Two filmic takes on the Lonely Hearts Killers

[read both reviews right here with a paid sub, or click through to see SDB’s coverage]

There's something off-putting to me about the so-called Lonely Hearts killers case. Something beyond the facts, I mean; Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck lured their victims by means of lonely-hearts personal ads, put them at ease by pretending Beck was Fernandez's sister (albeit a much more romantically territorial sister than their marks might have expected), then murdered them (and their children, sometimes) after relieving them of savings and valuables, so: not cheery stuff. But the Zodiac case file isn't either, and I've historically felt less existentially grossed out by that case than by Fernandez and Beck.

Part of it is the inevitable focus, in any Lonely Hearts coverage or overview, on Beck's weight. "Morbidly obese" this, "grossly overweight" that…it's not the descriptors* themselves, it's that they so often seem substituted for actual analysis of the killers, singly or together. The unspoken "of course a fat girl would go along with Fernandez's con, because who else would want her," and the equally ugly reverse of that coin, "of course Fernandez only 'truly loved' Beck out of all the women in his life, because he could best leverage her specific neediness for his own ends" – it's as though that's the beginning and end of the story. 

*and if you think that's bad, get a load of Gary Brumburgh's utterly pitiless IMDb bio of Shirley Stoler, who plays Beck in The Honeymoon Killers. The write-up laments Stoler's lack of leading-lady opportunities, but: dude, maybe she didn't get those parts because everyone was using phrases like "repulsive" and "pudding face"?