Murder by Mail: The Deadly Scams of the Lonely Hearts Killers

A Darker Side of the Roaring 20s

When it comes to the Roaring 20’s America, we usually think of big parties, champagne glasses, and new cars. Rarely do we think about healthcare or even that someone could be struggling with something like obesity. But that was the case for Martha Jule Seabrook. Doctors claimed she had a problem with her glands, which was the common diagnosis to explain why someone would be struggling with their weight at the time. But the truth is, we don’t know why Martha was bigger than the other girls her age. What we do know is that her weight led to her entering puberty prematurely and that was quickly followed by another traumatic incident.

Martha would later claim that her brother had sexually abused her as a child, and when her mother found out, instead of punishing her brother, she beat Martha instead.

That was why Martha ran away when she was only a teenager. She was quickly found and brought back, but now Martha knew that if she truly wanted a way out of her situation at home, she was going to have to find one for herself.

She then went into nursing, which was a good start, but she struggled to find work even though she was qualified. Many hospitals and other healthcare facilities turned Martha down because of her weight, and she was forced to work as an undertaker’s assistant instead.

That was until the Second World War turned everything around and made qualifications more important than size. Martha was then able to get a job as a nurse for the United States Army in California.

It was there that she would meet a local man and fall pregnant.

Confronted with the woman carrying his child, he then refused to marry her, and Martha had to leave town to avoid the stigma of having a child out of wedlock. She returned home to Florida, where she told everyone that her husband had died in battle. Martha came back a hero and a war-widow, and her daughter was welcomed into the community with open arms.

Martha’s Troubled Childhood

It was a few months after her daughter was born that Martha would find herself pregnant again. This time the father was a local bus driver named Alfred Beck, and Alfred agreed to marry her. Martha took his name, but the marriage only lasted six months before the couple divorced. She would give birth to Alfred’s son shortly after the paperwork for the divorce was finalized.

Now a single mother to not one but two children, Martha was out of work and had no one to support her. She then placed a lonely hearts ad in a magazine and sat back to eagerly await a response.

It was 1947 when Raymond Martinez Fernandez spotted Martha’s lonely hearts ad, and he quickly put pen to paper. By then, he was already a serial responder to these kinds of adverts, but Martha would have had no way of knowing that at the time.

It had been some years since Raymond had started responding to women who were looking for companionship all over the country.

Born in December 1914, in Hawaii, Raymond Fernandez was no stranger to putting in hard work in the hopes of getting a reward in the end. As a teenager, he’d moved from America to Spain, where he worked on his uncle’s farm, got married, and had a family. With a job, four children, and a loving wife to build a home for him, Raymond seemed to have it all.

But he, like so many other men during that period of history, would find himself drafted to fight in World War II. He first served in the Spanish navy before moving across to the British intelligence services, but when he was out on the other side of combat, a workplace accident changed the course of his life forever.

Raymond experienced a head injury that left permanent damage to his frontal lobe. It was shortly after that that he began showing drastic changes in his personality. Gone was the young farmer, the loyal soldier, and intelligence officer. Now Raymond was a burgeoning criminal.

He abandoned his family in Spain and moved back to America, where he began robbing stores and homes. Shortly after his release from the hospital, he was caught during an attempted robbery and sent to prison for one year.

It was during his incarceration that Raymond changed yet again. He learned about black magic and the power of voodoo from his cellmate, and after that, Raymond believed that this black magic had given him irresistible power over women.

He used this newfound power to lure wealthy women in by responding to their lonely hearts ads, and once Raymond had them ensnared, he would take their money and leave them hanging.

But one of his victims was more unfortunate than others. Her name was Jane Thompson, and she ended up following Raymond on a trip back to Spain. There he convinced her to change her will, leaving him the sole beneficiary in the case that something were to happen to her. Jane Thompson then died, although her exact cause of death remains a mystery. Raymond would tell Jane’s mother that she’d died in a train accident. To others, he would say she died of a heart attack.

The Fateful Meeting: Martha and Raymond

It’s unclear if Raymond responded to Martha’s ad with a similar intention of parting her from her money, but this meeting didn’t go quite like the others had. Raymond visited Martha down in Florida and stayed with her a short while before moving back to New York. He left her life and her prospects intact, but by then it was already too late. Martha had been baited, hook, line, and sinker, and she wasn’t about to turn her back on true love.

Without informing him of her plans, Martha showed up at Raymond's doorstep in New York with her two children and made it clear that she was willing to do anything it took to keep Raymond in her life.

Raymond considered her offer and then explained the details of his lonely hearts scam. Instead of being put off when Raymond revealed himself to be a criminal, Martha dove deeper. She dropped her children off at the Salvation Army and completely devoted herself to Raymond and his schemes.

Raymond himself took this to mean that Martha truly loved him, especially because she had chosen him over her own children, and the scene was set.

After that, Martha became an integral part of Raymond’s scams. She only had one condition and that was that Raymond didn’t sleep with any of the women he would be conning. Raymond agreed, and the two fell into step, with Martha frequently posing as Raymond’s sister and chaperoning his dates with wealthy, lonely women.

Love, Lies, and Murder

But if Raymond had learned anything from his time living with Martha, it was that she would forgive him for pretty much anything.

Martha came home one evening to find Raymond in bed with one of his victims: sixty-six-year-old Janet Fay. Instead of being heartbroken that Raymond had violated the terms of their agreement, Martha took out her frustrations on Janet. She grabbed a hammer and hit Janet several times over the head with it.

But Janet survived the ordeal. It was only when Raymond jumped in to help Martha that she lost the fight. Raymond then strangled Janet to death, and the two hid her body in the basement before fleeing to Michigan.

There, they were welcomed into the home of another prospective victim. Her name was Delphine Downing, a twenty-eight-year-old widow with a two-year-old daughter. Delphine believed that she was hosting a man who had responded to her ad named Charles Martin and his sister, but the truth was that she had invited two snakes into her home.

When Charles began trying to persuade Delphine to change her will, leaving everything she owned to him in the case that something unfortunate were to happen to her, Delphine smelled a trap. She refused, but at the same time, she welcomed a helping hand from Charles’ sister when she had trouble sleeping.

Martha then gave Delphine sleeping pills and knocked Delphine out. Confused and wanting her mother, Delphine’s daughter began crying for her, only to be met with Martha instead. Enraged that the girl wouldn’t stop crying, Martha began strangling her. She didn’t kill the girl, but left visible bruises along her neck.

Concerned that they wouldn’t be able to explain the bruises away, Raymond then shot Delphine in the head and killed her.

He and Martha then made themselves at home in Delphine’s house, but when her daughter woke up and wouldn’t stop crying for her mother again, they had enough. Martha then took the child and drowned her in a bucket of water. Both she and Raymond then buried the bodies of their victims in the basement and thought they had gotten away with things.

But when neighbors noticed that Delphine was missing, they reported it to the police, who then showed up at the Downing household to find Raymond and Martha still there.

The Final Killers' Confession

Once the bodies were recovered, Raymond confessed to everything. He claimed that this was not the first time that he and Martha had killed for money. In fact, he said that they had done this over seventeen times.

At trial, Raymond took back his confession and claimed that it had all been a lie. He knew that they were also to face charges for the murder of Janet Fay and that the state of New York still practiced the death penalty. He claimed that he’d only confessed to the other seventeen murders in the hopes that he and Martha would be extradited around different states to face their trials and avoid the death penalty in New York for a while longer.

It didn’t work.

It turned out that the trial of Janet Fay was the only one that he and Martha would face in court. His worst fear then came true when he and Martha were both sentenced to death for killing Janet, and they were executed in 1951 at Sing Sing Prison.

Because of their contradicting versions of events, their exact victim count is unknown, but it’s believed that together they may have killed around twenty women.

The Legacy of the Lonely Hearts Killers

The story of Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez, often referred to as the “Lonely Hearts Killers,” left a chilling mark on true crime history. Their method of preying on vulnerable, lonely women through personal ads revealed a dark side to post-war America. While many people were rebuilding their lives after the war, Martha and Raymond were using love and trust as tools to exploit and murder.

Their case also raised questions about the influence of trauma and mental illness. Martha’s troubled childhood and Raymond’s traumatic head injury may have contributed to their deadly behavior, though it doesn’t excuse their horrific crimes.