# The Lonely Hearts Killers: Finding Love in the Classifieds, Finding Death Instead

- Link: https://thedarksideofhumanity.com/the-lonely-hearts-killers-finding-love-in-the-classifieds-finding-death-instead/
- Published: 2023-08-18T15:48:39-04:00
- Author: Mandi Martyr

A guard tower at Sing Sing prison, Ossining, New York, 2014. Fernandez and Beck were executed at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. Credit: Acroterion / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Raymond Martinez Fernandez and Martha Jule Beck met through a correspondence club in 1947 and spent the next year and a half living off the women Fernandez found through lonely hearts columns, with Beck posing as his sister. In January 1949 they killed Janet J. Fay, a widow from Albany, New York, in their apartment in Valley Stream, Long Island. In February 1949 they killed Delphine Downing, a young widow, and her two-year-old daughter in Michigan. A Bronx jury convicted both of first-degree murder for the Fay killing, the New York Court of Appeals affirmed in People v. Fernandez, 301 N.Y. 302 (1950), and they died in the electric chair at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. They were never tried for any other death, though the press of the day attributed many more to them. Raymond Fernandez The Court of Appeals summarized his background from the trial record. Fernandez was born in Hawaii to Spanish parents and brought to the United States as a child; he was 34 at the time of the trial. In 1932 his mother took him to Spain, where he married at 17. He had four children with a wife who still lived in Spain in 1950. He worked land owned by his father, served in combat in the Spanish Civil War, and came back to the United States alone in 1946. Working for a construction company in Brooklyn, he joined a “Lonely Hearts Club” and began writing to women. The English Wikipedia summary adds that he later claimed black magic gave him power over women, a belief he said he took from a cellmate during a year in prison for theft. Martha Beck Martha Jule Beck, born Martha Seabrook in Milton, Florida, on May 6, 1920, according to Wikipedia, was 29 at the time of the trial. The court recorded that she did well in high school, became librarian of a women’s club, graduated from the Pensacola School of Nursing and became a registered nurse who held responsible positions in hospitals in California and Arizona. The Wikipedia summary, citing secondary works, says she married and quickly divorced a Pensacola bus driver named Alfred Beck, had two children, and worked at the Pensacola Hospital for Children from 1946. At her trial she said her brother had raped her and her mother had beaten her. Truman Capote told The Paris Review in 1957 that as a boy he ran away from home with “a girl much older than myself” who later became the Lonely Hearts Killer; he did not name her. The Lonely Hearts Correspondence Valley Stream, Long Island. The couple rented an apartment at 15 Adeline Place, Valley Stream, in December 1948. Village view only. Credit: DanTD / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). Beck and Fernandez met in person in December 1947 at her home in Florida, after she received his letters through the correspondence club. She then moved to New York and, except for brief periods, lived with him there. The Wikipedia summary says she placed her children with the Salvation Army. Throughout 1948, with her knowledge, Fernandez kept writing to women whose names he got from lonely hearts clubs. The Court of Appeals found that in that time “he met and married two of those women and he visited others.” He wrote as “Charles Martin.” On December 17, 1948, they rented an apartment at 15 Adeline Place, Valley Stream, in Nassau County. On December 26, a letter came from Mrs. Janet J. Fay of Albany. She described herself as a widow, 41, attractive, five feet four inches, 135 pounds, whose hobby was dancing, and invited “Charles Martin” to visit. The Wikipedia summary gives her age as 66. On December 29 the couple drove to Albany. Fernandez called on Fay alone, then introduced Beck a few days later as his sister. Valley Stream, January 4, 1949 On the evening of January 3, 1949, the couple drove Fay from Albany to the Valley Stream apartment. She brought a $2,000 check she gave Fernandez that night. Earlier, Fernandez had used a hammer to rehang some pictures that had fallen and left it on a chair in the living room. Fay and Fernandez prepared letters to her Albany friends: sheets with “Surprise” written diagonally across them, signed by Fay. The apartment had one bedroom. Fay was to share the double bed with Beck; Fernandez slept on the living room couch. Sometime between 3:00 and 4:00 a.m. on January 4, Fay went into the living room. What happened next was told four ways: two confessions given in Michigan on March 3, 1949, and two accounts at trial. At trial, Fernandez said he sent Beck to quiet Fay, went to the bathroom, and came back to find Fay “all splattered with blood” over a suitcase and Beck standing over her “in something like a daze.” He said he put a scarf around Fay’s neck only to stop the bleeding. Beck testified that she found Fay naked on the couch, waiting for “Ray”; that she said, “For a woman of your age, you’re the hottest bitch that I have ever seen”; that Fay slapped her; and that she remembered nothing until Fernandez was shaking her and Fay lay motionless. “I was just burning up with jealousy and anger,” she said. Their Michigan confessions were different. In hers, Beck said that Fay told her she would have to move out once Fay married Fernandez, and that she picked up the hammer and struck Fay on the back of the head, then struck her again. Fernandez took Fay by the throat with his bare hands to keep her quiet. Beck put a scarf around Fay’s neck; Fernandez knotted it, put the hammer through it and twisted it like a tourniquet. “We both realized then we had gone so far that we would have to,” Beck said, and agreed when the questioner finished, “Kill her?” On March 11, after consulting a lawyer appointed by the Michigan court, she asked to correct the part of her statement about the hammer. In his confession, Fernandez said he told Beck to keep Fay quiet “no matter how it is,” came back to find her bleeding and moaning on the floor, and that Beck told him to “finish it.” “It was twisted with the hammer,” he said. “Used a lot of strength to do it.” Hiding Janet Fay Fay’s body would not fit in their trunk, so they put it in a closet. A few hours later they drove downtown, failed to cash Fay’s $2,000 check at a Wall Street bank, and bought a bigger trunk. The trunk stayed in the apartment for three days, then went to the home of a sister of Fernandez, where he knew he would find a spade and a shovel. Over the following days they drove to Bridgeport and other towns along U.S. Route 1 looking for a house with a yard or cellar where he could “dig a hole in the ground and put her body.” They found one on 149th Street in South Ozone Park, Queens, and buried her beneath its concrete cellar floor. Within two days of the killing, the couple erased “Surprise” from Fay’s signed sheets and typed letters above her signature to her Albany friends. “I am all excited and having the most wonderful time of my life,” one read. “I soon will be Mrs. Martin and then we will go to Florida for the winter.” Byron Center Road Location of Byron Center, Kent County, Michigan. The Downing house was at 3435 Byron Center Road near Grand Rapids. Map only. Credit: Notorious4life (talk) (Uploads) / Wikimedia Commons (CC0). Heading for Alaska, the couple stopped near Grand Rapids, Michigan, and rented rooms at 3435 Byron Center Road, the home of Delphine Downing and her two-year-old daughter. Testifying at his New York trial, after being warned of his right not to incriminate himself, Fernandez said that on the night of February 26, 1949, he shot and killed Downing and buried her beneath the cellar floor of the house. The Wikipedia summary, drawing on secondary accounts, says Fernandez gave Downing sleeping pills before he shot her, and that Beck drowned the child in a basin. Late in February, Kent County police learned that Downing and her daughter were missing. On the night of February 28 officers came to the house, questioned the couple about “the whereabouts of Mrs. Delphine Downing” and took them to jail. Their statements there implicated them in Downing’s disappearance and in Fay’s death, and gave a clue to where Fay’s body could be found. On March 2, 1949, Fernandez pleaded guilty in the Kent County Court to killing Downing. The Body in Queens South Ozone Park, Queens, 2018. Janet Fay was buried beneath the cellar of a house on 149th Street in the neighbourhood. Not the house. Credit: RightCowLeftCoast / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0). On the night of March 1, 1949, investigators exhumed Fay’s body from beneath the cellar floor in South Ozone Park, “with bent head and flexed limbs tightly bound against the torso, and with a white scarf knotted twice around the neck.” The assistant medical examiner of Queens County found two head wounds, one rectangular and one triangular, each breaking through the skull into the cranial cavity, and a fractured larynx. He testified that the larynx fracture occurred before death, and that either the skull fractures or the larynx fracture would eventually have caused death. The Michigan Confessions On March 3, 1949, an assistant district attorney of Nassau County arrived in Michigan and took a confession from each defendant. HISTORY notes that Michigan did not have capital punishment and New York did. At trial the defendants said their earlier statements were made on a promise by the Kent County prosecutor that they would not be used against them in another state, and that the Nassau prosecutor’s silence carried that promise forward. The Court of Appeals found the argument carried no weight as to Beck’s corrective statement of March 11, which she made at her own request after advice from counsel and in which she said she knew it could be used against her in New York. Trial in the Bronx A Nassau County grand jury indicted both for first-degree murder, charging that on or about January 4, 1949, in the town of Hempstead, each “aiding and abetting the other” killed Janet J. Fay by striking her with a hammer and strangling her with a scarf. Because of local prejudice in Nassau County, the case was moved to Bronx County. The trial lasted 10 weeks and produced a record of more than 4,000 pages. One lawyer represented both defendants; they had retained him months before the trial. The jury convicted both of murder in the first degree, and both were sentenced to death. The Appeal The New York Court of Appeals affirmed both convictions in People v. Fernandez, 301 N.Y. 302 (1950). Judge Lewis wrote for the court, joined by Judges Dye and Fuld. Judge Desmond, joined by Judge Froessel, concurred, finding that the trial judge’s refusal to allow cross-examination of prospective jurors opposed to capital punishment was “plain error” but did not deprive the defendants of a fair jury. Judge Conway, joined by Chief Judge Loughran, dissented. He wrote that there was “a definite conflict of interest between the defendants,” since Fernandez’s defense was that he had no hand in the killing, and that the trial judge failed to charge the jury on that defense. The dissent would have ordered a new trial. Sing Sing Sing Sing prison with warden T. M. Osborne and two other men, circa 1915. Bain News Service photo, Library of Congress. Fernandez and Beck were executed at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. Credit: Bain News Service, publisher / Wikimedia Commons (Public domain). Fernandez and Beck were executed in the electric chair at Sing Sing prison in Ossining on the night of March 8, 1951. A United Press report from Ossining, carried in Oregon newspapers the next day, described them as calm and said they pledged their love for each other. Fernandez was 36. Numbers The Fay case was the only one for which they were tried and convicted, and Fernandez admitted the Downing killing under oath and by guilty plea in Michigan. HISTORY says they killed another victim accidentally with an overdose of sleeping pills; the Wikipedia summary says they denied 17 murders attributed to them and were suspected of up to 20. None of those deaths was proved in court. Legal Status Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck were convicted in Bronx County of the first-degree murder of Janet J. Fay and sentenced to death. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed, 5 to 2, in People v. Fernandez, 301 N.Y. 302 (1950). Both were executed at Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. Fernandez had pleaded guilty in Kent County, Michigan, on March 2, 1949, to killing Delphine Downing. Frequently Asked Questions Who were the Lonely Hearts Killers? Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck, who met through a correspondence club in 1947 and preyed on women Fernandez found through lonely hearts clubs. Who was Janet Fay? A widow from Albany, New York, who answered a letter from Fernandez writing as “Charles Martin” in December 1948. How was she killed? In their Valley Stream apartment on January 4, 1949. In their Michigan confessions, Beck struck her with a hammer and Fernandez twisted a scarf around her neck with the hammer like a tourniquet. Where was her body found? Beneath the concrete cellar floor of a house on 149th Street in South Ozone Park, Queens, on March 1, 1949. What happened in Michigan? Fernandez testified that he shot Delphine Downing at 3435 Byron Center Road on February 26, 1949. He pleaded guilty to killing her in Kent County on March 2, 1949. Why was the trial in the Bronx? Local prejudice in Nassau County led the court to move the case to Bronx County. Did the appeal succeed? No. The New York Court of Appeals affirmed both convictions 5 to 2 in People v. Fernandez, 301 N.Y. 302 (1950). When were they executed? At Sing Sing on March 8, 1951. Sources People v. Fernandez, 301 N.Y. 302 (1950), majority opinion of Lewis, J., concurrence of Desmond, J., and dissent of Conway, J. (full text via Hall Approved). United Press, “Lonely Hearts Slayers Die,” Ossining, N.Y., March 9, 1951, as printed in an Oregon newspaper (Historic Oregon Newspapers, University of Oregon, sn90066132, March 9, 1951, page 10). “The Lonely Hearts Killers are executed,” HISTORY, This Day in History, March 8. “Raymond Fernandez and Martha Beck,” English Wikipedia, accessed October 16, 2026 (used for birth dates, Beck’s early life and the Downing details not in the opinion).