1951 The Lonely Hearts Killers are executed.

The Lonely Hearts Killers, Martha Beck and Raymond Martinez Fernandez, are executed in the electric
chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. The strange couple had schemed to seduce, rob and murder
women who placed personal ads in newspapers. Beck and Fernandez boasted to killing as many as
seventeen women in this manner, but evidence suggests that there may have been only four victims.
Martha Beck was an extremely overweight, and by all reports, unattractive woman when she joined a
lonely hearts club advertised in a romance magazine. Her first letter came from Ray Fernandez in
Brooklyn. After World War II, he suffered a serious head injury in an accident that left him bald and
with serious headaches. He became a petty criminal andwore a cheap black toupee to cover up his
baldness. He convinced himself that he had a power over women that could turn them into his sexual
slaves.
In 1946, Fernandez found his first mark in a lonely hearts club. He dated the older woman until he had
gainedenough of her trustto loot her bank account.The next year, he took the latest in a line of victims
to Spain, where she turned up dead in a hotel room. Fernandez responded to Beck’s note with the
intention of conning her,but after a brief affair, Fernandez and Beck apparently fell in love. When he
confessed his original idea, Beck liked his scheme so much that she decided to join him.
Over the next two years, Beck posed as Fernandez’s sister as he seduced older women before stealing
from them. By 1949, they had murdered one victim and killed another accidentally with an overdose of
sleeping pills. The end came when Fernandez hooked up with a younger woman in Michigan. The
woman was a bit suspicious of the “brother and sister,” and although she allowed them to move into
her home, wouldn’t marry Fernandez immediately and provide him access to her funds. When the
jealous Beck got tired of waiting, the pair killed the woman and her two-year-old daughter and buried
them in the basement.
Police officers, challenged by Fernandez himself, searched the home and found the makeshift grave.
Beck and Fernandez confessed readily in the belief that their lives were safe in the non-capital
punishment state of Michigan. But they didn’t count on being extradited to New York, where the
electric chair was an option. At the last minute they attempted an insanity defense, butwere unable
toconvince the jury.
Their depraved story was the subject of a particularly sordid 1969 movie The Honeymoon Killers.

Lonely hearts killer

The phrase lonely hearts killer, sometimes also want-ad killer or matrimonial bureau
murderer, is a journalistic term of art that refers to a person who commits murder by contacting
a victim who has either posted advertisements to or answered advertisements
via newspaper classified ads and personal or lonely hearts club ads.[1]
Varied motives[edit]
The actual motivations of these criminals are varied. By definition, a killing will have taken place
in order for the suspected, accused, or convicted perpetrator to be dubbed a want-ad or lonely
hearts club killer. However, the crime may have involved a simple robbery gone wrong, an
elaborate insurance fraud scheme, sexual violence, or any of several other
ritualized pathological impulses (e.g. necrophilia, mutilation, cannibalism, etc.). Sometimes
murder is not the (original) intent, but becomes a by-product of rape or other struggle; in some
cases, murder is committed simply to cover up the original crime. Some, on the other hand,
are serial killers who utilize this method of targeting victims, either exclusively, or when it suits
them.[2]
Notable lonely hearts and want-ad killers[edit]
The following accused and convicted murderers and serial killers are known to have used want
ads, personal ads, and/or matrimonial bureaus to contact their victims:
Rodney Alcala (b. 1943) – known as "the Dating Game killer"
Harvey Carignan (b. 1927) – known as "the want-ad killer" [3]
Nannie Doss (1905-1965) - known as "The Lonely Hearts Killer", among other names
Raymond Fernandez (1914–1951) and Martha Beck (1920–1951) – known as "the honeymoon
killers" and "the lonely hearts killers" [4]
Albert Fish (1870–1936)
Harvey Glatman (1927–1959) – known as "the lonely hearts killer"[5]
Belle Gunness (1859–1908?) – she became part of American criminal folklore, a female
Bluebeard.
Robert Hansen (1939–2014)
Henri Désiré Landru (1869–1922)
Bobby Joe Long (b. 1953) – known as "the classified ad rapist"
Philip Markoff (1986–2010) – known as "the Craigslist killer"
Harry Powers (1892–1932) – known as "the lonely hearts killer", "the matrimonial bureau
murderer", "the West Virginia Bluebeard", and "the butcher of Clarksburg"[1]

Long before there was a craigslist or dot-com dating, there were places where men and women who were
too shy or busy to meet face to face could find romance. Calling themselves "matrimonial bureaus," these
organizations were known mostly as the "lonely hearts clubs," and they flourished through the middle of
the 20th century.
Such was Detroit's American Friendship Society, which opened its doors in 1927. By 1931, it had earned
more than $100,000. The business continued to thrive, even after the country plunged into the Depression.
For an annual fee ($4.95 for men, $1.95 for women), members got a listing of available matches, mostly
widows and widowers, with a description of their most attractive features - whether real or not.
Among American Friendship's clients in 1931 was a man who, based upon his written profile, should
have had no trouble attracting the ladies.
"Wealthy widower," the ad read, "worth $150,000. Has income from $400 to $2,000 a month." His
profession was listed as "civil engineer."
"Own a beautiful 10-room brick home, completely furnished with everything that would make a good
woman happy. My wife would have her own car and plenty of spending money. Would have nothing to
do but enjoy herself."
Cooler heads might have figured this was too good to be true, but not Asta Eicher, 50, a Chicago widow
with three children - Greta, 14; Harry, 12, and Anabel, 9. Eicher's husband, a silversmith, had died eight
years earlier, and since his death she had dedicated herself to raising her family.
In a flash, they disappeared
In July 1931, for the first time in years, she had told friends that romance had again entered her life. But
other than her new love's name, Mr. Pierson, she offered few details.
That same month, she asked William O'Boyle, a boarder, to find another place to live. The excuse she
gave was that the pudgy, pig-faced little Pierson, who had been hanging around the house for weeks, was
moving in.
Then she and her children disappeared. No one paid much attention until August, when O'Boyle went
back to Eicher's house to pick up some tools he had left behind. Eicher and her children were gone, but
the man O'Boyle knew as Pierson was there, and he was emptying the house.
O'Boyle called police, who asked the stranger about the missing family.
The man introduced himself as "Cornelius O. Pierson, of the Fairmont Hotel, Fairmont, W.Va." The
Eichers, he said, had moved to Colorado, and had left him behind to settle their affairs. He produced a
letter that appeared to be in Eicher's handwriting, saying he had paid her property taxes and mortgage, and
that he should tidy up the house to prepare it for renters. But when he could offer no real details on the
whereabouts of the family, police decided to probe a little more.
No one in Fairmont, W.Va., had ever heard of him, and it seemed that the trail was about to go cold. Then
investigations at Eicher's house yielded a few clues, in the form of love letters.
The letters led them to a small property near a West Virginia hamlet called Quiet Dell, where Pierson
lived under the name Harry Powers, with his wife of four years, Luella.
It would soon become known as the "murder farm."
Powers insisted that the Eichers had gone west, but then just a few seconds later, he sputtered that the
widow had traveled with him to West Virginia.
The conflicting stories raised suspicions, so detectives kept sniffing around. They learned that two months
earlier, Powers had built a garage on the property. When they took a look inside, they found jewelry,
clothes and other items that had belonged to Eicher.
Soon after that, the widow and her children were found. On Aug. 28, police dug up four corpses, wrapped
in burlap sacks and buried in a shallow grave. A day later, they found the body of another woman in the
garage. She would later be identified as Dorothy Lemke, 50, a divorcée from Northboro, Mass. Like
Eicher, Lemke had gone missing in July.
So many victims
Inside Powers' home, there was a trunk-load of correspondence from more than 100 love-starved widows
and spinsters from all over the country. Letters and photos found in the trunk suggested that he had been
operating as a love racketeer for more than a decade. A roll of film left in a camera was developed,
yielding images of Lemke and Powers together.
After a brutal grilling by police, Powers confessed to the five murders. After promising marriage, he had
driven Eicher and her kids from Chicago to his farm. He locked them up for a few days, then took them to
a room where he had suspended a noose from the rafters.
One by one, they were hanged. "I was permitting little Harry Eicher to watch the killing of his mother and
the others, but in the middle of it he let out an awful scream," Powers told police. "I was afraid the
neighbors would hear it, so I picked up a hammer and let him have it."
Lemke had arrived a day after the Eichers. She was ushered into the garage, locked up and later hanged.
Digging around the farm produced no more bodies, but there was a strong suspicion that Powers had
killed before. Asked once how many he had murdered, he shrugged his shoulders and muttered, "I don't
know."
Other women came forth with stories of how Powers had wooed them.
Bessie Storrs of Olean, N.Y., told The Associated Press that her wedding had been planned for the day
that Powers had been arrested.
Other women said that they emptied their bank accounts when their mail-order bridegroom proposed.
As soon as he pocketed their cash, he vanished, leaving the ladies sadder and wiser, but alive.
Bank accounts held by Eicher and Lemke had been cleared out just before the murders, leaving little
question as to a motive.
Quick conviction, then hanging
In anticipation of enormous crowds, the trial, which started on Dec. 7, 1931, was moved from a
courtroom to the 1,200-seat opera house in Clarksburg. Powers seemed unconcerned as the trial opened,
chewing gum and yawning through the first day. By the time he got on the stand, however, he was in
tears. He said that his miserable marriage had driven him to seek out mail-order sweethearts. But he
denied the killings, recanting his earlier confession.
After deliberating for one hour and 50 minutes in the opera-house dressing room, the jury found him
guilty. The penalty was death by hanging.
In jail, the prisoner produced a detailed confession. And, on the gallows, March 18, 1932, Powers was
given the chance, as are all condemned men, to offer a last statement. But for once, the Don Juan who had
spewed out thousands of words to women all over the country had nothing to say.
"No," was all he uttered before the trapdoor opened and he plunged to his death.