Family Murders Through History, Part III: Women Annihilators

Women wipe out their entire families in one violent, horrifying act. It's true. Your correspondent said it wasn't so in an earlier post, but sure enough, if you keep turning the pages in the histories (going back a decade or two from the present day), you can find them--women who murdered their husbands and children. This should not be astonishing--"there is no new thing under the sun"--but for some reason, I find it so.

That said, it seems clear from the (admittedly paltry) samples of female-authored familicides that the motivations are very different; it is not the same type of crime as familicides committed by men. The two women whose stories I will relay here both murdered their husbands and children not because of a delusional belief that they were better off dead because the family had lost its means of support, but for an even more sickening motivation: insurance money. Sad, sad, sad.

In March, 1987, in Houston, Texas, Mrs. Frances Elaine Newton took out life insurance policies on her husband and daughter. In early April, her husband Adrian, her son Alton, 7, and her daughter Farrah, 21 months old, were shot to death. Mrs. Newton was convicted and sentenced to death. She is scheduled to be executed on September 14, 2005, according to Amnesty International's Pending Executions.

Her sister in crime is Mrs. Robin Lee Row. In February 1992, she went to the duplex where her estranged husband, Randy, and their children, Joshua and Tabitha, were sleeping. She flipped the circuit breaker to the fire alarm. Then she started two fires on the first floor. They died of smoke inhalation. It turns out that Mrs. Row had recently insured their lives for more than a quarter million dollars. It also so happened that Mrs. Row had two other children who met sad fates: a daughter who died of SIDS in 1977 and a son Keith who was killed in a house fire in 1980. There is apparently no execution date set yet for Mrs. Row. There are dozens of websites devoted to saving Mrs. Row from her sentence and an international letter-writing campaign that thus far has proven ineffective.

Mrs. Row's story, and many others, are featured in Women and the Death Penalty in the United States, 1900-1998 by Kathleen A. O'Shea, a nun and social worker who specializes in research on female death row inmates, and in her book, she goes through the list state by state, briefly telling each woman's terrible tale.

While your correspondent has mixed feelings on the ultimate penalty, it is difficult to arouse sympathy for family annihilators of the female persuasion. And given the reputation of Texas governors as "Texecutioners," it seems likely that Mrs. Newton, at least, will one day very soon pay with her life for ending the lives of her children and husband so cruelly.

Comments

[John Galt]

"There are dozens of websites devoted to saving Mrs. Row from her sentence"

Source of this information, please? I am unaware of so much as one site dedicated specifically to Ms. Row. The author of a book supposedly about her claims there are a number of sites, and that Ms. Row has multiple requests for money posted on the net. Unless she has access to a different Internet than the rest of us, she's being a bit loose with the truth.

I'd like to see a site dedicated to Ms. Row's story. Her side has been virtually unheard, and it should be. I do not claim she is a saint, but I do believe that in situations like hers one should be certain before rendering judgement. And to my mind no such certainty exists.

[Laura]

Hi John, thanks for your comment. Back when I wrote this post, I found dozens of sites; apparently some no longer exist but many still do. Many of them were in Europe. Here are a few --
-- http://withoutyou36109.tripod.com/
http://www.oranous.com/women/Robin.htm
http://www.women.it/blogs/donnesenzaconfini/archives/%3Ci%3EROBIN%20LEE%20ROW,%20A%20WOMEN%20ALONE%20AGAINST%20AMERICAN%20JUSTICE%3C/i%3E
http://venus.soci.niu.edu/~archives/ABOLISH/may98/0524.html
http://homepage.eircom.net/~lifelines/Letters.htm

[pamela]

I just want to comment on the section of Robin Row, Josh and Tabitha were not Randy's children, they were his step children. Why would she leave them with him if not to kill them together.

[Laura James]

Thanks for your comment.

There is one book about the case, Deadly Confidante by Nancy Whitmore Poole, who is also a court reporter (intersting combination of careers!). I haven't read it.

[Kelly Banaski-Sons]

Robin claims to be innocent but all her appeals have been denied. She does not have an execution date yet.