Killer Women - Devasting True Stories of Female Murderers. Wensley Clarkson
they were offering her more money to do it. And, with the drunken Keith now hitting rock bottom back at home in nearby St Jacob, it seemed to make a lot of sense. Kathy was actually starting to enjoy life again. There was something quite exciting about taking risks. There was also something very fulfilling about being able to spend all the money you wanted. Becoming a drug courier wasn’t so bad after all.
Even when Kathy Gaultney found herself driving hundreds of thousands of dollars’ worth of cannabis plus $45,000 in cash in the boot of her car, it did not worry her. Who would bother stopping and searching a housewife from St Jacob? She hardly looked the part of a hardened drug smuggler involved in one of the biggest cannabis supply networks in American criminal history.
As she parked her car outside her cosy little cottage in that tiny rural community, she did not even bother to take her valuable booty inside the house. It was better if she kept it out of the way of her kids and husband Keith. He was always ranting in redneck fashion about how awful drugs were. He even warned her daughter to be careful.
‘There’s a lot of evil people out there who’ll try and force you to take drugs. Just tell ’em no way.’
Keith Gaultney could hardly talk. He could not even come to terms with his own addiction – to alcohol. Yet somehow – in his mind at least – the damage he was inflicting on his own liver was not as morally wrong as smoking pot. Sometimes Kathy Gaultney felt like telling him that pot was probably less harmful that booze, but she never bothered. He would not have appreciated her opinions. As far as Keith Gaultney was concerned, women were to be seen and not heard.
‘Kathy. What the hell have you got in the trunk, woman?’
Keith Gaultney was sober for once. But then it was seven in the morning when he went outside to get a jack from his wife’s car and discovered a small fortune in drugs stashed in the boot.
Kathy Gaultney did not reply at first. She needed a moment to think about this. She was in a classic dilemma – did she admit to Keith that they were drugs; or should she try and deny they even belonged to her?
But it did not take her long to realise there was no point in hiding the obvious. Kathy pulled her husband down on the bed beside her and started to tell him the truth. But being honest is not always the best answer when it comes to marriage. Keith Gaultney was spitting mad. In any case, for once in his life, he had something on her. All his years of heavy drinking had put him in a vulnerable position as far as their relationship was concerned. Now, for the first time, he had the upper hand and he was determined to milk it for all it was worth.
‘Drugs? What the hell are you doin’ selling drugs?’
But then Kathy had the perfect excuse.
‘How else were we goin’ to pay the mortgage, the bills, the kids’ clothes?’
Keith Gaultney did not like facing the realities of the situation. He hated the fact that he had not been the main breadwinner in the family for a long, long time. Kathy was making him face facts – and it hurt.
‘But we could have survived some other way.’
Kathy Gaultney did not agree. It was time for some plain speaking in that household. Maybe the discovery of the drugs was a blessing in disguise. Perhaps now she could come out in the open and say what she had been thinking for years.
‘There was no other way. You’ve lived off my money for months. I haven’t noticed you complaining.’
Keith Gaultney did not reply. He understood her point but he would never accept that selling drugs was the answer. He’d never felt the urge to even try pot as a kid. Now his wife, the mother of his only son, was admitting that she was heavily involved in a vast drug ring. Keith Gaultney retreated into his own shell-like existence from that day onwards.
For months he hardly spoke to his wife and sank deeper and deeper into an alcoholic abyss. The only times he could bring himself to talk to her were when he could not stand the thought of what she was involved in. Then he would let fly with a tirade of abuse centred around the inevitable subject of drugs.
‘How can you sit there and tell me that drugs don’t harm people? How can you?’
Keith Gaultney was off again on one of his regular ranting matches with Kathy. But this time she decided to respond. She was fed up with him going on and on about drugs. It was time for some home truths.
‘Well, pot is hardly any more harmful than all that booze you drink.’
Kathy was hitting back. OK, she could not defend the use of heavier drugs, but as far as she was concerned her narcotics overlords were only dealing in cannabis. Where was the harm in that?
But her husband did not quite see it that way.
‘Drugs are drugs. One type leads to another. It’s as simple as that.’
Kathy was concerned about her husband’s attitude because he was unshakable. Nothing would convince him that pot might not be so bad. She feared that he might one day do something about her involvement with the notorious Dean family.
But it wasn’t just drugs that were tearing the Gaultney family apart. Keith’s drinking had become a morning, noon and night-time obsession. The only work left to him was the opening of bottles. His reward – consuming the contents.
By the time Kathy got home after a hard day running the beauty salon followed by hours of weighing a fortune’s worth of cannabis, she was exhausted. Yet, she would be expected to make them all dinner. Bath her son. Get both kids to bed and attend to her husband’s every whim and command. It was simply proving too much for her to handle.
Some nights she would stay on at the shop in Collinsville and have a drink with her great friend and partner Martha, because it was infinitely preferable to going home to face Keith and the kids.
But Kathy knew things could not just go on like that for ever. When she got home late yet again one night in February, 1988, Keith rounded on her and started threatening her. She decided she’d had enough.
As Keith ranted and raved about ‘those damn drug peddlers’, she packed a suitcase, grabbed both the kids and headed out the front door. A few days later, she filed for divorce. But what disturbed her the most was that each time she tried to have a sensible conversation with Keith on the phone, he would start up again about those drugs. But this time he was more adamant.
‘I reckon the authorities would like to hear all about those scumbags you work for.’
Kathy did not like the sound of what she was hearing. The ramblings of a drunken, vindictive husband were one thing. But a threat to destroy everything she had built up so carefully was another matter altogether.
She could sense from the tone of his voice that he was contemplating taking this whole business a much more dangerous stage further.
‘It’s the perfect weapon for a single lady.’
The assistant in the gun shop in Collinsville might as well have been trying to sell Kathy Gaultney a piece of jewellery. But then that’s America for you. A reasonable gun costs about the same as a nice ring. And it’s just as easy to buy!
By then Kathy was looking at purchasing a .22 ‘Saturday Night Special’. In a country where some states have more deaths from gunshot wounds than car crashes, it’s no great surprise when a woman walks into a shop wanting to buy a gun.
As she handled the snub-nosed pistol over the counter of the shop, she knew she had to buy it. The stress and strain of running a legit beauty salon and an illicit drugs factory, and contemplating a divorce from her alcoholic husband was driving her to consider desperate measures in order to maintain the happiness she so needed.
‘Do ya think it’ll make my husband stop abusing me?’
It seemed a strange question to ask a guy who was trying to sell you a gun. But Kathy wanted some reassurance.
‘I can assure you, ma’am, that no husband in his right mind will mess with one of those things.’
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