A Drunken Nightmare: The Murder of Joan Vollmer
“Love is a haunting melody that I have never mastered, and I fear I never will.” — William S. Burroughs
After serious bouts of addictive highs and destructive lows, an “unwedded” union came between writer William Burroughs and Joan Vollmer.
Before their official unofficial husband and wife union, the two were married to their previous first spouses. Joan married a G.I., only for him to divorce her after becoming disgusted by her drug addiction. The divorce took place in 1945, and during this time, Joan, William, and others lived in an apartment complex on the Upper West Side of New York.
Vollmer and Burroughs’s paths eventually crossed, ending in William proposing to the now single mother of one. But despite this proposal of marriage, there was never anything official in the United States (but they did marry in Mexico), but she lived with him as a common-law wife.
A common law marriage is two people living together and living as a married couple despite the marriage never being formalized. However, in Mexico, where they married, they were seen as…
