A lot of people have been intrigued for a long time by those who kill, but we especially seem equally both fascinated and disgusted by female killers. Maybe this is because they are such a rarity in comparison; a 2013 global study into homicide by the United Nations Office of Drugs & Crime discovered that men account for about 95% of all convicted murderers worldwide. Is it this very rareness that enthrals us? Today, I have chosen ten female killers to write about; there was no particular reason to choose the cases except that I found them interesting.
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1 – Jodi Arias.
Arias was born on July 9th, 1980, in Salinas, California. She grew up with her parents and siblings and claimed that her parents had abused her from the age of 7, hitting her with a belt or wooden spoon. Arias had an interest in photography and eventually dropped out of high school in the 11th grade to pursue this. In September 2006, Arias met Travis Victor Alexander and was smitten. She converted to The Church of the Latter Day Saints, like Travis, and they began dating in February 2007. Travis and Arias dated on and off for around a year and a half. Travis’s friends didn’t think too highly of Arias, his friend Clancy Talbot described how possessive she was, saying ‘she just had to sit right by him. She didn’t appreciate it when he was talking to another female’. One quote from another friend, Lovingier Hughes was ‘I said, ‘Travis, I’m afraid we’re gonna find you chopped up in her freezer’.
Travis broke up with Arias, but she would continue to be possessive and stalk him, even getting into his house via the dog door. On June 9th, a group of Travis’s friends were concerned because they couldn’t get in touch with him. They entered his home and found his body in the shower, and they immediately alerted the authorities. Police later found a camera in the washing machine containing sexual images of Travis and Arias. There was also a photo of Travis in the shower, then another one of him bleeding on the bathroom floor. Arias was arrested and pleaded not guilty before claiming she was a victim of domestic abuse and that it was self-defence. She was sentenced to life imprisonment. Her victim was:
Travis Victor Alexander – 30 years old.
2- Karla Homolka.
Homolka was born on May 4th, 1970, in Port Credit, Ontario, Canada. Her father was an abusive alcoholic who would often fight with her mother. She claimed to love animals and later worked at a veterinary clinic, but I have read that she also took a friend’s hamster and threw it out of the window, resulting in its death. She met Paul Bernardo at the age of 17; the two had sex that night, discussing sadomasochism throughout. They remained in a relationship. Bernardo was annoyed that Homolka wasn’t a virgin and began focusing his attention on her younger sister, Tammy. Homolka promised her younger sister to him; they drugged Tammy with medication Homolka had stolen from her place of work and Bernardo proceeded to rape her. The combination of drugs, and alcohol that had been consumed early, proved too much for Tammy’s body and she ended up suffocating on her own vomit. The death was ruled accidental.
The couple went on to kidnap a 14-year-old girl and videotape themselves sexually abusing and torturing her, before killing her and disposing of her body. They repeated this with a 15-year-old girl. Another girl managed to escape after being raped and survived. The couple were caught and arrested; Bernardo was convicted of the murder of 2 teenagers and sentenced to life. Homolka claimed she was abused by Bernardo and that she was an unwilling accomplice. She received 12 years. The videos, that surfaced later, showed Homolka taking pleasure in sexually abusing and torturing the victims. She was unconditionally released from prison on July 4th, 2005. She is now married with 2 children. Her victims were:
Tammy Homolka, although never convicted for her death. She was 15 years old.
Leslie Mahaffy – 14
Kristen French – 15.
3 – Beverley Allitt.
Allitt was born on October 4th, 1968, in Grantham, Lincolnshire, England. As a child, she would wear various bandages over non-existent injuries to garner attention. As she grew older, she spent a considerable amount of time at doctors’ surgeries and hospitals, claiming a string of physical ailments. This attention-seeking even led to the removal of her appendix, which was perfectly healthy; this took an age to heal as she wouldn’t leave the surgical scar alone. Medical practitioners started to wise up to Allitt, so she would ‘doctor hop’ to continue getting attention. If she didn’t receive the attention she wanted, she would harm others. She decided to train as a nurse but was a poor student and had a lot of time off through supposed illness. Despite this, she was taken on by Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire, working on the children’s ward. Children in her ward started suffering from respiratory crises, cardiac arrest, and convulsions. Some survived, but some didn’t. Eventually, authorities realised this was only happening on Allitt’s shifts, and she was arrested. She was charged, and found guilty, of 4 counts of murder, 11 counts of attempted murder and 11 counts of causing grievous bodily harm. Allitt is still imprisoned at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire and is eligible for release in 2023. She cruelly took the life of:
Liam Taylor – 7 weeks old
Timothy Hardwick – 11 years old
Becky Phillips – 2 months old
Claire Peck – 15 months old.
4 – Aileen Wuornos.
Wuornos was born on February 29th, 1956, in Michigan, US. Her father, whom she never knew, committed suicide and her mother abandoned her, leaving Wuornos and her brother Keith to be adopted by their maternal parents. She said her grandfather, who was an alcoholic, sexually and physically abused her. By 11, she was swapping sexual favours for food, drugs, and cigarettes. At 14 she became pregnant after being raped and she was made to put the child up for adoption. Her grandmother died and her grandfather kicked Wuornos out at the age of 15. She lived in a nearby wood area, making money from sex work. Between November 1989 and November 1990, she killed seven men. Wuornos was arrested at the biker bar, The Last Resort, on January 9th, 1991, for an outstanding warrant. Police located her girlfriend, Tyria Moore, who agreed to get a confession from Wuornos in exchange for immunity. She made numerous phone calls to Wuornos in prison, begging for help in clearing her name, she didn’t want to go to prison. On January 16th, Wuornos confessed to the murders. Despite claiming the murders were self-defence, she was found guilty of murder. Psychiatrists declared she was mentally unstable and needed help, but it fell on deaf ears. She was executed on October 9th, 2002, dying at 9.27 am. Her victims were:
Richard Charles Mallory – 51 years old
David Andrew Spears - 43
Charles Edmund Carskadden - 40
Peter Abraham Siems - 65
Troy Eugene Burress - 50
Charles Richard Humphreys - 56
Walter Jeno Antonio - 60
5 – Rose West.
West was born Rosemary Letts on 29th November 1953 in Northam, Devon, UK. Her mother had received electroconvulsive therapy for severe depression whilst eight months pregnant. Her father repeatedly sexually abused West as she grew up, and in turn, it is said she sexually abused her brothers. She met Fred West in 1969 when he was 27 years old and she was 15. They moved in together with Fred’s 2 daughters from his previous marriage to Rena, Charmaine, and Anna Marie, and soon had a child of their own, Heather. Rose would constantly shout, scream, and physically chastise the children. Around this time, Charmaine would go missing, followed shortly afterwards by her mother. Rose worked as a sex worker, with Fred’s full encouragement, and the two of them developed more and more extreme sexual urges. Unfortunately, this included sexually abusing the children. They were eventually caught, and the garden where they lived, at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, was dug up, revealing many human remains. While on remand, Fred committed suicide at HM Prison Birmingham on January 1st, 1995. Rose was found guilty and, as of 2021, is still incarcerated at HM Prison New Hall, West Yorkshire. Their victims were:
Anna McFall – 18 years old and pregnant (although Fred West was responsible for this murder, I think it’s important to remember her name)
Charmaine West - 8
Rene West - 27
Lynda Gough - 19
Carol Ann Cooper - 15
Lucy Partington - 21
Therese Siegenthaler - 21
Shirley Hubbard - 15
Juanita Mott - 18
Shirley Robinson – 18 and pregnant
Alison Chamber - 16
Heather West -16
6 – Myra Hindley.
Hindley was born July 23rd, 1942, in Manchester, UK and lived with her parents and younger sister, Maureen. When Maureen was about a year old, Myra moved in with her grandmother, who lived nearby. When Myra was 8 years old a local boy scratched her and she ran crying to her father, her father threatened to ‘leather’ her (beat her) if she didn’t retaliate so she found the boy and punched him. Professor of forensic psychiatry at Cardiff University, Malcolm MacCulloch, wrote that Myra’s ‘relationship with her father brutalised her…she was not only used to violence in the home but rewarded for it outside. When this happens at a young age, it can distort a person’s reaction to such situations for life.
At 18, Myra joined a company called Millwards as a typist. It was whilst working here that she met Ian Brady, and she soon became obsessed with him. Myra later wrote ‘year old
It wasn’t long until Brady started talking about committing the perfect murder. On July 12th, 1963, the couple killed their first victim. The couple were eventually caught after trying to involve Maureen’s husband, David Smith. After witnessing them kill, he reported them to the police. The investigation found that Hindley and Brady had killed children and buried them at Saddleworth Moor. Hindley tried to claim she wasn’t involved, but a recording of one murder played to the court proved otherwise. You can find out more about this tape on the Internet, but be warned, it’s disturbing and heartbreaking. Hindley died on November 15th, 2002, having never been released from prison. Their victims were:
Pauline Reade – 16 years old
John Kilbride – 12
Keith Bennett –12
Lesley Ann Downey – 10
Edwards Evans – 17.
Keith Bennett’s body was never found.
7 – Dorothea Puente.
Puente was born Dorothea Helen Gray in Redlands, California, on January 9th, 1929. Both of her parents were abusive alcoholics, and her father would often threaten suicide in front of her. Her father died of tuberculosis, and her mother died in a motorbike accident. Puente was sent to an orphanage where she was sexually abused.
She married numerous times and led a life of crime, including fraud, theft and even the running of a brothel. Ruth Monroe moved in with Puente in April 1982, and not long after she died of a drug overdose. The police believed Puente’s story that Ruth was chronically depressed. Not long after, Malcolm McKenzie accused Puente of drugging & stealing from him. She was arrested, convicted, and jailed for three years. Whilst in prison, she was writing to Everson Gillmouth. When she was released, he collected her up in a red Ford pickup and before long, they were making wedding plans. In November 1985, Puente hired Ismael Florez to install wood panelling in her apartment; she also asked him to build a wooden box measuring 6 x 3 x 2 feet for her to store ‘items’ in. To cover his labour, she sold him a vehicle cheaply, a red Ford pickup. The wooden box was dumped on the riverside. On New Year’s Day, 1986, a fisherman discovered the box; police were alerted and discovered a body so badly decomposed it took three years to identify (no prizes for guessing which unfortunate person this is).
In the meantime, Puente was running a boarding house with many vulnerable tenants. Neighbours became suspicious of the house after a homeless man, ‘Chief’ (who had been taken in by Puente) was seen digging out the basement before covering the floor with concrete slabs; he also knocked down a garage and concrete slabbed it. She was caught when police started searching for Alberto Montoya; a developmentally disabled man with schizophrenia who had been staying at the boarding house. His body was found on the property, along with others. Puente tried to escape but was caught. She was convicted of three murders and accused of another six, but the jury couldn’t decide on the six. Puente was sentenced to life imprisonment and died in prison at Chowchilla on March 27th, 2011. Her victims were:
Everson Gillmouth - 77 years old
Ruth Munroe - 61
Leona Carpenter - 78
Alvaro "Bert/Alberto" Gonzales Montoya - 51
Dorothy Miller - 64
Benjamin Fink - 55
James Gallop - 62
Vera Faye Martin - 64
Betty Palmer – 78
8 – Nannie Doss.
Doss was born Nancy Hazel on November 4th, 1905, in Blue Mountain, Alabama, US. She hated her adopted father, James, who refused to let his children gain an academic education and forced them to work on the family farm. At the age of 7 a train she was travelling on braked suddenly, causing Doss to hit her head; this resulted in years of headaches, blackouts, and crippling depression. She adored reading romance magazines and longed for her perfect romance. Doss married her first husband, four, and they had 4 daughters. 2 of the daughters died of suspected food poisoning, and Nannie’s interfering mother-in-law died soon after. Her husband left her as he was terrified of her. She married her second husband. Her daughter, Melvina, had two children; the second one died as a new-born, and Melvina claimed to have seen Doss stick a hatpin into the baby’s head. Melvina’s firstborn child died whilst in Doss’ care. The same year, Doss’s second husband died. She married for a 3rd time, three, and he also died. She then married for a 4th time; he died 3 months after Doss’s mother. Her final husband was Samuel Doss. His sudden death shocked his doctor, who then ordered an autopsy, where a huge amount of arsenic was discovered in his stomach. Doss was finally arrested and eventually pleaded guilty; she was sentenced to life imprisonment. She died in Oklahoma State Penitentiary on June 2nd, 1965. Her victims were:
Her daughter Zelmer Braggs – 4 years old
Her daughter, Gertrude Braggs – 5
Her new-born, unnamed granddaughter
Her grandson, Robert Lee Haynes – 2
Her second husband, Robert Franklin Harrelson – 39
Her sister, Dovie Weaver – 42
Her mother-in-law, Sarah Lanning – 85
Her 3rd husband, Arlie Lanning – 32
Her mother, Louisa Hazel – 74
Her 4th husband, Richard L Morton – 64
Her 5th husband, Samuel Doss – 58.
9 – Leonarda Cianciulli.
Cianciulli was born on April 18th, 1894, in Montella, Italy. She attempted suicide twice as a young girl before marrying a man that her parents disapproved of. Cianciulli was convinced that her mother had cursed her, and this belief followed her all through her life. A fortune teller told her she would marry and have children, but none would survive. Cianciulli was pregnant a total of 17 times; she sadly lost three to miscarriage and ten children in infancy; unfortunately, this wasn’t uncommon then. She was, understandably, very protective over her remaining four children, especially after the fortune teller's words and her personal belief that she was cursed. In 1939, her eldest son and favourite child, Giuseppe, announced that he was joining the Italian army. Terrified, Cianciulli was convinced that human sacrifice would be the only way to protect her son. She killed three women, inviting them over, before drugging them and hacking away at them with an axe. She said of her first murder, after cutting the body into nine pieces:
‘I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk, and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together. I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Giuseppe and I also ate them.
Of her 3rd murder, she said, ‘She ended up in the pot, like the other two...her flesh was fat and white, when it had melted, I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbours and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.
She was arrested and found guilty, sentenced to 30 years in prison and three years in a criminal asylum. She died of a haemorrhage on October 15th, 1970, in the criminal asylum in Pozzuoli. She was 77. There was very little information about her victims, including their ages. Her victims were:
Faustina Setti
Clementina Soavi
Virginia Cacioppo
10 – Amelia Dyer.
Dyer was born Amelia Elizabeth Hobley in 1836 in Pyle Marsh, Bristol, UK. Her childhood was tainted by having a mother with severe mental health diseases, and it fell to Dyer to look after her. When she was 24, she married an older man, George Thomas. Dyer trained as a nurse and soon developed an easier way to make money; she would rent her rooms out as lodgings for women who had conceived illegitimately. In Victorian times, unmarried mothers struggled; they were severely stigmatised, and the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act meant that fathers of illegitimate children didn’t have any financial obligation to their offspring. As a result, something called baby farming started; people would offer to take these babies for a fee and either adopt or foster them. And this is what Dyer did. George died, and Dyer needed an income. She would advertise to adopt a baby for a one-off fee, and her clients believed her to be a safe, respectable, loving woman. In 1872, she married William Dyer, but after having two children, they split up. Some of the babies she took in were left to starve; when she realised this could take too long, she started to murder them. A concerned doctor alerted the authorities to these suspicious deaths, but she only received six months of hard labour for neglect. This time in her life was punctuated by periods in mental hospitals.
On March 30th, a bag was retrieved from The Thames River; it contained the body of a baby girl. They managed to trace the bag’s origins back to Dyer, and she was arrested. On May 22nd, 1896, Dyer appeared at The Old Bailey and pleaded guilty to just one murder. Her only defence was insanity. Dyer was hanged at Newgate Prison on 10th June 1896. We don’t know the exact number of victims, but her known ones were:
Doris Marmon – 4 months old
Harry Simmons – 13 months
Helena Fry – Aged 12 months or younger
So, what do you think? Do we perceive female killers to be ‘evil’ because they’re supposed to be caring, maternal, or even considered weaker? Or do you think they are seen the same as male killers? I have only written a little about each case in this post; are there any you would like to see me cover in more depth? As always, please do let me know what you think in the comments, take care, and I will see you soon!
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