An Almanac of Infamy

On this day in 1951, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, aka The Lonely Hearts Killers, were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in New York. Before their demise, the killer couple had bragged about seducing, robbing, and murdering seventeen women. While evidence suggests that there may have only been four victims, the strange couple is still notorious among male-female serial killer pairs. Raymond Martinez Fernandez was born on December 17, 1914, in Hawaii, to parents who had immigrated there from Spain. Shortly after his birth, the family moved to Connecticut, and as an adult, Raymond Fernandez moved to Spain. There he married and fathered four children. He would abandon this family later in life. During World War II Fernandez served in the Spanish Merchant Marine and in the British Intelligence Service and at the end of the war decided to return to the United States. It was during this return trip, by boat, that a steel hatch fell on his head, causing a skull fracture a...