Killer Women by Wensley Clarkson Read Free Book Online Page A

that mattered in her mind.
    Even when a friend advised her to contact a lawyer just in case police tried to haul her in for questioning, she was super cool about the whole business.
    In fact, when she motored into nearby Edwardsville with a friend one morning, she did not feel in the least bit threatened by the vicious gossip that was sweeping the area about her involvement in Keith’s death.
    As she slowed down at a crossing, she even smiled when she spotted two state police detectives and an attorney leading the investigation into her husband’s murder.
    ‘Aren’t you guys having a busy day?’
    Kathy Gaultney really was pushing her luck. Here were the top law enforcement officers involved in her husband’s case and she was ribbing them mercilessly.
    Unfortunately, what Kathy Gaultney did not realise was that the case against her was now sufficient to warrant her arrest. A few minutes later, police pulled up the van she was travelling in and arrested her for the murder of her husband.
    In April 1990, Kathy Gaultney, aged 34, was sentenced to life imprisonment after being foundguilty of the first-degree murder of her 35-year-old husband.
    Prosecuting attorney Don Weber told the court, ‘This crime was planned, but it wasn’t planned well.’ And, describing Kathy Gaultney’s own daughter’s role in her mother’s conviction, he added: ‘In any crime, the inadvertent witness is the one thing you can’t plan for.’
    Some months after her trial, Kathy Gaultney contacted authorities and agreed to provide inside information on the drug cartel she worked for with Martha Young.
    Twelve people, including Mary O’Guinn and her notorious one-legged drug baron brother Roy Vernon Dean, were arrested and eventually given very lengthy sentences for their involvement in one of the biggest narcotics rings in US history.
    Martha Young was also imprisoned as a result of testimony from her best friend Kathy. But, amazingly, the two women still write to each other from their respective prisons in Illinois and Gaultney says that they have remained friends despite everything.
    Meanwhile Gaultney herself insists that she did not carry out the murder of her drug informant husband. She maintains that he was killed by other members of the Roy Vernon Dean gang who wanted to silence Keith Gaultney before he helped authorities close down their drug cartel.
    When I interviewed her in the notorious so-called ‘women killers’ cottage in the grounds of the Dwight Correctional Center in January, 1992, she was still protesting her innocence and insisting that she would eventually succeed in overturning the jury’s verdict.
    In a hushed voice, as various other inmates walked freely around the inside of the stone-built building, she told me, ‘I put up with a lot of shit from Keith but there’s no way that I killed him.’
    As one woman inmate – imprisoned for life for murdering her parents – poured us each a cup of tea, Kathy went on, ‘I’ve done a lot of bad things in my life, but I ended up paying the price for working for an evil ring of drug smugglers. They killed Keith and then managed to get the police to arrest me. One day I’ll prise out the truth.’
    Meanwhile, Kathy continues passing her days reading and cooking inside one of the strangest cottages that I have ever visited. It remains to be seen if her desperate attempts to appeal against her sentence will ever actually be heard.
    Having spent two fascinating days inside one of the world’s most daunting prisons, I have to admit that Kathy Gaultney has a great deal of charm and intelligence. When she is eventually released, I have no doubt that she will successfully reinstate herself into society.

A Sense of Love
    Stonham Parva is the sort of hamlet where you can hear the birds singing and the trees rustling in the wind. Only a handful of cars pass through each day and the biggest event of the week is during the summer months when a cricket match is played most Sundays on