Joran van der Sloot, the young Dutchman charged with the murder of Stephany Flores, a 21 year-old Peruvian woman, and the number one suspect in the infamous disappearance of Alabama teenager Natalee Holloway, has boasted about receiving marriage proposals while locked up, and earlier this year, he reportedly impregnated a woman he started dating while in prison. Now, Newsweek’s Christopher Dickey and Andrea Zarate report on Dr. Mary Hamer, a Florida radiologist who’s become his self-styled “guardian angel.” But Van der Sloot isn’t the first famous inmate with a fan base. From John Wayne Gacy to the Night Stalker, The Daily Beast looks at women’s infatuation with killers over the years.
Ian Salas / EPA-Corbis
Joran van der Sloot became a household name as the key suspect in the disappearance of Natalee Holloway, a high school senior from Alabama who went missing on a graduation trip in Aruba back in 2005. Holloway’s body was never found, and Van der Sloot was never charged—but five years after the Aruba incident, the Dutchman, then 22, was arrested in Chile for killing Stephany Flores Ramirez, and this time he confessed. While locked in a Peruvian jail, Van der Sloot has bragged that he’s received marriage offers, and earlier this year, he reportedly impregnated a Peruvian woman who paid him private visits. His fan club only seems to be growing: as Christopher Dickey and Andrea Zarate report in Newsweek, Dr. Mary Hamer, a Florida radiologist, has taken it upon herself to mentor Van der Sloot, developing a close platonic relationship with him and his mother. “Everybody in life needs one mentor,” she told a reporter. "A person who believes in you and loves you—agape love, spiritual love—not sexual love.”
Aliosha Marquez / AP
“Preppy Killer” Robert Chambers was infamously convicted of strangling Jennifer Levin to death in Central Park, but longtime girlfriend Shawn Kovell has stuck by his side for decades, including through his 15 years in prison for manslaughter. After his release, the two moved in together on the Upper East Side of Manhattan, but the honeymoon period was cut short when they were both arrested for selling cocaine out of their apartment in 2007. The drug charges landed Chambers in jail for another 19 years. Kovell, meanwhile, was only given fourteen months of rehab prior to sentencing. Once her treatment was complete, Kovell went to trial to receive her sentence: parole. When asked by a New York Times reporter outside the courtroom whether she was still in love with her criminal boyfriend, Kovell replied, “Of course. After 22 years, I don’t love him any less than Day 1.”
Seth Wenig / Reuters-Corbis
Proof that love is blind? Even though the handsome, serial-killing rapist and necrophile confessed to the violent killing of 30 women, Ted Bundy received hundreds of letters in prison from ladies declaring their love for and desire to marry Bundy right up to his execution in 1989.
Bettmann-Corbis
Illich Ramirez Sanchez, also known as Carlos the Jackal, was once considered the world’s most dangerous terrorist. The Venezuelan pro-Palestinian militant was ultimately convicted of murdering two French secret agents and a Lebanese informer—crimes for which he is currently serving a life sentence in France. During his reign of terror, Carlos is believed to have been responsible for over 1,500 deaths. But Sanchez didn’t work alone. His girlfriend, Magdalena Kopp, was also his accomplice, and in 1982, she was arrested for her role in an attempted bombing. In an effort to get her out of prison, Sanchez launched a terror campaign that killed twenty people in eight attacks across the Middle East and Europe; still, she wasn’t freed before her sentence was up. Once Kopp was released, the two got married, had a child and began globe hopping. When he was finally sentenced to life in prison in 1997, however, Sanchez divorced his long-time lover and married his French lawyer.
Thierry Chiarello / Reuters-Corbis
It might be hard to believe that anyone would be attracted to a man who notoriously dressed up as a clown and murdered at least 33 young men and teenage boys within six years, often raping and torturing his victims. But before his execution by lethal injection in 1994, John Wayne Gacy reportedly received several letters of love and support from women, and even married a woman he met while on death row. Gacy also sparked the interest of 18-year-old Jason Moss, a college student who reached out to several serial killers as part of his thesis. Moss corresponded with a few inmates, but developed the closest relationship with Gacy, even pretending to be a gay hustler to keep the bisexual murderer interested. Over time, Moss' research went far beyond the school assignment; he began to receive regular calls often from Gacy, and during a visit to prison, Moss says the killer attempted to rape him. Seven years after his book, The Last Victim, hit The New York Times Best Seller list, Moss committed suicide.
Charles Sobhraj, better known as “the Serpent” and “the Bikini killer,” is currently serving a life sentence in Nepal for at least 12 murders of Western tourists in Southeast Asia during the 1970s. Before his ultimate 2004 arrest, Sobhraj was jailed for 21 years in India, yet he was eventually released. During his interim years of freedom, Sobhraj met a young traveler from Quebec, Marie-Andree Leclerc, who soon became one of his devoted followers, as well as an accomplice. Sobhraj has continued to intrigue many: One Nepali woman, Nihita Biswas, 20, garnered media attention in 2008 when she claimed to have married the jailed serial killer. Prison authorities, however, denied the claim and revealed that Biswas was not his first prison lover. “There were at least four young Nepali girls before Nihita,” one policeman told the Times of India. “They all claim to have relations with him. One of them even wore a ring, saying they had been married.”
Prakash Mathema / AFP-Getty Images
Between 1984 and 1985 Richard Ramirez terrorized California with his random and brutal murders of at least 14 people. Nicknamed “the Night Stalker,” Ramirez left clues to his identity at his crime scenes, and by the time his trial began in 1988, Ramirez had attracted a fan base of people who would write him letters and visit him. One woman, a freelance magazine editor named Doreen Lioy, wrote him constantly during his incarceration, and in 1988, he proposed to her. The two were wed in 1996 at the San Quentin State Prison in California, where Ramirez awaits execution. The serial killer continues to receive bags of mail to his death row cell—mostly from women—and Lioy has declared that when Ramirez is executed she will kill herself.
