Adopted Serial Killers

(Listed alphabetically, with age at time of crime if known.)

• Albright, Charles, (Eyeball Killer)

  Born in Amarillo Texas, adopted as the only child of Fred and Delle Albright, may be innocent of killing one or two of his serial killings of females. Source: http://TheChosenChildren.com, & http://www.radford.edu/~maamodt/Psyc%20405/serial%20killers/Albright,%20Charles.htm

• Barone, Cesar Francesco, 31, (aka Adolph James Rode)

  Born 12-4-60 as Adolph James "Jimmy" Rode Jr., and adopted as "Barone," he was convicted of sexually assaulting & killing 4 women in the Portland area in the 1990s & sentenced to Death in 1995. Source: Washington County Corrections web-site.

• Bartsch, Guergen

  "Between 1962 and 1966, four schoolboys were abused, tortured and killed in Germany's Ruhr District. Their tormentor, Juergen Bartsch, was fifteen at the time of his first crime; nineteen when he was caught. His mesmerizing confession, which frames the re-enactment of his crimes and the circumstances through which they came about, forms the heart of this journey into the dark reaches of a troubled mind. Bartsch's cold and severe adopters, his terror-filled years at a Catholic boarding school, the discovery of his sexual attraction to boys, his desperate longing to never have to grow up."

  Source: http://TheChosenChildren.com, & "The Child I Never Was" - http://www.scoops.be/movies/moviedetail.asp?movid=6260

• Benefiel Jr., Bill J.

  Executed 4-21-05 in Indiana, for the Feb. 7, 1987 murder of Delores Wells, 18, of Vigo County. Wells was kept in Benefiel’s home for several days. She was sexually abused & tortured before Benefiel killed her. Benefiel also kept another victim in his home who survived [after he repeatedly raped her] & testified against him. Court-appointed experts testified during the guilt phase of the trial that Benefiel suffered from schizophrenic personality disorder, & from a mental disease or defect. As a baby, Benefiel’s "birth" mother gave him to an unfit mother in exchange for having a place to live. Benefiel endured a traumatic childhood including abandonment & sexual abuse by his adoptive mother’s boyfriend. During trial, Benefiel was reluctant to disclose the details of abuse he suffered & also reluctant to discuss the crimes he had committed. He suffered an emotional breakdown during the trial, refusing to go back into the courtroom after a recess. The trial court, however, ruled that Benefiel was not mentally ill... In 1991, the Supreme Court of Indiana stated that Benefiel’s “impairment suffered as a result of mental disease is entitled to substantial mitigating weight .” However, the court maintained that this mental illness issue as mitigation was diminished because Benefiel exhibited both periods of non-violent behavior and control and because of the way in which the crimes were carried out. There is strong evidence to support the argument that Benefiel suffers from mental illness. The execution of persons with mental illness is a clear violation of international human rights standards as violating the 1964 and 1989 U.N. Economic & Social Council Resolution and the U.N. Human Rights Commission Resolution. Source: http://www.demaction.org/dia/organizations/ncadp/campaign.jsp?campaign_KEY=528

• Berkowitz, David, (Son of Sam & The 44-Caliber Killer)

  Born 6-1-53, adopted by Nathan & Pearl Berkowitz, there was no pre-adoption abuse to blame for his outcome; he grew up believing his mother died giving birth to him, so grew up feeling intense anger & guilt, also feeling rejected & scorned about being adopted & He killed 6 people, wounded several others. Source: http://crime.about.com/od/murder/p/sonofsam.htm

• Bianchi, Kenneth, (The Hillside Stranglers)

  ...Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.

  Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html

• Brady, Ian, 23

  Together with his obedient girlfriend, Myra Hindley, they "killed for kicks." Brady was born in Glasgow, Scotland, the "illegitimate" son of a waitress and never knew who his father was. He was raised by foster parents.

  Source: Serial Killers, http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/

• Bundy, Ted, (Florida Co-ed Murders; Lady Killer)

  Born out of wedlock & told his mother was his sister to coverup his in-family informal adoption by his grandmother, Bundy was executed in FL for serial killings of at least 28 women. http://www.CourtTV.com/news/flashbacks/January.html

• Buono, Angelo, (The Hillside Stranglers)

  ...Alleged to have killed 25 women, Bianchi (adopted as an infant) & his adoptive cousin Buono, were sentenced to life in prison for the rapes & murders of 10 women.

  Source: http://courttv.com/news/flashback/January.html

• Coleman, Alton

  sentenced to 112 years for killing his adoptive mother and other adoptive relatives....sentenced to death in 3 states for a 1984 killing spree & executed in Ohio... http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/morg9707.html

• Conde, Rory, (The Tamiani Killer)

  "Born in Colombia in 1965, his mother died of tetanus when he was 6 months old and informally adopted by his paternal grandmother...Sentenced to death for one murder, he pled guilty to murdering 5 prostitutes as part of a plea agreement to instead serve 5 consecutive life terms without parole" Source: http://www.mayhem.net/Crime/condo.html

• Desalvo, Albert, (Boston Strangler)

  Born 1937 in Chelsea, Massachusetts, as one of six children in his family, he grew up with a warped view of both sex and violence, mainly as a result of his alcoholic father, Frank, who beat both his children and his wife. When he waS 12, his parents divorced & his father sold him and two of his sisters as slaves to a farmer in Maine who paid $9 for them all [black market adoption]. He was sentenced to Life for sexual assault & robbery in a plea bargain, despite formerly admitting to having killed at least 13 women. He was stabbed to death in prison. Source: Harold Schecter & David Everett, "A-Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers," p. 293; & http://www.bbc.co.uk/crime/caseclosed/strangler.shtml

• Dugas, Gaetan

  Adoptee & Canadian airline steward who brought AIDS to the U.S., intentionaly infecting/killing hundreds of men in San Francisco's gay community. Resented his mother whom he never knew but fantasized about throughout his life. Source: "And The Band Played On," book by journalist Randy Shiltz

• Francis, Rodney Cameron, 19

  "at age 10, he attempted to strangle a young girl and an elderly lady. By this stage, his adoptive parents had completely rejected him.....In 1974 at age 19, he raped and urdered a nurse....[In later years] he confessed to murder of 8 victims (Kidd 1999)."

• Georges, Guy, (Beast of the Bastille)

  Born in Paris, the son of a French woman & an American soldier who abandoned him as a small child, he was raised by a foster family but by adulthood had already racked up sexual offenses & his first killing in 1991. When arrested in 1998, he confessed to 4 rape-murders & us suspected of other murders. In 2001, he was sentenced to a light term of 22 years & has threatened suicide.

• Graham, Harrison T., 29, (Marty)

  Born 9-9-59, a mildly mentally retarded Black man in Philadelphia who entertained children with a Cookie Monster puppet. On 8-9-87 upon being evicted from his aprtment, police found the corpses of 7 women in his apartment. He was sentenced to one Life term & 7 electrocutions. Source: http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/a-h/grahamharrison.html

• Gunning, James

  James Gunning was charged with the 1997 slaying of Dawn McCary, a sex worker, & with attempting to murder 3 other prostitutes in Camden, New Jersey. Police suspect mechanic might also be responsible for the murder of Caroline Ann Brader, 29, an Allentown area prostitute whose body was found on the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Montgomery County District Attorney Bruce L. Castor Jr. says it's not possible for his office to investigate this suspicion since Gunning is locked up in another jurisdiction.

• Kallinger, Joseph, 25, (The Philadelphia Shoemaker)

  "...adopted by sadistic Catholic parents....[his adoptive] mother forced him to hold his hand over an open flame, beating him if he cried. Kallinger grew up taking extreme pleasure in torturing others...[& slowly drowned his 13 year old son]...After behading his [adoptive] mom ....he raped her headless body..."

  http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/tick/abuse_3.html?sect=1

• Katlin, Steven

  ...given up for adoption as an infant... Source: "Serial Slaughter: What's behind America's Murder Epidemic," book by Michael Newton

• Kip, Martin James, (Dr. Crazy)

  ...Rape-slayer, child of a prostitute, given up for adoption at an early age. ("Attachment & Loss: Separation - Anger & Anxiety" book by John Bowlby)

• Kondro, Joseph

  " ....total lack of remorse for murdering two little girls. The burly former Longview millworker ...father of six saved himself from the death penalty in 1999 by pleading guilty to the murder of a 12-year-old and admitting to the older unsolved killing of an 8-year-old. They were the daughters of Kondro's closest friends. Police questioned Kondro, who had a prior child-rape conviction, about more than 70 other killings and disappearances. He remains a suspect in some cases. ...the self-described psychopath is serving a 55-year prison term for the murders. It's outrageous, he says, that someone as cold-blooded as him could cut a deal." Source: http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/33915_kondro07.shtml

  ...Born Don Lee Durant, both his parents, whom he never got to meet, and his adopters, are deceased; he requests contact from other biological relatives. Source: Kondro's 2/18/05 letter to Lori Carangelo/AmFOR (re his parents & adopters)

• Krebs, Rex Allan, 17

  A severely abused child, Rex Allan Krebs got into trouble as a youth in Sandpoint, Idaho, in 1984 & served 18 months in jail for a felony grand theft conviction for stealing a car & some cassettes; he also was sentenced to a boot camp program. & completed 8 months probation before moving to Grover Beach, California. His problems seemed to mount after he moved to California where his mother had moved after remarrying. Although Rex never returned to Idaho, his father, Allan Krebs, visited him at least once in California before his father was arrested for drug trafficking in Montana; one of his brothers was murdered in Vancouver, Washington & his sister was murdered in Spokane. By age 21, Rex had been arrested as a suspect in 3 burglaries & 2 violent rape-sodomy attacks & also a misdemeanor sex offense, for which he was sentenced to 20 years in 1987 but paroled in 10 years, in 1997, registered as a sex offender & was chased out of town. On 11-12-98, in San Luis Obispo, he attacked college student Rachel Newhouse, beating her unconscious with his fists, raped her & left her hog-tied to strangle to death. In 1999, at age 33, in the same town, he beat, raped, tortured & killed college student Aundria Crawford, 20. Upon arrest, the alcoholic sex-and-slaughter addict confessed, saying "If I am not a monster, then what am I?" In 2001, he was sentenced to death. Source: The Tribune, 4-24-99, http://members.tripod.com/~mcali/krebs2.html

• Lee, Bruce

  Killer, arsonist, child of a prostitute given up for adoption at an early age. ("Attachment & Loss: Separation - Anger & Anxiety" book by John Bowlby)

• Lindh, Aaron, 19

  Aaron, who is Black, was adopted by Mary Ann Lindh into her White family....He was confused about his identity as an interracial child & the prosecutor & psychiatrist testified at his trial that his impaired logic perceives problems as rejections; events even before the shootings (when he opened fire on police inside Madison Wisconsin Detective Bureau in 1/15/85) were seen as a series of abandonments. Source: Ghost Dancer web-site by Kay Russell, quoting from Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal.

• Munro, James, 18, (The Freeway Murders)

  Born 6/17/61 to Anna Marie Massow in Furth Byron, Germany, & adopted in 1983 by Evon Charron & Leigh Munro, Michigan. Although he admitted to participating in at least one of the "Freeway Murders"--serial killings of male prostitutes -- they were actually committed by William Bonin (who was executed). Munro, who has a low IQ, claims Bonin abducted him & forced him to participate by restraining one of the victims. Source: Munro's letters to AmFOR & http://www.AdoptedPrisoners.com

• Oken, Steven Howard, 25 (in 1987)

  Convicted in 1991 & executed in 6/17/04 in Maryland. In 1987 he murdered 3 women within 2 weeks: Dawn Marie Garvin, Antoine Hirt (his wife's older sister whom he also sexually assaulted), & Lori Elizabeth Ward (whom he also sexually assaulted). See http://AdoptedPrisoners.com for detailing.

• Payne, Eric, 18

  Born Eric Hollie, 1-7-73, in Roanoake VA, his father killed his mother & committe suicide when he was 4 months old. His aunt adopted him but kept him as "her son" for 6 years; he went through a series of foster homes & at age 8 was again adopted, this time by Gerald Payne & his wife who decided when he was 14 they didn't want him because of his lying & "failure to respond," and was imprisoned in 1991 at age 18 for 6 years for possession of LSD. When release in 1997, he went on a rampage of hammer beatings killing 2 women; a 3rd & her son survived his attacks; he was sentenced to death. Kay Russell, "Serial Killers" , Ghost Dancer's Anti-Adoption Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950

• Ramirez, Richard Leyva, (The Nightstalker)

  His was a stepparent adoption. He was convicted in Texas of 12 Satanic-motivate murders & a few dozen lesser crimes including rape & burglary, that he committed 1984-1985. Some of his victims included children, some he left alive which is how he was caught & sent to San Quentin's Death Row.

• Rifkin, Joel, 34

  Son of unwed teenage parents who gave him up for adoption 3 days after birth, adopted by Ben & Jeanne Rifkin & murdered at least 17 women, mostly prostitutes. He pleaded "Adopted Child Syndrome" as a mitigating factor, as he grew up believing his mother was a prostitute who couldn't afford and abortion. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang; & New York Times story, "A Novel Insanity Defense for Joel Rifkin" by John T. McQuistin, 9-25-94

• Speck, Richard

  Born 12-6-41 in Kirkwood, Illinois, the 7ths of 8 children, he adored his father who died when Richard was 6. His religious Catholic mother then married Carl Lindberg; his stepfather took out his drunken violent rages on Richard who, in his teen years, began boozing, fighting & whoring his way through life. Richard married and raped his wife who said he needed sex 4-5 times a day. Sixmonths after she filed for divorce, he murdered 6 nurses. Sources: http://www.mugshots.com/Historical/Richard+Speck.htm ; http://www.prairiehosts.com/speck.html

• Stano, Gerald Eugene, 27

  Born in 1951 at Daytona Beach, FL, taken from his mother at age 6 months & adopted. Murdered an estimated 80 young women (41 were prostitutes, runaways, hitchhiking teenagers, youngest was age 12) from PA to FL before his arrest at age 27 in 1980. He said "Adopted kids like me, I now know, seek out rejection, believe on some level that no one will keep them." Prior to killing he has sought help from 3 psychiatrists who never raised the issue of adoption and so didn't treat him. Executed 3/23/98. Source: "Dark Son," book by Denise Lang

• Toppan, Jane, 31, (Angel of Death)

  Born as Nora Kelly, in 1854 in Boston, she was adopted as an infant when her mother died & her father was institutionalized, for 2 decades worked as a nurse in New England, confessed to killing at least 31 people with morphine & atrophine, & is believed to have actually killed more people than any man or woman who has ever lived.

  Source: Kay Russell, Ghost Dancer's Anti-Adoption Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950

• Waldon, Billy Ray

  He scarcely knew his mother & apparently didn't know his father, having been raised from age 5 in 1957 by his grandmother "as her own" (informal adoption). Upon his grandmother's death in 1985, he began a killing spree. Source: "Serial Killers Live Here" http://www.francesfarmersrevenge.com/stuff/serialkillers/waldon.htm

• Wilken, Stewart

  Born 11-11-66, in Boksburg. He killed prostitutes. Article speculates "Perhaps it was anger at his biological mother for deserting him, his adoptive mother for not being the mother he wanted." When he was about 6 months old, he & his 2-year-old sister were left in a phone booth, where they were later found by a domestic worker, who took them to the home of her employer known only as "Doep," who subjected the boy to terrible abuse....burned him with cigarettes on his genitals.... engaged in acts of bestiality with his dogs, a made him lick his penis afterwards. At some point, his sister disappeared & he did not know what happened to her. When he was 2 years old, the neighbors, Mr and Mrs Wilken, adopted him out of compassion, named him Stewart Wilken, although he called himself "Boetie Boer." ...He failed the 3rd grade three times, was mocked by his peers because he was adopted, & when his teacher didn not intervene on his behalf, but instead had incited the others further, he assaulted the teacher & was severely beaten by the principal in front of the other children. He often bit his adoptive mother as well as other children.... At age 8, he started smoking marijuana. At 9, a deacon sodomized him; the same year, Stewart's adoptive father died. Stewart's adoptive mother felt overwhelmed by the difficult boy & sent him to a reformatory where he was locked up without clothes as punishment, & the older boys sodomized him. In later life he was accused of sodomizing his own sons.

  Source: http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/predators/stewart_wilken/7.html?sect=2

• Wuornos, Aileen Carol Pittman

  Illegally adopted in infancy, in 1960, along with her older brother Keith, by her maternal grandparents, Lauri & Britta Wurornos, abandoned at birth by her alcoholic mother, reportedly sexually abused by her father (a convicted child molester who committed suicide in prison), Aileen was pregnant at 14 by her brother Keith, & delivered and gave up her baby for adoption at a Detroiit Maternity Home; Aileen was also legally adopted as an adult by 44-year old born-again Christian Arlene Pralle & Pralle's husband. One of only 10 female murderers in the US to be executed, Aileen was executed in FL, 10-9-02, for murdering 6 FL truckers while working as a prostitute; she first claimed self-defense, later asked for death. Most detailed site on Wuornos is at http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/wuornos805.htm

• Yates, Robert Lee, 23, (Spokane Serial Killer)

  Yates grew up on Whidbey Island, Washington, where his mother died while he was still in high school. Records show that he was allegedly repeatedly sexually abused by an older neighbor boy when he was approximately 6 years old. A father of 5 children & retired from the Army; in exchnage for his life he pled guilty to murdering 13 female prostitutes, from 1975 to 1996 & was sentened to death in 2002. Source: "Serial Killers A-Z," http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/yates.html

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Adoptees Who Killed Their Adopters

(Listed alphabetically, with age at time of crime if known.)

Note: Alton Coleman & Joseph Kallinger, listed above as Adopted Serial Killers, also killed their adopters; and some adopter killers, below, killed another adoptive family member or other person, but can't be classified as Serial Killer, due not only to too few killed but also to primarily targeting adopters.

• ABLE, Melissa Fuss Erives, (Charged with Murder/ Plea Conviction for Robbery)

  Melissa Fuss Able Erives was adopted by Inez "Jackie" Fuss who reportedly abused her. Her 2 adoptive brothers, also adopted by Jackie, are: Charles Allen Fuss (convicted of Jackie's 1996 murder but who may be innocent) & David Fuss (whose wife was murdered in 1999 & for which Melissa's biological brother, Joel Domingues, was convicted & sentenced to Life, although he is innocent); Melissa & Margaret Branch, Melissa's adoptive sister & Jackie's biological daughter, were initially charged with the 1999 murder but plea-bargained for lesser sentences -- Melissa is serving 10 years for Robbery; Margaret got 10 years for Involuntary Murder. Melissa's biological mother, Sandra Race Cano (Domingues)accuses Melissa of framing her siblings for both murders, stating that Melissa has also attempted to kill her & threatens to do so when she is released from prison. Newspaper reports cite the motive for both slayings was money & that the siblings by birth & adoption arguing over Jackie's estate. For details on Melissa, Charles, Joel & Margaret, all incarcerated in Georgia, & for detailing on their complex biological & adoptive relationships that connect the 2 murders, go to their individual web pages at http://AdoptedPrisoners.com (Scroll down GEORGIA listings & Click on each name or photo). Source: Gayle White, Atlanta Journal-Constitution; Georgia Dept. of Corrections Prisoner Locator website; direct interviews with family members, one of their attorneys & others.

• Andrews, Charles D., 14

  In December 1981, Andrews murdered his adoptive father and stepmother in Anchorage, Alaska. He was adjudged a delinquent minor and was committed to the custody of the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services. Andrews turned 20 in October 1987, & so he was released from juvenile custody, & soon thereafter began a series of robberies & convictions. Source: Andrews vs. State [of Alaska], Appeal Opinion, http://touchngo/ap/html/ap-1611.htm

• Atkins, Charles, 23, and
• Atkins, Joseph, 27

  Joseph & his adoptive brother, Charles, who was 4 years younger, were adopted by a White family; Joseph was adopted as a toddler, his racial heritage unknown--possibly Native American, African American, or Puerto Rican. Joseph shot to death his adoptive father & 13-year-old neighbor while on parole for killing Charles--after Charles stabbed Joseph. His lawyers suggested Joseph, a veteran, was having a Nam flashback during the 1985 killings. According to trial testimony he got drunk and broke into the neighbor's house armed with a machete, a shotgun and a revolver. He shot Karen Patterson with the sawed-off shotgun while she was in bed. Then he chased her mother back to his house where he shot his adoptive father. Five years earlier, the older Atkins had convinced parole officials to release his 27 year old adopted son from prison where he was serving a life sentence for killing his 23-year-old adoptive brother, Charles; 15 years later, he killed the man who adopted him & a 13-year old neighbor in Charleston, NC, 10-27-85. He was executed at age 51 in Columbia, S.C. 1-22-99. Source: APB Online, & The Denver Post & Courier.

• Bamber, Jeremy, 40

  Described by his adoptive relatives as a "physcopath," & convicted of the shooting deaths of both of his wealthy adopters, Neville & June Bamber (who adopted Jeremy at age 6 weeks), his adoptive sister, Sheila Caffell, & her 6 year old twin sons, Nicolas & Daniel (Tolleshunt, D'Arcy, Essex, England; August 1985), & sentenced to 5 life terms. Jeremy claims he was wrongly convicted & that his adoptive sister, a schizophrenic, actually killed their adopters, her children & then committed suicide. After he was incarcerated, he attempted to connect with his natural parents but they made it clear they wanted nothing to do with him due to the verdict of the court that he killed 5 members of his adoptive family. Source: http://innocent.org.uk/cases/jeremybamber/

• Barnett, David M.

  Sentenced to death for the 2-4-96 stabbing deaths & robbery of his adoptive paternal grandparents in their Glendale, Missouri home + 2 consecutive life sentences on armed criminal action & robbery. Barnett claims, among other things, that his attorney failed to investigate & provide an expert witness to testify as to his "birth" family's extensive history of alcohol & other substance abuse, depression & other mental illnesses & his mother's lack of prenatal care the jury was never informed of his traumatic & painful life experiences, the prosecutor used religious (scripture) references & matters outside the record & the adopters' family's wish that he not be executed was ignored. The State contended that there is no right to effective assistance of post-conviction counsel. Source: State of Missour v. David Barnett, St. Louis County, Death Penalty; http://www.courts.mo.gov/SUP/index.nsf/0/0b5191e7fbb19c2286256c950057e?OpenDocument

• Boggess, Clifford Holt, 21

  Adoptee, executed at age 33, 6-11-98, in Texas for 2 homicides in 1986, including his adopter's father who actually raised him. He was the 10th child born to Mary Elizabeth Mann, one of several children not by her husband. Mary abused drugs, alcohol & her kids--3 died a violent death. ["The search for his biological mother & what she might reveal came too late--She had been dead for 20 years."] Clifford was at first left in the care of his 9-year old sister & to a brother later imprisoned for child molestation; then he was placed in an orphanage, 2 years later adopted by Steve & Shirley Boggess in Alabama. One of his adoptive brothers was jailed for child molestation. When he was 4, his adopters divorced & he was sent to Texas live with his adopter's father who subjected him to beatings until he murdered him. Source: Frontline PBS Transcript "The Execution" - 2-9-99 - http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/execution; & Chosen Children, http://TheChosenChildren.com

• Bourgeois-Greer, Michael, 17

  A Black child, adopted at age 17 in Ohio, by Terry Smith, 50, his wife Lucy Smith, 51. He shot & brutally stabbed both his adopters to death with accomplice Landon May, 19--both charged with first degree murder.

  Source: "The Truth at Last ," http://thetruthatlast.com/newspapers/440_p05_interacial_adoption/

• Campbell, Patrick, 20

  Killed his adopters, Kenneth & Anna May Campbell, with a hatchet & sledgehammer & claimed that anguish over his adoption as a small child in Michigan by a Farmington Hills couple in CT contributed to his insanity.

  Source: "Adoption Called Key To Killing" Detroit Free Press, 4-22-88

• Carter, Sean, 18

  Born 3/9/79, taken from his mother in 1981 & adopted at age 10 by Evelyn Prince Carter who threw him out of her house. He then lived with his adoptive grandmother until 1997 when he was incarcerated for theft, & killed her by stabbing her 18 times after sodomizing her & [His execution was stayed]. http://caselaw.findlaw.com/data2/indianastatecases/app/02190103.msn.doc Sean Carter confessed that he "went off" during an argument with 68-year-old Veader Prince after she told him to move out of her home in West Farmington, Ohio, according to documents filed with the court. Source: State vs. Carter, 98-921.

• Catlin, Steven

  Adopted as an infant in 1944, by Glenn & Martha Rose Catlin, of Fresno, California. His first arrest was at age 19 for forgery & theft & he had been drug addicted. Over several years' time, he murdered both his adopters & 2 of his 6 wives, Joyce Adeline Catlin 5-6-76, Glenda Kay Catlin with Paraquat poison. Because he had their bodies quickly cremated, it was undiscovered. Convicted on a single murder count, he drew a term of life imprisonment . In Bakersfield, where other charges waited, prosecutors hoped to see him executed. http://www.crimezzz.net/serialkillers/e/CHARD_WILLIAMS_ada.htm

• Chase, Jeffrey, 17

  "Jeffrey Chase was adopted at 4 months in 1958, when adoption privacy was paramount and no information on biological parents was released. Jeffrey began exhibiting personality problems when he was 2 years old. Through the preschool, elementary, and high school years he displayed increasingly severe behavioral disorders. At 17, he assaulted a 4-year-old girl, choking and traumatizing her. He was tried for attempted murder, convicted, and sentenced to 30 years in prison. After serving 21 troubled years, he was released. Within 6 weeks he shot and killed his adoptive parents." Source: http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Acropolis/9830/articulo15.htm

• Clark, James B., 39

  Gloria Jean Morden was shot to death by her ex-partner, who also killed his adoptive parents at the same time, Gore Bay, OIntario, Canada (August 1996)...while on parole from 22-years served for kidnapping a 16 year old girl. He had asked NOT to be paroled saying he could not cope with release (to his adopters). Sources: Ontario Women's Justice Network Archive, Nov. 1998 at http://www.owjn.org/archive/gender2.htm & Kay Russell, Ghost Dancer's Anti-Adoption Pages, http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950

• Clayton, Hugo, 14, (Guatemalan adoptee)

  The Lexington County (South Carolina)teenager was sentenced to 10 years in prison after admitting to stabbing his adoptive mother to death.... Debra Clayton was stabbed in her home in Red Bank in 2003. Investigators say the knife was found under the boy’s bed. Hugo Clayton will be kept in a juvenile facility until he turns 17 in May & then will be transferred to an adult prison. The boy was adopted from Guatemala. Prosecutor Dayton Riddle says the boy killed his [adopter] after being required to speak only English on the day of her death. Riddle says the boy had also been punished for—not—getting up to go to work with his father. The youngest daughter of Keith and Debi Clayton celebrated her 5th birthday without her mother or older brother. Keith Clayton says his faith has helped him forgive the (then 14-year old), who they adopted from Guatemala (when he was 13). While police are pushing for the boy to be tried as an adult, Clayton says he wants his son treated as a child. He says his son deserves to be punished, but doesn’t need to spend his life in prison. Source: AP, July 20, 2005 -http://www.amren.com/mtnews/archive/2005/07/boy_sentenced_f.php

• Cooke, Joshua, 19

  Sentenced to 112 years-to-life for killing both his adopters, Paul Cooke, 51, & Margaret Cooke, 51, at their Oakton, Virginia home, with a shotgun, after a series of rejections. During the entire 90-minute interrogation, Joshua offered only one detail suggesting any conflict with his [adoptive] parents...Joshua said they had always refused to give them [him & his adoptive sister] any information about their birth parents. Later, he revealed the physical & emotional abuse by his adoptive mother who had never known her own father. In 1984, when Joshua was age 1 & his sister Tiffany was a newborn, they were removed frm their parents. In 1986, the Cookes adopted Joshua at age 3, Tiffany, 2, not knowing that both children had been physically abused (beaten) in foster care. Joshua doesn't remember his parents who had been declared unfit & neglectful & his father, a male prostitute who repeatedly beat Joshua's mother who was also a prostitute had been diagnosed paranoid schizophenic, according to their Ohio adoption records. Also in his adoption file was a photo & letter from his mother who had kept track of him, saying she loved him & asking him to forgive her. By the time he got to trial, Joshua had been diagnosed as schizophrenic without utward signs due to being "detached from the self." Source: "I Don't Think They Deserved It," by Peter Pearl, Washinton Post, http://WashingtonPost.com , 11-30-03, p. W-16.

• Corne, James, 29

  [Auburn, WA] A severely depressed & schzophrenic drug user, Corne took a butcher knife, slipped behind his 54 year old female adopter, Peggy Corne, and, as horrified family members watched, stabbed her to death. Corne told police she was "pushing his buttons" and making him angry. Source: "Man Gets 22 Years for Killing Mother," by Nancy Bartley, Seattle Times, 3-24-01.

• Coulson, Robert Otis, 24

  "Executed 6-26-02 by lethal injection in Huntsville, Texas for the murder of both his adopters and three other family members when he was 24..... Robert Bennett, Robin and Robert Coulson's natural father, said he is opposed to his son's execution - although his son was convicted of murdering his other natural daughter. He is facing an ugly decision: He has one child that was convicted of killing the other and now the state say that child must die.....[In] a letter he wrote to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles..... he asks that his son be spared from execution. He also told of the 'guilt' he has felt over the years for allowing his children to be put up for adoption, blaming Texas for pushing him to do so." - Excerpted from "The Death House," online source of death penalty news, by Robert Anthony Phillips

• Cox, Johnnie

  Executed 2-16-99 in Arkansas for 3 murders including his adoptive grandmother, Marie Sellers, 68, Margaret Brown, 36, & Billy Brown, 32. They had been shot, stabbed & strangled before Cox set their home afire.

  Source: http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/Pending/99/feb_execlist.html

• Degelleke, Patrick, 14

  Admitted that he set fire to his adopters' house. His adoptive mother died [that day] but his father survived for 10 days before he died. Prosecuted for murder, he disclosed that before being adopted at age 6, he had lived with his mother in Ohio for the first 3 years of his life; his mother had turned to prostitution to keep food on the table & was gone from the house for long periods. His adopters treated adoption with a sense of denial. Patrick said he never intended for anyone to be hurt but wanted people to think he died in the fire...so he could hop a train back to Ohio, find his mother & live happily ever after. He had an absence of feelings about his adopters. He served 9 years, is now out & living with one of his adoptive sisters. Source: "Violence in Adoption," a talk by Donald Humphrey, adoptee & attorney, at 9-23-92 conference of The American Adoption Congress.

• Diaz, Monica, 16

  Born 10-31-83, Monica was adopted by Richard Angel Flores, 42. Together with her high school boyfriend, she fatally stabbed Flores, his wife Sylvia, 3 adoptive siblings, & wounded her female adopter, Sylvia Flores, allegedly because her adopters disapproved of her boyfriend whom she had dated for a year; students who knew them said her adopters were too strict.

  Source: Beth & Joe Matthews, Los Angeles Times, 7-27-00; & LA County District Attorney; http://www.cybersleuths.com/news/00__2000news/04112000.2141.htm

• Domingues, Joel Lee, 33, (Wrongly Convicted !!!)

  SEE JOEL'S WEB PAGE at http://AdoptedPrisoners.com (Scroll down to GEORGIA listings & Click on his name or photo). The complex family relationships by birth & by adoption, detailed on Joel's page, connect 2 Murders -- the 1996 murder of Melissa Fuss' adopter, Inez "Jackie" Fuss (GA)for which her adoptive son, Charles Fuss (whose web page is at AdoptedPrisoners.com under GEORGIA also) may have been wrongly convicted, & the 1999 murder of Kelley Fuss, wife of David Fuss who ws also the adoptive son of Inez "Jackie Fuss" -- Joel Domingues is wrongly convicted for the 1990 murder,framed by his sister, Melissa according to their mother & others -- Her web page is at AdoptedPrisoners.com under GEORGIA also for the 1999 murder. Joel and his sisters were adopted separately. He writes: "I'm tired of being locked up for a crime I didn't commit. If the judge would only read my trial transcripts, I'm sure I would be released, but I see that isn't going to happen and I don't have any friends left -- They abandoned me as soon as they found out I got Life...and life is hell alone in prison where I get suckered into fights because of my large size." Born 5-16-66, as "Joel Lee Bensing," he was abused in foster homes, & in 2 failed adoptions, & was subsequently re-adopted by his own mother, Sandra Race Cano (Domingues), aka "Mary Doe" in "Doe v. Bolton," a Georgia abortion case heard by the US Supreme Court on the same day as the better-known "Roe v. Wade" case. See Joel's web page for the incredible details. Source: Atlanta Journal-Constitution archives, 1-22-03, "Roe v. Wade" role Just a Page in Rocky Life"; direct interviews with Joel's attorney, mother, & others involved with Joel & who state he is innocent.

• Dreyer, Henry Lee, 17

  His mother left him with his grandparents who put him up for adoption; he was adopted at age 7 by recently-divorced Carol Dreyer. On 1-29-88 when he was 17, he & killed her & her boyfriend, Gary Engleman, in their sleep. He & his adopter argued a lot & he had run away from home several times. He criticized media for referring to Carol Dreyer as "his mother" stating that Dreyer & Englemam were not his parents. Source: San Diego Tribune, 1-30-98

• Duff-Smith, Markum, 28

  Convicted & executed by lethal injection in TX for contract killing of his female adopter Gertrude Duff-Smith Zabolio.

• Foell, David

  Native American, born with fetal alcohol syndrome, adopted as a child by the Singletons, sexually abused by his adoptive father. Convicted of killing his 69 year old adoptive grandmother, Marian Atkinson, by stabbing her 16 times (2-19-91, Iowa). Source: http://www.judicial.state.ia.us/appeals/opinions/20011228/00-1536.asp

• Fuss, Charles Allen, 36, (Possibly Innocent/Framed!)

  Born 12-16-65, Charles, was convicted & sentenced to Life Without Parole for the murder of Inez "Jackie" Fuss with an axe, in 1996 (GA), allegedly after a quarrel over an $1,800 phone sex bill. He & his adoptive sisters, Melissa Fuss Able & Margaret Branch, were adopted by Jackie who reportedly abused them. His adoptive sister, Margaret Branch, was Jackie's biological daughter. Melissa's biological mother, Sandra Race Cano (Domingues) accuses Melissa of that murder & a subsequent murder. At some point after the 1996 murder, Charles Fuss was diagnosed as "schizophrenic." Jackie died without a will; but the division of her property among her children after her death precipitated a 3-year property fight among her heirs that the DeKalb County police now believe also led to the 1999 slaying of Kelly Lindsey Fuss, wife of Inez' adopted son, David. The complex biological and adoptive family relationships & abuse connect the 2 murders, are detailed on Charles Fuss' web page at http://AdoptedPrisoners.com (Scroll down to GEORGIA listings & Click on Charles' name or photo to access his page, & also web pages for Joel Valadez Domingues (wrongly convicted of the 1999 murder), Melissa Fuss Able, & Margaret Branch, also under GEORGIA. Source: Atlanta Journal-Consitution archives, 6-17-99 "Estate Dispute Led to Slaying, Police Say"; & direct interviews with family members, Joel's attorney, & others.

• Garner, Joseph

  In 1995 in Indiana, he killed his adoptive father, Paul Garner, by beating, cutting, stabbing him with a knife, drove a dowel rod through his head, ate part of his brain, then skinned part of his body post mortem. He struggled with alcoholism & his adoptive mother, Charlotte Garner, said Joseph had stalked her & beat her after the couple divorced in 1988. Joseph claimed his adoptive father sodomized him as a child. Source: Detroit Free Press, 1-28-95, & http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/scripts/getcase.pl?courts=in&vol=121801.rts&invol=o2

• Gebauer, John Frank, 15

  Charged as an adult for murder and rape of his adopter Allison Gebauer. Source: http://www.post-gazette.com/regionstate/20020219gebauer0219pb.asp

• Goodman, Sierra, 17

  Born March 1984, Sierra was legally adopted by Melvin & Audry Goodman but never bonded with them. She had endured a "history of parental abandonment," numerous foster & pre-adoptive placements. Termed a "victim of system abuse," Sierra, together with Darryl Headbird, 14, stabbed Gene & Carol Campbell, Sierra's former foster parents who had tried to adopt her in 1992, after headbird had murdered his father. Source: Native American Press/Ojibwe News, 9-14-01; http://www.maquah.net/clara/Press-ON/01-09-14.html

• Hamlin, (first name withheld), 10

  Arrested & charged as a juvenile in Humboldt, Kansas, for the 4/25/05 shotgun slaying of his adoptive father, Robert Hamlin, 42, & threatening to kill his adoptive mother who escaped with 2 of the boy's 4 siblings (the other 2 sibs were found in the house, unharmed). News reports commented that the boy was "fairly calm," was concerned only that "They're going to spank me hard," & could be held until age 23 if convicted. Sources: Chanda Brown, "Child Shoots Father," KSN News, 4-26-05, a http://www.ksn.com/new/stories/7640676.html, "Boy, 10, Is Charged with Murder in Shotgun Slaying of His Father," 4-28-05, http://www.kansascity.com/mld/kansascity/news/local/11507267.htm, "Kansas Town Shocked, Boy May Have Shot Dad," Carl Manning, Associated Press Writer, Kansas City Star, http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20504028/ap_on_re_us/child_charged%3b_

• Harper Jr., Edward ("Eddie") Lee

  Shot both of his adopters to death (12-19-92) & executed 5-25-00, Kentucky. Source: Kentucky Herald-Leader & Rick Halperin; http://www.erroloys/AbouttheAuthor.htm & AfroCentric News; http://www.afrocentricnews.com/html/execute.html

• Harvey, Holly, 15

  Holly stabbed to death her [adoptive] grandparents, Carl & Sarah Collier, with whom she had been living since her mother went to prison... ...The Colliers so loved children that when they could not have their own, they adopted two babies to raise in their new home north of Fayetteville, Ga. More than 30 years later, they looked with pride upon their adopted son, Kevin, who is active in his church & followed his father's footsteps in working for Delta Air Lines. When it came to their adopted daughter, the Colliers had reason to seek group prayer for Carla Harvey, a known trouble maker who had two daughters fathered by two different men. Carla, who is serving a three-year prison sentence for possession of marijuana, left her parents to care for her 15-year-old daughter, Holly. Holly's father, a paraplegic confined to a wheelchair after an accident, could not raise her himself, so the Colliers took on the task of trying to straighten out the young girl's life despite her repeated attempts to run away from home. "They found her and brought her back and they were trying to help her," Gaskins told 11Alive's Jon Shirek. In return for their help, police say, Holly and a friend [Sandy Ketchum, 15] stabbed her grandparents to death Monday night inside the home they built 35 years ago. Carl's body was found in the kitchen while his wife was slain in the basement. Kevin Collier was informed of his parents' deaths while practicing in the orchestra at the First Baptist Church of Atlanta. "Kevin said that she (Holly) said last Saturday that she was going to kill them so I guess she did," said neighbor Ivelyn Hanie. Source: WXIA-TV, Atlanta, GA, 4-14-05 - http://www.wxia.com/news/news_article.aspx?storyid=61707 & -storyid=50033

• Heater, Naomi KImberly

  Jury faces question of intent in slaying: Did woman mean to kill her mother? Six years ago, Naomi Kimberly Heater saved her mother's life by donating a kidney for a transplant operation. Source: Sacramento Bee - http://www.cybersleuths.com/news/00-1999news/110/1999.htm

• Heikkila, Matthew, 20

  Shot & killed his adopters, Richard & Dawn Heikkila, 1-29-91. On the shotgun shells he had written "Mom" & "Dad." There didn't seem to be anyone with whom Dawn was acquainted who hadn't listened to her complaint about the boy she adopted. Richard Heikkila felt compelled to "cure" what he considered to be Matthew's "biological defects". Psychotherapist David Kirschner's analysis of Heikkila's "Adopted Child Syndrome" saved the youth from the Death Penalty & he may be eligible for parole at age 60. Source: Los Angeles Times, 4-27-93; FOX-tv "A Current Affair" 6-30-9; Laurence Arnold, "Woman Said She Aborted Heikkila Child", Courier News(NJ) 1-12-93; http://AdoptedPrisoners.com

• Helm, Roger Scott, 14

  Tried in adult court, he is serving a life sentence for killing both of his adopters & 16-yr. old adoptive sister in their sleep, when he was 14 & high on LSD. Source: Helm's letters to Lori Carangelo/AmFOR

• Hittle, Daniel Joe

  Killed his adopters in Minnesota, he served 11 years in prison before parole in 1984. In 1989 after a feud with his drug dealer & his wife, he begand shooting at police, killing an officer before surrendering. He was executed 12-6-00 at Huntsville, TX. Source: David Carson, December Press,12-13-00; & http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/us/hittle679.htm

• Hoskins, Robert, 15

  Murdered his adopters & brother with multiple stab wounds, 5/83, in Mineral Springs, WI, after discovering the year before that he was adopted & told that his parents "didn't want him," that his mother was a "whore" & other degrading statements about her which bothered him so he began to resent his adopters. His male adopter, a boxer, often hit him in the face, stomach & ribs. Source: The Capital Times, Madison, WI, 8-12-83

• Jenkins, Joshua, 15

  In 1996, using a hammer, knife & axe, he killed 5 members of his adoptive family -- his adopters, their parents, & another child in their Las Vegas home, during a visit to his grandparents' condominium in San Diego County because he was unhappy about being sent to the Vista del Mar boarding school for troubled youths in West Los Angeles. On 2-2-96, his family -- who lived in Las Vegas -- picked him up from school and took him to his grandparent's condominium in the exclusive community of The Terraces to spend the weekend. There, after an argument with his [adoptive] mother, he bludgeoned his [adoptive] parents & grandparents to death with a hammer. Inexplicably, somehow he kept his 10-year-old sister Megan from discovering the carnage. He then cleaned the murder weapons, took a shower, changed his clothes, set the place on fire & left. He had always wanted to know about his parents but was never told. His adopters said they had a letter from his mother but refused to show it to him because of their desire to replace his parents. When placed in [Vista del Mar], he felt his adopters had abandoned him. For years, he had been hostile toward his adopters. He said he thought his “parents” had abandoned him. Did he mean his adopters, or was he expressing the pain of losing his real parents? Four psychiatrists agreed that the boy suffered from chronic depression. Initially Josh pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Although all psychologist and psychiatrist who have examined the troubled youth agree that he is mentally ill, some do not consider him insane. On 4-16-97, a day before his trail was set to begin, Josh changed his plea to guilty. Jenkins' defense lawyer, Jack Campbell, said the plea change was in the teenager's best interest but was unusual because neither the judge nor the prosecutors made concessions. If found insane, he could be sentenced to a state hospital. If found sane, he faces a maximum of 140 years in prison. Source: Las Vegas Review Journal, 4-17-97; & Adopted Serial Killers- http://www.geocities.com/Wellesley/9950/adoption_serialkillers.html

• Johnson, Lamont S., 21

  Said to have a history of psychological problems, he bludgeoned his male adopter, Bracey C. Johnson, to death with an axe. Source: Katie Thorne, The Augusta Chronicle, 6-1-01

• Kasten, Daniel

  Killed his adopters, Edith & Joseph Kasten, using a rifle, in Ronkonkoma, NY. Source: Carolyn Cowell, Newsday

• Kislov, Yaroslav, 12

  Hired 2 "hit men," ages 18 & 19, to kill his adopters in Volgograd, Russian, home to thousands of orphans. Source: The Observer, 5-26-02

• Koslow, Kristi, 17

  Murdered her male adopter's wife (her stepmother), oil heiress Caren Koslow, & attempted to murder her male adopter, Jack Koslow. Source: "Teen Gets Life Term," Pittsburgh Post, 7-1-94.

• Lascola, Dr. Raymond

  Killed his wealthy female adopter. Source: Boston Globe/AP, 10-8-80

• Lisker, Bruce, 17, (Wrongly Convicted?)

  The evidence seemed overwhelming 20 years ago when Bruce Lisker was convicted of killing his adopter, Dorka Lisker,66, in a fit of rage. But new investigation reveals previously ignored evidence, investigator's lies, and alleged false confessions by Lisker ... He had a drug problem and a history of fighting with adopter...In recent months, new information had shaken faith in the fairness of the verdict: A bloody footprint found at the scene did not match Lisker's shoes. A mysterious phone call made around the time of the murder raised further questions. Whatever the truth, it's this writer's opinion that Bruce Lisker was "wrongly convicted." For details of this story & more photos, see "Adoptees Wrongly Convicted?" at http://AmFOR.net/WronglyConvicted Excerpted from Source: "A CASE OF DOUBT - New Light on a Distant Verdict" by Scott Glover and Matt Lait, LA Times Staff Writers http://www.latimes.com/lisker, 5-22-05 (see also http://www.freebruce.org)

• Little Jr., Charlie

  Born Alexander Julian Morgan, he killed his adopters, Arlene & Charles Little Sr., with a shotgun & covered it up as a burglary. Source: Iowa v. Alxander Julian Morgan, 1986

• Long, Justin Ryan, 15

  Stabbed to death his adoptive father, Hoyt Long, after suffering horrific physical & sexual abuse resulting in mental illness. Sentenced to Life without Parole. Source: http://www.pscn.ne/appication/osch/deliverdocument.asp?citeID=437217

• Losicco, Richard, 28, and
• Losicco, Terrence, 20

  Richard murdered his male adopter, Pasquale Losicco & critically wounded his female adopter, Anna Losicco. Richard's adoptive brother, Terrence, was then serving a life sentence for the 1980 murder of Helen Prou. Source: "Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption," book by Marsha Riben.

• McMullen, Jonathan, 14

  Killed his adopter, Kristina McMullen, by shooting her 5 times; wounded his male adopter Andrew McMullen & adoptive brother, Jack McMullen, on 9-6-01 at Elgin, AZ. Source: AZ Daily Wildcat, 9-14-01; Charisma News Service Update, "Widowed Man Forgives Adoptive Son for Attack," 9-14-01. The teen pleaded guilty to manslaughter, gave up his right to a jury trial, and has been locked up for years, but he was never formally sentenced. On 7-7-05, the Arizona Court of Appeals is deciding who should sentence McMullen, the judge he confessed to, or a jury. Frank Leto, a Public Defender, says, "We are dealing with a brain-damaged 14-year-old who suffers from impulse control, slightly retarded." Depending on the court's ruling, McMullen could be released as soon as December of this year, or he could face 8 more years in prison. Attorneys expect the court to rule in a few weeks, but the controversy isn't likely to end there. The side that loses is expected to continue to appeal. Source: KVOA-Tuscon, 7-7-05: http://kvoa.com/Global/story.asp?S=34450168&nav=HMO6aoAz

• Miller, George, 18

  Honor student who beat his female adopter to death with a baseball bat in an argument over grades. Source: Marsha Riben, New York Post, 1-12-85,page 5

• Moorman, Robert Henry, 36

  Born 6-4-48. While serving 9 years-to-Life at Arizona State Prison in Florence, Moorman was given a 72-hour compassionate furlough to visit with his 73-year-old adoptive mother. The two stayed at the Blue Mist Motel in Florence. On 1-3-84, Moorman bound & gagged her & then strangled & stabbed her, chopped the body into many parts & disposed of them in dumpsters throughout Florence. He was then sentenced to Death based on Aggravating Circumstances, Prior conviction punishable by life imprisonment, Pecuniary gain, Especially heinous/cruel/depraved & no Mitigating Circumstances sufficient to call for leniency Source: http://www.supreme.state.az.us/courtserv/CrtProj/capsentguid/page50.html & http://azcentral.com/specials/special32/articles/0904moorman-ON.html

• Mox, Gregory Richard, 21

  Incarcerated in Michigan for murdering bludgeoning his adopters to death & setting the home on fire. His adopters & Catholic Services refused to provide him even non-identifying information about his parents, despite that other incarcerated Michigan adoptees who killed were provided such information. Source: AmFOR's direct contacts with Mox & Catholic Services, & Detroit FreePress archived newsclips - http://freep.com

• Niiranen, Patrick, 37

  Born 6-2-59 in Portland, OR, & immediately taken home by Henry & Mercedes Niiranean who adopted him. Mrs. Niiranean physically & emotionally abused him; her husband once hit him with a baseball bat. By teenage, he was livng in foster homes, shelters, the street, adicted to cocaine. He bludgeoned his adopters to death with a 3-lb. sledgehammer in a rage, then spent all the cash in his adopter's wallet on a 9-day drug binge. In 1980 he hired a PI to find his mother but the PI abandoned him. Since imprisonment, he filed a request for his original birth certificate in Oregon, insisting his mother has nothing to fear "I just want to tell her I love her." Source: Seamus McGraw, APB News.com, 6-2-00.

• Ortiz, Jeffrey R., 14

  On 7-30-97, in Indiana, he strangled & bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer his adopter, Rebecca Ortiz. He then spent the day driving freinds around in her car on a shopiing spree with his adopter's credit cards to purchase a car, CD player, flowers, lunch & movie tickets for the group. Although he told police that he had argued with his adopter over a $1,000 bill he had run up on 1-900 sex phone calls, and he had stolen money from her, forgered her checks & taken her car without permission previously, the night before the murder, his adopter ordered him out of the house by the end of that week & that likely triggered the murder. Source: http://www.in.gov/judiciary/opinions/archive/09109901.trb.html

• Peterson, Angel

  Threw a firebomb through their window while they slept, trapping & killing the couple who adopted her 8 years prior. Source: "Fatal Bombing Was Vengeance for Beatings Prosecutor Says," Detroit Free Press, 11-8-94

• Prink, Timothy, 20

  Convicted of shotgun slayings of 4 adoptive family members after an argument with his adoptive sister, Holly Prink, who had been calling him names and putting him down; she escaped being killed when his shotgun misfired. Source: The Desert Sun (Palm Springs), 10-4-97.

• R., Marika, 21

  Marika is in the delinquency system in San Joaquin County, California, for second-degree murder & use of a firearm -- She shot & killed her male adopter who had molested her & her siblings for years. The following lines are excerpted from a poem she wrote: "Do you think you know me; Do you know what makes me who I am... A man I once called Daddy; A man I learned hated me; A man who haunts my dreams...Will he ever let me rest; Will he ever let my pain stop...How many times must I kill him before he dies." Source: www.courtinfo.ca.gov/programs/ cfcc/pdffiles/PoetryBook2004.pdf

• Reynolds, Jacquiline "Nikki", 17

  Adopted as at age 3 months, Jacquiline "Nikki" Reynolds never denied plunging a 14-inch blade into her 49 year old adopter, Billie Jean Reynolds, more than 25 times, she claims she was insane when she committed the May 14, 1997 murder.... According to prosecutors, Nikki, then 17, was so distraught over the breakup with her boyfriend, Carlos Infante, that she plotted to kill him. But when her parents unknowingly got in the way of her plans, Nikki also plotted their murders.... Robert Reynolds, a commercial truck enforcement officer, said their relationship with their daughter seemed fine until her high school years. Robert claims Nikki's relationship with her mother began to deteriorate, & the teen-ager exhibited mood swings. The concerned parents sought counseling for Nikki from a church minister. By early 1997, Nikki was dating fellow student Carlos Infante... Fearing she may be pregnant, Nikki told her parents she had been raped by a stranger. .. But after police determined that the story was fabricated, Nikki eventually confessed to her mother that she had made it up. ... Each time the two would break up, Nikki would tell Infante that she was pregnant in hopes of getting him back. Prosecutors say Infante again ended his relationship with Nikki — but this time, Nikki began planning to murder him...Nikki told police she decided to eliminate her parents so that she would keep her scheduled time to kill her boyfriend....While she was stabbing Billie Jean, Nikki apologized & asked Reynolds if she was "dying yet." When Reynolds was able to answer that she was dying, Nikki stabbed her several more times. Nikki called 911 & confessed to the slaying. The Defense attempted to prove that Nikki inherited severe depression & psychological problems from her biological mother, Katrina Ramos. Ramos said she thought she was doing the right thing by giving her up for adoption...& still loves her daughter. Source: The Sun Sentinel & Miami Herald, 1997; & Court TV, 6-8-05, http://www.courttv.com/trials/taped/reynolds.html

• Rodriguez, Ricky, 29

  Adopted as "Davito" by "Family International/Children of God" cult leader, Karen "MAria David" Zerby & David Berg, he was sexually abused since infancy by cult members & killed one of his abusers before committing suicide, in Blythe, CA. Source: "After My Mother, All I Need is One Bullet for Myself," TimesOnline, 2-9-05; http://timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,7-147423,00.html & San Francisco Chronicle, 1-17-05

• Rogers, Dayton Leroy, 22, (Molalla Forest Killer)

  Born in 1954 in Idaho & adopted & raised in Oregon, along with another boy & 2 girls by Ortis & Jasparelle Rogers, devout Seventh Day Adventists who told their adopted children they had "an evil entity inside their bodies." Dayton beat his male adopter to death, stabbed a girl who rejected his advances, committed several rapes & & was convicted of 6 stabbing/muilation murders of young women; sentenced to Death in Oregon. Source: "Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption," book by Marsha Riben; & Dayton Leroy Rogers web-site; & "Serial KIllers A-Z", http://www.geocities.com/verbal_plainfield/q-z/rogers.html

• Sellers, Sean, 16

  On 3-5-86, he shot & killed his mother, Vonda Bellefatto & his adoptive father, Lee Bellefatto, while they slept. Previously (9-8-85), he had killed a convenience store clerk; he said he did is "just to see what it feels like to kill someone" & that he is a victim of "multiple personality disorders." Source: http://www.prodeathpenalty.com/Pending/99/feb_execlist.html

• Sherman, Timothy Scott, 19

  DOB: 8/24/69. Shot his mother & adoptive father to death as they slept (Maryland, 1988) & was sentenced to 2 consecutive life terms. Source: "Young Killers," http://karisable.com/youngmurder.htm

• Singleton, James Joseph, 23

  On 8-18-02, he killed both his adopters, Ralph Singleton, 55, & Sherida Singleton, 53, by stabbing them more than 50 times with a Chinese Militia sword, in their Rylie, Texas home. Sentenced to life in prison. Upon providing his confession, he said "I don't know why it should have happened." Asked "Why?" by his adoptive uncle, he reportedly replied "When you see an opportunity you take it. Source: KHOU (TX)/AP, 2-4-05, http://wwwKHOU.com/cgi-bin/bi/gold_print.cgi

• Smullen, Bruno Lorenzo, 16

  Stabbed to death his male adopter, Warren Smullen, 57. Appealed his conviction unsuccessfully, claiming Battered Child Sydrome. "On the morning of Saturday, May 6, 2000, while several of his adopted siblings remained asleep upstairs in the family home, Bruno Smullen stabbed and cut his adopted father twenty two times with a large kitchen knife. He then proceeded to attack and threaten his adopted siblings when they investigated the noises they were hearing downstairs. After all three siblings escaped from their attacker, Smullen fled the scene. Upon finding Smullen sitting on a street curb, the police read him Miranda rights, and interrogated him at a nearby hospital. Smullen admitted to the events of that morning, at which point police recorded a formal confession. He claimed that he was trying to kill his [adopter] before his [adopter] killed him. Smullen claimed the father was abusive in that he said threatening things to him, and had hit him in the chest with a piece of wood." Baltimore Sun reported: "The carnage inside the tidy, gray-shingled bungalow stunned even seasoned police investigators. Not one room, they say, was left without some trace of blood. For friends at St. James African Methodist Episcopal Zion Church, the horror of the stabbing death of 57-year-old Warren Smullen was magnified when they learned that Smullen's son, a teen-ager who spent much of his time at worship or in youth group activities, had been charged in a slashing rampage." Source: Baltimore Sun, 5-10-00; and Amicus brief filed in Maryland Court - http://www.courts.state.md.us/publications/amicus4_04.html

• Soni, Gita

  Hired someone to kill her 73 year old male adopter, Adi Ardeshir Cursetjee, in Gamvedia, India. Source: 6-2-03 report, http://www.mid-day.com/news/city/2003/june/54631.htm)

• Stoddard, Daniel Paul, 19

  Adopted in infancy by Patricia & Tom Stoddard, he was diagnosed as schizophrenic & bipolar & sentenced to life for the multiple-stabbing death of his adoptive father. Prior to the murder, his adopters had sought treatment for him & he spent several years in & out of institutions. Daniel had told friends he was tired of his adopters "throwing him around like a rag doll," that he was going to live with his bilogical mother in Virginia. Before the murder, he asked a friend for a place to stay but was told there was "no room." Source: Kootenai County News, 4-2-01, & ICDVVA News Database 8-31-02; & http://www.state.id.us/crimevictim/news/news.cfm?category=7&chapter=65&article=368

• Struebing, Kurt Alan, 20

  In April 1986 when he was 20, a guitarist for his black metal band & on drugs, Kurt Struebing killed his adopter, Dalee Struebing, 53, with a hatchet & pair of scissors. He was sentenced to 12 years for 2nd Degree Murder; released in 1994, reformed his band, "NME," gained international fame, became a trusting friend & doting father of one son, & was killed at age 39 on 3-11-05 when he drove his car through 2 barriers & plunged 50 feet off the opening of a span bridge. Police investigators & motorists who saw the crash were puzzled why Struebing drove off the bridge. Friends said he didn't like to talk about his past & for most it didn't matter; Kurt's mission in life was to help others; "his humility was endearing" & "everybody respected the hell out of him." Source: http://seattlepi.com/local/215517_kurt11.html & http://www.seattlemetal.com/news.php

• Swartz, Larry, 17

  On 1-16-84, at Cape St. Clair, MD, days after his adopter, Kathryn Swartz, had Social Services case workers remove his 15-year old adoptive brother, Michael, from their home, Kathryn threatened to do the same to Larry. Larry then struck Kathryn on her head with a wood maul & stabbed her 7 times with a kitchen knife, then turned on Robert Swartz, killing both his adopters. Michael was convicted in 1990 of murdering a Crownsville man over a jar of coins and is still serving time in the Maryland Correctional Institution in Hagerstown. Larry was tried as a juvenile, convicted for the murders & released after serving his sentence; he was well liked by the community, had married, had a son, and had finally found happiness when he suffered a massive heart attack and died at age 38, 12-29-04. His compelling story is detailed in "The Second Life of Larry Swartz: Friends Remember Murderer as 'God's Gift to Life'", by MarylandMissing, Websleuths forum at: http://websleuths.com/forums/archive/index.php/t-18711

• Swofford, Jerry, (Mental age of 10)

  Described as a "mentally retarded youth," Swofford stabbed his 68-year-old adoptive father, Oren Swofford, 6 times with a butcher knife while the victim lay sleeping, on 12-26-83. The youth was home on Christmas furlough from a mental health facility. Source: "Fulton Jury Awards Retarded Youth $50,000; Released Mental Patient Killed His Adoptive Father," Atlanta Journal & Atlanta Constitution, 6-17-88.

• Tankleff, Martin "Marty", 18

  Having maintained that his confession was coerced, Marty is seeking a new trial with support from some members of his adoptive family. Their website provides recent court rulings, newsclips, & a petition with public commentary invited, at http://www.MartyTankleff.org. Interestingly, in 1988, the Maury Povich Show sensationalized the case of Marty Tankleff, referring to him as an "adoptee" accused of killing his "adoptive parents." But since pressure on media to censor adoption language, the 3-13-2005 CBS-TV's "48 Hours" segments ("Second Chance," & "Prime Suspect") investigated Marty Tankleff's possible innocence in the killing of his "parents" (avoiding thje term "adoptive" parents). The print & video downloads of these segments are at: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/ 2005/03/11/48hours/main679576.shtml On 7-9-05 Marty Tankleff wrote AmFOR: "Thank you for your letter and article...Let me make something very clear, I do not consider myself 'adopted', not does my family. While 'legally' that may correct, I find it offensive when people find a need to use that term in relating to my family. I don't have 'adopted' parents. My parents are my parents, and my 'birth' mother is just that--a woman who brought me into the world. I know the name of my 'birth' mother and what her profession was. So, if I wanted to find her I could. Since I was born in Brooklyn and the adoption was handled by an attorney that was a family friend, I could obtain records if I wanted, but I have more important things to handle right now. Thank you for your support.--Marty" [AmFOR Note: With his adoptive family now supporting his bid for freedom, as well as holding his adoption file, Marty's denial of his adoptive status sounds like he's in the typical Catch-22 between adoptive family loyalties and the normal need to know firsthand, rather than from a secondhand version from an adoptive relative or file folder. Many adoptees have discovered that, regardless whether their adoption file info is true, biased, untrue, and regardless of their mother's past or present situation, the more important issue is that their right to know should not be mired in a conflict of interests. Professional profilers in the Bruce Lisker case see that conflict as giving rise to behaviors which make them vulnerable to being easily coerced into confessions of crimes--whether or not they are guilty of such crimes.]

• Thornton, Jamie Grant, 16

  Shot his male adopter, Gerald Thornton, with his high powered rifle at his home. Source: Daily Times, Watertown, 8-1-94

• Tomassoni, Kathryn Marie, 15, and
• Tomassoni, Tammie Marie, 11

  Shot to death their abusive adopter, Lydia Tomassoni, in the head, after Child Protectciv Services & school authorities ignored their several pleas for help in Sun Lakes, AZ.

• Van Duyne, Arnell, 16

  Born 4/4/85 to Blendell Van Duyne & Purnell Parson (who was slain while working as a security guard), Arnell was adopted at age 12 from foster care, Arnell is serving "Life" (30 years before eligible for parole)"plus 21 years for related crimes," in New Mexico, for killing his female adopter, Norma Young, in Clovis, CA. Blendell Van Duyne says she "never abandoned" Arnell but had given temporary custody of Arnell & his older brother to his aunt & uncle. He ended up in foster care after reportedly sexually abusing a younger sibling, & where he was described as as "a walking time bomb." The Youngs were never advised of his behaviors from emotional trauma of feeling abandoned. Investigators wanted to also charge Arnell with raping Young but never could figure out whether the sexual attack came before or after Young was dead. One during a conversation, Young's husband learned that Arnell missed his biological mother with whom he has maintained contact off & on since incarceration. Source: Tom Archluleta, Albuquerque Tribune Reporter, The State of Our Children, http://web.abqtrib.com/news/kids/021402_news_age16.shtml

• Villareal, Juan Alberto, 44

  Murdered his female adopter, Hilma Villareal, in Falfurrias - Brooks County, Texas; Juan is described as having "no remorse." Source: Corpus Christi Caller Times, 8-21-03

• Weaver, Keith Chul, 14

  Admitted to stabbing murder of his adopters, Anna May Weaver & Raymond Clair Weaver, & his adoptive sister Kimberly, & raped a teenage adoptive relative. Keith was one of 2 Korean orphans adopted by the (White) couple whose biological son described Keith as a "self centered, callous, juvenile delinquent." Weaver's feeling of rejection became a festering mental illness. Source: "Psychologist: 'Weaver's Mind Snapped,'" Intelligencer Journal (Lancaster, PA), 3-12-92; & "Lawyer Wants Teen Accused of 3 Murders Tried as Juvenile; 9/7/91; & "Weaver Tried as Adult", 6/23/93.

• Welche, Lee, 15

  Shot & killed his female adopter, Brenda Welche, 6-15-92, during an argument over household chores. He first shot her in the chest & then reloaded the shotgun & shot her once in the side & once at close range in the head. Welche showed no remorse; psychiatrists attributeed the outbursts to a history of abuse, but the Judge, John T. Hammond, said there was no excuse for killing even if his "mother" was abusive. He reunited with his biological mother after imprisonment. Source: "Teen Son Sentenced as Adult in Slaying," South Bend Tribune, 5-1-92,page B-2.

• Williams, Tavares Eugene, 21

  Serving Life imprisonment in Florida on 1st Degree Premeditated Murder for beating his adopter, Barbara Roth, to death with a baseball bat on 1-24-02 in Gainesville, FL. She was a former social worker who had been assigned who Williams' family when he was a child & adoptd him in 1998. http://www.alligator.org/pt2/050124williams.php

• Wolmarans, Frederik, 20

  Adopted at age 2 weeks, he was charged with stabbing/strangling deaths of his affluent adopters, Koos & Erna Wolmarans, in Durban, South Africa. Source: Dispatch Online 3-14-00 - http://www.dispatch.co.za/2000/04/11/southafrica/CHARGED.HTM

• Wright, Mitchell, 18

  An altar boy, adopted by Donald & Delphine Wright, set up his 15 year old sister, Donette, to be raped & beaten by a friend & then left to die under a log. Donette was half Mexican & the Wrights say MIcthell became hostile toward Blacks & Hispanics after learning his natural mother had given birth to a Black baby & keot that child after putting Mitchell up for adoption. Source: Marsha Riben, The News Journal (NJ), 4/85

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Adoptees Who Killed Their Biological Parents

(Listed alphabetically, with age at time of crime if known.)

• Hendricks, Billy Lynn, 40, bio-mother murder

  According to Court documents, on 12-8-01, Billy Lynn strangled his biological mother to death at her Shreveport, Louisiana home, during an argument over money; she tried CPR unsuccessfully, then drove his mother's car to his adopters' home in Edmond, Oklahoma. The next day, his adoptive sister, Elizabeth Buck, contacted Edmond police. According to his Buck and their adopters, Billy has told them that he & his mother had been drinking when he choked his mother & passed out. Billy was convicted of 2nd degree murder & sentenced to Life imprisonment at hard labor without parole. Although non-adoptees have killed their biological mothers, it is extremely rare that an adoptee has killed his known biological mother & this is the first we've heard of and may be updated if Billy, who is in correspondence with AmFOR, is willing to provide further information, subject to his pending appeals. Source: Louisiana 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals 9-22-04 Judgment- (See also Hendricks' web page at http://AdoptedPrisoners.com)).

• Waddell, Nakisha, 15, stepfather adoption; bio-mother murder

  A 15-year-old Wythe County girl pleaded guilty yesterday to stabbing her mother [Vaughne Roxanne Thomas, 42] to death in a fit of rage, then burying her in their backyard..... A prosecutor described how Waddell flew into a rage and attacked her mother with a hunting knife when the mother called her too "chicken" to do it.... "Something snapped," the daughter told one investigator.... tried to burn the body, but then doused the flames in a panic when smoke started seeping from some of the 43 stab wounds. ....Thomas was upset over phone calls Waddell had made to her real father. The arguing worsened Thursday and, according to Waddell's statement, her mother grew so angry she threw a small figurine at her, bruising her arm. "She would verbally abuse me every day and call me a screw-up," Waddell later told investigators. Source: Times-Dispatch, 12-15-04; http://www.timesdispatch.com/.../MGArticle/RTD_BasicArticle&c=MGArticle&cid=1031779684623

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Mass Murdering Adoptees

(Listed alphabetically, with age at time of crime if known.)

Throughout recorded history, mass-murdering, genocidal villains have been depicted as having been abandoned and/or abused, or felt rejected by one or both parents in childhood, including adoptees...

Even non-adopted, mass murdering children, are triggered by family rejection:

• Freund, William, 19

  In the weeks before he donned a cape & mask & went on a shooting rampage in his Aliso Viejo neighborhood, killing 3 people at random, he had reached out for help on Internet with more than a dozen messages at http://wrongplanet.net asking for a "real life" friend, threatening a "Terror Campaign" & his own suicide. Freund, an adoptee diagnosed with Asberger's (a variation of autism, a neurological disorder, origin unknown). He was described by his former employer as "incredibly smart (a deep thinker) but lacked social skills severely" & Freund described himself online as "the only child of adoptive parents, a student at ITT Technical Institute in Anaheim who enjoyed computers, role playing, fantasy, pugs, food, guns" and his prior suicide attempts, also stating "...my mind's sick with depression." Volunteers offered to contact his adopters but could not locate them. No mention of his "birth" parents nor of William's desire to know about them was mentioned. See "Adopted Child Syndrome--Its History & Relevance Today" at http://AmFor.net/acs Source of Freund story: Los Angeles Times, 11-1-05, Front Page story continued on A-12 (and http://latimes.com).

• Hamilton, Thomas, 43, (School Shooter-killed 16 children & himself)

  Informally adopted by his grandparents who raised him & made him believe they were his parents. The woman he was told was his sister was actually his mother. On 3-13-96 at age 43, dressed in black & wearing earmuffs to protect himself from the noise, he sprayed 105 bullets into a Dunblane, Scotland elementary school gym killed 16 first graders & their teacher & wounded 12 other children, before killing himself. Source: http://www.indystar.com/library/factfiles/crime/school_violence/school_shootings.html

• Knight, Julian

  Born March 1968 & adopted at 10 days old by an Army couple, his adopters moved frequently. At age 12, his adopters divorced. Girls with whom he had intimate relationships testified that not only was he upset & angry over his adopters divorce but also he felt "profound unhappiness about having been adopted." Both subjects reduced him to tears after heavy drinking.

  Source: http://www.massmurder.zyns.com/julian_knight_04/html

• Moses, (the first adoptee)

  Biblical Moses, the first adoptee, is a "victim's role model"--a child of two races, with physical handicaps and character flaws. He was born a Levite--one of the 12 tribes of Israel--nearly put to death in a purge, sent floating down the Nile in a basket by his mother, rescued by an Egyptian princess and raised in the royal court "as her own." The adult Moses is described as having speech problems, perhaps stuttering, his face was deformed after seeing God, and he ordered his legion to butcher the boys, massacre the mothers, and to rape the daughters...

• Perry, Michael James, 18, (Romeo)

  Jim & Gayle Perry adopted Michael when he was an infant. He was sentenced to Death for the 10-24-01 shooting death of Sandra Stotler, 50, & is suspected of also murdering Stotler's son Adam, 16, & Adam's friend Jeremy Richardson, 18. Diagnosed in 2nd grade with hyperactivity disorder, Michael's adopters admitted him to several inpatient psychiatric facilities & residential treatment programs for troubled teens.

  Source: http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/rick-halperin/apr03/0047.htm

• Privacky, Seth, 18

  He said in his confession that he was angry because his father threatened to kick him out of their Michigan home, just before he murdered his whole family in 1998.

• Ramsey, Evan, 16

  On 2-19-97, when Evan Ramsey was 16, he walked into his school in Bethel, Alaska, pulled out a .12 gauge shotgun & murdered two people. Then Evan put the gun under his chin. But he never fired the final shot. After a short standoff with police, he surrendered & was convicted of murder and assault. "My main objective of going into the high school was to check out," he says. "To commit suicide." Up to that point, Evan had had a difficult life. When he was 7, his father went to prison. His mother became an alcoholic, & Evan & his brothers were shipped off to a series of foster homes. In one of those homes, he suffered sexual abuse & humiliation, according to court testimony. Psychiatrist Dr. John Smith, who examined Evan a few months after the murders, found that Evan had attempted suicide at age 10. According to Dr. Smith, Evan was depressed from a young age. By the time Evan was using marijuana, getting poor grades and struggling to control an explosive temper. Evan was an outsider, someone who didn't fit in with the athletes and popular kids at school. He was sentenced to 200 years in prison & will be eligible for parole when he's 75. Source: CBS-60 Minutes, 3-7-01 http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/1999/08/17/6011/main58625.shtma

• Weise, Jeff, 16

  His father committed suicide 4 years prior; his mother is in a nursing home after an auto accident...His grandfather had been raising him. On 3-23-05, while on a megadose of Prozac for depression, Weise went on a rampage, shooting to death his grandfather & the grandfather's companion. Then, armed with 2 pistols & a shotgun, he killed 9 people & wounded 7 before shooting himself to death....at his school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation. ... the nation's bloodiest school shooting since Columbine High in Colorado 6 years prior. http://wfrv.com/topstories_story_081201350.html and http://www.antidepressantsfacts.com/casualties.htm

• Williams, Charles Andrew "Andy", 15, (The Santee School Shooter)

  His parents divorced when he was 5; his mother stayed in South Carolina & his father brought him from Maryland to Santee, a suburb of San Diego, California in 2000. An older son, Michael lives in Atlanta, Georgia. According to neighbors who knew Andy in Knoxville, Andy seemed to prefer being away from his home. He slept overnight at friends' houses with inordinate frequency & half-jokingly called his friends' mothers "Mom." Kathleen Seek's mother, Mary Neiderlander, said Williams "always wanted a relationship with his mom." Her absence is a sore spot for Williams, according to friends in Maryland. "That's the only time I saw him get violent -- when somebody said something about his mom," said Scott Bryan, 15. In 2001, on a downward spiral of rejection, isolation & anger, Andy went on a shotting spree with a 22-caliber revolver, killing 2 classmates & wounding 13 people. Source: CNN.com/US, 3-16-01; & http://www.apfn.org/apfn/school.htm

• Woodham, Luke, 16

  Went on a shooting spree at a Mississippi school on 10-1-97 after killing his divorced mother, Mary, 50, by beating her with a baseball bat & slitting her throat. Sources: http://CNN.com/US/97101/02/miss.shooting.folo

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Adoptees Who Killed Strangers

(alphabetically, single incident killing of other than their adopters, with age at time of crime if known.)

• Baer, Kenneth

  A graduate of Thomas University, Philadelphia, Baer killed his girlfriend, Marina, 45, whom he called "My lover, my mother." In his mind, he was killing his adopter. He said he hit his female adopter several times when he was between 12 & 15. "Shedding Light on the Dark Side of Adoption" book by Marsha Riben

• Beardslee, Donald

  A homeless man diagnosed as schizophrenic & convicted of murdering an elderly woman who was an exact "double" for the adopter he had come to hate. Beardslee was the child of an affair between a married White woman & an African American man. For the first year of his life, he had been locked in a back room of the woman's home as an object of shame, and then was given up for adoption. He was first spared execution & incarcerated in a state mental institution but because California re-instated the Death Penalty in 1978, he was executed by lethal injection on 1/14/05 at San Quentin Prison. Source: "Another Death in the Dark Hours" by Al Martinez, LATimes.com, 4/24/05, http://www.latimes.com/news/columnists/ la-et-martinez24jan24,1,1952581.column? coll=la-mininav-columns&ctrack=3&cset=true

• Berner, Timothy, 33

  Featured on "America's Most Wanted" as one of the FBI's "15 Most Wanted," Berner, a crack cocaine user, killed himself as a SWAT Team was closing in. He committed suicide with the same gun he took from the police officer, Mark Sawyers, whom he killed after he allegedly robbed a bank. Source: "Suspect: Man Was Quiet, Not Violent, A Friend Says" 6-11-04, p.5B

• Cannon, Joseph John

  Executed in 1998 in Texas for the murder of Anne Walsh in 1977. At the age 4, he was hit by a truck & left hyperactive, with a head injury and a speech impediment. Unable to function in the classroom, he was expelled from school at age of 6 or 7 & received no other formal education. He turned to glue sniffing and other solvent abuse, & at age 10 he was diagnosed as suffering from organic brain damage. Suffering from severe depression, he attempted suicide at age 15. He was diagnosed as schizophrenic and borderline mentally retarded. From the age 7 up to the time of the murder, he suffered repeated & severe sexual abuse from male relatives. So brutal & abusive was his upbringing that he thrived better on Death Row, where he learned to read & write, than he ever had in his home environment. By the time he was killed, Joseph Cannon had spent more than half his life on death row.

• Carter, Marcus, 23, (Korean/African-American adoptee)

  In 1991, Marcus was tried for first degree murder of Amelia Lewis in Wayne County, N.C. when he was 23 (The murder involved an attempted rape. Marcus had been identified as a suspect in a rape elsewhere the night of the murder & by association was implicated in the Lewis murder.) .... Carter's life up to his conviction was a mess. He was born in Korea in 1968. His father was a black soldier, his mother Korean. When his father abandoned her, she gave him up for adoption, partly becuase of teh stigma of the bi-racial affair. His adoptive parents, another soldier stationed in Korea and Shirley Hill, soon split up, and Hill came back to Goldsboro with Carter when he was 4. Carter saw his father on and off for several years after that, but when the father remarried and had other children, Carter started getting in trouble, and the father disowned him--a fact Hill didn't know until his trial. She believes the source of his troubles was trying, and failing, to win back the affections of his adoptive father. Marcus was sentenced to death; now his execution is halted & his sentence commuted to life without parole (11/21/00). Source: http://www.unc.edu/student/orgs/cedp/page26.html "Death Watch," http://indyweek.com/durham/2000-11-15news.html

• Cotton, Marcus, 23

  He had been on drugs since age 5 as result of his adopter being drug addicted & habitually abusing hime & his siblings. He was convicted in 1996 & executed for the shooting death of prosecutor Gil Epstein, 27, when he found Epstein's badge in his wallet while robbing him in a parking lot. Source: Houston Chronicle, 11-5-97

• Dalzell, Andrew, 20

  Charged with murder in the 11-30/12-1-97 disappearance of Deborah Key, 38, when he was 20. After two miscarriages, one stillbirth & seeing one child die at 2-1/2, Juanita Dalzell Mullen & Michael Dalzell, her husband at the time, adopted Andrew in 1977 when he was 7 weeks old; they brought him home to Chapel Hill when he was 10 months old. (George Mullen is his stepfather of 2 years.) By Mullen's own account, her son grew up to be a troubled young man. A bright, former special-education student with attention-deficit disorder, Dalzell bounced from school to school & class to class trying to find his niche. Early in his childhood, she said, he suffered from depression. Numerous visits to psychologists & various medications failed to lift his mood. At 18 in 1995, his adoptive father, Michael, died of pancreatic cancer, & Dalzell, who was active in The Church of the Holy Family in Chapel Hill, gave up on a God that he felt gave up on him. He dropped out of Northwood High School in Chatham County & later got his GED. Dalzell had few social skills, few friends and didn't get along with his mom. He spent much of the following decade in his mother's house visiting chatrooms on the Internet, with brief interruptions by short-lived attempts at finding work. He lived on his own for only five months, in an apartment where his adopter footed the bill. Juanita Mullen said officers had been out to get her son for years & forced him to make his confession. Source: http://groups.msn.com/PRISONLONGHOUSE/yourwebpage12.msnw

• Dowdell, Richard, 27

  His 16 year old mother put him up for adoption after his 19 year old father abandoned them. His Canadian adopters divorced when he was 4. Convicted in Wyoming of murdering Cpl. Wayne Martnez (June 1997), Dowdell said he got an adrenalin rush out of killing the officer & that given the chance he would try it again. He described the killing as "fun." Counsellors who had worked with him as a youth testified he was suicidal & defense attorney Mark Voss portrayed Dowell's life as "a series of rejections." Source: The Billings Gazette; http://venos.soci.niu.edu/~archived/ABOLISH/rick-halperin/july98/0501.html

• Eastlack, John Patrick

  Adopted from foster care at age 16-months by Katherine Norgard, Eastlack was not diagnosed until age 30 with Fetal Alcohol Syndrome. The FAS diagnosis is the reason that a Pima County, Arizona judge reduced his Death sentence to Life in Prison for the brutal 1989 murders of Kathryn & Leicester Sherrill in Tucson. In 1999, he was hopsitalized from numerous stab wounds inflicted by other inmates. Source: Tucson Citizen online, "A Ticking-Bomb Baby," April 1999 article, http://www.come-over.to/FAS/Citizen/part3_5.html

• Fears, Randall Alan

  Born 1963 as Gregory Inman, & adopted at birth, he was convicted of first degree murder & sentenced to "life without parole plus 3 life sentences." Source: Fears' own letters to AmFOR.

• Ford, Patrick Hunter

  Adopted at age 6 weeks by a St. Louis News Anchor & wife who dicorced, he was convicted for the 1991 burglary & rape/beating murder of Nora Lee Attaway. His attorney contacted his mother whom he never met; she spoke of her love for him but she has not had contact with him nor provided any information about his father who he never met. Source: Ford's own letters to AmFOR & St. Louis Post-Dispatch newsclips, 10/2809/92 & 3/94

• Forman, Joseph "Jay", 16

  Described as a boy who was eager to please but who constantly felt rejected since discovering at age 11 that he was adopted. Murdered Janice Graffone in New Jersey. Source: "Forman Labeled a Problem Child," Trenton Times (NJ), 5-26-82

• Gerlach, Clayton

  Born 6-7-78 in Washington, birth name Perkins. He was convicted for 2nd degree murder which he claims was accidental. Earliest release date is in 2009. Source: Gerlach's letters to AmFOR.

• Goodman, Spencer, 23

  Executed 1-12-00 for the stabbing death of Cecile Ham, 48. On August 7, 1991, Goodman was arrested driving & wrecking Ham's vehicle in Colorado after a high-speed chase. Goodman confessed to her murder, saying that the day he got out of jail, instead of going to his halfway house, he just started walking. Eventually he ended up in a Walgreens parking lot in Houston, and as Ham was getting into her Cadillac, he attacked her because his feet hurt and he wanted some transportation.... I don't know why I did it, but I know that I was lost. I then put her in the trunk of the car." Later, he dumped the body in a field. Goodman had prior convictions for Burglary in 1989 (2 years imprisonment), Auto Theft (5 years). He was released on parole, revoked, then again paroled on July 1, 1990, the day before the murder. Goodman 's adoptive father, Barnard Goodman Sr., 62, testified that his immediate family fears the defendant -- who, at his own request, remained outside the courtroom during his father's testimony. Under cross-examination by Goodman's attorney, Steven Rosen, the father said he placed the decision of life in prison or death in the jury's hands. "At this point, he's broken the heart of our family, and we would rather not be any further involved in this than we have to," he said. In a letter written earlier this year, the elder Goodman told his son the whole family loved him when he was taken in at age 1. "I tried so hard when you were young to turn you around," the letter read. "We couldn't turn you around and you continued to do things that were against our laws, God's laws and the laws of society." The father and other family members left the courtroom after his testimony. Assistant District Attorney Fred Felcman, in closing arguments, called the defendant "society's worst nightmare." ....Megan Goodman states: "When I was 19, I was living on my own and thinking a lot about my Uncle who was sitting on Death Row. His crime was not something that was talked about in my family and frankly he was never talked about either. I decided that I wanted to know the whole story about what he had done and who exactly he was. So, without telling anyone in my family, I wrote him a letter telling him that I wanted to talk to him. He wrote back and said that he would love to see me. I prepared myself to go and visit a monster. I was sure that that was what he was. I remember when I went to see him I was shaking as I walked down the row of cages full of people waiting to die. I sat down and talked to my Uncle for the first time since I was in third grade. We talked about his crime, about the rumours going around the family and about things that we used to do together. By the end of our two hour visit I had completely changed my opinion of him. I realized that he wasn't this monster that I needed to be scared of but he was still my Uncle who loved me and I still loved him. Over the next year and a half I visited with him on a regular basis and we became very close. He was like my older brother more than my Uncle. At the time of his execution I was closer to him than anyone else in my life. There is not a day that goes by that I don't miss him. He taught me so much about myself and life. The most important thing that he taught me was to search for my own truth, don't just take one persons point of view as truth, because the truth is probably somewhere in the middle. My Uncle did a horrible thing in his life but that doesn't mean that he was horrible. I believe that it was Ghandi that said, "If we all took an eye for an eye then the whole world would be blind." Source: http://www.clarkprosecutor.org/html/death/US/goodman605.htm

• Grant, Matthew, 19

  Adopted by Gail & David Grant in Raleigh, North Carolina, Abused & neglected & diagnosed with ADHD as a child, his mother died when he was 7." Convicted 12-2-04 for killing Sheriff's Deputy, Mark Tucker, with a shotgun to avoid being arrested for violating his probation on a prior conviction for breaking into cars. Relatives said "He almost never expressed any emotion. He has learned that from the time he was a child to keep it bottled up inside." Source: The News Observor, 12-2-04, http://NewsObservor.com

• Graves, Jennifer Irene, 30

  A child care worker, she shot a 21-year old mother, Ronnie Katrina Holton, in the head & kidnapped Holton's 6-month old son, Jeremiah, because Graves was obsessed with having a baby.

• Hagen, Marjorie

  Acquitted of 1979 murder of her female adopter, Marjorie (Caldwell) Hagen was arrest in Ajo, Arizona, in 1991. She was convicted of insurance fraud & attempted arson & was thought to be responsible for a rash of fires. In 1983 she was also convicted of arson in Mound, Minnesota, & is suspected of killing her third husband, Wally Hagen, in 1992 & before that Hagen’s first wife, Helen, in 1980. Source: http://www.x-communication.org/willextras.htm

• Hargon, Ernest Lee

  "There was speculation that Hargon was angry at being written out of his adoptive father's will." Source: "Community Grieves Over Slayings", Picayune Times (MS), 3-3-04 - http://www.picayuneitem.com/articles/ 2004/03/03/news/11famil