NOTE: Research for
UHoM
has turned up hundreds of forgotten female serial killers including a large
number of
Black Widows, women who murdered two or more husbands. The Ada
Wittenmyer is a case of relatively recent date: she died while awaiting trial
in 1984. Normally, one would expect such a recent case to have been included in
current lists of female serial killers. Yet the case does not.
This case has the particular value of offering a clearly
stated m.o. delineating not only a clear-cut strategy of exploiting men through
offering companionship and/or sex, a common feature of black widow serial
killer cases, but also in disclosing the corollary sadistic motive. When the
Alimony Reform League did a study in 1935
of motivations of women who sought to have husbands for failing to pay alimony the stunning outcome was that sadistic
pleasure in seeing the man suffer overrode, in the majority of cases, the need
– or desire – for additional cash.
In looking at cases of
maternal filicide during child custody disputes, there are other
documented cases showing a motivation of sadistic pleasure, not in the enjoyment
in watching the murdered children’s suffering, but in depriving the targeted
man, the father of their children, for suffering. This scenario is matched, of
course, in cases where a father is perpetrator.
As is now well-known, studies of false rape accusations and
child-father access denial (including outright parental kidnapping), initiated
by members of the Men’s Rights Movement and Fathers’ Rights Movement, reveal
that sadistic pleasure in the counterpart’s suffering is a common motive.
Statements of motive made by female serial killers are
scarce.
Jane Toppan represents one of
the few cases where the murderess has described her intense pleasure in
watching her victims die.
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FULL
TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Dickson, Tenn. – Police exhumed the body of Ada Laverne
Crow Evans Hensley Hayes Wittenmyer’s third husband Tuesday to see if he, like
her fourth husband, died of arsenic poisoning.
The
plump, 33-year-old brunette, last seen near Gallatin, Tenn., two weeks ago, is
already wanted for the murder of her fourth husband, John L. Wittenmyer, 62, a
wealthy Oklahoma antique dealer and rancher.
The
couple married three years ago, two weeks after she answered his ad in a
“lonely hearts” magazine.
Wittenmyer
died March 28, just one day after he signed a handwritten will leaving the bulk
of the cattle ranching estate to his wife, Oklahoma officials said.
Suspicious
authorities ordered the body of Mrs. Wittenmyer’s third husband – William
Clifford Hayes, who died five years ago – exhumed Tuesday from a Nashville
cemetery and shipped to Memphis, where an autopsy will be performed by the
state medical examiner.
Mrs.
Wittenmyer told police she found her husband dead at the couple’s Bartlesville,
Okla., home after she returned from a shopping excursion. At the time, police
assumed he died of a heart attack.
But when
investigators returned to the home to question Mrs. Wittenmyer further, she was
gone. An autopsy then turned up arsenic in the rancher’s body.
Officials
said Mrs. Wittenmyer has been married at least four times. Police talked to one
of her ex-husbands, but refused to release his identity.
[“Widow Suspect In Deaths Of Two Husbands,”
syndicated (UPI), Tyrone Daily Herald (Pa.), May 2, 1979, p. 12]
FULL
TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Nashville, Tenn. – A woman who met men through lonely hearts clubs and
poisoned two of her four husbands with arsenic hanged herself with a prison
bedsheet and left a note saying “at last I have found peace,” authorities said.
Ada
Wittenmyer, 39, was found hanging in her cell Wednesday evening, six days after
being sentenced to life in prison for the 1974 murder of her third husband,
William Hayes. She had pleaded innocent by reason of insanity.
Hayes’
body was exhumed after Mrs. Wittenmyer’s fourth husband died of arsenic
poisoning. She was convicted of that killing in 1982 and sentenced to a 25-year
prison term in the poisoning of wealthy Oklahoma rancher John Wittenmyer, whom
she met through a lonely hearts club advertisement. Her other two marriages ended
in divorce.
Authorities
discovered last week that Mrs. Wittenmyer was continuing to correspond with at
least one man she had met through a lonely hearts club advertisement.
In
one of several handwritten suicide notes she left in her cell at DeBerry Correctional
Institute here, Mrs. Wittenmyer said, “I want to remain as I lived – alone.”
In
another note, Mrs. Wittenmyer asked prison officials to call her parents and
“tell them at last I have found peace,” Warden Aileene Love said.
“I’ve
brought shame and disgrace on my family. God knows they tried to love me, but
it’s hard to love a mentally ill child that you don’t know what’s wrong with
them,” the note said.
Mrs.
Wittenmyer was alone in her cell under mandatory segregation at the time of her
death, Mrs. Love said. She had been held at DeBerry since last winter to await
trial in Hayes’ death.
A
DeBerry cellmate testified at last week’s trial that Mrs. Wittenmyer told her
about poisoning her two husbands.
“She
said she was going to go through life finding men with money and poisoning
them, using the lonely hearts club ads. She said that she enjoyed to see them in
pain from the poison,” testified Barbara Quaranto, 46, who was convicted in
Chattanooga in the shooting death of her 73-year-old husband.
Canadian
rancher Henry Joneson said he sent 12 letters and a $1,150 check to Mrs.
Wittenmyer before learning last week that the address she had given him was the
prison and not the retreat she had told him it was.
The Tomahawk, Alberta, man said he answered Mrs.
Wittenmyer’s ad in [an] agricultural publication in April that read: “Widow
wishes to start new life – will relocate.”
When Mrs. Wittenmyer telephoned him after her second
poisoning conviction, Johnson said he told her,” … I found out everything and
goodbye.”
Oklahoma Chief Forensic Psychiatrist Dr. R. D. Garcia, who
treated Mrs. Wittenmyer for more than three years during her imprisonment in
Oklahoma, testified she suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.
But Roger Hensley, Mrs. Wittenmyer’s first husband, said he
did not believe she was mentally ill. “I lived with her
off, and on for nine years and she has always known what she was doing,” said Hensley.
“She is just mean … She was kind to people, but then she would turn around and
be worse than heck.”
[“Husband-Poisoner Hangs Herself in Cell,” syndicated (AP),
Youngstown Vindicator (Oh.), Aug. 9, 1984, p. 29]
***
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FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): Dear Ann Landers: I always thought it was
narrow-minded and mean of you to take such a strong stand against lonely-hearts
advertisements. I changed my mind today when I read the Nashville Banner.
It seems a man named Henry Joneson of Tomahawk, Alberta
(Canada), answered an ad in an agricultural publication. The woman who was
looking for a companion was Ada Wittenmyer, age 37. Henry, the 50-year-old over
a 900-acre ranch, was lonesome and thought Ada sounded “interesting.” He didn’t
realize his letters and checks were going to prison until District Attorney
General Kenneth Atkins called and told him that Ada had just been convicted of
poisoning her first husband. she already was serving a 25-year term for
poisoning her third husband – a wealthy Oklahoma rancher she had met through
another lonely-hearts ad. Atkins said that when he told him the news Mr.
Joneson said, “Oh, Lord.”
I hope you will print this letter in your column, Ann, as a
warning to others who are lonely. And please accept my apologies for my
previous attitude. – Nashville Reader
Dear Reader: Nothing I might have said could have had the
import of your report. I checked it out with Nashville and every detail was
right on. Thanks for the backup.
[Ann Landers, “Beware, Lonely hearts,” syndicated, Ukiah
Daily Journal (Ca.), Oct. 18, 1984, p. 13]
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[20,497-1/3/2021]
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