Women serial killers

Serial Killers

Dorothea Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and loved tending her garden. She was quick to help those down on their luck, and during the 1980s, this 59-year-old woman opened her home to welfare and social security recipients. She offered low rent and hot meals, but the turnover was high. When neighbors inquired about someone they hadn't seen in a while, she would tell them that so-and-so had simply moved on. Yet the government checks kept coming and getting cashed, so a social worker went to check on a client reported missing. She heard about the bad smells coming from the house and felt sure her client wouldn't just run away, so she notified police. Upon investigating, the police dug up the lawns and gardens and soon discovered the source of the stench. There were seven bodies covered in lime and plastic, one of which had been beheaded and dismembered. Autopsies later confirmed that these people had died by drug overdoses.

In the meantime, Puente had fooled the police with her grandmotherly ways and had skipped town, but an elderly man that she tried to pick up in a bar recognized her as the hunted fugitive. When arrested, she said, "Did you know I used to be a very good person once?" It turned out that she had forged signatures on over 60 checks and had served prison time even before all of this for theft and fraud. Upon release, she had even been considered a danger to the elderly.

Book cover: Serial Murderers

and Their Victims

Puente was tried for nine murders — two bodies being found elsewhere — but convicted of three because one male juror refused to agree to anything more. She got life in prison.

How a man could decide that Puente had murdered three people found buried in her garden but not all seven is at the heart of how the American public views female killers. There's a pervasive sense that women — especially elderly women — just cannot be that dangerous. While males acquire such aggressive monikers as Jack the Ripper and the Southside Slasher, women get the more passive-sounding Damsel of Doom, Angel-Maker, or Giggling Granny. Media stereotypes help to form the impression that women are less lethal than men.

However, statistics say otherwise. Just because someone might choose poison as a weapon over a knife or gun does not make her victims any less dead. Although Aileen Wuornos was designated a "rare female serial killer," her rarity was that she used a gun to kill strangers, which is not generally the female's weapon of choice. However, it's a mistake to think that just because they're not acting like males, few women have been serial killers.

Book cover: The New Predator

In Serial Murderers and Their Victims . Hickey examines the cases of 62 female serial killers, which is only a sample and not an exhaustive list. They represented 16% of the killers in his study, and collectively had murdered from 400 to 600 people. More than nine out of ten were white, and two-thirds acted alone. Many were "black widows," or health-care providers, and they tended to be older and to get away with their crimes for a longer period of time than did their male counterparts. One had been killing for 34 years. Those who killed with male partners were more likely to be violent than those who acted alone, where poisoning was preferred. Their average number of victims was seven to nine and most of them had no prior criminal records.

According to Deborah Schurman-Kauflin in The New Predator . most of these women had a history of cruelty toward animals and levels of isolation that fed self-absorbed fantasies. The sources of their violence include attachment disorders, abandonment, harsh discipline, and abuse, but a few have been stone-cold psychopaths. Some have even gotten others to kill for them so they could get what they wanted without being caught and incarcerated. Let's take a closer look at that category.

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15 Women Serial Killers

By The Admin October 4, 2013 No Comments

Have you ever wondered what drives a man or a woman to serial killings? It is really hard to believe that there are people out there who are on the lookout for their next victim to kill. A serial killer is a person who has killed 3 or more people. The motive of these murders is usually, psychological gratification . The features that can be associated with serial killers are:

Average or below average “IQ”

Unstable family backgrounds

Have usually been abused physically or mentally by someone close (relative or parent)

Involved in sadistic activity

Have been socially isolated as children

Begin with petty crimes

Female serial killers are rarer than their male counterparts. You will notice that quite a few women serial killers are the ones involved in a medical profession more often than not. Women serial killers also tend to kill people who are close relatives . lovers or children. Women serial killers rarely derive sexual pleasure out of serial murders. When it comes to serial killers, there really is no gender bias. Either a man or a woman can be a mentally sick person who thrives on murders. Here is a list of 15 legendary women serial killers.

1. Dorothea Puente

Origin: American

Birth: January 9, 1929

Death: March 27, 2011

Puente was a convicted American serial killer. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California, and cashed the Social Security checks of her elderly and mentally disabled boarders. Those who complained were killed and buried in her yard.

2. Aileen Wuornos

Death: October 9, 2002

Aileen was a serial killer who killed seven men in Florida in 1989 and 1990. Wuornos claimed that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was working as a prostitute, and that all of the homicides were committed in self-defense. She was convicted and sentenced to death for six of the murders and was executed by the State of Florida by lethal injection.

3. Lavinia Fisher

Death: February 18, 1820

Fisher is widely recognized as the first female mass murderer in the United States of America. Her origins are unknown; however, Fisher resided in the United States for a large amount of her life. She was married to John Fisher, and both were convicted of murder and robbery.

4. Jane Toppan

Death: 1938 (date unknown)

Toppan was born Honora Kelley and was an American serial killer. She confessed to 31 murders in 1901. She is quoted as saying that her ambition was “ to have killed more people, helpless people, than any other man or woman who ever lived”.

5. Belle Gunness

8. Nannie Doss

Death: June 2, 1965

Doss was an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people between the 1920s and 1954.She confessed to the murders in October 1954, after her fifth husband died in a small hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In all, it was revealed that she had killed 4 husbands, 2 children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson, and a nephew.

9. Amelia Dyer

Death: 10 June 1896

Amelia was the most prolific baby farm murderer of Victorian England She was tried and hanged for one murder, but there is little doubt she was responsible for many more similar deaths (possibly 400 or more) over a period of perhaps twenty years.

10. Delphine LaLaurie

Death: 1842 (date unknown)

11. Beverley Allitt

Death: —

Allittis an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six children. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days between February and April 1991 in the children’s ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a Nurse. She administered large doses of insulinto at least two victims and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received 13 life sentences for the crimes. Mr. Justice Latham, sentencing, told Allitt that she was “a serious danger” to others and was unlikely ever to be considered safe enough to be released. She is currently detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

Why Do Women Fall for Serial Killers?

Charles Manson

In her post, “Women Who Love Serial Killers,” PT blogger, Katherine Ramsland, offers some suggestions about why some women can be so attracted to, or hopelessly beguiled by, the most terrifying of human predators. At first, she provides explanations from the women themselves, women who actually married these dangerously unhinged criminals. Their reasons (somewhat elaborated here) include the assumptions that:

their love can transform the convict: from cunning and cruel, to caring, concerned, and compassionate.

there’s a wounded child nested somewhere inside the killer that can be healed through a devoted nurturance that only they can provide.

they might share the killer’s media spotlight, and so triumphantly emerge from their anonymity, and maybe in the process even land a book or movie deal (an aspiration about as cynical as it is narcissistic and self-serving).

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What I’d like to do in this post is expand further on the biological, sexual, and psychological dynamics that Ramsland only touches upon. After all, in trying to adequately account for a most peculiar (not to say, bizarre) female preference, it only makes sense to explore its origins on as many levels as possible. My key reference here is a recent, provocative book on male vs. female sexual brains entitled A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World’s Largest Experiment Reveals About Human Desire , by computational neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam (Dutton, 2011). This comprehensive undertaking (with a bibliography containing over 1,300 items) analyzes enormous amounts of data extracted mostly from the Internet to come to conclusions that at times confirm earlier research in the area and almost as frequently contradict what previously had been inferred (thereby boldly turning a good deal of conventional wisdom on its head).

To simplify this work’s findings for my present purpose, however, let me begin by emphasizing that Ogas and Gaddam find substantial evidence from Web searches, posts, and many 1,000s of romance novels that women demonstrate a strong erotic preference for dominant men. Or toward what’s now commonly referred to as alpha males—in the authors’ words, men who are “strong, confident, [and] swaggering [as in “cocky,” and the pun is intended].” Unfortunately, what these descriptors often imply is behavior sufficiently bearish, self-centered, and insensitive as to often cross the line into a physical, mental, and emotional abuse that can be downright brutal.

Consciously, most women would like their men to be kind, empathic, understanding. and respectful. But there’s something in their native wiring that makes a great many of them susceptible to “bad boys.” Possibly because, as the authors quote Angela Knight as reflecting (in a sentiment that echoes the conclusions of most evolutionary psychologists): “[Their] inner cavewoman knows Doormat Man would become Sabertooth Tiger Lunch in short order” (p .97).

Moreover, in responding to the question as to whether some men, such as “serial killers, violent offenders, and rapists," might be too dominant for women to accept, Ogas and Gaddam note: “It turns out that killing people is an effective way to elicit the attention of many women: virtually every serial killer, including Ted Bundy, Charles Manson, and David Berkowitz, have received love letters from large numbers of female fans” (p. 98).

The fantasy that seems to be operating in such devotees, and that constitutes the plot of virtually all erotic/romantic novels written with women in mind, is that the “misogyny and jerkdom” they might have to battle with in such super-dominant males is only temporary. That it doesn’t really represent the man’s innermost reality. That his violence and lack of tender feelings is only the beginning of the story, and that their unsparing love, affection, and dedication can ultimately transform his character by helping him get in touch with his, well, “inner goo.”

It’s no coincidence that the whole genre of fictional romance is so hypnotically enticing to so many women that—surprise, surprise!—it actually outsells the pornography everywhere out there that’s expressly designed to appeal to the male brain (which, alas, focuses far more on female body parts than anything pertaining to “romance”). Women regularly purchase an astronomical amount of romance fiction (and, more and more, anonymously through the Web). And what this suggests is that while those who fall for serial killers may represent a pathological exaggeration of a female’s erotic mind, many women (at least secretly, or subliminally) can’t help but be drawn toward cold-blooded, controlling, “bad boys” whose dominance symbolizes quite the opposite of what in relationships they’re consciously seeking.

(And here I should probably mention the astoundingly successful e-book and New York Times bestselling erotic fiction trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey . which graphically depicts so many scenes of BDSM. The book’s phenomenal popularity doesn’t at all relate to its originality or creative prose, but to its striking a powerfully erotic chord in so many of its readers.)

As repeatedly demonstrated in romance novels, heroes aren’t simply strong but competent also — the best at what they do. And, however ironically, serial killers seem to fit the bill in this respect, too. They may not be corporate CEOs or Hollywood movie stars, but they’re extraordinarily skilled at annihilating people. Additionally, the combination of dominance and competence is typically linked to age. So it follows that those who are attracted to serial killers tend to be much younger than the violent criminals they find so alluring.

Again, much of this might well go back to prehistoric times when it was crucial that women choose mates who could best provide for them and their children, as well as defend them from various external threats. In today’s society, women typically are far more independent and have the freedom to choose a partner based primarily on mental and emotional (vs. physical or material) needs. But if their hardwiring predisposes them to be attracted to alpha males, modern-day rationality can still be offset by primordial instincts having little or nothing to do with reason. And, frankly, as a therapist I’ve encountered many women who bemoaned their vulnerability toward dominant men who, consciously, they recognized were all wrong for them.

What might also be noted here is that many women experience as enticing the idea of surrendering to a powerful male figure because of its very riskiness. Curiously, such an acutely felt threat can actually be eroticized by women’s minds into exceptional sexual excitement so compelling that (at least on a fantasy level) it’s almost irresistible. (And see here my earlier post "Fear-Inspired Sex ".) Add to this the captivating illusion that their special womanly qualities eventually will diffuse the man’s aggression to the point that he’ll come to reveal his “inner mushiness” (the norm in romance fiction plots) and you have a recipe for real-life disaster. For there’s much evidence suggesting that female brains are cued to “set out on a mission to tame, heal, or soften the alpha hero’s wild heart” (Ogas & Gaddam, p. 99).

So, returning to the women who fall for serial killers, such distorted notions about love would seem a perfect set-up for the rudest of awakenings. But fortunately, though women may frequently entertain fantasies of such an impetuous romantic involvement, and be tantalizingly turned on by all its forbidden elements, very few are actually swayed by such primitive instincts.

NOTE: Here are the titles and links to each segment of this 12-part series:

© 2012 Leon F. Seltzer, Ph. D. All Rights Reserved.

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