Cougars, Beware

After centuries of older men dumping their older wives in favor of newer, sleeker models, I cheered the “cougar” phenomenon when it hit the national consciousness a few years ago. Thanks, Demi. But now it seems there’s a dark underside. Lately, the news has been abuzz with stories of accomplished older women being killed by their dashing younger husbands or boyfriends. 

There’s the case of Sue Marcum, a respected and well-liked accounting professor at American University. At 52, she took a Spanish class led by a charming 40-year-old named Jorge Landeros, a poet/yoga enthusiast/day trader who looks a bit like a young Antonio Banderas. The couple read books, practiced meditation, and invested money together. She fell in love and made him the beneficiary of her $500,000 life insurance police. Her body was found in her home last October, killed by blunt force trauma and asphyxiation. Guess who the police charged with her murder? That’s right, the charming Landeros — who quickly fled to Mexico, where he periodically sends taunting e-mails to the police who want to bring him to the U.S. “Of course,” Landeros wrote to one detective, “you are cordially invited to cross the same bridge, in the opposite direction, and meet me at Sanborn’s, a great café and restaurant here in Juarez, and we can talk shop all you want. We can have brunch. It will of course be my treat. Yours, Jorge.”

Then there’s Albrecht Muth, 47, who’s been charged with killing his 91-year-old socialite wife, Viola Drath. Drath was a respected journalist and a fixture in her posh Georgetown neighborhood; Muth seems to have been a bit of a crackpot, a German who falsely claimed to be a General in the Iraqi army so he could give fake interviews to journalists. They got married when she was in her 70’s and he was in his 20’s. They broke up for a period of years when, according to the Washington Post, he “left her for a man.” That should’ve been a hint all was not well in Cougartown, but they got back together. During their 20-year marriage, she filed for a protective order against him, and he was charged with assaulting her. (Those charges were dropped after she declined to prosecute, a common twist in domestic-violence cases.) Last week he reported her dead. At 91, she could have died quietly in her sleep, but an autopsy concluded that she died of strangulation and blunt-force injuries. Hours after her death, Muth approached her family, wielding a  document saying he gets $200,000 from her estate.

Is cougar-hunting becoming more common? Or are older male newspaper editors just playing up these stories to frighten their wives?

What are the lessons that women should take from this? I don’t want to ruin anyone’s Ashton-Kutcher fantasies. There may be plenty of nice younger men who genuinely love the wisdom, confidence, and perspective that age brings. Still, exercise some caution if considering a plunge into the much-younger-men pool.  At the very least, don’t tell him he’ll inherit a fortune upon your death.