Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (15 page)

C
hildren are particularly at risk from fathers who beat their wives and from those with a criminal record for violence. Men who abuse their pets are also more likely to abuse their families. Sometimes neighbours manage to flag up the abuse before it reaches homicidal proportions – 7,000 abused youngsters were helped in Britain in 2008 because concerned neighbours contacted the National Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children to report their fears.

Most physically-abusive fathers who murder are caught comparatively quickly, either because the child’s battered body is found or because a witness to the cruelty – often the child’s mother or a sibling – comes forward. But William Jennings got away with homicide for 26 years.

In December 1962, 24-year-old Jennings was looking after his three-year-old son Stephen and two of Stephen’s
preschool
siblings whilst his wife, Eileen, took their new baby to the local clinic. But, when Stephen wet the bed, his father punched or kicked him, fracturing his ribs and quickly causing his death.

Jennings took his son’s corpse, wrapped in a sack, to a railway embankment about three-quarters of a mile from his home in Cleckheaton, West Yorkshire, and buried it under a pile of stones. To his relief, heavy snow quickly covered the burial site. When Eileen returned from the clinic, he told her that Stephen had been playing outside and had disappeared. He repeated this story to the police. A huge search was mounted but it was hampered by the snow-covered ground, which took two months to thaw, and searchers failed to uncover the child’s body. Later, a wall partially collapsed over the makeshift burial site. William Jennings told everyone that the boy must have been taken by travellers, though many suspected that he’d played a part in his young son’s disappearance as he was known to be mercurial.

Eventually his marriage failed and he moved to Wolverhampton and remarried. Chillingly, for a man who now knew that he couldn’t control his temper, he fathered another two children. He must have thought that his homicidal attack would never come to light. Then, on 7 April 1988, a Jack Russell terrier unearthed a small human skull on the embankment. Its owner, who ironically had taken part in the original search for the missing boy, immediately fetched the police. A search revealed the rest of the child’s skeleton and forensics established that these were the remains of Stephen Jennings and that he had died as a result of a severe beating which had fractured his ribs.

Arrested, his father soon admitted the murder, explaining that he’d knocked the three-year-old through the banister as a punishment for soiling himself and that Stephen had fallen
down the stairs. He said that the child had lived for a few minutes, that he’d performed the kiss of life. But an expert at his trial said that the three-year-old had died immediately because his injuries were so severe.

At Leeds Crown Court on 23 May 1988, Jennings pleaded guilty to manslaughter and was given life imprisonment. A subsequent appeal failed.

Hard-hitting fathers like William Jennings deliberately hurt their children in the belief that they are instilling character, though repeated violence actually has the opposite effect, making children likely to soil themselves, have nightmares and become either intolerably clingy or excessively withdrawn. But, in a few cases, the father is a sadist who deliberately tortures – and sometimes sexually assaults – his progeny.

Jessica Randall was born in 2005, and for the first seven weeks of her life, her sadistic 33-year-old father Andrew tortured and sexually abused her. She was seen by 30 health workers in her native Kettering, none of whom took the decision to remove the baby from his care. When Jessica was 54 days old, her father battered her to death, her injuries including broken ribs and a fractured skull. He was jailed for life at Northampton Crown Court in March 2007.

Patrick Bourgeois and Michelle DuMond had a son together whom they called PJ (short for Patrick junior) but the relationship swiftly deteriorated and Patrick left the area and took PJ to live with him, moving the toddler from Lewistown, Pennsylvania to Columbus, Ohio. He made the move with his
girlfriend, mother-of-two Tracy Lynn Bratton who left her children behind with relatives.

PJ was a quiet and friendly child but he suffered hugely at his father’s hands, being frequently beaten and bitten. Tracy also bit the little boy. They didn’t leave water by PJ’s bedside, so if he woke up feeling thirsty he would drink from the toilet bowl. As a punishment for this, the couple sometimes tied him up overnight.

On 27 February 1996, shortly after returning from a visit to his mother, the three-year-old refused to eat the eggs that he’d been given for his evening meal. Enraged, Patrick and Tracy dragged him around the kitchen by his ears, leaving them bruised and swollen. Patrick also bit him in the side, leaving strong teeth indentations in the boy’s flesh, and hit him about the head. Thereafter, they tied his wrists behind his back and bound his legs tightly together and put him to bed, lying on his back.

PJ had suffered such severe head trauma that his brain started to bleed. The blood ran down his throat and, as he was heavily bound, he couldn’t roll onto his side or stomach. Blood would later be found in his lungs, airway, stomach and bowels.

The following day, the emergency services received a call that a little boy was having difficulty breathing. But when they arrived at the trailer, no one answered their increasingly desperate knocks. They could hear a couple arguing – and, when Tracy and Patrick eventually opened the door, they could see that the floor had been very recently washed.

PJ was lying lifeless on the floor with blood coming out of his nose and mouth. His 34lb body was a mass of bruises. His injuries were so bad that one of the paramedics who drove him to the hospital – a man who had seen more than his share of
horror – went home that night in tears. An autopsy determined that the toddler had been battered and had choked to death on his own blood.

When interviewed by police, Patrick said that PJ had tried to bite him on the finger so he’d bitten him back. The police officer hid his shock that a grown man could bite a three-year-old boy as a punishment. He asked why PJ was bleeding, and Patrick said that he’d backhanded the boy during a little tiff. (PJ’s injuries showed that he’d been hit repeatedly about the head.)

Police searched the mobile home and found blood spatters on the bottom of the fridge and the foot of the cabinets, which the couple had overlooked when cleaning the three-year-old’s blood from the kitchen floor. Detectives asked why tape residue was found on PJ’s wrists and legs, and they admitted taping him before putting him to bed – the discarded tape was found in the couple’s rubbish bin. Tracy also admitted biting the boy. Both were sent to prison for involuntary manslaughter, and sentenced to 7 to 25 years.

For the next five months, a jailed Patrick Bourgeois fought for the right to bury his son – the son he’d killed – in Columbus, Ohio. His mother protested that she wanted the body returned to Lewistown, Pennsylvania. Meanwhile the autopsied corpse remained in the mortuary. Eventually, Franklin County Court decided on his burial place.

From jail, the couple continued to argue about who had done what to the unfortunate child. Yet, after a mere three years and two months (before she was even eligible for her first parole hearing) Tracy Bratton was released on the orders of Judge Nodine Miller who granted her what is known as ‘supershock probation’. Judge Miller said that the torture and tying-up of PJ had been ‘fraught with ignorance, immaturity and
inexperience more than malevolence’ and said ‘Bratton is unlikely to commit another offence. The public does not need to be protected from Bratton.’ She added that Tracy Bratton’s children (age seven and nine) from a previous relationship were living with her relatives in Pennsylvania, but they were ill so it was best that Tracy regained custody. The public were appalled at the thought of this sadistic woman being in charge of other youngsters, or anyone vulnerable.

Not to be outdone, Patrick Bourgeois’s lawyers also petitioned for his early release, and, after serving a mere three years and ten months, he was set free. Ordering his release, Judge Nodine Miller said ‘These particular circumstances were so abhorrent, it is hard to conceive of such a replay in Bourgeois’ lifetime.’ (In other words, Patrick Bourgeois’s excessive cruelty towards his son earned him an early release.) The judge said that PJ had been ‘difficult’ and ‘misbehaving’ on the night he died, as if refusing to eat his dinner was a sufficient justification to beat him to death.

Most violent fathers are removed from the home after killing one of their children, but Bill Bagneski has the dubious distinction of murdering two of his offspring in separate incidents.

A military man and a strict disciplinarian, 34-year-old Bill Bagneski was stationed at Hinesville, Georgia in August 1989, when he beat his nine-month-old daughter Amy about the face. A neighbour noted the baby’s injuries and insisted on driving them to the emergency room. As medics treated the infant’s injuries, he shouted at her to stop crying – abusive parents often imagine that childhood distress is an act to wind them up, that such displays of anguish are under a baby’s conscious control.

Unsurprisingly, doctors didn’t believe Bagneski’s story that
the nine-month-old had jumped off of the settee and landed face down, so upon discharge from hospital, she was taken into foster care. Two months later she was returned to him and his wife Robyn but fortunately Robyn divorced him shortly afterwards and got custody of their child.

In 1997, Bagneski moved back to his native Green Bay, Wisconsin, and married again, this time to a woman called Kelly. Two years later the couple had a son, Joel. On 2 November 1999, she went to work leaving her husband asleep with the understanding that he would babysit when he awoke. He claimed that he slept through the alarm and woke up to find the baby dead, a death which was attributed to Sudden Infant Death Syndrome as there were no visible injuries.

In 2001, Kelly and Bill had a daughter to whom they gave the name Kelby, just one letter away from the moniker of her mother. Later that same year, Bill was babysitting and phoned medics to say that the baby wasn’t breathing. Paramedics found her unconscious and rushed her to hospital where she died. Bagneski told the police that the infant had been difficult as per usual and had suddenly stopped breathing as she played in the lounge.

But a post-mortem showed that her death was due to swelling on the brain and retinal haemorrhages. The case was handed over to the FBI. Meanwhile, Kelly – who taught parenting classes at a local college – opted to become pregnant again, convinced that her husband was innocent. The day after the Bagneski’s second daughter was born, the authorities took her into care.

The FBI ruled that Kelby’s death had not been accidental and that, with hindsight, Joel’s death had also been as a result of abuse and Bill Bagneski was charged with two counts of first degree intentional homicide. Shortly before his trial, he pleaded no contest to reduced charges of first degree reckless
homicide, and was sentenced to between 27 and 40 years. Incredibly, his second wife maintained that he would never knowingly harm their children and said that she’d stand by her man.

L
oving parents often describe their children as priceless – but sociopathic parents think nothing of insuring their offspring and murdering them for financial gain. There’s often a dual motive in these cases, with the father wanting to fund a more hedonistic lifestyle and resenting the time that his wife spends with the children. Or, if she’s an ex-wife, he’s motivated by both the desire for money and revenge.

On the eve of Michael Shane Goode’s 16th birthday in 1977 – he liked to be known by his middle name of Shane – his 10-year-old stepsister died, having spent six weeks in hospital due to a horrific car accident. This wasn’t the only tragedy to befall the Goodes, as many years later one of his stepbrothers would hang himself following a failed marriage. Though handsome and slimly built, Shane had little self-esteem.

His first marriage in 1981 to his high school sweetheart
ended in divorce after six years when he hit her so hard that he perforated her eardrum. Their daughter Tiffany was three at the time. The following year he met a bookkeeper called Annette (who had a daughter from a previous marriage) and convinced her that his first wife had been difficult and was to blame for the break-up of the relationship. Annette and Shane soon married, but none of his family attended the ceremony in Pasadena, Texas, though they lived nearby.

From the onset of the marriage, Shane was moody, controlling and incredibly jealous of Annette’s friends. He was a postal carrier by day, but spent his weekends with the National Guard, a kind of territorial army: he told other members that he was prepared to die for his country and that he knew how to kill people and get away with it.

He was always short of money so arranged for his brother-in-law Steven (Annette’s brother) to steal Shane’s sports car and sell it. No one else in the family knew anything about this. Shane netted insurance money of almost $14,000, enough to pay off his debts, and for a few weeks he seemed more relaxed and amicable then he returned to being his usual changeable self.

Annette became pregnant early in the marriage and Shane persuaded her to have an abortion as he wasn’t ready to be a father for a second time. But the marriage remained volatile and he left her and set up home alone. However, the couple occasionally reconciled when they were feeling lonely, and Annette got pregnant yet again. He begged her to have another abortion as he was already struggling to pay maintenance for his existing daughter, Tiffany, but she refused. Enraged, he walked out on her, shouting that he wanted nothing to do with the impending birth.

The baby was born on 27 August 1991 and christened Katherine Renee Goode, though she would always be known by her middle name. By now Annette had realised that her life was better without Shane, and she didn’t initially tell him that he had a daughter, but she did file for divorce.

As part of the divorce petition, Annette’s attorney requested that Shane pay maintenance for baby Renee. Shane resented the request and retorted that the little girl wasn’t his and he became even more embittered when the courts insisted that he take a paternity test. His rage built when the DNA test proved that he
was
the father and he was ordered to pay child support. He was worried that he’d have to sell his beloved pickup truck to afford the maintenance payments, but fortunately his father agreed to lend him $5,000.

When Renee was 18 months old, Shane took out a life insurance policy on her for $50,000 and one for the same amount on his older daughter, Tiffany. He didn’t tell Annette about this. When his girlfriend Sunny, who he was living with, overheard an answering machine message from the insurance company and questioned him, he said that he was thinking of taking out medical insurance on the little girl. Sunny understandably wondered why he’d insure a child that he had never seen.

Shane now decided that he wanted to have contact visits with his daughter, though he admitted to his girlfriend that this was more to annoy his ex-wife than because he wanted to form a relationship with the 18-month-old. The law was on his side, so Annette reluctantly gave him access to their child.

Over the next few months he took out his mood swings, and resentment at having to pay maintenance, on the little girl. She would return from a visit looking upset and would show no interest in her toys for the next few hours, sitting and staring into space. When she was two years old and unsettled during
a sleepover at his home, he showed no empathy and spanked her for getting out of bed.

Meanwhile, Shane’s first wife was becoming increasingly perturbed at the way he was treating their eight-year-old, Tiffany. She told her mother that her father had dressed her up in adult clothing and makeup and taken her to a nightclub where they had danced together. When confronted, Shane made light of the incident.

But, increasingly dissatisfied with his relationship, he brooded over his life and ran up a huge telephone bill by calling sex chat lines. He knew that he’d have to pay maintenance cheques for Renee for another 16 years whilst his debts mounted. But if she died…

On 22 January 1994, he invited his firstborn daughter Tiffany, Michelle (Annette’s 12-year-old daughter from her first marriage) and two-and-a-half-year-old Renee to a slumber party at his parents’ house. The following morning, Michelle found the toddler lying motionless under her sleeping bag with liquid seeping from her mouth. She had been dead for several hours as rigor mortis had already begun to set in. Police arrived to find Shane rocking his dead daughter in his arms but they noticed that he wasn’t tearful and that his subsequent statement was similarly emotionless. His girlfriend Sunny was so troubled by his callousness that she would later testify for the prosecution.

An autopsy showed lung congestion and bloody froth, suggestive of asphyxiation. But the pathologist’s report said that the manner of death was undetermined, and Renee’s body was released for burial.

After the funeral, Annette and her mother continued to protest to the authorities that Shane had murdered the little
girl. He was still awaiting the insurance money because the coroner hadn’t yet completed the paperwork, something which often takes months.

A female detective investigated Shane Goode and became convinced that he was guilty. She persuaded the authorities to exhume Renee and, during the second autopsy, the pathologist cut through the muscles and removed the diaphragm so that he could examine the back of the chest wall. This revealed haemorrhaging which must have been caused by extreme force applied to the toddler’s abdomen for at least five minutes. In other words, she had been squeezed to death.

At Shane Goode’s trial, the defence said that Renee had died from Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) and that the $50,000 insurance policy which Shane had taken out on her life was to have been used for her college education. The prosecution countered that the second autopsy showed trauma to the child and therefore she hadn’t been a SIDS victim. The doctor who had performed the second autopsy used a life-sized doll to demonstrate how Renee Goode had been squeezed to death. Brain death would have occurred in approximately five minutes, though it might have been ten minutes or more before cardiac arrest.

Annette took the stand, telling how, after her daughter’s death, she’d asked Shane if he had additional insurance on the two-and-a-half-year-old and he’d denied it. He had a small insurance policy that he’d taken out at work which she already knew about.

Shane Goode took the stand, looking and sounding confidant. He said that his second wife and his ex-girlfriend Sunny, who had both testified against him, were bitter that the relationships had broken down, that this was their motivation
for painting him as money-obsessed and uncaring. But he had to admit that he’d had debts which he was desperate to pay off at the time that Renee died – outstanding household bills, car payments, loan repayments, child maintenance arrears and divorce attorneys’ fees.

He spoke emotionlessly of how Michelle had told him that Renee wasn’t moving, said that he had picked the child up and noticed that she was cold and stiff and had purplish discolouration on one side of her face.

The jury were out for three hours then returned with a guilty verdict. Goode remained impassive, even when Annette read out a victim impact statement describing their daughter as bright, cheerful, lovable, energetic and affectionate, a girl who ‘could have been anything: a teacher, doctor, lawyer, even an astronaut.’

The child killer began serving his life sentence in an Amarillo jail and appeared to adjust quickly to prison life. A year and a half after the murder he wrote a letter to Annette confessing his guilt. He said that, though he hadn’t carried out the murder in the way that the court described it, he
had
killed her and that it was a cowardly and selfish thing to do. He wrote, somewhat elliptically, that he had convinced himself the murder was the only way out. But he played down the financial motive, saying that he’d acted out of bitterness at the ending of their relationship. He added that he’d found religion and that his God had forgiven him.

Raised as a Jehovah’s Witness, Stephen married another Witness in September 1974, when he was 22. His bride, Jane, was only 18 and completely devoted to him. The couple started
their married life living with relatives in Syracuse, New York. Though the new husband boasted that he could play football at a professional level, he mainly lived off welfare. (This is unusual amongst Jehovah’s Witnesses who prefer to support each other rather than seek state help.) He loved expensive clothes and flashy cars but made no attempt to work for them, and such leech-like behaviour is one of the signs of a psychopath.

Eight months after their wedding, the Van Der Sluys’ son Heath was born, a healthy, happy baby. Stephen seemed attached to his son but complained about how much time Jane spent with the infant and said that they didn’t have fun as a couple anymore. Yet, early the following year, he got Jane pregnant again.

Three weeks before Heath’s first birthday – an anniversary which Jehovah’s Witnesses don’t celebrate – Stephen took out an insurance policy on his firstborn for $10,000. It was a surprising move for a man who was always pleading poverty.

On 8 October 1976, Jane, by now almost nine months pregnant with their second child, went to the obstetricians to keep a routine appointment, leaving Stephen alone in the house to look after the 16-month-old. The little boy was playing contentedly in the lounge when Jane left.

Shortly afterwards, Stephen phoned the Syracuse police to say that his son was choking. They arrived to find Heath unconscious on the couch and although they performed artificial resuscitation – as did the ambulance crew who succeeded them – the little boy died.

The remarkably calm father told police that he’d put Heath down for a nap at midday, then had decided to put a coin in the savings bank in the baby’s room. But he realised belatedly that dropping the quarter into the slot might wake him, so he
put the coin next to the nappies pail instead. Heath, he continued, must have awoken, picked up the coin and swallowed it and choked to death.

The baby was examined and found to be clean and
well-nourished
and the couple’s home was immaculate. As there were no signs of child abuse, an autopsy was deemed unnecessary and ‘coin lodged in throat’ was the official cause of death. Shortly afterwards, Stephen received $10,000 from the insurance company.

Twelve days after Heath’s untimely death, a distraught Jane gave birth to a daughter whom they’d decided, months before, to call Heather. (It would be interesting to know if Stephen chose the names, as some psychologists believe that parents who choose names beginning with the same letter for their children are opting for a style of false bonding, in the way that insecure couples wear matching outfits or get identical tattoos.)

Jane’s days were immediately taken up with the new baby and with grieving for the loss of Heath, but Stephen seemed more interested in spending the insurance money, buying himself a brand new Pontiac and designer clothes. Stephen’s father remarried, so the couple moved out of his home and into an upstairs flat in Syracuse. Their lives continued to revolve around the local Jehovah’s Witness Kingdom Hall.

Shortly before Heather turned six weeks old, Stephen Van Der Sluys took out a $10,000 insurance policy on her. A month later, he woke Jane up in the middle of the night, holding Heather and screaming that she wasn’t breathing. Thankfully, Jane reacted quickly: she used her fingers to check that Heather’s airway wasn’t obstructed, whereupon the infant vomited. Jane then breathed into her mouth.
Paramedics arrived swiftly and further revived the child and she was back to normal shortly after reaching the local hospital, though they kept her in for four days and carried out various tests, all of which showed that she was perfectly healthy and progressing well.

Later that week, Jane got her hair cut short and hated it. She mused aloud about whether she should go out and buy a pair of hair tongs to add some curl to her new style and Stephen encouraged her to go, despite the fact that it was snowing heavily. He commented that she’d hardly been anywhere since the birth and offered to look after little Heather. Jane took the car and was back home with her purchase in less than an hour.

On her return, she checked on Heather, who was lying in her crib, only to find that the baby was dead. She became hysterical and Stephen looked suitably distraught. This time an autopsy was performed, but no cause of death was discovered so the pathologist wrote Sudden Infant Death Syndrome on the death certificate. Again, Stephen Van Der Sluys collected the insurance money and went on a spending spree.

Jane’s father suspected that money-mad Stephen was now a double murderer and he feared for the fate of the couple’s future children, his grandchildren, so he asked them to move in with him and his wife in Mechanicville, near the state capital of Albany, explaining that he’d like Stephen to join the family industrial-cleaning firm. Stephen proved to be a poor employee but a fertile son-in-law and, on 14 October 1977, the Van Der Sluys had their third child. They called the little girl Vickie Lynn, and she was extensively tested in hospital and pronounced fit and well.