Partner In Crime

“Welcome home, Ernie,” Joa

“So I hear,” he said.

For the next forty-five minutes they each briefed Detective Carpenter on everything that had happened. Then, when Jaime left for the medical examiner’s office and Ernie went to handle the interviews with Eddie and Marcus Verdugo, Joa

Reaching for her briefcase, she withdrew the first thing that came to hand – the envelope containing the A

THE FEMALE OF THE SPECIES

CAN BE DEADLIER THAN THE MALE

Conventional wisdom holds that serial killers are usually disaffected white males. But what happens when women turn deadly? How do they differ from their male counterparts, and how are they treated by the criminal-justice system?

In this series of six articles, award-wi

Today’s installment deals with Arizona copper heiress A

On a su

Hours after the wedding ceremony in one of Seattle’s waterfront public parks, A

Serial killers often manifest their murderous tendencies early on. Stories abound of how an adolescent history of torturing and killing small animals is an early indicator of a troubled youth who may well end up becoming a serial killer. But A

Roger Rowland was the well-heeled heir to a pioneering Arizona copper-mining fortune who carried on a family tradition of hands-on involvement in the mining industry by moving his young family – a wife, Anita, and two daughters, Patricia and A

Patty, the older of the two and developmentally disabled, died at age thirteen in what the Cochise County coroner’s report declared “an accidental fall” in the family home. A few days later, Roger Rowland was dead as well, as a result of what was officially termed “a self-inflicted gunshot wound.”

That double family tragedy was made worse when, prior to her father’s funeral, Rowland’s younger daughter, A

While hospitalized, A

Dr. Myra Collins, a longtime friend and colleague of Milton Corley, says that even at the time she doubted Corley would have taken his own life, but no one was interested in hearing what she had to say. They still aren’t.

”By that time A

When asked if she thought A

After Milton Corley’s death, his widow lived a shadowy, vagabond lifestyle, never staying long in any one place. Her bills were sent to Scottsdale-area attorney Ralph Ames, who handled her finances and paid the bills as they came in, leaving her free to come and go as she wished.

People who had dealings with her during the next ten years said she looked like a movie star, drove a series of bright red Porsches, and stayed only in first-class hotels. It is also thought that she left behind a trail of murder.

Her victims were most likely people free on bail and awaiting trial in cases of suspected child abuse. Local law enforcement agencies, freed of the necessity of trying, convicting, and incarcerating yet another pedophile, were usually happy to close the books on those cases after only cursory investigations.

After A

In one of them, Jake Morris, a forty-six-year-old drifter suspected of kidnapping and raping a six-year-old girl, was shot dead in Bangor, Maine. In another, twenty-three-year-old Lawrence Ke

In both of those cases, witnesses mentioned something about a stranger – a good-looking woman – who was seen talking to both victims shortly before their deaths, but no one ever bothered to track her down. She was never thought to be a viable subject. Since there was no communication between the two affected jurisdictions, no one ever made the co

”That doesn’t surprise me,” Dr. Collins says. “There are plenty of male chauvinist homicide detectives out there who don’t believe women are smart enough or tough enough to be killers.”

Both A

A