Killer Women (18 page)

Patricia watched him consume every mouthful of the pie with great relish. He was so selfish that he did not even bother to ask why she was not joining him for supper. He did not care just as long as she gave him what he wanted.

Ten minutes later, Patricia saw her husband finish the last scrap on his plate. He even greedily wiped it clean with a piece of bread. She was so happy. It would not be long now, surely.

Jean-Louis was a fairly well-built sort of fellow, more solid than rotund. He had a typical Frenchman’s cast-iron stomach, used to devouring all sorts of gastric oddities, but Patricia’s poisonous pie was certainly managing to have an effect.

He sat down on the sofa in their living room and let out a huge yawn. ‘I’m feeling really tired. Shall we go to bed early tonight?’

Normally, that was the signal for the start of a round of sexual torture too painful to contemplate. This time, her husband’s request met with a genuine response. ‘What a good idea. You look shattered.’

Patricia was ecstatic. It was working. He would be unconscious in minutes. And there was an added bonus – she would not have to have sex with him that night either.

She was right. Jean-Louis was snoring away within a few moments of his head hitting the pillow. For the first time in years, Patricia Orionno sat up in bed and read a book. It was a romantic novel and it gradually reignited her hopes for the future.

She looked over at her husband snoring noisily next to her. ‘Come on, die. Come on, die.’ But
Jean-Louis
looked rather too healthy to be anywhere near his deathbed quite yet.

It was a good book but Patricia could not concentrate. She kept looking over to see if he was dead yet. His snoring proved he most certainly was not. She was furious. He had to be dead. He should be dead, but he was very much alive. Even in his slumber, his face had a huge, broad grin on it as if he were challenging her to try to kill him.

Patricia had every intention of rising to that
challenge. She got up out of the bed and crept towards the kitchen. Her fists were clenched in fury. She pulled open a drawer and took out the sharpest knife she could find.

She walked back into the bedroom, and looked down at his irritatingly content face and narrowed her eyes in determination at the task at hand. Then she stopped in her tracks. Should she just stab him over and over or slit his wrists gently and quietly without even disturbing him? With any luck he would be sufficiently knocked out by the sleeping pills not to feel a thing, whereas the force and violence required to stab him might awaken him. She decided to slit his wrists.

Like a master craftsman carving a small wooden figure, she began sawing at the veins on the back of his wrists. The knife seemed only able to penetrate the tiny blue rivulets that ran up his arm. She found herself desperately squeezing his wrists just as he had done to her on that honeymoon night. It was the only thing she could do to try to pump those veins up large enough to slice through them. The wounds she finally managed to inflict were pathetic. Little globules of blood trickled from the minuscule gashes, but there was no cascade as she had expected. Patricia did not realise that the massive dose of sleeping pills had slowed down Jean-Louis’s circulation so much that, even if she had shot him in
the chest at point-blank range, he would have been highly unlikely to bleed to death.

After ten minutes she gave up that method of killing. There had to be a better way. Or perhaps she should just give up altogether. It was actually starting to seem more appealing just to divorce the brute. Then she remembered all the appalling sex acts he had forced her to do and realised that she had to continue her mission.

Patricia then thought that the kitchen gas might do the trick. She ran the unusually long cooker hose pipe from the kitchen into the bedroom and pointed it straight into the snoring face of her husband. He did not budge an inch.

As the smell of the gas started to make her feel queasy and faint, she realised that she was in danger of killing herself in the process of trying to end her husband’s life. She quickly abandoned the hose pipe.

There had to be an easier way. She stepped back from the bed for a moment and looked down at him sleeping peacefully as if he did not have a care in the world. He had no right to survive this onslaught but somehow he was still very much alive, if not exactly kicking.

Each time her murderous intentions failed, she felt a surge of even more fury and bitterness. She kept reminding herself of that abuse. She could still feel the pain he had inflicted on her. He could not be allowed to get away with it.

She reached down, picked up a pillow and held it up above her head. His face was looking up at her, challenging her to do it. She hated every inch of him. Even as he lay there in front of her, she could not bring herself to feel an ounce of sympathy for him.

Slowly and deliberately, she knelt over his chest. The pillow was still held up high above her head. She crashed it down over his face and held it there with all her strength. She could feel him struggling beneath her. His arms came up and grabbed her breasts and then moved, blindly, up to her neck. He was hurting her now and her grip on that pillow was weakening. She could not hold it down tight enough.

He was starting to begin to take control again. Wide awake from his pill-induced slumber, he was fighting back and she was just not strong enough to stop him. She looked over at the knife with which she had tried to slit his wrists a few minutes earlier. It was her only chance.

She managed to lean over to the bedside table and grab it from the slippery glass surface. For a split second she grappled with it as his right hand began hitting back at her to try to stop her. His face was still covered by the pillow but she knew that in another few seconds he would emerge victorious yet again unless she took her chance immediately.

She plunged the razor-sharp knife right into his chest and felt the blade slice through the skin and
tissue like carbon paper. She had to be quick. This was her only chance. She knew that one wound would not be enough. She had to puncture his body until there were enough outlets to drain the energy – and the blood – from him.

Seven more times she slashed the knife into his torso. Each time she felt his body twitch in pain. It was a pleasant enough sensation after all the agony he had inflicted on her. However, he still refused to die so she just carried on stabbing into his body.

By the time she pulled the knife out for the eighth time, she knew that he was finally dead. His body lay limp beneath her, the pillow still covering half of his face. However, she could see from the one glassy eye now staring out into oblivion that she had finally achieved what she had set out to do.

She felt nothing inside. Her conscience was not even troubling her. She got calmly off his body and gave him one last glance just to make sure there were no signs of life. For the first time in years she was free from the man who had turned her life into a living hell.

On 23 October 1988, Patricia Orionno was allowed to walk free from a court in her home town of Doubs, France, after the judge found her not guilty of the murder of her husband Jean-Louis.

He called her actions ‘justifiable’ following years of sexual torment at the hands of her lust-hungry husband.

Lubeck is a town steeped in tradition. With a 15th Century gate and two plump towers, it is so typically German that it even figures on the fifty mark banknote. The sheer greyness of the place is daunting when you first walk down its sterile streets.

Block upon block of tidy buildings, never more than ten storeys in height, set a severe backdrop against a population where few people smile and the
emphasis is on survival rather than happiness.

On 4 May 1980 residents went about their business in a cold, almost fearful way. Rarely stopping to chat as they performed their chores for the day.

Provincial German towns nearly all share that slightly dead atmosphere in daytime. They only come alive when darkness has fallen and the nightlife takes over to become the life blood of virtually every man under the age of 60.

There is a commonly held theory about this stark contrast. The Germans work very hard to earn a living. That means they tend to play even harder;

A night on the town in Lubeck was usually a three stage affair for the typical middle-aged male resident, out with a couple of workmates.

Naturally, food would come first. And that could mean a massive three or even four course meal in one of the town’s many restaurants. A dinner consisting of everything from sauerkraut to those huge fat sausages. All washed down with vast litre mugs of beer.

Then your typical group would wander to one of the livelier bars in Lubeck where they would regale each other with blustery tales of woe covering a range of topics from soccer to politics.

By about 9.30pm everyone would be well and truly on the way to drink-induced euphoria. This
was when the insatiable appetite for sex took over.

They flock to the brothels that are always on the outskirts of town. The townsfolk all know they exist, but they don’t want to hear about them or see them. In Lubeck, the brothels attract far more sightseers than those plump twin towers.

Names like ‘The Fun Palace’ and ‘The LA Club’ were popular. The Germans have always felt more reassured by brothels with American sounding names. They like that familiar ring to them.

The set-up, though, was always exactly the same: the customers paid a nominal entrance fee. Then they would stroll up to the bar and order a drink. Suddenly, at least six girls, in outfits that usually consisted of skimpy basques, stockings and white stilettos, would appear as if by magic and start flirting outrageously.

For the uninitiated it was a most fulfilling experience because men on their first visit nearly always presumed these girls were only interested in them. They would frequently believe that their good looks and magnetic character had attracted all these single, unattached beauties to swarm around them, like bees in a honey-pot. The fact the girls are virtually undressed seemed incidental at the time.

Anyway Marianne Bachmeier and her live-in lover Christian Berthold weren’t complaining. They ran one of the most popular bars in Lubeck and it
just happened to be the perfect stopping off point for many of those men who were planning an eventual visit to ‘The Fun Palace.’

Marianne, aged 30, with long dark brown hair was a stunning looking woman, more than a capable match for the hundreds of leering, lecherous men who poured into her bar.

She worked in a soft, sensual yet efficient manner. Never offending the customers but at the same time sometimes flirting outrageously with men who caught her eye.

Marianne was a woman who had spent her whole life craving for love and attention. Her fanatical Nazi father was soon replaced by a brutal step father who regularly gave her vicious beatings. She hated him so much she couldn’t even bring herself to call him
anything
other than ‘Uncle Paul’.

A vicious sex attack by a salesman left an even more indeliable mark on her childhood. She was just nine at the time. As she reached her mid-teens, Marianne blossomed into a beautiful young woman. She longed for someone to genuinely love her but far too many men wanted her for entirely the wrong reasons.

It was therefore no surprise that she ended up with Christian. After countless disastrous relationships, two brutal rapes and two pregnancies,
Marianne was desperate for someone whose intentions were genuine. She had already worked up an unhealthy dislike and distrust of men. She needed to find someone who could restore her faith in the other sex.

Christian seemed to be a gentle hippy, only interested in love and peace, when the couple first met at an all-night party hosted by an oddball friend called ‘Yogi’. Marianne was immediately taken by Christian – and slept with him within hours of that first meeting. They both felt a bond of friendship and love and soon moved in together.

Then she discovered he was a wealthy innkeeper and she actually had some money to spend for the first time in her life. That first bar was in Kiel. It was a great success. They were happy days for Marianne.

Christian sold the business for a fortune. They bought a floating gin palace. But that didn’t do so well and that was how they ended up in Lubeck in yet another bar.

Meanwhile, Marianne and Christian’s love for each other had turned into a roller coaster of emotional ups and downs. Each often sleeping with someone else as a cry for help when the relationship had seemed to be disolving.

Somehow they remained together and seven years previously, they had even had a child, Anna, as proof of their love, however tormented it might have
been. Now, here was Marianne playing mine perfect host inside the smokey, sweaty bar. Even though she always wore an apron over a sweater or blouse and sexy tight jeans, Marianne still managed to ooze a sensuous appeal – something that some people are born with while others are not.

Just 200 yards away, balding former butcher Klaus Grabowski was definitely not going to join the mass of Lubeck men out on a night of drink and vice.

He was a desperately shy man in his thirties. Sometimes he was so afraid to meet people that he would stay locked up in his tiny one-bedroomed flat in one of those grey town apartment buildings, fearful of the consequences if he should dare to venture out onto the streets.

His fiancé was constantly on at him about his antisocial behaviour. ‘You cannot stay cooped up here all your life. You must get out. You have to meet people’, she would tell him. As a result he only saw her once a week. They barely kissed each time they met. She longed to stay the night and make love with him but the urge on Grabowski’s part was not there. She never forgot the night she stripped off all her clothing and tried to seduce him. He didn’t even get sexually excited. She fled the flat without even bothering to put back on the red tights she had bought especially for the occasion. But she grew to
believe this was all a sign of how honourable his intentions towards her really were. But she got sexual urges. How come he didn’t? She wondered. They had been engaged to marry for seven years.

She simply had no idea what happened whenever Grabowski did encounter other people in one to one situations … especially young people.

He had been a popular figure at his corner butcher’s shop. There, he had had his regular customers. They all called him Herr Grabowski and treated him as a man of substance. They saw him as a fine butcher whose meat was second to none. They did not see beneath the heavy bearded face that gave him a Rasputin-like appearance. He was just your friendly, rounded butcher, always eager to please.

But that was all in the past. Grabowski had lost his job and his pride with it. He was a broken man who felt degraded by his non-status in society.

Grabowski was preparing for bed. He had consumed two bottles of beer and he knew what would happen if he drunk. Those twinges would reawaken the devil that lurked within him. The evil thoughts that most men – according to Marianne Bachmeier – were constantly absorbed by. The intent was always there. It never actually went away for long …

Back at the bar Marianne too was desperate. She was worn out by the long hours she worked. Always
on her feet, it was a gruelling profession. Constantly smiling at the customers, in response to their sexist, rude remarks. Wanting revenge when a drunken man tried to grab her breasts or another beast hung around until the bar emptied because he thought she would be an easy lay.

Luckily, Marianne, Christian and little Anna lived above the bar. At least she could avoid those creepy walks home she had endured when they ran the place in Kiel.

It always bugged her that they had agreed to split the responsibilities of running the bar. He insisted it was more sensible for them to take it in turns to manage the place rather than run it together and both end up working an eighty-hour week.

The problem was that it meant they hardly saw each other. One was sleeping while the other was working. It was a recipe for disaster and Marianne knew it. But Christian was not the sleepy laid back hippy he once was. He had become a jaded, money-conscious businessman desperate for financial success. He felt all the pressures of the world on his shoulders. He became more and more pre-occupied with all his own problems. Giving Marianne and his family less and less attention. It marked the beginnings of a classic relationship breakdown.

The consequences of this attitude were clear for
everyone to see. Marianne began to sleep with other people. Her craving for a long lasting genuine love had returned.

Christian was deeply hurt by her indiscretions and took his own sad revenge. He started visiting brothels – the temptations were all so close by.

On one occasion they hurt each other so badly that it was a miracle they managed to stick together. Marianne took it upon herself to travel to Hanover and search out an old boyfriend – the father of her second child, who had eventually been adopted. She tracked him down, but his reaction was to drive her into the countryside, rape her and leave her on a grass verge to find her own way home.

When Marianne arrived back at Christian’s bar she poured the entire incident out to him. He was stunned. He had a feeling of anger at the man and betrayal by Marianne for bothering to locate him in the first place. But his emotions came out in the form of severe depression. They began rowing more and more.

One night, he stormed out of the flat and headed for his old haunts in Berlin. Unable to find any of his previous girlfriends, Christian visited one of the city’s most notorious brothels.

He had sex for just 50 marks. But the cost to his relationship with Marianne was far higher. On his return to Lubeck, he described the entire experience
to her. Every detail about the sex. The way he
performed
. The way the girl reacted. It was all too much for Marianne. Yet again she had been betrayed. Why did men treat her so badly? What was it in her character that prompted such punishment?

Marianne could not begin to answer those questions, so she did what many victims – especially women – see as the only solution. She retaliated in the most graphic, hurtful way.

‘Let’s see how he will react if I become the whore,’ she thought to herself. ‘Will he still want me after that? I want to make him realise how dirty and heartless it is to sell your body. He’ll soon find out what it is like to live with a prostitute.’

Just a few hours later, Marianne was walking the streets of Berlin herself, waiting for the first man to come along so she could sell her body to him. She found a man and instantly hated herself for it. But, in her eyes, it just had to be done. It was her own special brand of punishment for the man she longed to continue loving.

Somehow, through all this bruising tit-for-tat behaviour, Christian and Marianne continued to survive, although their friends believed it was now only a matter of time until they split.

On May 4, 1980, Little Anna she slept blissfully in her bed in the flat above the bar – unaware of the
torment and guilt that constantly enveloped her parents’ lives.

As Klaus Grabowski prepared for his own bed that evening, he heard the din of the music coming from the bar. It was 11pm and a couple of drunks were stumbling up the road outside his flat still dreaming of the sex they would like to enjoy with that beautiful barmaid Marianne.

Women like that were the farthest thing from Grabowski’s mind. His fantasies were far more obscure. They delved the depths of degradation.

His recurring thoughts concerned the sort of sex that would horrify those friendly housewives who’d always made such polite conversation with him at the butcher’s shop. No doubt those customers would have grabbed one of those huge, razor sharp meat knives and turned on him if they had even vaguely realised what fantasies flowed consistently through his mind.

As he lay there in his bed, Grabowski conjured up pictures of what he wanted to do. The pain and suffering he wanted to inflict. The screams of fear. The cries of horror. The look on their faces when he fulfilled his sick desires. All the time his face would freeze in an ever-so-slight smile as he came closer and closer to reaching the climax he so longed to get to but knew he could not attain.

Even by his own sordid standards, this particular
fantasy was vivid and life like. Grabowski felt as if he were actually there, doing it. He imagined in a frenzy the agony he was causing. And he wanted more and more.

This was a dream he did not want to escape from. He didn’t want to leave. He wanted it to go on and on and on. Each time he saw her face, it drove him wild.

The fact that he was thinking up atrocities of such ferocity and brutality that they would be entirely unacceptable in any society did not seem to matter. Grabowski had long since given up any respect for human decency. His life was going nowhere. He had to have something to cling on to. Realizing just one those fantasies was his ultimate aim …

Marianne was cleaning up the last few glasses after a heavy night. It was almost 1 am and she was virtually asleep on her feet. Just a few minutes earlier she had pushed the last letching hanger-on out of the front door and started performing the most tedious duty of every evening in the bar – straightening out the premises before retiring for bed.