Everyone who knows me is aware of the fact that I am a true crime fanatic. I read true crime. I watch true crime shows. I slow down whenever I see a police car pulled over. And, when hiking, I’m always on the lookout for dead bodies. I wake up to Cruise Ship Killers and fall asleep to Forensic Files. The monotone voice of narrator, Peter Thomas, as he describes the condition of the body after anti-freeze poisoning, is like a lullaby to me. My Kindle library looks like the blotter of a big city homicide detective. The word “death” appears in 90% of the titles. I like to think that over the years I have gathered a head-full of knowledge about latent fingerprints, blood spatter, and DNA. But, in reality, the most startling bit of information I have gleaned from researching homicides is that women are stupid!

According to a recent study by the Bureau of Justice Statistics, 76% of female murders were perpetrated by someone known to the victim. However, based on my reading and TV viewing, I would say that 98% of the murderers these women meet are from online dating sites. Case in point, eHarmony.com already has the word HARM embedded in it! I believe the other two percent of female murder victims are just women who are desperate for a man. Any man. And, they aren’t particular about where they meet him. It’s like prison visiting day is just another version of a blind date. It is unfathomable to me how many women get involved in relationships where they know absolutely nothing about the guy, and then take whatever he tells them at face value. When I was dating, we had all kinds of ways of vetting new boyfriends. Of course, this was in the late 1970s before the internet. 

Since we weren’t trolling for dates online, most of our dates were found at local discos, arcades and bowling alley bars. Whenever you met someone new, chances are he would either be from your city or a city within a 5 to 10 mile radius. Early conversations would consist of the pertinent information needed to see if the guy was worth pursuing. Common questions would be, “What kind of car do you drive?” “Do you have a paying job?” “Where did you go to school?” These three questions made it easy to tell how truthful the guy was. Number one: To find out about the car you would have one of your girlfriends scour the bar parking lot to see if, in fact, there was a green 1974 Mustang parked there. Number two: If he pays for your drinks and is wearing nice clothes from “Teen Man,” he most likely is gainfully employed. Number three: The next week you casually enter the high school he attended and find his yearbook in the school library. Then, check out his photo and any clubs he may have belonged to. If he’s president of the Chess Club or in the Boy’s Glee Club, you have to decide if dating a possible nerd/gay guy is worth your time. Unfortunately, today, women don’t even take these three simple steps to check out the guys they meet on Plenty of Fish.

Dating websites are like job resumes. Everyone lies. Most of the information, and sometimes even the photo, is false. You may think you’re meeting a brain surgeon who looks like Ben Affleck, but chances are you will be meeting a Walmart bagger who looks more like Ben Franklin. And then there are the red flags. I’m not talking about small little red flags that pop up when you’re with a guy who chews with his mouth open, or who wears cheap shoes. I’m talking about the guy who tells you his entire family was wiped out in a tsunami and he didn’t have insurance on them and that’s how he lost his job/home/driver’s license/money and has no place to stay. This is just about the time the desperate, bleeding heart woman takes the guy into her home and supports him. BIG RED FLAG! Here are just some of the Big Red Flags that I recently saw on crime shows that women chose to ignore. 

While having dinner with her new boyfriend, one woman ran into an old friend who stopped by the table. When introduced to the friend, “Bill” never looked up. He kept his head down and to the side and didn’t utter a word. The woman’s rationale about this encounter? “I thought he was just shy around people he didn’t know.” The truth? He was on America’s Most Wanted the night before for killing his ex-wife. In another episode, one man would disappear periodically for days at a time. His excuse? And this is one I hear all the time – he’s working undercover for the government as either a) Seal Team Six, b) An FBI informant, c) CIA Special Agent, or my favorite d) He’s in the Witness Protection Program and has to secretly appear before the FBI so they can ensure his safety. Then, of course, there’s the guy who tell’s his new girlfriend that if she calls the government to check out his story, they will have to disavow any knowledge of him so as not to compromise his identity. Are you kidding me? My brother-in-law was once late coming home from a Super Bowl party and my sister accused him of having another family across town that he was hiding from her! She never would have fallen for the Seal Team Six excuse. 

I sometimes wish I could explore the minds of the women who write to prisoners and then marry them. For example, the notorious Menendez brothers, who brutally killed their parents and are serving life sentences, are both married to women they first met as pen pals. I had a pen pal once when I was in elementary school. His name was Igaluk and he lived in Alaska. We were 10 years old at that time and to the best of my knowledge, he wasn’t incarcerated. But, I suppose if dating apps, seedy bars and homeless shelters aren’t working out, then I guess the next logical step for desperate women is to check out the local prison population.

So, ladies, please be smarter. No matter how handsome or nice the guy is, if he tells you that he was in prison for 10 years because someone “falsely identified him,” don’t believe him. Or, if you’re doing his laundry and you find four burner phones in his pants pockets, don’t believe him when he tells you he’s “holding them for friends.” And, most of all, if you’re looking for a normal, crime-free relationship, one where you won’t end up in a landfill, stay away from prison pen pals.

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