AFTER months of exchanging letters and audio tapes Laura Greenberg plucked up the courage to meet Doug Gretzler, who she had become obsessed with, and he confessed his feelings.
“I love you,” he told her. “Whether you like it or not. I can’t help it. I want to hug you. I want to lay you down and then just crawl into bed and hold you for hours.”
Laura Greenberg was a young journalist when she started corresponding with Doug GretzlerCredit: Oxygen
Gretzler went on a killing spree with his accomplice that left 17 deadCredit: Oxygen
Laura appears in the documentary, directed by her nephew Ben GirouxCredit: Oxygen
Emboldened, the next time she visited, he made a move.
“I walked in and he lifted me up, kissed me and stuck his tongue in my mouth,” Laura laughs. “I could see he had been building himself up to do that. Then he said, ‘I should have done that a long time ago.’”
The pair would lovingly send each other locks of their hair and when he asked for a picture of her in a bathing suit, she was happy to send one.
“He had a romantic streak that was insane,” she says, with a wistful look in her eye.
But this was no ordinary romance. Laura Greenberg was a journalist and Doug Gretzler was one of America’s worst serial killers, imprisoned on Death Row.
The extraordinary story of Laura’s 10-year obsession with the cold-hearted killer is told in the , Charmed By The Devil, made by her nephew, filmmaker and actor Ben Giroux.
What began as a professional interest in why he and his accomplice had senselessly killed 17 innocent people in a murderous three-week road trip in 1973, became an all-consuming obsession that gradually blurred the boundaries between reporter and subject.
The pair exchanged an astonishing 500 hours of audio tapes between her home and prison which she kept privately to herself… until now.
“I blur lines in every relationship I have ever had,” she tells her nephew.
In October 1973, Doug Gretzler, 22, who had left his family home in and travelled to Denver, was getting high with his new dropout friend, Willie Steelman, 28. The older man had a mesmerising effect on the younger, impressionable Gretzler.
Gretzler was on death row when the pair first metCredit: Oxygen
Laura had 500 hours of tape from the serial killerCredit: Oxygen
The killer had never talked about his crimes before meeting herCredit: Oxygen
Deciding they needed money, the two men made a deadly pact.
“Willie was very, charismatic, intelligent, a great storyteller,” Gretzler explains to Laura in one of his tapes. “He said, ‘There’s got to be a leader and there’s got to be a follower.’ The pact was like a code of behaviour. He asked me, ‘If anything went wrong, would you be prepared to kill?’ I said, ‘Yes.’”
Seeking warmer climes they pair drove to Phoenix, Arizona, along with a 17-year-old hippy girl named Marsha Renslow, who wanted to see her friend, Yahfah Mestites.
On 9 October they met up with Yahfah, her boyfriend, Bob Robbins and two other men, Ken Unrein and Mike Adshade.
Having procured more drugs, Steelman and Gretzler idled away their days until Steelman said, “We should rip those guys off.”
On 18 October, they held Unrein and Adshade at gunpoint, drove to a ravine and tied them up.
“Willie said to Doug, ‘You take Mike, I’ll take Ken,’” says Laura. “I believe that was his test to see how far Doug would go for him. This was the dangerous threshold from which they couldn’t return.”
Murder spree
The men were strangled to death using leather belts. Steelman and Gretzler took their money and drove off in their stolen van.
Douglas E Gretzler and accomplice Willie L Steelman committed 17 murdersCredit: Getty
Gretzler was executed by lethal injection on June 3, 1998Credit: AP
Back on the road, Steelman remarked that Bob Robbins was making him feel uncomfortable. “He knows something,” he said. Turning back, they picked up hitchhiker, Steve Louchan, who Steelman took against and, after an argument, shot him.
The following day he ordered Gretzler to strangle Robbins in his apartment while he shot Yahfah.
When their bodies were found, witnesses identified Steelman and Gretzler as having hung out with them and police issued a warrant for their arrest.
After the van broke down, they were hitchhiking in Tucson when Gilbert Sierra stopped to give them a lift. Instead of being grateful, Steelman wanted his car and money and shot him dead.
Driving around, aimlessly, they saw former marine captain, Michael Sandberg, washing his car outside his apartment. Forcing him into his home, they shot both him and his wife, Patricia, before snatching money and fleeing in Sandberg’s car.
At home I would go into the bathroom, lock the door, fill up the bathtub and I would listen to him talk to me about murder
Laura
With eight people now dead, the murder spree reached a crescendo on 6 November, when they massacred nine, wiping out two families.
They had travelled to Steelman’s hometown of Lodi, , hoping to rob the United Market store, but when they arrived in the parking lot that night the store was already closed.
Knowing where the owner, Wally Parkin, lived, they went there but the door was opened by 18-year-old Debbie Earl, who was babysitting the Parkins’ two children, Lisa, 11 and Robert, nine, while Wally and his wife, Joanne were out bowling. Also there was Debbie’s 15-year-old brother, Ricky.
Gretzler with Sacramento police after being taken into custody on November 8, 1973Credit: AP
Steelman was arrested at his girlfriend’s houseCredit: Getty
Steelman and Gretzler left and Debbie, not liking the looks of them, phoned to tell her father, Richard, who told his wife he was going to check on their daughter and if he was not back within 15 minutes, to call the police.
Meanwhile, Steelman and Gretzler returned and held the youngsters at gunpoint. When Richard arrived, he warned them that his wife was primed to call the police so Steelman took him back home where they collected Wanda and returned with her now a hostage too.
In the midst of this, Debbie’s fiancé, Mark Lang, turned up to take her and her brother home. All were tied and held at gunpoint until Wally and Joanne Parkin arrived.
Steelman then drove Wally to his store where he took four thousand dollars from the safe. Back at the house, Steelman gave Gretzler the job of killing the two youngest children and the pair of them killed the rest, one after another.
The following day, Gretzler was recognised from a police mugshot by a clerk at a hotel where he was staying and arrested. Steelman was apprehended shortly after at the home of a former girlfriend.
Lisa and Robert Parkin, 11 and nine. were the youngest victimsCredit: Wikipedia
Debbie Earl, 18, and Ricky Earl, 15 were also killed in the final massacreCredit: Wikipedia
Bob Robbins was garroted and shotCredit: Wikipedia
Forgotten killers
At their trial, they were convicted and given the death sentence. Steelman died from liver failure in 1986 and Gretzler remained on Death Row, not speaking to anyone about his crimes for 12 years until he was contacted by Laura Greenberg.
“I got a tip-off story about these two mass murderers on Death Row and I wanted to write something that no one had written about before because no one really knew who they were,” she says. “Willie Steelman died but I wrote to Douglas Gretzler, asking if he would be willing to talk to me. He said, ‘Only if you are willing to come here so I can lay eyes on you.’
“The first time I went to visit him I was so nervous. I said, ‘Hey. I’m Laura,’ and he stared at me in total silence. And then he apologised, because he had never really had a visitor before. He told me that my letter intrigued him.
“I found out that Doug and I had a lot in common. We were both from New York, we were sarcastic with each other and we liked to talk about music. We had a culture in common and we both were obsessed with the human mind.”
The pair began learning about each other’s background. He told her of his traumatic upbringing where his academic older brother, Mark, was the apple of his strict father’s eye.
I just thought we were in a different kind of relationship. One that, in some ways, was way more important that my romantic ones, which I had been a dismal failure at
Laura
But when Mark was discovered to have broken into his school to steal answers to his exams, his father called the family together at home, to talk about the issue. When Doug went upstairs to get Mark, he found him on the floor of his bedroom in a pool of blood. He had shot himself in the head.
“When my brother committed suicide, my father just closed me right out,” he said.
On 26 December, 1972, Doug abandoned his family and headed west.
He was in Denver a couple of weeks before he met the man who would change his life for ever – Willie Steelman.
“It was almost like an instant understanding,” says Gretzler. “That’s something that I had been looking for, almost like finding a brother.”
When Laura asks him how he could kill people so easily without a conscience, he replies, “It didn’t take a lot for me to kill. I didn’t have standard roadblocks in my mental roadway that would have stopped me from killing.”
Later, he tells her, “When I start digging out memories of this whole thing, it wells up in me for allowing myself to be stupid enough to get involved in all this sh**. My own actions, my own behaviour, were wrong.
“How could I be so gullible? I listened to this guy, who is so f…… lost, and in a world of bullsh** and lies.”
Hours of audio
As Gretzler began to trust and tell Laura more and more, via tapes and letters, he asked if she would visit him too, which she started to do around twice a month.
“There were these similarities between us,” says Laura. “We had both been rejected, over and over again by our parents. And whenever we talked about our parents we kind of had this unconditional connection.
“It was a ten-year therapy session. The person I met in 1988 was removed from his old self. As time moved on, everything changed. He had value and opinions and all of a sudden, our feelings were going back and forth and we were being totally honest.”
Their conversations took an intimate turn as they got closer. She talked to him about her unhappy relationship with partner Dick and he grew to hate him.
“There is something very freeing about talking on a tape recorder,” Laura tells Ben. “I drew him out. And the more we did that, the more I couldn’t wait to get home from work. I would be like, ‘Oh, wait. Did I get a package today?’ Eventually, I thought about him all the time.
“At home I would go into the bathroom, lock the door, fill up the bathtub and I would listen to him talk to me about murder.”
In one tape, Gretzler, in his calm, sonorous tone, says, “There’s nothing more intimate than murder. What’s Laura about? What does she really need? What does she want? I have millions of questions. What can I do for her? What can she do for me?”
“I would describe my aunt’s relationship with him as deeply complicated and inappropriately entwined,” says Ben. “It was clear that it extended far beyond a journalist interviewing a serial killer.”
Laura tells Ben: “I just thought we were in a different kind of relationship. One that, in some ways, was way more important that my romantic ones, which I had been a dismal failure at.”
Laura had a 10-year romance with the killerCredit: Oxygen
Ben Giroux was fascinated by how his aunt became ‘inappropriately entwined’ with GretzlerCredit: Getty
‘I still miss him’
Having declared his love for Laura, Gretzler was riddled with jealousy when she split up with Dick and married chef, Kevin Dixon
“He hated Kevin,” she says. “There was a bit of irony there, a serial killer telling me I should get away from another man.”
Ben Giroux believes there may be an underlying factor that attracted his aunt to Kevin. “I sure think he looks a lot like Gretzler,” he says.
Gretzler remained in prison for decades until he was executed on 3 June 1998. He had invited Laura to attend.
“He told me that he wanted me to be the last thing he saw,” she says.
“Afterwards I just felt really, really sad. I laid on my bed watching about a hundred Law and Orders on TV and eating junk food for about a month. He was my secret life and I enjoyed it.”
While Laura talks to Ben on camera, she is painting a portrait of Gretzler, looking misty-eyed at his image. When asked outright if she loved him, she replies, “If you are asking was I in love with him? No. Did I love him? Yes. There were 17 dead people that stood between us. That’s a lot of people. But I still miss him.”
Charmed By The Devil can be seen on Sky Crime 9pm, on Wednesday
Eze Chidiebere Paul
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