Guest Author - Vance Rowe

Gwendolyn Graham and Catherine Wood were nurses at the Alpine Nursing Home in Walker, Michigan, a suburb by Grand Rapids, but instead of caring for their patients, they killed them instead. The two women were lovers and participated in deviant sexual behavior such as erotic asphyxiation of each other to heighten their sexual pleasure. Then they allegedly discussed killing someone and just talking about doing something like that gave them sexual pleasure.

The Lethal Lovers, Graham and Wood, had trouble when they first began to try and kill their patients. The patients were able to fight back enough to stop Graham from killing them. No one complained about the nurse either. That would prove to be fatal for other unlucky patients. Gwendolyn Graham went into the room of an elderly woman who was suffering from a debilitating neurological disease. Graham suffocated the woman to death and this truly excited the women. They would go on to kill six patients and this excited them so much that they would go into unoccupied rooms after their killings and make love.

The Lethal Lovers even made it a game. Literally. They picked their victims by their initials to spell the word “murder”. They also bragged about their exploits but no one believed them. Gwendolyn Graham even kept souvenirs like jewelry and dentures and kept them on a shelf in her locker at the nursing home. The two women serial killers were finally caught when Gwendolyn Graham finally bragged to the wrong person. She began telling her ex-husband about what she and Catherine Wood did. The ex-husband then notified the police and they began to exhume bodies. The original causes of death were listed as natural because the patients ranged in age from 67 to 95 and suffered severe neurological diseases such as Alzheimer’s.

Gwendolyn Graham was arrested in Tyler, Texas but maintained her innocence the whole time, claiming that they were only joking when they told people that they murdered some patients. However, Catherine Wood told a different story. She turned State’s evidence and testified against Graham. Catherine Wood stated that Gwendolyn Graham was not only the mastermind behind the “death game” but she did all of the killings and took souvenirs. Wood said her role in the macabre game was to be a lookout and to distract any supervisors that may be around. Graham said that Wood was just saying these things out of vengeance for being a jilted lover. Gwendolyn Graham’s attorney said that Wood was lying in order to get her sentence reduced.

In the end, it was Graham who failed to sway the jury and received life in prison without chance for parole. Catherine was sentenced to twenty to forty years in prison and her first chance at parole was in 2005. They were sentenced in 1989.