Bonnie and Clyde and Clyde

by Pat Brown

Often we wonder what made one child turn bad, but how often do we wonder what made three siblings go bad? At the same time? The mother of the so-called "Dougherty Gang" must be trying to figure that one out right now.

The Dougherty siblings, two brothers and a sister, just decided to go on a crime spree–yes, a fully intended crime spree–otherwise they would have left the AK-47 at home. Lee Grace Dougherty, 29, and her two brothers, Dylan Dougherty Stanley, 26, and Edward Ryan Dougherty, 21, stole Ryan's girlfriend's Suburu Impreza (not exactly The Fast and the Furious) and took off from Pasco County, Florida, with mayhem on their minds.

Their mother may have a difficult time understanding why her kids are on a suicidal crime spree, but she should not have been surprised that they would commit crimes; between the three of her children, they have racked up twenty felonies including burglary, battery, and drug possession. Most recently, Ryan Dougherty had sent hundreds of sexual tests to an 11 year old, got nailed for it and was put on 10 years probation for sexual battery (probation after 13 felonies and being a child sex predator). Supposedly, he was upset that his conviction would prevent him from seeing his new baby days away from being born. I guess he figured cutting off his ankle bracelet, committing grand theft auto, and then firing 20 shots at a Tampa police officer who stopped them for speeding (luckily, police shot out his tires and not him), and then robbing a bank at gunpoint would improve his chances.

They took an undisclosed amount of money from the Valdosta, Georgia, bank firing their weapons at the ceiling, an AK-47 assault rifle and a MAC -10 or MAC -11 type machine pistol. They wore masks during the robbery, but considering they took the Ryan's baby momma's vehicle and she reported it to the police, their faces and a photo of the car are plastered all over billboards now.

One can kind of see the brothers going on a crime spree (even though brother Dylan has only one arrest for marijuana possession on his record). But what of Sis? Well, she seems to have her own set of problems. On her Flickr page, Lee states, "I love to farm and shoot guys and wreck cars." Two out of the three's pasttime seems to be less than healthy. The sister has five felonies, all of them hit-and-runs, and six misdemeanors. She had DUIs, attacked a police officer, and was supposed to be in a drug rehab program. She did have a job as a topless go-go dancer/stripper and was engaged to a 45-year-old professor who said, "She touched me in a way neither of my wives came close." I bet she did. But, unfortunately for her sugar daddy, I guess she just wasn't that into him. As he says, "I guess the wedding is off."

Mom has begged her children to give themselves up before someone gets hurt. She went on television on the condition her face not be seen (hey, wait, I can see her face; she is not going to be happy with that media outlet). I think the chances of the siblings surrendering is not too good. They texted Mom from the bank, saying, "There's a time for all of us to die."

What caused these kids to go bad and then completely lose it? It is difficult to say, but another sister died recently and also their father. Mom moved away from Florida, leaving the three criminal siblings to their own devices. They built a bunker (for what, we don't know) and, clearly, their lives were spinning out of control. Mom says, "Only Mom knows what good people you are inside." I am guessing they have not had much in the way of accountability in the past and a whole lot of excusing for bad behavior. I think these three know that they don't have much to offer the world or themselves and so are taking themselves out through suicide-by-cop. We can only hope they don't take anyone else with them.

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Memories of Murder

by Deborah Blum

When I was a baby reporter - which is how I think of my early days in journalism - I covered the cop-and-court beat for The Macon Telegraph, a medium-sized paper in a rather stately town in middle Georgia.

At least the reputation was for stateliness and deep Southern history which is something one tends to miss when hanging out at the county courthouse, covering the trials of rapists and murderers. My memories of Macon - aside from very late nights at a downtown bar called The Rookery - tend to be like antique paintings, golden oils featuring dark paneling and desperate faces.

I covered one trial involving two men who had abducted and beaten to death two elderly women. The bodies were found in the woods in an adjacent county. The prosecutor brought one of the skulls into the courtroom so that the jurors could see how a blow had caused dents and chips in the bone.

In the courtroom breaks, I'd hang out with the cops, flirting a little maybe, trading crime gossip the way any beat reporter does. And often in those discussions she would come up, the killer to whom all needed to compared, the worst of the Macon killers, whose murderous trail, laid in the 1950s, still left its shadow.

"I've saved all the stories," one detective told me, and he had. He gave me a sheaf of photocopies, dark and smudgy the way they used to be, with the headlines over-black and the face of Anjette Lyles, framed by her silvered hair, shining on the page. He rubbed a finger over that smiling image, the arsenic-loving serial killer.

I used to think I might one day write a book about her, the homicidal woman whose pretty face still charmed the older police officers in Macon. Anjette Donovan Lyles, born 1925, was arrested in 1958 for killing two husbands, a mother-in-law and a nine-year-old daughter. Sentenced to die in the electric chair, she was found insane and sent to the mental hospital for the criminally insane in Milledgeville, Ga., where she worked in the prison cafeteria until she died of heart failure in 1977.

But the book already exists, called Whisper at the Black Candle, published by Georgia true crime writer Jaclyn Weldon White in 1999. It tracks Anjette Donovan through her troubled first marriage to Ben Lyles Jr. (and his mysterious death), her marriage to Buddy Gabbert (his excruciating death plagued by ulcerated sores on his skin and internal bleeding), the death of Lyle's mother, and eventually of Anjette's little daughter, Marcia.

At the time of the last two murders, Anjette was running a successful restaurant in Macon. The deaths of her husbands had not raised any suspicions, but these did, especially her daughter's death. During her trial, it came out that she'd bought her daughter's coffin two weeks before the little girl died from arsenic-spiked lemonade. After the death, Anjette shocked nurses in the hospital by gathering up her daughter's clothes, saying "Well, she won't need these anymore," and throwing them away. Autopsies found the poison in all four bodies.

There was a time, I believe, when every crime reporter, every serial killer historian in Georgia knew the story of Anjette Lyles. I have an old friend, once a staff writer at the Atlanta Journal Constitution, who, as Mary Kay Andrews, writes wonderfully charming Southern comedies of manners. I stayed with her this spring while touring for my latest book, The Poisoner's Handbook. Two former cop reporters hanging out, and old Georgia killers naturally came up. And Ms. Lyles herself, whose photograph once hung on a wall at the AJC.

"Was she all glamorous?" I asked, seeing in my memory that silvery glimmering face.

"She was a crone," my friend replied flatly.

I kind of liked that, actually. It's just right to hear evidence that prison takes a toll on serial poisoners, turns beautiful, amoral women into hags trapped behind stone.

It strikes me, though, that some murderers are made for haunting. The killings I described, the beating deaths of the old women? Sometimes I'm caught back there, in that over-bright courtroom cluttered with tales of death and bits of broken bone. And Anjette Lyles? If you can believe it, someone has created a Facebook page in her memory.

The first creepy thing is that it plays to her glamour girl side. The second, at least for me, is that when I looked the page, the most recent post was about me and my poison book. It startled me to see it there, made me wonder why. But maybe it's just what I said earlier; some murders stay in our memories. Some killers call up the ghosts.

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