The movie Fatal Attraction may have come out in the late ’80s, but it had such a cultural impact that it’s still being referenced today. That’s not only because of the movie though. In 1989, Carolyn Warmus was arrested on charges of murdering her lover’s wife, and in the process was dubbed as the Fatal Attraction Killer. While she was convicted and later paroled, some speculate she was framed for the murder. But was she?
The answer is complicated, because people are complicated, and so is the case. Warmus showed all the signs of an obsessive lover, and she had a pattern of stalking and bothering the wives of her married beaus. Regardless, the evidence against her was circumstantial and a jury couldn’t decide. Until! A mysterious glove appeared three years after a jury couldn’t decide if she did the crime, and that was enough to get her sent away for 25 to life. Who produced the glove? The husband of the victim.
It really is a wild story, and there are some recent developments that make it even stranger. Let’s dive in.
Who is Fatal Attraction murderer Carolyn Warmus?
For all intents and purposes, Carolyn Warmus was an ordinary, upper-class girl. Her father Thomas Warmus was a millionaire insurance salesman from Detroit. Not just a little bit of a millionaire either. He owned eight jets, two yachts, numerous cars and even had homes all across the United States.
Warmus grew up in the comfortable suburbs of Birmingham, Michigan. She was the oldest of three, and had a younger sister named Tracey who seemed to get all the family attention. Thomas was not an affectionate father, actually quite the opposite. He provided for the family financially but not emotionally, and eventually divorced their mother and married a second wife.
Carolyn went to live with her mother while her father lived in a huge six-bedroom mansion on top of a hill. Despite her father’s absence, she attended the University of Michigan and earned a bachelors in psychology, and then a Master’s from Columbia University, in teaching.
No one really had anything bad to say about her at all. One neighbor said she was “the kind of girl you’d take home to mom.” Another said she was “quiet” and “pleasant. Not a wild person in any way.” However, perhaps because, or in spite of, her troubled relationship with her father, she would chase “unattainable men.”
Fatal Attraction murderer Carolyn Warmus’ dating history
Things got testy in 1983 when Carolyn started dating a Paul Laven, a teaching assistant. Laven broke up with her and got engaged to another woman, but Carolyn would harass Laven, call all the time and even broke into the couple’s apartment, an event that resulted in her being forcibly removed by cops.
Later, she left a note for Laven’s fiancée that said: ‘I really hope you enjoyed this past week of not being bothered by me, because now that I’m back from vacation you can start worrying all over again.’
She sent another note after a vacation to Florida, rife with spelling errors, that said: “Lit me tell you, with the tan I have now, you’ve got even more to compete with! Of coarse with a body like mine, I’m sure you relized what tough competition you were up against. … your just about out of the running completely now.”
To top it all off, she converted to Lavin’s religion (Judaism) after he got married in 1984. Her next love interest was a married bartender. She hired a Private Investigator to follow him and collect incriminating evidence she could show to the bartender’s wife. The investigator said he couldn’t find anything, and claimed she asked him to doctor some images.
How did Fatal Attraction Killer Carolyn Warmus meet Betty Jeanne Solomon?
Carolyn met eventual victim Betty Jeanne Solomon’s husband Paul Solomon in 1987. They both worked at the Greenville Elementary School in Greenburgh, New York. Solomon was 40 and married, which basically meant she was Carolyn’s dream man. Paul moved to another school in 1988 but the two continued their affair.
When Carolyn met Paul, he and his wife Betty Jeanne Solomon had been married a long time, and had a teenage daughter together named Kristan. Betty Jeanne was also 40, and she worked for a collection agency. The marriage wasn’t solid, however, and Betty Jeanne’s friends said she changed after meeting Paul, who some characterized as controlling.
There was talk that the two were going to divorce, but unfortunately she never got the chance.
How was Betty Jeanne Solomon murdered?
Betty Jeane was shot nine times on Jan. 15, 1989, in the home she shared with Paul. Police first closed in on Paul, and while they were surveilling him they noticed that Carolyn was following him around. Paul’s alibi also featured Carolyn: he said he went to meet his friends bowling and then met Carolyn at a Holiday Inn in Yonkers.
After a few drinks together, the pair had sex in a car. When he got home his wife was dead. Paul broke up with Carolyn after the murder and started dating someone else. Unsurprisingly, this upset Carolyn and she started up her old pattern of stalking Paul and his new girlfriend.
This went pretty far. She followed Paul to Puerto Rico without knowing he had a new girlfriend. When Carolyn found out, she called the girlfriend’s family and pretended to be a cop and tried to break them up. The woman got a restraining order, but then Carolyn had much more important matters to attend to: her arrest for the murder of Betty Jeane.
Was Carolyn Warmus framed?
Warmus was indicted on second degree murder charges on Feb. 2, 1990. Cops said she killed Betty Jeane before she met up with Paul at that bar in Yonkers. She had no alibi and the private investigator said she bought a gun from him – the same type of weapon used in the murder, although a murder weapon was never found.
There was no concrete evidence tying her to the murder, and her trial ended with the jury not being able to reach a decision in April 1991. Here’s why there’s speculation she was framed: Paul found a black cashmere glove with traces of blood on it, and his defense team argued that it was her glove, which would put her at the scene.
The glove, by the way, was found three years after the murder. In a 2014 interview, Warmus’ attorney William Aronwald said the glove should never have been allowed into evidence.
“It wasn’t available at the first trial and then suddenly materialized,” Aronwald said. “There was no way of determining whether or not it was the glove depicted in the photographs. Number two, there was no way of knowing whether the glove had been tampered with.”
Regardless, Warmus was convicted of the murder. She was sentenced 25 years to life on May 6, 1992. After 27 years in prison, she was released on parole in 2019. In 2021, prosecutors agreed to DNA test evidence. She continues to maintain that she’s innocent.
