Killer Women - Devasting True Stories of Female Murderers. Wensley Clarkson
went dark.
‘There’s a car in the bushes.’
The voice of the hang glider pilot was most emphatic.
Amateur photographer David Payne reacted immediately by rushing over to the place where the pilot had pointed.
Two policemen followed just seconds later and scrambled down to the Ford Orion. Gillian had been sick and was naturally distressed. But there was no lasting damage. Incredibly, she only sustained minor injuries after smashing her head on the steering wheel. The car had dropped only twenty feet onto a ledge that jutted out of the cliff.
It did not take long for forensic scientists to conclude that Graham Philpot had been murdered.
At the Old Bailey, in January, 1991, Gillian Philpott was found guilty of the manslaughter of her husband and sentenced to just two years imprisonment. Her sister Janet always emphatically denied having any sexual relations with Graham Philpott.
Dear Reader
In the latest from Blake’s terrifying True Crime Library, Wensley Clarkson exposes the strange minds of killer women. The beautiful bride who had to have it all, and so brought her marriage to a bloody end. The obsessed mistress, tortured with jealousy, who savagely assured her place as the only person in her man’s life. Or the housewife turned drug-runner, who stopped her husband informing on her operations… with a bullet.
These are women from every walk of life, a collection as diverse as they are deadly. All women who, before their crimes, were as different from each other as any group of people could be. Some loners, some seemingly innocent, others possessed of deadly logic.
But as you will find to your horrified astonishment, they are all united in passion and anger, by the deadly bond of murder…
James Ravenscroft
Editor
Blake’s True Crime Library
St Jacob is the sort of place where nothing much happens. A sleepy little hamlet set in the middle of the Illinois flatlands, which many people describe as the heart of America. The population of this tiny community is just eight-hundred and the locals have always said that they dread the day it tops the thousand mark.
As you drive into St Jacob you cannot help noticing the fertile fields that surround it on all four sides. Beautiful green pastures expertly farmed for maximum potential. They represent the real reason why the village even exists. The farming of land is the reason most of the population live and breed there – and that’s the way they all want to keep it.
There are only half-a-dozen streets in St Jacob and they are never exactly bristling with traffic. There only ever seem to be a handful of pick-up trucks and the occasional car – and everyone knows the owner of each vehicle.
Perhaps not surprisingly, property prices in St Jacob have never been high. You could pick up a perfectly reasonable detached home on the edge of town for £30,000 – hardly a king’s ransom by anyone’s standards.
That was how Kathy Gaultney and her husband Keith came to settle in the town in the early 1980s. They had lived in larger communities nearby over the years, but both of them fell in love with the peace and quiet of St Jacob – and houses went for a price even they could afford.
The problem was that neither Keith nor Kathy were working full time. He organised building site labour for construction sites all over the state of Illinois. But sometimes that could mean months of solid work followed by weeks of inactivity. Kathy – who had just given birth to their son Walter – was not working at all. You could say the Gaultneys were struggling to survive. But at least they had their pretty little white wooden – slatted cottage in St Jacob – even though the modest mortgage repayments were proving very difficult to keep up.
It was fairly inevitable that Kathy had to get a job. She knew Keith was expecting it – and as their struggle to stay financially afloat continued, she came to the conclusion that any type of work would do. Within a few months of Walter’s birth, Kathy Gaultney found herself working behind the bar at a rough and ready hostelry in nearby Collinsville. It wasn’t exactly a well-paid position but it would keep the wolf from the door for the time being.
Back at home, Keith’s work had completely dried up and he had taken to boozing excessively. There was a certain irony in the fact that Kathy’s income came from serving alcohol and Keith was wasting all her hard-earned cash on the very same stuff. She was working all hours God could send while he knocked back countless bottles of rye at their pretty little home. Often she would arrive back late at night, completely shattered, only to find him slumped on their bed in a stupor.
At first, Kathy decided to bite her lip and say nothing to her husband. After all, he had been the breadwinner for many years before it had all turned sour. Things would pick up and he would sort himself out, she kept telling herself. The truth was that Keith Gaultney had long since given up the fight. His pride had taken a huge knock and now he was sinking rapidly into alcoholic oblivion. He did not really care any more. Just so long as Kathy kept working they could just about survive – and that would do him just fine.
When Kathy Gaultney met Mary O’Guinn one night as she was serving beers behind the bar of the hostelry, she was at an all-time low. The mortgage had not been paid for three months. She could barely afford to clothe their baby son and 11-year-old daughter Rachel from an earlier marriage. Times were pretty desperate and she was not bashful about admitting it to anyone who would listen. It was a plea for help. Kathy knew full well that time was running out unless she could find some other, more profitable way of earning a living.
Mary O’Guinn appeared like some angel of mercy – the answer to those desperate dreams. The attractive redheaded housewife was fully aware of how vulnerable Kathy was and she made her an offer she could not really refuse. On the surface it sounded like the opportunity of a lifetime.
Within a few weeks of that first meeting, Kathy and her equally stretched pal Martha Young were the proud owners of the New Way Toning Salon for housewives, in Collinsville. No one questioned the women’s sudden ability to pay tens of thousands of dollars in cash for the premises needed to house the club. But then only Kathy, Martha and their new best friend Mary O’Guinn were aware of the secret office hidden behind the gym.
In it was an assortment of weighing machines – but these had nothing whatsoever to do with keeping people fit. They were small scales which were perfect for weighing drugs before distributing them to a network of suppliers throughout the American mid-West. Kathy Gaultney had just become a full-time employee of one of the country’s biggest drug cartels.
For the first few months, life at the New Way Toning Salon was very very good for Kathy and her pal Martha Young. The two women really looked and acted the part of bosses of a health club. Both of them looked like ordinary suburban housewives. Kathy, with her glasses and neat, short hairstyle, always dressed in a tracksuit and sneakers. She could have been any one of a million hardworking women in a middle-class enclave anywhere in the Western World.
And, perhaps surprisingly, the legitimate business was actually doing quite well. They had worked very hard to build it up. They had something to prove to Mary O’Guinn. For both Kathy and Martha rather looked down on the drug dealing that was going on in their backroom. But they also knew that without the narcotics gang behind their little venture it would have been nothing more than a fantasy for the rest of their lives.
Kathy tried hard not to consider the consequences of all those millions of dollars’ worth of cannabis that were weighed, re-weighed and then packaged up for distribution among the street dealers of Illinois. She turned a blind eye when heavy-set characters used to turn up with vans for delivery and collection at all times of the day and night. Kathy was just delighted that for the first time in her adult life she had enough money to pay the mortgage, feed and clothe her children and enjoy some of the better things in life.
When Mary