Love Behind Bars

-THS Investigates

So here is my take away from watching the documentary, Love Behind Bars.  This hour and 26 min documentary covered the stories of several woman who had became involved with a men behind bars. One a confessed murderer, another a rapist, and one on death row.

The documentary jumped around a lot, telling pieces of each story. So I am going to tell each story in sections and what I learned toward my research of Marrying a Murderer.

The first woman covered was Veronica Compton. She said that her goal was to help people who are thinking about getting involved with someone who is incarcerated. Veronica was held captive and raped repeatedly at a young age. After her father had arranged her marriage, after two years it fell through.  As this was happening, there were several killings of young women taking place in the hillside of California. The killer was deemed  The Hillside Strangular.  This man was found out to be Kenneth Bianchi. He confessed and was sentenced to life without parole. 

Here is were Veronica comes into play. Veronica wrote to Bianchi to get information and insight for her book. Eventually, she began visiting him and talking on the phone daily.

Bianchi had convinced Veronica to commit the same crime that he had and inject the girl with someone else's semen to clear his name. Veronica stated that she felt that he had complete control over her.

She went ahead with their plan, she was unsuccessful; with guilt and remorse she was put in jail. 

While in jail she fell for a lawyer and they ended up getting married. Her husband James said, " you hear what she did and think that she is deranged. But she is not deranged."

My response:  It is crazy to think that this woman could have been convinced to carry out a crime to attempted to clear the name of the man who already confessed to the murders. It was so interesting when she said that she felt like he had complete control over her. He is behind a glass window, and she is talking to him through a telephone. All she had to do was stop coming to visit him and he couldn't do anything about it. But something inside her made her keep going. It is so ironic that she is now behind bars too, and what makes it even better was that she found love and got married while incarcerated. The film also stated that Bianchi had used other women for similar reasons.  Convicts really are con-artists. I guess women will really do crazy things for the men that they love. But Veronica stated several times that she was not in love nor attracted to Bianchi, so why did she do it? It is a state of being that she can not explain, she is just glad that she snapped out of it.

Additional Info

In between the stories of the women was information on the websites that exist.  The creators of WriteAPrisoner.com  stated that the inmates are denied direct access to the internet, but have full access to mail. They said that inmates send the $40.00, a photo, and a short bio about themselves and then they, the creators of the website, upload their profile.

They also talked about a different website called, WomenBehindBars.com. The women are more 

sexualized, under the impression that more hits will get them more letters.

The websites are censored, the creators monitor and correct any false information that may get posted, things like age and race are most common.

It was also noted that the most fit, prettiest, and most famous get the most attention. The infamous Susan Smith, who drove her car into a river with her kids in it, received piles of fan/love mail.

Another Story  

A coworker invited Janet to meet her fiancé, the catch was that he was in prison. Janet, scared to even set foot inside the walls of the prison, ended up falling for a man she saw in the visitor room that day. After several visits, Janet gave him her home phone number. They would talk on the phone all night. This was before they gave phone calls a 20 minute limit.

The man told Janet right away of the crimes he had committed, he was a convicted rapist. But that didn't matter to her. Janet said she was attracted to his honesty, among other things.

My response:   The man is a convicted rapist! If and when he gets out, what makes you think he won't do the same to you? What if he is just playing head games so he has an easy target?

You appreciate his honesty? Of course he is going to tell you what he did, he has nothing to lose! He is already facing his consequences, what is he going to say? That he got sentenced to prison for stealing a kitten? No.  

But this does answer another communication aspect of my research. They give them their phone numbers so the inmate can call at his designated times. Talk about waiting by the phone!

Kinds of Women

The documentary also provided information on the kinds of women that write and visit the prisoners. Women that have no high school diploma, women with a high school diploma, college degrees, masters degrees and even PhD.'s

There is no one category of a woman in terms of socioeconomic or educational background.

So this partly answers my question about the types of women that fall for these men, but I am also curious if  age or race have any significant patterns.

On Death Row and in Love

The woman in this story found her inmate while on WriteAPrisoner.com, she was spreading her faith to those who needed it.  She lived in Wisconsin and he was at prison in northern Florida. The woman broke off her engagement to the man she was currently seeing and moved to Florida to be closer to this inmate- where he awaited execution. Because he was on death row they were not allow conjugal visits, but she said that it did not matter.

My response:  This woman packed up her kids and moved to a trailer park 20 minutes away from the prison.  What compels a person to re-arrange her entire life and her kid's lives, so a inmate on death row!? He has no possibility of parole, he is going to be executed. What do you have to look forward too?

Ted Bundy

This documentary mentions Ted Bundy several times and in reference. They said how Bundy received bags of fan mail during his trial and several marriage proposals. The lovesick groupies  showed up to the court room with their hair parted in the middle and dyed the proper shade of brown for Bundy's liking. The conviction raised the public interest.

I think it is so interesting that Ted Bundy was included in this documentary, after all he was the inspiration for this continued research. But how dumb were these girls to make their appearance look similar to all of his victims? Did they want to be next?

Reasoning

The reasoning that experts give for these women falling for these criminals are as follows:

• They have a "bad boy" image.
• They are rescuing and restoring them.
• They have exclusive access to them.
• They have redeeming features.

These "appealing" qualities are thought-provoking. Is it due to a woman kind and loving nature that she feels compelled to "fix" this "broken" human being? Are the reasons different for men? What are those reasons? This documentary  partially answered my question for the reasoning that women give for marrying these criminals.

This documentary was very valuable in my research; it allowed me to look at several different cases at once and see the real-life people that's story was being told. They looked like normal, sane human beings. No one would every guess that when they call their husbands that he is calling from behind bars.