Good Night James Wood-the Story of a Serial Killer and His Wife: Inspired By Actual Events

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Prologue

Her name is Yvonne Anderson Wood. She was born, raised, and still resides in Shreveport, Louisiana, surrounded by a large family and many longtime friends. She thought that all her childhood hopes and dreams had finally come true when she met one James Edward Wood. It was a blind date in early 1988, arranged by a Policewoman friend. That night stars and planets aligned to make a match, and seal her fate forever.

A crash course in rapid fire dating in the fast lane led to falling in love for the wild and crazy lovebirds. So naturally, they tied the knot and family life began. Everything about her life was fast tracked and always crowded with all manner of busy activity. Taking things slow, smelling roses along the way did not in any way, shape, or form describe of appeal to Yvonne.

In fact, in her pursuit of her hefty slice of the ‘happily ever after fairy tale’ pie, she operated at full speed ahead, so desperate was she to be loved and taken care of by her man. But can you blame her?

They had three miserably failed marriages between them. It was her second and his third, but there was no doubt whatsoever in her mind that James, or Jimmy, was the bomb, pun intended, and this time it was going to be forever. All things considered, she saw an all around great, good-looking guy who made her laugh and smile. Jimmy professed undying love and adoration emphatically over and over. As far as she was concerned, he’d passed all the tests and the blanks were all checked with an undeniable ‘hell yeah’!

No red flags. None. No gut intuitions screaming out for a time-out or pause to consider choices and consequences. He was a solid gold family member now, embraced and adored by all.

They gladly welcomed this handsome, gregarious and selfless man who had swept their dearest Yvonne off her feet and into marital bliss. It was all a fabulously bright, but putrefied down deep in the soul, fairy tale. Except for one key element. One diabolical secret that would eventually see daylight and detonate like a super nova, with devastating results.

This was several years away, but already it was too late. Kept hidden away from her by the love of her life, in an icy, deep void bloated with unfathomable rage and blasphemous hatred was the truth. But for now it lay slumbering, waiting for its master’s call and bidding.

And so begins this sick, sordid tale of misaligned stars, innocents betrayed and abused, and in many cases, butchered.

Chapter 1

Big hair is a religion in Shreveport, Louisiana. Up-dos are constructed using cans of ozone-depleting, nose-curdling hairspray, six to a box. Southern beauty salons are second only to houses of worship in terms of importance, and in a way, they inspire their own form of worship: Artifice. Turning something plain into something gorgeous.

And in Shreveport, the undisputed princess of pretty was Yvonne Wood, proprietor of Shears back in the day.

Like all beauty salons, Shears still doles out gossip and nail lacquer in equal measure. Since forever, the ladies of Shreveport have been coming in to let their hair down, knowing Yvonne and the girls will beat it back up again and then shellac that ’do into the next century. Salon appointments are sacred. Just try getting in the way of a beauty appointment and find out what a Southern church lady is all about.

Shreveport is a water city tucked up next to the Red River, which is actually more brown like gumbo as it washes through red clay. Strange things happen there. In 2009, the steeple of United Methodist Church fell onto a passing car during a thunderstorm and killed a motorist. Bigfoot has been spotted along the sloughs and swampland around north Cross Lake. They even made a movie about it in the ’70s. And people disappear, leaving not a clue or trace. Used to be people left doors unlocked at night and keys in the sun visor. Not anymore.

When the bottom dropped out of the oil business in the late eighties, Shreveport’s population steadily began decreasing, signs of desertion everywhere – a boarded-up window here, a dusty, abandoned store there. The small downtown had already withered, falling victim to urban malls and strip centers. Yet Shreveport and Shreveporters persevered. Grit and resilience abound in pockets in the widespread city. That paid off, saved the town, when the big gambling boats on Red River and glitzy onshore high rise casinos popped up in the late ‘80s. Jobs followed. Even a thriving film industry was born that continues and downtown is finding its own new happy normal.

It bills itself as a sportsman’s paradise, which in a sense is true. Amid the bald cypresses and the long lacy festoons of Spanish moss along Cross Lake and the Red River oxbows, there’s plenty of fishing, hunting, and hiking. Pleasure boating is mainly on Cross Lake, which allows no swimming; it’s the city’s water supply. Skiers switch and glide among weekend sailboats with their captains at the wheel, fresh from throwing back a few at a favorite hangout, the Shreveport Yacht Club.

But maybe the term sportsman’s paradise depends on whether the thing you’re hunting has four legs or two. And hunting, like church going, is also a religion in this buckle of the Bible Belt.

When Yvonne met rapist, serial killer, and child murderer James Edward Wood, she was already a successful young entrepreneur with a divorce under her belt, a small daughter, and a quick laugh. She was a woman of size and suffered because of it, perpetually dieting despite her habit of baking cookies and brownies for her clients at the salon. Christmas season there was a sinful buffet of decadent fat calorie laden holiday goodies, and all partook. It was not only polite but also expected. Recipe exchanges took place as decadent treats whipped all into a sugar high.

* * *

But society deals harshly with women who hunger, whether for food or love or approval. In Yvonne’s case, she hungered for all three. By the time the consequences of that insatiable appetite caught up with her, it was too late to undo the horrific damage that her all-too-human cravings had inflicted – not only on herself, but the ones who mattered the most to her.

Yvonne grew up, as all young American women do, longing for the love of a good man. Songs, books, and movies all told her that only the thin and the beautiful were rewarded with that love. She tried so hard to be worthy.

It never occurred to her to question what a good man might look like or whether the value system of looks equaling love might in fact be a faulty one. She subscribed to all of the sacred tropes of the Southern belle: You are only complete when you have a man. The having of a man is of far greater importance than being happy. Only the approval of a man can make you feel beautiful. Special. Whole.

Being wanted, needed, and most of all, desired is the most that any good Southern belle can aspire to.

In what was the land of Scarlett O’Hara, hoop skirts and Spring Cotillion beaux, it was as simple as totaling up a column of single digits – make yourself as attractive as possible so that some man will love you. Unfortunately, when you’re preoccupied with being acceptable, you sometimes miss the Big Red Flags that might warn you when a man isn’t acceptable in the slightest. When he isn’t even who he represents himself to be.

When Yvonne met James Edward Wood on a blind date in early 1988, she spotted none of those flags. He was everything she’d been searching for in her previous marriage and despaired of ever finding. Wood was handsome, gregarious, selfless. He made no secret of his adoration for her. He made her laugh and feel wanted, special. Wood had a miserably failed marriage of his own in the distant past, so he seemed to share her desire to do things right this time.

An affectionate and impetuous woman, Yvonne felt no need for caution or for taking time to learn more about her new suitor. She’d prayed long and hard over the years. Here then was the answer to her prayers. After all, she had a young daughter of her own to raise, and what was a girl to do without a father?

It is said that when Christopher Columbus first sailed into the turquoise waters of the Mexican Yucatan, the natives couldn’t see his ship. They didn’t know what a ship was or what it looked like. And since the natives had no frame of reference for any ship, Columbus’s magnificent vessel appeared invisible to them.

Yvonne Wood was a product of Shreveport, Louisiana. Stricken blind by a similar bias, she didn’t know what monsters looked like because she’d never actually seen one.

How many of us know a psychopath on sight? Serial rapists and murderers tend to blend. They don’t carry signs attesting to their fiendish ways. Their eyes don’t necessarily give them away. Most of them lead very normal lives – well, at least the part of their lives they let you see.

John Wayne Gacy, for instance, a murderer of at least thirty-three teenage boys and young men, worked as an assistant precinct captain for a Democratic Party candidate. He also performed as a clown at children’s birthdays. Necrophile and serial killer Ted Bundy, a one-time law student described by his peers as handsome and likable, murdered multitudes of young women and performed unspeakable acts upon their putrefying bodies. No one knew these men were sadistic killers until their crimes had been discovered. No one had a clue what they did when they were alone in the dark.

* * *

So when Yvonne met James Edward Wood hit it off that fateful night in 1988, she had no better idea of who he was or what he was capable of than did any other person who met charming, affable Jimmy. The mere thought of him pleading guilty to raping and killing eleven-year-old Jeralee Underwood –