Lost Child Aileen Warnos
Satanic Craigslist Killer Miranda Barbour
Murder in Miami Joyce Cohen
Produced by
01
October “Her year-long killing spree left seven men dead. But was she a cold-blooded killer or a tragic victim of violence and abuse fighting back? Was she born a killer, or made one?”
After years of killing, Miranda Barbour found it hard to keep track. “When I hit 22, I stopped counting,” the pretty teenager says. “But it’s less than 100.”
The eyes that stare out from the Florida prison mug shot are unmistakably those of Joyce Lemay Cohen. Once as pretty as a fashion model, she has retained some beauty.
Volume
01
FEATURE
7
: Miranda Barbour
The Lost Child by Cory Sever
Satanic Craigslist Killer by Peter Sheridan
13
DEPARTMENTS
: Joyce Cohen
Murder in Miami by David Krajicek
23
21
INFORMATION
FEATURE
3
INTERVIEW
FEATURE
: Aileen Wuornos
02
EDITORS PAGE
Femme Fatallee
19
03
The Lost Child by Cory Sever
illustrated by Faille Bloom
I
n the rural town of Troy, Michigan Aileen Carol Warnous, at the age of 9 was trading sexual acts for cigarettes, continually being sexually abused by her biological father, and was ultimately deemed the name “The Local Untouchable”. (Broomfield) This horrid abuse continued throughout her life and resulted in her taking the lives of 7 men in what has been called the first ring of killings from a female serial killer. What is often overlooked from Aileen’s lifetime is the significant abuse she suffered through in the early stages of development. This span of abuse in so many cases is overlooked, due to the recent act of murder induced by the individual. The main concern is whether or not extensive past abuse whether it be sexual, physical, or mental can increase an individuals ability to either abuse, neglect or torture others. In exposing what I find to be a very important topic I wanted to start by investigating the case of Aileen Warnous and her very extensive abuse.
04
05
I
n the rural town of Troy, Michigan Aileen Carol Warnous, at the age of 9 was trading sexual acts for cigarettes, continually being sexually abused by her biological father, and was ultimately deemed the name “The Local Untouchable”. (Broomfield) This horrid abuse continued throughout her life and resulted in her taking the lives of 7 men in what has been called the first ring of killings from a female serial killer. This span of abuse in many cases is overlooked, due to the recent act of murder induced by the individual. Having seen many films of her tragic life story, I began to feel a large amount of sympathy towards her especially when it came to her childhood. One of the films “The Selling of a Female Serial Killer: The Story of Aileen Warnous” Nick Brumsfield dives into the full story of what her life entailed. Everything from her near fatal birth to her death on the execution table was covered in this two series film. At the young age
of 6 Aileen was exposed to several harsh situations. She was first sexually abused at the age of 8 by a man who was very close friends with her father. This may seem to be a very young age, however as studies show that nearly 80% of recorded abuse occurs in children under 3 years old. (United) It is also recorded that 5 deaths occur daily in abuse cases involving children. This number has nearly doubled in the past decade. (U.S. ) In Aileen’s case its troubling to think that possibly more abuse occurred before being reported. Aileen, being the brave child she was, informed her father of the abuse but was told she was a liar and that “nothing like that ever occurred”. Shortly after being dismissed Aileen was raped repeatedly over the course of several months. Following the torture Aileen suffered from her fathers friend she began to spend time away from home due to guilt she felt in reporting the abuse suffered at the hands of her father’s friend.
Yet again Aileen found herself being abused, this time however she was raped by an elderly pedophile located in her town. The cycle of abuse once again struck Aileen but unlike before she refused to report the rape. Soon enough Aileen began to experiment with her sexuality on her own terms with kids her age. Growing up in a small rural area ( Insert Statistic) the curiosity of sex was something many young teens were faced with, however Aileen was involved with others sexually at the age of 9. It was reported by several children within her age ground that Aileen was often trading blow jobs for cigarettes. The idea of a child “selling” his or herself for a mere cigarette is completely nauseating. Let alone the simple fact she was performing a sexual act in order to receive a illegal substance for a child. (Broomfield) Several years later Aileen was faced with yet another horrible struggle in the discover that she was pregnant. Many rumors began stating that her grandfather was actually the biological father of her child, others believe it was the local pedophile’s child. Either way Aileen was forced to have the child and place it up for adoption immediately. Two weeks following the childbirth, Aileen was asked to leave the home of her grandparents, in which she took shelter in local woods where she built small shelters out of found materials. Aileen faced the harsh Michigan winters by sleeping in a nearby friends. The friend was not able however to let Aileen into her house so she slept in a car that was placed on cinder blocks along the driveway of the house. Aileen lived homeless for nearly 2 years before deciding to leave the Upper Michigan peninsula and hitchhike all the way to Florida. There she believed she could make her life into something more, the small amount of hope she had, she took with her and continued to provide hope for the future. After countless instances of abuse both sexually, mentally, and physically, Aileen began to accept the demoralizing act of selling her body for money. In order for Aileen to earn money she resorted to the only job in which she knew how to do best. Aileen worked as a full time prostitute or as she liked to call it “A Professional CallGirl.” Often Aileen found refuge from the harsh weather while prostituting at bars and local biker hangouts. It was here where
she believed she felt most at home. However Aileen’s temper would often resort in her getting into an altercation with people. She was also arrested many times throughout her life for prostituting. She believed later in life that the cops were always out to get her no matter what she was doing. The prostitution continued for all of Aileen’s adult life, it was reported by Aileen herself that she serviced well over a thousand individuals over the span of several years. I can only imagine the amount of disease and sexually transmitted diseases she was exposed to during this years. (Reynolds) For nearly a decade Aileen hooked the Florida highways selling herself for the pleasure of others. However soon enough she was faced with yet another case of abuse. In her own words she described a man by the name of “Richard Mallory” who casually picked her up off the side of the road looking for sexual favors. Aileen continued by explaining the harsh acts inflicted on her. Richard began by knocking Aileen unconscious and then proceeded to tie her hands to the steering wheel. (Broomfield) Once Aileen awoke she was blindsided by a bottle of rubbing alcohol
“Found guilty of killing 6 men she was eventually executed in the state of Florida by lethal injection.” which was poured onto her badly scraped and beat body. Mallory proceeded by raping her with a tire jack. Once Mallory had stopped, Aileen eventually struggled and broke free, by wielding her way out of the ropes she reached into her bag and retrieved her gun. She proceeded to shoot Richard Mallory 6 times killing him immediately. Aileen proceeded to kill six more men in the duration of twelve months. (Reynolds) These killings all occurred in heavily wooded areas along major highways of Florida. The men were all shot multiple times and body’s discarded in nonspecific ways. sentenced to 5 years for sexual assaulting a young woman. So was Aileen defending herself from prostitution gone wrong? Or were the killings due to the build up of abuse and neglect Aileen suffered throughout her life?
06
07
SATANIC
Craigslist Killer
By: Peter Sheridan Photography Joel Carter
A
FTER years of killing, Miranda Barbour found it hard to keep track. “When I hit 22, I stopped counting,” the pretty teenager says. “But it’s less than 100.” There was only room for so many notches on her knife, which she has admitted to police was her favourite murder weapon. And yesterday Miranda Barbour began giving police information about where they can begin digging up her victims. “I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them,” she says. The petite 19-year-old with long dark brown hair, her porcelain face framed by spectacles, seems too delicate for such savagery, yet she insists: “Looks can be deceiving.” Barbour faces the death penalty, and vows: “If I were to be released, I would do this again.” She is charged with a single count of murder, but in a shocking jailhouse confession claims
08
09
that she has rampaged across America in a killing spree as part of a Satanic cult since the age of 13, leaving victims from Alaska to California, and from Texas to North Carolina, where she was finally arrested.
“I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.” Stunned police are skeptical but are treating her claims seriously, as Barbour could prove to be one of the worst serial killers in history and certainly the worst female serial killer ever. Disturbingly, Barbour sees herself as having performed a public service. Just like the lead character in the hit American TV show Dexter, who kills criminals who have slipped through the cracks of the justice system, she claims that she only kills “bad people”.
The troubled teen was finally caught after luring her husband of just three weeks, Elyette Barbour, 22, into joining her murder spree. I wasn’t always there. I knew something was bad inside me and the Satanic beliefs brought it out. I embraced it. Seeking out a victim who “deserved” to die, Barbour advertised on Craigslist (the online classified ad site) offering “companionship” for $100 (£60). On November 11 she lured Troy LaFerrara, 42, a married environmental engineer, to meet her in Sunbury, Pennsylvania. As they were sitting in her car, Barbour claims that she considered letting LaFerrara live, but then “he said the wrong things”. Though she is still a teenager, Barbour explains: “I lied to him and told him I just turned 16” – two years below the legal limit for consensual sex. “He told me that it was OK. If he would have
said no, that he wasn’t going through with the arrangement, I would have let him go.” On Barbour’s signal her husband leapt from his hiding place on the floor in the back seat and wrapped a cord around LaFerrara’s neck. “Things got out of control,” says Barbour, who admits stabbing LaFerrara – 6ft 2in and weighing almost 20 stone – 20 times. “I remember everything. It is like watching a movie.” Barbour met her husband after they joined the Satanist cult which has dominated her life and allegedly led to her first killing at the tender age of 13. She traces her murderous desires back to the age of four when she was molested by an uncle. Her mother Elizabeth Dean, 41, confirms that her sister’s husband was sentenced to 14 years in prison for child sex abuse. “It was bad,” says
Dean. “I never let her stay anywhere except for my sister’s house and I was devastated when I found out.” Nine tormented years later, Barbour joined a Satanic cult in Alaska, where her family was living and was quickly inducted into a life of murder.
“When I hit 22, I stopped counting,” the pretty teenager says. “But it’s less than 100.” The cult leader took Barbour along to meet a man who owed him money, she recalls “It was in an alley and he shot him,” says Barbour. “Then he said to me that it was my turn to shoot him. I hate guns. I don’t use guns. I couldn’t do it. “So he came behind me and he took his hands and put them on top of mine and we pulled the trigger.
10
11 and Barbour claims she became pregnant. Cult members allegedly tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and an “in-house abortion”, she said. For the next three years in Alaska, Barbour participated in several murders, though she claims that she began abusing drugs, which affected her mentally. “I wasn’t always there. I knew something was bad inside me and the Satanic beliefs brought it out. I embraced it.” Barbour says that she rose to become a high-ranking official in the cult and became pregnant by the deputy leader, named Forest, who was later murdered. She claims to have left a trail of bodies across Alaska in Anchorage, Nome, Palmer, Big Lake and Wasilla. “I would lure these people in,” she says. “I learned them and even became their friend. “I did this to people who did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here any more.”
She fled Alaska in 2011, moving to North Carolina, hoping to get away from her murderous past, and pregnant with her daughter, now 19 months. She fell in love with fellow Satanist Elyette Barbour, marrying in October 2013, and got a job as a supermarket cashier. But Barbour could not escape her inner demons. She was a fan of the role-playing computer game Dark Souls, in which a cursed character kills to survive. And the newlyweds decided to celebrate their third week’s anniversary by murdering someone together. “He is proud of what he did,” she says. “I will always love him.” Though skeptical of Barbour’s boasts, Sunbury police chief Steve Mazzeo says: “We are taking her claims very seriously. We have made contact with the FBI and we have agreed to work with them.” In the vast wastes of Alaska, where murder victims can easily disappear, investigators are awaiting Barbour’s directions to her victims’ graves.
If police confirm her claims, she could be the worst female serial killer in history and among the most prolific ever. Miranda Barbour’s claims are so horrific that even America’s leading Satanists are scrambling to distance themselves from her. “It seems to me that she is calling herself a member of a Satanic cult, not a legally incorporated above-ground form of Satanism,” said Church of Satan head priest Peter Gilmore, who says his church absolutely does not condone killing. Barbour hung her head as she was led into court for a recent hearing, her wrists in handcuffs chained to a heavy leather belt. But regrets are beyond her any imagining. “I have none,” she reveals. “I know I will never see my husband again and I have accepted that.” She shows no remorse and, against her lawyer’s advice, wants to come clean and stop living a lie. “By no means is this a way to glorify it or get attention,” she says. “I feel it is time to get all of this out. I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.” A satanic killer and her husband have avoided the death penalty after they pleaded guilty today to fatally stabbing a married man whom she lured to his death using Craigslist.
“I feel it is time to get all of this out. I don’t care if people believe me. I just want to get it out.” Miranda Barbour, 19, and her husband, Elytte Barbour, 22, stabbed and strangled Troy LaFerrara in Pennsylvania, after he responded to her ad for ‘female companionship’ last November. They appeared for a pre-trial hearing in Sunbury, Pennsylvania on Tuesday morning ahead of what was expected to be a high-profile case involving claims of cult killings and sordid sexual encounters. They will be sentenced on September 18. Both killers have pleaded guilty to additional charges of aggravated assault, robbery and possessing an instrument of crime, dailyitem.com reported.
12
13
in By David Krajicek
A Deadly Sin The eyes that stare out from the Florida prison mug shot are unmistakably those of Joyce Lemay Cohen. Once as pretty as a fashion model, she has retained some of her attractive features umber-colored eyes, lush lips and noble cheekbones. But her hair is shorn, and she has gone gray something she would never have tolerated in the lavish life she once led. But after 15 years in prison, any remaining glimmer of glamour went dull long ago for Cohen. She is 55 years old now. Her life is reduced to the simple regimen of incarceration at Broward Correctional Institution, the women’s prison in Fort Lauderdale. She is inmate No. 161701, one of 611 women prisoners. Greed got her there. At age 24 she married a rich older man, Stanley Cohen, who introduced Joyce his fourth wife to a jet-set way of life. They lived in an historic mansion overlooking Biscayne Bay in Miami’s ritzy Coconut Grove section. They drove Jaguars and flew in their own jet. They vacationed in one adult sandbox after another the Bahamas, Ocho Rios, Jamaica, Las Vegas and Cancun, Mexico. Stan Cohen bought a spread near Steamboat Springs, Colo., for winter pleasure. Mrs. Cohen became accustomed to the fine things in life designer clothing, satin sheets, servants. She enjoyed her husband’s wealth. She
enjoyed his “Miami Vice” lifestyle. She enjoyed his social status. But over time the marriage began to lose its sheen. She was doing too much cocaine. He was fooling around on her. The couple began spending more time apart she in Colorado partying, he in Miami running his construction and real estate development business. One day, after 11 years of marriage, Joyce Cohen stared out at the Rocky Mountain peaks and got a lump in throat. She had reached the conclusion that she wanted the man’s possessions all of them, not half. But she did not want the man. Hysterical Joyce Cohen telephoned 911 in Miami at 5:25 a.m. on March 7, 1986, to report that her husband had been shot in their Coconut Grove home. Police found Stanley Cohen, 52, naked and dead in bed, with gunshot wounds to the head. When Joyce calmed down, she managed to report that Stan had been upstairs asleep while she was up late, busy with a charity project in a downstairs room. The couple’s pet Doberman pincher napped at her feet. She said she was suddenly startled by a loud noise a gunshot. She crept toward the sound and glimpsed two men running out of the house. The mansion was filled with fine furnishings, and the intruders might have found stashes of cocaine and cash had they both-
Nobody bothered to look. But nothing was missing. The crime was not a robbery. If Joyce’s story was true and accurate, someone had entered the house for the express purpose of putting a bullet in the head of Stanley Cohen.
Someone clearly wanted him dead. But who?
Self-Made Man
Stanley Cohen was the eldest of four children of a New York City furrier. He grew up on Long Island, but his family moved to Florida in 1948, when Stanley was 14. He graduated from Miami High School in 1951, then earned a degree in civil engineering from the University of Florida. He married young, and the couple soon had two children, Gary and Gerri. Cohen took a junior management job with a construction firm. He was a fast learner, and he struck out on his own in 1963, when the ambitious man was not yet 30 years old. He called it SAC Construction Co., after Stanley Alan Cohen. The population of Florida doubled from 5 million to 10 million between 1960 and 1980. The Miami area gradually was transformed into a bustling and hip ethnic polyglot from its former reputation as a Jewish retiree’s last stop en route to the hereafter. Cohen’s firm, based in Miami, was positioned to capitalize on the construction needs of that population boom. SAC specialized in commercial construction strip malls, medical facilities, government buildings, warehouses. Cohen juggled many building projects at a time, but he managed to keep a discriminating eye on all of them. He visited his numerous job sites regularly relentlessly, as his employees and subcontractors might have put it. He also began to branch out from construction into its companion enterprise, real estate development. Over the years he built a business with scores of employees and dozens of projects across the State of Florida. Not coincidentally, along the way he got rich.
A New love
Cohen raced through three wives in less than a decade while growing his business. He wasn’t a handsome man in the traditional sense. He was husky, balding and well short of 6 feet. He had a broad smile that did not quite compensate for oversized facial features. But Stanley Cohen could be a commanding presence in any crowd. Like most self-made men, he was confident and engaging. Cohen enjoyed the company of women, and he was never without a steady companion or two, whether he was between marriages or not. His heavy wallet had plenty of sex appeal, even if Stanley didn’t. He was engaged to a woman who would have been his fourth wife when Joyce Lemay came into his life. Cohen didn’t have to look
far to find her. A separated single mother who was new to Miami, she was working as a secretary at SAC Construction. Cohen came to work one day and there she was. He introduced her to his circle of close friends at a French restaurant in Miami one night in the fall of 1974. She was 16 years younger than Cohen, who had just turned 40. Meeting Joyce forced Stan Cohen had to reorder his romantic life. He informed his fiancée that the engagement was off. A few weeks later, on Dec. 5, 1974, he married Joyce Lemay in an extravagant affair at the Dunes Hotel in Las Vegas. This sort of opulence was new to Joyce. She had been born poor in Carpentersville, Ill., a city of 30,000 at the northwest edge of Chicago’s vast suburban halo, an hour’s drive from the Loop.
14
“It’s no surprise that Joyce caught the boss’s famously wandering eye at SAC Construction. She was young, pretty and petite, at just 5 feet tall. Her raven hair and ocher eyes gave Joyce an exotic appeal.” Her father, Bonnie Lemay, was an American Indian, and her mother, Eileen Wojtanek, was of Polish extraction. It was not a Currier-and-Ives childhood, according to a profile by Carol Soret Cope in her book about the Cohen murder, “In the Fast Lane.” Lemay beat his wife, and the couple had persistent financial problems, perhaps because both husband and wife had drinking problems and could not keep steady jobs. Before Joyce reached school age, the family moved south so that Bonnie Lemay could find work as a sharecropper. But life got no sweeter for the enchanted family. Tired of abuse, Eileen split, taking Joyce with her. For several years the woman bounced from one bad relationship and bottle to another. She spent time in orphanages, foster care and youth homes. Joyce would later say that she suffered sexual and physical abuse as a child. In 1964, an aunt in Carpentersville was contacted by Illinois state authorities after Joyce, at age 13, had been booted from a foster family for stealing. The aunt, Bea Wojtanek, took her in and raised her until age 17, when she married a local teenager, George McDillon. They had a son, Shawn, nine months later. George worked as a drywall installer, Joyce as a secretary. They bought a small house but struggled to make the mortgage payments in part because Joyce had expensive taste. (According to author Cope, she once spent $165the equivalent of roughly $1,000 in 2006on peacock feathers to decorate the living room.)
15 After five years of an up-and-down marriage, Joyce compelled her young husband to move the family to Florida to find a better life. He arranged to go to work as a dry-waller in Coral Springs, north of Miami-Fort Lauderdale. The McDillons moved there in 1973, but George returned to Carpentersville alone less than a year later. His wife wanted more out of life than he was able to supply.
then a much faster small jet. The couple invested Stan’s money in whatever struck their fancy land, shopping centers, restaurants and resorts. Their Steamboat Springs home was completed about the time that their marriage reached the seven-year itch phase. Joyce began spending longer stretches alone in Colorado, where she developed her own circle of friends, including briefly country singer Tanya Tucker.
Fabulous Life
Act III
Her marriage to Cohen just 10 days after her divorce from McDillon was official gave Joyce the good life she desired. Author Cope wrote that Joyce and her son made a triumphant return to Carpentersville not long after the Vegas nuptials. She showed up in a shiny new luxury car and reported that she had lassoed a Jewish millionaire. Cohen gave Joyce a fabulous life. Their social connections were centered around the Miami Ski Club and Stan’s tight circle of college fraternity brothers. Joyce became a featured model in one of the year’s most important social events, the ski club’s annual fashion gala. Stanley paid Joyce’s way through interior design school and referred clients from his building firm. But Joyce was too busy shopping to work much. She furnished their new Coconut Grove mansion like a showplace, and she kept abreast of the latest designer clothing styles. When she wasn’t shopping, she was planning their bimonthly vacation trips to the continent’s finest sandy or snowy resorts. Author Cope said Stanley Cohen once joked to his stepson, “Your mother’s
Their Steamboat Springs home was completed about the time that their marriage reached the seven-year itch phase. Joyce began spending longer stretches alone in Colorado, where she developed her own circle of friends, including briefly country singer Tanya Tucker. going to shop me to death.” For skiing, the couple favored laid back Steamboat Springs, Colo., where faded blue jeans were far more plentiful than furs. Stan bought a 650-acre spread there that he called Wolf Run Ranch, then constructed an elaborate cedar-sided cabin on the property. To get back and forth to the mountains he bought his own plane first a prop-driven Cessna,
In the movies, life is a three-act play. The happy ending narrative couldn’t be simpler: You’re up, you’re down, and then you’re up again. Think “Rocky” or “It’s a Wonderful Life.” But Joyce Cohen was born down. Stan Cohen’s wealth brought her up. Inevitably, the third act of her life would find her hell-bound. There could be no happy ending. Their story was as old as infidelity itself. First the couple’s sex life went south. Then Joyce learned that Stanley had rekindled an affair with an old flame. They argued frequently, and each threatened to leave the other. But Stan warned Joyce that she would leave the marriage the same way she entered it with nothing. Joyce could not fathom the idea of returning to her former life. After a decade of living in high style, she was mortified at the thought of having to worry about such financial minutiae as car payments, appliance purchases and clothing boutique tabs. Joyce mused to a friend that she wished Stanley were dead. She made an oblique reference to finding a hit man to solve her problem. They both laughed, and the friend assumed she was kidding. Maybe, or maybe not. Meanwhile, South Florida in the early ‘80s was in its “Miami Vice” phase. Reckless cocaine cowboys were turning the city into one of the country’s murder capitals. Nearly every adult with a spare Ben Franklin in his billfold was dabbling in the drug, and that certainly included the Cohen’s and their clique. Stanley was said to be a regular tooter three or four times a week. There even were whispers that he and his jet were involved in cocaine smuggling. Joyce, for her part, went around with a permanent cocaine-powder mustache. She tooted up with her friends in the Rocky Mountains, including Tanya Tucker, as the singer later would acknowledge to police. When she was in Miami, Joyce often tucked Stanley into bed early, then went out on late-night excursions to her club of choice, the Champagne Room, a disco where cocaine was as easy to find as a swizzle stick. Her son Shawn, whom Cohen had adopted, developed a drug problem of his own and was packed away to a military-style boarding school in Colorado that specialized in instilling a sense
16 used a semester or two there. Clearly, she was careering out of control.
The Investigation
The probe into Stanley Cohen’s murder got off to a rocky start. Less than an hour after the investigation had begun at the Cohen home, Joyce ordered police to vacate the premises. Cops and prosecutors were forced to get a search warrant, which delayed the gumshoes until late that afternoon. The next morning’s Miami Herald carried a story of the Cohen homicide under the headline “Prominent Builder Murdered in Home; Wife Keeps Police Outside for More Than Eight Hours.” Prosecutor David Waksman told reporters, “This is the first time I’ve been asked to prepare a search warrant because the widow would not allow the police to come into her house to conduct a crime scene search.” Joyce’s peculiar behavior made her the prime suspect, of course. But the case was not destined for quick and easy resolution. Stanley Cohen had been killed with four .38-caliber gunshots to his head. One grazed his scalp, two entered from the left side and one from the right. Police found the murder weapon that afternoon in a stand of ferns in the Cohen’s’ yard. It was Stanley’s own Smith & Wesson revolver. Joyce Cohen explained that Stanley had handled the gun at about midnight on the night he was killed when she heard a noise and asked him to investigate. She said he searched the house and yard but found nothing. Joyce surmised that he left the gun on his nightstand, and the two “shadowy figures” she saw in the house used it to kill him. But inside the house they found a facial tissue that contained both gunpowder residue and Joyce’s nose mucous. There were other problems in her account. An ear witness said he heard four gunshots at 3 a.m., even though Joyce did not report the shooting until nearly 2 hours later. The medical examiner estimated the time of death at 3 a.m.
Waiting for a Call
Joyce Cohen hired Alan Ross, a marquee name among Florida defense attorneys. He immediately arranged for his client to take a lie detector test. The first was inconclusive. But a second indicated that she was not lying when she said she was not involved in her husband’s murder. Police shrugged off the results. “We’re not baffled,” one deadpan police official told reporters. Neither were Stanley Cohen’s children from his first marriage, Gary Cohen, a lawyer, and Gerri Helfman, a TV reporter who would go on to become a widely recognized news anchor in South Florida. Five days after the murder, they filed a $5 million wrongful death lawsuit against Joyce. The stepchildren also began legal maneuvers
to block her from getting any part of Stanley’s estate, which would prove to be worth just $2 million due to a heavy personal and business debt load. Joyce responded with an $11 million slander suit against them. But the investigation seemed to grind to a halt. Days, weeks and months passed without criminal charges being filed against Joyce or anyone else. Every so often, impatient reporters would demand to know why
“This is the first time I’ve been asked to prepare a search warrant because the widow would not allow the police to come into her house to conduct a crime scene search.” police were unable to pin the crime on the prime suspect. Jon Spear, the lead detective, firmly believed that Joyce was responsible. But neither he nor prosecutors wanted to risk losing the case to a jury by rushing forward with charges that were not provable. They waited for the usual break: a silver-bullet phone call. It finally came from Frank Zuccarello, a member of a busy home-invasion gang that worked mansions in the Sunshine State.
The Trial
Zuccarello had been arrested for robbery just four days after the Cohen murder. He was facing a long prison stretch, and that was motivation enough for him to step forward. He told police that Cohen had hired him and two others from his robbery gang, Thomas Joslin and Anthony Caracciolo, to kill her husband. She provided the gun and a sketch of the house to guide the killers to Stanley’s bed. On the night of the murder, she turned off the alarm system, locked up the pet Doberman and left a sliding door open to allow them access, Zuccarello said. He added the killers were paid with $100,000 worth of cocaine. For a month, authorities worked on Joslin and Caracciolo, trying to get them to implicate Cohen. They refused to talk and were eventually charged with murder in September 1988. Joyce Cohen was finally arrested and charged with her husband’s murder two months later, on Nov. 2, 1988, two and a half years after the murder. By then her lifestyle had undergone a transformation. She was living at a trailer park in Chesapeake, Va., with her new boyfriend, Robert Dietrich, whom she met in Steamboat months after the murder. Her trial in the fall of 1989 began with testimony from the first cop on the
17 scene on Nov. 2, 1988, two and a half years after the murder. By then her lifestyle had undergone a transformation. She was living at a trailer park in Chesapeake, Va., with her new boyfriend, Robert Dietrich, whom she met in Steamboat months after the murder. Her trial in the fall of 1989 began with testimony from the first cop on the murder scene, Officer Catherine Carter. She testified that a dazed and spacey Joyce Cohen sat on the floor of her living room and said, “I shouldn’t have done it.” Another early witness described a foreboding conversation he had been having with Joyce for more than a year before Stanley was murdered.
“She seemed kind of a pain-wracked person,” Tucker told Spear. “Bottom line, she was extremely unhappy.... She liked the money. That’s the only thing she liked.” Tucker stayed the night at the Cohen residence. The women used cocaine, and Joyce once again opened up about Stanley. Detective Spear interviewed Tucker, and a 46-page transcript of the conversation became part of the case record. “She seemed kind of a pain-wracked person,” Tucker told Spear. “Bottom line, she was extremely unhappy....She liked the money. That’s the only thing she liked.” Another Steamboat friend, Kathy Moser, said Joyce Cohen was “extremely unhappy and agitated” that Stanley was fooling around with an old girlfriend, Carol Hughes, and the paramour mounted the stand to acknowledge that she and Cohen were intimate. Defense Attorney Ross gamely tried to discredit one prosecution witness after another, but he was swimming upstream against a torrent of damning testimony, including the apparent delay in reporting the shooting and the gunpowder residue on found on a tissue. Prosecutors said the killers apparently carelessly dropped the murder weapon while fleeing. They said Cohen picked it with a tissue and threw it in the ferns in yard before police arrived. She blew her nose in the same tissue. Frank Zuccarello, the star witness, probably sealed her fate. “She wanted her husband dead,” he said. “The murder was supposed to look like a botched burglary.” He was lucid and believable as he described the planning meeting with Joyce Cohen at a North Miami Beach 7-Eleven parking
18 Caracciolo went upstairs and killed her husband. Defense Attorney Ross accused the “conniving” Zuccarello, of make up the story in exchange for a lenient five-year prison sentence, which he had completed even before his testimony. But the jurors obviously believed him. After hearing three weeks of testimony, they took less than a day to convict Joyce Lemay McDillon Cohen of first-degree murder. The jury recommended against execution, and Judge Fredrick Smith imposed a life sentence, plus 15 years for conspiracy. Smith told Cohen, “You committed the crime for financial gain, and you did it in a cold, calculating manner.” Joyce Cohen has been unsuccessful in a series of appeals, and she ultimately lost any claim to Stanley’s estate. Her son, Shawn, did receive a $106,000 inheritance. But he quickly blew it on drugs. A few years ago, the Miami Herald found him living in a cardboard box in a city park. “I’m stuck in a rut,” he said. In 1991, five full years after they were implicated in the case, Anthony Caracciolo and Thomas Joslin finally agreed to a plea bargain. They pleaded no contest to second-degree murder and were promised sentences that would allow them the possibility of parole. Caracciolo, the alleged trigger-man, got 40 years and Joslin 30. Joslin is scheduled to be released on parole on Dec. 26 this year, 2006, and Caracciolo on Jan. 14, 2010. Meanwhile, a Miami TV reporter came forward in 1998 to say that Jon Spear, the lead Cohen investigator, told her confidentially in 1993 that he believed Joyce Cohen had acted alone in shooting her husband. He said he believed Zuccarello made up the contract-killing story to get out of prison. The reporter, Gail Bright, said she revealed the information after five years because she was overwhelmed by guilt that two wrongfully convicted men were rotting in prison. Supporters of Caracciolo collected statements from two other law enforcers and a polygraph operator who also questioned Zuccarello reliability. But Zuccarello, who now lives in the Tampa area, has stood by his account. A federal judge granted a hearing in the case last summer. Joyce Cohen reportedly is eager to have Zuccarello discounted because more than anything else his testimony led to her indictment and conviction.
So far, the key figures in the South Florida crime epic remain behind criminal bars.
19
Facts at a Glance By Maria Lasko
Otto Pollak, also said that most female crime is hidden. Kelleher & Kelleher (1998) argue that female serial killers are more successful, careful, precise, methodical, and quiet in committing their crimes.
F
emale serial killers have always been something of an anomaly in criminology and a puzzle for law enforcement. As Eric Hickey (1991) describes them, “These are the quiet killers, every bit as lethal as male serial murderers, but we are seldom aware of one in our midst because of their low visibility.� One of the first writers on female criminality,
They examined 100 cases since 1900 and found an average duration of 8 years before being caught — double that of the male serial killer. On the other hand, Alarid, Marquart, Burton, Cullen et. al. (1996) conducted interviews with convicted female offenders and found 86% of them assumed a secondary follower role during criminal events by either working with a male or female accomplice. In all fairness, feminists and people of conscience maintain that the academic literature on female crime is fraught with misconception and that popular mythology detracts from the real reality of women as victims of crime as well as perpetrators.
20
DROWNING STABBING SUFFOCATION BLUDGEONING SHOOTING POISENING
METHODS
MOTIVES
SEX ENJOYMENT CONTROL DRUGS/CULT MONEY
21
INTERVIEW by Matthew Lysiak
A
few weeks ago, Miranda Barbour decided to kill herself. She says she quietly unscrewed the bulb from the socket in her cell in Pennsylvania’s Northumberland County Prison, smashed it on the ground and picked through the shards, searching for a piece sharp enough to slice open her wrists. She was dismayed that none of the pieces would do the job. Among the reasons she wanted to die is her heavy burden of regret. Regret for her family’s pain and “slaughtered” reputation because of what she has done. And most of all, regret that she may never hold her husband or young daughter again. “I knew I would be put away, but I just didn’t think it would all happen so quickly,” she says. “I thought I would have more time to say goodbye.” But she has no regrets about Troy LaFerrara, whom she confessed to murdering, or about the 22 other people in at least four other states she claims to have killed. “I felt no regret. None,” she says. “I didn’t hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it.” Barbour is charged with criminal homicide for the murder of LaFerrara. Last week her attorney filed a motion asking a judge to rule that she did not torture LaFerrara before killing him, in an effort to take the death penalty off the table. She is due back in court on May 30. She became an international headline after she told a local reporter on Valentine’s Day that she was a serial killer. Since then, the teen mom from North Pole, Alaska, has been a constant source of media speculation. Police don’t seem to take her seriously as a mass murderer, but she has been fielding requests from CNN and other news outlets. As she calmly discusses what led her to the jail cell, she is handcuffed, dressed in an orange jumpsuit and sitting on a hard plastic chair in a small highsecurity visitation room at the Muncy Department of Corrections in central Pennsylvania. She is 19 but seems years younger, has a warm smile and speaks in a quiet, calm voice, just above a whisper. “People think I’m a monster, but I’ve done a lot of good.” She claims her murders spared “hundreds” of young girls from abuse. “The justice system doesn’t work, so I did what I did.” That’s why she believes LaFerrara deserved to die. The 42-year-old electrical engineer from the small town of Port Trevorton, Pa., answered a Craigslist ad Miranda posted promising “companionship” in exchange for $100. On November 11, they met for the first time in her car in the parking lot of the Susquehanna Valley Mall. Hiding under a blanket in the backseat was her husband of just three weeks,
22 Elytte Barbour. Their plan was simple. As soon as Miranda said the code words “Did you see the stars tonight?” Elytte would leap from the backseat with a cord, wrap it around LaFerrara’s neck and choke him to death. But first, Miranda says, she wanted to give LaFerrara an out, so she told him she had lied about her age, that she had just turned 16. If he had done the right thing at that moment, she says, he would still be alive. “Instead, he told me that it was OK.” He still wanted to have sex with her. Miranda says that as LaFerrara’s hand slid higher up on her thigh, she said the code words, expecting Elytte to pounce, but he did nothing. So she did it herself. Police say she pulled a knife from the side pocket of her car door and plunged it into LaFerrara’s chest, again and again, 20 times. The newlyweds then drove around for a short while, looking for a secluded spot to dump the body. They settled on a dimly lit alley, then headed off to the local department store for cleaning supplies. After Miranda and Elytte scrubbed their blood-soaked passenger seat, they drove for an hour to Harrisburg, Pa., where they celebrated at a strip club. “We were on this high, but the club was so bad,” she says. “The girls were just dirty. It was a total buzzkill.” She laughs at that, then claims she was tired of killing. “That’s why I left [LaFerrara’s] cell phone. I wanted to get caught.” LaFerrara’s body was found in the backyard of a home in Sunbury on November 12. Police began their investigation by interviewing local strippers who had met with LaFerrara, but then found his cell phone, which had texts that led them to Miranda. She was arrested on December 3. Her husband was arrested three days later. After initially claiming she had stabbed LaFerrara because he molested her, she confessed. She now claims that LaFerrara wasn’t her first victim and that the actual number is somewhere between 22 and 45. Most law enforcement officials say her claim isn’t credible and haven’t followed up, although Miranda insists she can draw a map to the bodies and is waiting for the FBI to interview her. Miranda’s father, Sonny Dean, told a reporter that while he doesn’t think she has killed 22 people, he believes it is possible that she may have killed someone while living with him in Alaska. .Miranda shrugs off the fact that her friends and family dismiss her claims. “It hurts to know that all these people and my family don’t believe me,” she says, “but in another part of me it makes me laugh that people think I’m lying, because this is the most I’ve ever been honest in my whole life.” A few months later, Miranda began to complain that her anus and “pee-pee” hurt, but her parents did nothing. Her eyes grow larger, and she touches the bulletproof glass separating us with her hand with enthusiasm. “Willow was standing at my locker,”
she says. “I always hated her. She wouldn’t move, so I punched her in the face and got suspended.” Miranda says she briefly considered killing Willow but “it just didn’t seem like a good idea.” She explains that she only wanted to kill people who deserved it, and “being stuck up” didn’t warrant death. “I was like, You have no idea who I am or what I’m capable of.” Miranda says her violent emotions began to rise to the surface when she was 10—first in the form of a dream about her beloved pet bird, Henry. “I had this little yellow bird named Henry I kept in a cage in my room. I kept dreaming that I had killed it. At the time I couldn’t understand why, because I loved that bird.” She says she joined a satanic cult at the age of 12: “I kind of slid into it. But they weren’t just into Satan, there were into hating minorities too.” She insists Satanism has been a positive influence in her life and helped her harness that darkness inside of her—most of the time. “I worship a dark entity,” she explains, “but just because it is dark doesn’t mean that it is bad.” She claims to have committed her first murder when she was 13. It was a man who owed money to her cult’s leader, whom she identifies only as Forest. She says she lured the man into a dark alley with the promise of sex, and Forest jumped out of the shadows and shot him. “Forest shot him in the chest, but he was still alive,” she says. “He put the gun in my hand. He put his finger over my finger and pulled the trigger.” Miranda claims she became pregnant by a member of the cult that same year. The other cult members did not want her to have the baby, she says, so they tied her to a bed, gave her drugs and performed a gruesome in-house abortion. Before moving from Alaska, she says, she had to endure a brutal gang rape as the “exit fee” for leaving the cult. “There were only two ways out—by death or gang rape. I was pretty beat up.”
EDITORS
Calling Card
W
elcome readers to another edition of Femme Fatalle. As the editor I felt the need to give some background on what a female serial killer really is, to help you gain a greater insight into the psyche then provided in each individual story. Of course it is still up to you to combine the many nuances provided within this framework of literary content to base or formulate your own opinions and we welcome any and all feedback you may have. Until Aileeen Wuornos came along, the term “female serial killer” was generally believed to be an oxymoron, in spite of the fact that some of our fairer citizens have consistently shown us that, when it comes to murder, a woman can compete with any man. See the article in this issue for more on Aileen. Of course, part of this lack of awareness was caused by earlier definitions of serial murder which commonly assumed the perpetrator would be a man; as late as 1998, Roy Hazelwood of the FBI was quoted at a conferences as saying “there are no female serial killers.” Even when the lethality of a femme fatale is recognized, she is most often portrayed as a victim manipulated by an evil male. It’s true that there have been far fewer female serial murderers than there are males (although percentage-wise, there are more female serial murderers (15 percent in comparison to 85 percent males) than there are one-time killers (90 percent men; 10 percent women). It’s also true that you aren’t as likely to see a woman torturing her victim
or having sex with a dead corpse, the kinds of gory details that make headlines and sell movies. In fact, sex and pleasure are likely to be much farther down on the motivation list for female serial killers than men; we females tend to take a more pragmatic approach to killing as you will discover in each and every new issue. Most female serial killers work alone. And, they’re good at it. In fact, if you accept the now-common definition of a serial murderer as someone who kills three or more persons, with time elapsing between homicidal events, females outperform their male counterparts. A 2011 study found that these lethal ladies operate under the radar; they are less likely to have a criminal history, tend to kill those closest to them (emotionally and physically) and use quieter methods of elimination (poison, drugs, smothering). As a result, their killing careers last much longer than men (between eight and 11 years, in comparison to two years for male serial murderers), with an average of nine victims. As a result of this, their killing careers last much longer than men (between eight and 11 years, in comparison to two years for male serial murderers) Don’t ever under any circumstance underestimate a dangerous woman. And don’t judge by appearances; evil can be pleasant and pretty on the outside. Just like poisoned candy.