Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (12 page)

Judith now committed armed robbery - at the end of October 1980 - by pointing a pistol at a student in a quiet corner of a shopping mall and demanding money. She called her victim a bitch and stared at her coldly. The terrified young woman handed her bag over and Judith fled.

If she’d been content with the money she might have gotten away with the crime, but she forged the victim’s signature on her cheques, and was quickly arrested for trying to cash them. Judith was sent to a young
offenders
unit in Rome, Georgia, and later transferred to the Macon Youth Development Center. Whilst incarcerated there she gave birth to twins. Many months after being set free she would fire shots into the house of one of the Center’s careworkers and firebomb the house of
another
worker, causing a fire to break out.

Alvin also went to prison at this time. He would be locked up for various theft and deceit crimes throughout
the early months of their relationship. The couple wrote to each other throughout their enforced separation, the letters showing a mixture of love and control and emotional immaturity. None of the letters demonstrated the telepathic communication she’d earlier imagined and many bordered on the paranoid.

One missive he wrote her said ‘No matter if you stick to me or walk out on me you’ll get some things to answer to me about, and I do mean you.’ In turn, she imagined that he was in touch with other women and wrote that ‘None of them are woman enough to try to take you from me when I get out.’ She also wrote of how brilliant their sex life was.

Judith was released in the summer of 1981 but was quickly rearrested on charges of shop theft. She was released again on 1st December. Alvin was still in prison so she stayed with his parents, though she
complained
in letters that his father could ‘still raise hell’ and was a ‘son of a bitch.’

On his release she and Alvin - with the babies often strapped into the back seat of the car - continued to commit minor league criminal acts in and around their home area of Rome, Georgia. When they could, they stayed with relatives or shacked up in cheap motel rooms. Other times they slept in the car, Judith and the twins surviving mainly on peanut butter sandwiches, cookies and candy. Alvin favoured huge takeaway hamburgers and large amounts of Coca-cola. This
overeating is symptomatic of unhappy people –food dulls the senses and essentially acts as a tranquilliser, an attempt to self-medicate.

Sometimes they managed to steal cheques from post office boxes and could afford to rent a room for a few days but at other times they were completely broke and found it hard to get even a change of clothes or a bath. Judith’s previously glossy hair now hung in greasy
tangles
and her eyes were puffy. She was swiftly becoming the thing she most hated - an uneducated person with no clear goals, little cash and a series of dead end jobs.

When the going gets tough, the weak look around for a scapegoat. On 10th September 1982 Judith drove to the home of a Youth Development Center employee - who she would admit in court was kind to her - and fired shots into his home. He wasn’t injured. The next night she threw a Molotov cocktail onto the drive of another YDC worker, a woman whom she would later praise publicly. She also phoned the woman and promised that both employees would die for abusing her.

Judith didn’t leave her name but would later admit both crimes when taken into custody on a murder charge. She alleged that she’d been sexually abused at the home and forced to take part in a prostitution ring - but
a subsequent investigation ruled this out and cleared the two people she’d tried to harm. As abuse is legion in children’s homes it’s very likely that
someone
abused her when she was in care. However it’s also true that a man, presumed to be Alvin, made one of the threatening calls about his wife being abused to a careworker so Judith might have been trying to make her husband jealous during one of their many power games.

According to Judith, Alvin started to say that he wanted to have sex with a virgin and asked her to procure him one. But Alvin would say that Judith chose to pick up a girl to have power over her - and the police would later state that Judith clearly liked to control others and seemed stronger than her spouse.

Keen to make someone else feel worse than they did, the Neelleys went to the Riverbend Mall in Rome, Georgia on 25th September 1982. There they entered the video arcade and Alvin started playing the machines. When his back was turned, Judith approached Suzanne Clonts and asked her if she was alone, and if she wanted to drive around for a while. Suzanne looked at the dead eyed and dirty teenager and declined, a move that undoubtedly saved her life.

Judith then approached thirteen-year-old Lisa Millican. The teenager was with a party from a children’s home for neglected girls but had become separated from them. She was frightened as some youths had been eyeing her up and she’d had bad experiences with
abusive
men. She chatted eagerly to Judith as her care workers searched for her throughout the mall.

Lisa had already suffered greatly during her short life, as her family - who lived in a rundown trailer - had neglected her. She’d been sexually abused by her father from the age of eleven. Her mother had also taken her to bed with a man on various occasions saying that the man wouldn’t rape her because he was too drunk.

Lisa and her three siblings had all been taken into care and she had been placed in several foster homes before being moved to the Harpst Children’s Home. The attractive dark-haired teenager was actively
bisexual
- but clearly had no idea what the sadistic Judith Neelley had in mind.

Lisa now got into Judith’s car, excited at the idea of an adventure. Judith may have had the twins in the backseat, yet another reason for Lisa not to feel alarmed. Alvin probably wasn’t around at this stage, for by now the unlikely couple had a car each.

The reasons for this were myriad. Alvin liked a tidy vehicle whereas Judith kept hers littered with food
wrappers and other junk. Plus they fought a lot and the separate vehicles allowed them to maintain a necessary distance. And it couldn’t have escaped their notice that if a potential victim got into Judith’s car and was driven someplace quiet, she would be especially taken by
surprise
when Alvin suddenly appeared.

At some stage on the journey Lisa was introduced to Alvin. It was easy for Judith to arrange this as the couple both had CB radios in their cars - ironic, given that Judith had so hated her mother’s CB radio. Judith called herself Lady Sundown and Alvin called himself Nightrider. The hamburger diet hadn’t been kind to Nightrider so he was a smiling, roly-poly kind of man. Lisa had no reason to fear the couple, and by now had no idea how to get back to the children’s home even if she’d wanted to. So they all went to a cheap motel and booked a room.

One motel worker saw Judith walking through the building with Lisa following close behind her. She also saw Alvin going again and again to the vending machines which sold junk food. He clearly found it taxing to be active, his movements further hampered by a long-term injury that had resulted in a metal plate in his leg. Witnesses would describe Alvin as an overweight, breathless man who only ventured out of the room to obtain more sustenance. And Judith would admit that he liked to lie around for hours just watching TV. But his semen would be found inside thirteen-year-old
Lisa’s body so he clearly managed to have sex with the needy child.

When they were locked in their motel room, Judith produced her gun and told the terrified Lisa to do whatever she said. Then the couple gagged her and tied her to the bed. For the next four days Judith sexually assaulted her and Alvin raped her. Both Neelleys took turns in beating her whilst their own little children watched. At night they handcuffed the teenager to the bedframe and made her sleep on the floor. There was a spare bed in the room so leaving her cold and naked on the carpet was yet another instance of abuse.

After four days they decided to move on and Judith decided to kill Lisa - she would later claim this was so that the teenager couldn’t identify her. Judith left the hotel very early whilst no one was around and
handcuffed
the girl to the inside of the car. She then drove her to a canyon in a remote part of Dekalb County, told her to get out of the vehicle and lie down. Lisa obeyed and Judith promptly handcuffed her young victim’s arms around a tree.

Next, Judith produced a loaded syringe and injected Lisa in the neck with liquid drain cleaner. She would later claim that she did this to kill her quickly, but it’s
apparent from what followed that it was simply another form of torture, particularly when she had a gun
available
that could have instantly killed the raped and
beaten
child.

Lisa cried out and writhed on the ground but didn’t die. After a time, Judith injected a different solution into the other side of Lisa’s neck. Again, Lisa remained conscious. Judith ordered Lisa to walk about, ostensibly to make the solution work faster. Then she handcuffed her again, still at gunpoint. She went on to inject both of Lisa’s arms and her buttocks using a total of three different syringes and waiting for a few minutes after each injection but the girl still didn’t die.

Lisa pleaded to be allowed to go back to the children’s home and said she was cold and could she have a blanket? The caustic agent was literally causing her flesh to bubble and liquefy and she must have been in terrible pain. Judith had taken care to drive to a remote region so there wasn’t a rescuer for miles around.

Judith untied Lisa for the last time and ordered her to walk to the very edge of the canyon, which in some places is 600 feet deep. The pretty brunette teenager again pleaded for her life but Judith ignored her pleas and shot her from behind. The girl fell backwards onto the ground rather than toppling forwards over the edge so Judith pushed her over, watching her body plunge over eighty feet before it was caught by a jutting tree. Whilst rolling the girl over she’d gotten blood on her
jeans so she now swapped them for a clean pair that she had in the car. She threw her blood-stained clothing and the syringes over the edge where they would be found near the body by Dekalb police.

Judith would say in court that she carried out the injections and the shooting on Alvin’s orders because she was terrified of his violence - but there is no physical evidence linking him to the abuse at the canyon, only to having sex in the motel. She would also claim that he masturbated at the scene.

Shortly after Lisa’s death, Judith Neelley phoned a radio station in Rome, Georgia and told them where to find the teenager’s body. She repeated the detailed instructions in another phone call to the Rome police. The Rome police would search the area but fail to find the child’s corpse. Judith now phoned the Dekalb County Sheriffs Office and told them where to find ‘a young girl’s body’ adding ‘where I left her.’ They searched and finally found Lisa with a bullet through her head. They also found Judith’s blood-smeared jeans and the three syringes that had been used to torture Lisa immediately before her death.

Criminologists always state that female serial killers never make taunting phone calls to the police - but
Judith Neelley is a rare exception. Her motive for doing so is still unclear. What’s certain is that the taped calls helped show that she was confident, calm and completely without remorse for her vicious crime.

On the afternoon of 3rd October 1982, Diane Bobo was approached by Judith Neelley, who tried to get her to go for a ride with her. She refused immediately. The next day thirteen-year-old Debbie Smith was walking home from school when Judith did the exact same thing. She too declined. Both felt uneasy after their encounter with the staring teenager in the brown Dodge - and Debbie’s mother would report the
incident
to the authorities. Both witnesses were later able to identify Neelley from photographs.

The approaches to Diane Bobo and Debbie Smith having failed, that evening Judith drew up alongside a couple who were out walking, John Hancock and Janice Chatman. She said that she was lonely and repeatedly asked them to ride around with her. John Hancock, a gravedigger, had a bad feeling about the offer, but
foolishly ignored his intuition. He had recently become a Christian so thought he should satisfy Judith’s request for companionship. Janice, his common law wife, had learning difficulties so was quite happy to get into the car.

Judith started to drive along country roads with her two new passengers and her two small children in the car. Soon she switched on her CB radio. When someone calling himself Nightrider started to speak she
responded
immediately. She called herself Lady Sundown as she arranged to meet up with him. She sounded calm and assured, not the battered and brainwashed wife she would later try to make herself out to be.

After a while she drew up on a dirt road north of Rome and Alvin Neelley drew up in a red car beside them. Alvin suggested that John Hancock ride with him and Janice Chatman stay with Judith. John’s uneasiness increased but Janice seemed quite happy with this arrangement. The two cars then drove north looking for a cheap source of drink that Alvin had apparently heard of, but finally stopped because John Hancock needed to urinate.

Both cars stopped and John Hancock walked a little distance away and relieved himself. He was aware that Judith and Alvin had left their vehicles and were standing watching him. He could hear them whispering. Then he heard Alvin say ‘If we’re going to do it, let’s get it over with,’ and Judith approached him pointing her gun.

She ordered him to walk with his back to her. He did, his heart beating heavily in his chest. She told him which directions to take, marching him backwards and forwards until Alvin, by now out of sight, shouted to hurry up and get it over with. (John, who miraculously survived the shooting, would later say that Alvin sounded scared.) He asked if he could talk to her but she said ‘Hell, no’ and remained disinterested and cold. She added, ambiguously, that they were going to take care of his girlfriend - at which stage Alvin shouted again for her to hurry up.

Seconds later John felt a bullet enter his shoulder. The force of the shot threw him forward onto his
stomach.
He played dead, feeling his blood run down his back and into the ground as he heard his assailant, Lady Sundown, rush away through the woods.

John Hancock lay there for some time, hearing both cars drive away and knowing that twenty-three-year old Janice Chatman was in one of them. At last he dragged his bloodstained body to the road and tried to flag down a car.