From Nudist Camp to Abusive Marriage
Hilma’s relationship with Paul began in one of the strangest settings imaginable. After Hilma and her sister bounced around foster homes during their childhood and early teen years, their mother, Margaret O’Donnell, regained custody and took the two girls to live with her and her new husband at a nudist camp in Florida.
Hilma was 16 years old, 10 years younger than Paul, when the couple met and got married at the nudist camp, which was known as a place where older men would meet teen girls. It was an odd orbit that shaped Hilma’s world view, according to forensic psychiatrist Dr. Carole Lieberman.
“Hilma’s rough childhood laid the seeds for her becoming a psychopath, and gave rise to her later cold, manipulative behavior and murderous intentions,” Lieberman tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “She had not been in control of her life from the time she was born and built up a murderous rage.”
After marrying Paul, the couple moved to his hometown, Michigan City, Ind. Hilma was 19 when she had Eric, and two years later she gave birth to Butch. The family had idyllic moments such as Paul taking his sons on fishing and camping trips. But the Witte patriarch had a dark side as well, beating his wife and kids whenever they upset him.
“[Paul] was a very large, powerful person,” Eric said in an interview for a documentary about his mother. “A backhand from him—that's not a loved hand. From him, he thought of it as discipline.”
The abuse made Hilma desperate to get rid of Paul.
“Her life had thus far caused her to feel estranged toward others since she had never felt loved by her parents, her foster families, or her husband,” Lieberman says. “She tried poisoning Paul, but when that didn't work, she felt nothing of using her eldest son to kill him just like she had been used as a child.”
The Murders of Paul and Elaine Witte
After one beating left Eric bloodied and shaken, Hilma tended to his injuries and then floated the idea that had been simmering in the home for years: Maybe Paul had to die. When Eric hesitated, she tried to poison Paul by surreptitiously giving him small amounts of rat poison and Valium. Dobson believes Hilma made half-hearted attempts to poison her husband to further manipulate Eric into killing his father.
“It was her way of saying, ‘I’m too weak, I can’t kill him. Someone else is going to have to help me,’” Dobson believes. “That manipulation was so refined. She was too good, too convincing at what she did.”
By the time Paul was killed, the “accident” story had already been rehearsed into something the family could repeat convincingly. It was Elaine Witte’s murder in 1984 that unlocked the horrible truth. Police first got suspicious when Elaine could not be accounted for, and relatives kept getting evasive answers from Hilma about her whereabouts. Investigators then noticed Elaine’s social security checks were still being cashed locally.
Hilma and her two sons were apprehended in San Diego when she attempted to cash one of the checks, and a bank employee contacted police. Under questioning, Butch, then 16 years old, admitted to killing Elaine by shooting her with a crossbow. He also told investigators that he and Hilma dismembered his step-grandmother’s body and got rid of the body parts with the help of Eric and Margaret O’Donnell, Hilma’s mother.
Hilma was convicted and sentenced to a 90-year term in Elaine’s slaying and a concurrent 50 years for her role in Paul’s death. During her trial, Hilma took the stand in her own defense, denying her involvement in orchestrating the homicides. She did admit to dismembering Elaine’s body and withdrawing $6,000 from her stepmother-in-law’s savings after the murder.
Eric and Butch received reduced sentences after cooperating with prosecutors, while O’Donnell was also convicted for helping dispose of Elaine’s body parts, which were never recovered.
“Psychopaths such as Hilma have this narcissism where it becomes their identity,” Dobson says. “Their truth is their identity, even if they know they're lying.”
