From Ray and Faye Copeland to Fred and Rosemary West, These Couples Were Truly Partners in Crime

While murderers don’t always work alone, it’s rare to uncover that their accomplice also happens to be their romantic partner. These couples who kill together collaborate on their grisly crime sprees, leaning into their shared violent and sadistic impulses.

Often, these dark and twisted relationships are based on a power dynamic where one partner is the dominant predator, preying upon a vulnerable person who is willing to indulge in their sick fantasies. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t both benefitting from their shared bond. 

“The dominant person needs the follower’s total loyalty in order to validate him- or herself,” former prison psychologist Dr. Al Carlisle told Psychology Today. “The subservient follower needs the power and authority of the dominant person, so he or she attempts to become that person’s shadow and to mirror the dominant person’s beliefs and ethics. Each receives justification from the other.”

On the other hand, an accomplice also may be equally complicit in their life of crime, propelling their partner forward and escalating one another’s violent tendencies. These murderous duos mutually reinforce one another’s behavior and are squarely guilty for their actions.  

Regardless of their origins, these relationships create a lethal combination, leading to deadly consequences. 

Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka, also known as the “Ken and Barbie Killers,” appeared to have been the picture-perfect couple when they tied the knot in 1991, but behind closed doors, their actions led to the deaths of three teenagers, including Homolka’s 15-year-old sister, Tammy.

Long before their murderous spree began, Bernardo had experienced a tumultuous childhood with an abusive father, per The Walrus. When he met Homolka, then a 17-year-old high school student, Bernardo was already 23, working in accounting—and had already begun a life of crime. Starting in 1987, Bernardo had brutally raped at least 14 women and girls in his hometown of Scarborough, Ontario, per CBC. Although he was interviewed by police in 1990 due to his resemblance to a composite sketch, he was not charged. 

As Bernardo and Homolka’s relationship grew more serious, he drew her into his life of crime, beginning with Homolka’s sister. On two occasions, they drugged Tammy with tranquilizers obtained from Homolka’s job at an animal clinic, and Bernardo sexually assaulted her. The second time, Tammy choked on her own vomit and died, an incident that was ruled accidental.

Bernardo and Homolka struck three more times, raping and torturing three teenage girls and killing two of them between 1991 and 1992. Then in 1993, Bernardo ruthlessly used a flashlight to attack Homolka, who then filed charges against him. He was arrested but later released from police custody. Shortly after, Bernardo’s DNA samples collected from his interview in 1990 finally connected him to the Scarborough attacks.

Before the case went to trial, Homolka arranged a plea agreement with prosecutors. In exchange for her testimony against Bernardo and guilty plea to two counts of manslaughter, she would serve just 12 years in prison, per the Canadian Department of Justice. The couple divorced in 1994 and the following year, Bernardo was found guilty of all the charges against him, which included two counts of first-degree murder. 

Bernardo was sentenced to life in prison while Homolka was released in 2005.  

Fred and Rosemary West were one of Britain’s most notorious serial killer couples, known to have sexually assaulted and murdered at least a dozen young women, including two of their own children. Over two decades, they took part in gruesome acts of violence, graphically raping and torturing their victims before dismembering and burying their bodies near their home.

The pair met when Rosemary was 15 and Fred was in his late 20s. They both came from troubled and traumatic backgrounds, facing abuse in their homes as children, per The Times. By the time they got together in the late 1960s, Fred had already secretly murdered a previous romantic partner and their unborn child, according to Fred and Rose: The Full Story of Fred and Rose West and the Gloucester House of Horrors. Together, Fred and Rosemary fueled their dark and twisted tendencies, eventually turning their home into a crime scene. 

The couple, who was obsessed with sex involving bondage and brutality, would lure young women into their homes, sometimes on the pretense of being a nanny, and eventually rape and kill them. Fred and Rosemary evaded police for years, their nine children too scared to come forward about the abuse they faced at home, per The Independent. Although Heather did attempt to tell a friend about being sexually abused, she was murdered in 1987 and buried in the backyard. 

Fred and Rosemary were finally caught after their daughter Louise confided in a friend, whose mother made an anonymous report to police. In 1992, they were arrested on numerous charges including rape and child endangerment. Although there were clear signs of abuse, the investigation stalled when their children were too scared to testify against their parents. Investigators eventually obtained a search warrant to excavate the backyard, where many of the couple’s victims were found.  

Before they could be tried for their crimes, Fred died by suicide. Rose was eventually sentenced to life behind bars. 

Ray and Faye Copeland are believed to be the oldest couple ever sentenced to death after being convicted of killing five people on their isolated farm in rural Missouri throughout the 1980s—but their life of crime began long before that. 

By the time Ray met Faye in the 1940s, he was already involved in petty crimes like forging checks and stealing livestock. Having lived through the Great Depression, Ray had picked up criminal tendencies in order to survive which continued on as he married Faye and they welcomed children. After being sent to jail for his crimes on several occasions, Ray earned a reputation as a scammer. Not permitted to buy or sell cattle to support the family’s farm, he began to formulate a dark and twisted plan to get his way.

Ray began hiring young drifters who were living at a mission for homeless men in Springfield, Mo. According to The New York Times, Ray promised them $50/day in cash and helped them set up checking accounts in their names. They would then act as small-scale cattle buyers, purchasing anywhere from $1,000 to $1,500 worth of cattle using a check. Days later, the check would bounce—but by that point, the Copelands had already resold the cattle. When investigators came looking for the men who cashed the bad check, they would be gone without a trace.

In 1989, authorities received a tip from a former employee who claimed to have seen human remains on the Copeland farm, explaining that he escaped before they could kill him too. Ray and Faye were eventually arrested on charges of fraud and their property was extensively searched. Authorities eventually discovered the bodies of five men—although investigators suspected there were more victims. 

Both Ray and Faye were found guilty on five counts of murder and were sentenced to death. At age 78, Ray died in prison while awaiting execution. In a later appeal, Faye successfully had her death sentence overturned. She was re-sentenced to life in prison but after suffering a stroke in 2002, she was released to a nursing home on medical parole. She died the following year at age 82.

Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez were known as the “The Lonely Hearts Killers,” murdering their victims after finding them through personal ads in newspapers and romance magazines. 

Fernandez, who served in British intelligence during World War II and had suffered a head injury, came up with the scheme while serving time in prison. While behind bars, he became convinced that he had a voodoo power over women and could turn them into his sexual slaves, per Time. After his release in 1946, he found his first victim, responding to her ad, gaining her trust and then robbing her. The following year, he took another woman, Florence Brown, to Spain, where he had lived as a teenager, and then killed her in a hotel room. 

When Fernandez then found and wrote to Beck, a single mother, he expected to con her, too. Instead, they fell in love and became partners in crime. Over several years, Fernandez and Beck pretended to be siblings and worked together to seduce and rob unsuspecting older women. 

In 1949, Fernandez and Beck killed a woman, Janey Fay, they were attempting to con on Long Island, N. Y. When Beck caught Fernandez in bed with Fay, she attacked her with a hammer in a fit of jealous rage and demanded that Fernandez strangle her to death. Later, the pair relocated to Michigan, where they attempted to con a young woman named Delphine Downing but ended up murdering her and then drowning her daughter.  

Fernandez and Beck were caught by police in Michigan and later extradited to New York. While the couple signed a 73-page confession, they were only charged for the murder of the Long Island woman—although it’s suspected they could have had as many as 20 victims. They were sentenced to death and died in the electric chair in 1951. 

Throughout the 1960s, Ian Brady and Myra Hindley orchestrated the abductions and brutal killings of five British children and teenagers in what infamously became known as the Moors Murders. It all began when the young couple met in 1961 as they both worked at a chemical distribution company, just outside of Manchester. Hindley quickly became infatuated with Brady,  who embraced Nazi ideology and had an obsession with sadistic sex.

Both coming from troubled home lives, the pair delved deeper into their dark and twisted tendencies. Their interests grew from pornography to more sinister acts that would satisfy their sadistic impulses. In 1963, the couple sexually assaulted and murdered their first victim, a 16-year-old school girl, and then buried her body on Saddleworth Moor. 

The couple struck four more times before being caught. Their final murder in 1965 occurred in front of Hindley’s brother-in-law, David Smith, who then contacted the police. Thanks to his tip, the body was discovered by authorities before it could be buried. During a search of Brady’s home, police were also led to suitcases containing photos and audiotapes of another victim being tortured and pleading for her life.

The duo was charged with three murders, although they were involved in several others. During their trial, they showed what psychologists called “no capacity for empathy,” per The New York Times. Brady was found guilty of all three murders, while Hindley was found guilty of two. They were sentenced to life in prison in 1966. 

Hindley died in 2002 while Brady, who had been diagnosed as a psychopath, died in 2017 while being held at a high-security psychiatric hospital

Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood went from nurse’s aides to murderers when they killed five elderly women at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Michigan where they worked. 

Shortly after Graham moved to Michigan in 1986, she formed a romantic connection with Wood, a co-worker who had recently gone through a divorce. According to Wood’s later testimony, Graham recruited her to be a part of her sinister plan to take the lives of several elderly patients. While they first intended to kill people whose initials would spell out the word “murder,” they backed out of the plan when their first victim fought back. They quickly shifted their focus to the weakest women in the home, ranging in age from ages 65 to 97.

According to Wood’s testimony, she would stand guard as Graham smothered the women with a wash cloth, which allegedly helped her “relieve tension,” per the Los Angeles Times. The couple even allegedly bragged about the murders—but their co-workers did not take them seriously. It wasn’t until 1988 that the pair got caught. Graham had challenged Wood to “prove her love” by murdering someone by herself; when she refused, Graham broke off their relationship and moved back home to Texas. 

Fearful that Graham would continue her murder spree elsewhere, Wood confided in her ex-husband about the crimes. In 1988, he contacted police who began an investigation into the deaths of several women in the nursing home who were previously thought to have died of natural causes. Following extensive interviews with Wood, she and Graham were arrested in December 1988.

Before the case went to trial, Wood agreed to a plea deal of a reduced sentence of 20 to 40 years in exchange for her testimony against Graham. Meanwhile, Graham was found guilty on five counts of first-degree murder and was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility for parole.