Parents Who Kill--Shocking True Stories of the World's Most Evil Parents (7 page)

In September, the couple attended a Bagby family wedding and stayed with his parents in California. She was watching television with them when the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers was televised but she remained indifferent to the horrific loss of life, ignoring the carnage and continuing to talk about the telephone service which she’d arranged for her new apartment. She also caused a scene when presented with a large bill in a restaurant. Shirley was even more irrational whenever she went out with Andrew and his friends, becoming enraged if they didn’t like her choice of bar or if he went someplace without telling her first. They flatly told Andrew that she was ‘nuts.’

By mid-2001, he was trying to end the relationship but she kept calling him and turning up at his Pennsylvania apartment. On 20 October that year, he took her to another family wedding and slept with her. It was the entirely wrong signal to send to someone whom he no longer wanted in his life. Three days later he told a friend that he and Shirley had again broken up and that he was now dating a radiographer.

On Monday 5 November, Shirley Turner arrived unexpectedly at Andrew’s Pennsylvania apartment as he was getting ready for his 7.30am hospital shift. He left her in the flat, having agreed to meet her after work at 5.30pm before she returned home. Friends suggested that he shouldn’t meet her alone, but he said that he’d be fine. Meanwhile, Shirley phoned her practice nurse and lied about her whereabouts, telling the woman that she was in bed in Iowa with a migraine and wouldn’t be coming in to work.

Late that afternoon, she met Andrew in the parking lot of Keystone State Park. When he got out of his vehicle, she shot him once in the chest and once in the cheek. He fell forward onto his face, badly injured, and she fired the next two shots
at his rectum. Bending down, she shot him in the back of the head. She tried to shoot him again but the gun was empty, so she settled for kicking him in the face. Shirley then drove back to Iowa, dumping the gun en route, and began to phone Andrew’s family and friends, asking if they’d heard from him. She endeavoured to sound like a concerned lover rather than a murderess.

Andrew’s body was found at 6am on the Tuesday morning, with his belongings untouched, so it was clear that this wasn’t a robbery. The shots to the face and the rectum suggested that the killer knew the victim and wanted to humiliate him.

Detectives were immediately suspicious of Shirley Turner as she told them that she and Andrew were in love, yet several of his friends and relatives said that, on the Monday, he’d told them that she was a ‘psychotic bitch’ and that he’d been increasingly determined to extricate himself from the relationship. The doctor admitted to having a .22 calibre pistol and said that it must be in her car, yet five hours later she phoned the police and reported the weapon missing. Even more damningly, Shirley’s pistol often malfunctioned and an unspent casing had been found next to Andrew’s corpse.

She said that she had been in bed suffering from a migraine in Iowa at the time of the murder, but her mobile phone records showed that she was lying about her location, that she’d made calls from Pennsylvania. They also found out that she had a history of harassing ex-boyfriends and had lost custody of all three of her children because she was so cold.

A week after the murder, as detectives continued to put together a case against her, she fled back to Canada. Later that same month, she found out that she was expecting Andrew’s child.

In Canada, Shirley received treatment for anxiety and depression from a psychiatrist who she had previously worked for. When she was arrested, he paid her surety money and she was let out on bail, pending a hearing regarding her extradition to the United States on the murder charge. Still extremely disturbed, she turned up at the home of Andrew’s ex-fiancée Heather and accused her of committing the murder. And when her 12-year-old daughter arrived for a short access visit, she refused to send her back.

Meanwhile, Andrew’s parents were so determined to support their future grandchild that they gave up their jobs in California and relocated to Canada. They forced themselves to be civil towards Shirley whenever she called. On 18 July 2002, she gave birth to a baby boy and called him Zachary Andrew Turner. The Bagbys paid for his care (Shirley wasn’t working) and babysat for him as often as possible, hoping to get full custody when his mother went to jail.

On 14 November, the Order of Committal was finally heard in a Newfoundland court, and Shirley was committed and sent to a woman’s prison. The Bagbys took Zachary to visit her every weekend, as per the court order. But in January she was bailed and took the baby back. By now, it was clear that Zachary preferred being with his grandmother Kate Bagby rather than with his mother, a fact that wasn’t lost on Shirley. She often changed her mind at the last minute about their babysitting arrangements and said that he’d have to be fostered out if extradition went ahead and she was imprisoned in the US.

But, in mid-July, she met a medical technician in a pub and quickly went to bed with him. However, her mood darkened at Zachary’s first birthday party when he chose his grandma over her. She told him that he was one year old now and couldn’t
expect to be cuddled forever, that it was time he became more independent. She phoned a friend and wept, saying childishly ‘he likes her more than me.’

Later that month, Shirley’s boyfriend finished with her and she went into bunny-boiler mode, phoning him at all hours of the day and night. She told him that she was pregnant, then that she’d had an abortion. A few days later she stated that she hadn’t had an abortion but had had a miscarriage, and, later still, that the miscarriage was a false alarm and she was continuing with the pregnancy.

He told her to stop calling, whereupon she appeared to retreat into a fantasy world, telling a friend that she and her new man were working things out.

Late on Sunday 17 August 2003, she drove to his house with Zachary in the backseat. His vehicle was parked in the driveway and she pushed a bloody tampon under one of the wheels, presumably her way of telling him that the pregnancy was a false alarm. She also lodged two photos under another wheel, one of herself with Zachary and another of her in bra and briefs. Leaving his house – and probably en route to his workplace – she ran her car into a ditch.

At this point, she gave the baby several of her tranquillisers and walked to the coast, following the road until she reached a marina. At 3am, she jumped into the North Atlantic Ocean, clutching the 13-month-old. Their bodies were washed up on Manuels Beach the following day.

By now the Bagbys – having lost both their beloved son and grandson – were so distraught that they could barely function. But they regrouped, and David wrote a book,
Dance With The
Devil,
about the failures of the Canadian judicial system. He now speaks out for victims’ rights.

The couple also helped set up an American scholarship – the Dr Andrew Bagby Family Medicine Scholarship Fund – in their son’s name, which allows medical students to spend a month working with family doctors in a clinical setting. Two years later, a similar fund was established in Newfoundland, Canada.

After killing her 16-year-old daughter and attempting to kill her 14-year-old, Susan turned the gun on herself but it jammed. Prior to the shooting, she hadn’t seriously hurt or neglected her children, wasn’t a Munchausen’s By Proxy mother and didn’t have a hormonal or financial reason to kill them. As such, she fits best into the murder-suicide category where a mixture of long-term unhappiness, psychiatric problems and external events conspire to convince the woman that she and her offspring would be better off dead.

Susan Biancardi married in 1970, and in 1972 moved with her husband, Philip, to Beverly, Massachusetts. She became clinically depressed during her first pregnancy in 1974 which resulted in a beautiful baby girl, whom she christened Marcia. Two years later she gave birth to another equally attractive child, Audrey. The family were regularly seen around the neighbourhood, going out on walks together or to the ice-cream parlour. She even helped the local children put on a backyard play, making all of the costumes on her sewing machine.

Though she went on to suffer intermittently from depression, and sometimes seemed to be living off her nerves,
she was a good mother to her children when they were young. She paid for them to have music and dancing lessons, and encouraged them to participate in sports and drama. Later she was very proud when Marcia made the cheerleading team.

Susan was also a good worker at the local town hall where she was head clerk in the assessor’s office. She kept excellent records, gave helpful tax advice and was especially attentive towards elderly visitors. She brought in home-baked cookies for her colleagues on a regular basis and kept them up to date with her daughter’s accomplishments. She also taught at the local Sunday school.

But, behind the Superwoman image was an increasingly unhappy wife and, in 1984, Susan filed for divorce from Philip citing ‘cruel and abusive treatment.’ She later changed her mind and reunited with him.

In 1987, 13-year-old Marcia began dating an older boy of whom Philip and Susan disapproved, and this led to numerous family altercations. The following year, Susan filed a complaint against the youth, alleging that he had raped her daughter and contributed to the delinquency of a minor. The charges were investigated and dismissed. But Marcia loved the youth and continued to see him throughout the rest of the 1980s, hoping that her parents wouldn’t find out.

Meanwhile, Susan’s life increasingly revolved around religion and she often attended the Second Congregational Church in Beverly, taking her daughters to lengthy prayer sessions. But this couldn’t quell the deep sadness inside her, and she turned to drink, the alcohol clashing with the tranquillisers that she was already on. She began to see two psychiatrists and told them that she was exhausted but couldn’t sleep.

All three of the women in the Biancardi household were
becoming increasingly disturbed, with both girls having terrible nightmares. Audrey, age 14, often slept in the same bed as her mother whilst her father was working nights. Susan called the 14-year-old ‘little Audrey’ and was always phoning the girls to check up on them.

But Marcia was becoming a young woman who needed an increasing level of independence, the right to make her own choices. Yet when her mother found out that she was still seeing her boyfriend, she was incensed. She fell into a deep depression, stopped eating and lost over two stone in weight. Her marital troubles continued and Philip left their bed and began sleeping alone in the attic. Susan told a friend that she was going to leave him and take the girls.

It was clear that, by now, she favoured her younger daughter Audrey who was surprisingly mature for her age and very much the family peacemaker. When Susan and Marcia came to blows, the 14-year-old stepped between them to prevent anyone getting hurt.

Susan admitted to a relative that she now hated Marcia. In January 1990 she slapped the teenager across the face and threw her out of the house for refusing to relinquish the phone to her sister. School friends noticed that Marcia was deeply unhappy, though she tried to hide this with bright chatter and by practicing with the rest of the hockey cheerleading team. She also sang in the school choir.

On 11 February 1990, Susan cancelled the 16-year-old’s beloved riding lessons, telling her riding instructor that Marcia had a bad attitude. She asked the riding school to sell the teenager’s riding boots and hat, saying that she no longer needed them. But, on the 13th, she bought each of the girls a bunch of roses and helped them wrap Valentine’s Day gifts to take to their friends at school the following day.

That same night, Susan was as insomniacal as ever. At midnight, she left her bed (which she was sharing with Audrey) and walked up the stairs to the attic where she fetched her husband’s 16-gauge, bolt-action shotgun from its usual storage space behind a bureau. She walked back down the stairs and into Marcia’s room, put a blanket over the muzzle and held it three inches from her sleeping daughter. Susan then shot the 16-year-old through the torso and hurried back to her room.

Marcia, who was naked, staggered from the bed and began to scream that there was blood everywhere. Audrey woke up and Susan told her to stay where she was whilst she returned to Marcia’s bedroom. Marcia yelled ‘Mother, stop!’ and Audrey raced down the hall to find her sister covered in what she thought was tomato ketchup. Susan told her that Marcia had had a bad dream, to go back to bed.

Audrey went back to bed as ordered, unaware that she’d just witnessed a Valentine’s Day Massacre. Seconds later, Susan approached the bed and pressed the muzzle of the gun into Audrey’s side and pulled the trigger but the shotgun jammed and Audrey managed to push it away. She noticed that her mother’s eyes were wide with fright. Jumping out of bed, she raced back to her sister’s room to find Marcia slumped against the door, moaning. She had lost a lot of blood.

The 14-year-old raced down the hall to call the police, but saw her mother in the bathroom, pointing the gun at her own stomach. She pulled the trigger but, again, the shotgun misfired. Susan warned Audrey not to tell the truth about what happened to her sister. When police arrived, Susan told them that Marcia had committed suicide.

They were suspicious as the 16-year-old had phoned her best friend that night and made plans to go dancing, hardly the actions of a girl who was suicidal. They also found out that
Susan had previously slapped her oldest daughter and claimed to hate her, but they couldn’t prove that this hatred had resulted in a murder. Susan’s friends believed her version of events and she returned to her old life, buoyed up with a heavy intake of alcohol.

For the next year, young Audrey kept the terrible secret but then she broke down, walked into a police station and told them what had happened that fateful night. Weeping, she begged them to get psychiatric help for Susan, describing her as ‘a good mother.’