Addicted to Luxury: The Pampered Killer

March 16 was the anniversary of the death of Julia Whitcombe's father, Ernest Beebe, from cancer.� Her mother, Dora Beebe, was still alive and she suffered each year when this date came around.� Julia called her to offer comfort but received no response.� She then went to the condominium into which she had moved her mother the year before, so she'd be safer and have less maintenance to worry about.� "Her one terror," Julia would later tell reporters, "was becoming a victim of violence in her home."

Dora's fear came true.� A male friend with whom she had missed an appointment went to her home to find out if she was all right.� He was well aware of the murders in the area of elderly women in their own homes.� He had spoken to Dora earlier that day and she had been fine, but it was not like her to say she would be some place and not show up.� He just wanted to be certain.� But when he went into her residence late in the afternoon of March 16, he found her door unlocked (also unlike her), and her blood-covered, battered body on the bathroom floor.�

She lay in a fetal position, as if protecting herself, and her blood stained the gold carpet beneath her. Her scalp had bled freely from a terrible gash, probably made by a dented, blood-stained iron that sat in the sink.� Detectives determined from blood patterns on the door and wall that Dora had been hit while in several different positions, including when she was on the floor.� She appeared to have been dragged to the bathroom and left where she lay.� But she was also beaten there.� She had received five separate blows from the iron.� Oddly, beneath her, they found a telephone.

The Crime Scene, With Police Markers

Yet before she'd even been found, the suspect in the two earlier murders was being interrogated.� Even as police sat with her, getting her to talk, they had no idea just how depraved she had been over the past month.