The «lonely hearts» murderers: the couple who died together in the electric chair

This is the story of two monsters. That they had a first and last name.

His name was Raymond Fernández. Born in Hawaii on December 17, 1914, his childhood was hell. His family, who had arrived from Spain to North American soil, decided not to send him to school because they had another task to give him: work from morning to night on the family farm.

Raymond not only had to deal with child labor but also with hatred that his father had against him. An example was given when the boy was 16 years old. Together with two friends they were stealing some chickens when they were discovered.

The three boys ended up in a cell. Two were released after three hours after paying a small bond by their parents. Raymond went to jail for two months. His father did not want to pay bail.

With depression, the family decided to return to Spain. World War II arrived and Raymond offered his services to the British Army. But he didn’t go to the front. He worked as a spy in the Rock of Gibraltar.

Before leaving, He married a beautiful young woman, Incarnation.

Once the war in Gibraltar ended, Raymond dedicated himself to his wife, with whom he had 4 children. But they had to be fed and in search of money he traveled to the United States. His wife stayed in Spain to take care of the children.

The trip, the blow, the change

On that trip Raymond suffered an accident. A hatch came loose and fell on the man’s head. His skull was crackedhis brain suffered injuries and he lost a lot of blood.

They left him for dead, but he arrived on land alive and was admitted to a hospital where he fought against death for two months.

Hundreds of «Lonely Hearts» ads in newspapers. A Tinder from those times.

His body recovered, but that fateful blow It killed his soul.

Nothing remained of that calm, quiet man, who loved his wife and children. The blow had also woken him up. a sexual appetite that seemed insatiableregardless of the age of his conquests.

Raymond forgot about his wife and children and began to have dozens of lovers. And that correct man became a criminal. And in a monster.

In 1946 he went to prison for robbery and attempted smuggling. There he embraced the occult, from voodoo to black magic going through hypnotism.

He believed he had mental powers and could influence people from a distance. He wrote a letter to the judge who had sentenced him to prison telling him that his punishment had been excessive. Believe it or not, the judge agreed with him and he was released after spending a few months behind bars.

That convinced him of two things: He had powers and he had to use them with women to get rich. As soon as he got out of prison he started sending letters to women in the hundreds of clubs. “Lonely Hearts.”

Martha. He loved rough sex and was merciless when killing.

Thousands of women without men after the War sought to rebuild their love lives by giving their profiles in magazines and newspapers. A Tinder from those times.

Raymond found dozens of women who fell for his charms to which he added an “extra”: in the letters he sent he placed small doses of «magic powder» that he had bought in a Santeria store.

Raymond’s “business” began to bear fruit. He received expensive gifts and money in bulk from his lovers.

His death race

In 1947, Raymond met Jane Lucilla Wilson Thompson, who was living with his mother. The man settled in the women’s house. After two months of living together, he convinced the woman that will pay for a vacation trip to Spain.

They visited Madrid, Granada and Malaga… where Raymond’s wife and four children lived. There, Mrs. Thompson learned that her boyfriend was married. For days both women lived under the same roof, until Mrs. Thompson, a woman close to 60 years old, couldn’t take it anymore and went to a hotel in Seville.

The next day she was found dead. supposedly due to a heart attack. It was Raymond’s first murder, and hours after the woman’s body was discovered, he embarked to the United States.

Raymond and Martha, the evil couple.

Upon arriving in New York he went to Mrs. Thompson’s apartment and spoke with her mother. Through Raymond he learned of his daughter’s death and other news: he was sole heir of that department and to certify it he took out a document signed by the deceased woman.

The signature was clearly forged, but the old woman did not realize it and good old Raymond “allowed” her to live in a room for a few months until she found a new home.

Already in 1947, Raymond added lovers and scams against them. Until it is written with the director of a kindergarten in Florida. It was Martha Seabrook Beck, 26 years old.

She quickly fell in love by letter and so did he, when he found out that the young woman He had property and savings.

Martha, the other face of evil

Martha had a very bad character, a product of the teasing she received at school for her obesity. At 13 years old she was raped by her older brother and that awakened her an uncontrollable desire for sex.

Her mother, to solve the problem, locked her in her house. And she began to dream of a prince charming who would come rescue her.

At the age of 22, she graduated as a nurse, but she couldn’t get a job anywhere. They discriminated against her because of her obesity. Martha weighed 115 kilos. He only managed to get a position in a funeral home to wash and shroud the corpses.

He moved to California and got a job in a hospital. Freed from her mother, she gave free rein to her sexual appetite. At night he frequented bars and bus stops and He preferably slept with soldiers and bus drivers.

One of them got Martha pregnant, the man did not want to get married and she returned to her mother’s house.

She made up a story for her mother: she said that she had been dating a Navy officer, who He had died in the War.

She gave birth and got a job at the same hospital where she was admitted, but was fired for «scandalous conduct,» when discovered in the middle of a sexual act with a patient.

In 1944 Martha married a bus driver, Alfred Beck, but the marriage lasted only six months, when Martha was already pregnant for the second time. Besides a son of that man, Martha appropriated his last name.

The couple of criminals when booked by the Police.

In 1946 she went to work at a home for handicapped children and was so good at her job that she was named director of the establishment. But to his endless desires for sex he added alcohol, which he began to consume excessively.

The meeting of the sadist and the nymphomaniac

A friend wanted to help her and wrote to the «Lonely Hearts» club of New York in his name. That’s how he met Raymond Fernández.

Martha thought she had found her prince charming. Raymond to a good source of income. When he arrived in Florida, Raymond was surprised. The woman he had corresponded with and who was described as graceful, beautiful and very sexy, did not exist.

To make matters worse, he found out that he was poor and could barely support his two children. The scammer had been scammed.

After that first encounter (which was also sexual), Raymond returned to New York and forgot about Martha, but she began bombarding him with letters declaring that I was madly in love with him.

Months passed, and Raymond received dozens of letters from Martha. He replied that he had no feelings for her and that it was better for her to forget him.

Martha decided to commit suicide sticking his head into the oven, with the gas on. They managed to save her in time.

After she was discharged, the woman sent a new letter to Raymond telling him about her suicide attempt.

Raymond changed his attitude. He replied with a telegram inviting her to spend a few days in New York. She left her children with relatives and traveled.

She thought her prince charming had given up. The truth is that Raymond had found his other evil half of soul. He subjected Martha to rough and violent sex for hours and she loved it. They were perversity twice.

After the two weeks she had requested from work, she had to return to Florida. When he arrived he found harsh news: She had been fired from the children’s home. Her suicide attempts did not qualify her to be in charge of the institution.

In January 1948, Martha and her two children appeared at the door of Raymond Fernández’s apartment in New York.

The pair of murderers. A cursed love.

The man almost fainted. Believing that he would get rid of her, he told her: “You can stay, but no children.”

The woman showed that she was equal to him or worse. On January 25, 1948 abandoned his children forever at a Salvation Army office.

The first measure as Raymond’s “official lover” was taken immediately: he threw the true owner of the apartment, the elderly Lucilla Thompson, out onto the street.

Raymond realized that this woman was the one he needed to develop the idea he had in mind and told her the truth: He had dozens of lovers with the sole purpose of scamming them.

Martha didn’t back down. He agreed to work with him. She would be his sister before the future lovers he met.

A road littered with murders

On January 28, 1948, they found the couple’s first victim: Esther Henne. Raymond and Esther were married in a small ceremony in Fairfax, Virginia. A few days later the woman realized that she was facing a scamming couple when They sold him the car and wanted him to sign a life insurance policy.

Esther abandoned the man and her apartment, but was left alive.

Fernández’s third wife (second in the United States), Myrtle Young, was not so lucky. After a few days of marriage, she realized that her husband was stealing from her and that her sister had “strange” approaches to his brother.

Myrtle suffered an overdose of barbiturates and the diabolical couple put her on a bus headed to Arkansas, where died on the way of a brain haorragy.

By December 1948, Raymond and Martha had spent all the money they stole from Young. AND They went out to “hunt” the next victim. Always with the same hook: exchange of letters in “Lonely Hearts.”

The one who fell into the trap was a 66 year old widow: Janet Fay. Raymond fi He claimed to be a very religious man when he realized that women were all house and church.

After an exchange of letters Raymond showed up at the woman’s house for the end of year holidays. Accompanied by Martha, whom he introduced as his sister.

The two murderers before going to the electric chair.

Everything was fast. Raymond (who said his name was Charles Martin) proposed marriage and the widow accepted. The trio went to live in an apartment that Raymond rented on Long Island, paid for by his future wife.

During the first week of January 1949, Janet visited several banks to withdraw money from her accounts: US$6,000. A fortune at that time that went to Raymond’s hands.

One night, Mrs. Fay, who already doubted her boyfriend’s strange sister, told him that as soon as they were married, she had to leave. The three of them were not going to live together under the same roof.

Martha nodded. The three of them were not going to live together under the same roof. AND He killed her with a hammer.

Upon waking up, Raymond found the tragedy already over. The fierce couple placed a towel around the dead woman’s head, placed it in the trunk of the car and hid it. in the basement from a rented house in Queens.

The same day that Janet Fay was murdered, the man received the letter from another of his lovers, Delphine Downing, a 41 year old widow who lived in Michigan, with her two-year-old daughter, Rainelle.

The evil couple showed up at the woman’s house with the same story. For days Raymond and the widow lived as lovers under the same roof, with “sister” Martha as a witness.

The most ferocious of his murders

that he I had sex only with Janet It angered Martha. After a few weeks, Martha decided to delete it.

And Raymond agreed. She put the woman to sleep with some sleeping pillshe placed a towel on her head and then He shot him several times in the head.

The woman She was buried in the basement of the house, under several layers of cement. But there was one drawback that they had not thought about: What to do with Delphine’s little daughter, Rainelle?

They concluded that it also had to be eliminated, but the man did not want to take charge. It was Marta who took the little girl to the basement and drowned her. She was then buried next to her mother.

Mrs. Downing’s neighbors realized that something strange was happening. Several days without seeing her or her daughter. And those strangers living in his house. They called the police.

Raymond and Martha were arrested when they returned from the movies one night. Both confessed to their crimes and the news shocked the United States for weeks. They were «The Lonely Hearts Killers.»

When he was behind bars, Raymond Fernández seemed to become again the man he was before his accident: «They should kill me. «I did horrible things, but I’m not afraid of the chair.»

The man sent a letter to his Spanish wife and mother of his four children, Encarnación Robles, asking her to visit him. The woman flatly refused.

Martha, on the other hand, cried and declared himself a victim of love: «Mine is a love story, but only those who have suffered for love can understand me.»

The end of the monsters

The trial lasted 44 days. It was long because the public, the justice system and the press wanted it that way. On June 17, 1949 They were found guilty and sentenced to the electric chair. in Sing-Sing prison, New York.

Psychiatrists also had their moment of glory. Martha asked one of the prisoners, «Raymond never loved me, did he?» And the professional answered: “No, he never loved her, and you didn’t know it, but is infected with syphilis for him.»

The case shocked the United States for months.

On March 8, 1951, two hours before being executed, Fernández sent a message to Martha, in which he told her «I would like to shout to the world the love I feel for you.» Beck hugged a nurse and told her, «Now I know that Raymond loves me and I can face death with joy.»

Martha’s last meal consisted of fried chicken without wings, French fries and a lettuce and tomato salad.

Raymond asked a tortilla with onion, French fries, chocolate and a Cuban cigar.

At 11 p.m., Raymond Martínez Fernández was executed in the electric chair and his last words were a scream in which He declared his love for Martha.

When it was Beck’s turn, she had trouble settling into the chair and almost in a whisper said “bye-bye.” At 11:24 pm Martha Beck Seabrook died.

The case inspired several works and books, and also a couple of films, most famously starring John Travolta, Jared Leto and Salma Hayek, in 2007 (see trailer above).

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