Being a serial killer seems like it could get lonely. With so much waiting and plotting and thinking, they're bound to crave some real human companionship, right? So why not find a lover with some similar interests and team up to become... a killer couple? Here is a list of serial killer couples from the past decades whose endless love ended others' lives.
Look at enough killer couples and you start to notice similarities - most killers were fleeing broken homes where violence, drinking, and sexual abuse were the norm. Most of the duos (but not all) found each other young, and quickly began killing together. There's usually a dominant member of the couple, while the other was submissive and compliant, doing whatever they were told. In most cases though, both individuals had chances to flee but usually stayed.
The biggest, baddest, and most finite commonality between these these couples is that they almost always turned on each other when they were caught, blaming the other one and saying they were the innocent one. Usually juries didn't buy it, and virtually all of these killers are either on death row or serving long prison terms. So brace yourself for some creepy stuff and read through this list of horrifying killer couples.
The 20 Most Deadly Serial Killer Couples,
Delfina and María de Jesús González
Sisters Delfina and Maria Gonzales cut a swath of destruction unmatched in the history of horrible murder. Together, the Mexico City sisters are responsible for at least 91 murders (and possibly as many as 110) in the 1950’s and 60’s. They were so good at it that their mass murdering had gone unnoticed until a young woman accused of an unrelated kidnapping told Mexican police about their brothel compound north of the Mexican capitol. The sisters’ property was searched, and there were found the remains of 11 men, 80 women, and several fetuses.
It came out that Maria and Delfina had a system of recruiting prostitutes under the disguise of hiring maids for a cleaning service. Then the girls were drugged, pimped, and once they lost their looks or became useless as sex workers, the sisters killed them and dumped the corpses in a pit. The pair were eventually sentenced to 40 years in prison. Delfina died in prison, but amazingly, Maria did her time, got out of prison and vanished.
Ray and Faye Copeland
In 1990, Faye and Ray Copeland gained infamy as the oldest couple in America sentenced to death. Ray was 76 and Faye 69 when they were convicted of mass murder. The elderly couple murdered five drifters execution style, who had each been hired by Ray to use fake checks to buy cattle for the Copelands.
Ray (who was a known fraud) would turn around and sell the cattle for much more than he bought them for, and take care of the poor drifter he’d hired. They were finally caught when another drifter told police he’d seen the remains of human bodies on their land. While Ray had a long history of crime, Faye’s lawyers argued that she was trapped by Ray’s battering, and psychologically couldn’t leave him. So when the police finally closed in, Faye swore she had no idea her husband was a murderer.
However, an investigation turned up a written list of drifters - and those who’d been killed had an X marked next to their names. And in one final, horrible twist, Faye was found to have made a quilt from the dead men’s clothing. Faye’s death sentence was commuted to life, and she lived until 2003. Ray died in1993.
Gwendolyn Graham
A young lesbian couple from Grand Rapids, Michigan, Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine May Wood weren't content to have a vanilla sex life. So they first tried choking each other while making love. When the thrills from that faded, they moved on to bringing a third party in – elderly women they’d murder together.
Their first thrill kill was in January, 1987, when Graham smothered a woman with Alzheimer’s Disease, and the pair made love next to her body. They did this four more times, smothering their victims together and having sex to relive the thrill, often ritually washing the bodies. The two were so "good" at what they did that they took souvenirs and openly bragged about what they did to their co-workers, who didn’t believe them.
Graham was clearly dominant over Wood, who weighed over 450 pounds and often pledged her undying love for Graham. But that changed when Graham ordered Wood to kill a woman purely for fun, and Wood refused. Graham left Michigan to take a new job in Texas, and Wood broke down and turned herself in. The two turned on each other, and Wood confessed to get a lighter sentence. Graham received a penalty of life imprisonment and Wood got 20 years in prison.
David and Catherine Birnie
David and Catherine Birnie were an Australian couple that murdered four women in their homes in the 1980s. Because the couple lived at 3 Moorhouse Street, the press referred to their crime spree as the “Moorhouse Murders”, playing on the infamous “Moors Murders” in England in the 60’s. Catherine met David when she was 12 and he was 14, and the duo quickly bonded over the squalor they were both living in. David was already a career criminal and sex offender when Catherine left her husband and seven children to be with him.
After raping and killing four women together, they tried to kill a fifth, but she escaped and turned the couple in. David killed himself in prison and Catherine is still in jail.
Michelle Michaud and James Daveggio
Sacramento couple Michelle Michaud and James Daveggio were sentenced to death in 2002 for kidnapping, raping, torturing, and strangling a 22-year-old student in December 1997. Fueled by sadistic sexual impulses, the couple grabbed the woman, then drove to Lake Tahoe in a Dodge van rigged with ropes and hooks, while James tortured and raped her repeatedly.
Prosecutors also alleged that the pair were responsible for the kidnapping, rape and torture of at least six other women. Both are still on death row.
Alton Coleman and Debra Brown
Starting in 1984 and working together, killer couple Alton Coleman and Debra Brown committed an astonishing roll call of eight murders, seven rapes, three kidnappings, and 14 armed robberies over the course of two years. Their relationship was likened to a master and slave, with Coleman a vicious killer and Brown his willing helper. In a particularly sickening twist, the couple, both African-American, targeted other black people, befriending them, then attacking when their guard was down.
Both were eventually found guilty and sentenced to die. Brown’s term was reduced to life in prison, but Coleman was executed in 2002.
Judith and Alvin Neelley
Judith met Alvin when she was 15 and he was 26 and already had a long record as a car thief. The two started their crime spree with armed robbery, then moved on to attempted murder when they shot at and firebombed the homes of two employees at a Youth Development Center where Judith had been incarcerated. Finally, they kicked things up a horrible notch when they were accused of kidnapping, torturing, and murdering two females, one of whom was just 13.
They were caught when the boyfriend of the older woman they killed managed to survive and turn them in. They turned on each other, each proclaiming their innocence and blaming the other. But after a quick trial, Judith was sentenced to death for injecting the young victim with Drano, shooting her in the head, then throwing her into a canyon, and Alvin got life for rape and murder. In 1999, her sentence was commuted to life without parole. Alvin died in prison in 2005.
Carol M. Bundy and Doug Clark
Carol M. Bundy and Doug Clark went on a horrific sex killing spree that tagged them with the nickname "The Sunset Strip Killers,” named after the area of Los Angeles they terrorized in the summer of 1980. Bundy had already fled multiple abusive marriages when she fell hard for her apartment manager, a country singer named Jack Murray.
While chasing Murray, she met local gigolo and “king of one night stands” Doug Clark at a bar. Pretty soon they were living together, and sharing their dark sexual kinks. In June, Clark murdered two prostitutes, then murdered two more a few weeks later, this time bringing a trophy back – one of their heads. Naturally, Bundy put makeup on the head and they used it for sex games. Then they cleaned it and put it in a box. Meanwhile, Bundy continued to be infatuated with Jack Murray, and drunkenly confessed her crimes to him.
Clark wasn’t a fan of this, and cooked up a plan for Bundy to kill Murray by luring him into a van for sex. Bundy did just that, then shot and decapitated the guy. Finally, she broke down and confessed to her co-workers, who called the cops. Clark acted as his own lawyer and pinned all of the murders on his girlfriend, but got the death penalty anyway. Bundy died in prison 2003, and Clark is still waiting on death row.
Ian Brady and Myra Hinsley
The five killings perpetrated by Ian Brady and Myra Hinsley in Manchester scandalized 60’s England. Known as “The Moors Murders” after desolate and dark Saddleworth Moor, where the bodies were found, they took place between 1963 and 1965. The first victim was 16 year-old Pauline Reade.
Myra talked her in to getting into her van, ostensibly to help her find a missing glove. Ian then brutally attacked and raped her. She was then buried on the moor. They repeated this pattern four more times, all with children they lured out to the remote Moor. Myra recorded the murder of 10 year-old Lesley Ann Downey on audio tape, while Ian took photos.
Their last killing got Myra’s 18-year old brother-in-law, David Smith in on the act, as Ian killed a young boy with an axe and David helped Ian hide the body. David proved to be their undoing as he contacted the police and told them what he had seen. On May 6, 1966 Ian was found guilty of three murders, and Myra was found guilty of two. Myra died in prison, while Ian was eventually declared insane and moved to a mental hospital
Suzan and James Carson
Suzan and James Carson became famous as the San Francisco Witch Killers for their murders of at least three, and maybe as many as a dozen people who they claimed had “evil energy.” Describing themselves as "vegetarian Muslim warriors”, the duo took massive amounts of drugs, converted to Islam and lived on a pot farm. Then they started killing.
The first was in Haight-Ashbury in 1981, when they beat their roommate with a frying pan, then stabbed her a dozen times. They killed at least two more people, attempting to rid the world of witchcraft. They had a list of others to kill, some people who were acquaintances, and others in the celebrity world. They were eventually caught, and held a press conference admitting to the murders, which they claimed were done to break evil spells that had been cast on them. Both were given prison terms of 75 years to life.