Pretty self explanatory title. Post your fave serial killer "intimate" couples here. Some like Bernardo/Homolka, Fred/Rose West, etc. already have their own posts, so I would advise performing a forum search first.
I'll start it off:
Nightrider and Lady Sundown: The Bonnie and Clyde of Georgia
Mysterious Attacks
Georgia map with Rome locator
Kenneth Dooley was part of the staff at the Youth Development Center in Rome, Georgia, a facility for troubled adolescent girls (sources disagree as to whether he was a teacher or security).� �One night in September 1982, a woman called who claimed to know his wife and who asked for directions to his home.� He gave them, but his wife of a few months claimed not to know such a person.� They forgot about the incident until the night of September 10.� This time, says Thomas Cook in the definitive account Early Graves, a young woman called for Kenneth while he was away.� She called again later, and when he came to the phone, an angry male voice told him he was going to pay.� He could not understand what it meant.Later that night, four shots were fired into his home and two penetrated his study.� �He saw a car speed away and called the police but did not know what to report.� He couldnt figure out if the shots had been random or intended for him, and if the latter, who might have done it.� Still, he was worried.� He had recently gotten married and along with his wife he had his two children in the house.� He remained awake the rest of the night, but he wasnt alone in being attacked.
The following night, a home-made Molotov cocktail was thrown at another house in town, that of YDC staff member Linda Adair, according to Michael Newton.� �Thomas Cook records the fact from police reports that her husband told her that she had received several phone calls just prior to this incident from a young woman.� But when Linda had gone to the phone to take the call, the line was dead.� Right after the fire-bomb was tossed, a neighborhood boy had seen a brown car with cream-colored stripes speed away with a man and woman in it.� The woman, he reported, had long reddish hair.
When the flames were extinguished, the police examined the bomb, which had been made from basic partsgasoline, a cloth and a bottle.� �They suspected that Lindas husband, an arson inspector, had been the target, but it soon became clear that they had guessed wrong.� The phone rang while they were there and Linda answered.� A young womanperhaps the same one--told her that she and Kenneth Dooley were both going to die that night.� So, clearly the assault that night had been a message for her.
This call and another one made later to police indicated that the two attacks were linked and that the motive was anger and revenge: a female caller who would not give her name or any other details claimed to have been sexually abused at the YDC.� �Her call had been automatically recorded, which would prove useful when the situation became more complicated.� The police had Linda Adair listen to the tape of this call and she realized that the voice sounded similar to the woman who had called her in such an accusatory tone.� Yet she could not identify her as someone she knew from the YDC or anywhere else.
The police searched for clues and interviewed people at the YDC, trying to pinpoint who might have been responsible for the incidents and decide whether the allegation of abuse had any substance.� Since no one had been harmed in these attacks and since there were no clear leads, the case went on a back burner.� There was no reason at the time to suspect that the violence had only begun, with a particularly fiendish agenda.
Lamb to the Slaughter
On Saturday, September 25, 1982, two young girls were approached on the western side ofRome, Georgia, by a woman who wanted to know their names. Her MO, it later turned out, was to pretend she knew a girl she approached and call her by a wrong name.� �Once she was set straight about her mistake and learned the girls actual name and where she lived, this woman would continue to pressure her about going with her to ride around in her car.� Both of these girls managed to avoid her.� They were the lucky ones.
Lisa Anne Millican
Thirteen-year-old Lisa Ann Millican was at Riverbend Mall, the central shopping area in Rome, GA, which had a videogame arcade for families and teenagers.� �Lisa was on an outing with five other girls from the Ethel Harbst Home for neglected girls in Cedartown (though Cook later says there were boys at this facility as well). � Two years earlier, a woman had been robbed at gunpoint here at this mall, on the day before Halloween, but Lisa did not know anything about that.� Nor would she have cared.� Being a teenager, she probably would not have believed that such incidents would ever come close to her.� But she was wrong.� In fact, the very woman who had been arrested for the robbery and sent for a brief time to a juvenile facilitythe Rome YouthDevelopment Center---was now luring her away from the mall and toward a brown car.Since no one recalled a struggle, Lisa apparently went easily enough.� �One minute she was with the other girls, told to meet at a certain spot within an hour, and by the time they were all back together again, writes Cook, she was gone.� Three separate searches were made, and then the police were called, but Lisa was nowhere to be found. � The worried social worker who had accompanied the girls said that Lisa had been wearing jeans and a white-and-black patterned blouse.
Little River Canyon & Falls, Alabama
�Several days went by and there was still no sign of young Lisa.� �Then three anonymous calls to the police from a femaleall of them apparently from the same person---directed them to Alabamas Little River Canyon, near Payne, some thirty-five miles away.� First, the Rome police received and recorded a call and checked it out superficially but found nothing.� Then police in Alabamatook the next two calls.� A call also came into a Rome radio station, claming that the police were covering up a murder done by a female juvenile officer.� The caller named Lisa Ann Millican as the victim.� (In retrospect, it appears that the girls abductors were attempting to implicate people in authority for various offenses, from sexual abuse to murder.)
Finally the police decided to make a more concerted effort to search the area where the caller directed them, especially since she had seemed insistent and had given quite specific instructions.� �Just as night was falling on September 29, they spotted the still figure of a child, draped partially over a tree trunk, face down on the canyon floor.� A pair of jeans hung from a branch.� As they rappelled down to get closer, they could see from a bullet hole in the victims back that she had not fallen accidentally but had been murdered.� She apparently had been thrown there from the eighty-foot height onto the rocks.� As they carefully brought her body up to the top in a basket, a woman who had known her from one of the juvenile facilities identified the body as that of the missing girl.� Lisa Ann Millican had been found.
The autopsy showed that she had been subjected to a series of brutal attacks, from rape to injections in the neck and back with something that boiled the fat under her skin into whatNewton�quotes the county coroner describing as the consistency of anchovy paste.� Crime scene investigators also found among the debris near her body three plastic syringes to test for fingerprints and to determine with chemical analysis the substance that had been used on the girl.� From the crime lab, they learned that it had the basic components of toxic household cleaners, such as Liquid Drano.� These would affect the flesh in the way Lisas skin appeared at the site of the injections.� And it would have been terribly painful.� The jeans that had been hanging from the tree had red splotches, which turned out to be blood, and they werent Lisas jeans, so someone who had been close to the girl had thrown them over the edge.� The jeans might belong to her killer.
Det. Sgt. Kenneth Kines
Detective Sergeant Kenneth Kines was assigned to head the investigation.� �Aside from whoever had made the phone call, there were no suspects.� Yet the voice had been recorded, so if an arrest were made this recording could be compared to that person.� It was also a good place to start.� Investigators listened to each of the calls made to the various places regarding Lisa and some of them agreed that the same woman had made all fourespecially when the transcripts were typed out.� The clues lay in how she talkedthe phrases she used and her accent.� She sounded fairly young and several things she had said indicated that she was familiar with the juvenile justice system.� Investigators checked whether Lisa had any enemies.� While it turned out that she was not popular with anyone, there seemed to be no specific grudges that might fuel murderous intent.� Whatever connection she had with the caller, it remained a mystery.The police figured that Lisas abductor was probably from the Rome�area rather than Alabama, since the first calls had been made there.� Yet they interviewed everyone they could think of, from the girls at the home where she had been placed to former neighbors, to her destitute father, who had allegedly molested her, and her mother, who had a boyfriend fresh out of prison.� Many people were given lie detector tests, and some looked pretty good as suspects, but no one emerged as a viable person to continue to investigate.� It seemed that Lisa either had friends that no one had known about or she had been abducted by a stranger. � Given the calls and the fact that she had been murdered, it was unlikely that she had run away from the mall and had just stumbled into a bad situation.� This incident had all the marks of a predator who had grabbed her.
Even as the police were busy with this crime, another one was taking place on the streets ofRome, with another victim targeted for similar treatment.
Secret Codes
On October 3, cemetery worker John Hancock and his fianc�e, Janice Kay Chatman, accepted an invitation to go riding around.� �Although the young woman in the car was a complete stranger, these two lovers decided to go anyway.� Authors Michael Newton and Jennifer Furio say they were invited to a party and that there were children in the car, but other authors indicate otherwise.� Cook, whose account is most deeply researched, states from Hancocks story that the young woman told them she was lonely and just wanted some company for a little while.� As a Christian, he later said, he felt obligated to do what he could for her, so he and Janice got in.� On the way, they talked with the woman, who showed them her Cobra CB radio and got into a conversation with someone on the other end called the Nightrider. She acted as if she did not know him, but later events indicated otherwise.� Newton says that the couple played with the children, but Cook writes that the children came into the situation at a later point.�
Cobra CD radio
�John and Janice had CB handles of their own, so when John saw the weakness of the frequency that their driver was using to chat with Nightrider, he wondered what was going on.� �This Nightrider character seemed to be quite close rather than where he said he was.� He communicated with Lady Sundown in a way that John could not decode, so he just relaxed and went along for the ride.� (Newton insists that her name was Lady Sundance, as a take-off from Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.)� But then to Johns surprise, the woman took them outside town.� She came to a stop where Newton says a rather large man was apparently waiting (Cook says she parked first and he came in behind them in a Red Granada).� This man was the mysterious Nightrider.�
John introduced himself and Janice, and Nightrider said he wanted to find some booze.� Then they all drove away together in two cars to yet another spot that was miles from where they had all come together.� Nightrider pretended that he was looking for someone who could supply them.� John no longer had any idea where they were.� He had lost his sense of direction.
To his surprise, when he was allowed to get out to urinate, Lady Sundown walked up to him with a handgun and ordered him into the woods.� �She walked him down a narrow road and then he heard Nightrider yell at her to get it over with.� She told John not to worry about his girlfriend.� Nightrider yelled at her again and John soon found out what they had in mind when she shot him in the back.� He felt the impact in his right shoulder and fell to the ground, stunned.� Fortunately for him, Lady Sundown was in a hurry and did not pause to make certain that she had finished him off.
John Hancock, victim & survivor
John was shocked and dazed by this unexpected turn of events, but still alive.� He lay there for some time, feeling himself losing blood, but then revived.� He knew he had to act quickly.� He heard the cars drive off and when he was certain he was alone, he ran to the road to find someone to help.� He had no idea what this evil couple had planned for his fianc�e, but he hoped he could rescue her before he passed out from the pain in his back or from loss of blood. � Managing to flag down a helpful truck driver, he made it to the hospital, and a nurse called the police.John had been shot through the right shoulder and would recover.� �The police initially suspected it may have been a drug deal gone bad, since John was saying that a woman had shot him and he had seemed to put up no resistance.� And then there was his manner.� While he spoke to them easily enough and they detected no dishonesty in his account, writes Cook, he seemed oddly unconcerned about his fianc�e, or even about his own attack.� It also seemed to be a rather strange story altogether, especially the part about getting willingly into a car with a complete stranger, for no apparent purpose. � Even so, there had been a number of reports over the past few days of people being accosted by a woman driving around in a brown Dodge with white stripes.� That lent his tale some credibility.
John was able to supply a description that gave police a break in all of the recent puzzling cases, although Cook says that this occurred serendipitously rather than as a result of his interrogation.� John was being taken into the police station for a polygraph by skeptical patrol officers when he overheard Kenneth Kines playing the tape of the female caller.� He recognized the voice as the woman who had shot him.� Telling his story again to Kines, he offered physical details of the couple for a composite sketch.� For Kines, this was a real break in the case.
Details
John Hancock was willing to submit to hypnosis as a way to refresh his memory of the events and possibly supply more details than he had yet been able to offer.� �Cook says that he was taken to Atlanta to have this done.� Yet all he could recall during the session was a bumper sticker that he had not previously described.� He also rode with Kines around town to see if anything he saw might jog his memory.� He noticed two cars that looked similar to the ones driven by his attackersa brown Dodge and red Grenada.� Of that he was certain.
In the meantime, the bullet removed from his shoulder had been analyzed and could be used in the event that suspects were arrested with a weapon.� �Ballistics could make a definitive comparison. �����
Cook indicates that at an earlier stage of the investigation, Kines brought Linda Adair and Kenneth Dooley together in the police station after he had compared all the calls from the mysterious female and decided that they were all linked.� �Because he was investigating them at the same time that he was running down leads from the Hancock story, he got another break.
Kines wanted to know from Dooley and Adair if something had occurred at the YDC to a girl who might now be carrying out a grudge.� �He did not want any more people to be harmed, but Dooley and Adair denied that any sexual abuse had occurred and said that they did not know each other outside a professional relationship at the YDC.� Kines then went over all the files of the girls who had been sent to the YDC due to crimes they had committed and narrowed his list of suspects to five with prior records.� Among them was Judith Ann Neelley, and she fit the descriptions given by some of the witnesses.� In addition, she had been involved with an armed robbery, so she had a gun and knew how to use it.� She was obviously brazen.� Then came another serendipitous turn of events.
Frasier, who based his account in Murder Cases of the Twentieth Century�largely on Cooks book, writes that Linda Adair read the description of the Hancock/Chatman incident in the paper and believed she knew who had been responsible for the shooting.� On October 12, she came to the police with her own story, but Cook says the police actually came to her and told her about the incident. � As they described the two children whom Hancock said had accompanied the Nightrider, Linda reacted.�
She knew of a girl who had been at the YDC with kids that age.� �She even had pictures and showed them to the police.� The girl was Judith Neelleythe same woman whom Kines had decided was a good suspect.� Her husband was Alvin.� Kines found a police record on the Neelleys and asked that the photos be brought to him as soon as possible.� He placed them in a photo line-up to show to John Hancock.� John hesitantly picked out the Neelleys as his attackers, but said hed want to see them in person to be certain.� It had been night, after all, and in the photo the Nightrider, aka, Alvin Neelley, had a beard.
Alvin & Judith Neelley
�As it turned out, this request was not difficult to accomplish, because the two suspects had already been arrested for other crimes.� They were in custody in Tennessee.
Boney and Claude
Judith Ann Neelley would acquire a range of monikers, pseudonyms and nicknames over her life, as recounted by Frasier.� �Referred to variously as Judith Adams (her maiden name), her CB handles, Lady of Sundown or Lady Goodyear, and the Bride of Frankenstein, she was born inMurfreesboro, Tennessee in 1964.� Her father, a construction worker and moderate alcoholic, died in an accident when she was nine.� Conditions at home deteriorated and according to Frasier, Judiths mother was arrested for contributing to the delinquency of a teenage boy.� Even without that charge, the woman was apparently solidly promiscuous, thinking nothing of having her male companions come to her in the familys trailer.�
Alvin Neelley
When she was fifteen, Judith met Alvin Neelley, twelve years older than her (Cook variously indicates eleven and fourteen years older), and described as larger than most football players.� �He was pudgy and overweight, but apparently had a face that people called sweet.� The impression he gave to Detective Kines when they finally met, according to Cook, was that he was a wimpa pathetic character if there ever was one.� Yet it was always easy for Alvin to pick up girls.� Born inGeorgia, he was a car thief with a friendly demeanor who was more than happy to give Judith a way out of her situation at home.� Their chemistry was instantaneous and neither could imagine life without the other.� But Alvin was married.� He decided to get a divorce from a woman who was more than happy to see him go, and Alvin and Judith quickly eloped in Georgia in 1980.�Judith moved easily with Alvin�into his life of two-bit crimes.� They were constantly on the move, robbing convenience stores and gas stations from Georgia to Texas to finance their transient lifestyle.� As they came into the Riverbend Mall parking lot in Rome, Georgia, they finally made a mistake.� In 1980, they robbed a woman at gunpoint.� Soon they were caught trying to cash stolen checks and were arrested.� Alvin, with outstanding warrants in several states, went to prison, sentenced to five years, and Judith ended up at Romes Youth Development Center.� She was pregnant at the time and gave birth to twins.� She was then transferred to another facility inMacon, Georgia.�
Judith wrote frequently to Alvin, telling him how much she detested the staff at the YDC and claming that they had sexually abused her.� �Whether she was just looking for attention is anyones guess, although all of her allegations have been denied and police found no evidence to support them.� Still, she managed to get Alvin feeling vengeful over these alleged incidents, and she herself burned with anger about them.
Judith was released toward the end of 1981 and having nowhere else to go, she moved in withAlvins parents in Tennessee�to await his release.� Yet she returned to her old ways, robbing another convenience store, and was arrested again.� Alvins parents helped to care for the twins.
Within six months, Alvin�had been granted early release, so they grabbed their children and picked up where they had left off, except that Alvin now had a score to settle with the staff at the Rome YDC.� When they were ready, they would act.� First, they needed money.� They learned how to steal checks from post offices and use the signatures to forge money orders, which became their primary means of supporting their transient lifestyle.� To keep track of one another, they installed CB radios in their respective cars. � Alvin became the Nightrider and Judith Lady Sundown.� Newton says they gave themselves the nicknames Boney and Claude as a joke about their resemblance to the roving, bank-robbing outlaws Bonnie and Clyde, while Frasier contends that it was the police who did so.� From a hotel, they attempted to lure a woman for an interesting sexual escapade, but she failed to show up.� Nevertheless, they were clearly creating fantasies together at this stage that would fuel their more serious crimes.
In September 1982, they found themselves in Rome, GA and decided to launch an all-out attack.
Quick Hits
First they took shots at Kenneth Dooleys home and tossed the Molotov cocktail at Linda Adairs residence.� �Within days, Judith had grabbed Lisa Millican and kept her captive in two different hotel rooms in Georgia and Alabama for three days.� (While Alvin initially denied being with them, witnesses saw him at both hotels.)� Judith and Alvin had sex with Lisa in front of their children and kept her handcuffed to a bed, which forced her to sleep on the floor. Then at Alvins direction (because, according to Cook, he had learned that this was a way to murder someone without discovery) Judith took Lisa to the remote canyon in Alabama that would become her grave and tried to inject her with drain cleaner products they had purchased for this purpose.� However, Lisa did not die.� Judith kept shoving the needle into her, six times over half an hour in the neck and back, but the deadly procedure did not work.� In the end, she decided just to kill the girl quickly, so she used a .38 pistol to shoot her three times.�
One bullet went through Lisas back and out her left breast, killing her.� �When Judith was certain she was dead, she shoved her over the edge of the cliff and watched her fall to the canyon floor.� Judith would later say, writes Frasier, that Alvin had masturbated as he looked down at the battered corpse, far below.� But Cook indicates that Judiths description of this incident to the police indicated that she had been alone.� Alvin, too, denied ever being there, but he had also initially denied raping Lisa before he finally said that he had indeed had sex with herbut only once.� It was difficult to know what the true story was. � He had even tried claiming that Judith had masturbated him into ejaculation and then put the sperm into Lisa herself.� Only when the police refused to buy that did he admit to sexual contact with the girl.
Five days later, Judith went cruising for another victim.� �She saw a woman at a pay phone that appeared to be alone, but Judith was unable to get her to go riding around.� That woman would remember later for the police the strange feeling she had when Judith approached her.� Fortunately for her, she had called her husband to come and get her.� Otherwise, she would have needed a ride.
Then one evening, Judith spotted 22-year-old Janice Chatman.� �She was with a man, but Judith thought that with Alvins help, that was easily managed.� They could get rid of the guy and take the girl with them.� Judith pulled over and invited the couple to go with her.� Then man hesitated but the woman seemed eager to do it.� They finally agreed to come along with Judith.� As the two got into the car, Judith called the Nightrider on the CB radio and let him know through their secretive codes that she was on her way.�
They rendezvoused on the outskirts of town, put Janice and John into Alvins car and the children into Judiths, and then drove around for a while.� �When they stopped, Judith forced Hancock into the woods and shot him.� She simply wanted him out of the way.� She and Alvin then took Janice, who was mentally retarded and unaware of what was happening, to a cheap motel nearby, raped her repeatedly, and then shot her.� They drove her body to a wooded area near a creek and dumped her.� This time they called no one to report the body.
It seemed to them that they had twice gotten away with murder and they were ready for another.� But first they needed money, so they went into Murfreesboro to pass some of their forged money orders.� They did not get very far.� Someone recognized them from a police flyer and they were arrested.� Each began at once to point the finger at the other, but Judiths eventual defense would stagger the police and enrage the town.� Once she was out for herself, she cut all ties to Alvin.� Apparently they both preferred a pirates code: every man (or woman) for himself.� And those who had surmised that Judith was quite bold for such a young woman were about to see how brazen she was.
S/He Did It
That was the way they operated.� �When theyd been arrested back in 1980, each gave a conflicting version of events.� Alvin said that the check cashing schemes had all been Judiths idea and hed done nothing.� Judith claimed that they had planned and pulled the robbery together.� But two years later, her story became more vivid.
Judith Neelley at time of arrest
Shortly after their arrest, Alvin�lawyered up, effectively shutting down interrogation, but his attorney urged him to tell the police what he knew.� He claimed that Judith had instigated the crimes and was responsible for eight murders (Frasier says 15 and Furio accepts fifteen victims as fact); he had just gone along with her.� She liked to have power over others, he said.� He didn't know what else to do.� He even said he was afraid that his wife might even kill him.� To his interrogators, he insisted that she was dangerous.�Alvin�apparently believed her tales about sexual abuse at the YDC and thought she had good reason to be angry, but he also gave the impression that he had not wanted to commit the rapes and murders.� He thought there had been a prostitution ring at the YDC in which Judith had become a willing participant and believed that she had been raped by various court personnel as well.� In other words, he was fairly ignorant and gullible, and she seemed to have known how to push his buttons.� Alvin claimed that the weapons all belonged to Judith and that she had killed the two girls because of some rage that she carried around with her at all times.
And at first, Judith did accept the blame, exonerating him every step of the way.� �In her own confession, she described her final moments with Lisa and Janice.� She spoke of how the shots of Liquid Drano and Liquid Plumber had hurt Lisa, how she had begged for her life, and how her blood had gotten on Judiths jeans, necessitating that she be rid of them.� She also took responsibility for the fire-bombing and the shooting incident in Rome, but insisted that Dooley had raped her and that Adair had set it up.� But the suspects would both change their minds and their stories several times.
Alvin�told the police how Judith had killed Janice Chatman and gave directions to where they could find the body.� He even drew a map, implicating himself at least as an accomplice.� It wasnt long before they recovered the decomposing corpse.� She had been raped, shot to death, and dumped in a wilderness area.�
Prosecutors Mike ODell (front) & Richard Igou
Two bodies, two murders, two suspects.� It seemed obvious what came next, but the DA in Tennessee was stuck with a strange impasse.� The major crimesmurder, rape, and assaulthad all been committed in different counties, indeed, in some cases in different states.� And the evidence was weak against Alvin.� They could get him for the Chatman murder but not Lisa Millicans.� So he remained inTennessee, pleading guilty to his part in the kidnap-murder of Janice Chatman in exchange for life in prison.� Judith, however, faced first-degree murder charges in Alabama for the murder of Lisa Millican, and with her confession, they had a good case against her.� She was extradited there for trial, with a possible death penalty hanging over her head. She and her court-appointed attorney, Robert French Jr., got ready.The Trial
Judge Randall Cole
Judge Randall Cole was to preside over the proceedings.� �Alabamahad a three-count indictment against Judith: murder, abduction with the intent to harm, and abduction with the intent to terrorize.� Frasier indicates that Judiths first legal maneuver was to attempt to be considered under the Youthful Offender Act.� That way she could be tried as a juvenile offender rather than an adult, which if convicted, would carry only a $1000 fine and a three-year prison sentence.� Her request was denied.� Her attorney then put Plan B into action: an insanity defense based on battered woman syndrome.In the meantime, Judith gave birth to another child in January 1983.� �All three of her children had been born while she was under arrest for crimes.� She also went through psychiatric examinations to attempt to support her insanity plea.� Yet she was found to be oriented and cooperative, i.e., competent to stand trial.� She showed no sign of being delusional or having hallucinations.� She was intelligent and free of obvious organic impairment, and showed a good memory.� While there was some sign of depression, there was no reason to believe she was out of touch with reality or had been unable to conform her actions to the requirements of the law.
DeKalb County Courthouse
�The trial in the DeKalb County Courthouse at Fort Payne, Alabama, began two months later in March.� �French attempted to have her confession thrown out, but the judge ruled that it would remain as evidence.� Nevertheless, he put all of his effort into proving that Alvin had controlled Judith and whatever she had done had not been her fault.� Shed had no choice.� Alvin beat her continually.
Judith Neelley with Robert French
�French brought in Alvins first wife to describe her years of alleged abuse at Alvins hands, and she claimed to have many scars from those days.� �That set the stage for Judith to take the stand, and Frasier indicates that she was grilled for three days in front of the jury (Cook says four).�
Judith Neelley on witness stand
She went into extravagant detail about being a victim and being deathly afraid of her husband, Alvin.�� �She wanted to impress the jury that she could not help what she had done.� If she hadnt, Alvin would have killed her.� Everything from assault to murder had been done completely under his direction.� She had more or less been a mindless accomplice, unable to think or act for herself.� She had been subjected to vigorous abuse and constant demands for sex.� She had photographs that allegedly documented it all, and said that Alvin had ordered her to kidnap girls for him to rape.� She was, her attorney would say in his closing argument, like the bride of Frankenstein, an extension of Alvin, guided entirely by his will.� He was a Svengali.� Judith had actually begged him to let Lisa Millican go, but he had refused.� Judith had given the girl injections in the hope that it would end her pain quickly.� It had been an act of compassion.DA Richard Igou
John Hancocks testimony very nearly assisted her, because he had to admit that Alvinseemed to have been directing Judith right before she shot him, but DA Richard Igou managed to get him to say that she had clearly been acting on her own.� Igou also kept Lisa, the victim, foremost in the jurys mind so they would not mistake who was on trial.� Most of what Judith had said contradicted the letters she had written toAlvin, so Igou considered her entire performance on the stand an act.� He was determined that this was a play that would end badlyfor her.� He had no doubt that her rendition of shooting both womenwithoutAlvins directionwould present clear images for the jury.During rebuttal, he called psychiatrist Alexander Salillas, who said that Judith had known the difference between right and wrong at the time of the offense and that she had consciously decided to commit murder.� �French attempted to derail him by asking about a psychiatric syndrome called coercive persuasion, and then tried to get him to admit that Judith had been subjected to it via isolation, brutality, and control.� In other words, he hoped the psychiatrist would stipulate that Judith Neelley had been brainwashed. Salillas responded that Judith, and other battered women, still had choice.� French attempted to undermine this with one example after another, but the psychiatrist remained firm.� And he was the final witness.� Both sides closed and the judge gave his instructions to the jury...