Samantha Spiegel, 19, is a San Francisco art student and penpal to famous serial killers and murderers. According to Spiegel, she was formerly engaged to John Mark Karr, who falsely confessed to killing JonBenét Ramsey. But they've split. Now she's into Richard Allen Davis who murdered Polly Klaas. Of course, Spiegel wouldn't be a real killer groupie if she didn't have a letter from Manson. She wrote him but is still waiting on a reply. SF Weekly has Spiegel's sad story. From SF Weekly (photo by Spiegel's roommate Pamela):
Samantha appears to be the quintessential modern killer groupie — a hybrid of a media-obsessed attention junkie and a vulnerable young woman sincerely attracted to twisted, violent men.
She craves attention from famous killers, from her friends and relatives, from the world. She wants to be our cherry bomb, and in attaching herself to Karr, then landing on The Today Show, she has figured out a way to do that.
But according to her, all that is secondary. "Getting attention is not my intention," she says. "It's just what comes with what I'm interested in." She has other psychological needs that are seemingly a product of her upbringing and background…
Expressing her admiration isn't the only way she has tried to compel murderers to write her. She routinely visits web forums like Write-a-Murderer, where she has learned how to find out the location and identification numbers of prisoners she intends to contact, as well as what subjects to bring up and what ones to avoid.
She also took a trip to Union Square, where she purchased a handmade floral stationery set. On its delicate paper, she composed more than a dozen letters to Richard Ramirez, Richard Allen Davis, Charles Manson, and several members of the Manson Family. She finished each off with a spritz of Narciso Rodriguez perfume. "They should have pretty stationery," she says. "I save it especially for them."
Samantha took to checking her mailbox promptly at 3 p.m. She knew that eventually the day would come when a famous prisoner would write back, and it didn't take long. On that warm September afternoon, not even a week after she had mailed her initial batch of letters, she reached into the mailbox and retrieved a correspondence from San Quentin inmate Richard Allen Davis.
"Killer Groupie Samantha Spiegel"
And video of Spiegel's Today Show appearance after the jump.
