Children Who Kill: Profiles of Pre-Teen and Teenage Killers (10 page)

Cindy was born on 18th April 1968 to nineteen-year-old Linda and twenty-two-year-old David Collier. She came into the world to find that she already had two half-brothers, Keith and Jeff. These brothers were the product of Linda’s previous marriage – an attempt to escape an unhappy home life – at age sixteen.

Cindy was a seriously underweight baby who was born with legs that were out of joint. As a result she spent her first two years in a metal brace. She was often ill, possibly picking up on the stress within her
impoverished
and haphazard home. Her father was
unemployed
and had a troubled history and the couple argued constantly.

When Cindy was four, Linda presented her with another little brother – and when Cindy was five, her father walked out on the family for good.

Linda, who had learning difficulties, found it hard to cope. She soon got involved with another man. And another. She frequently left for work leaving her latest man in the house with the four kids. Joan Merriman, who wrote a book about the case, says that these men were ‘of various temperaments and moralities… each one leaving his telltale mark on the children.’ Sometimes
these marks were left literally as the men wielded their power over the helpless kids.

Cindy was a pretty little girl, who was very
attractive
to some of these men. Others enjoyed ordering the children about, knowing that all four were at their mercy. Violence or the threat of it filled many of their days.

By the time Cindy was seven, she was being
sexually
abused on a regular basis by a ten-year-old relative. (It’s a safe bet that this relative had also been abused, as abused children become sexualised very early.) This abuse continued as the years went by.

The frequently-beaten child had little quality time with caring adults and nothing to look forward to. She increasingly hated school, where she was one of the more impoverished students. As a result, she started to play truant, staying away from school and home for as long as she could. When she was home she tended to be protective towards her mother and to make excuses for the fact that Linda sometimes stayed in the pub until closing time.

Cindy turned twelve and began to fight back,
getting
into increasingly violent arguments with other pupils. One playground fight was so brutal that the police were called and she was charged with assault and battery. She was given community service, but was soon in trouble again for stealing. This time she was sent briefly to Juvenile Hall.

Cindy started to run away. Teenagers often do this to escape a desperately unhappy home – yet the public and police often misconstrue the motive as being ‘just
for fun’ and react punitively. As a result, Cindy got even more custodial time. Photos taken of her at age thirteen show a bright-eyed girl whose smile no longer meets her eyes, is fixed.

By now her health was even more precarious as the relative who was sexually abusing her had given her a venereal disease. Her menstrual cramps were almost unendurable and she sometimes bled for twenty days in a row. She was so unhappy that she attempted to take her own life – and would threaten to do so again.

When she was fourteen she stole her mother’s car and took off, living on the streets. She lost weight and soon had a serious hygiene problem. After four weeks she contacted the police and asked them to take her home.

The authorities decided to put her in a group home, where she’d later claim she was raped. (Such homes are magnets for paedophiles.) After a few weeks she was moved into foster care but within hours she’d absconded again. She was desperate to be a free spirit – but understandably didn’t have the peace of mind to truly be free. Meanwhile her brothers were being
questioned
by the police about acts of vandalism and theft and drugs.

Like many unhappy teenagers, Cindy began to overeat. By the time she was fifteen she weighed ten stone. Superficially she looked old beyond her years
and hard and angry – but people who looked closer could see that she was still a desperately vulnerable child. She was also an increasingly dangerous child as the years of sexual and physical abuse had taken their toll and she told herself she no longer cared who she hurt. In fact, she’d started to enjoy hurting those who’d had more privileged childhoods. She also swore and lied and insulted the various authority figures who she came into contact with, surviving by cutting herself off from emotional pain.

Cindy soon gained a reputation for being mean to other inmates in the group home. Even the boys were afraid of her. She’d now grown to five foot nine and could pack a powerful punch.

On 14th June 1983, Cindy went to visit a friend who was living in a group home, and met up with another resident called Shirley Wolf. Shirley was still missing her mother and her brothers and even wanted to see her dad. The teenagers talked and decided to flee together, determined to have a big adventure. As they walked and hitched they exchanged life stories,
finding
that both had suffered a lifetime’s worth of violence and sexual abuse. Within hours they would become the violent ones, killing an innocent victim in a prolonged and brutal attack…

Shirley’s life had been even worse than Cindy’s. She was born on 17th April 1969 to Katherine and Lou
Wolf, the couple’s first baby. Katherine had been physically and sexually abused by relatives during her childhood and Lou had been physically battered by his father – and had watched his father batter his mother – then was put into a care home where he was beaten by a priest. (Despite these brutal experiences, he had a religious tattoo on his left arm.) Lou, a carpenter, now controlled his young wife, who initially adored him and was used to being controlled.

But control freaks tend to control their children too, so by the time Shirley was a toddler her life was becoming a less happy one. Her father – who was over six foot tall and powerfully built – hit her for any
imagined
misdemeanours whilst Katherine looked the other way. On other occasions Katherine also lashed out. She’d given Shirley two brothers in quick
succession
so was coping with three pre-school children and a husband who ruled the household with an iron fist.

Not that life was all bad. Lou would sometimes bring home presents for the children. He’d stroke Shirley’s silky brown hair and look into her dark brown eyes and tell her that she was his little princess.

One night, when Shirley was three, the little princess awoke to find her father in her room. He took her from her bed and rubbed her body against his until he ejaculated. Then he awoke his wife and told her he’d had a dream in which he’d imagined he was having
adult-to-adult sex. He said that he’d woken to find that he was really touching little Shirley. Would Katherine go and clean the child up?

Katherine’s relatives had pretended not to notice when she was sexually abused – and it now seems that she emulated this not-seeing. She picked up the frozen, watchful child, stripped off her semen-soaked pyjamas and dressed her in clean clothes.

By the time Shirley was ready to start school, the family had moved to New York. The years of violence and abuse had already taken their toll and she was old before her time, her little face often vacant. She was desperate to please her teacher – or any adult in the vicinity – but clearly found it hard to approach the other kids. The school told her parents that the five-year-old needed counselling. The couple nodded – but didn’t follow through.

When Shirley was six, her mother presented her with another baby brother. By now Shirley’s brothers were emulating their parent’s violence and were constantly battering each other. Months later Lou fell from a window ledge at work and shattered his legs. He had operation after operation but remained in pain and
was often wheelchair-bound. At other times he managed to walk on crutches – but he couldn’t return to his carpentry work so the family now lived on social security.

Lou’s temper worsened after the accident and he began to imagine slights. Other adults in the vicinity gave him a wide berth, especially when he began to appear outside holding a submachine gun. Katherine would chainsmoke, nervously sensing the build up of his latest rage. He beat Shirley if she scuffed her shoes or spilt a drink or did any of a million other normal childish things. He even beat her if she didn’t get top grades in school.

There was a strong humiliation aspect to these punishments, for he would pull down her pants before lashing into her with his belt. She also had to watch and listen as her three brothers suffered similar assaults, and often saw him punching and slapping her mum.

Hurt and frightened, Shirley found it increasingly
difficult
to make friends at school. The other children had the usual childish concerns of whether they’d win at sports, get good grades, be given that much-wanted toy for Christmas. In contrast, Shirley had to cope with being stripped and beaten by her father – and assaulted by her increasingly hysterical mother who was determined to have some power. Katherine had even threatened her daughter with a knife. Shirley never
knew exactly what she’d return home to, but it was usually ugly and frightening – for example, her father often shaved her brothers’ heads as a punishment.

When Shirley was nine the family left the urban excitement of Brooklyn and moved to rural California. Lou started fixing up the house and sent his wife on a long errand to get carpentry materials. He ordered her brothers to leave the house then told Shirley to take off her clothes and show him how much she loved him. Moments later, he took her virginity.

The thin, frightened child continued to have intercourse forced on her by her father during the next few years. The other schoolchildren and teachers noticed that she had a rancid scent that she was clearly ashamed of. Her childish body was being made to accept demands that it couldn’t handle, and she must have been in terrible pain.

The physical abuse also continued unabated. Lou got one of his friends to erect a wooden pillory in his backyard. He would put Shirley or one of her brothers into this makeshift stocks so that their head and arms were held in situ. Then he’d yank down their lower garments and beat their bare buttocks with a cord or with his belt. Neighbours heard the children screaming – but as Lou was an imposing figure on a very short fuse they elected not to intervene.

Lou increasingly bought Shirley unsuitably sexy
outfits
and make-up which she wore to school. At other times he made her pose nude for his camera. He even made sexual passes at her only friend.

The school strongly suspected sexual abuse – and they knew that there was physical abuse because Lou Wolf had told them he believed in severe physical punishment. But when Child Protection Services approached the family they were met with blank faces and a wall of silence. Shirley believed that her mother knew nothing of the sexual abuse so thought that she was protecting her. And Katherine was still trying to pretend that nothing was wrong. Moreover, Shirley had been beaten severely for simply getting her clothes dusty. Surely her father would kill her if she told strangers that he was having full sex with her every time Katherine left the house?

At last, as she turned twelve, Shirley began to pass on the violence that she’d suffered. She started vicious fights in the playground, fights that were terrifying to observers. She told another group of girls about being sexually abused and they could see her pain and her hate. She started to menstruate and immediately her father put her on the pill.

One day he attacked his wife more brutally than
usual, then slammed out of the house. Shirley rushed to her mother’s side where a fearful Katherine
admitted
that she couldn’t take any more and feared for her life. Taking on the role of the adult, Shirley now
comforted
her mother by saying she’d tell of the abuse so that her father would be locked away for a very long time.

Katherine phoned the local police – who had long suspected that Shirley was being sexually abused – and Shirley made a statement. Katherine added that for years she’d been ‘worried that something funny was going on.’ (Yet she had gone away for days at a time to visit her family, leaving Shirley – who pleaded with her not to go – alone with Lou.)

Lou was brought in for questioning and
immediately
went in for some serious victim-blaming, saying that from the age of three his daughter had been a sex maniac who led him on.

The police searched his home and found numerous child pornography mags and articles which tried to legitimise incestuous sex within the family. Katherine admitted that her husband’s demands were relentless and that she was so worn out that she’d persuaded a friend to sleep with him.

In the months leading up to his trial, Lou was ordered to keep away from Shirley. But Katherine missed him and soon wanted him back home. She realised that
he’d be able to live with her again if Shirley was living elsewhere.

To the child’s consternation, her mother now put her in a foster home. Shirley had never been able to make friends with other children – yet now she was living with lots of them, all strangers. She desperately wanted to be back with her brothers and her mum.

Katherine said that everything might go back to normal if Shirley withdrew the charges. Shirley did just that. As a result, Lou only got three months in jail after pleading no contest to child abuse.

Shirley’s mood deteriorated further and she continued to be sent from one foster home to the next. Her self-esteem was so low that she was convinced her foster parents couldn’t love her so she went all out to make herself unlovable. She refused to speak and got into vicious fights with the neighbourhood children. She ran away and was soon returned to residential care.

By now, like many sexually abused children, she was very promiscuous. By age thirteen she was writing in her diary about boys she’d slept with and wondering if she was pregnant. Thankfully the answer was no.

Shirley was bored and lost. The days stretched ahead with very little to look forward to until her room-mate introduced her to Cindy Collier, who wanted someone to run away with. Shirley volunteered to run away with her and the two girls sloped off into the night.

The next day they tinted their hair and hung around by an outdoor pool and traded their desperately
unhappy life stories. Within hours, fourteen-year-old Shirley was thinking of Cindy (who’d turned fifteen just two months before) as her best friend. Both girls had hitched lifts before, but now talked about how brilliant it would be to have a car of their own. They could go wherever they wanted, keep moving around the country. They could sleep in the car and seek
shelter
there whenever they wished. Each perhaps talking tough in front of the other, they decided that they’d steal themselves a vehicle – but that they’d have to kill the owner first.