Joseph Atkins, adopted as a toddler, killed the man who adopted him; he also killed a 13 year old neighbor -- both in North Charleston, South Carolina on October 27, 1985. Fifteen years before that, Joseph killed his half brother Charles, also adopted by the Atkins’, after first being stabbed by the victim. This adopted killer was abused -- by his adopter not his parents. Also, Joseph’s racial heritage was not known; he may have been Native American, African American, or Puerto Rican. He was adopted by a white family.
Like many adoptees who kill their adopters, Joseph has no idea why he killed the man who adopted him.
This adoptee was executed on January 22, 1999 by lethal injection in Columbia, South Carolina. Joseph offered no final statement, and no one from the family he was adopted into attended his execution.
David Berkowitz is the serial killer known as Son of Sam. Relinquished by his mother -- who had been arranging for his relinquishment during her pregnancy because, like many women who lose their children to adoption, she could get no help from society, her family, or even from David's own father – David was adopted at birth in 1953. There is no pre-adoption abuse to blame his behavior on.
His adopters loved him and took good care of him. Yet as a child, he was a neighborhood bully with a mean streak. So, whatever happened to David happened very early, and the only thing abnormal about his childhood was that he was adopted -- separated from his family and raised by genetic strangers.
David always felt different and uncomfortable around people. He also felt unattractive, though neighbors described him as a good-looking child. Certainly this suggests the low self-esteem and identity problems experienced by many adoptees. Could his distorted self-image have resulted from being raised by people who did not look like him?
Adoption reunions are not enough to undo the damage that adoption creates. David found his mother Betty Falco. She and his sister Roslyn did everything they could to make him feel at home. Initially, David was happy in reunion, but he eventually drifted away from this family of his that he’d been forbidden to know as he grew up.
David was also an arsonist, setting more than 1,000 fires. Arsonists, like serial killers, gain a sense of control from committing their crimes. Adoption can instill a feeling of lack of control in many adoptees. It could very well be this adoption related need to achieve a sense of control that lead David to the arson and eventually, to murder.
Just before the murders started, David wrote to his adopter, "You wouldn't believe how much some people hate me. Many of them want to kill me. I don't even know these people, but still they hate me." Of course, people did not hate him; they probably didn't even notice him. So where did this feeling of being hated by people he doesn't even know come from? Could it be the feeling of being rejected by his own mother before he was even born?
In 1976 when he moved out of a house where he'd been living, he had this to say about his ex-landlords: "When I moved in the Cassaras seemed very nice and quiet. But they tricked me. They lied. I thought they were members of the human race. They weren't!"
Examining that statement in connection with adoption, it could be surmised that this is more likely a buried feeling about his adopters. They where “nice” to him. His adopters were “quiet” people. But, they “tricked” him and “lied” to him by saying they were his parents, when in fact, they were not. The Berkowitz's were very much members of the human race, but as adopters they were unable to give David that sense of connection to the human race that we get from being raised within our families by parents who share our genetic charactoristics. Many adoptees experience this feeling of being disconnected.
When David called himself the Son of Sam, he was referring to Sam Carr, a neighbor. Could this be a reflection of adoption related identity problems and confusion about what constitutes parental relationships? Confusion caused by being told that genetic strangers are your parents?
In a 1997 prison interview David admitted that the demon dog story was for protection if he was caught -- a preplanned insanity plea. The interviewer, Robert Ressler, states that "his real reason for shooting women was out of resentment toward his own mother."
So tell me -- who did he resent? His mother for giving him up? or his adopter for not being his real mother?
It seems obvious to me, in just this superficial examination, that adoption most likely had a great deal to do with turning David Berkowitz into a serial killer. A more in-depth study of adoption’s connection to David Berkowitz’s murderous rampage is needed, but it will not happen. Because the psychological community is as subject to the sacred cow image of adoption as the rest of society, they will continue their minimization of the damage adoption does to adoptees. Their denial is even less excusable than that of the general population because people in the mental health field are fully aware of the negatives affects of adoption on adopted people. They just refuse to admit that low self-esteem, identity problems, abandonment issues, problems forming close relationships, and more -- can be harmful if it results from adoption.
Ken Bianchi killed several women in LA and two in Washington state. He was also adopted as an infant. So there is no pre-adoption abuse to blame his killing spree on, either. Unless you would consider the trauma of separation from his mother abuse, which I do. I consider it to be an abuse perpetuated by a society that encourages and honors the separation of mothers from their children in the form of adoption. As a side note, Bianchi's partner in the killings was Angelo Buono, a member of the adopter's extended family. Buono was not adopted, but he had been separated from his mother at the age of five.
James B. Clark
, 39, was convicted of the 1994 murders of his adopters in New Castle, Deleware, 4 weeks after being paroled having served 22 years of a 30-year sentence for kidnapping of a 16-year old girl. He had asked NOT to be paroled saying that he could not cope with release, but was paroled anyway. Within a few weeks of his return to his adopters, James fatally shot them both. At his trial in 1994 he asked for the death sentence, and after he was sentenced he was put in the psychiatric unit of the prison hospital where he was reportedly treated with anti-depression medication. He refused to eat and was force-fed until July 1995. He was often on "suicide watch.” James was executed just after midnight, April 19, 1996, in Delaware. I’m going to try to find more information about the kidnapping and his adoptive experience then post it here. Also, I can’t help but wonder what was it about being returned to his adopters that was so traumatizing for James.
Henry Lee Dreyer – during his childhood his mother had been having problems and left Henry Lee in the care of his grandparents who then put him up for adoption. He was adopted at the age of seven by recently divorced 38 year-old Carol Dreyer. Ten years later on January 29, 1998 at 5 am, he killed his adopter and her boyfriend as they slept in their Carlsbad, CA condo. The motive for the crime was said to be Henry’s resentment toward her and her boyfriend.
The bodies were found on January 30, 1998 stuffed in the trunk of a car in their garage. Investigators found bloody bedding, a metal baseball bat, and a knife in the car. Carol was stabbed four times in the head and neck. The throats of both victims were slashed repeatedly, and Engleman's head was bashed in with the bat.
The trouble began when Carol Dreyer adopted Henry Lee. Relations between them, along with her 52 year-old boyfriend Gary Engleman, had been strained. There were many arguments between Henry and his adopter, and he ran away from her home several times. Neighbors describe the relationship between Henry and the woman who adopted him as contentious. The boy stole from his adopter, her father, and her boyfriend. Henry was on probation for a 1996 residential burglary at the time of the killings.
Before his arrest, Henry bragged about the murder to friends. He and a friend gave the adopter's jewelry to their girlfriends. Henry then withdrew $520 from her account and spent the night at a motel. He had so much contempt for his adopter and her companion; it is reported that he joked about the slayings and defecated on Engleman's body. Henry was caught on security camera at ATM machines while using Carol Dreyer's card -- several of the photos, show him laughing as he withdrew her money.
Two days after the murders, Henry Lee turned himself. His friend Daniel Scott Whitlow was arrested that night, after police had interviewed Henry for several hours. It is said that he slit the throats of his adopter and her boyfriend while his friend, allegedly, bashed Engleman's head with a baseball bat. But, according to DNA tests, the blood on the baseball bat used to beat Engleman belonged to Henry, not Whitlow. After the killings Henry is said to have exclaimed: "Anybody alive in here? Raise your hand. Oh no, too bad for you!"
He told fellow inmates that he was implicating Whitlow in the crime to hurt his friend for trying to talk him out of the slayings. Whitlow said he saw Henry stab both victims to death and then bash Engleman several times in the head with a baseball bat. Henry told at least two people that he alone killed the victims, while Whitlow was asleep in the bedroom.
Henry was calm, composed and quiet during initial court hearings. At times during one hearing, Henry smirked and smiled while witnesses detailed his role in the killings. He held up his handcuffed hands to shield his face from a 15-year-old female witness, and at another point, coldly stared at another female witness. However, when Henry Lee was ordered to stand trial as an adult by San Diego Superior Court Judge Michael Wellington, he cried.
A jury found Henry Lee guilty of murdering his adopter and her boyfriend. Because he was a juvenile when the acts were committed, he could not receive the death penalty. Superior Court Judge John Einhorn sentenced him to life-without-parole.
After his sentencing, Henry apologized to the families of his adopter and her boyfriend. He then criticized the media for describing Carol Dreyer as his mother. He stated that Carol Dreyer and Gary Engleman were not his parents.
Thomas Hamilton was raised like an adoptee. He was lied to about who his parents were. The woman he believed to be his sister was, in reality, his mother.
Age 43 and single, Thomas killed 16 first-graders and their teacher. Two other teachers and 12 children were wounded. He started shooting in the playground and ended up in the gymnasium. There he moved around the room shooting the terrified children, chasing some as they ran. Then he killed himself.
It is no better for grandparents to pretend they are their grandchild’s parents than it is for genetic strangers to pretend to be the parents of someone else’s child. And to me, for grandparents to do it seems like a sort of incestual adoption.
Matthew Heikkila
did not murder his parents. He didn’t even know his parents, had never even seen his parents. On January 29, 1991 in Basking Ridge New Jersey -- twenty-year-old Matthew murdered Dawn and Richard Heikkila, the people who’d adopted him as an infant. He shot them each in the head with shotgun shells that he’d personally hollowed out and labeled “Mom” and “Dad” respectively. A year before the killings Matt had threatened Mr. Heikkila with a handgun. He had a long history of emotional problems beginning in his childhood.
About the time that the adoption was finalized, Mrs. Heikkila became pregnant with a son of her own. Mr. and Mrs. Heikkila had strong hopes of more pregnancies and more children of their own. I’m sure these desires were no secret to Matthew and had a tremendous effect on how he felt about himself and his adopted status with the Heikkilas.
Dawn Heikkila had a habit of complaining about Matthew to friends and co-workers, though she seemed reluctant to go to her extended family for support concerning the adopted boy. On the day she was murdered, she had started a letter to her son Joshua in which she complained about Matt. There didn’t seem to be anyone she was acquainted with who had not listened to Dawn complain about the boy she had adopted. She may have even encouraged Matt’s antisocial behavior out of an emotional need in herself to gain sympathy from her associates, to react to the crises he created, and to continually rescue this adoptee throughout his life. At times, Mr. Heikkila, too, felt compelled to cure Matt of problems that he considered biological defects. It’s not likely that Matthew was unaware of those feelings towards him.
Other times, Mr. Heikkila believed that Matt just wasn’t suited well to the Heikkila family. And, he was correct in that assumption. Matthew had the genetic characteristics that suited him to his own family, not the Heikkilas.
Matthew believed that the Heikkilas did not love him, especially Mr. Heikkila who he hated. He also believed that the Heikkila’s gave preferential treatment to their own son over Matthew, and I tend to believe it was so. It was as if the tall, fair-haired Josh could do no wrong and the medium, dark-haired Matt could do no right. Richard, Dawn, and Josh were all athletic over achievers with many awards -- unlike Matt. They were tidy; he was messy. They looked like each other and not like him. Sometimes Josh would tease Matt about him being adopted and his inability to measure up to the family academically. I think it must have been very painful for the Matthew to grow up in this family with which he had nothing in common. Like many adoptees, Matthew was unable to bond with anyone, even in school. How could he possible bond with this family who were all so dissimilar to him?
Matthew had a habit of lying, but consider his upbringing. He was raised with the lies that Dawn and Richard were his parents and that Josh was his brother. They had pushed the fabrications that he was “special” and “chosen,” when in fact they had taken the first baby they could get their hands on. To explain why Matthew looked so different than her and her son, Dawn would say that he’d inherited Mr. Heikkila’s looks – an outright and obvious lie.
Matthew was sentenced to two consecutive life terms for the murders of the people who adopted him. In New Jersey, that means a minimum of 60 years before he's eligible for parole. The mitigating circumstance that saved him from the death penalty was Adopted Child Syndrome.
Joshua Jenkins is another killer adopted at birth.
In Vista, CA on February 2 and 3, 1996 -- using a hammer, knife, and ax, the sixteen year-old killed his adopters, their parents, and another child in the household. Then he cleaned the murder weapons, took a shower, changed his clothes, set the place on fire, and left.
Joshua always wanted to know about his parents, but was never told. His adopters said they had a letter from his mother but refused to show it to him. Because of their desire to replace parents and because society authorizes it -- adopters typically hide info about their parents from adopted children.
For years, he had been hostile toward his adopters. In the summer of 1995 he was arrested after a fight with one of them and placed in a school for disturbed kids. He said he thought his “parents” had abandoned him. Did he mean his adopters, or was he expressing the pain of losing his real parents?
Four psychiatrists agreed that the boy suffered from chronic depression.
According to David B. Chamberlain “. . . the boy's spread of illnesses and disabilities point directly to the prenatal period . . . in the womb of a mother who did not plan to keep him.”
Should mothers be encouraged to give their children up for adoption?
Joseph Kallinger was adopted as an infant in 1937. This adopted serial killer was abused -- by the people who adopted him, described as cold, emotionless people. He moved out at the age of 16, married, and had several children. Then he was abandoned again when his wife left him. On January 23, 1972 he branded his oldest daughter for running away. He drowned one of his own sons (his second victim) and brought another son along for his killing spree. For several hours on Jan. 8, 1975, they terrorized then murdered eight people. Near the end of his life, Joseph felt remorse and attempted suicide refusing to eat. He died at the age of 59.
I have to repeat this – he was taken from his family at birth, denied any relationship with his parents, and beaten by the replacements. This is another adoption story that contradicts the sacred cow perception of adoption.
John William King
, adopted at 3 months, was convicted and sentenced to death by lethal injection for the racially motivated dragging death of James Byrd Jr, whom he dragged for 3 miles behind a pick-up truck.
His 68 year-old adopter, Ronald King, made some interesting choice of words when talking about John. For instance, he and his wife had “invested” a lot of love in “that boy.” He also said referred to him as “a boy I raised.” Rather than seeing his death sentence in terms of John, the adopter showed a sense of possession of the boy he adopted saying, speaking in terms of himself, that he hated to think that he was “going to lose” John, rather than that John would be losing his life. Of his deceased wife, Ronald King said, ''She loved that boy.”
This murder was not John’s first run-in with the law. At the age of 17 he was sent to prison, where he entertained dreams of starting his own racist group, the Texas Rebel Soldiers.
Prosecutor Guy James Gray observed that it’s obvious that a person could not commit a crime this “heinous” without “a lot of hate and anger." Which John demonstrated after the trial – when asked if he had any words for the victim’s family he uttered a crude reference to oral sex. If you doubt that being adopted can lead to anger, go spend some time at alt.adoption. There are some adoptees there who will be more than happy to demonstrate how much anger an adoptee can possess.
It’s interesting that a former inmate of King’s, William Hoover, said that belonging in a racist group required a “blood tie,” meaning to kill someone. It has been theorized that gangs function as families for members. Is it possible that this sense of belonging by a “blood tie” was unusually compelling for John King because he had absolutely no familial blood ties in his life whatsoever since the day he was born?
Karl and Walter LaGrand
, brothers adopted by their step-father. They are both scheduled to go to the gas chamber (their choice) at the Arizona State Prison in Florence for the murder of Kenneth Hartsock.
Their German mother, Emma married a U.S. Army soldier, who adopted the children rather than raising them by his true relationship to them as a step-father. They were born in Germany and moved to southern Arizona in 1967.
Karl was a troubled child who first got in trouble with the law at the age of 9. Karl bounced between home, programs for troubled youths, and juvenile centers. He and Walter were convicted of armed robbery in 1981. The murder took place on Jan 7, 1982. Hartsock's throat was slashed, and he suffered 23 other knife wounds. They also stabbed a 20 year-old woman -- 7 times in the head, side and shoulder, but she survived.
Aaron Lindh
a 19-year-old adoptee, carried a .22-caliber rifle into the Madison Police Department detective bureau and opened fire on Jan. 15, 1988. Prosecutor John Burr told jurors that Aaron was "angry and vengeful." A Wisconsin jury convicted Aaron of fatally shooting coroner Clyde Chamberlain and secretary Eleanor Townsend. In a separate trial, he was found to have been sane at the time of the killings and was sentenced to two consecutive life terms in prison, and an additional 35 years, for the shooting deaths and wounding of Erik Erickson, who was paying a parking ticket when Aaron went on his shooting spree.
At the age of 29, he was serving his sentence at Columbia Correctional Institution when he got a new sanity hearing. Prospective jurors were questioned about their beliefs concerning mental illness and interracial adoption. Aaron, who is black, was adopted by a white family. His adoption does play a role in his defense.
"To understand what happened on Jan. 15, 1988, you have to understand Aaron's whole life," defense lawyers said.
His life of crime began at age 4 with shoplifting, setting fires, stealing, fighting, fantasizing about murder and, trying to kill himself according to the woman who adopted him. She told the court that her adpoptee had tried to hang himself with a belt in a closet. Mary Ann Lindh said despite her family's love, their adoptee told them that he would rob them, burn down their house, and kill them. Several therapists, doctors and others treated or analyzed Aaron during his troubled childhood. He told doctors he wanted to be recognized.
Defense lawyers maintain that he was a tragic loner -- depressed, unable to bond with anyone, unable to grasp the importance or meaning of truth, a thief from age 4 who also later set fires, and confused about his identity as an interracial child adopted by a white family. Burr, who prosecuted Aaron the first time, agrees with that description.
Aaron's adopters, Mary Ann and John Lindh, were among the first to testify. Years of private counseling and treatment programs and punishment through the juvenile courts did him no good, Mrs. Lindh said. Child psychiatrist Martin Fliegel, who treated Aaron for three years, said that he seemed incapable of intimacy.
A Madison psychologist indicated that Aaron's lack of opportunity to bond with his parents marked him for life. He suffers from "reactive attachment disorder,'' stemming from family disruptions during infancy that make it difficult for children to ever connect with people. Aaron was taken from his mother when he was 11 days old, by Milwaukee County social services. The Lindh family of Madison adopted him when he was just 4 months old.
Yale psychiatrist, Dr. Ezra Griffith, testified that Aaron had a lifetime of mental problems -- suffering from anti-social personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and narcissistic personality disorder. Fifteen previous witnesses described Aaron as having a life-long battle with mental problems. He continued to exhibit signs of mental illness throughout his childhood and was treated by various counselors and doctors, and spent most of his teenage years in juvenile court-ordered treatment centers, foster homes or group homes.
Griffith said that Aaron's impaired logic perceives problems as rejections. Events before the shootings were seen as a series of abandonments. Those events included his credit union's refusal to grant him a loan unless he had a co-signer, his adopters' refusal to co-sign, a second burglary of his home, his view that police didn't care that he was burglarized, his belief that a former roommate stole his belongings, and a dispute with his landlord. While at the City County Building complaining about the second burglary, he was told that a new detective assigned to the case was unavailable. Aaron went out to his car, got his gun, came back and began shooting, which ended when he was shot and wounded. The retired Sheriff's Deputy, who shot Aaron, said the adoptee kept repeating, ``Shoot me. Kill me. I'm going to shoot you.''
In the second sanity trial, he was again sentenced to two life terms, plus 35 years, in prison. Aaron was silent as he was resentenced.
Channel 3000
Northern Lights
Capital Times & Wisconsin State Journal
James Munro
was one of William Bonin's accomplices in California’s 44 or more freeway murders in the late 1970’s. He was 18 years old at the time. He’s currently serving 15 years to life in Mule Creek State Prison, Ione CA, for his participation in at least one of the killings – 18 year-old Stephan Jay Wells.
James was born James Massow in Furth Byron, West Germany. His mother, Anna Maria Massow, relinquishd him. James says that he never knew his parents. He was adopted by the Munros when he was about a year old and they took him from his home land in 1963. He grew up in Virginia and Michigan. James says that his relationship with his adopters was “not good” and that he ran away a lot. He did not like their life style, and he had an especially difficult relationship with Mr. Munro.
James now claims that he got caught in a failed attempt to turn Bonin in, but he truth is that Bonin turned him in after he was caught. This illustrates something I find very disturbing about adoption – just saying that something is so does not make it so. Just saying that the Munros were James’ parents did not make them his parents, just as saying that he was trying to turn Bonin in does not change that fact that Bonin is the one who told the police about James. What kind of lessons does adoption teach adoptees about truth and reality?
Patrick Niiranen bludgeoned his adopters with a 3-pound sledgehammer in a rage then stole $600 and their vehicle. After a nine-day dissociative state using drugs, Patrick turned himself in to the police. He was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and must serve at least 30 years before he is eligible for parole. Patrick is incarcerated at the Snake River Correctional Facility.
Patrick was born at Portland General Hospital on June 2, 1959, and immediately taken home by Henry and Mercedes Niiranen, a middle-aged couple who already had one male adoptee. Mrs. Niiranen physically and emotionally abused him; she beat and berated him. Her husband also once hit the boy with a baseball bat. By the time he was a teen, Patrick was living in foster homes, shelters, and the street.
This adoptee's first marriage ended in divorce and four children, one of whom he has almost no relationship -- mirroring the experience of his own mother. Patrick became addicted to cocaine, and his life has been a constant pain. He tried suicide six times.
After one failed suicide attempt in 1994, Patrick's middle-class adopters then in their 70s, promised that they would help him if he stopped using drugs. He checked himself in to a Portland drug rehabilitation center and stayed sober for nearly a year. But, Patrick's girlfriend was pregnant with his fifth child and they were having financial problems. In 1996, he went to the people who'd adopted him to take them up on the promise of help. Mr. Niiranen completely ignored him and Mrs. Niiranen flew into a rage literally spitting the words at Patrick that he was no good and never would be. The words he'd heard his entire life with the Niiranens. That's when Patrick ultimately lost control and beat them to death.
During all this, Patrick never stopped yearning for his lost mother and hoping that she would rescue him. The belief that she gave him up because she loved him had always been well accepted by this adoptee. In the 1980s, he tried to contact his mother. He hired a private investigator who soon abandoned him and all his other possibilities turned into dead ends.
Finally at the age of 41, Patrick can reach out to his mother after waiting his entire life. He still, quite naturally, wants to meet his nearly 70-year-old mom and tell her that he loves her. Perhaps if he had never been separated from her, the Niiranens would still be alive.
Just as they've used moms who've lost children to adoption, opponents of Measure 58 in Oregon helped make Patrick a poster boy for the attempt to block adoptees' access to their own records. The truth is most moms want access to records, too, so they can finally know their lost offspring even and perhaps more so -- if they are damaged by their adoption experience as Patrick has been. I have never heard of a case where an adoptee has killed his real parents. But if I ever do, I will consider it a warning that adoption is harmful -- rather than an indication that, contrary to any other life situation, secrecy is good in adoption.
Info from Ontario, Ore, APBnews.com
June 2, 2000, By Seamus McGraw
Eric Payne was born Eric Hollie. In Roanoke,
Virginia on Jan. 7, 1973 when he was only 4 months old, Eric’s father killed Eric’s mother and then killed himself. Rather than just taking in her nephew, Eric’s aunt thought she needed to adopt him. His aunt then kept him as her ‘son’ for only 6 years. For the next two years, he went through a series of institutions and foster homes. At the age of eight, Eric was adopted by Gerald Payne and his wife. But the Payne’s simply decided they didn’t want to be his ‘parents’ when he was 14 years old because of his lying and failure to respond to $70,000 worth of counseling.
The next four years Eric moved from foster care to juvenile prisons. In 1991 at the age of 18 in Chesterfield County, he was sentenced to six years in prison for possession of LSD. Six months after his release in 1997, he went on a rampage of brutal hammer beatings in the Richmond, Virginia area.
Eric refused to appeal his sentence, accepting it as fair punishment for the crimes that he has committed. At the age of 26, he’s on death row for killing two women during the six-day rampage in June 1997. He also beat a woman and her young son, but they survived the attacks.
Adoption did not prove to be the magic cure that everyone seems to think it is in this child’s life.
Jacquiline Nikki Reynolds
was adopted as an infant. In Coral Springs, Florida at the age of 17 -- she stabbed 49 year old Billie Jean Reynolds, the woman who adopted her -- to death. On May 14, 1997, Nikki took a 13-inch butcher knife and stabbed Mrs. Reynolds, who was working at a computer; she stabbed her 18 to 25 times. While she was stabbing the adopter she apologized and asked Reynolds if she was dying yet. When Mrs. Reynolds was able to answer that she was dying, her adoptee stabbed her several more times. Nikki had plans to kill her male adopter, Mrs. Reynolds’ husband Robert Reynolds, also.
The stabbing took place not long after Nikki suffered a rejection from a boyfriend. Rejection is a potent issue for people who’ve been separated from their families by adoption. In her defense, a psychiatrist testified that she was seriously depressed. Adoption issues seem to have been ignored at the trial and blame was pointed at the teen’s mother who’d relinquished her when she was just an infant. Nikki’s lawyer argued that she endured major, undiagnosed depression and mental disease that the Reynolds failed to recognize. Evidence that Nikki had an eating disorder, suicidal thoughts, and negative feelings towards Mrs. Reynolds were found in her diary after the killings. Also found was a suicide note expressing Nikki’s perceived need to punish herself for being rude to her adopters.
The prosecutor portrayed the adoptee as a lying, manipulative brat.
After two days of deliberation, a mistrial was declared after the jury said that they were hopelessly deadlocked and unable to reach a unanimous verdict – split equally between first-degree murder and finding Reynolds not guilty by reason of insanity.
Katrina Ramos, Nikki’s mother, says that she thought she was doing “the right thing” by giving her up. How could she not think that, since people were and are still lead to believe that adoption was and is: “the right thing.” But, it seems more likely that “the right thing” would have been to help Nikki’s mother with her problems and keep the family together. That would have been better for Nikki, her mother, and especially for Mrs. Reynolds.
Full of mixed emotions, Nikki’s mother sat in the back of the courtroom learning about her daughter's life at her murder trial. She wonders what could have gone so wrong in her daughter’s life. After all these years, Katrina still loves her daughter who she thinks looks just like her. Despite the tragic circumstances of their reunion, she is thankful for the chance to know her daughter finally.
Info obtained from The Sun-Sentinel and the Miami Herald
Joel Rifkin the son of unwed teenage parents, born in 1959, Joel was adopted by Ben and Jeanne Rifkin at three weeks of age. He was a brainy child who never quite fit in and did poorly in school. He drifted in and out of jobs, mostly living at the home of his adopters and was always depressed.
After Joels confession to killing at least 17 women, police searched Jeanne Rifkins home for evidence. They found dozens of ID cards, drivers licenses, credit cards, photographs, jewelry, and piles of womens clothing taken from his victims. In the garage, they found a wheelbarrow and a chainsaw, both stained with human blood. Neighbors had noted a foul odor emanating from the adopter’s garage, where corpses were occasionally stored before disposal.
Gerald Stano was taken from his mother at the age of 6 months and put up for adoption. He murdered an estimated 80 young women from Pennsylvania to Florida before his arresst at age 27 on April 1, 1980. His youngest known victim was 12 years old. The reason he offered for confessing his crimes was that he needed psychiatric help and hoped he could be cured.
Jeremy Strohmeyer -- adopted when he was a baby -- raped and murdered 7 year-old Sherrice Iverson in a casino restroom. While molesting her, he strangled her to stifle her screams then because she was still breathing he twisted her head in an attempt to break her neck.
Jeremy sometimes played a game he called “whore dragging,” in which prostitutes were lured to the car, grabbed by their arms as the driver sped off, and dragged along the street until Jeremy let go.
More than 800 files of child pornography were found in Jeremy’s computer after the murder. When asked about his motive for the murder, he responded, "I wanted to experience death." Jeremy pleaded guilty – with a plea bargain that let him avoid the death penalty.
In his own words to answer the question of what lead to the murder, Jeremy says:
“In trying to answer these questions, I have had much help from my lawyers, my [adopters], and psychiatric experts . . . For some of us who were adopted, not knowing whom or where we came from can wreck our lives. It can make us walking time bombs, full of rage we don't consciously experience . . .I was filled with anger and rage that I couldn't understand . . . My recently found half brother, who knows our . . . mother and grew up seeing . . . her has avoided the pitfalls of drug and alcohol use. But our other brother [also adopted] . . . has been having some of the same problems that I was having . . .”
[So, the one brother who was not separated from his mother fared better than the two who were separated from her.]
“Adoptive kids like me, I now know, seek out rejection, believe on some level that no one will keep them . . . Had any of the three mental health professionals I sought help and advice from even raised the issue of adoption, they might have treated me for the complications it caused in my life . . . What needs to be understood is that being adopted is not the same as being born into a family . . . Many adopted kids [do feel] the confusions and doubts about who they are like I did . . . What's bad is not knowing who you are, what your genetic history is, or why you were given up for adoption in the first place . . . it shouldn't be as difficult as it is to find out about your roots . . . Had my [adopters] not been led to believe in the false popular myth that adoption is a non-issue . . . they might have suspected the existence of a secret shameful self inside of me. They might have seen how serious my struggle with it was . . . Closed adoptions are dangerous . . . isolation and lack of real relationships and communication with your family is the real destroyer . . .”
Jennifer Tombs shot childhood friend, Tanya Lavallais, in the head 5 times on September 27, 1996 in Denver, Colorado.
Adopted as a baby by unmarried Pastor Madeline Tombs, Jennifer was constantly in trouble for missing school, car theft, drug and alcohol use, etc. The victim's family described her as an "adroit liar," a "troubled" and "displaced teenager." It's difficult to understand why Pastor Tombs had adopted because she is described as having little room in her life for a child.
On the night of the murder, 16-year-old Jennifer was currently under house arrest for anther run in with the law. Yet, her adopter felt it appropriate to leave her at home for the weekend to be baby-sat by the 23-year-old victim.
In prison, Jennifer is considered to be a problematic manipulator.
Info from Crime Stories, Court TV
Jane Toppan was adopted as an infant, but she was not relinquished – her mother died. She was born in Boston as Nora Kelly, 1854. The adopters replaced her real name with “Jane” and gave her their last name. Except for adoption, she led a very normal life. Nevertheless, she had a nervous breakdown and made an unsuccessful suicide attempt as a young woman. For over two decades, Nora worked in New England as a nurse poisoning at least 31 people. Arrested in 1901, she declared in court, "That is my ambition. To have killed more people -- more helpless people -- than any man or woman who has ever lived." She died in 1938, at the age of 84.
Miriam White, born Alexis Walker on
Aug. 25, 1987, was taken away from her mother and became a ward of the court. She's been in mental-health treatment centers, foster care, and adopted by her third foster care provider,
Michelle White Stevens, in May 1997.
Adoption did not save this young girl; she had trouble adjusting to the adoptive environment. At her trial, a psychiatrist and a
psychologist both testified that she needed to be sent to a juvenile facility where she could get long-term psychiatric treatment from experts who handle children.
Alexis' public defenders, Thurgood Matthews and Vincent Corrigan, found the Brown School in Austin, Texas - which
has agreed to accept White and provide her with the treatment she needs in a setting with other troubled children. The prosecutor's expert witnesses told the court that the adoptee was a manipulator, a liar who cursed, acted out, and was prone to violence. However, prosecutors later announced they would
agree to Alexis going to the juvenile facility in Austin, Texas, if after her treatment there she spends some time in a prison geared to juveniles before being released under court supervision. Common Pleas Court Judge Legrome D. Davis set Sept. 15 to announce his decision.
On Aug. 20, 1999 shortly before her birthday -- a stressful anniversary for adoptees -- after an argument with the
members of her adoptive home, Alexis ran from the house in a fit of rage and fatally stabbed Rosemarie Knight, a South Philadelphia hairdresser who was out walking her dog. She didn't know or dislike Knight, who just happened to be the first person Alexis encountered after the fight in her adoptive home. Alexis
plunged a six-inch kitchen knife into the chest of the 54-year old woman.
Alexis does not deny killing Knight. After the stabbing, the young adoptee walked into a hair salon holding the bloody knife and told a receptionist what she had done. Alexis, now 12, is charged in the murder of Rosemarie Knight, who lived a block and a half away from Alexis' adopters.
Alexis' young age and gender make this adoptee's murder case highly unusual. She's one of the city's youngest murder suspects and the youngest girl ever imprisoned at the Philadelphia Detention Center.
Testifying for the first time, Alexis tried to answer the judge's questions about why she ran away from her adopter 10 times, stole from them, tried to stab her tutor in the face with a pencil, and threatened to kill or harm other girls at the Philadelphia Detention Center.
The tutor had told her to stop writing curse words. When Alexis refused, the tutor picked up her papers to leave. Most likely, fear of abandonment precipitated this incident -- as the adoptee explained that she did not want the tutor to "go away." Rejection is a common precursor of adoptees' crimes.
Alexis said she got angry when her adopter punished her, so she'd run away from their home and steal from them. On one occasion, Alexis told the judge she threw pieces of a toilet at a
bank window, which led to the adoptee's commitment to a Horsham mental-health clinic for a week. Three weeks later, Rosemarie Knight was stabbed to death.
Alexis said she ran away because she wanted to be in a juvenile home, and not with her adopters, including White's daughters Joy, 10, and Donna, 8.
Info obtained from the Phillidephia Inquirer
Aileen Pittman Wuornos – suspected of killing 7 men, confessed to 4 of them -- was born Aileen Pittman in Rochester, Michigan, on February 29, 1956. Her teenage parents separated months before she was born. Her mother, Diane, left Aileen with her grandparents when she was about 4 years old. The grandparents, Lauri and Britta Wuornos, then legally adopted her and proceeded as if she were their daughter instead of their granddaughter. Adoption did little to improve Aileen’s life. Around 1971, she became a ward of the court.
Aileen’s adult life style continued to be rootless, and she had a chip on her shoulder. She received a traffic citation once that contained the comment the she thought she was above the law. How could she develop a respect for law if laws also tried to tell her that her grandparents were no longer her grandparents but had somehow become her parents?
In another bizarre adoption twist to Aileen’s life: January 1991, 44-year-old rancher’s wife, Arlene Pralle entered the picture as an advocate for the confessed murderer and legally adopted 35 year-old Aileen as her daughter. Pralle then hired a new lawyer and helped her new adoptee seek the death penalty.
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