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The Wives and Girlfriends Who Aided or Stood By the World's Most Notorious Killers
Some of the globe's most infamous killers, including Fred West, Jack Unterweger, and Marc Dutroux, had some help from their romantic partners.
The shocking crimes committed by those featured on Peacock's new true crime docuseries, World’s Most Notorious Killers, horrified the communities in which they occurred and sent shockwaves around the globe.
Despite their gruesome acts, some of the murderers at the center of the unscripted series had wives or girlfriends who not only stood by them, but in some cases, took part in some of the killings and cover-ups.
A few of the episodes of World's Most Notorious Killers — which consists of five 80-minute installments, all dropping on Peacock on Tuesday, September 17, 2024 — also highlight these partners involved in well-known international murder cases.
Ahead of the docuseries' debut, get to know these women who stood by their men, who just happened to be dangerous killers.
Rose West
Britain’s Rosemary “Rose” West, the wife of serial killer Fred West, was herself convicted of 10 murders, including at least one she carried out on her own.
Between 1967 and 1987, the couple preyed on girls and young women, some of whom stayed at the couple’s terraced home in Gloucester, England as lodgers and were used to fulfill the Wests’ sadistic, sexual fantasies.
The murderous duo dismembered most of their victims and buried them upright in and around their small property. Their victims included their oldest child, 16-year-old Heather West, who disappeared in 1987 and was never reported missing, and Fred’s 8-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine West, who was buried at another property the couple had lived at earlier.
Rose and Fred West collected parts of the bodies as trophies.
Criminologist Jane Carter Woodrow, author of the 2012 book Rose West: The Making of a Monster, told CNN in 2021 that both Fred and Rose, as children, had been subjected to severe physical abuse and incest before finding one another.
“There’s no doubt Fred West was a sadist and a voyeur, and a serial killer, a psychopath with a very warped sexual mind," Rose’s former attorney, Leo Goatley, told CNN. "And Rose West was his willing apprentice,”
Rose continues to serve a life sentence behind bars.
Bianca Mrak
Bianca Mrak was 18 years old when she and her lover, Jack Unterweger, went into hiding, as previously reported by Oxygen.com. At the time, Unterweger — an Austrian man who was previously sentenced to life in prison in 1976 for beating and fatally strangling 18-year-old Margret Schäfer with her own bra two years earlier — was something of a national hero. He’d received a rare presidential pardon after penning a critically acclaimed memoir behind bars, one that gained Unterweger celebrity status around Europe, according to the Los Angeles Times.
Months after his May 1990 release, Unterweger would start killing again, murdering eight sex workers in and around Austria and another three in Los Angeles, all while living a double life as a celebrated author and journalist. Suspicion intensified around Unterweger in 1992, prompting him and Mrak to go on the run, visiting Switzerland and Paris before ending up in Miami, Florida.
According to The Washington Post, Mrak found work as a nude dancer and tried selling her story until credit card receipts led authorities to the couple. Mrak fiercely defended Unterweger at the time, saying he couldn’t have killed the sex workers because they “weren’t his type."
Unterweger was extradited to Austria to face charges for 11 murders: eight in that country, three in Los Angeles, and one in Prague. He was found guilty of nine of them.
In a January 2024 interview with the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation (ORF), Mrak — who now lives in Waldviertel, Austria — said that while she stayed in touch with Unterweger when he was first sent to jail, she’d broken things off with him when she learned that he’d been writing other women.
On the same day that Unterweger was sentenced to life in prison, June 29, 1994, he hanged himself in his cell.
Looking back at the media attention she received from being Unterweger's lover, Mrak told ORF that she “enjoyed the hustle and bustle as a young girl” and didn’t regret making “a lot of money” from telling her story.
"I am now happily married, have pets that I want to look after, and I have come to terms with the past," Mrak added to ORF.
Michelle Martin
Belgium’s Michelle Martin was the wife of child killer and rapist Marc Dutroux, and one of several of his accomplices, according to BBC. Dutroux's case put the nation under heavy scrutiny for how it was handled after he abducted and tortured a string of girls, teens and young women in the mid-1990s and subjected them to months of abuse and captivity.
Among the crimes, teens An Marchal, 17, and Eefje Lambrecks, 19, as well as one of Dutroux’s alleged accomplices, Bernard Weinstein, were buried alive.
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Martin was sentenced to 30 years for her roles in the deaths of 8-year-old friends Julie Lejeune and Mélissa Russo, both of whom were abducted together in June 1995, according to The New York Times. Dutroux sexually abused the children until December 1995, when he was arrested and ordered to serve four months behind bars on car theft charges, according to BBC. He instructed Martin to feed the children, but she didn't, and both girls starved to death.
She told authorities she was too afraid to enter the dungeon-like cellar where they were being held, according to Belgium’s VRT NWS.
Martin was released in 2012 after serving 16 years of a 30-year sentence, BBC reported. According to VRT NWS, part of Martin’s release required that she attend psychological counseling and not speak to the media. She reportedly was accepted to live in a convent, much to the outrage of the victims’ families.
Learn more about Martin, Mrak, and Rose West in World’s Most Notorious Killers, premiering Tuesday, September 17, 2024 on Peacock.
