10 Couples Who Fell In Love

WITH CRIME

Bonnie And Clyde What’s a list of notorious partners in crime without the most famous outlaw duo? Clyde Champion Barrow and Bonnie Parker met in Texas in 1930. She was 19 and married to an imprisoned murderer; Clyde was 21 and single. Soon after they met, he was arrested for burglary. Using a gun smuggled to him by Bonnie, he escaped prison but was later recaptured. When he was paroled in 1932, he joined Bonnie for two years of violent crime that included kidnappings, multiple robberies, burglaries, and 13 murders.

In 1934, the couple was ambushed and killed in Louisiana. They were never married, and we don’t know much of their personal histories, but their brutal heists are the stuff filmmakers would kill to create. And so they did. Their story became a 1967 Oscar-winning film, and a 2013 A&E TV mini-series. Sometimes crime does pay (at least for film producers).

The Lonely Hearts KillersRaymond Fernandez And Martha Beck

Fernandez was serving time for petty theft when he learned from a cellmate about voodoo. Figuring he could use this practice to influence vulnerable women, he began responding to wanted ads posted by singles in his town. His intention was to woo the lonely ladies, rob them blind, and disappear. Martha Beck was one of the interested women, but when she showed up at his place with two kids in tow, Fernandez told her to abandon them at the Salvation Army. She actually obeyed, and the couple began a joint venture to scam women.

When Beck became too jealous of Fernandez’s relationships, the couple began killing their targets. They were arrested for murdering a young widow and her child. After signing a 73-page confession, Fernandez and Beck were executed in 1951 in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in New York. As The Lonely Hearts Killers are believed to have killed up to 20 people, maybe you should re-think going solo on Valentine’s Day.

Julius And Ethel RosenbergThey aren’t vicious criminals, but they were the first U.S. civilians to be executed for conspiracy to commit espionage. Having allegedly shared top-secret information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union, their punishment stirred up public debate for decades. Many claimed the couple were victims of hysterical anti-communist sentiment in the U.S. (Even Pope Pius XII requested their pardon.)

But the Cold War was a heated matter for the U.S., so guilty or not, President Eisenhower declined granting clemency for the couple. They were executed in 1953 at Sing Sing prison in the electric chair, two years after the Lonely Hearts Killers. Both proclaimed their innocence up to the time of their deaths.

Caril Fugate And Charles Starkweather A visit to Caril’s home in January 1958 ended in the murders of Caril’s parents and two-year-old sister. Caril and Charles then fled on a killing spree that took 10 lives in three days, and covered a 500-mile stretch from Nebraska to Wyoming.

The modern-day Bonnie and Clyde became a highly sensationalized story about disaffected youth in America (Charles was 19 and Caril was 14). Their story also inspired the Terrence Malick’s Badlands and Oliver Stone’s Natural Born Killers. Maybe the film world should rethink glorifying young couples with a penchant for serial murder?

Kurt Cobain And Courtney LoveThe two star-crossed lovers had a tragic ending just like the dramatic and morbid flair of the music that made them famous. In 1990, the troubled Cobain found his match in the equally erratic Courtney Love. Their whirlwind love affair started the next year, and they married and had a daughter in 1992. The couple fought a costly legal battle to keep custody of their daughter after Courtney declared to Vanity Fair that she’d been using heroin while pregnant.

In 1993, Cobain was arrested for assault after a physical altercation between the two. Cobain became more and more withdrawn and drug-dependent, making suicidal threats until his actual suicide in April 1994. Not that she was ever stable to begin with, but Love has since been on a downward spiral. And if it’s true that “Heart Shaped Box” was inspired by the couple’s marriage, well, that relationship was doomed to fail.

Tonya Harding And Jeff GilloolyTonya Harding is the former Olympic ice skater with a tomboy charm and underdog reputation. She’s also the first American woman to land a triple axel in competition. But all her talent’s been squandered by scandals involving her lovers. At the 1994 Olympics, fellow American skater, Nancy Kerrigan, was struck in the leg in the women’s locker room. Later investigators revealed that Tonya’s ex-husband, Jeff Gillooly, had organized the attack with the help of a hired hit man, accomplices, and (allegedly) Tonya.

Tonya was arrested six years later for throwing a hubcap at her live-in boyfriend. Harding told police that her boyfriend had pinned her to the ground, and she hit him out of self-defense. He reported it was no regular beating: she was "hooking (him) like Mike Tyson." For an Olympic athlete with a penchant for temper tantrums, that comes as no surprise. Now that Harding teaches figure skating at a mall in Portland, OR, we can only hope she doesn’t try to teach her pupils the definition of “good sportsmanship.”

Whitney Houston And Bobby BrownRumors have circulated for years of bad-boy singer Bobby Brown having a bad influence on the once-pristine pop star, Whitney Houston. Their chaotic 14-year marriage included multiple allegations of drug use and physical abuse. But according to Brown’s new tell-all, Bobby Brown: The Truth, the Whole Truth and Nothing But. . . , it was Whitney that got him into illegal drugs.

"At one point in my life, I used drugs uncontrollably,” he wrote. “I was using everything I could get my hands on, from cocaine to heroin, weed and cooked cocaine."

Whitney died in February 2012 of an accidental drowning, though authorities said it had been complicated by heart disease and cocaine use. A year after Whitney’s death, Bobby turned himself in to LA County jail officials for an eight-day sentence for DUI under a restricted license. He’d been on probation for a DUI arrest the previous March. That’s not the end of it. He was handed a jail sentence in 2000 after a court-ordered drug test show traces of cocaine in his system. In 1996, he had a five-day jail stint for crashing Whitney’s Porsche while under the influence.

Shannon And Dale HickmanThis Oregon couple was convicted in 2011 of second-degree manslaughter after opting out of seeking medical help for their dying child. The two were members of the Followers of Christ Church, a sect that generally favors home-healing techniques over professional medical care. Shannon Hickman, the mother, allegedly never sought prenatal care during her pregnancy.

Instead of taking him to a doctor during and after the child’s birth, the two prayed and rubbed olive oil on their sick infant. Though her son was born two months early, medical experts testified that had the parents sought medical care, the baby would have had a 99 percent chance of survival.

But Dale Hickman testified that he didn’t call 911 because he was praying, and Shannon claimed no responsibility because as a woman of the church, decisions were deferred to her husband. "That's not my decision anyway," she testified. "I think it's God's will whatever happens." The couple will face a $250,000 fine and a sentence of 18-month max in prison. That’s a light sentence in comparison to a typical six-year sentence for secondary manslaughter, but they were protected by religious exemption in Oregon state law.

Real Housewives Of New Jersey’s Teresa And Joe Giudice

Lifestyles of the rich and famous can apparently include 39 counts of tax fraud and evasion. Teresa and Joe Giudice, the outspoken couple on The Real Housewives of New Jersey, have been accused of failing to file tax returns, falsifying loan applications, and failing to report assets in a bankruptcy petition.

If convicted, they could face up to 30 years in prison and a $1 million fine. Joe is also headed to court after being caught using a false license using his brother’s identification information. His license has been suspended 47 times over the last 26 years. All these scandals beg the question, Why did it take so long for the couple to get caught?

Bob And Maureen McDonnellThey don’t look too happy, but it’s only ‘cuz they got caught. The former Virginia governor and his wife were indicted on Jan. 21 on 14 counts of corruption. Federal prosecutors accused the governor of accepting $135,000 in gifts and loans (and “thousands of dollars in golf outings”) from then-Star Scientific CEO Jonnie Williams.

It all started in 2009 when Maureen asked Williams to cover the cost of her inaugural dress because, as she allegedly wrote in an email to Williams, “We are broke, have an unconscionable amount in credit card debt already, and this inaugural is killing us!!" She later decided not to accept the dress (good idea, Maureen).

But she did say she’d take a “raincheck” (bad idea). The later gifts came in the form of Louis Vuitton shoes, a Rolex watch, golf clubs, iPhones, home repairs, shopping sprees, and contributions to the weddings of the two McDonnell daughters. Even after all this, McDonnell denied breaking the law, saying he was "falsely and wrongly accused" by federal prosecutors. Perhaps he’s hoping that if he’s convicted, someone will have pity enough to foot his assuredly hefty bail.

Image Sources http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/7f/Bonnieclyde_f.jpg

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