"Veronica is one of the most moral people I've ever known," Wallace said. Wallace says that while his two grown children have accepted his second wife, who is 27 years his junior, a nephew once told him, "There is no fool like an old fool."īut he shrugs the comment off, saying he approached his marriage with open eyes - and an open heart. She'll settle into Wallace's brick rambler in the Ravenna area of Seattle and, according to Wallace, begin "to lay the foundations of a genuine intimacy." If parole is finally granted, Compton will go home to the child and to Wallace, a retired Eastern Washington University political-science professor whom she married during a formal ceremony at the prison, officiated by then state Supreme Court Justice James Dolliver, a friend of Wallace's. "Not just for me but for the other women. And a psychiatric social worker told the parole board in another letter that Compton is sincere in her rehabilitation and recommended "without reservation" that she be paroled.Ĭompton credits the changes in her life in large part to her relationship with Wallace, who fathered their daughter during a conjugal visit here at the Washington Corrections Center for Women.Ĭompton says that when she attacked the Bellingham woman, she was under Bianchi's evil spell and addicted to cocaine, and also was in turmoil over being physically and sexually abused during her early years. The prison's recreation director wrote a letter on her behalf, applauding her "dedication and innovation," which helped create the recreation program. Fellow inmates call her inspirational, even an angel. Yet, Compton seems to have won more fans than critics in prison. The man who prosecuted her refers to her to this day as dangerous and bizarre. One psychologist said in 1990 that she had a "severe antisocial personality disorder," and in 1994 another called her a shrewd manipulator. Her mother, Elizabeth Johnson, said Compton was disappointed - like the rest of the family - because "she has tried so hard to turn her life around." And Wallace wonders how much longer it will be before he lives with the woman he loves.Ĭompton, now 42, is not without detractors. Compton heard Friday from prison officials that the board had turned down her second chance for parole, although she has yet to receive that message from the parole board. Or whether she'll have to wait two more years before being considered again. In April, the state parole board held a hearing in Compton's case, and this week it is to officially announce whether Compton will again be paroled, after 18 years in prison. She escaped for a week and a half in 1988, and was released on parole in 1996 - a parole that was quickly revoked after she failed to comply with its terms. Compton was convicted of attempted murder and sent to prison. In 1980, when Compton was 24 and involved with Bianchi, she lured a Bellingham woman into a motel room and tried to strangle her to make it look as if the Hillside Strangler were still at large, and therefore couldn't be Bianchi, who was in jail at the time. On this day, she talks of a new outlook on life and her hope of convincing the state parole board that she is ready to be released. She displays the little girl's sketch of the Spice Girls and her pencil portrait of Mom and Dad - Compton and James Wallace, a retired professor Compton married in prison almost 10 years ago.Ĭompton beams a cover-girl smile. GIG HARBOR - Veronica Compton, who gained national notoriety as a copycat criminal and girlfriend of Hillside Strangler Kenneth Bianchi, proudly spreads drawings by her 5-year-old daughter across a table at the women's prison here.
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