The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers (88 page)

TEAM Killers:
Serial murder by groups

that is, political, religious, and socioeconomic. (The Contrary to popular belief, serial killers are not always Bureau further subdivides extremist murders by a group loners, brooding in seclusion between their violent out-into
paramilitary
and
hostage
killings.) No apparent bursts. In fact, some 13 percent of American cases distinction is made in the FBI manual between cult mur-involve multiple killers. Of those, 56 percent find two ders and those committed by a religious extremist killers working together, while the remaining 44 percent group, which also fits the basic definition of a “cult.”

include groups ranging in size from three slayers to a The so-called ZEBRA MURDERS, for example, were com-dozen or more.

mitted by members of a Black Muslim splinter group Demographically, male paris (like killing cousins that aimed to exterminate “white devils,” thus making KENNETH BIANCHI and ANGELO BUONO) are the most the crimes both religious
and
racial in motive. Finally, common team slayers, representing 30 percent of the group-excitement murders—vaguely defined by the FBI American total. Male-female couples, typified by GERas a case involving “two or more persons who cause the ALD and CHARLENE GALLEGO account for another 25

death of an individual”—apparently result form some percent, with the male partner generally (sometimes emotional and chaotic confrontation. A case in point is inaccurately) presumed to be dominant. All-male “wolf the murder of a member of the Hebrew Israelites (a packs,” ranging in number from three to a half-dozen black cult that is not connected in any way to Israel or members, represent 10 percent of America’s identified Judaism) in Florida, beaten to death by fellow cultists team killers. Larger groups, particularly cults like the after accusations of “heresy.”

MANSON “FAMILY,” sometimes find male and female A glaring omission from the FBI’s list of group killers cooperating toward a common goal, however homicide motives is any reference to
criminal enter-bizarre. The rarest grouping of killers is found in the prise murders. Despite the manual’s inclusion of indi-all-female team, ranging in size from occasional couples vidual gang-motivated murders, contract killings and (e.g., GWENDOLYN GRAHAM and CATHERINE WOOD) to murders spawned by criminal competition, the Bureau larger groups like the Austrian “ANGELS OF DEATH” or strangely makes no allowance for financial motives in Hungary’s “ANGEL MAKERS OF NAGYREV.”

group-caused homicides. This oversight is all the more The FBI’s Crime Classification Manual (1992) recog-surprising since contract murders, by definition, nizes three types of “group cause homicide,” including involve at least two parties, while the vast majority of cult, extremist, and group-excitement murders. CULT

gang- and drug-related murders involve organized killers sometimes prey on strangers, as in the case of the groups. There is also well-established evidence of

“CHICAGO RIPPERS” but may also turn upon their own, group involvement in insurance/inheritance-related as seen in several of the Manson murders. Extremist murders (e.g., the BOLBER-PETRILLO-FAVATO MURDER

homicides, according to the FBI, break down into the RING) and in sexual or sadistic crimes (e.g., the Gal-same general MOTIVES as those of individual murders—

lego case and others). In short, any motive capable of
253

TERRELL, Bobbie Sue

driving one person to kill may also be shared by a With Bobbie Sue in charge, the late-night “graveyard group.

shift” soon lived up to its sinister nickname. Aggie Marsh, age 97, was the first to die, on November 13, 1984. Advanced age made her death seem common-TERRELL, Bobbie Sue

place, but questions were raised a few days later, when A native of tiny Woodlawn, Illinois, the future “Death 94-year-old Anna Larson nearly died from an insulin Angel” of Florida grew up overweight, myopic, and overdose. The riddle: Mrs. Larson wasn’t diabetic, and painfully shy. Her seven siblings included four brothers insulin was kept in a locked cabinet with Nurse Dudley afflicted with muscular dystrophy, two of whom would holding the only key. Despite this, the matter was not die from the disease before Bobbie Sue reached her mid-seriously investigated.

thirties. Above-average grades in school were countered The grim toll continued. On November 23, 85-year-by an outspoken religious fervor that amused or embar-old Leathy McKnight died from an insulin overdose on rassed Bobbie’s classmates. Only in church did she Dudley’s shift; the same night, an unexplained fire broke shine, playing the organ for Sunday services and dis-out in a linen closet, with arson suspected. Two more playing a fine singing voice.

patients, 79-year-old Mary Cartwright and 85-year-old Graduating high school in 1973, Bobbie Sue was Stella Bradham, died on the night of November 25. The doubtless influenced by family illness in her choice of a next day, a Monday dubbed The Holocaust by worried nursing career. By 1976, she was a registered nurse, staffers, five more patients died in quick succession.

ready to take her place in the medical community. Mar-Matters went from bad to worse after that, including ried to Danny Dudley a short time later, Bobbie was an anonymous call to the rest home, a woman’s voice despondent at learning she could not bear children. The whispering that five patients had been murdered in their couple adopted a son, but their marriage collapsed beds. Police were called to North Horizon in the when the boy was hospitalized for a drug overdose.

predawn hours of November 27, finding Nurse Dudley Dudley accused his wife of feeding the boy tranquilizers with a stab wound in her side. Bobbie Sue blamed a prescribed for her own schizophrenia, a charge that led prowler for the assault, and detectives were further con-to Bobbie being stripped of custody in the divorce.

cerned by reports of 12 patient deaths in the past 13

Alone again, Bobbie Sue’s health and mental state days.

swiftly declined. She was hospitalized five times in short A full-scale investigation was launched, leading to order—for fibroid stomach tumors, for a hysterectomy Bobbie Sue’s December dismissal “for the good of the and removal of her ovaries, for surgery on a broken facility.” When she filed a $22,000 claim for workman’s arm that failed to heal properly, for gall bladder prob-compensation based on her stabbing, the hospital coun-lems, for ulcers and pneumonia. Bobbie voluntarily tered with psychiatric reports branding Dudley a “bor-committed herself to a state mental hospital, spending derline schizophrenic” who suffered from Munchausen’s more than a year under psychiatric treatment. On Syndrome (a mental condition characterized by false release, she held several short-term nursing jobs before claims of illness and self-inflicted wounds). Reports of she was hired to work at Hillview Manor, a rest home Bobbie’s Illinois self-mutilations were obtained, and her in Greenville, Illinois.

claim was rejected.

It wasn’t long before the staff at Hillview Manor On January 31, 1985, Dudley entered a Pinellas started to record bizarre events surrounding Bobbie County hospital for medical and psychiatric treatment.

Sue. She fainted frequently on duty without apparent By that time she was already a prime suspect in several cause, and twice she intentionally slashed her own deaths at North Horizon, and detectives had obtained vagina with scissors. The second wound required emer-exhumation orders for nine patients—including bodies gency surgery at Barnes Hospital in St. Louis where buried in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Bobbie Bobbie told a counselor she stabbed herself in rage and Sue was still hospitalized on February 12 when frustration over her infertility.

Florida’s Department of Professional Regulation issued Discharged from her job at the rest home, Bobbie an emergency order suspending her nurse’s license. DPR

Sue moved to St. Petersburg in July 1984, obtaining a spokesmen further asked the state’s Board of Nursing Florida nursing license that August. Drifting from job for a permanent revocation order, calling Dudley “an to job in the Tampa Bay area, she was still dogged by immediate, serious danger to the public health, safety, mysterious ailments, including a bout of rectal bleeding and welfare.”

that led to an emergency colostomy. In spite of every-Bobbie Sue demanded a formal hearing, and while thing, October found her employed as a shift supervisor waiting for her day in court she married 38-year-old at St. Petersburg’s North Horizon Health Center, Ron Terrell, a plumber from Tampa. Matrimony failed assigned to work from 11:00 P.M. to 7:00 A.M.

to do the trick where Bobbie’s mental problems were
254

TOOLE, Ottis Elwood

concerned, and she soon found herself in another psy-ing the case under the umbrella of SUDDEN INFANT

cho ward, this time committed against her will. She was DEATH SYNDROME (SIDS). On September 2, 1975,

still inside when the Board of Nursing announced a Nathan Tinning died at the age of five months, an five-year suspension of her license, with reinstatement autopsy blaming his case on “pulmonary edema.” SIDS

conditional upon successful psychiatric treatment.

was the culprit again on February 2, 1979, when Mary Licensing became the least of Bobbie’s problems on Tinning died six months short of her third birthday, but March 17, when she was formally charged with

no cause was ever determined in the death of three-attempting to murder Ann Larson in November 1984.

month-old Jonathan, on March 24, 1980. Three-year-old Arresting officers found the Terrells living in a roadside Michael Tinning was still in the process of being adopted tent, recently evicted from their small apartment, but a when he was rushed to St. Clare’s Hospital on August 2, search of the former residence turned up sufficient evi-1981. Physicians could not save his life, and while they dence to support indictments on four counts of first-viewed his passing with a “high level of suspicion,” the degree murder. Bobbie Sue was held without bond cause of death was listed as bronchial pneumonia.

pending trial in the deaths of Aggie Marsh, Leathy The real questions began on December 20, 1985, McKnight, Stella Bradham, and Mary Cartwright.

when three-month-old Tammi Lynne Tinning was found The trial was scheduled to begin on October 20, unconscious in bed, blood staining her pillow. Rushed to 1985, but legal maneuvers and psychiatric tests repeat-St. Clare’s Hospital, she was beyond help, and while doc-edly postponed the starting date. At last, in February tors ascribed her death to SIDS, they also telephoned the 1988, Bobbie Sue pled guilty to reduced charges of sec-state police. An investigation led to Marybeth Tinning’s ond-degree murder and was sentenced to a term of 60

arrest on February 4, 1986, after she confessed to press-years imprisonment.

ing a pillow over Tammi Lynne’s face when the child See also MEDICAL MURDERS

“fussed and cried.” In custody, she also confessed to murdering Timothy and Nathan but staunchly denied killing any of the others. “I smothered them with a pillow,” she
TINNING, Marybeth Roe

told detectives, “because I’m not a good mother.”

For a devoted mother, Marybeth Tinning seemed to In fact, psychiatrists decided, the problem ran deeper have no luck at all raising children. In the 13 years from than that. Marybeth Tinning was diagnosed as suffering 1972 to 1985, she lost nine infants in Schenectady, New from a condition called MUNCHAUSEN’S SYNDROME BY

York. Police would later charge that eight of those were PROXY, in which those responsible for the care of chil-slain deliberately for MOTIVES so bizarre they challenge dren, invalids, and the like sometimes seek attention by credibility.

harming their charges. Friends and relatives recalled The first to go was daughter Jennifer, a mere eight Marybeth preening at funerals, basking in the spotlight days old when she died on January 3, 1972. An autopsy of sympathy, playing her role of grieving mother to hilt.

listed the cause of death as acute meningitis, and since It was suggested that the outpouring of condolence fol-the baby never left St. Clare’s Hospital after her birth, lowing her first baby’s death in 1972 had become addic-authorities consider her death the only case above sustive, driving Marybeth to kill one child after another in picion. We may never know what emotional shock pursuit of the sympathy “fixes” she craved.

waves were triggered in Marybeth Tinning’s mind by On July 17, 1987, Tinning was convicted of second-the death of her newborn daughter, but more of their degree murder in Tammi Lynne’s death, jurors acquit-children soon joined the casualty list.

ting her of “deliberately” killing the child, blaming her Less than three weeks later, on January 20, two-year-for a lesser degree of homicide through her “depraved old Joseph Tinning Jr. was pronounced dead on arrival indifference to human life.” It was a compromise ver-at Ellis Hospital in Schenectady. Doctors blamed his dict—more sympathy for Marybeth—but it carried a death on a viral infection and “seizure disorder,” but no prison sentence of 20 years to life. Husband Joseph Tin-autopsy was performed to verify those findings. Four-ning seemed bewildered by the whole affair. In newspa-year-old Barbara Tinning died six weeks later, on per interviews, he admitted occasional suspicion of his March 20, and autopsy surgeons, lacking an obvious wife but had managed to push it aside. “You have to cause of death, attributed her passing to “cardiac trust your wife,” he said. “She has her things to do, and arrest.” Barbara’s death as the first reported to police, as long as she gets them done, you don’t ask questions.”