'Till Death Do Us Part: Love, Marriage, and the Mind of the Killer Spouse (22 page)

It’s human nature to want to strike out at someone who deeply hurts you. According to a recent study, brain scans reveal that revenge really can, like Dirty Harry says, make your day. Planning revenge can spark enough pleasure to actually motivate getting even. It is the amount of satisfaction that may ultimately predict who will take it to the next level and who will not. People want to punish “wrongdoers.” There is a clear connection between emotion and behavior. Our emotions can also influence our analytical decision-making skills. The “revenge study” mentioned above also revealed that the dorsal striatum, the brain region governing enjoyment and satisfaction, became active in the people who decided to retaliate. This activity was not necessarily the exhilaration caused by revenge itself, but rather the pleasure of anticipating it.

When Nancy attacked her husband, the force and nature of the attack represented all of the abuse that she had endured during their thirty-year marriage. With each blow of the hatchet Nancy sighed in relief. Robert could not hurt her anymore.

Marriage is supposed to be a beautiful joint venture. It is a creative and life-enhancing experience; at least it should be. Nancy’s had been nothing like that. After it was all done, she carefully wrapped Robert up and placed him in her car. When asked about the wrapped dead body, Nancy said it was artwork. In a way, this was the artistic gift she gave herself after thirty years of marriage. This was all her marriage ever was anyway, a bloody, sad mistake.

10

The Pregnancy Killer

M
ANY
modern magazines and popular TV shows, movies, and commercials depict parenthood as idyllic. The same myths that airbrush the realities of marriage also affect our perceptions of having children. This part of life is often romanticized; having a baby with the person you are in love with would seem to ensure and enhance the relationship. I know I certainly felt this way when I was young. Some women get pregnant because they believe it will help them hold on to their partner, or prevent a problematic relationship from breaking apart. Others believe having a baby can save an ailing marriage. Anyone who has ever had a child knows this belief is far from a sure thing. Parenthood, with all of its wonders, often increases strain and stress on a relationship. Before exploring all of the pathological reasons why pregnancy can be lethal for women, we should first identify some of the normal, yet often masked, parental reactions that can occur. These feelings are rarely discussed, because they are too scary.

Pregnancy can bring up a whole host of strong emotions, not all of them positive. It is normal to fear what is unknown, and having a baby is a big unknown. Both mothers and fathers, no matter how much they think they want a baby, may react to the news of a new pregnancy with overwhelming ambivalence. A pregnancy can bring up deep psychological conflicts. For example, sometimes parents-to-be revisit feelings they once had toward their own parents, and such emotions are often unpleasant. More common reactions toward pregnancy include thoughts such as
I do not want to have this baby; This cannot be true;
and perhaps the most frequent of them all,
My life will be over.
An adult who felt unwanted or unloved by his own parents may find it very hard to want his own unborn child. It is probably safe to say, yet undoubtedly controversial, that no child is wanted 100 percent. Every parent has some degree of mixed feelings about having a child.

But let’s revisit one of the thoughts listed above:
My life will be over.
Certainly it is human nature to have such a fear, and yet having children does not really mean the end of one’s life. Some of us fear that we must abandon our own pleasures in order to devote ourselves to our children. Truly the birth of our children signifies our replacement by a new generation, and in that sense there is a sort of death in birth. In fact, pregnancy can be experienced as the death of one’s youth and childhood, and the death of being responsible exclusively for oneself. However, part of the upside—which is difficult, if not impossible, for some to see—is that the birth of a child can create new opportunities for successful living and feelings of fulfillment.

Another common fear is of giving birth to a monster. As bizarre as this may sound, believe it or not, the “monster” fantasy is almost as ancient as humankind and civilization itself. The drawings on the cavemen’s walls, the legends of each primitive society and the ancient Greek myths, all refer to this frightening theme. Roman Polanski’s famous film
Rosemary’s Baby,
based on Ira Levin’s iconic book, is rooted in some of the fears men and women have about pregnancy. First there is this notion that the sex act, which creates the baby, is evil and wicked. And then there is the fear that the woman will give birth to the devil, and that, monster or not, the devil will be loved unconditionally by the mother. Because of this fear, sometimes parents choose to adopt a child simply to avoid any possibility of having a deformed monster child of their own. Again, this highlights how the unknown can be experienced as foreboding and scary.

Still another fear is of the impending financial burdens. Often this rests with the male. Coupled with this fear is the broad notion that one may be unable to handle parenthood psychologically. The parent-to-be fears all of the responsibility involved in bringing up a child. Men, in particular, are very sensitive to the possibility of losing their freedom, and some of them greatly resent it. According to criminal profiler Pat Brown, pregnancy is a huge life-changing event that can be experienced by some men as a major limitation. In certain cases, the birth of a child marks the end of a hedonistic era in which the male has sought pleasure without answering to anyone or being “chained” to a wife and child.

In today’s world, however, there is a greater likelihood that the male will be directly involved with the pregnancy. Part of this involvement requires that the male prepare himself psychologically for both pregnancy and parenthood. This task is often harder for men simply because they are further removed from the physical facts of pregnancy and hence, from experiencing their unborn child in the same way that the woman does. Approaching fatherhood can sometimes trigger depression, appetite problems, sleeplessness, a false obsession with having an illness, and in severe cases, even suicide and homicide.

The Scott Peterson trial and Mark Hacking headlines brought national attention to the unpleasant reality that pregnancy can be a dangerous time for some women. The shocking study that pregnancy was the leading cause of murder among pregnant women became widely quoted. In fact, according to a Maryland study published in the
Journal of the American Medical Association,
pregnant women are more likely to die of homicide than any other cause. The high percentage, while utterly confounding, may even be higher than initially reported, as many of these deaths go undetected due to a lack of autopsy reports. While the Maryland study did not explain
why
homicide is the leading cause of death among pregnant women, there are theories that these homicides are in part a result of the societal and historical influences mentioned above. In other words, we live in a patriarchal society wherein some men
still,
whether consciously or not, see women as their property, to be treated any way necessary. Certainly, in Western society, such views are generally discouraged. That being said, simply because something is discouraged does not mean it doesn’t exist.

Men who subscribe to this way of thinking tend to be more likely to commit homicide
if
they fall into any of these categories: owning a gun, being with an extremely controlling partner, and/or being unemployed. Additionally, as stated earlier, if the female partner is pregnant against her partner’s wishes, the male’s aggression factor is ultimately increased. Obviously, not every sexist man who owns a gun, suffers at the hands of a controlling wife, or lacks a job will murder his pregnant wife. Still, there is a chilling trend. As the statistics on this issue become more available, experts are beginning to notice that pregnancy can be an aggravating aspect that increases a woman’s risk of being killed.

While maternal homicide has recently received a lot of attention in the mainstream media, considerable research has also been done on battered pregnant women. Some of these studies go back twenty years. According to the American Bar Association, by the most conservative estimate, each year one million women suffer nonfatal violence at the hands of their intimate partner. Yet other sources provide astounding numbers. According to the Women’s Rural Advocacy Program, four million women are assaulted and beaten by their partner in a year and 37 percent of pregnant women, across all class, race, and educational lines, have been physically abused during pregnancy.

It is especially hard to imagine an act more horrific than the killing of a pregnant woman. Still worse is the idea that her killer is, most likely, her intimate partner and the father of her unborn child. There are several reasons abusive spouses may focus on harming the fetus, although in most cases there are feelings of neglect on the part of the male spouse. They know any threat to the unborn child will upset the mother-to-be and, understanding the pregnancy is what the woman is most concerned with, will target the fetus and thus return attention to the male.

Additionally, during her pregnancy a woman tends to be overwhelmed by concerned family and friends, and therefore less isolated than she may be ordinarily. This can prove very threatening for an abusive spouse, who may grow jealous over all the attention. Still, other researchers believe abuse from the male can be triggered by the stress brought on via the pregnancy itself, for instance, worries over finances.

Certainly, numerous prompts can become catalysts for abuse, and it would not be surprising for a male to exhibit several of these characteristics, rather than simply one or the other. For example, in many cases, pregnant women are tired, less attentive, and uninterested in sex. Obviously this may contribute to a male’s feeling that he has been abandoned. Additionally, some men become paranoid, believing the baby is not theirs but was fathered by another man—yet another indication of neglect and betrayal. And, in still other instances, there are men who see the pregnancy as challenging their idea of manhood, which does not include taking care of babies.

Perhaps the most frightening aspect about this type of murder is that the men who kill their partners, for the most part, rarely exhibit any warning or danger signs. And aside from some of the motivations these killers share, people who kill their pregnant wives often do not fit into any particular forensic profile, crossing all racial barriers and economic classes. Interestingly, one of the only parallels that pregnancy killers exhibit is the murder weapon. Pregnant victims are, more often than not, killed with a gun.

RAE CARRUTH
was an upstanding citizen and rising football star. A wide receiver for the Carolina Panthers, he was a polished athlete who enjoyed all that the National Football League had to offer—both on the field, where his job was to catch footballs, and off the field, where he ably caught the attention of some of the most beautiful women in Charlotte, North Carolina. A first-round draft pick out of the University of Colorado in 1997, Carruth received a four-year, $3.7 million contract. His was a success story.

Soon after Carruth’s birth in Sacramento, California, his father abandoned the new family. His mother, a social worker, remarried but divorced again when Carruth was in his teens. The family lived in a poverty-stricken, drug-infested neighborhood, but Carruth found sanctuary on the athletic field, excelling at football and becoming a high school star. He was also popular with his fellow students, and this led him to being twice voted to serve as the school’s prom king.

Clean cut and handsome at age twenty-six, Carruth juggled multiple girlfriends after arriving in Charlotte, many of them starstruck and impressionable. Among his many admirers was Cherica Adams. A former Panthers intern and topless dancer, Adams, twenty-four, met Carruth at a party in 1999. The two dated, and within a short time Adams became pregnant. Carruth, who already had a son from a previous relationship and paid $3,000 a month in child support, told Adams to abort the pregnancy. She refused, saying she wanted to have the baby.

Her choice angered Carruth. He was in the last year of his contract and had recently made a poor investment decision that had cost him tens of thousands. He was also the subject of a lawsuit in a real estate deal gone sour, and the thought of paying additional child support made him less than enthusiastic about the pregnancy. To further complicate things, he was also romantically interested in another woman, and had no intentions of allowing Adams to remain in his life.

Since Adams understood Carruth had no plans to marry her, she began taking steps toward surviving as a single mother. She took maternity classes and selected her son’s name months in advance, excited for the day when her child would be born. As with any pregnancy, without the support of the father, the first few months were difficult. The pair often exchanged angry words, with Adams even confronting Carruth at the stadium following a game, as he was leaving with another woman. Yet Adams did not foresee any danger to her or her unborn child.

On November 15, 1999, with Adams in her seventh month of pregnancy, Rae Carruth decided to take a different tack, and accompanied Adams to the movies. After seeing
The Bone Collector,
a film about a police hunt for a killer, they left in separate cars, with Adams following Carruth to her apartment. A few minutes later a car pulled up alongside Adams and a gunman fired several shots, severely injuring her. Conscious, Adams dialed 911 on her cell phone and told the operator she’d been shot. She also told them who she thought was behind it—Rae Carruth. “I think he did it,” she said.

Paramedics soon arrived and took Adams to the hospital, where she was treated for gunshot wounds to the liver, stomach, back, and right lung. They also performed an emergency cesarean section and delivered her boy, who was named Chancellor Lee and born ten weeks early. Adams remained gravely ill for the next month. During that time she provided police with details of the shooting in which she said Carruth, driving ahead in an SUV, stopped in front of her, which forced her to come to a halt in her BMW. At that time, another car pulled up alongside her with several men inside, and shots rang out. Rae Carruth was arrested a week later and charged with conspiracy to commit first-degree murder. The alleged reason? He didn’t want to pay child support.