CALIFORNIA'S DEADLIEST WOMEN-David Kulczyk

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who cooked and ate her husband. The twenty eight women profiled in California's Deadliest Women show that the fair sex can be as evil and as deadly as any man. The book that we're featuring this evening is California's Deadliest Women, Dangerous Dames and Murderous Mums, with my special guest journalist and author David Colchik. Welcome back to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. David Colchick.

omani Irie. She was born in Egypt in nineteen sixty nine, which could have been one of the worst years to be born in Egypt. There was the war going on with Israel, and everything was just a big mess in nineteen sixty nine, especially over there. She there's not a lot known about her growing up, but we do know that she had she was forced to have female circumcision, and that's pretty common back then. There's a lot of things about it now to stop it. But when she

was eighteen she immigrated to America. She was ip but one beautiful woman, just very exotic and attractively built, as the Beatles would say, being young and beautiful in this country. She never liked for male companionship, and she probably really didn't even go to school, So we have no idea what her education level was, or even what her language

skills were, how good she was speaking English. But one thing that she managed to do when she got to America is that she kind of became because of her good looks and everything she's she became not necessarily a prostitute, but she was an I candy for rich people's parties and things. As we know now.

she sex was painful and traumatic for her. You know, like I said, no one really knows what her life was like in Egypt before she came to America, but one of her favorite things to do would be to take guy and tie him up to their bed, to his bed, and then she would take his wallet and leave.

And no one knows how many times that actually happened, but there were at least two cases where guys called the police and filed charges and then dropped them before they went to court because they probably got teased really badly at work and things about that. And it's kind of funny because I read one thing is that one guy was like two days he was tied up to his bed, and so it was quite a mess when

his friends filed him and stuff. So she fell in love with this pilot who was convicted of drug smuggling in the eighties. But he was just middle aged guy and he's like fifty six years old at the time they got married. They only knew each other a few days and they got married. So they seem to be

getting along fine. And November twenty second, nineteen ninety one, that's Thanksgiving Day in America, when everyone else was around having turkey and watching football games and hanging out with their relatives, both student decided to have a little bondage gate, and so she tied up Richard Nelson to their bed, and then she took a clothes iron and beat him over the head with it. And to make sure he was dead, she took a pair of scissors and stabbed

him a bunch of times in the chest. So that put her in the holiday spirit, and she dressed up in her favorite bondage clothes, which were like red, and put on her red high heeled shoes, a red hat, put on blood red lipstick, and she started to cut up her husband. Now, the police showed up at her apartment on December second. One of her former boyfriends called and told the police that she asked him to help dispose the plastic bags of leftover turkey and body parts.

So the police showed up at their place. And you know, it's almost a cliche, but his head was cooking on a pot on the stove, his hands were fried in cooking oil, they were in a pan, and he had basically his guts were all in different garbage bags. One of the bags was in the back in the trunk of Nelson's corvette. And she told the psychiatrists that she'd cooked his ribs and dipped them in barbecue sauce and ate them. And she told the investigators nothing tastes as

good as the man I married. It's the sauce that does it. WHOA, yeah, that's that's really getting out there. So at her trial, she claimed that she was defending herself, but it didn't really fly because he was tied down and there's really no way that he could have threatened her physically, at least when that happened. So she's currently doing twenty eight to life in prison right now.

And so we can just explain a little bit about this very complex character and this very fascinating tale called the Shopping Spree Killer.

and she's about four years old. She didn't know what to do with it. She just looked at it like, I don't even know what this is. But about Dana, she knew what it was. Her mother they got divorced and she was a scientologist, and she spent all their money on churches, classes and things like that. So she rented out her driveway to some men that were in RV vehicle and this is about in nineteen seventy three or something like that. Beverily would go out nightclub and

all the time and have parties at her house. And that's how Vana grew up seeing this kind of stuff. She had a boyfriend who lived with her in that so she misbehaved in school and got in trouble, got in fights, shoplifted, and she hated taking orders from anyone. She'd sneak out of her bedroom at night and wander the streets and things. And I think she lost her virginity at age twelve to one of the guys that lived in an RV in her driveway almost been about

nineteen seventy or so. Her mother was diagnosed with cancer in seventy one, and she saw how her mother suffered going through of her chemo and things, especially back then, she decided to become a nurse. And Beverly had a knack of if she decided to do something, she would she would be totally successful at it. She would go beyond beyond what most people could do. Just anything she

tried she was great at. So after Beverly died, she moved in with her father and his new wife when he had had quite a few wives, actually I think four, and when it came down to it and she had to share a bedroom with her stepsister, and you know, a girl like that, going back to living with a strange stepmother and a strange stepsister, she was getting in nothing but trouble. So her brother, her stepbrother from the first marriage, introduced her to skydiving, and she became excellent

at skydiving. After her step mother found some marijuana in her room, they kicked her out and she just moved in with her boyfriend, who was twenty three years old. She was sixteen and her boyfriend was a jumpmaster at the skydiving club. So she grew up being really athletic. Blonde haired, blue eyed California girl went to Newport Harbor

High School and she graduated. She started going to college to be together a nursing degree, and she at the same time she started playing golf, and she also got into windsurfing, which is, you know, the pioneering days of windsurfing.

Nineteen eighty one or so. She graduated from nursing school and became a nurse, and you know, I was making good money being a nurse at that time, and she started going to windsurfing competitions and golf tournaments all over the West Coast in Hawaii and was enjoying pretty good life. So the thing was stayed that way. That would have been good, but she always wanted more. Her father got divorced and married again, and she wasn't sure about what

to do with her life. She went to New Zealand or no, she went to Australia and she went there to see if she could get work and it didn't work out. There was this guy named Tom Gray who went to high school with her. She had moved in with her father in a Canyon Lake, California, which is about one hundred miles east of Los Angeles in the

deserts they called the Inland Empire area. So this guy that lived nearby was a guy who went to high school with her, and he always had a crush on her, and it was like, hey, you know, it's kind of good. She doesn't know anyone out here in that And this guy, Tom Gray, he was in a band called Long Shot and they played all the Los Angeles clubs and seemed to be doing really good. But the band wasn't serious. They didn't want a record deal or anything like that,

so he kind of put that away. He was also an ultra light aircraft pilot and he would fly over you know, races and things like that, heeing banners. And his real job with a construction heavy equipment operator, so you know, that's good paying jobs. So she went to she went to Australia then, and she just couldn't get

work without having the just empty bedpans. And she had a lot of experience by then, so she came back and Tom Gray picked her up at the airport and she they fell in love and got married and she got a job a little in Catalina, the Catalina Islands off the Los Angeles, which is she'd come home for the weekends. And they started a They bought a house, and they started a marriage all in one company where he was a Universal Life minister, and they had the band.

They had a print shop and they would do everything that you needed to do to have a wedding. So you know things are going good. Money it's coming in, and this is kind of hot.

in there. You need a card pass or you need to know the combination. People feel pretty safe there. They were living beyond their means and they had a second mortgage on their house. Then the house in double broke and there were no more jobs for heavy equipment operators. It became pretty tight, especially with their double mortgage, and her credit cards were all maxed out, and Dana never stopped going to her weekly hair appointments and manicures and

spat dates. She had a gold Cadillac. She kept on going out and buying clothes and accessories, just like they were fully employed. So she started getting really mad about the lack of money that they had and that Tom would ask her not to spend so much, and she

just would not have it. No one could ever tell her what to do, so she asked her stepbrothers for money and other relatives, and she angered her old family when she tried to change a will of her stepbrother's great aunts, who she was not related to at all. She had nothing to do with them, and she, you know, her relatives were just just having it with her. They

just couldn't couldn't deal with her anymore. She got a job at the Inland Valley Regional Medical Center as a labor and delivery nurse, and she took extra shifts and by all accounts, she was really good nurse, but she didn't get along with her coworkers at all, and she had been reprimanded for or not getting along with them. She wanted to have a baby. Couldn't happen. They just couldn't have. They just couldn't do it.

couldn't have. And also during this time, she was pingpong and between her husband Dan and between this guitar player guy, and you know, Dan pretty much just threw his hands up in the air and just looked, you know, make up your mind someday. So she got fired from her job for stealing demole and other opiates. You know, you're supposed to just stray what she don't use. And she was a false false buying a narcotic inventory. And she said that she'd these were files that fell on the floor,

but they didn't believe her and they fired her. So Tom At this time, they were separated and she had taken out a life insurance policy on him and he didn't know about. On Valentine's Day in nineteen ninety four, she called him and asked to meet him, and he just didn't think it was a good idea and he stood her up. So she instead that she was in the area where they lived. Their house was now in foreclosure.

She still had her pass key for the gate of that air of that town, and she drove past her old house and she saw eighty six year old Norma Davis who lived nearby, and she was the former mother in law of her latest stepmother. And it gets pretty pretty complicated in a way, but she's no relation to this person, but she knows her through her stepmother's through

her stepmother. So she went over to her house and Norma was recovering from a triple bypass surgery, and she let her in, like, oh, how you doing, And she sat down in her chair and Dana snuck up behind her and strangled her with a phone cord that seemed to be like her favorite weapon. It just started. After she was done strangling her, she stabbed her eleven times or two knights and broke the knights off.

Two weeks later, she goes to the same place in Canyon Lake and there's sixty six year old June Roberts and she she was She would strive through the neighborhood and she saw somebody outside, she'd pull in and say, she said, hey, do you have a book about kicking alcohol edition addiction? And you know, can I borrow it? And she got up to go use the to go up to go get the book, and she came up behind her and strangled her with another phone court and she took cash and two credit cards from her.

She was vacuuming whatever, straightening up things. And Dana came in asked if she had any antique picture frames, and they walked to the back of the store where they were, and she grabbed the phone cord and starts strangling her, and while she was fighting for life, Gray was whispering to her, just accept it. You know you're going to die, and she thought she she killed her. She left her there, laid dead. She got five dollars in a credit card for that for that murder, she took twenty dollars out

of cash register. So she left her laid on the floor and uh she she was unconscious for an hour in the phone ring and it brought her out of her out of her coma as she had, and she was able to call the police and she gave a description. So when Dan found out that she didn't kill her and that she was able to identify her, she went out and got her hair cut short and dyed red. But the same time, Riverside County there, you know, they

had like a sheriff substation. Riverside County is the largest county in America and it's you know, almost as big as New England. It's just incredibly huge. And there it's actually pretty poor county too, so they have their their

resources are stretched pretty thin. This cop was talking to to her step her father's new wife, and she was shunging to the police detective because you know, her grandmother was killed, and they said that she told the cop that that Dana had a key to her house into the Canyon Lake subdivision, and so they were starting to look at her. Okay, we're gonna we're gonna watch what she does. So she does it again March sixteenth, just

another two weeks. It seemed like every two weeks she had to about every time she had to get her nails done or her hair done, she would go out and kill somebody and steal their money. So she goes back to Canyon Lake, the same street where Norma Davis lived, and she saw eighty seven Dora Bbie come home from

a doctor's appointment. And I guess Dora didn't really like her that much, and she she claimed that she was lost and wanted to look at a map, and so she let her in her house and she got the thumb cord tied it around her neck again, and this time Dora really fought she was a scrapper, and they totally trashed out the living room, broke things, some lamps fell down, and she eventually Dana grabbed a clothes iron and smacked her in the head until she was dead.

That's the second murder. There's two murders in this book that are by clothes iron, of all things.

gone on a shopping spree. So just take us a little bit back, because that's an incredible sort of meanwhile, well.

put the time, they put these things together. Yeah, she had killed somebody while they're way for her to arrest her. So they found you know, purses and wallets and credit cards sitting in her house, two thousand dollars in cash which was taken out of June Roberts bank account. I found that, you know her she had not Briana clothes and jury and you know, some of these things weren't even opened or used. They stud their tags on it. So so they put the cups on her and arrested her.

And she seemed to be just as hard to interrogate and interview in jail as she was just in her life as she was.

only men, Yeah, overwhelmingly, and with the death penalty. Out of the four women that were killed, only one did an actual killing, the other one did the planning in Barbara Graham was completely innocent. And I've kicked off a few criminal historians about this, but I've done my research in Barbara Graham. She was like a third generation Oakland prostitute. She had never had a chance. She grew up in the Foster homes and she was a heroin addict at a young age. She was just kind of like just

kind of a good time girls. She was in the wrong place at the wrung time. This guy named Jack Santos and EMMITTT. Perkins were the ones that really did commit the murder. And those two had a criminal ring in northern California for about twenty years up until they

got caught in the late fifties. They would just go up these lonely highways here in northern California and they would see somebody at a rest stop or something, usually a salesman or something, and they would rob and kill the guy and dump his body in some ravine and steal the car and maybe dump the car in a

ravine or whatever. But there were all these unsolved murderers and people disappearing, and they think that Santo's and Hurrikins could have been responsible at least his game were maybe fIF fe murders that happened between nineteen thirty nine nineteen fifty nine, but Barbara act Made made a movie about her, I Want to Live and as great as their last words when when they put her in a gas chamber, guard said, just take a deep breath and hold it.

You won't feel anything, and she said, how the hell do you know?

A nursing home. Pardon me, now, this is a tale that you have gone quite in depth and to show the character change, and this is very complex transformation that this woman goes through to become this Acid Queen. So tell us a little bit about Larissa Foreman and this very successful person and talented person as well. That ends up being one of the more interesting stories in your book. Acid Queen.

agricul cultural city. They do a lot of packaging and canning of food products they grow, you know, in the rich San Joaquin Valley. You know, anything can grow there.

Saint Agnes Medical Center. I'm doing pretty good, you know. Resno is also a very poor place, and to have a good job in that area. You know, you live in high you have a nice house, you have a nice car. You know, everything is at your fingertips, you know, I mean, settled into a regular middle class life. Belonged to a Lutheran church and Tim was a Mason and everything. And Lewison noticed that the lab looked like it wasn't doing too well. She said to open her own, and

she started Central California Research Labs. And it's still there. They this was all done and done, it was sold. So you know, you can't have a they have a successful ag lab in Fresno. Is is uh, well, not necessarily difficult because that's where you know, the nation's farming is. You know, Fresno it's the number one Fresno County is the number one agriculture county in America. And again it's you know, the size of Etquta or something that's just

the same. She got really successful at this, and.

company was getting more successful, she got more obnoxious. And she was used to being the boss, and she treated her family the same way. And she would make fun of her husband's section little prowless in front of people at you know, little parties and things like that, and she dragged about an affair she had and how much money she made. And yeah, everyone, no one really liked her. Everyone liked Kim. Tim was a good guy. They all liked him. And you know, he had a good job himself.

He was making over eighty grand a year, so you know, that's that's not like he's pumping gas at a gas station or anything. So their daughter, be Castine, she started having problems in teenage years and she just chipped her out to her parents back in Missouri. And in the meantime, their marriage was on the rocks. They filed for divorce and they lived in separate fictions of their house. But

Melissa wanted everything. She did not want Tim to get a single thing, not even the blender out of their divorce when they got divorced, so she went out to Missouri and fourth of July holiday in two thousand and two, and Tim moved out of the house, which angered her. And here's here's a person that she's done nothing but push out of her life. And then when he moves out, she got totally angry and she did not want to want to, you know, split the money that they made together,

which is California law, you get fifty to fifty. So she got custody over their son, Tyler, and he got Every other weekend they would meet at the place where she got her nails done, and she would always like yell and scream at him, and then she'd go and get her nails done and then she'd make fun of them some more. So she's just got this big mouths and she's telling people that, you know, you know, if he died, my life would be great, and things like that.

She started doing some really odd things. She ordered hydrochloric acid, sulfuric acid, and some other kinds. They her company used maybe a couple of gallons a year. He was buying it by the box full, and the shipping and receiving people, they at first thought something was wrong, and she said, no, that's what we're getting.

on his message machine. Back then they had him and got must have been one of last time. But she then bought from her company a fifty five gallon of blue plastic barrel, and she jokingly asked her warehouse staff if they think it was big enough to put a body in, and you know, everyone just kind of laughed. You know, it's like some of humor. But Luisa was really making plans.

of sepheric acid over him. And he was still alive. He was unconscious, but he was still alive. That's how she killed him.

cell phone, his wallet and watch. We're all sitting there right in plain view. And he knew that he would never leave, you know, you know, fairly meticulous guy. He would always do the same things. So Melissa took her son to meet just like she was going to drop him off for the weekend, and he didn't show up,

and she was, like she thought. Larissa said to her manicurists that I haven't feeling this divorce is going to go my way, and that you know, oh, he didn't even show up to pick up his son and on this day that he's supposed to have him. But the manicurists noticed that her hands were so sweaty that her

fake nails wouldn't stay in. So his friends called the police, and they didn't know, you know, what was gonna You know, missing people get missing all the time, and you know, they go to Vegas or they go to you know, Tequoia or King's Canyon and all the wilderness out there, and thought, oh, maybe he just went off there and stuff but never did show up.

called him like multiple times. They also noticed that she had abrasions on her legs, and they thought, okay, this isn't right. They let her go. They thought, okay, we're gonna give her some rope and let her hang herself.

He lived with his parents, and they brought him into question and the relationship with her just kind of innocently, and they knew they could sweat this guy out. You know,

he's basically just a kid. And he ended up telling by the third interview, he ended up telling them that he had been paid two thousand dollars for helping with the murder and he had to ditch everything in the stun gun and a porter John at a construction site, and they went and found it, and then they got a search warrant to go through her property and they

found they found out about the storage locker. Sweating this guy out, You know that that would be the easiest thing because you know Larissa was you know, she's educated, she's a savvy businesswoman. She's always planning like five steps ahead. You know, this Tigan guy, he was just, you know, just a kid, just a just a hic kid who got a job at this research place. So the police went into the storage unit and opened it up, and you know, the whole place cleared out. It was horrible.

Only his legs and hips were the only part of his body that wasn't dissolved.

They put all the evidence out in front of her and had a lot of their friends come up who said that she spoken openly of her hatred and she wanted him dead. And you know the people that she her employees told about how you know, she asked if a body would fit into it. Another one talked about

renting a truck for her. The day to barrow was moved about the the uh storage unit and all that stuff, And they played two dozen phone messages that they discovered on Tim Tim's answering machine from her that were just totally foul and she was threatening him. They even had a dust outline of the barrel that was in the garage and yeah, she uh, she let's see she she just made everyone came up and just said, you know that she was. That's how she was. She was, uh,

just totally hated that guy. So she took the stand and she was just charming and articulate, and she kept her wits and temperate. Bay She had two days of cross examination. She had an excuse for everything from the purchases from the lab to her foul mouth messages. And she admitted that she helped Bargu move the barrel to the storage unit. That was the only thing that she would admit to. But she said that she did not

kill him. And when she was sentenced to life without parole, she just sat stone faced while you know her her kids were crying in court and things, and she just didn't affect her it off. She just sat their stone face and there you know, six hundred dollars dress and dance hairdoo.

She lived in New Liberty, Iowa. So tell us about this real troubled youth Michelle, and as you write in the book, about what it led to in her early life, talk about background. Yeah, Michelle O.

dancing naked on stage and stuff. She got married a couple of times, you know, never worked out. She never got divorced either. When she's twenty years old. So for six years she was basically a stripper slash prostitute. You know, she was very good looking, beautiful, beautiful woman. She had a pat two of a vampire fight on her neck and this is nineteen ninety one, with a little drop of blood, and then on her arm she had like a bats flying like out of a belfry type thing

when they got bigger and smaller. So she was working at the Mustang ranch in Nevada, and she kept a little apartment in a suburb of Sacramento. She had a you know, it was all done up like a vampire house and stuff. She just really liked all that stuff.

of place at there. But in Hawfer and Michelle liked each other and she actually was very fond of him, and she was over at his house one day, March fifth, nineteen ninety one. She took a bunch of LSD. And Michelle had a pretty serious drug problem. It wasn't that she had to take drugs, It's just that she wanted to take drugs, and she would take whatever drugs are just around. She'd take LSD, she'd take pout, she'd snort

you know, anything, and was stoned all the time. So she took some LSD and she was at his trailer home and she went berserk. She thought that in offer an evil spirit, and she stabbed him to death and over thirty times in the shower, and then she stuck him in a bag and put him in his bedroom and took off in his car. So this then finds out, you know, when work calls up, and so say, you know, your dad hasn't been around a couple of days, a kind of he went and he found his father dead.

So Batgirl disappears. The press called her Batgirl because of her tattoos and because of the vampire thing, and she know, she went for the heavy eye makeup and all that kind of mortitia goth girl. And she disappeared and old Time offered her low life drug dealing friends and co worker were just they were they were using her to

get out of their own problems with the cops. They were just telling them anything she had a bomb, or that she had guns and all these things, and they meet her a lot worse than what she really was.

this wanted bat girl. So she took a day or two for the sacrament of police to get there and take her back, you know, and go through all those things. And when they got to the airport, you know, after two months of you know, batgirl hysteria. You know what they saw was this twenty year old girl, had little nose and freckled faith, and you know, she was just

a frightened twenty year old person. She looked more like a college student than I wrote a murdering coke loving weed smoking, I could drink and and iterate good time girl. And she tried to explain what happened, but she had not had any kind of education at all since maybe she was twelve or thirteen years old. Her brain in all the drugs that she thuck just stunted her emotional and psychological growth. She was basically like a thirteen year

old as far as a reasoning ghost. And you know, at her trial, they brought up her two ex husbands, and you know, when they searched her apartment, they found she was doing these love letters to airmen and failures and stuff, making them think that she was in love with them, and made Sunder money and gifts and things like that. She ended up doing a plea bargain for

his murder. And yeah, you know, he was the one person that the press made to look out like she was this you know, vampire girl, and she was really just this innocent person really had no chance in life. Even when they contacted her parents, they were just like, I don't know, I haven't seen her in years.

Doctor's Wife Part one, two and three. So before I let you go, tell us a little bit about some of the stories that you that you have in this book before I let you go, some of the ones that people can look forward to reading and finding out about this book Deadly at Women.

seems to be something that happens quite often. One of my favorites was the first one that happened in nineteen forty five in San Francisco and she killed her her husband's girlfriend, and then when her husband found out, he went and committed suicide. But at the trial she had been in small plays or local San Francisco productions, and the prosecutor said, she's an actress. Everything she says is live,

and this is Irene Mansfelt. Her attorney went up there and brought in all these people that she worked with, all these actors and directors, and they all said to a tea that she was a horrible actress, which is something that really backfired on the prosecution. There's another one case like that too, where the prosecutors just put in too much into one thing and they ended up getting a really small sentence for what happened. That woman only

got twenty five months in prison. But one of my favorite ones is it Smelled one too, and it's this couple that were a little down of their luck. They were seasonal workers up in vacation land up in the Sierras, and they had saved the nest egg of five thousand dollars. They were going to open a bar. They're going to buy a bar in Alaska. But the husband ended up spending all the money gambling while they were waiting out the winter up in Sonora, and his wife killed him.

They were living in a little cabin. She killed him, chopped him up, and buried him alongside the cabin in two graves only in six inches deep. And then she told the people that I got this job. I'll be going on moving on down the road. Hobby he went fire how to get things done. So later, like three four months later, in the summertime, some people were renting out that cabin and they just smelled it just smelled funny. They started poking around and they found the two graves.

One had his body a torso and the other one had like his arms and legs in it. And they ended up finding her fairly easy. And she had a really rough life too. It's the thing, you know, in these stories, either the person had a really horrible upbringing or they were brought up you know, with all the lecturies you could ever dream of. There's really no rhyme or reason for any of us.

murders do happen there too. Also a couple of mothers that killed or were trying to kill their daughters, or did kill their families. I got a couple of them

like that. Of course, I had about Phil Hartman, the great comedian whose wife yeah murdered, And I also have about this happened a few years ago when I first moved here in two thousand and one, and that was Elsa mcnabby, who was a lifelong gricter and she finally married a rich attorney and spent all his money and then ended up killing him and burying him in a greape field a vineyard, along with this young woman who just didn't know anything. She was just probably the most

native person in the world. And her husband, after he was dead and all, he never did know his wife's real name because she had used so many fake names in her life. He really had no idea that who he was married to didn't matter because he was dead. But she ended up committing suicide in prison, and then tried to pitch the whole thing on her accomplice, who was just her office. Basically, she was mostly the upper love and greed, love and money and things.