I am pleased to host an extract from Kate Moretti's new book In Her Bones as part of the #InHerBones blog tour.
Excerpt from The Serrated Edge: The Story of Lilith Wade, Serial Killer, by E. Green, RedBarn Press, copyright June 2016
Some people will argue that Lilith Wade killed for love.
More accurately, her killings were all rage-induced as a direct result of sleeping
with married or soon-to-be-married men. She would not speak directly to us but
has given various accounts of the sequence of events. The following transcript
is taken from police and psychiatric interviews, all published and footnoted.
My mam always said the only thing
that mattered was keeping a husband. Her whole life was lived for him, until
they died together ’n left me alone, which if she had to pick is how she woulda
picked anyhow. I ain’t nothing but living competition to her. He was a snake,
that one, my father, I guess, though I never called him that. Never called him
much of ’nything to ’is face. [Psy. Case Stu. 2004 Jul;19:310–12]
Lilith Wade broke the serial killer mold on several
fronts. She was female, of course; the majority of serial killers are men. She
behaved more like a “mass murderer” who kills primarily to right a perceived
wrong, except in her case, the wrong was personal, not societal. She did not
kill for sexual gratification, like Ted Bundy or Dennis Rader. When asked why she
killed six women, all wives or fiancées of men she’d seduced, she simply
shrugged and said, “Because they deserved it.” She was also one of the least
prolific serial killers. Officials do not believe there are unaccounted-for
murders.
“She’d laugh, you know? She said
she didn’t kill them all. I took that to mean she didn’t kill all the wives of
men she’d seduced. From what we’ve been able to gather, she was sexually active
after her shift at the bar,” says Dr. Phyllis Bond, a psychiatrist who has studied
Lilith Wade extensively, referencing her case in her recently released case
files nonfiction title, Serial Criminals, New York: Pinkerton Press, 2014. “We
do not understand why she ‘picked’ these women, specifically, to kill.”
Bond goes on to say, “No one has been able to get what
happened in the house she grew up in out of Lilith definitively. She shows an
incredible amount of rage toward her mother. She is very clear about her
father. He raped her, regularly. I once asked her if she blamed her mother for
all the hell her father put her through. If she was angry that her mother never
protected her. She laughed. ‘Protect me? That bitch would no sooner protect me
than . . . well, let’s just say she called me his little whore, that’s all.’
I’ll never forget the way she laughed. You have to remember, she was ten when
her parents died. What kind of person calls a nine-year-old a whore?”
Experts note that a key component in the characterization
of a serial killer is repeated killings, spaced months or years apart, with a
“return to normalcy” in the downtimes. Lilith Wade’s normalcy was highlighted
by bouts of mental illness, even once an institutionalization. Most serial
killers have severe personality disorders but not necessarily a mental illness
diagnosis. Lilith Wade had both.
Many psychiatrists have argued over Wade’s various mental
illness and personality disorder diagnoses. She has been labeled with
borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, and
narcissistic personality disorder, as well as bipolar disorder with delusions,
obsessive-compulsive disorder, and severe depression. One prominent
psychiatrist argued that Wade held no mental illness diagnoses at all, save for
her personality disorders, because she was “devoid of emotion.” This assessment
has been largely discredited. Some of these diagnoses also conflict with one
another, which makes a formal assessment difficult to obtain.
Serial killers, by nature, have learned to camouflage
themselves. They are charming, well spoken, manipulative. Lilith Wade displayed
all these traits when she worked at the bar, Drifter’s. They can shape-shift
into regular people on instinct.
Mitchell Cook, husband of victim Penelope Cook, gave one
interview where he said this of Lilith:
She could charm the pants off a
snake. She looked at you like you were the only one in the room. Like you were
interesting. She was just so goddamn interested in everything you had to say.
In my whole life, no one has ever thought I was that funny, that smart. She
made you feel like a hero, you know? She was damaged, too, you could tell. That
combination, though? Beautiful, damaged, and intensely interested? It could
lure anyone. People forget that, when they talk about her. That she was pretty.
This is not an uncommon description of Lilith Wade. Her
coworkers and acquaintances describe someone who was always intensely
interested in whomever she was talking to. She asked detailed, almost prying
questions. She is described as having trouble with boundaries.
After an accident involving her neighbor’s daughter, whom
Wade’s tweenaged daughter was tasked with babysitting, Linda Reston said that
Wade brought her flowers.
“She’d always ask about Hazel. Was she doing okay? Was
there anything they could do? She was so concerned,” says Reston.
But Yolanda Fink, another neighbor in Faithful,
Pennsylvania, only says this:
Lilith Wade was not a mother to
those children. They ran feral from May to September. Half the time I fed them.
They hung out on the steps with my boy, and Mrs. Wade paid them no mind until
she wanted or needed something. Everyone said she looked at you like she cared,
but I saw right through her. She didn’t care about anyone but herself. She
wasn’t caring, she was calculating. Always wanted to know: What could you do
for her?
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In
Her Bones by Kate Moretti published by Titan Books
Fifteen years ago, Lilith Wade was arrested for murdering
six women. After a death row conviction and media frenzy, her daughter Edie is
just trying to survive out of the spotlight, but has a disturbing secret: an
obsession with the families of Lilith's victims. Then one man is found murdered
and she becomes the prime suspect. Edie remembers nothing of the night of the
murder, and must get to the truth before the police-or the real killer-find
her.
