Who would marry a killer?
Justin “Jay” Boulay of St. Charles is free to leave prison today after serving half of a 24-year sentence for murdering his former girlfriend in college. On Groundhog's Day night in 1998, Boulay used a phone cord to strangle 18-year-old Andrea Faye Will of Batavia while they were both students at Eastern Illinois University. She had broken up with him several months earlier.
“I've made the biggest mistake of my life,” Boulay wrote in the rambling confession letter he left in his apartment with Will's body, “and should suffer in hell for all eternity.”
For now, Boulay reportedly is moving to Hawaii with his bride he married while in prison. Boulay paid his debt to society. Illinois law at the time of his sentencing allowed inmates who behaved in prison to be released after serving half their sentence. That law has since changed, but when Boulay was sentenced in 1999 to four years more than the minimum sentence and far less than the maximum sentence of 60 years, some complained. But everybody knew this day would come.
Murderers surrender lots of freedoms in prison. So hearing that Boulay married a woman while in prison and now is moving to Hawaii to be with her seems, well, a little shocking.
“Everyone's always so shocked, but it's not shocking,” says Sheila Isenberg, a journalist who explored that subject in her book, “Women Who Love Men Who Kill.”
A 1987 U.S. Supreme Court decision refused to ban inmates from marrying, and since Isenberg wrote her book in 1991, prison marriages have been on the rise.
While such marriages still are “rare” in Illinois, inmates who obtain legal marriage licenses are allowed weddings that adhere to strict prison restrictions, says Sharyn Elman, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Corrections.
“The spouse will be allowed to come into the facility, as visitors are, and they are brought to a room where either the prison chaplain or clerk can perform the ceremony,” Elman says in an e-mail. “There are always correctional officers present. No conjugal visits are allowed in the Illinois Department of Corrections at any time. They do not have a party, or guests, or music. It is a simple pronouncement of marriage and that is it.”
Such marriages almost always involve male inmates and the free women who love them.
“The women are not crazy. They are getting their psychological needs met,” says Isenberg, who talked by phone while on a promotion tour for her latest book, “Muriel's War,” about the daughter of a Chicago meatpacking magnate. While women she interviewed for her prison book had been victims of abuse, they spanned all economic and educational strata from those who never finished high school to women with good jobs and doctoral degrees.
Inmates have a lot of free time, which they can use to write love letters and lavish attention on a new love. That makes a guy appealing to some women.
“He can give her an enormous amount of attention most people don't get in real life,” Isenberg says. When a husband is in prison, the new wife doesn't have to deal with dirty socks on the floor, sex issues, hubby's bad day at the office or even questions about what to watch on TV.
“The relationships are purely romantic with a capital R,” Isenberg says. “It's thrilling and exciting to be in love with a convicted murderer.”
The most heinous killers, even John Wayne Gacy, have drawn numerous marriage proposals from women on the outside. But many women who make good on their vow to marry a murderer get divorced once the husband gets out of prison.
“Most of them find that without the parameters of the prison walls, they become like any other relationship,” Isenberg says.
Mrs. Boulay, a well-educated professional woman, knew Boulay before he killed Will and wanted to make him her husband despite his last relationship ending in murder. They married in 2007 and have waited more than three years for their honeymoon. We have no legal reason to wish them anything but a blissful and crime-free marriage.
But we understand the heartache this news brings to the loved ones and friends of Andrea Faye Will, who are holding vigils to honor her memory.
She's buried in a coffin with two stuffed animals from her childhood, and her killer is going to Hawaii to start a new life with his wife. It isn't fair and there is nothing anybody can do about it now, but Will should have gotten that same chance at life.
Marry: Most couples divorce after husband gets out of prison, expert says