Image: Mugshots of Gwen Graham (top) and Cathy Wood (bottom) (Public Domain)
On this day in history, November 2, 1989, Gwendolyn Graham is sent to prison for life with no possibility of parole for killing five elderly female occupants of the Alpine Manor Nursing Home near Grand Rapids, Michigan. Both Graham and her criminal and romantic partner, Catherine Wood, had been working as nurses’ aides at the home. In exchange for a reduced punishment of 20 to 40 years, Wood agreed to give evidence against Graham.
The two women encountered each other at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home after Graham had relocated from Texas to Michigan. They became friends, and ultimately lovers, by 1986. Two years later, they would both face murder charges for suffocating five elderly patients as part of a “love pact.”
The specifics of the killings came almost entirely from descriptions supplied to police by Wood, whose homicide charges were diminished by a plea agreement so she could give evidence against Graham in Graham’s trial for first-degree murder. Nonetheless, Wood’s narratives and depiction of herself as Graham’s pawn were later reasons for serious questions in some quarters.
According to Wood’s narrative, in January 1987, Graham entered a patient’s room with Alzheimer’s disease and suffocated her with a washcloth as Wood functioned as a lookout. The woman was too weak to fight back and became the pair’s first victim. The woman’s death looked natural, so an autopsy was never done. Wood alleged Graham killed the woman to “relieve her tension.” Each felt that the fact that both women were involved in the murder would prevent the other person from leaving the relationship, thus strengthening their connection.
During the following number of months, Graham would kill four more nursing home patients, according to Wood. Many of the dead, aged 65 to 97, suffocated and experienced Alzheimer’s disease. Wood testified that the couple turned the choice of victims into a game, first attempting to pick their victims by their initials to spell M-U-R-D-E-R. But when one of the victims fought back, they started counting each murder as a “day,” as in the phrase, “I will love you forever and a day.”
A poem by Wood to Graham, given in the trial, presumed, “You’ll be mine forever and five days.” Wood also stated that Graham took souvenirs from the victims, keeping them to recall the deaths, Yet police never found any such souvenirs. Wood also depicted Graham as sexually, physically, and emotionally preeminent in their relationship. The couple ultimately parted when Graham began dating another female nursing aide employed at Alpine Manor. Graham then moved back to Texas with the woman and began working in a hospital, caring for infants.
The murder investigation started in 1988 after Wood’s ex-husband, whom she had informed about the killings, advised the police. Detectives from the Walker Police Department thoroughly questioned Cathy Wood during several conversations. She slowly told her account of the murders, portraying Graham as the brains of the operation and the person who committed the homicides. The investigation caused the disinterment of two nursing home victims who had not been cremated. But when medical examination failed to show any physical evidence of murder, not abnormal in a suffocating case, the county medical examiner nevertheless decided the deaths were homicides, based on Wood’s evidence to the authorities. Warrants were issued for Wood’s and Graham’s arrests. On December 4-5, 1988, Graham and Wood were arrested and charged with two murders. Wood was detained in Walker, Graham in Tyler, Texas.
During the trial, Wood negotiated her way to a reduced sentence, asserting that Graham plotted and conducted the homicides while she acted as a lookout or distracted supervisors. Graham upheld her innocence, stating that the killings were part of a detailed “mind game” by Wood. Despite having little physical evidence, the jury eventually was convinced by the evidence given by Graham’s new girlfriend, who told the court that Graham had admitted to five murders.
On November 3, 1989, Graham, after being found not guilty of five charges of murder and one of conspiracy to commit murder, was given five life sentences. Graham is incarcerated in the Women’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Charter Township, Michigan. Wood admitted to one count of second-degree murder. She was given 20 years on each charge. Wood was held in a minimum-security prison in Tallahassee, Florida; she was released on January 16, 2020, and it was probable that she would live with relatives in South Carolina.
However, friends, coworkers, family members, and others who knew Graham and Wood told a wholly altered version than the one Wood said as the prime witness in Graham’s trial. They characterize Wood as both an intimidating and charismatic pathological liar who enjoys causing chaos in the lives of others. It is stated that Wood conceived the first murder after she found Graham in the arms of another woman. She required Graham as an insurance policy to keep her from ever abandoning her.
When Graham left her nevertheless after the series of alleged killings, Wood was prepared to put herself in legal danger by revealing to police to get her retribution. Wood is seen as a psychopathological criminal mastermind who used the prosecutor and the jury to punish Graham. Psychological testing also showed Graham could be easily influenced, suffered from a borderline personality disorder, and did not have the sophistication to plan the series of killings, let alone effectively protect herself in a trial.
Wood, some assert, later told inmates two other versions of events: The first was that she had fabricated the entire story to ensure that Graham was put away for life for leaving her for another woman. Second, she was responsible for all the killings but framed Graham for revenge.
Numerous families sued the owners of Alpine Manor for hiring “dangerous and unbalanced employees.” Alpine Manor has since gone out of business, but the building now houses a nursing home called “Sanctuary at Saint Mary’s.”
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