> DemoListScott Peterson Attracting Female Fans
>
> Wednesday, March 23, 2005
>
> By Chris Erikson
>
> NEW YORK - Scott Peterson has been called many things since he was
> convicted of murdering his wife and unborn child last week.
>
> A liar. A murderer. A sociopath.
>
> A total babe?
>
> Admirers started coming out of the woodwork - and posting love notes
> on various Web blogs - even before the 32-year-old killer landed on
> San Quentin Prison's death row last week.
>
> A prison spokesman said San Quentin received dozens of calls, letters
> and even two marriage proposals for Peterson.
>
> Surprised? You shouldn't be.
>
> The average woman probably wouldn't list depraved indifference to life
> and a death-row address in her "turn-ons" column, but there's a
> strange and dogged group of women who do, guaranteeing the country's
> most notorious killers a supply of eager pen-pal paramours.
>
> "It's so classic," said Cliff Linedecker, a true-crime writer who
> wrote the book "Prison Groupies" about women smitten by killers. "The
> more notorious they are, the more groupies they tend to attract."
>
> Peterson promises to bring women out in force, said Linedecker,
> because of his clean-cut good looks and the nature of his crime.
>
> "They especially like wife-killers," he said. "It adds to the thrill."
>
> Richard Ramirez, a Satanist on death row for a shockingly brutal
> string of rapes, murders and mutilations, "had women falling all over
> him," even fighting one another for his attentions, said Linedecker.
> (In 1996, Ramirez married a 41-year-old magazine editor.)
>
> Even John Wayne Gacy, "a very unattractive guy - and a homosexual,
> too, which you'd think might be a deterrent - had all kinds of women
> after him," Linedecker said.
>
> "Preppie Killer" Robert Chambers had to be transferred to another
> prison because so many aspiring girlfriends were smuggling him
> contraband - and when he was released last year, one was waiting for
> him.
>
> Tracy Lamourie of the Canadian Coalition Against the Death Penalty,
> which runs a Web site where death-row prisoners solicit pen pals, said
> many who write are women looking for relationships.
>
> Numerous love affairs - and two actual weddings have resulted, said
> Lamourie, who adds that her group has received a number of e-mails
> from women who want to contact Peterson.
>
> Why would any woman go out of her way to form a relationship with a
> convicted killer?
>
> "It's very complicated," said Sheila Isenberg, author of the book
> "Women Who Love Men Who Kill."
>
> One reason is the notoriety. Killers may be famous for doing stomach-
> turning things, but they're famous nonetheless.
>
> "If you want to get together with a celebrity, Brad Pitt won't answer
> your letters, but Scott Peterson might well," she said.
>
> Another appeal of a death-row inmate is that he has a lot of time on
> his hands to write poetry and love letters.
>
> Plus, Isenberg says, violence holds an allure in our society - "and
> who's the most macho man of all? Well, he's the one who did the
> murder. And if it's a particularly heinous murder, then he's even more
> macho. And people are attracted to that in some strange way."
>
> Other killer groupies have savior complexes. Linedecker relates the
> tale of a young woman from a Christian church group - "a real
> innocent" - who started a relationship with a convicted killer in
> California. When they met at a motel after his release, he raped her
> and cut her legs off.
>
> But the most important factor, Isenberg concluded, is that these women
> are almost all victims of abuse, and they're attracted to the control
> offered by a relationship with a man behind bars.
>
> "It's basically a safe relationship, and she has control of it,"
> Isenberg said. And a death-row inmate "has very limited interaction
> with the world, so she's going to be even more in control."
>
> Karen Richey - a 41-year-old grandmother from Glasgow, Scotland, who
> has been in love with a man on Ohio's death row since 1988 - says not
> every romance with an inmate is the result of a jailbird fetish.
>
> "I thought I could be a friend to someone who I was sure was going to
> die," she told The Post from Glasgow. "We wrote back and forth. Little
> by little, we fell in love."
>
> Her fiance, Kenny Richey (whose name she's taken), now stands to be a
> free man after the recent overturning of his arson conviction for a
> blaze that killed a 2-year-old girl in 1986.
>
> Unlike Peterson, Karen's man is no death-row Don Juan.
>
> "His teeth are falling out. He's got diabetes. I can't explain it. I
> know you'll probably hear from some of these women who say, 'My guy is
> innocent because he's so gorgeous and he told me he didn't do it.' I'm
> not one of those people. I checked him out. And I was right."