My Boyfriend the Killer: Women Who Loved Monsters and Ignored the Blood on Their Hands
by M.P. Pellicer | Noir Notebook
They dated charming writers, poets, and smooth-talking strangers—unaware or unwilling to see the monsters beneath the surface. Dive into the chilling true stories of women who stood by serial killers like Jack Unterweger, Ted Bundy, and Paul John Knowles, trapped in a web of seduction, denial, and deadly secrets.
Some women run with killers. Labeled compliant accomplices, they know about the crimes—and sometimes participate—driven by fear for their lives or terror of losing the relationship. Others insist they never suspected a thing, blind to the blood staining the man beside them. Popular culture paints serial killers as lone wolves obsessing in dank cellars, but reality often tells a far more disturbing story.
Johann “Jack” Unterweger, the Vienna Woods Killer, carved a trail of strangled victims across multiple countries. In 1974, he murdered 18-year-old prostitute Margaret Schaefer, using her own bra as the lethal ligature. Sentenced to life, he transformed inside prison into Austria’s celebrated “prison poet.” He penned short stories, plays, and poems that captivated literary elites. A fervent campaign secured his pardon, and authorities released him in May 1990 after the mandatory 15 years.
Once free, Unterweger’s star rose higher. Schools taught his book. Radio stations broadcast his children’s stories. He hosted a television program on criminal rehabilitation. As a journalist, he even covered murder cases—his own crimes. Austrian police later searched his apartment and discovered photographs of him posing with female LAPD officers. They had welcomed the acclaimed writer in 1991, taking him on ride-alongs.
Evidence soon linked him to additional cold cases in Austria. When authorities closed in, Unterweger fled to Florida with his 18-year-old girlfriend, Bianca Mrak. The true psychopath taunted pursuers with interviews, claiming he was framed. Bianca stood by him, insisting she joined him willingly. Mesmerized by his celebrity as an author and journalist, she believed his lies. Whether she knew about the accusations against him remains unclear.
U.S. Marshals captured the couple in South Beach, Florida, in 1992. Unterweger abandoned Bianca—perhaps the wisest choice he ever made for her. His travel journal, left behind in the room, revealed he had contemplated killing his young lover. While awaiting extradition, he boasted, “I have wonderful relationships with women.”
Even after learning the full horror of his crimes, Bianca declared, “I’ll stick with him, no matter what happens. He is my man, and I’m his woman.”
In May, prosecutors charged Unterweger with eleven murders, including one in Prague and three in Los Angeles. A court convicted him in 1994 of killing ten women across three countries. That same night, he fashioned a noose from shoelaces and a tracksuit cord, hanged himself in his cell, and used the exact knot he had tied around his victims—many of them prostitutes.
Bianca later reflected with eerie devotion: “Jack has such beautifully cared-for hands. He could be very sweet with those hands. I can’t imagine that he could have used those same hands to kill someone.”
Liz Kendall (born Elizabeth Kloepfer) met Ted Bundy in a bar in 1969. The smooth-talking law-school hopeful swept the single mother off her feet with tales of writing a book and bright ambitions. In her memoir The Phantom Prince (1981), she described their six-year relationship:
“I knew when I first looked at him…that he was a cut above the rest of the crowd. The way he moved projected confidence. He seemed to be in control of his world.”
Kendall supported him financially despite his polished facade. She later discovered he had murdered other women while they dated. When she confronted his lies, he twisted the narrative and made her doubt herself. She believed him. She stayed compliant.
Both Unterweger and Bundy mastered the art of manipulation. They projected normalcy, imitated caring boyfriends, and carefully walled off their predatory violence from their romantic relationships. They understood that any bleed-over would shatter the illusion. These killers fulfilled their girlfriends’ emotional needs, grooming them into dependency. They spared their lovers not out of love, but because the women served a vital purpose—making the monsters appear ordinary.
Unlike television dramas, where viewers spot the villain early, real predators deliberately blend in. They target neediness and insecurity, then exploit it.
Romanticizing Bundy’s restraint with Kendall as true love misses the cold calculation: killing her would have made him the prime suspect and exposed his crimes.
Paul John Knowles, the Casanova Killer, offers another haunting case. FBI agents hunted him in 1974. He started a life of crime when he was 7 years old and stole a bike. He became a runaway child, and for 21 of his 28 years, he shuttled in and out of jails and courtrooms. After a brutal youth in foster homes and the notorious Dozier School for Boys, he landed in Florida’s Raiford Prison. There, he began a long-distance correspondence with Angela Covic, a San Francisco divorcée. They became engaged after one prison visit. Through friends, she met attorney Sheldon Yavitz, a protégé of the famed New York attorney Ellis Rubin, who worked with her to get Knowles paroled.
Once free, Knowles went to her, but Angela found him so disturbing she ended the relationship immediately. That same night, he claimed he murdered three people. She likely already knew his burglary conviction, yet something far darker in that meeting terrified her into flight.
Knowles returned to Jacksonville in violation of his parole agreement to stay in California. In July, 1974, he stabbed the bartender at the Tropic Air Motel in Jacksonville Beach during a fight. He escaped before he could be processed by kicking down a wire mesh door in a holding cell.
He then unleashed a four-month, multi-state killing spree. His first victim, 65-year-old retired school teacher Alice Curtis, choked to death on a gag after he broke into her home and stole her car.
In his taped confession, he said he had killed a girl named “Alma”. It wasn’t until 2011 that this claim was proven to be accurate. The Georgia Bureau of Investigation matched Alma to Ima Jean Sanders, 13, who disappeared on August 1, 1974, from Warner Robins, Georgia. Her skeleton was found in April, 1976.
Then he said he was responsible for the disappearance of Lillian Anderson, 11, and Mylette Anderson, 7, who were taken from their Jacksonville home on August 1, 1974. The investigators believed this was a false confession. The girls’ bodies have never been found, and their kidnapping coincided with the disappearance of a total of five young girls during 3 months. The only bodies recovered were those of Virginia Helm and Rebecca Greene, both 12. No arrests have been made in connection with any of the cases.
On September 3, 1974, William Bates, 32, an account executive for Ohio Power Company, was seen at the Scott’s Inn, a pub near Lima, Ohio, in the company of a redheaded man. The bartender, who knew Bates, recalled that they had several drinks that evening and left together.
Mrs. Bates reported him missing. Near the tavern, Alice Curtis’ stolen Dodge Dart was recovered, but Bates’ car was gone. His nude body was found a month later in the woods. He’d been strangled.
Knowles continued his rampage: strangling Marjorie Howie and stealing her TV, murdering Kathy Sue Pierce while sparing her toddler.
Knowles’ next stop was Ely, Nevada. On September 18, 1974, he shot Emmett and Lois Johnson, two elderly campers at a rest stop.
Four days later, Knowles had already made it to Texas. On September 22, Charlynn Hicks was found dead near a rest stop outside Seguin. This was three days after her family had reported her missing. She’d been raped and strangled.
Within 24 hours, he rolled into Birmingham, Alabama, and met Ann Dawson, 49, a beautician. They traveled together for about a week, and she was footing the bills. He said he killed her on September 29, 1974, and threw her into the Mississippi River.
While some sources claim her body was never found, others confirm that squirrel hunters in Mississippi discovered her remains on November 15, 1977. Her family and investigators suspect that Knowles did not dispose of her in the Mississippi River. Her car was found at a known stopping place with blood evidence, indicating she was kidnapped rather than leaving voluntarily.
Two weeks later, Karen Wine and her daughter, Dawn, 16, were tied up, raped, and strangled. Knowles had broken into their Marlborough, Connecticut home. The only thing missing from the home was a tape recorder.
On the move once more, Knowles went to Virginia. On October 18, Doris Hosey, 53, was shot through the head with her husband’s gun, which was left by her body.
Knowles then showed up in Key West, driving William Bates’ vehicle. He had picked up two hitchhikers and was stopped by police for some infraction, and was given only a warning. Scared by the close call, he dropped off the couple in Miami without harming them.
After this, he went to see his lawyer, Sheldon Yavitz, who suggested that he surrender. Knowles refused, but would later mail his taped confessions to his attorney.
Yavitz said he never listened to the tapes, but he refused to turn them over to the police, citing attorney-client privilege. He was sent to jail for contempt of court, and for an unknown reason, his wife was jailed as well. Eventually, authorities did obtain them.
On November 2, 1974, hitchhikers Edward Hillard and Debbie Griffin disappeared near Macon, Georgia. Hillard’s body was found in some nearby woods, and Griffin has never been found. Knowles is suspected of being their killer.
Four days later, he met Carswell Carr, who lived in Milledgeville, Georgia. A witness later reported seeing Carr in the company of a young man at a local gay bar, and they left together. Little did Carr know he was inviting a killer to spend the night at his home. Martha Carr worked the night shift as a nurse and was absent from the house. She was the one to discover the murder scene. Carswell was stripped naked on the bed and stabbed almost 30 times with a pair of scissors. Despite his injuries, the medical examiner indicated that his death had been the result of a heart attack.
His daughter Mandy, 15, was strangled with a pair of stockings. Another pair of stockings was stuffed inside her mouth. Both victims had their hands tied behind their backs. There was the appearance of attempted but incomplete rape.
He charmed British journalist Sandy Fawkes (1929-2005) in Atlanta, posing as Lester Daryl Golden and teasing her with promises of a sensational book. They spent two days together. Fawkes noted his strange behavior during intimacy but found him otherwise considerate. She even joked that he might be a killer. The next day, he attempted to rape at gunpoint Susan Mackenzie, one of Fawkes’ acquaintances. She escaped and called the police. Only then did Fawkes realize the monster she had invited into her life. She later surmised that her potential role as his biographer saved her.
Fawkes recognized from police photos the expensive suits Knowles wore as those stolen from Carswell Carr. He had given her a Mickey Mouse watch, which had belonged to Mandy Carr.
Knowles then fled to Florida and turned up in West Palm Beach, where he posed as an IRS agent and broke into the home of Beverly Mabee and kidnapped her twin sister, Barbara Tucker. He left Beverly an invalid, and her nephew tied up in the home. He drove 60 miles with Barbara in her car to Fort Pierce. At his insistence, they checked into a motel as a married couple. He left her alone in the room, and she managed to run away from him.
Knowles fled, and police believed he was hiding in Jacksonville. On November 16, Trooper Charles Campbell recognized the stolen car Knowles was traveling in. Knowles overpowered Campbell and kidnapped him and another man named James Meyer. With both hostages, he drove into Georgia and ran a roadblock in Stockbridge. He wrecked the vehicle against a tree, and he was forced to flee on foot.
The hostages were not in the car any longer, only some of their items.
A task force of 200 men hunted the fugitive to a farmhouse. There, he tried to take David Clark, a local hunter, hostage, using a shotgun he had found. The firearm jammed, and Clark instead held him until police arrived.
Knowles initially refused to tell police where his two hostages were. Authorities hoped they were still alive, but on November 21, they were found dead by a hunter. Knowles shot them both in the head while they were handcuffed to a tree.
During a prison transfer on December 18, he picked open his handcuffs and was shot by agent Ron Angel, after he wrecked the vehicle he was traveling in as he attempted another escape.
Knowles identified as bisexual and engaged in sexual encounters with both men and women. His victims ranged in age from 7 to 65 and included both genders. Knowles claimed to have killed 35 people, although it’s believed he only killed 18.
Knowles’ male victims were stripped nude, and he engaged in necrophilia with at least one of his victims. His primary motive was reportedly a thirst for fame and notoriety, with sexual violence being a component of his spree rather than the sole driver.
His confession tapes were reviewed by a grand jury in 1975, but never released to the public. According to the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the tapes and their transcripts were destroyed after being ruined in a flood at the Federal Courthouse in Macon.
Knowles was buried in Jacksonville, Florida, accompanied by a quiet service attended only by his family and Angela Covic, the woman who had rejected him.
Sandy Fawkes went on to write Natural Born Killer (1977) based on her three days with Paul Knowles.
She had her own unusual history. Fawkes was found as a baby in the Grand Union Canal. She never discovered the identity of her biological parents. Her birth was registered in the third quarter of 1929 as Unity Pansy Boyce-Carmichael. She married Wally Fawkes in 1949. The couple had four children, Sarah, Joanna, Kate, and Jamie, of whom the first, Sarah, died of SIDS. She divorced her husband in 1964, and never remarried.
She was 45 years old when she had her encounter with Knowles.