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WASHINGTON Annette

1958

...

1986

Verdict/Urteil:

Once employed by a home health care service on Long Island, New York, 28-year-old Annette Washington was discharged from her job in July 1986. A single mother with a 9-year-old son to feed, she was also supporting her boyfriend's drug habit on the side. Embittered by the loss of employment , she devised a scheme to solve both problems simultaneously, by the grim expedient of killing off her former patients. Loretta O'Flaherty, age 85, was the first to go, found dead in her Bronx apartment on August 8, 1986. Two kitchen knives had been employed to cut her throat before her flat was ransacked for cash and other valuables. Two weeks later, 68-year-old Edna Fumasoli was killed at her home, stabbed 90 times by a frenzied assailant. Similarities in the two crimes led detectives to begin a background search for links between the victims . The name of Annette Washington surfaced in due course, and police learned that both victims had been terrified of robbery, establishing a "knocking code" to let them know a friend was at the door. Suspecting that their "friend" had been a Judas in disguise, authorities arrested Washington in mid-September and secured her confession to the crimes. Pleading guilty on two counts of murder, plus assault and weapons charges, she received a prison term of 50 years to life in July 1987. At this writing, her unnamed male accomplice is still at large.