Couples Who Kill by Carol Anne Davis Read Free Book Online Page A

lived, so when Ken was eight she and her husband bought a much more expensive house in Greece, a more upmarket suburb of Rochester. As a result, Nicholas Bianchi had to work even longer hours to make ends meet. Frances got a part-time job but the family still had money problems, and Ken quickly picked up on this. Soon the Greece School District were noting that ‘Mrs Bianchi is a very nervous person, easily upset. She needs to be calmed down.’ But little calming took place, for Ken’s mother went on to write to the school, telling them that she wanted to be informed of any injury her son suffered, however slight.
Another change of house
    Within months it became clear that the family couldn’t afford the payments on the new house so they moved again and Mrs Bianchi took a job with an aircraft company. Ken was now looked after by a neighbour and for a few months he blossomed. Social services noted that his disposition became much less sombre and that his bedwetting had stopped. Unfortunately his mother gaveup her job through ill health and Ken’s psychologically-induced medical problems started up again. By now doctors believed that Ken’s illnesses were the only way for him to get his feelings out in the open, to show his adoptive mother that he was hurting. They believed that, robbed of this outlet, he might became a violent boy.
    Social services had been monitoring the family for some time and when Ken was eleven the Rochester Society For The Prevention Of Cruelty To Children reported that Mrs Bianchi was ‘a deeply disturbed person’ with paranoid tendencies. In that same year, the staff at the local DePaul Clinic concluded that ‘Kenneth is a deeply hostile boy who has extremely dependent needs which his mother fulfils. He depends upon his mother for his very survival and expends a great deal of energy keeping his hostility under control and under cover.’ The insightful doctor at the clinic also noted the boy’s loneliness and extreme anxiety. He ascertained that Ken’s mother disapproved of his friends and that he was desperate to have other people in his life.
    But Ken’s unhappy home life continued. At twelve, his perfectly normal adolescent curiosity led him to leaf through a pornographic magazine – but his mother’s response was to whip him with a shower hose. Clinicians who were monitoring the case noted that she seemed to spy on him, as she told them she’d seen him pulling down a six-year-old girl’s pants.
Educational standards
    Ken had an IQ of 116 which meant that he had a well above average intelligence but wouldn’t be bright enough to eventually go to university. Unfortunately he expectedto get higher grades than he was actually capable of, so he often felt frustrated at school. The one subject he excelled in was creative writing – children from unhappy households are often especially creative as they disappear inside their own heads as often as possible to avoid their external reality.
A death in the family
    Ken’s relationship with his father had been time-starved for many years as the man had to work so much overtime. Nevertheless he was grateful for the quiet kindness his father showed him – and when Ken was thirteen they managed to have a fishing trip together. Unfortunately, Nicholas Bianchi died a few days later at his work. Ken cried for hours when he heard the news, as did his mother, but after the funeral he rarely cried again. Social services noted that Mrs Bianchi seemed to behave provocatively in front of her teenage son, pulling down her already low-cut tops and crossing her legs suggestively. A report noted that ‘this family has been known for many years to social services in many areas of the country.’ Unfortunately no one stepped in to help the increasingly disturbed child.
A teenage marriage
    Then the teenage Kenneth Bianchi fell in love and married shortly after he graduated from high school. Friends would later suggest that he married young to get away from