Gwendolyn Graham & Cathy Wood: How vulnerable people were made a victim of the deadly promise no one could fulfill
A healthy relationship will never require youto sacrifice your friends, your dreams, or your dignity
Mindy Hale
I would venture to say that everyone reading this, including myself, has been in love in their life. When that happens, you have a connection with that person who goes beyond any other connection you had before that. In a healthy relationship, each person contributes their strengths and sometimes sacrifices for the happiness of the other.
But what happens when the relationship isn’t healthy? We’ve all heard the reports of abuse, neglect, adultery, and much more. However, sometimes it goes beyond that. When two people are so dedicated to each other, they will do anything to make each other happy.
That happened in the case we are presenting today. Gwendolyn Graham and Cathy Wood were two health care professionals that met each other later in life. It wasn’t long before they developed a relationship that went beyond the concept of what is healthy. In fact, they developed a way to strengthen their relationship that meant their patients were in danger.
Keep ready to find out what drew them to each other, the plan they came up with to strengthen their love, and the result that ensued.
Digging Up the Details of Gwendolyn Graham’s Childhood
After extensive research, I found little information on the early life of either woman in this case. However, I could find out more about Graham, so I’m starting with her. Gwendolyn Graham was born on August 6, 1963, in Santa Barbara, California. I could not find out very much about her family life, but here’s what I found out. She was raised on a Texas farm by her mother and father, and she had at least one brother.
According to her accounts, she endured a rather tragic childhood. Her parents were said to have believed holding infants ‘made them weak’. Therefore, she did not receive any of the ‘nurture’ parts of her early development. She also made accusations against her father, accusing him of abusing her both physically and sexually.
It has to be noted that these claims have remained unsubstantiated and her father has vehemently denied them. However, being a survivor myself, I do not dismiss them. Because of this abuse, she would find a sense of relief by burning herself with cigarettes or cutting herself with razors.
I read an account regarding what she referred to as a bizarre incident from her childhood. I found the incident, if it’s true, to be more of a foreshadowing of events to come rather than a bizarre event. Apparently, she had a pet dog when she was younger that spooked a horse.
According to Graham, her dad made her brother kill the dog. She then later dug up the dog’s decomposing corpse, removed its teeth, and kept them in a little heart box. I didn’t find this story to be so much bizarre, but downright terrifying.
She openly admits to being diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder. According to the National Institute of Mental Health, BPD is an illness marked by ongoing patterns of varying moods, self-image, and behavior that often result in impulsive actions and problems in relationships.
People with BPD may experience intense episodes of anger, depression, and anxiety that can last from just a few hours to several days. She also admits that she had/has an erotic asphyxiation fetish that comes into play a little later on.
Graham moved to Michigan in her mid-teens. I wasn’t able to find out if she moved there with her family or if she ran away from home and ended up there. In 1985, at age 22, she began working as a Nurse’s Aide at Alpine Manor Nursing Home in Walker, Michigan. This is where she met Cathy Wood, who was her supervisor.
Separating Fact From Fiction
If I even thought for a minute trying to find information on Graham was difficult, finding information on Wood was nearly impossible. Here’s what I found out: She was born on March 7, 1962.
In 1979, at age 17, she found herself pregnant and married her Baby Daddy, Ken Wood. She later claimed she allowed herself to get pregnant in order to escape an abusive childhood home. However, I couldn’t find any more information about her early life to either confirm or deny this claim.
Once she gave birth to her child, a baby girl, she became different, according to Ken. She showed absolutely no interest in bonding with the new baby. Almost appearing irritated that the child even needed to be cared for.
I naturally assumed this was because of her possibly having Postpartum Depression as these are the classic symptoms of that. But when I saw she was diagnosed as being a Pathological Narcissist. That’s when things clicked with me.
According to the DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, this is the criteria outlined for this disorder.
- Fantasies about beauty, success, and power dominate the individual’s thoughts
- Individual needs to be admired all the time
- The individual lacks empathy (or the ability to recognize the feelings and needs of others
- Their behavior appears arrogant or haughty
- They are envious of others’ successes
- They have an exaggerated sense of self-importance
- The person feels they are ‘special’ and can only relate to other ‘special’ people
- They manipulate and take advantage of others
- Feel an entitlement to most things
I personally think that having the child meant that attention would no longer be on her, but on her child. That’s why she was annoyed with the infant and thus I believe refused or could not bond with her.
She, like Graham, began working at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home in 1985 as a supervisor. She met a group of lesbians working there who she claimed welcomed her into their circle, inviting her to join them at bars and parties after work.
They claimed she was never really welcome at these gatherings because she was a manipulative, pathological liar who seemed to enjoy cultivating conflict, chaos, and drama. However, since she was their supervisor, they allowed her to tag along.
Discovering & Nurturing a Shared Fantasy
Graham and Wood began having an affair in September 1986. Once they became lovers, they practiced sexual asphyxia to achieve a stronger orgasm. It was during one of these encounters that Graham admitted she often fantasized about killing someone just to know how it felt. Thus began their reign of terror on the residents of the Alpine Manor Nursing Home.
According to Wood, she merely acted as a lookout while Graham attempted/committed their murders. Graham’s first few attempts were unsuccessful, since the women she targeted could fight back. Instead of giving up on the whole situation, she found a solution to her ‘problem’.
Graham and Wood targeted Alzheimer’s patients. I believe the reason for this was two-fold. Number one: Alzheimer’s patients can not defend themselves. Mainly because they don’t remember how. Number two: Even if they survived and tried to talk about it, people would just assume they were confused.
Once they decided on their victim pool/profile, their original intention was to murder people alphabetically according to their initials, but that seemed too obvious. Their next thought was to kill people with initials that spelled out MURDER. However, this proved to be difficult, so they abandoned that idea as well.
That’s when they developed their own code. For every murder, they would say, ‘I will love you forever + (number of victims = number of days) – For instance, their first victim meant Forever + 1 Day and so on.
In January 1987, they chose their first victim, Marguerite Chambers. She was an Alzheimer’s patient who was extremely tired that day after spending the whole day with one of her children. According to Wood, Graham entered the room that evening while she remained at the door as a lookout.
Once Graham was in the room, she approached Chambers and smothered her with a washcloth. Because of the victim’s age and condition, her death was ruled as natural and they performed no autopsy. Scott and I questioned how Graham could suffocate her without leaving bruising or marks.
There were a few occasions when the sheer thrill of the kill was so overwhelming they had to find an empty room and have almost violent sex while the memories were still new and raw.
According to reports, Graham took items from each victim so that she could later relive the murders, which is a common practice among serial killers. Both of them would also openly brag to fellow co-workers, saying they had killed 6 victims and showing them the souvenir. However, because of Wood’s history as a pathological liar, nobody believed them.
Later, when Graham was arrested, the authorities say she claimed the murders were made up to frighten the other employees. Sher did not know Wood had already confessed items she allegedly collected would include an anklet, a handkerchief, a broach, and a set of dentures. It should be noted that none of these items were found at the time of their arrest.
Over the next few months, from January — April 19887, they killed four more victims, so they were responsible for the deaths of five patients. Hence the reason the book about their crimes written by Lowell Cauffiel in 1992 is titled Forever and Five Days.
Their five victims were:
- January 18, 1987: Marguerite Chambers – Age 60
- February 10, 1987: Myrtle Luce – Age 95
- February 16, 1987: Mae Mason – Age 79
- February 26, 1987: Belle Burkhard – Age 74
- April 7,1987: Edith Cook – Age 97
Since their victims were ages 65–92 and suffering from Alzheimer’s, the murders went unnoticed. The combination of that age range and the disease diagnosis explained the deaths to everyone else. Although the authorities believe the pair were responsible for eight deaths, they could only verify five and thus only charged and prosecuted for five.
Graham and Wood ended their relationship in April 1987. Wood states it was because of her refusing to participate in killing anyone to “prove her love.” Graham states it was because she left Michigan and returned to Texas with her new lover, Heather Barager, in order to get away from Wood’s overbearing control.
Wood later claimed Graham was the dominating/controlling partner. However, I feel because of her pathological narcissism, this would be impossible cannot be submissive and a narcissist, the very nature of the diagnosis, would not allow for it.
The End is Nigh
In August 1987, Wood went to a bar with her ex-husband and, after a few drinks, told him what she and Graham had done. However, Ken initially dismissed the claim because of her history of lying. Yet, he never forgot about it. Fourteen months later, he went to the police with the information. His reason for finally reporting it was simple.
Graham had gone to work at a neonatal facility. He didn’t want to take the chance of her victimizing any of the infants in her care. At first, the police also dismissed the claims Yet, they still looked into it. Apparently, approximately 40 patients had died at that facility during the time frame in question. Upon further investigation, they found eight deaths that stood out.
Some had already been cremated, but the ones who weren’t were exhumed. After examining the remains of the exhumed bodies, there still was no evidence of foul play.
Authorities brought Wood in for questioning. She initially claimed that the ‘confessions’ to others were a joke. Then she confessed to everything, saying Graham was the mastermind, and agreed to testify against her for a lesser sentence and protective custody charged with and convicted of one count of 2nd-Degree Murder and one count of conspiracy to commit 2nd-Degree Murder. She was sentenced to 20 years for each count and was eligible for parole on March 2, 2005.
She was finally granted parole and released from Federal Correctional Institution in Tallahassee, a minimum-security facility, on January 16, 2020 She is reported to be living with her sister in South Carolina.
Graham was extradited back to Michigan to stand trial. She was convicted of five counts of 1st-Degree Murder and one count of Conspiracy to Commit Murder in the 1st-Degree. She received 5 life sentences and is currently at Woman’s Huron Valley Correctional Facility in Pittsfield Charter Township, Michigan.
There’s one thing about this case that made little sense to me when I was doing the research for this episode. I presented my dilemma to Scott, and he also seemed a bit perplexed by the situation. The one aspect of the story of these two women/lovers/killers that isn’t sitting well with me is this: Graham was convicted solely on the testimony of Wood and her current lover, who claimed Graham had confessed the crimes to her as well.
The Media is Fascinated with the “Lethal Lovers”
The case and the history of Graham and Wood has been featured on a couple of docu-series episodes that have aired on television. Also, in Season 6 of American Horror Story — Roanoke on FX, a highly fictionalized version of their story was featured. In the episodes that season, they were depicted as sisters Miranda and Bridget Jane as opposed to lovers who killed as part of a ‘Love Bond’.
Interjecting Some Thoughts of My Own
This case was quite baffling me. While I was researching it, I literally took it personally. I’ve never lived in Michigan. I can’t claim a spot on my hand to tell you where I lived. However, I can tell you that my mother worked in a long-term care facility from before I was born until February 22, 2020.
She was a Registered Nurse for nearly 50 years and other than her ICU rotation; she worked in long-term care or post-acute rehab facilities. Before she retired, she worked for the same company for over 30 years. I have many fond, vivid memories of going to visit her at work.
When I was younger and she was a floor nurse, I would help her do her rounds, which would include doing certain treatments, like bandage changes and respiratory therapy. I could also help her pass out the meds to the residents when they had to take them. I could dispense them from the bubble packs, crush them with the crusher, and mix the crushed pills in the applesauce before I gave it to the resident.
Since I would be at the facility so often, I often became fond of some residents. It got to a point that when I arrived at a facility, I would go visit the residents in their room or in the dining hall before I went to find my mother. Because the residents had lived their lives and simply needed help to take care of themselves, as the tasks had become too burdensome for them to do alone.
That being said, I know firsthand how frail the people who live in this type of facility are. Normally when somebody works in a retirement home or long-term facility, as with my mom, they have a calling and a desire to let every patient they are charged with taking care of maintaining a quality of life until they pass away. Growing up, there were many patients that I had grown very close to that would pass away. The thing is, they would pass away peacefully. They weren’t suffocated with a washcloth or towel.
A little disclosure here, but when I was younger and my stepdad was still around, he was physically abusive. From the time I was 3-years old, as that’s when my mom married him, until I went to live in Iowa when I was 12-years old, I never knew when, where, why, or how the violence would come. All I knew was that it will come, and I never knew what would trigger it or how violent it would be.
That being said, although it’s obvious that I didn’t die, I know what it’s like to be choked. I recall one time when he threw me down on the ground and he was standing over me with his hands around my neck and I remember that as my vision went dark; I saw in his eyes that he would take great pleasure in knowing he was responsible for me taking my final breath.
Prior to this incident, there were many times when I seriously thought he was going to kill me. He would beat me with cast iron bars we used in the barn as gates to keep the milk cows from going into certain parts of the barn. If we were down in the pasture moving irrigation pipes (That became one of my chores shortly after I turned 5-years old) and if I didn’t do it fast enough or if I didn’t place them just right, he would drag me over to the cow trough that we had down by the pastures and hold my head under the water.
I’m not telling you all of this because I want you to feel sorry for me. Trust me when I tell you I have gone through enough therapy that it seldom affects me any more. I have put most of that behind me.
I’m telling you this because I want you to know that there were many times when I was still little that I wondered if that beating was going to be the one that would kill me. So on that night, I could look into his eyes and see the pleasure he was getting from seeing me struggle to take a breath. I could see how he reveled in the power of knowing that he had complete control at that moment over if or when I would ever breathe again.
My last vivid memory is of my vision going black and the only thought I had in my head was that I hadn’t seen my mom all day because she was at work and I would never see her again.
Although we were living on a farm, the elderly couple that owned the property actually lived right next door. I could look out my bedroom window and watch her television through the big bay windows in her living room.
I was told later she had decided that instead of sending my brother back home in the dark alone, she would walk him over. When she came out of her house, she saw my stepdad hovering over me, choking me, and most of all, she witnessed my body go limp.
She admitted to me when I was older than she thought; I had truly died that night at the hands of my stepfather. This lady was only five foot two, but apparently, she yanked him off of me and did what she could to get me to breathe and open my eyes, which I eventually did. He choked me so hard that it would be three days before I could talk right again.
So, I know what it’s like to struggle to breathe. I can’t imagine what their victims were thinking. Knowing that they were struggling to take a breath, yet because of their diminished capacity because of the dementia they were suffering from, they didn’t remember how to fight back and defend themselves.
I know what they were probably feeling, but I am left wondering if their final thought was one of regret because they hadn’t accomplished everything that they wanted to accomplish in their life. Did they at any point have a loved one that they were arguing with and they weren’t able to let that person know they were no longer mad. That no matter what happened or how the situation played out, whatever they were arguing about was not important in the whole grand scheme of life.
Since I was raised in that environment, quality care for the elderly is very near to my heart. So with the medical cases that we present, when the person targets the elderly, it affects me almost as much as it does when we cover other cases that involve atrocities toward children, because both children and the elderly cannot defend themselves.
If they would have used a medication overdose, it wouldn’t have affected me nearly as much. That as a nurse’s aide, who is working in a position where they are to take care of an individual, yet they decide that one particular individual or another needs to be eliminated. Then to follow through with the elimination process by choosing a method that causes the victim to suffer just affects me negatively on a level I cannot articulate effectively to help people understand what I felt when I dug into this case.
Wow, normally it’s Scott that climbs up on his soapbox and today I shoved him down so I could take my place up there. Now that I’ve got that off of my chest, I’m curious about some things in this case. Feel free to let us know what you think in the comment section below.
I debated on where I would start with the questioning, but since it’s a question that we ask for every case, I’ll not deviate from that pattern. Were the thoughts, feelings, and actions of Graham and Wood a matter of nature or nurture?
Personally, although I couldn’t substantiate the claims of the abuse, both women say that they suffered from while they were young, I’m going to give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that maybe the abuse wasn’t as extreme as they claimed but it was present. If we can assume this, then we can rightfully assume that theirs is a case of nurture.
The only exception to that assumption is when we consider Wood was diagnosed as a Pathological Narcissist. This diagnosis is considered a condition you are born with, but through circumstances in your environment, the symptoms are then exacerbated to a point where they can manifest in the way they did with Wood.
With the dynamic of Graham and Wood’s relationship, do you buy into the fact that Wood was just an innocent bystander, and that Graham was, in fact, the mastermind behind the killings? Considering they had broken up and Graham had moved on and relocated to another state, do you think either would have continued to kill people? Or do you think that the motivation behind the murders had to do with the relationship that they shared with each other?
If you were one individual on the parole board that released Wood, would you have opted in favor of her release or would you have been the hold-out that really wanted to deny her parole application?
Here’s my last question: Despite Wood agreeing to testify against Graham, do you think it was right that she did not get the same punishment that Graham did? Whether Wood played an active role in the murders is not the issue.
What is important to understand here is that by her own admission is that she was there for every one of them. Therefore, by being present during the murder and not attempting to report them to anybody, I feel she is just as guilty. I know in Oregon if you are present for the commission of the crime and you don’t do what you can to report it, then you yourself are guilty of that crime. The person who actually committed the murder may be charged with Aggravated Murder, but you yourself might be charged with Felony Murder or Involuntary Manslaughter.
Since there were five victims, even if she plead guilty to the lesser charge of Manslaughter, with five consecutive sentences for that charge, she would more than likely do a considerable amount of time. She could have received the same time as Graham did. Just in a roundabout way.
Additional Resources
Brutal Nation. (2021, June 29). Episode 2: Gwendolyn Graham & Cathy Wood. Twisted Blue LLC. https://open.spotify.com/episode/6Q4d7HKoTJZfVtFhOmbIIs?si=ce7W5SdaQuaIOFyILkm5iQ
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