Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (16 page)

Jane’s parents made sure that Stephen was never alone with baby Vickie, though they were aware that their vigilance made
for a somewhat claustrophobic lifestyle. The two couples worked together, lived together and worshipped together at the Kingdom Hall. Stephen seemed devoted to his daughter and had the family take numerous photographs of himself with Vickie, but showed no interest in providing for her and mainly lived off a mixture of insurance payouts and welfare cheques.

On 6 December 1978, he took out a policy on his own life and Jane’s and insisted on also having the 14-month-old insured for $30,000.

The following month, Jane’s father needed help to clean the Kingdom Hall and Jane volunteered. By now Vickie was a robust little girl and they had no qualms about leaving her with her apparently-devoted father. But, when Jane returned from the church at midnight, the child was dead in her crib. Stephen said that she’d been acting strangely, was breathing noisily and had asked for a glass of water. He’d given her the drink and laid her down to sleep.

Though most cases of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome occur between one and six months, and Vickie was 15 months, the pathologist wrote SIDS on the death certificate.

By March of that year, Stephen had cashed the insurance cheque and bought himself yet another car, a limited edition Trans Am costing $15,000. He also bought himself a designer suit and an expensive coat, plus a fur coat for Jane. The couple moved to Oklahoma where Stephen planned to learn welding, but he showed no aptitude for his new trade and within 18 months they returned, broke as usual, to New York.

In April 1981, Jane gave birth to their fourth child, Shane, but refused to let Stephen insure him, saying that she didn’t want to tempt fate so Stephen made money by claiming on his insurance by citing a mental disability, telling a psychiatrist
that he was clinically depressed because his first three children had died.

Shane and his sister Jennifer (born in March 1983) would live because their father had no financial incentive to murder them. They were also hooked up to a baby monitor which would have sounded the moment that their breathing stopped.

Outwardly, Stephen Van Der Sluys’ life was all about his religion and his family, but inwardly he lusted for excitement and variety. At Christmas 1984, he and Jane arranged to informally foster another Jehovah’s Witness, a 16-year-old girl from a troubled background. By now, the Van Der Sluys were living in Ontario County and were stalwarts at the local Kingdom Hall. Everyone was impressed that they were willing to take on a teenager – but, almost immediately, Stephen began to clandestinely have sex with her.

Within two months the girl returned to her family but she was already expecting his baby. When she told Stephen Van Der Sluys, he went to her father and admitted that he’d impregnated the teenager. Hoping for damage limitation, he wept and talked about the loss of his first three children to SIDS, painting himself as a victim rather than a predator. He admitted that his long-suffering wife was due to give birth in the same month as the 16-year-old.

The teen’s father went to the police and in April they arrested the father-from-hell for having sex with a minor. (She was below the age of consent in Ontario County.) That July, he pleaded guilty to 36 counts of statutory rape and sodomy.

Police had long suspected that he’d had something to do with the deaths of his first three children, and now they pressed him
to make a full admission. Much to their surprise, he began to falteringly tell them partial truths. He swore that he hadn’t harmed his firstborn, Heath (though detectives were convinced that he had) but admitted that he’d been holding his second born, Heather, and had suddenly become convinced that she was about to expire. After rambling and sobbing some more, he added ‘I felt that she should die.’ He’d put her on her stomach in the crib (a baby should always be laid down to sleep on its back, but this wasn’t the advice given in the 1970s), and put her face into the pillow. His wife had returned to find her dead.

He made a similar rambling statement about Vickie’s death, saying that she’d looked at him as if to say ‘help me,’ and had started crying. He’d put his hand over her mouth for about a minute but she was still wailing inconsolably. He told police that he could tell that she was going to expire so he put her on her stomach in the crib and put her face into the pillow and she duly died.

He said that he killed both girls, but that he hadn’t planned to and added that he had done it to get more love from Jane, not for the insurance money: but investigators were convinced that cash was his main motive. After all, he’d gone on huge spending sprees when the cheques arrived rather than spending time with his desolate wife.

The authorities exhumed all three children, but Heath and Heather’s corpses were too decomposed to offer any clues. Fortunately, a suspicious local undertaker had carefully embalmed the third baby, Vickie, convinced that one day she’d be dug up and autopsied. He’d done a remarkable job of preserving the 15-month-old, and pathologists cut her open to find lung lesions consistent with smothering.

Van Der Sluys refused to incriminate himself in Heath’s death, so he was only charged with Heather and Vickie’s homicides. Whilst he was in custody, his teenage victim gave birth to his illegitimate daughter and five days later his wife gave birth to his sixth child, a boy. Her religion had taught her to be a dutiful and compliant wife, so she was standing by Stephen: the police noted that she was living in a world of her own.

But in summer 1986 – aware that Vickie’s autopsy suggested foul play – Stephen Van Der Sluys pleaded guilty to manslaughter one which carried a sentence of eight to 25 years. It allowed him to convince himself that the death hadn’t been premeditated, that he’d merely suffered a sudden brainstorm and done the wrong thing.

When it came to Heather’s murder, Stephen opted to be tried by a judge rather than a jury. The trial opened on 23 September 1986 at Onondaga County Courthouse in Syracuse.

The prosecution said that SIDS was a hollow term, meaning not a cause of death but the
absence
of a cause of death. They said that smothering could easily be mistaken for Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. An expert witness testified that pathologists often put down SIDS on the death certificate rather than carry out a full autopsy. She said that the insurance on these children was a strong motive for bringing about their untimely deaths.

In turn, the defence suggested that chemicals in the home – everything from carpet shampoo to perm lotion – could have killed Heather or that she might have succumbed to a bad cold.

In summary, the prosecution said ‘this is killing for greed and it’s a killing because of inadequacy.’ They saw the
defendant as inadequate because he’d resented the time that his wife spent with the children, had wanted her to himself at whatever cost

Five days later the judge found Stephen Van Der Sluys guilty of murder and he was sentenced to 25 years to life. A few weeks later, his wife finally admitted to herself that he was guilty of the murders and filed for divorce.

Stephen Van Der Sluys is currently housed at Attica prison, and will become eligible for parole in 2019.

In the aforementioned cases, the children died relatively quickly from suffocation, but O’Bryan poisoned his son and watched him die an agonising death.

Ronald O’Bryan, a married man with two children, ran up large debts and secretly decided to insure and kill one or both of them. He took out $40,000 insurance policies on eight-
year-old
Timothy and five-year-old Elizabeth in 1974 but did not tell his wife. In the same timeframe, he boasted to his fellow employees in Texas that his money problems would soon be over, and he asked one of them where he could obtain potassium cyanide.

Once he’d secured some of the deadly poison, the 30-
year-old
bought five Pixy Stix, large plastic tubes filled with sherbet which were popular at the time in America. He carefully opened the tubes, mixed cyanide into the sherbet and tightly resealed them. Hiding the sweets in a bag, he accompanied his wife and children to a friend’s house in Pasadena for Halloween. He hadn’t been the best father in the world, so his wife was pleasantly surprised when he offered to take their children and a friend’s children to trick and treat around the neighbourhood.

Before long, every child had a basket filled with candy, and
O’Bryan had given out all of the poisoned Pixy Stix, making sure that his son had one. By poisoning strangers as well as his own offspring, he planned to make it look like a random act by a mad person in the neighbourhood.

Back at the friends’ house, everyone sat down at the table to admire their sweets, but O’Bryan was horrified to see his friend’s son reaching for Timothy’s Pixy Stix. He knocked it out of the boy’s hand, explaining that it was for his son.

By mid-evening when they returned to their home in Deer Park, Timothy still hadn’t touched the lethal candy, so his father suggested he try some before going to bed. The eight-year-old obediently took a swallow of the usually-sweet powder but said that it tasted bitter. He went to bed, but almost immediately got up again, telling his father that he had stomach pains. Murmuring that this was nothing to worry about, O’Bryan urged him to return to lie down, but seconds later Timothy rushed to the bathroom and vomited. He screamed in agony and his mother, a nurse, insisted that they phone the emergency services. By the time they got to the hospital, Timothy was dead.

Police soon ascertained that the Pixy Stix had been poisoned and asked Ronald O’Bryan where Timothy had got it. O’Bryan replied that a stranger had opened his door a crack and handed out five of the Stix, that he’d distributed them around the neighbourhood. Detectives quickly alerted everyone who had been trick or treating, and located the other candies: one 11-year-old boy had fallen asleep whilst clutching his, thankfully unable to prise off the top. And Timothy’s five-year-old sister, Elizabeth, hadn’t yet started hers.

But, within days, O’Bryan was in the frame when an insurance agent told police that he’d recently insured his children. Detectives also found out that he’d asked a chemist about the use of poisons. Even more damningly, cyanide mixed
with sherbet had been found on a knife in his home, presumably the knife which he’d used to cut open the Pixy Stix and stir the poison into the original contents. He was arrested, still loudly proclaiming his innocence. His wife testified against him at his trial and it took the jury only an hour to find him guilty and he was sentenced to death.

For almost 10 years, the killer – who was now nicknamed the Candyman – lived on Huntsville’s Death Row, but on 31 March 1984 his luck finally ran out and he went to the death chamber, having apparently enjoyed a last meal of pizza. He made a final statement, saying ‘What is about to transpire in a few moments is wrong… I pray and ask God’s forgiveness for all of us respectively as human beings.’ His death by lethal injection was much more humane than that of his son.

M
en who kill their entire families tend to fit roughly into two categories, though traits found within these categories, such as the need to exert control, can overlap.

There’s the man with an inflated sense of his own importance who sets himself up as the breadwinner, often holding a ‘no wife of mine will ever work’ philosophy. He refuses to confide his problems to his spouse or relatives, even when he’s sacked, demoted or facing bankruptcy.

Such men have often over-romanticised family life and are desperate to present a united front to in-laws and outsiders, sometimes even setting up a website to publicly portray their happiness. Ironically, as the relationship becomes stale, they often take a mistress or use prostitutes.

When the idealised picture that they have created breaks down because their deception becomes apparent or because of external pressures, the man becomes depressed and despairing. His solution is to murder his spouse and offspring, sometimes
even killing his parents or parents-in-law. Thereafter, he may turn the gun on himself. (The murder weapon is often a firearm, though other popular methods of slaying family members include suffocation or smothering, followed by a hanging suicide.)

The second category is that of the controlling father who becomes incensed when his wife or children make lifestyle choices which he disapproves of. In frustration, he annihilates his spouse and offspring: often these murders are also familicide-suicides. But, if he goes on the run, he invariably remarries and creates another family which he controls in an equally unhealthy way.

There is one familicide – mainly perpetrated by fathers – every six to eight weeks in the UK.

Outwardly, Christopher had it all – a loving wife and daughter and a palatial mansion, Osbaston House, in Maesbrook, Shropshire. He had made his fortune by selling pipe insulation technology to the oil industry, but had latterly incurred heavy losses as the industry changed. In October 2007, his company went into liquidation with debts of £1.8 million. Christopher owed over £800,000 to the taxman, but he didn’t tell his family about his increasing money problems and they continued to enjoy a luxurious lifestyle. That same month, he was issued with a High Court order which prevented him from selling his house.

By May of the following year, he was accused by a judge of stripping assets from his company to thwart his creditors. The judge also branded him as untrustworthy.

Foster knew that the bailiffs were due to arrive on Tuesday 26 August, that his family would lose their home and stables and he’d no longer be able to send his daughter to her private school.

On the 25th, the 50-year-old tycoon, accompanied by his 49-year-old wife Jill and 15-year-old daughter Kirstie attended a neighbour’s barbeque. Everyone acted normally and posed happily for a photograph, though Christopher drank steadily throughout the festivities. Shortly after midnight, they left their neighbours house and walked home. Jill went to bed and Kirstie went to her room and logged onto an internet chatroom where she began sending messages to her many friends.

Meanwhile, Christopher went to the cellar and loaded his shotgun: his image was captured on CCTV and would later help detectives piece together what had happened. In the early hours of the morning, he crept up to the top floor and went into Kirstie’s room where he shot her through the head as she slept. (Earlier reports stated that she was chatting online before midnight when she was murdered but later evidence suggest that she was killed between 1am and 4am when fast asleep.). He then went downstairs to their bedroom where his wife lay sleeping and killed her in the exact same way.

The businessman also shot the family’s three horses and four dogs before driving a horse trailer in front of the driveway’s security gates and puncturing its tyres, knowing that this would block access for the emergency services. He ran a network of pipes through his house and to his outbuildings, using them to flood his house with oil. Returning to the marital bedroom, he set the oil alight. As the blaze took hold, he put his shotgun to his head and fired. It was by now around 4.45am.

Five minutes later, a neighbour was awakened by the sound of the petrol tanks in Christopher Foster’s four cars – which included a Porsche and a Land Rover – exploding. The fire brigade arrived to find that the £1.2 million mansion was an impenetrable inferno, and it was three days before Christopher and Jill’s bodies were recovered from the skeletal framework, and four days before Kirstie’s body was found,
the remains so badly charred that they had to be identified from dental records.

Friends and relatives of the family later confirmed that the Fosters were a close-knit trio and expressed their shock at the double murder and suicide.

Neil and his brother Russell grew up in a working class family in Worksop, Nottinghamshire. His mother, Yvonne was a
part-time
school dinner lady, his father Clifford a miner who later became a Bassetlaw district councillor. Yvonne was protective of her sons and would play football in the garden with them when they were teenagers rather than risk them getting into trouble on the streets.

Neil was a quiet boy who did well at school and went on to York University to study electrical engineering and business management, where he showed a natural aptitude for computers. He also enjoyed outdoor sports and joined the university rowing team. It was there, in 1999 that he met Rachel Elizabeth Souza, an exchange student from America, studying English Literature, who became the team’s coxswain. They fell in love and he seemed to overcome his natural shyness, telling everyone that he was going to spend the rest of his life with her.

Psychologists would later speculate that he suffered from Narcissistic Personality Disorder, where a person has an inflated sense of their own importance and a desperate need for love and attention. They tend to idealise love, are preoccupied with fantasies of success and wealth, and react inappropriately to criticism from others.

Just over a year after they met, Rachel had to return to her prestigious Catholic college, Holy Cross, USA to complete her
degree. But the couple kept in touch by phone and email and, after she graduated in 2001, she returned to England and did a teacher-training course. The following year, Neil graduated with a master’s in Electrical Engineering and began to work as an IT consultant for a defence contractor. Colleagues found him to be mild-mannered and unfailingly polite. Though the couple couldn’t see each other as often as they wanted due to work and studying commitments, she referred to him as her knight in shining armour and Neil spoke of her in equally glowing terms.

In 2003, he posted a message on the Friends Reunited website saying that he was soon to marry the most wonderful woman in the world. That same year, he established a website which offered to help customers set up their own internet pornography businesses, a service for which he charged £2,000. Meanwhile, Rachel began to teach English and Drama at St Augustine’s High School in Redditch where she was a popular member of staff.

In August, the couple married in Massachusetts, holding their reception at a re-enactment village which mirrors life in the 17th century. They honeymooned in the Mediterranean, posting photographs on their website – www.rachelandneil.org – of themselves on their luxurious cruise. (After the murders, the website was removed.)

When their honeymoon ended, they returned to England and to their respective jobs, renting a cottage in the Midlands. Neil kept his day job but spent some of his spare time setting up two more websites, namely www.deephotsex.com (offering photographs of young women, often in fetish poses) and www.bigpenismanual.com (which offered penis enlargement techniques.) He made money from both sites. He also sold software on eBay and had a good rating, though this would later change.

Though he had a talent for computer design, he sometimes suffered from low self-esteem, telling Rachel that his working class accent was holding him back and that he’d never make a success of his life when he sounded like a miner’s son. But he seemed genuinely pleased when Rachel became pregnant with his first child.

On 9 April 2005, she gave birth to a 7lb baby, Lilian Rose. The couple were delighted with the new arrival, and posted numerous photographs on their family website, signing them with the words ‘love, the happy family.’ Rachel phoned her mother so often with news of their grandchild that the bills were huge.

As the months passed, she missed her mother and stepfather more and more, and the couple decided to relocate to America. Neil resigned from his company telling them that it was due to domestic reasons. In September, they flew to Massachusetts with six-month-old Lilian and moved in with Rachel’s family in their large, friendly home. Rachel posted a photo of Neil and Lilian on the website with the caption ‘I love my Daddy.’ And the couple wept with happiness as they had the baby baptised into their Catholic faith.

Rachel was very close to her mother and stepfather (her father had died when she was nine) and they were delighted to have their granddaughter on the premises, but life was more difficult for Neil as he couldn’t find employment. He gained weight and seemed envious of Rachel’s bond with her parents, admitting to them that his own family ties weren’t as close. He also told them that his firm back in England was paying him $10,000 a month for secret military operations, but they noticed that he financed everything on credit cards. He explained this away by saying that his money was tied up in
offshore accounts but that he’d soon have access to it. Rachel was also short of cash, having run up student loans which totalled £18,000.

Shortly before Christmas 2005, Neil Entwistle took out a month’s subscription to a swingers website, posting that he was an Englishman who had heard that American women were good in bed. And, on 4 January 2006, he emailed a female swinger to say that he was in a relationship but ‘would like a bit more fun in the bedroom.’ There was obviously trouble in Paradise.

By now, Entwistle’s attempts to make money through various internet get-rich-quick schemes were failing, and he continued to sell software on eBay but no longer sent the goods. As a result, on 9 January, he was banned from selling on the site. Some of the items for sale were listed under Rachel’s name so she too came under fire, with one irate customer posting the comment ‘Rachel Entwistle is a lying bitch.’

On 12 January, the couple moved to a luxurious rented
four-bedroom
Colonial home in Hopkinton, a 45-minute drive away from Rachel’s family. The house had three bathrooms and an eight-person Jacuzzi. Neil Entwistle paid a two-month deposit plus a month’s rent with cheques which cleared and said that he hoped to buy the house once his offshore accounts were moved to the US. He also kitted out the house with expensive upmarket furniture and leased a white BMW, both on credit. But the money that he’d made from his get-rich-quick schemes was running out and he knew that he’d never be able to pay the bills.

Until now, he’d been something of a fantasist, always able to convince himself that his next idea would bring in serious wealth, but now he was listed on various sites that warned
customers of internet scams and he’d maxed out on most of their credit cards. Rachel must also have been aware that he was letting people down, as he’d used her email account and she received hate mail from dissatisfied customers.

Four days after they moved in, Rachel used one of their credit cards but it was refused through lack of funds. It’s believed that the couple had a serious argument. Rachel went to bed early and Neil accessed a porn site, doubtless bringing himself to orgasm in order to relax. That same night, someone using his ‘ent’ username asked a search engine to list the best ways to kill someone and also typed in the search for ‘how to kill with a knife.’ The following afternoon, the same account was used to search for ‘knife in neck kill’ and ‘quick suicide method.’ In the same timeframe, Neil sent a photograph of himself, leaning back in a chair and clutching his erection, to an adult sex site.

On the 18th, Rachel questioned Neil about an interview that he was going for, and he angrily reassured her that he would get the job and make lots of money. In reality, it had fallen through and he had no other prospects. That night, he again trawled the internet for sex, looking at pornography in a bid to distract himself from thinking about his debts. How could be admit to his wife and in-laws that he wanted more than a conventional marriage could offer and that he was verging on bankruptcy? His parents-in-law had treated him like a son and believed that he was completely devoted to their beloved daughter and grandchild, that he could financially support his little family.

On the evening of Thursday 19 January, Rachel spoke to her mother briefly on the phone, telling her that she was still busy unpacking items for the new house and preparing for a forthcoming dinner party. That same day, either she or Neil took yet another photo of a beaming Lilian. But, on the Friday,
Rachel failed to answer her mother’s calls as she – and baby Lilian – were dead.

When friends, whom the couple had invited around for dinner, arrived at the house on the Saturday night and couldn’t get an answer, they called the police. They investigated to find that the television was on downstairs and that the radio was playing in the baby’s bedroom. The couple’s basset hound, Sally, was in a crate without food though she had a bowl of water. The friends walked and fed the animal before returning her to the lounge. The couple’s BMW was missing from the garage but Rachel’s mobile phone was in the house, filled with messages from worried family and friends.

Police noticed linen crumpled on top of the couple’s bed but they didn’t investigate further. If they had done so, they would have found the corpses of Rachel and Lilian Rose lying beneath. Satisfied that no foul play had taken place, they locked up the house – which unusually had all of the shutters down – and left.