December 17, 1914 - Raymond Fernandez
Fernandez and his partner Martha Beck exploited the vulnerability of lonely, often middle-aged women who sought companionship through newspaper personal ads — a predatory method that gave their crimes both their scale and their particular cold quality. Operating over roughly two years in the late 1940s, the pair are suspected of killing as many as twenty people, though confirmed victims number three. The case drew widespread public attention after their 1949 arrest and has remained a reference point for the study of predatory partnerships and the dangers of deception dressed as romance.
From Wikipedia
Raymond Martinez Fernandez (December 17, 1914 – March 8, 1951) and Martha Jule Beck (May 6, 1920 – March 8, 1951) were an American serial killer couple. They were convicted of one murder, are known to have committed two more, and were suspected of having killed up to twenty victims during a spree between 1947 and 1949.
After their arrest and trial for serial murder in 1949, Fernandez and Beck became known as the Lonely Hearts Killers for meeting their unsuspecting victims through personal ads, posted in newspaper lonely hearts columns. A number of films and television shows are based on this case.
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