still ‘nursing’ her sickly husband. Desperately counting the minutes through the day in the hope that nightfall would come as quickly as possible.

Through the morning and afternoon, she had found herself pacing the hallway outside the bedroom in expectation of what was to come. She could not wait for it to happen.

It was Harold Hamlin who heard the gunshot. Just one single sound. No follow up. Just an eerie silence following the bang that came from the direction of the main house. For a few moments, he stood there wondering what to do. Then he looked towards the house and ran for the front door to investigate.