Earlier this year, one of the craziest stories unfolded as an Alabama prison guard helped a convicted murderer escape custody.
Convicted murderer Casey White was freed by prison guard Vicky White after the two had a romantic relationship inside the prison. The two were not related. Until then, Vicky White had an impeccable record as a prison officer.
The two went on the run. The authorities soon began hunting them down to bring them to justice.
The pair fled north and were eventually found in Indiana. The authorities closed in on the hotel they’d checked into, and the two fled the hotel in their vehicle. A chase ensued. Corrections Officer Vicky White shot herself in the head while convict Casey White surrendered to police to return to prison.
It was a story that feels like it could’ve only unfolded in America.
America looked on, wondering what compels someone to leave a family they’d spent years building to run off with someone so obviously dangerous. Many people believe the sexist trope that women are secretly attracted to dangerous men.
Layperson readings of evolutionary theory have convinced countless people—especially men, especially people in men’s rights movements and pickup artist circles—that women are secretly drawn to criminality because strong, violent men make them feel safe.
Trust me, ask any woman if she feels safe around a gang of unpredictable criminals, and I assure you, the answer will usually be no. But the answer won’t always be no.
Ted Bundy: Shockingly Wicked, Evil, and Vile
A few weeks back, I had some time to kill, so while I worked, I put The Ted Bundy Tapes on in the background. I kept thinking, “What a self-absorbed jerk this guy was. He’s like a more intelligent version of Trump.”
His attorneys quit because they got tired of him only talking about himself. He never talked about facts. He never talked about the cases or accusations. The only thing Ted cared about was feeding his grandiose ego.
And still, women showed up at his 1979 trial in Florida, where he was ultimately convicted and sentenced to death. One woman who flocked to see his trial, Carole Ann Boone, agreed to marry Ted Bundy in the courtroom where he was on trial for murder.
Don’t take my word for it. There’s a video.
Yes, that actually happened.
Boone and Bundy had met five years prior, in 1974, back in Washington State. The two worked for the Washington Department of Emergency Services.
The two were assigned a job for the state that seems like fiction: searching for the women Ted Bundy had been murdering.
Examples of Hybristophilia
The same happened to Richard Ramirez in Los Angeles in the 1980s during his trial.
In 1995, a woman named Rosalie Martinez helped a man named Ray Bolin Jr. escape from prison. She was a public defender, and he was a ten-times convicted rapist and murderer who killed three women in Florida.
Like Vicky White, she abandoned a family she’d been with for years, abandoning her four daughters, and ran off with a convicted murderer who she married over the phone.