CON MEN PREY ON NEEDY WOMEN

This sex scam went on for eight years.  Jon Allen told his girlfriend “Cindy” that if she did not have sex with him, they might both be killed by the mob.  She was blindfolded during sex and was told that he had a listening device so the mobsters could tell if they were performing as ordered.   “She truly believed him for eight years,” said the district attorney.  Allen was convicted of rape, sodomy and coercion and faces an eight to twenty-five-year sentence.

How could Cindy have been so incredibly naïve?  Hard to say, but one thing is for sure: Jon was a con artist playing to her needs.  While we all have a need for love and relationships, women are more vulnerable to love/sex scams.  One con artist did it by mail – from prison.  Carl Ippolito answered personal ads in newspapers, figuring that these women would be lonely and ripe for the pickings.  He sent them letters describing himself as an engineer working for the UN in Kuwait.  He asked them for money to buy gifts.  This guy was so convincing that he received thirty to fifty letters a month, many of them with checks.  All from women.

When Jay Kaplan arrived in New Haven, Connecticut, he passed himself off as a wealthy California businessman.  He wined and dined Lindy Lee Gold, endearing himself to her family.  Soon after they were married, he conned her out of $75,000.  “He knows exactly what buttons to push,” said a New Haven police detective.  Kaplan is a professional con man who has been married eight times.  He has been arrested in California, New York, Nevada and Florida for forgery, fraud, theft, larceny and bigamy.

 What strikes me as truly strange, is that even when women know their lover boys are not the best of citizens, they still marry them.   For example, Jennifer is talking to her friend Betty, a teacher from New York City.

     Jennifer: Betty, I’ve got a really neat guy I’d like to fix you up with.

     Betty: Great!  What does he do?

     Jennifer: Well, at the moment he’s in prison, but I think you’ll like him.

     Betty: Prison?  Oh, well, nobody’s perfect.  What’s he in for?

     Jennifer: He raped 200 women.  But he’s really a decent guy.  Why don’t you

    give it a try?

     Betty:  He sounds interesting, but when is he due to get out?

     Jennifer: He has a parole date in about twenty years.

Although the conversation and names are fictitious, Betty really did marry a prisoner who had raped 200 women.   And she is not alone.  In 1983, for example, 900 women in California married inmates.

Lisa Thompson called her husband Brett, “a neat guy.”  Brett was convicted of a triple murder and is serving three life sentences.  Said Lisa, “I’m not ashamed of him.  I’m ashamed of what he did.”   The deed is somehow separated from the man.  She had to rationalize it somehow.  Brett’s mother, jumping on the Rationalization Bandwagon, said, “I have five other kids, and this is the best marriage of the lot.”  Sure it’s a great marriage; they don’t live together, don’t have money problems and they certainly don’t argue about sex.

Pam Murphy, whose husband is serving a life sentence for a drug related murder, likes her married life.  “You figure we’re in a situation where most of the time we have nothing to do but talk.  Very few married couples have that.  And we talk so much of our relationship that we know each other more than a lot of people that have been married for twenty years.”  They might “know” each other quite well, but not in the biblical sense.  (When Adam knew Eve, Cain and Abel was the result.)

Why do women marry rapists and murderers?  Dr. Larry Claton, a veteran prison psychiatrist, believes these women, “have a great need to be needed.”  Perhaps they feel they are helping the men.  Women sometimes believe that because of their personal qualities, they can bring out the best in these cutthroats.   The need to be needed may help explain why women are duped by men.  A lonely woman would rather marry a prisoner, whom she perceives as needing help, than live alone.  From her point of view, it’s a win/win.  They both get something from the relationship.

“We’ve got three thousand captive men in here,” said a correctional officer at California’s Folsom prison, “and you’ve got a lot of unhappy women out there.”

  A year from now, many of these women will be parted from their money.

Update – Nothing has changed since this piece was originally published.  In 2018, not far from where I live, Christopher Watts, a seemingly normal man murdered his two little girls and then murdered his pregnant wife, after which he loaded their bodies into his truck and dumped them at an oil work site. He apparently did not commit this crime in a fit of rage; he coolly smothered one of the little girls.  When the other said, “Daddy don’t do that to me what you did to (my sister),” he killed her too. 

Heartbreaking. Soul crushing.  Bizarre. Incomprehensible. At least to normal people.  Watts is not exactly good marriage material, yet he received dozens of letters from young women who find him “handsome” and “cute” and want to get to know him better.  A thirty-nine-year-old woman from Colorado wrote to him, "Literally, I want to get to know you soooo bad its (sic) not even funny.  Literally your (sic)on my mind almost every single day since you were in the news.”  She added that she’d be “the happiest girl alive” if Watts responded to her letter.   The twenty-nine-year-old enclosed a bikini-clad photo of herself on a beach.

 Other women wrote:

  “In my heart, you are a great guy.”

   “I’m hoping to brighten your days.”

A surprising number of women brightened up the days of Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, the Boston Marathon bomber and Brian Kohberger who slaughtered four college students in their beds in Idaho. Nikolas Cruz, who killed 17 people and injured 17 more when he opened fire at Marjory Stoneman Douglas high school in Parkland, Fla. on Feb. 14, 2018, received dozens of love letters from teenage girls, women and even men.  They send lewd photos and obscene letters, and words of support. 

“I’m 18-years-old. I’m a senior in high school,” one wrote. “When I saw your picture on the television, something attracted me to you…Your eyes are beautiful and the freckles on your face make you so handsome.”  She described herself as “… really skinny and have 34C sized breasts.”

Psychologists continue to weigh in with theories.

·   Katherine Pier suggests that flirting with a dangerous individual could be part of a sadomasochistic fantasy.

·   Judy Ho argues that women sometimes want to be the “special person” to fix their wrongdoing.

·   Sheila Isenberg, author of “Women Who Love Men Who Kill,” suggests that having a relationship, even a loving one with a notorious criminal is simply exciting.  “You don’t know what’s going to happen. There’s always an adrenaline rush.”

·   Isenberg also suggests it might be all about celebrity worship.   Women who write to monsters like Watts, want to get in on the notoriety.  

There is no neat and tidy conclusion.  Human behavior is rarely neat and tidy.  Mostly it’s messy.  If we label Watts and the others as psychopaths, the label somehow explains their behavior.  But the actions of women who want a relationship with them  to fill some need, is more difficult to explain.  Their actions are not logical, they are psychological.