After being demeaned for years, Linda Lee Couch decided that she would no longer put up with her husband’s unspeakable abuses. Thus in 1984, she shot him in the back of his head and buried his body in the garden with the help of her children. When authorities discovered the dead body, Linda reportedly claimed that it was an accident.
According to Daily Mail, the 68-year-old was one of 10 inmates who was profiled in a season of I Am A Killer. While being interviewed, the mother-of-three revealed how she met her husband Walter Douglas Couch at a wedding reception when she was just 16. A few months later, they tied the knot.
Episode 204 of Netflix and Crime+Investigation UK’s #IAmAKiller examines the tumultuous life of Linda Lee Couch. Did she kill due to abuse? https://t.co/1Jkn84YdDB pic.twitter.com/2Km2q5aJup
— Show Snob (@ShowSnobFS) April 14, 2020
“I was still a teen and I thought I was in love. Now, I wish I’d never met him,” she explained in the series, adding that her partner, who she loved dearly, would not only watch but also laugh as his friend raped her. The distressing incident began one night when Walter’s friends went into her bedroom and woke her up.
“He said they wanted a part of me. I was raped by all his friends and Walt just watched and laughed. I felt trapped. Any time his friends came over, that would happen. Slowly but surely he was bringing me to a breakdown,” she explained. Linda knew that the only way she could escape this sexual abuse was by attending college but Walter wasn’t ready to let her live peacefully just yet.
“College was going to be my escape because I would have been there and away from him. It angered him and he wanted me to quit the program and stay at home with him. That was the first time in my marriage that I said no to my husband,” she recalled. One day, their argument escalated as Walter went in to fetch a gun he had recently purchased.
To save herself, Linda fought him off by kicking his groin and forcefully taking away the gun. At the time, she alleged that her husband was killed after she tripped and the gun went off accidentally. Next, she dug up the vegetable patch outside their home for a shallow grave and hid his dead body in it. Investigation however revealed that she had in fact purchased a gun and killed him.
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If that wasn’t enough, she sought the help of her three children to drag his body into the garden where he was ultimately buried. “I didn’t kill him but I felt horrible inside. She had me bury my father in the cold ground. That night’s actions destroyed an entire family. She tells stories and she likes to get sympathy. She could tell you a lie and you would believe it’s the gospel truth because she believes her own lies,” shared her daughter Roxanne.
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Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters told KIRO7, “Think how brutally cold it is to involve your children in burying of their father, the husband’s father, the neighbors. Think how brutally cold it is to involve your children in burying of their father, the husband’s father, the neighbors.” Deters believes that Linda simply wanted out of the marriage and that she made up the “battered woman syndrome.”
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Cover image source: YouTube Screenshot | WCPO 9
