Killer Women (3 page)

‘Have all the affairs you want, if I don’t satisfy you. But you’ll never find another woman who would do all the things I did for you.’

Gillian was getting hysterical. She was straining her face to avoid crying.

‘I’ll do anything you want to make our marriage work. You must believe me. I love you so much.’

Graham Philpott did not react to her pleas. Instead, he said coldly, ‘I want a divorce from you.’

Gillian was allowed to continue sleeping in the house – but only in the spare bedroom where her sister Janet had once slept. To all the neighbours in Mungo Park Way, who wished them ‘Happy Christmas’ when they passed in the street, Graham and Gillian Philpott seemed as close as ever that December. They went to a stream of parties in the area as man and wife – never once revealing the anguish of their break up.

Janet had left the house on the day of their big confrontation, never to return. She was as bemused
as she was hurt by the whole episode. Graham flooded her life with cards and messages. His obsessive love had not in any way been dampened by those scenes at the house. Instead, he thought about how they would be together one day. He sent her a loving note saying, ‘Thank you for giving me a lovely year. It is so lovely living with you.’

It was signed: ‘From your loving Graham.’

Now, Gillian and Graham were keeping up a huge pretence to the outside world. Deceiving everyone into believing they were as happy as ever.

Christmas Day was a disaster. They barely spoke to one another. It was supposed to be a time of year for rejoicing. For Gillian and Graham it was a time for silence.

The only respite for both of them were the parties they attended in the neighbourhood. These seemed to provide them with an escape from the appalling situation at home. As soon as they arrived at any party, they would split up and head off for conversations with people on opposite sides of the room. It was a bizarre existence. No communication at home but a smiling veneer at every public function.

By the time New Year 1990 was almost upon them, the strain was really starting to tell.

On December 30, Gillian and Graham managed just enough conversation between themselves to
agree to go to a neighbour for a drinks party. As usual, within seconds of arriving, they split up and headed in different directions.

But, as other guests were later to remark, they still made a point of making it absolutely clear just how much in love they still were. In one extraordinary conversation, Graham told a friend, ‘We are thinking of going to Bali for a second honeymoon.’ Perhaps he was thinking of Janet at the time? It was an astonishing remark to make when one considered the circumstances.

Gillian may have hated him for his obsession, but she still longed to live the rest of her life with him. She still wanted him to love her. To adore her. To want her. Even though they had not even slept in the same bed for weeks she lived in hope.

But the pressure of the situation was leading them both to drink excessively.

And at that neighbour’s party, they both went over the top…

It was two-thirty am by the time they stumbled into their house.

Graham was looking for an argument.

‘I just don’t care for you any more,’ he said. ‘We must get a divorce.’

They were standing in the hall. He was not giving her a single ounce of compassion.

Gillian longed for him. She really wanted to sleep
with him that night. Feel his body next to hers. Feel the warmth and security they had enjoyed together for so many years.

‘Can I come to bed with you? Please.’

He did not reply.

‘Please let me sleep there tonight. I won’t go near you. I won’t touch you if that’s what you want.’

But Graham’s thoughts were only for Janet – even then.

‘I don’t want you. Can’t you understand that?’

He was shouting fiercely now.

‘I don’t want you.’ He kept repeating it over and over.

Even then Gillian felt a compulsion to try to please him in any way she thought might bring him back to her.

‘I’ll bring Janet back into the house. Anything.’

‘You’re a bitch. You should never have thrown Janet out.’

Gillian still kept pleading.

‘But surely this isn’t worth giving up eight years of happiness for?’

She was trying to appeal to his good sense now. The sensible side of him that made him such a right and proper person for his job. But he only wanted one thing now – the divorce settlement.

‘I’ve lost a house and money before. But this time, you’re entitled to nothing.’

That was the final straw for Gillian. He had switched this screaming match from the subject of love to money. In her mind, it showed just what he really thought of her. It proved that he was a cold, calculating man. Not the loving person she once knew so well.

He was shouting more at her now. He kept on and on about the money. She took the pink dressing gown cord from around her waist and gripped it tightly in her fist – just in case.

He was losing control. Everything he said was becoming increasingly hurtful. Then, as he swayed around in the room, he grabbed Gillian by the neck. She did not know if it was because he was falling or trying to throttle her. But she grasped the dressing gown cord in both hands and twisted it around his neck. He felt his throat tightening as the cord dug into his windpipe. Nothing would stop her now. There was no marriage to look forward to – he had seen to that. Gillian Philpott felt the urge to pull that cord tighter and tighter. She could see his eyes bulging outwards as he tried to free himself. But the surprise element had given Gillian just a few moments in which to seal his fate. He had already begun to die. He simply did not have the energy left to fight back.

She gave the cord one more sharp pull and her husband was dead.

It had all been so quick and, in a strange way, so painless.

For a few seconds she sat there stunned by her own actions. What had she done? It was awful as the feeling began to dawn on her. She had just killed Graham the man she once loved so dearly. The man who had given her the happiest days of her life.

But he had taken his own life. He had demanded death and been given it in the end.

Gillian looked at his twisted body on the floor and knew she had to do something to make him look as if he’d committed suicide. She wanted to die with him.

Using all her strength, she picked up his lifeless body by putting her arms under his and pulling hard. She stopped by the bannisters at the landing and tied a fresh, longer piece of cord around his neck.

Then she knotted the other end firmly to a bannister. It was no easy task to lift his 12 stone body over the edge of the rail. For minutes she struggled until, through sheer will power she managed to tip it over the edge.

Exhausted, she sat down on the bed for a few minutes, trying to compose herself so she could plan the next stage. She thought about Graham. What he meant to her. What, ultimately, she had ended up meaning to him. That gave her the strength to carry on. She got out a sheet of their headed notepaper and
paused for a few seconds to decide what to write. It was not that difficult.

‘We couldn’t live separately. We wanted to die together. Please keep us together – I beg of you. We love one another so much.’

And she meant every word.

Gillian Philpott grabbed at the bottle of aspirins in the medicine cupboard. She was going to do it. She was going to kill herself. End it all. There was nothing left to live for.

She had lived through the worst nightmare of all and now it was time to say goodbye. To leave this world and all her problems behind. The note was written. Now she had to go through with it.

She struggled with the childproof cap of the aspirin bottle for what seemed like minutes, in a desperate effort to get at the tablets. Finally she managed to pull off the lid and put the bottle to her lips. The bitter tasting pills cascaded smoothly into her mouth. She stopped and took a huge swig from the bottle of whisky that stood on the table besides her. Soon she had finished off the bottle of about 30 pills and sat down to die.

She presumed that the tightness in her stomach was a sign that the tablets were getting into her bloodstream. Poisoning her permanently. She hoped it would be quick. Suddenly, a terrible nauseous feeling overwhelmed her. Her stomach began to
spasm. Uncontrolable jerking movements. She could feel the bitter taste of the pills against the roof of her mouth. She vommited everywhere. A steady stream gushed out of her like an oil well.

She would have to try something else. The determination to end it all was still there.

It was early morning on 31 December, 1990. Gillian Philpott was trying to concentrate on the road as she drove the couple’s Ford Orion on the busy ‘A’ road full of New Year’s Eve traffic.

Just a few hours earlier, she had killed the husband she had always loved so much and then tried to kill herself. Unsuccessfully. Now she intended to finish off the job in such a way there would be no room for failure.

As she approached the cliffs of Beachy Head – a picturesque beauty spot on the Sussex coast renowned for suicide bids – she kept rehearsing her death plunge plans.

She wanted to make sure there was no mistake this time. She wanted to join Graham in heaven. At least Janet was not there.

There were quite a number of sightseers at Beachy Head that day watching hang gliders sweep majestically up into the skies from the cliff edge, hundreds of feet above sea level.

Gillian clutched onto the steering wheel as the car mounted the grass verge that led to the cliff edge.
Her foot flat down on the accelerator, she willed the car forward as fast as it would go. This was the worst part. The waiting. The waiting to die.

She felt the car rear forward as the engine
over-revved
. Getting closer and closer to that leap into the unknown.

No one was watching the Ford. All eyes were on the hang gliders soaring on the thermals.

Gillian felt a weird sensation as the car got near the edge. It was a mixture of elation and fear. She was relieved it would soon all be over. But she was terrified of the pain she might have to endure before the moment of death.

Then it happened. The car lifted over the edge of the precipice. She was flying through the air. Totally out of control now. Completely unable to stop fate from taking a hand.

She felt her head hit the steering wheel as the car smacked the ground. Then everything went dark.

‘There’s a car in the bushes.’

The voice of the hang glider pilot was most emphatic.

Amateur photographer David Payne reacted immediately by rushing over to the place where the pilot had pointed.

Two policemen followed just seconds later and scrambled down to the Ford Orion. Gillian had been sick and was naturally distressed. But there was no
lasting damage. Incredibly, she only sustained minor injuries after smashing her head on the steering wheel. The car had dropped only twenty feet onto a ledge that jutted out of the cliff.

It did not take long for forensic scientists to conclude that Graham Philpot had been murdered.

At the Old Bailey, in January, 1991, Gillian Philpott was found guilty of the manslaughter of her husband and sentenced to just two years imprisonment. Her sister Janet always emphatically denied having any sexual relations with Graham Philpott.

Dear Reader

In the latest from Blake’s terrifying True Crime Library, Wensley Clarkson exposes the strange minds of killer women. The beautiful bride who had to have it all, and so brought her marriage to a bloody end. The obsessed mistress, tortured with jealousy, who savagely assured her place as the only person in her man’s life. Or the housewife turned drug-runner, who stopped her husband informing on her operations… with a bullet.

These are women from every walk of life, a collection as diverse as they are deadly. All women who, before their crimes, were as different from each other as any group of people could be. Some loners, some seemingly innocent, others possessed of deadly logic.

But as you will find to your horrified astonishment, they are all united in passion and anger, by the deadly bond of murder…

James Ravenscroft

Editor

Blake’s True Crime Library

St Jacob is the sort of place where nothing much happens. A sleepy little hamlet set in the middle of the Illinois flatlands, which many people describe as the heart of America. The population of this tiny community is just eight-hundred and the locals have always said that they dread the day it tops the thousand mark.

As you drive into St Jacob you cannot help
noticing the fertile fields that surround it on all four sides. Beautiful green pastures expertly farmed for maximum potential. They represent the real reason why the village even exists. The farming of land is the reason most of the population live and breed there – and that’s the way they all want to keep it.

There are only half-a-dozen streets in St Jacob and they are never exactly bristling with traffic. There only ever seem to be a handful of pick-up trucks and the occasional car – and everyone knows the owner of each vehicle.

Perhaps not surprisingly, property prices in St Jacob have never been high. You could pick up a perfectly reasonable detached home on the edge of town for £30,000 – hardly a king’s ransom by anyone’s standards.

That was how Kathy Gaultney and her husband Keith came to settle in the town in the early 1980s. They had lived in larger communities nearby over the years, but both of them fell in love with the peace and quiet of St Jacob – and houses went for a price even they could afford.

The problem was that neither Keith nor Kathy were working full time. He organised building site labour for construction sites all over the state of Illinois. But sometimes that could mean months of solid work followed by weeks of inactivity. Kathy – who had just given birth to their son Walter – was
not working at all. You could say the Gaultneys were struggling to survive. But at least they had their pretty little white wooden – slatted cottage in St Jacob – even though the modest mortgage repayments were proving very difficult to keep up.

It was fairly inevitable that Kathy had to get a job. She knew Keith was expecting it – and as their struggle to stay financially afloat continued, she came to the conclusion that any type of work would do. Within a few months of Walter’s birth, Kathy Gaultney found herself working behind the bar at a rough and ready hostelry in nearby Collinsville. It wasn’t exactly a well-paid position but it would keep the wolf from the door for the time being.

Back at home, Keith’s work had completely dried up and he had taken to boozing excessively. There was a certain irony in the fact that Kathy’s income came from serving alcohol and Keith was wasting all her hard-earned cash on the very same stuff. She was working all hours God could send while he knocked back countless bottles of rye at their pretty little home. Often she would arrive back late at night, completely shattered, only to find him slumped on their bed in a stupor.

At first, Kathy decided to bite her lip and say nothing to her husband. After all, he had been the breadwinner for many years before it had all turned sour. Things would pick up and he would sort
himself out, she kept telling herself. The truth was that Keith Gaultney had long since given up the fight. His pride had taken a huge knock and now he was sinking rapidly into alcoholic oblivion. He did not really care any more. Just so long as Kathy kept working they could just about survive – and that would do him just fine.

When Kathy Gaultney met Mary O’Guinn one night as she was serving beers behind the bar of the hostelry, she was at an all-time low. The mortgage had not been paid for three months. She could barely afford to clothe their baby son and 11-year-old daughter Rachel from an earlier marriage. Times were pretty desperate and she was not bashful about admitting it to anyone who would listen. It was a plea for help. Kathy knew full well that time was running out unless she could find some other, more profitable way of earning a living.

Mary O’Guinn appeared like some angel of mercy – the answer to those desperate dreams. The attractive redheaded housewife was fully aware of how vulnerable Kathy was and she made her an offer she could not really refuse. On the surface it sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.

Within a few weeks of that first meeting, Kathy and her equally stretched pal Martha Young were the proud owners of the New Way Toning Salon for housewives, in Collinsville. No one questioned the
women’s sudden ability to pay tens of thousands of dollars in cash for the premises needed to house the club. But then only Kathy, Martha and their new best friend Mary O’Guinn were aware of the secret office hidden behind the gym.

In it was an assortment of weighing machines – but these had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping people fit. They were small scales which were perfect for weighing drugs before distributing them to a network of suppliers throughout the American mid-West. Kathy Gaultney had just become a full-time employee of one of the country’s biggest drug cartels.

For the first few months, life at the New Way Toning Salon was very very good for Kathy and her pal Martha Young. The two women really looked and acted the part of bosses of a health club. Both of them looked like ordinary suburban housewives. Kathy, with her glasses and neat, short hairstyle, always dressed in a tracksuit and sneakers. She could have been any one of a million hardworking women in a middle-class enclave anywhere in the Western World.

And, perhaps surprisingly, the legitimate business was actually doing quite well. They had worked very hard to build it up. They had something to prove to Mary O’Guinn. For both Kathy and Martha rather looked down on the drug dealing that was going on
in their backroom. But they also knew that without the narcotics gang behind their little venture it would have been nothing more than a fantasy for the rest of their lives.

Kathy tried hard not to consider the consequences of all those millions of dollars’ worth of cannabis that were weighed, re-weighed and then packaged up for distribution among the street dealers of Illinois. She turned a blind eye when heavy-set characters used to turn up with vans for delivery and collection at all times of the day and night. Kathy was just delighted that for the first time in her adult life she had enough money to pay the mortgage, feed and clothe her children and enjoy some of the better things in life.

When Mary O’Guinn and her brother Roy Vernon Dean asked her if she would begin delivering some of the cannabis herself, she agreed because they were offering her more money to do it. And, with the drunken Keith now hitting rock bottom back at home in nearby St Jacob, it seemed to make a lot of sense. Kathy was actually starting to enjoy life again. There was something quite exciting about taking risks. There was also something very fulfilling about being able to spend all the money you wanted. Becoming a drug courier wasn’t so bad after all.

Even when Kathy Gaultney found herself driving hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cannabis
plus $45,000 in cash in the boot of her car, it did not worry her. Who would bother stopping and searching a housewife from St Jacob? She hardly looked the part of a hardened drug smuggler involved in one of the biggest cannabis supply networks in American criminal history.

As she parked her car outside her cosy little cottage in that tiny rural community, she did not even bother to take her valuable booty inside the house. It was better if she kept it out of the way of her kids and husband Keith. He was always ranting in redneck fashion about how awful drugs were. He even warned her daughter to be careful.

‘There’s a lot of evil people out there who’ll try and force you to take drugs. Just tell ’em no way.’

Keith Gaultney could hardly talk. He could not even come to terms with his own addiction – to alcohol. Yet somehow – in his mind at least – the damage he was inflicting on his own liver was not as morally wrong as smoking pot. Sometimes Kathy Gaultney felt like telling him that pot was probably less harmful that booze, but she never bothered. He would not have appreciated her opinions. As far as Keith Gaultney was concerned, women were to be seen and not heard.

‘Kathy. What the hell have you got in the trunk, woman?’

Keith Gaultney was sober for once. But then it
was seven in the morning when he went outside to get a jack from his wife’s car and discovered a small fortune in drugs stashed in the boot.

Kathy Gaultney did not reply at first. She needed a moment to think about this. She was in a classic dilemma – did she admit to Keith that they were drugs; or should she try and deny they even belonged to her?

But it did not take her long to realise there was no point in hiding the obvious. Kathy pulled her husband down on the bed beside her and started to tell him the truth. But being honest is not always the best answer when it comes to marriage. Keith Gaultney was spitting mad. In any case, for once in his life, he had something on her. All his years of heavy drinking had put him in a vulnerable position as far as their relationship was concerned. Now, for the first time, he had the upper hand and he was determined to milk it for all it was worth.

‘Drugs? What the hell are you doin’ selling drugs?’

But then Kathy had the perfect excuse.

‘How else were we goin’ to pay the mortgage, the bills, the kids’ clothes?’

Keith Gaultney did not like facing the realities of the situation. He hated the fact that he had not been the main breadwinner in the family for a long, long time. Kathy was making him face facts – and it hurt.

‘But we could have survived some other way.’

Kathy Gaultney did not agree. It was time for some plain speaking in that household. Maybe the discovery of the drugs was a blessing in disguise. Perhaps now she could come out in the open and say what she had been thinking for years.

‘There was no other way. You’ve lived off my money for months. I haven’t noticed you complaining.’

Keith Gaultney did not reply. He understood her point but he would never accept that selling drugs was the answer. He’d never felt the urge to even try pot as a kid. Now his wife, the mother of his only son, was admitting that she was heavily involved in a vast drug ring. Keith Gaultney retreated into his own shell-like existence from that day onwards.

For months he hardly spoke to his wife and sank deeper and deeper into an alcoholic abyss. The only times he could bring himself to talk to her were when he could not stand the thought of what she was involved in. Then he would let fly with a tirade of abuse centred around the inevitable subject of drugs.

‘How can you sit there and tell me that drugs don’t harm people? How can you?’

Keith Gaultney was off again on one of his regular ranting matches with Kathy. But this time she decided to respond. She was fed up with him
going on and on about drugs. It was time for some home truths.

‘Well, pot is hardly any more harmful than all that booze you drink.’

Kathy was hitting back. OK, she could not defend the use of heavier drugs, but as far as she was concerned her narcotics overlords were only dealing in cannabis. Where was the harm in that?

But her husband did not quite see it that way.

‘Drugs are drugs. One type leads to another. It’s as simple as that.’

Kathy was concerned about her husband’s attitude because he was unshakable. Nothing would convince him that pot might not be so bad. She feared that he might one day do something about her involvement with the notorious Dean family.

But it wasn’t just drugs that were tearing the Gaultney family apart. Keith’s drinking had become a morning, noon and night-time obsession. The only work left to him was the opening of bottles. His reward – consuming the contents.

By the time Kathy got home after a hard day running the beauty salon followed by hours of weighing a fortune’s worth of cannabis, she was exhausted. Yet, she would be expected to make them all dinner. Bath her son. Get both kids to bed and attend to her husband’s every whim and command. It was simply proving too much for her to handle.

Some nights she would stay on at the shop in Collinsville and have a drink with her great friend and partner Martha, because it was infinitely preferable to going home to face Keith and the kids.

But Kathy knew things could not just go on like that for ever. When she got home late yet again one night in February, 1988, Keith rounded on her and started threatening her. She decided she’d had enough.

As Keith ranted and raved about ‘those damn drug peddlers’, she packed a suitcase, grabbed both the kids and headed out the front door. A few days later, she filed for divorce. But what disturbed her the most was that each time she tried to have a sensible conversation with Keith on the phone, he would start up again about those drugs. But this time he was more adamant.

‘I reckon the authorities would like to hear all about those scumbags you work for.’

Kathy did not like the sound of what she was hearing. The ramblings of a drunken, vindictive husband were one thing. But a threat to destroy everything she had built up so carefully was another matter altogether.

She could sense from the tone of his voice that he was contemplating taking this whole business a much more dangerous stage further.

‘It’s the perfect weapon for a single lady.’

The assistant in the gun shop in Collinsville might as well have been trying to sell Kathy Gaultney a piece of jewellery. But then that’s America for you. A reasonable gun costs about the same as a nice ring. And it’s just as easy to buy!

By then Kathy was looking at purchasing a .22 ‘Saturday Night Special’. In a country where some states have more deaths from gunshot wounds than car crashes, it’s no great surprise when a woman walks into a shop wanting to buy a gun.

As she handled the snub-nosed pistol over the counter of the shop, she knew she had to buy it. The stress and strain of running a legit beauty salon and an illicit drugs factory, and contemplating a divorce from her alcoholic husband was driving her to consider desperate measures in order to maintain the happiness she so needed.

‘Do ya think it’ll make my husband stop abusing me?’

It seemed a strange question to ask a guy who was trying to sell you a gun. But Kathy wanted some reassurance.