Raymond Fernandez mugshot

On this day in history, March 8, 1951, Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, better known as “The Lonely Hearts Killers,” were executed by electric chair at Sing Sing Prison in Ossining, New York, for the murder of Janet Fay, 66, of Long Island, New York. The couple had conspired to seduce, rob, and kill women who placed personal ads in newspapers and magazines. Fernandez and Beck boasted of killing as many as twenty women in this manner during a spree between 1947 and 1949. Several television shows and films are based on this case.

Raymond Martinez Fernandez was born in Hawaii on December 17, 1914, to Spanish parents. His family moved around the United States several times, and eventually, Fernandez moved to Spain to work on his uncle’s farm. While there, he married and started a family, all by the age of 20.

Fernandez served in World War II before deciding to return to the U.S., abandoning his wife and four children. On the ship to America, he suffered a head injury when a steel hatch fell on him, smashing his skull and injuring his frontal lobe. This damage may well have affected his social and sexual behavior. Because of his accident, he spent three months in hospital recuperating from his injuries. He then fell into a life of crime and was sent to prison for theft. While there, his Haitian cellmate reportedly taught him voodoo and black magic, which be believed gave him irresistible power and charm over women.

Martha Jule Beck was born in Milton, Florida, on May 6, 1920. A glandular condition caused her to be overweight and to undergo puberty prematurely. Beck later claimed during her trial that her brother had sexually assaulted her at a young age and that her mother abused her.

Beck completed studies for her nursing degree, but she struggled to secure a job because of her weight, so she bounced around the country for a time. She eventually returned to Florida while pregnant with her first child. Shortly after, she became pregnant with her second child. Beck married the second baby’s father, but the marriage only lasted a few months. In 1946, as a single mother of two, Martha Beck landed a job at the Pensacola Hospital for Children. A year later, she placed a lonely-hearts ad in a magazine and soon received a reply from Raymond Fernandez.

Fernandez came to Florida from New York City and stayed with Beck briefly but returned to the city shortly after that. Beck was then unexpectedly fired from her position at the Children’s Hospital, so she impulsively packed up her belongings and moved in with Fernandez. She doted on him, and he subsequently confessed his life of crime to her. Influenced by her new love for Fernandez, Beck gave up her children to the Salvation Army and committed everything she had to him. Beck was devoted to Fernandez until the end.

Fernandez continued to answer lonely hearts ads, and Beck often posed as his sister, claiming that he was just a guest and the home was hers. The lie enabled him to maintain an air of respectability, making his victims more comfortable having someone else in the house with them.

Beck’s love for Fernandez made her intensely jealous, and if he ever slept with a mark, Beck would fly into a rage. In 1949, Fernandez got engaged to Janet Fay, and she moved into his apartment in Long Island. When Beck discovered them in bed together, she attacked Fay by striking her on the head with a hammer, after which Fernandez finished the job by strangling her. They buried her in the basement of his apartment building. The pair were forced to flee to Michigan after Fay’s family grew suspicious when she went missing. The couple ended up locating in Wyoming Township, just outside Grand Rapids.

In February 1949, Fernandez and Beck met a widow, 28-year-old Delphine Downing. Things initially went well. Downing soon invited the pair to move in with her. She then took them to Nebraska to meet her mother and planned to sell her home in Michigan, so the threesome could all move to California.

The turning point came when Downing entered her bathroom on Saturday, February 26, 1949, and discovered that Fernandez had been keeping a secret from her. Because of his head injury years earlier, the swindler had worn a toupee to keep his damaged pate a secret. As Downing beheld his bald, scarred head under the bathroom light, she became distressed and accused “Charles” and his sister of deceiving her.

Fearing that Downing would contact the police and end their charade, Beck and Fernandez decided murder was their only way out. To quiet the agitated woman, Beck urged Downing to take sleeping pills. Downing did so. After falling asleep, Fernandez grabbed a blanket, wrapped it around Downing’s dead husband’s pistol, put it to her head, and fired, all while Downing’s 2-year-old daughter watched. Fernandez and Beck buried Downing in the basement and encased the grave in cement.

With Downing gone, the two fraudsters had free reign of the house. The dead woman’s daughter was crying for her mother incessantly, so Fernandez told Beck to kill her, which she did by drowning in a basin two days later. The young girl was buried in the basement beside her mother.

Raymond Fernandez and Marta Beck were arrested by Wyoming Township police soon after at the home after neighbors reported the young mother missing.

During the interrogation, Fernandez confessed to multiple murders across the country but later retracted his confession. He told police he was trying to protect Beck but knew that Michigan did not have the death penalty and used the confession to stay there. However, the pair were extradited to New York for the murder of Janet Fay, a state with the death penalty. They were tried and convicted of murder and sentenced to the electric chair. Soon after, they were remanded to Sing Sing Prison.

Fernandez and Beck were executed on March 8, 1951, at Sing Sing Prison for the murder of Janet Fay. Though police had Fernandez’s confession to the deaths of multiple women, there is no way to know the exact number of victims.

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