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Are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking killers in true crime history and the authors that have written about them. Gasey Bundy, Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host, journalist and author Dan Zufanski.
Good evening. What is the Price of Passion? What is the power of love? Meet Martha Beck, a young nurse dedicated to healing others until their own hurting heart lured her down a darker path. Loneliness led her to Raymond Fernandez, but love led her all the way to the electric chair. This is the tragic story of the Lonely Hearts Killers. The book that we're featuring this evening is Tortured with Love, the true crime romance of the Lonely Hearts Killers, with
my special guest, journalist and author JT. Hunter. Welcome back to the program and thank you very much for this interview. JT. Hunter.
Thanks glad to be back on here with you Aren't True Murder.
Thank you very much, nice to have you back. Incredible story you've brought to us once again, Tortured with love. As you write in the book, in the mid forties in America, as a product of the byproduct of World War Two, many lonely women there will, in fact one more one million more women than men in America at that time. And you take us right away to a woman named Martha Beck who's twenty seven years old in nineteen forty seven, her friend Elizabeth Swanson, fellow nurses at
the Crippled Children's Home. They are having a little visit and Martha's looking through her mail and they're having a conversation. Take us to this incredible scene where she first meets mister Fernandez.
Martha Beck, as you said, her friend had signed her up for what was called the Lonely Hearts Club. And just by way of a little background on that, what these Lonely heartsblubs were is they were the equivalent of maybe online dating service today that we have, where you know, people could meet other people across the country. And the way this worked back at the time this happened. Of course, this is before internet and computers and all that stuff.
At the time. Back then, they had these clubs throughout the country, and the way it worked is the people would join the club, and when you join the club, after you paid your fee, you got a listing of other club members around the country, names and contact information.
And then what would happen is that people would write the people they were interested in trying to make a connection to, and you know, many often times they would end up exchanging correspondence over an extended period of time, you know, in the hopes of some sort of romantic relationship developing. So that's kind of the backdrop to what happened with Martha Beck. Her good friend had signed her up for one of these lonely Hearts clubs without her
knowing it. And so one day they were together at work, as you said, at the hospital of the place they worked there, the medical facility, and Martha got a letter that she didn't recognize and it turns out it's from one of these Lonely Hearts clubs, and you know, she was pretty surprised at for and when she found out her friend signed it up for her, she was kind of irritated, but also intrigued, and she eventually signed up for it to get more information, and she was ultimately
contacted by by someone through the club, this Raymond Fernandez, and they didn't end up meeting after exchanging letters over you know, several months time period.
What kind of information were the women and the men, but especially in the case of Raymond Fernandez's case, what kind of information personal and otherwise was included in that posting.
The listings would typically include the name obviously in the address or location of the person, but it would also include personal information such is, you know, their hobbies, their interests, and also you know, financial information in many, many of
the circumstances. And that's how Raymond Fernandez really started using these as he you know, he would target women who divulged financial information on their club information sheets that seemed like they would be a promising target in order to try to you know, get their get their money out of them. So oftentimes you would have you know, their their net worth or the home they owned or the
value of it and that sort of thing. So there was a there was a lot of personal information oftentimes on these listings.
Now you take us to Raymond Martinez Fernandez born in nineteen fourteen in Hanolu, Hawaii. His father emigrated from Spain, but they had he had moved the family to Bridgeport, Connecticut for work. He was a harsh disciplinarian. But tell us a little bit about his life and his relationship with his father and before we talk about what he did at seventeen and his move with his mother.
Well, as you said, his father was pretty strict, pretty harsh, pretty hard on him growing up. After they moved over to Connecticut, Raymond spent most of his childhood there, growing up and going to school. When he graduated from grammar school, instead of moving on to high school with all his friends, his father forced him to get out of school and help work on the family farm, and was very strict with them in other ways as well, and seemed disappointed
in Raymond's physical stature. He wasn't a real big guy, and his father didn't look too kindly on that. So it kind of gave him a hard time in general.
And he was just a harsh disciplinarian in general. And you know, there's there's one little story that was related about when ray Raymond was about, oh, I don't know, maybe thirteen or so, he had come to his father and asked if they could have a traditional Thanksgiving, you know, like a kind of like a normal American family would do, and his father refused, I'm outright, He told him, you know, if you want to do something like that, then you need you need to take care of it. You need
to handle it, you know. A day or so after that, Ray got with a couple of his friends and they went and stole some chickens from a nearby chicken farm, and they got caught. And instead of his father coming and helping him bail him out and bringing them home like like the two friends, both their both their parents came and got him. Ray's father, you know, refused to take custody of him, and instead he forced him to go face the criminal justice system, and so he was.
He was found guilty to trial, found guilty at a juvenile facility there, and ended up spending sixty days in Tony jail. There. Kind of an example of you know, how harsh his father worked on him.
Now, his mother, he must have had a different relationship with her. He believed he would have a different life in Spain. So at seventeen, he moved to Spain with his mother, Francis Morales, and his father stayed behind, and there he met a beauty at twenty years old in Carcinatio probably mispronounced that. Robels tell us about this marriage and what happened in terms of his luck and turning around again for the worse with the Spanish Civil War.
Shortly after he was married. I guess this is about a you know, less than a year later he and his new wife they had their first child. They had a son was born, and a few months after that, Ray was heading back to the US for work. Got a job in New York working as a landscaper, but he received notification from his wife that his son was real sick, so he kind of dropped everything and rushed back to Spain because it looked like his son might die.
He got back to Spain and fortunately his son recovered. But while he was back over there, as you as you mentioned in the Spanish Civil War broke out. So that was in nineteen thirty six, and because of that, there were no ships allowed to go out of Spain back to the US. So he was basically trapped over his family in Spain, and he ended up waiting for one of the sides in the Spanish Civil War for Franco's forces. He was forced to serve the front lines there.
He did that for eight months and encountered a lot of you know, really horrific conditions as you know, as you might imagine in war times, saw a lot of bad things, saw a lot of death and destruction, including including the deaths and of you know, his friends and other people he knew. And he described that later on about what the conditions were like, and you know, the rioting corpses on the battlefields and these sorts of things.
So it was certainly something that would have left it lasting impression on him.
You talk about he was assigned to be a guard in an infamous prison where they executed Republican loyalist prisoners by firing squad and you talked about the ditches that they were, these bodies were thrown in, and he assisted with all of this gory work. And like you say, it was not unusual for Ray to send people he knew to their deaths, even friends and neighbors. One time, he wasn't able to maintain his composure, you right, though, and a commanding officer at an execution noticed him crying.
Of all things. He was so disgusted he ordered Ray be tied up with the other prisoners and taken to the remote field for execution, tell us what happens at the last minute, and surely must have had a hand in shaping some of his character.
So he was he was taken with the other prisoners that were slated to be executed. He was taken to this remote location, you know, and there was this huge you know, ditch for lack of a better term there that they're all forced to stand in and then they would be shot while they're standing down on the ditch
and then buried there. And so he was forced with the other prisoners there to stand down on that ditch, and the firing squad, the execution squad, and if you want to call it, came and got in position, and you know, it was the ready aim and right before the fire command was given, the officer stopped the execution and pulled Ray back out, and then he was forced to stand there and watch as the execution continued. So the people that he had just been standing next to
you were all shot and field in front of him. So, yeah, as you as you alluded to, there again another another certainly traumatic episode during the war that would that would seem to have some sort of impact on him.
Now, eventually that that was the end of the war, and he worked at these dockyards run by the British government, but didn't last long. So September of nineteen thirty nine, Germany's invasion of poll In marked the beginning of World War two, and Ray contacted British officials to offer his services. So tell us a little bit about his service and the kinds of things he did do and experience.
So he when World War two broke out, he did. He volunteered for this to work with the British there in Gibraltar, And basically what he did he served as a as a spy, carrying documents back and forth, confidential documents back and forth for the sides, and by all accounts, he served very very bravely and took on a lot of dangerous missions during the time.
In nineteen forty five, after being in two wars in less than a decade, he secured passage on an oil tanker which he thought was heading ultimately to New York. He planned to carry a plan to earn money and send for his wife and daughter. There was a storm at sea. What happened at sea? What happened to Ray?
This is I think a really important part of his background you know, we talked about the war and the experiences in those two wars certainly affecting him, but the this circumstance on the on the ship, this oil tanker, is something that I think really had a huge impact on him. And there was a storm and see a really bad storm and sea and the ship started taking on water because of the you know, the waves that were breaking over the deck and things, and the water
pumps failed sure enough on the ship. So everyone's running around trying to get the thing under control. So Ray, you know, he's he's trying to help out as well. So he goes down into the pump room to help out, and he's standing down there in the corridor basically, and a big wave slams into the side of the ship and knocks this this huge heavy door, this heavy metal door off of its hinges, so it falls down down
this corridor onto Ray, who's standing numb below it. So it's this it's a six foot high door about a half inch thick field door falls down on him, hits him in the head with such force that that quarterly left this like indentation in his skull on his forehead and left him with a you know, really nasty scar over three inches long afterwards as well, and you know, sent him to the hospital. He was hospitalized for weeks and weeks and weeks recovering from that injury.
When you say it was. When he was well enough, he took a job as a utility guy and another oil tanker bound for Liverpool. Before going to Mobile, Alabama, he was caught stealing some sheets and towels and arrested. He had gotten some advice. What was the advice and what happened as a result of stealing supplies worth about fifty three dollars.
Yeah, So after he was he spent about four weeks in the hospital. After he got released from the hospital, he took a job on another ship, another oil tanker. When it arrived in the US in Alabama, he decided to stay on board to earn some extra pay. So he decided to stay on board for a couple of weeks to help, you know, get everything taken care of.
After they had arrived there, when he was getting ready to head out, he was packing up, he noticed some of the other guys that had stayed on were taking different things like towels and bed sheets and whatever else, and you know, sticking them in with their stuff and taking them. So he saw that and he figured, well they're doing it, I may as well do it as well.
So he took some things, and sure enough he got caught when he was trying to go through customs with these, you know, these government owned supplies, and he was arrested.
He was given this advice to plead guilty to it to get a lesser sentence, So he decided to do that, thinking, you know, he would get some kind of minimal sentence, But he entered the guilty flee and ended up getting a year sentence, actually a year in the day imprisonment, and he was sent to a federal prison in the Panhandle for the Panhandle in Tallahassee.
Now at this, in his mind, this is a fourtuitous event in that he develops a friendship with a cellmate, a Haitian man who practiced voodoo, and there Ray got a copy of a book that was a big influence on him, The Magic Island by William C. Brook, a classic account of voodoo and Haiti tell us more about his fascination and what this this cellmate had told him about voodoo and what he started practicing. Even while he was in prison, he became.
Friends with this cellmate who heavily involved in practicing voodoo and introduced him to it, and yeah, Ray, he developed
this fascination with it. You know, really read that book The Magic Island very closely, and you know, started getting all the information he could from his friend about voodoo and what was involved with it, and he really started to believe in these sorts of powers that you could get from you know, hypnotism and these other sort of black magic powers and influence that you have on people. He really came to believe that he had developed these
sort of abilities. And he one thing that really cemented this belief in his mind is he wrote to the judge who had sentenced him, requesting a reduced sentence, and sure enough, his sentence was reduced. This request was granted.
He was reduced to six months, and he also got a reduction for good behavior apparently, and so he was released early from the Federal prisionent And so in his mind, in this really confirmed that his voodoo powers were the ones that had caused the judge to reduce his sentence.
Right now, he gets a job, and one evening after work, he sees a copy of Women's Home Housekeeper and he was flipping through and he found an ad. What was the ad that he found and what was the information that intrigued him.
He was an ad from one of these lonely Hearts clubs that we mentioned earlier, and it was called Old Chelsea Station was the name of the club. There were, you know, there were there were many of these across the country, but this was this particular club he had it. He saw an ad, you know, it said something like contact Friends lonely Hearts, you know, promising the ability to
connect with you know, various people. He he went ahead and wrote in, requested an application and mailed it back in with the you know, the fee that was involved with it. And as a result of that, he started, you know, he got the list of the other members and started looking at over for the different women, female members, and started writing to them, picked them out and started
writing to them. So he started exchanging letters with different women different locations in the country that that he had met through this club. And he went on and joined you know, a few other similar lonely Hearts clubs as well and did the same thing. And supposedly he ended up getting a list of you know, hundreds, a couple of hundred women through these different clubs that he was potentially targeting.
Now you talked at the letter writing skills that he had developed somehow bore fruit, and so he had letters written back to him from three separate clubs as you write, but he had women write in droves. Some of these women that he contacted. What was the first first person that he we talk about correspondence with Jane William Wilson Thompson tell us about that correspondence.
So he met Jane early on. This is one of the first women he seriously started corresponding with. He was about a month or so after he started joining the club when he started corresponding with her, and he ended
up meeting her in person. She was a forty year old woman living in New York, so you know, close by, and he ended up meeting her and they hit it off pretty well and actually made plans to go back to Spain, the two of them, and purportedly on the on the voyage back to Spain, they were kind of holding themselves out as as husband and wife, and Jane was apparently paying for everything as well on the trip too.
So they headed over to Spain and got back in Granada, and Ray's wife was there still, you know, still living there with with their with his children, had four children in total now by this time, with his wife, so she was still living there with the children. And they actually Ray and and Jane actually ended up meeting her
while they were there. And what ended up happening is one night shortly thereafter, Ray was seen leaving the hotel that he was staying with Jane, leaving the hotel there, and when he returned the next morning, we discovered Jane dead in the room. Was his story anyway, and it turned out authorities looking into it a little bit more later on, it turned out that it appeared that Ray had poisoned Jane, given her an overdose of some medication she was taking, and by that time he was long gone.
He had left and was headed back to the US. So, but this is the first indication of something not right with the women he was meeting through these lonely hearts clubs.
There was I don't know on this. You say, Spanish authority is issued a warrant for Ray's arrest after this, but you say he was long gone. November twenty ninth, Ray sailed for New York. Arrived December eighth, and then he had to break the news of Jane's death to her mother Pearl. What did he say and what did he what did he say as an explanation, and what did he produce? Supposedly from Pearl's daughter.
He told Pearl that Jane had died of I believe it was some sort of heart condition. While she was over there, he produced this will. This document was what he said, was a will that Jane had prepared, you know, conveniently enough before her death. And in the will, she had given her apartment that her mother, Pearl was living in. She had given that to Ray, and so Ray now had control of the the apartment and all the furnishings in the apartment.
Now on this list of priorities, he wants to get back to correspondence and meeting Martha Beck. They have corresponded, so now it's one of the top on the list women to meet. And there a few days before Christmas he telegrammed Martha proclaiming that he just couldn't bear waiting any longer to see her. So you describe their meeting. Ray five foot eight, one hundred and sixty pounds and a movie called The Gaslight with Charles Boyer. So for Martha, you have this scene where Ray gets off the at
the train station and she meets him. Tell us about that.
So, as you said, this is a few days before Christmas nineteen forty seven, Martha went to the Pinnacle train station to meet Ray for the first Simon person. And she yeah, she was a big fan of Charles boy She had seen a lot of his films, including Gaslight, and she was really attracted to him. And so Ray, by all accounts, had had a really strong resemblance to
this famous actor. His his faith looked very similar. He had the same sort of deep set eye, the same sort of complexion, the same sort of hair, and also the same sort of physical stature, and even the way he kind of walked and moved around as very similar as well. So when he got off the train, it
really struck Martha. You know, she was she was pretty much loved Drack as soon as when he as soon as she saw him when he stepped off the train, you know, to her it was like this famous actor that she loved so much had had literally just stepped off the train into her life.
She had two children. What was his attitude towards the children.
She was really happy to see that that Ray really seemed to enjoy the children and like the children. You know, he stayed with her there in Pensacola for a few days, and while he was there, you know, he spent time with the kids and was you know, seemed to show an active interest in them and seemed to really have a genuine affection for them. So that that really helped in her mind firm up that that, you know, he was the he was the right guy for her.
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What kind of talk ensued quickly as a result of a couple of days of being together.
This is the first time, of course, that Ray had seen Martha in person, And just to kind of step back a little bit, Martha was a larger woman. She was pretty big. She certainly not like some petitue, little little la you know, that he might have in mind. So when he saw her in person, he was, no doubt a little bit of a surprise to him. So he, you know, he decided that he didn't want to have
too much to do with her. So after a few days he told her he made up a story essentially that he needed to be back in New York to take care of some kind of business matter and he had to he had to leave right away, so he, you know, he did that, and it was very upsetting for Martha. You know, she she really wanted to be with him longer, and she didn't react too well to
it when he left. But but he did end up didn't pack up to New York, and you know, it turned out she ended up following him up there, not not much longer after that. She showed up in New York, so surprising him, and he wasn't too keen wrapped up well.
She had brought her two children as well, so he really wasn't too happy with that. What did he what did he say to her? And this is right around Christmas?
He told her that he eventually decided, you know, she could stay with him, but the children wouldn't be able to stay. And she thought about it and weighed in her mind, and she decided the future that she thought she might be able to have with Ray, she decided
was worth more than her two children. So she ended up taking her two kids to a Salvation Army location there and pretending like they were going to be spending the night there, and then she know, she waited until her son fell asleep, and then she told her daughter she was stepping out to get something for them and said she would be back, and she walked out and never came back and abandoned her kids for ray.
You talk about the next few weeks, it's a she is deliriously happy, going to movies, dancing, dinner, sight thing, and he waits on her hand and foot, and she'd never had any kind of treatment like this before. He's very lovable, always caressing her. So what happens with this confidence in this relationship. He decides to do what and tell her what.
So eventually he decides to confide in her about what he's doing with these lonely hearts clubs. You know, he lets her in on the secret that he's targeting women purposely in order to to you know, scam them out of their money, you know, to fleece them out of whatever they have. So he lets her know that he must have sensed how how devoted Martha already was to him, you know, in this short time period for him to
for him to divulge that. So we told her that, and you know, he didn't really seem to phase her too much. You know, she didn't go running off and say I don't want to have anything to do with you. The quite the opposite. You know, she stayed with him, and she ended up helping him out with these these scams and started posing as his sister when he would meet these other women.
It's a little more complicated than that, because she says, listen, I love you no matter what. I don't know if you can love another woman, but I'm going to be with you no matter what. I don't care about these other fake romances. This m this love is so genuine, I don't care. And then he gives her ultimatums and he says, this, listen, but the thing is, you can't interfere. I'm going to do whatever I want to do. I'm
going to do whatever I want to do. And of course she agrees with that, doesn't she.
Exactly he does. He does give this ultimatum that she's he's going to allow her to stay with him, but yeah, this condition that she can't interfere with with what he wants to do. So and she she's she's so taken with him that she she agrees to it. She's she's fine with that condition.
Now, on February thirteenth, Ray sets his plans into motion. He needs to go to Reading, Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania to meet Esther hen or Hennay. And she was instantly attracted by his genteel manner and bad boy attitude. What were they talking about after a couple of days being together.
Well after he met Eser, you know, not long after that, the idea of marriage, you know, this is this is kind of raised. He would he would start bridging the idea of getting married, you know, in order to lead the woman on and let her think that he was really serious about this relationship, you know, in order to get her to get to get her put her guard down and you know, trust in him and all these
sorts of things. So it wasn't the way he operated these scams, as he would do this and so yeah, so with Esther, he brought up the idea of marriage, and so there were plans made for them to to be married, and sure enough they drove to a courthouse and had a marriage there on it.
Now this is their first endeavor together. So right away Esther realizes that Martha had taken some of her jewelry, and then she finds a money belt with five hundred dollars missing. Tell us a little bit about this. Despite his charm and his explanations, this woman is seeing some things that concern her.
So this, this money belt goes missing with five hundred bucks in it, which you know, back in forty eight five hundred dollars was I mean, it's a lot today, but he was really odd back then. So this this goes missing, and Esther started getting a little suspicious about things that were going on. She started having some second thoughts, and she kind of gave Martha the slip when they were supposed to be going to the bank and went back to the apartment, popped in your car, and drove
back home to Pennsylvania. So she, you know, she was. It turned out she was pretty fortunate to have these suspicions come up and be able to get away like that, because she she'd hung around, she might have suffered the fate that some of these other women.
Now. Ray is spooked by Esther's getaway and so he sold the Jane Thompson apartment that he had chiseled out of her through the will, and he had pocketed fifteen hundred dollars from that sale. Now you say, he's empowered by this cash, and so he goes on a trip, takes Martha on a trip, and then they decide to relocate to Chicago. He gets a job as a mechanic and she gets a job as a nurse. Now, what happens when almost all that money is gone from that
apartment sale? What does Ray do? As you say, who does he meet through the Lonely Hearts Club this time?
So he goes back to the Lonely Hearts Club and picks out another woman there that he's been corresponding with. Their name is Myrtle Young. She's a forty year old woman from Arkansas, and he ends up pursuing her through the Lonely Hearts Club, and of course they end up meeting. She takes a bus to Chicago's to meet him, and Ray introduces Martha again as his sister. Sure enough, not long after that, a few days later, Ray is marrying
Myrtle Young. So they get married there in Chicago. And threw that Ray ends up getting more money, gets money from Myrtle, gets her to wire money from her bank in Arkansas to the bank there in Chicago, and withdraw, withdraw the money and buys in your car for Ray and all sorts of all sorts of good things for him.
Now. Myrtle, though, is not liking the situation with his sister around all the time, so she tries or is planning, to get rid of Martha. Ray and Martha have a conversation, and so what is planned and what does Martha do?
So they decide that they need to get rid of Myrtle. So Martha gives her an overdose of barbituates and Myrtle loses consciousness. And what they do is they end up sticking her on a bus bound back for Arkansas. You know, they keep the car that she had purchased for Ray, they keep the falcon as a dollar she'd withdrawn from
her bank, and send her off on the bus. And she's found on the bus a day or two later, you know, days barely coherence, has to be carried off the bus and ends up dying not long after that in a hospital there in Arkansas, without ever really giving a real coherent account of what had happened to her son, another victim of Ray's The only hearts love scandals here.
You say. All the while too, he has sending. He has been sending money to his family in Spain, his wife and is now his four children, and they have a comfortable life.
He's been sending money back to Spain to help support the family, you know, using part of the the money's he's getting from these victims that he's fargeting through these only Hearts clubs to support his wife's and kids back there in Spain. You know, it's a repeating pattern. So after they get rid of Myrtle, then he goes back and finds another one. This one this time they find he finds a woman in Vermont that he takes a liking to, Irene de la Points. So once again he
goes and meets her again. Martha's posing as his sister and they go to Devant to meet her, and he uses the same name he's been using. He goes by Charles Martin instead of using his real name when he's worn and again the subject of marriage comes up when he meets her. They even even get blood tests they're in Vermont, but uh, you know, something happens this time before they can get married. Martha finds out that they're making his wedding plans again and throughout her time with
him when he's meeting these women. Martha has been battling to keep her jealousy in check, right she you know, she has to stand by and watch him marrying these women, you know, oftentimes serving as the you know, an official witness for it. And and it's she's been having a problem with it, and it's been boiling and boiling up and boiling up, and by this time she it kind
of boils over. And what she does is she ends up writing a letter to this latest woman, Irene, and tells her point blank what Ray's been doing, you know, leaving out the fact that he's killing other women, but you know, letting her know that bad things that happened to these other women he's met through the villain Hearts clubs. And so, of course Irene reads the letter and calls off the relationship with the Ray, and when he finds out why she did so, you know, he's furious with Martha,
and so he sends her away. But of course they get back together. You know, Martha can't better be away from him, and and to his surprise, I think Ray discovers that he is actually missing Martha too, so he lets her come on back and they start back up again.
What does she tell him regarding her health and what does he recommend for her to do? And what does she do?
So she lets him know that she's pregnant, and he tells her that, you know, basically just tells her that she needs to get an abortion. He doesn't want to have the child. So she ends up doing the procedure herself. She takes a needle, a largely crochey needle, and performs this procedure on herself by inserting that up into her vagina in order to puncture the the sack of the nervan gna in her uterus. And she does this and
she ends up giving birth to the baby. I think it was a few days later when when actually the the Misterriae happens. She does that at a house she's working at, is kind of a caretaker for the kids that live there. She ends up giving birth when no one's at the house, she's alone, and gets rid of the gets rid of the you know, the baby that's born, and and so that takes care of the the abortion that Ray wanted.
So they're back together, and Ray is employing his voodoo powers of deviation and divination and he finds a person named Janet Fay five foot four, one hundred and thirty five pounds with what's most important to him when he looks at the women that he picks out that she has seven thousand dollars in savings. So what happens with Janet Faye? And he as Charles Martin.
So this is by now, this is about a year after Ray and Martha had met. This is December forty eight, nineteen forty eight, and he targets Janet Faye. She was a widow, her husband had died a year or two earlier, and she was a really very very religious woman. She was a Catholic, and so he kind of played up on his Catholic background and made it, you know, seem like that he was very active in the church, and she really liked that. So he ended up driving over
to meet her, to meet Janet. She was from already New York. And again the same sort of thing, Martha is my sister, I'm I'm I'm Charles, you know, and all this sort of thing, the same sort of scam they use to get in with Janet. And of course, again marriage is brought up and Janet's is certainly game for that. She's very attracted to to Ray and they continue down this path. And as you said, she had quite a bit of money saved up, so that really attracted him to her as well, and he ended up
getting a lot of that money. He ended up getting her to go to these various banks where she maintained her accounts and withdrawing the funds and either in cash or in cashier checks, and she ended up handing that over to him to keep for safe keeping. Basically, step into.
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Now, the thing is she had put on her profile that she was forty four, but in actuality she was like sixty six, So again he had to make a little bit of an adjustment. I would think, what does she notice about the relationship between Martha and Ray.
Yeah, it picks up that it seems like that there's a little bit more than a normal brother sister kind of relationship going on there. I don't know if you ever, you know, put two and two together completely, but something didn't seem quite right to her mind.
And one night, because they sleep together to Martha and her her and Ray sleeps in a in another room. During this time that they spend together, the three of them, they have these late night trysts where they do everything but have sexual relations. Again, unbeknownst to her that Martha is a seething jealous wife. So tell us what happens one night when they're sleeping and she's a little bit restless what kind of conversation she has with Martha.
So Janna, one night when they're sleeping there, she she really starts to get concerned about the money that she's taken out of all her bank accounts and that Ray has, and you know, starts peppering Martha with questions about it and ends up getting up and leaving the bedroom and going out into the living room where we're Ray's sleeping on the on the pullout couch there, and there ends
up being a confrontation. And this is really where the story kind of takes different turns, because there ends up being I think I ended up counting there's four different versions of what happens next, depending on telling it and depending on when they're telling it, because the story kind of changes at different points. But but the you know, the end result of it is Janet Fay is murdered in the apartment by being struck in the head with
a hammer twice and also by being strangled. So you know who did it and what exactly the circumstances were how it occurred. You can't say with one hundred percent certainty. The only thing you can say for sure is that Ray and Martha were both there and Janet was murdered.
And the kind of the first one of the first accounts of it is that they, you know, upon hearing Janet, you know, going on on about the her worries about the money and these sorts of things, that he kind of motions to Martha to a hammer that he had got out earlier that night, indicating to her that you know, she needs to to get rid of of Janet, and you know, tells her, you know, if you love me,
you'll do it. And so Martha takes the hammer and you know, wax Janet across the head and then they end up you know, making sure she's she's dead for sure. And then there's a period of time afterwards where they're trying to cover up the crime. This is all covered in a book where they're trying to figure out how
they're gonna get rid of the body. They're going to different banks trying to collect these cats on these cashier checks to get all of the cash that Janet had, and eventually do ended up getting rid of the body. They find a house, a rental house that has a basement that that's you know, kind of allows them access
to the open ground in the basement. So they dig a hole in the basement that a grave in the basement for Janet and throw in the hole, you know, fill it back up with a dirt and then they ray covers it over with cement and allows the cement to harden there in the house. So that's how they get rid of Janet after they kill her, and then
it's right back to what they were doing before. They go back to the lists, the only Hearts lists, and they find somebody else, so this time a woman named Delphine Downing, who's another widow from Michigan.
Yes, and she has a two year old as well, and raised letters are very very effective again doing things very very quickly, so that now he only has to send a few letters. And these people are overcome and want to meet him. They the three of them get together in February and have a couple of weeks of sexual relations. When she doesn't when she misses her normal menstrual cycle, who does she come and and who does she ask for advice? And what is that advice?
So Delphine, she's concerned that she might be pregnant, so she to Martha and confides in her, you know, asks for help and and Martha assures her, oh, I know exactly what to do. I know how to take care of it. So Martha gives her a bunch of sleeping pills and tells her to take him because it'll abort the pregnancy. So Delphine does what she's what suggested. She
takes the pills, becomes you know, very very drowsy. Obviously, because of that, and the child, Renelle, a two year old uh sees sees her mom acting really weird and so starts crying and all these sorts of things. And as a result of that, Ray ends up going into the next room and getting a getting a gun that belonged to the Delphine's, you know, Desi's husband, and comes back into the room and shoots Delphine in the head
with it kills her. Now they have another body to get rid of, and now of course they have the two year old daughter as well to deal with.
Now they try to do some things like buy her a puppy and try to relate to her and try to get to win her over. Daughter has some problems. So eventually what do they decide to do with the daughter? And you describe this incredible scene where Ray asks a huge favor of Martha.
At first they think maybe they can, you know, keep the girl, but they ultimately decide there's really no way that that's feasible that it would be. It would just be too difficult trying to explain, you know, why she was with them and in these sorts of things. So Ray decides they have to get rid of her, and he tells Martha, you know again kind of point blank that that you need to do it, you need to get rid of her. So Martha, you know what Ray wants,
he gets when it comes to Martha. So Martha takes the little girl and takes her downstairs. And you know, when they when they dug the hole, the very bury the mother Delphine. As they were digging the hole, the groundwater started filling in the hole, and so they had to take a bucket and bale the water out of the hole as they did that, and so the water had been put in, you know, like a washtub there in the in the in the basement, in the cellar,
and the water is still there. So she went downstairs with the little girl and grabbed her by the feet and turned her upside down and dunked her in the water and drowned.
Her and buried her beside her mother and cemented it over.
Yep, yeah, go ahead.
They went to see the move a movie afterwards, but when they returned they were met at the door by who.
So this is kind of another kooky sort of thing. I mean, they just had just recently buried the mother, and they just killed this two year old girl and buried her beside her mother. And what do they do. They decide they're going to go into town and go to the movies. So they go to the movie, they come back, as you said, and you know, not more than a minute or so after they walk in the door, there's a knock at the door and it's the police.
So the neighbors had become suspicious about Ray and Martha being there and why Delphine had kind of disappeared without her telling anybody about that, and they didn't believe the stories that Ray and Martha were telling that Delphine kind of had a family emergency she had to go to and and this sort of thing. So they had called up the police and asked, essentially they conduct a welfare check.
And so the police showed up at the house there, knocked on the door and kind of asked Ray, you know, where Delphine was, and you know, he said the same sort of thing, that she had had to leave her family emergency and that she took her daughter with her and that he and Martha were just their kind of house sitting. So the police asked if they could come inside, and he let him in, and you know, obviously feeling confident that they had done a good job disposing of
the bodies. But the police and did it up in the basement eventually, and they found the bodies and you know, it was it was said that Renel's body was the little girl's body was still warm when they dug her up because it had been so recently. Of course, Ray and Martha are arrested as soon as they as soon as they discover this.
Ray has four thousand dollars in cash on them, and they found the list of over one hundred women's names from twelve states on the Lonely Hearts Circular at seventeen with check marks. You say, likely prospects. Now, Also, they found a twenty two caliber and they found in a trunk a bloodied balpeen hammer. So obviously they have these arrests, and there's a da Roger McMahon arrives and what happens at questioning from both of these people.
So yeah, he questions. He separates three and Martha and starts questioning them, and they start, you know, you know, you guys got me dead to rights. He decides he's just gonna he's just gonna open up and tell him. He says, he says, I'm no average killer, I may as well come clean and tell everything. Almost like he's, you know, in a way, maybe sort of proud of what he's done. But he he does. He goes on and tells him what happens. Martha does the same thing.
And this is what I kind of talked about earlier about how there's these different versions of events come out. So we get a version of the story from Martha where where Martha has this confrontation with Janet and next thing she knows, she she has the hammer in her hand and hits her. And then we have a version of the story later on while they're in custody, kind of a supplemental statement that that that changes where it goes back more to Ray like directing her to commit
this murder, ordering her to commit this murder. Uh, And then we get another version of it at trial the story changes from both of them, and then even later on after they've been convicted at trial, the story changes ultimately Martha, Martha leaves behind kind of a final confession, just has a different version of the story as well.
So so while they're in custody though, they give these these different confessions, and meanwhile the State of New York and the state of Illinois are going back and forth on you know, who's gonna who's gonna send them a trial because they Ray confesses to the Janet f a murder and tells them where to find the body and everything. So so New York really wants to put them on trial for murder, and ultimately that's what ends up happening.
They end up getting extra guided to New York to face trial, and so that's where their their trials held.
What the public loves most and today and then at the same time is true there was details of as part of the defense that this was abnormal sex between them and given the time, they talked about oral sex from both partners and those kinds of details. What you describe in the book how sensational and how big this trial was and how the crowds have to be controlled. Tell us more about how big a case this was and why, I mean.
The trial had had national coverage and it was it was really i mean, for the time especially, it was really scandalous kind of material when they're going into real details about their sexual lives and their sexual practices, and as you said, they're talking about you know, the the the the oral sex practices that they're engaging in and things like that. I mean, at the time, that was that wasn't really something that people talked about for sure publicly,
you know. I mean even now, people don't go around talking about it public So for them to be, you know, testifying about these things and trial, it was it was very very attractive as far as people wanting to hear this sort of thing and kind of being fascinated by it. And so the courtroom was packed for the testimony, both when Ray was testifying about it and also when Martha
was testifying about it. I mean, they had accounts of people, you know, the crowds spilling over from the courtroom out into the halls and having to be cleared away, and police having to be called from a nearby police branch in order to help get the crowds away. So it was it was a very very popular trial, very scandalous kind of subject matter going.
On, and especially fascinating and interesting to women, wasn't it.
Yeah, A lot of the ones that were really trying to get in there apparently was women who were really interested in this. I mean, it was you know, as you can imagine the victims were of course women in you know, maybe these a lot of these women that were wanting to be there to hear about this firsthand and to see these people that had done these things. You know, they probably imagine themselves being victims. Perhaps, so there were a lot of the spectators in the courtroom were female with women.
Now they had they got themselves lawyers and vigorous defense attitude towards their attorneys. But there was the issue of Michigan having the death penalty and New York not having it, definitely or vice versa. Pardon me, but so there was one some boneus contention at the trial that and it was part of the appeal. Of course, was denied. But the idea that they had there was a deal offered by the DA in terms of extradition to New York
from Michigan. Just tell us about that, because it did have some bearing in these proceedings.
Pray and Martha both insisted that part of the reason why they confessed to the crimes is because they were promised by the prosecutor, by the DA there in Chicago that if they did so, they would be able to stay there in Illinois and have their trial conducted there, as you said, there was no death penalty there and that they would not be extradited to New York where there was the death envie. So they both insisted that that was a key reason why they had confessed.
Now, their behavior at trial unlike i'd say modern day, they were at the same table with the defense attorneys, and so what was their behavior, Like what kinds of things and affection towards each other did they exhibit at this trial.
They exhibited a lot of affection for each other, you know, when they could you know, they obviously exchanged glances and things of it. You know, there's one kind of example would be when Martha was called to testify, on her way to the witness stands, she kind of went out of her way to walk over to Ray and give him a kiss before she went up there to take
the witness stand. So they and there were other business is, you know, out in the hallway at the courthouse and things where they would embrace or kiss and you know, pronounce their love for each other and these sorts of things. So it was certainly something that continued through the trial, and it was something that was played up, you know, the the romance between the two of them. You know that in the name that they got the Lonely Hearts killers.
So if they were dubbed in the media one of one of the one of the names that they used for them. So that was certainly going on. And you know, you mentioned the fact that they were both at the defense table, and one of the really striking things about the trial for me as a as an attorney is that they both had the same council representing them in the trial. Right, So it's it's it's something you would not see today, certainly not today because of the you know,
the conflict of interests that's going on. I mean, they're both on trial of these women, and yet they have the same attorney representing them, and you know, that was something that was brought up during the trial and also on appeal. But strangely enough, this is this is how it went. So they both had the same attorney there during the proceedings.
And they tried in vain to have this defense of this I guess partial amnesia diagnosed with hysteria amnesia type, but it was to no avail with the judge and jury. What happened as a in terms of their conviction and what was their reaction before we talk about post conviction and their relationship in prison.
They raised Martha in particular, you know, tried to assert that she had had an amnesia event at the time of the killing, and so you know, therefore because of that, she didn't have the necessary criminal intent to you know, be convicted of a first degree murder. But that was not accepted by the jury. They rejected that. You know, of course, there was expert testimony on both sides about that, but ultimately they're both convicted for the for them or
first degree murder. Uh, you know, they they didn't have a whole lot of emotion when it was when the verdicts were announced, but they were They were both sentenced to death. They were both sentenced to serve out their time preceding their execution at Sing Sing Prison, the you know, the famous prison there in New York, right, which was another even just another kind of added interesting layer to
the case. I I thought the fact that they're you know, the famous prison institution where where the use of the electric chair really got it starred and was really famous for us.
Right, it was interesting too that to while they were in prison. I just thought it was so strange that, especially given Ray's past, that Ray thought Martha was having an affair with a prison guard and really was very very upset about this, wasn't he.
Yeah, he certainly became. And you know, you can say, well, is this something that he was doing trying to trying to play the system somehow to help with his appeal or something, or was he really under the impression that this was going on. But either way, he asserted that Martha was having an affair with one of the prison guards there and that you know, he was basically driving him crazy. He couldn't take it anymore, and he was waiting to drop his appeal so he could be executed
sooner and all this kind of stuff. So so this, this, this did happen, you know it there may have been suspicions between them. They're spending all these you know, long hours and days and basically isolation there, and so you know, maybe naturally suspicion started rising up in their in their minds there. But yeah, this was kind of an interesting issue that happened while they were in prison, and you know, the details of it are all included there in the book.
But they did eventually kind of reconcile after that, you know, it was all over and done with.
Yeah, it seems incredible that she writes him a letter and and basically says that she he's a double crossing two timings skunk and he and he betrayed himself as a misunderstood boy and in the clutches of a female vampire. So she called herself a gullible fool. And yet their relationship was repaired to this incredible point before their executions. At the same time, what kind of relationship, if any, did he have with arr contact with his wife in Spain.
Well, the whole time he was in thinking, he was sending letters back to his wife in Spain, and they you know, they were changing letters back and forth, very loving letters, both on his part and also on the part of his wife. So so he was he had kept up you know, apparently he had kept up his feelings, his love for his wife throughout the time that he also supposedly had this love for Martha as well. So he was he had basically, you know, two women going
on at the same time there. And uh, and you know, that's really kind of one of the underlying themes I think of the story is you know what what extent there is of true love and what love and make someone do. Especially in the case of Marca, you know, how much was she manipulated by by Ray? You know how much was how much power did he have over her because of the feeling she had for him? And it was brought up in closing argument by their attorney
at the trial. You know, he said that she became so wrapped up in Ray that that she was just like another hands to him that he could use to do, you know, whatever he wanted to do. And he kind of talked about how, you know, how kind of mysterious
love can be. No one can really always explain why somebody falls in love for somebody, and that that this this kind of unexplainable love that that Martha had for for Ray had caused her to do these things, and that it had you know, it had kind of short circuited or overpowered her abilities and to reason, and and you know, think clearly a lease those sorts of things.
And you know that comes up again shortly for their executions there in Sing Sing and the electriature Mars of the is the final statement, a written final statement that's quoted in the book and and you know, she says, my story is a love story. And she says, but only those tortured with love can understand what I need. And of course that's where the title of the book
comes from, tortures as well. And uh, it's really, uh, it really is a great example I think of of this, uh you know, this this power that love can have over people, and you know, it's something that that happens over and over again. So even though this story, you know, took place a long time ago, primarily in the you know, the late forties, early fifties, you know, it's still strongly resonates today because you know, we still you can still see this all the time. You know, people and not
just maybe your everyday life. You probably see maybe with people you know you can't quite understand why somebody's doing something, either with a certain person or not. But you know, you see it throughout history as well. So it's a story that continues all through the ages, that always has been and you know it always will.
Yeah, there's so much that you include about their undying love for each other and passing of the poems, and then her final statement, delivered through her attorney Rosenberg, just that she said that I was I had a great love and I always will have. And they talked about I guess love everlasting in these letters and an incredible
letter writing campaign between them. And she didn't sound like she was naive at all and that you are not intelligent, that she really understood what she had done and what she had she she wrote that sin is great. The sin is great, but so is the penalty. So she realized what was in store for her. And both of them went to their deaths with I guess if anything else, with some dignity in their minds.
Yeah, as you said, they were both they both proclaimed their love for each other to the very end, and you know, they both they both went to their deaths, you know, happy to the extent that they knew that that they had this love for each other and that you know, perhaps it would perhaps it would continue the afterlife. But yeah, they certainly had this. And you know it's interesting that after their executions. Uh, this would have been you know, months after their executions.
Uh.
There was the the chief psychiatrists or for the defense at trial, the guy I mean, Richard Hoffman, all right,
he uh, he came out with a story. He told the story to a true true crime detective magazine, this untold story of Martha, where he said that he had in his time with Martha that she had given him like a final statement or like an official final statement of what happened account of the crime, and in that she basically penned the murder of Janet Faye on Ray and said that she had been out of the room where Ray and Janet were and she heard she heard a cry, you know, yell cry out, and she came
into the room and saw Ray murdering Janet, and she insisted that she had never hit Jannet with the hammer and that it was all Ray. And according to this this doctor often he had taken this account and showed it to Ray, and Ray had confirmed that it was the truth, but he had refused to refuse to, uh, you know, to go on record that it was truth, basically saying that if he was going to go to the share, Martha was going to go as well. So, you know, you know, it's kind of left to us
to say, well, is that true or not? You know, what's the real truth in the story. And you know, you'll never really probably know because the only people that really know what happened, was Ray and Martha and Janet say, And obviously none of them are around him more. And you've got different stories from Ray and Martha all the time about about what happened, So so you know, at the end of the day, what exactly happened was kind of left to the imagination to an extent there.
Her and you know, her involvement in terms of totality is in question, and the same with with with Janet Fay. But I think legally based on accomplice, being an accomplice to other murders and the covering up of murders too would be an accomplished So I think that there may be more to the story, and we'll never know the exact story, but certainly they were, as you write, listed as the number four crime duel in American history, So I think that's it's true.
And just you know, one thing I wanted to point out too is you know, we talked about earlier about this accident that Ray had on on the ship where this door hit him in the head. And you know, nowadays, nowadays we know that that sort of thing, that sort of traumatic injury to the fernal lobe of the brain can drastically change someone's personality and behavior, and reports from Ray's family and people who knew him at the time said that that, Yeah, after this accident happened, he really
changed a lot. His behavior changed a lot. He acted like a different person in a lot of ways. And when you look back at kind of what he did after that, uh, he really does. He really does display a lot of the characteristics of a psychopath. I mean, he has a he has this black lack of responsibility for his actions. He he had. He leads this kind of parasitic kind of lifestyle, preying on these vulnerable women.
He's prone to these fits of anger and you know, he can become suddenly violent and these sorts of things. So he really did sort of change after this this accident and and really fall into this pattern of this
kind of this psych psychopathic personality. And that would really lend itself to you know, what he did with Martha and kind of the influence he had over her and how he kind of sucked her in into this darkness, you know, basically because before he before met Martha and met Ray, I mean, she didn't have any kind of legal issues, legal problems, she didn't have any kind of record or anything. So you know, it looks like he kind of sucked her into this and drove her to do these things.
He was certainly gained that confidence with his voodoo and what he believed were his successes as a result of that black magic. And I think he had that confidence right to the very end, even believing that he might somehow get out of the bund that he was was in facing execution. I want to thank you very much JT for coming on and talking about Tortured with Love, of the true crime romance of the Lonely Hearts Killers. It's been a fascinating interview, certainly for those that might
want to take a look at your other work. Do you have a website and or is there a Facebook page they might take a look at.
Yeah, I have both. I have. My website is JT. Hunter dot org dot org. I'm also on Facebook JT. Hunter True Crime author on Facebook, also on Twitter on another social media JTA Each True Crime as well, So any of those places please check me out.
Thank you very much, JT. You have a great evening. Thank you for this. Good night.
Thanks then, I enjoyed it. Take care, good night.