Published in the High Desert Advocate September 6th, 2018.
Wendover Kody Patten, who committed a horrific murder, with the help of then girlfriend Tony Fratto, got married at the Ely State prison last Friday, August 31st, 2018. He killed West Wendover High student Micaela Costanzo. The Wendover community still mourn
Micaela “Micky” Costanzo.
Unmoved by his lawyers contention that Kody Patten was dupe in the brutal murder of Micaela Costanzo, White Pine District Judge Dan Papez sentenced the former West Wendover High School student to the maximum life without parole, in Elko District Court, August 2012. Eight years later, Kody got married at the Ely State prison to a 26 year old woman from Ogden Utah(but with a driver License from Washington State), Amenda Smith.
But Nevada Maximum security prison doesn’t allow for conjugal visits, and Patton being behind bars without possibility of parole it means it will be nothing of a real wedding for the new couple.
So what do these two will get out of it? May be the woman will get some kind of Social Security money, and Patten might possibly get some mail from her. But experts say otherwise.
Throughout the years women have been attracted to men behind bars.
In the book “Women Who Love Men Who Kill,” author Sheila Isenberg explores this phenomenon. The book contains countless interviews with women, psychiatrists, lawyers, social workers, prison guards in hopes of shedding light on why women are drawn to men behind bars. The book has been featured on CNN, the Today Show, MSNBC, Good Morning America, and 20/20, among other news outlets.
In an interview with Attn, Attn asked if there were any commonalities Isenberg found with the women who were attracted to men in prison.
Isenberg replied: “The real crux of the whole thing is that these are all women who are damaged. In their earlier lives they’ve been abused either by their parents, their fathers, their first husbands, their boyfriends, whatever. They’ve been sexually abused, psychologically, emotionally abused. These are women who’ve been hurt. And when you’re in a relationship with a man in prison. He’s in prison. He’s not going to hurt you. He can’t hurt you. So you’re always in a state of control because you’re the one who’s on the outside. You’re free. You go in and you visit him. You can decide whether to accept his collect phone calls. So in a way, even though cons are very manipulative—that’s why we call them con men and they are manipulative with the women—it’s still up to the woman to decide how far she wants to go and she knows she can’t be hurt. And every single woman I interviewed had been abused in the past and that’s what I found out. That was the big secret.