‘I’m in a lot of killers’ phone books’ - Amanda Howard is the serial killer whisperer

AMANDA Howard gets inside the minds of the world’s worst serial killers. To do so, she has shared letters and conversations with around 450 murderers, including Charles Manson and Ivan Milat.

ALMOST every month, Amanda Howard posts a letter to a prison in England. It’s a ritual she has maintained since about 1995 and, so far, her letters have gone unanswered.

But the criminologist, author and self-proclaimed “serial killer whisperer” lives in hope that one day Rosemary West will write back.

West and husband Fred murdered and buried a series of young women in their modest terrace home in southwest England. The home, since demolished, became known as the House of Horrors. West was convicted of 10 murders and is one of only two women in Britain serving a life sentence.

“From what I can tell, she was the dominant one in the relationship with Fred,” Howard says. “Often women are the secondary killer in a couple, but she was the primary killer and the reason this perfect storm happened with Fred. She is top of my list.”

THE SERIAL KILLERS WHO THOUGHT THEY’D GOT AWAY WITH MURDER

Fred and Rosemary West, who were charged with 12 counts and ten counts of murder in 1994. Picture: AP

Most days Howard receives a letter or unsolicited “gift” sent by a killer locked behind bars. She’s received art work and lingerie catalogues and even a pair of soiled long johns from a Melbourne-based serial murderer.

“I’ve had a wedding proposal and an invitation to an execution from Bobby Joe Long in Florida,” she says.

“He asked me to marry him and I declined and then he asked me to be at his execution. He also sent me a lock of his hair, which I can’t touch.”

Long committed a series of rapes in the early 1980s and went on to kill 10 women over eight months in 1984. He is on death row.

Sydney-based Howard is in touch with about 60 serial killers.

She uses her conversations and correspondence to build up knowledge about how the mind of a serial killer works.

“I explain that I am interested in learning about their life and how they went from a child to a serial killer,” she says.

“Often there are a lot of letters and conversations before they say something that offers some insight into how they think.”

Howard has letters from some of modern history’s most notorious killers, including Charles Manson. They shared letters and phone calls until shortly before his death last year.

“He was a crazy one. When he called, his conversation jumped from this idea to that idea and back again so fast,” Howard says.

“He talked about aliens and black ops and he tried to draw you in with his ideas and plans and quotes from the Bible. He really was a wild man.

“During one of the last phone calls, he talked to me about bodies being buried. He told me the Russians were involved and so were black ops.

Criminologist and author Amanda Howard writes to serial killers.

“I don’t know if he was saying there were more victims of his or that he knew about the victims of someone else. It was a very bizarre conversation.”

Howard is also in regular contact with Ivan Milat since first writing to him in prison around 1995.

She says Milat, who is serving seven life sentences for the abduction and murder of seven backpackers in a NSW state forest between 1989 and 1993, sends her jokes and French poetry.

But much of their correspondence centres on Milat proclaiming his innocence.

“He talks about the killer in the third person and gives his theories and ideas of what might have happened,” she says.

“I think he is guilty, but I also think we don’t know the full story.

“When I look at the crime scenes — one victim was shot, another was stabbed, one was sexually assaulted, another was chased through the forest … I think that suggests two killers.”

Howard has written a series of books about true crime and produces a podcast, Monsters Who Murder: Serial Killer Confessions.

Part of a letter from serial killer Ivan Milat to Amanda Howard.

When growing up, Howard wanted to be a singer and dancer until she became intrigued by the “Granny Killer” case. She’d just finished reading Silence of the Lambs and believed serial killers were all Hannibal Lecter-style monsters.

“But when the Granny Killer was caught, he was a father and a husband, and he looked normal. To me, that was more terrifying,” she says.

John Wayne Glover was known as the Granny Killer because he murdered six elderly women on Sydney’s wealthy North Shore from 1989-90. He committed suicide in jail in 2005.

“From that case, I was hooked and gone were the dancing and sequins and they were replaced by serial killers,” Howard says.

She studied for a criminology degree and is completing a master’s in criminology and criminal justice.

When a lecturer told her the best research involved going direct to the source, Howard began writing to serial killers 30 years ago.

Ivan Milat, who was convicted of the murders of seven backpackers, wearing a sheriff's badge, poses in his lounge room with firearms.

She is careful to protect her family and her privacy and has developed an acute ability to survive the cat-and-mouse mind games that her unusual penpals sometimes play.

“I play those mind games to see what I can get out of them and what we can learn,” she says. “I always remember who I am talking to and carefully choose what I say.

“Conversations can be quite normal: How are you coping with the heat? What are your plans for Christmas? How’s your back after you hurt it a few weeks ago? But it can go to some dark places.

“I’m in a lot of serial killers’ phone books, so when I answer the phone, I sometimes wonder who it will be.”

Some of the serial killers Howard converses with have died after years of letter writing and phone calls.

David Birnie and his partner Catherine abducted, raped and murdered four women in Perth. A fifth victim escaped. He was given four life sentences and killed himself in prison in 2005.

He called Howard the night before he was found dead in his cell.

“I spoke to him every Sunday night and was mentioned in David’s coronial inquest because one reason why he took his life was that the prison had stopped our contact,” she says.

“I was his only contact with the outside world and he liked that tiny escape from prison life.

“It is odd when you have these people who you speak to for years and then they’re gone. But it’s better they aren’t out there killing and destroying families.

“You can’t weep for a serial killer because they are still monsters.”

From the mouths of monsters: an evening in conversation with Amanda Howard, Village Roadshow Theatrette, State Library of Victoria Conference Centre, 179a La Trobe St. Thursday, November 22, 7.30pm. 18+ event. eventbrite.com.au

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Originally published as ‘I’m in a lot of killers’ phone books’ - Amanda Howard is the serial killer whisperer