Anybody married has at one time or another pondered however briefly the idea of doing away with his or her spouse or long term lover. It’s natural. You can lie about it and claim self-righteous indignity, but I seriously doubt if your spouses demise wasn’t at least cause for a flash of speculation. Except maybe if you are Mother Theresa. But then, she wasn’t married.
Let’s face it, killing one’s spouse is an historic tradition. It has peppered history. It has moved fortunes, and it has realigned nations. It has also disrupted families and left us to ponder the illogical. But prevalent. As it is difficult to pick up a paper and not discover the periodic and often sensationalized story of one significant other reaching the dramatic conclusion that the other significant other is not so significant, after all.
Spouse killings are big news. Scott Peterson, a pathetic nebish of a man with a lust for other women, a deep seated hatred for his wife, and a bad murder plan, made headlines for months on end, after he killed his eight months pregnant wife, Laci, and tossed her body into the San Francisco Bay. His turgid story practically made careers. Talking heads babbled on and on as if this idiot had killed the Archduke Ferdinand and set off the First World War. But interest in that little catastrophe in distant Europe pales in the face of spousal murder.
I remember as a kid hearing my parents discuss Ethel Kravitz who awakened her husband one morning with five shots into his sleeping body. She was early in the game and didn’t get the headlines, the book and movie deal she would have today as she explained to all who would listen of her mental torture at the hands of what’s his face. And then not long ago there was the woman in Texas who as taped by security cameras running her Mercedes over her cheating husband’s body. Like fifteen times. Surely her way of declaring the marriage was over.
But then Texas has always been intriguing with its spousal murders. I remember living there some decades ago when the “crimes of passion” ruling was still hanging around. Come weekends you would get the murder scores like the ball scores. The first being how many drunken rednecks not yet accustomed to urbanization shot up the bar and killed some other barfly in a heated dispute over the superiority of the Ford or Chevy truck. I remember one incident where one shot another for taking his hat. Not quite like taking his horse or his truck, but it got him shot just the same.
But that was nothing when compared to the time honored Texas tradition where spouses who shot the wife, husband, lovers, whatever, claimed they did it in the heat of passion. The heat of passion laws were still on the books back then, and more than a few judges paid homage to custom and gave the heat of passion plea notable credibility. The loving couple may have not spoken to each other for months, not had sex for decades, but suddenly that old passion blazed inside and blammo, there was blood on the Karastan carpet. I remember one husband shooting his wife’s lover because he thought he was a burglar. A burglar standing naked over his straying wife. And these, mind you, were hardly the trailer trash whose collective insignificance meant their tales of murder and betrayal was a mere footnote to the upscale crimes of passion. It wasn’t like today where any half-assed ne’er do well could make big headlines by only killing his or her spouse. If you were of the lower classes you had to at least kill a whole bunch of people and not just your spouse before any self-respecting journalist would waste news space or air time on your sordid and pathetic story. But then, that was before there was a 24-hour news monster that had to be fed.
Yes, more than a few of the wealthy and successful have traveled the rickety path from the appearance of reputable citizenship to homicidal celebrity. There are any number of physicians who choose to do in their wives to avoid the inconvenience of divvying up community property. Sometimes there is a lover involved, and sometimes it is just a stand alone venal gesture. Such was the recent case where according to the Los Angeles Times, a man was charged with arranging for his wife’s murder back in 2003. Only now, are they bringing charges, which speaks well of the tenaciousness of the Los Angeles Police on this murder case. The murdered spouse was one of their own, after all, and had been a secretary in the Internal Affairs Division. Police considered among other leads the killing was job related. But ultimately the motive enveloped the estranged wife discovered assets her husband didn’t declare in what had initially been an amicable divorce. It came to light that it was a hired gang member who murdered her with a shotgun, outside a Mexican Restaurant. At the alleged behest of her husband. Her husband had taken there because a friend had told him the guacamole was something special.
But speaking of killings, there are the celebrity murders that seemed wrapped around restaurants. Something about eating a decent meal that makes one want to kill their beloved. There is the Robert Blake who was brought up on murder charges for allegedly killing his wife in North Hollywood, outside their favorite Italian restaurant. He wasn’t convicted. O.J. Simpson, was also found not guilty, wink-wink, was charged with killing his wife after she, too, returned from a then trendy Italian restaurant in Brentwood. But Phil Spector was found guilty. Took two trials to make it happen, as the evidence of his having blood all over himself, powder burns, and claiming to his driver “I just killed someone,” made it a tough call for the jury. Alright, technically she wasn’t Spector’s wife, but some woman he had picked up in a restaurant. Nevertheless, Spector deserves some honorable mention here, if for no other reason than his past exploits with former wives and girlfriends. All those years of trying shouldn’t go unnoted.
There was the celebrity chef, Juan Cruz, who was arrested for arranging his wife’s murder. And now Mexican authorities have issued an arrest warrant for Bruce Beresford-Redman, former producer of “Survivor,” some irony there, in connection with the killing of his wife. Beresford-Redman has denied any involvement with his wife’s death. Saturday Night Live featured player, Phil Hartman, was shot by his drug addled wife. Years go, women were best known for poisoning their victims. But now they have modernized and have exchanged poison for bullets. And you get to know the outcome of your actions much sooner than poison would allow. You’ve come a long way, baby.
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Age doesn’t seem to be a factor when it comes to killing your spouse. Spousal murder is fun for all ages. The young do it, think of Ryan Jenkins, former reality show contestant, who killed his ex-wife, Jasmine Fiore, a former swimsuit model. Brain child that he was, Jenkins pulled out her teeth and cut off her fingers to keep the police from identifying the body. He forgot about the serial numbers in the boob job. Oh well. At least Jenkins had the decency to hang himself in a Canadian motel and save the state some desperately needed bucks.
And then there is my former neighbor and strange but brilliant fellow, Ira Einhorn. Combining actual research with actual bullshit, Einhorn was a charismatic soul despite the fact he appeared to wash every new moon and gave Mr. Dirt a serious run for his money. Nevertheless, he captivated the new agers, academicians, and corporate folk alike with his mighty spiel about the expanded mind and the future of everything. Even when convicted, many still backed him, in fact supported him with money and other assistance as he eluded authorities for close to twenty years. In fairness, Ira didn’t kill his spouse but the young woman who loved him and then found him overbearing and controlling once she grew up and out of her infatuation stage. Ira didn’t like that, couldn’t stand the fact that she had left him, and forever sealed their bond by beating her to death with a hammer and then keeping her desiccated body in a trunk inside his funky apartment. He had convinced the more gullible it was all a set up. That despite the smell coming from his apartment, he was working in mind manipulation and telekinetic communication. But the less gullible, like the jury for instance, wasn’t buying it, and convicted poor Ira in something like two hours. They probably took so long because one juror had lingered in the bathroom.
Okay, enough of the gruesome facts. There are certainly enough to get the picture, and the list or spousal and lover murders is far too long for any reasonable person to want to absorb. Beside, I will live that up to Nancy Grace and the Crime Network. But spousal murder still remains its own kind of killing. Jealousy and avarice may be the top two ingredients to set someone off to killing their spouse, that’s true. But, still, we are referring to a pretty dramatic and reprehensible act here, all to save a few bucks or justify a lover on the side. Or to nullify that lover on the side. Whatever. It is some recourse for what appears an intractable condition.
While we have for the more religious the Biblical depiction of fratricide, there is little I can think of that explains in any detail the killing of one spouse or another. You can find it in blues songs and in country music, but not in the Bible. But then I have never been much of a Bible reader, so I might have missed something in class. And then if I had missed the spousal homicide bit, pop culture would have reared the parable in whatever dumbed down lyric form so I would at least be aware of it. No going there. But then not everything in the Bible. I am Western and think in Western thoughts. There are special creeds where the ultra religious somehow still feel justified, in killing their wives. But say no more as they tend to get upset when you remind them of it.
Was spousal homicide just inconceivable back in Biblical times? Doubtful Or was it that women were considered property or chattel and their sudden demise at the hands of their self-righteous husbands was nothing to write verses about? I don’t know. But then there is no real Biblical listing of wives killing husbands, either. And they might have been more justified, given the oppression of the times.
And what prompts one spouse to kill another? Rich and intelligent people commit to spousal murder the face of all probability they will be caught, convicted and sentenced to a place far removed from the golf course? It is amazing that to avoid giving up material possessions one would stoop to the unthinkable. Or because they want to leave their spouse for another lover. Or the spouse doesn’t want them leaving for another lover. It”s a stone, cold fact yet still amazing that greed and jealousy leads to the kind of thought that leads to murder.
I can understand the true crime of passion when in a jealous rage one spouse or the other snaps out and stands there with the smoking gun or dripping knife. Dumb but understandable. But most often jealous rage is not the the case. Most often spousal murders are premeditated and calculated. Most of the time there is a trail. There are motives and documents, telephone records and complicit email. There is often the actual killer, the guy who did it, arrested on a different charge and now willing to tell all for a lighter sentence. Or for an appearance on Larry King. Few get away with it. But still the beat goes on.
I would love to attribute it to our social programming and blame the media for egging us on. I would love to cite loose morals, the ever growing need for self-aggrandizement. I could opt that we read enough headlines, see enough movies, and read enough books to perhaps make some of the more demented start to think spouse killing is an easy fix to a bad marriage. But it is not the media. The media may fan the flames, but there is something inside us that leads the charge. There is that chemical impulse that leads to premeditation, that causes some to cross the line between rational thought and plotting and scheming their spouse’s murder. Yes, it is in our chemistry. Damn it.
So I guess we should take into consideration the old Dupont slogan, “Better Living Through Chemistry.” Or not. Perhaps it is better said that we are just dumb enough to be human.
