Female Serial Killers - Coursework Example

Female Serial Killers Organization This paper will explore the various reasons and methods employed by women who kill more than one person. In addition to looking at some of the classic literature available on the subject and the history of murder as it appears in case studies, this paper will explore why females kill, how they kill and who they kill and compare those answers with the answers given for male serial killers. Studies into the killing behaviors of female killers in the past 15 years have yielded few answers other than to indicate the mind of a female serial killer is completely alien from the mind of a male serial killer. In many areas, women differ from men in the selection of their victims, the selection of their weapons, and the motives behind their decisions to kill. To merely assume danger signals of a potential male serial killer are equally applicable to females would be like assuming a kitten might turn into a dog. An understanding of the female killer’s profile would greatly assist law enforcement agencies to identify these silent killers earlier. Health care workers would then also be able to better address the issue in treatment sessions once they are apprehended or to recognize the danger signals in their patients. Several studies have been conducted both regarding the male serial killer as well as the female serial killer, but many of the studies published fail to take into account the vast differences the change in gender represent. The one thing these studies do agree upon is the idea that the female serial killer kills for reasons other than her male counterpart, rendering studies conducted on male serial killers or even studies conducted using male typologies invalid and incomplete. The history of murder dates back to Biblical times when Cain killed his brother Abel in a fit of rage. History books are full of the stories of murdered kings, nobles, presidents and whole generations of ethnic classes. Yet the documentation of murder as committed by serial killers seemed to skyrocket following 1970, especially murder involving women as the perpetrator. This can be seen in the list of serial murderers contained in Samantha Levine’s “Famously Evil” (2002) in which eight multiple murderers are profiled, the earliest of which started his killing in 1972. “Throughout the last three decades the US serial killer rate has risen 940 percent and it is estimated that by the next millennium it will claim an average of 11 lives a day” (“Modus”, 2000). Serial killers in particular fall into their own bracket of crime because their modus operandi, or method of killing, and motives are generally considered to be different from methods and motives involved in other murders. The United States holds 76 percent of the world’s serial killers with Europe coming in second with only 17 percent. Of the European contingent, it is reported England holds 28 percent of the killers while Germany produces 27 percent and France contains 13 percent. Most of the serial killers identified in the United States are Caucasian males with 65 percent of the victims being white females (“Modus”, 2000). To adequately discuss serial killers as opposed to other killers, one must work from a common definition. A common definition for serial murders is a person who kills two or more victims in incidents that are geographically and temporally unrelated (Mitchell, 1997). In asserting that “only a few examples of female serial murderers exist,” Mitchell indicates the reasons for this are “due to differential male and female socialization (with males being taught to ‘take’ and strive for power and women taught subservience and obedience)” (1997, pp. 27-28). Rather than being a question of if women kill, the question of the day has suddenly become one of why women kill. In fact, Karen Ahn discusses the rise of female serial killers in her introduction to a novel following the case of Aileen Wuornos: The phenomenon of the female serial killer is a recent one … What is indisputable is that recent trends have shown that violent crime committed by women is on the rise. The incidence of women and girls who commit murder has risen astonishingly in the last two decades (1999). Historically, literature available on the subject has focused almost exclusively on the male serial killer. Early theories of why individuals turn to serial crime included the biological theories of Cesare Lombroso and William Sheldon (Schurmann-Kauflin, 1999). Lombroso’s theory stated that physical characteristics such as the size of the forehead, earlobes and the distance between the eyes could indicate an individual who was “not as far along” as the rest of humanity. Sheldon’s theory indicated that athletically built individuals were more likely to turn to a life of crime than others with different physical characteristics. Of particular note is that Lombroso, who was conducting his research in 1911, included women in his study, claiming “female criminals supposedly had cranial depressions, deep frontal sinuses, and a heavy lower jaw” and her skull resembled that of a man rather than a woman (Schurmann-Kauflin, 1999, pp. 15-17). However, subsequent research has pointed to a variety of factors that must be considered in the making of a killer, including biology, psychology, family conditions and sociology. To begin to understand the scope of the question, it is important to look into some of the shared characteristics among women who kill multiple times. Current research indicates women turn to homicide “as the result of the structural inequalities between men and women”, often as a self-preservation response to a perceived threat from a male-dominated society or as a form of retributive justice (Gill, 2002, p. 26). Because the trend in female killers began to swing upward following the women’s liberation movement, early analysts assumed women had the same motives as men for killing. However, steadily increasing statistics and general research indicates a majority of male serial killers operate out of a need to perpetrate sexual acts. This information further indicates the alarming trend in female serial killers could not be driven by the same forces (Mitchell, 1997). While male serial killers are most likely to be sexual predators who target predominantly female victims, female serial killers who act alone tend to favor very young, elderly or closely emotionally connected victims such as a spouse or a lover (Kelleher and Kelleher, 1998). In most cases, their victims are perceived as even more helpless than they feel themselves to be. The killers are acting out of what they perceive to be mercy or they are protecting themselves from or revenging themselves on the significant other they perceive has or will wrong them in some way. In the case of the so-called black widow killers, these women join the ranks of some the men in murdering for the simple motive of personal gain. All of these female killers share one thing in common with their male counterparts, however. They usually have childhoods “steeped in violence, brutality, and sexual abuse” (Ahn, 1999). Despite the somewhat limited number of motives present in historical formal research, writer Katherine Ramsland asserts that women have a range as diverse as men in finding motives for murder. Her list includes monetary gain, ridding themselves of a burden, revenge, dislike, pressure from a gang, seeking power, following orders, delusions, pleasure, self-defense, acting out from a history of abuse, sexual compulsion, team chemistry, psychopathy, misplaced mercy, depravity and rivalry (2005). Although women seem to have a limited number of motives listed in the common research behind their desire to kill, research on men places them into a broad range of categories to describe their motives for becoming a serial killer. Serial Killers Exposed lists four different types of male serial killers including the visionary type, the mission-oriented type, the thrill-oriented type and the lust killer (1999). The visionary type is the serial killer who goes on a killing spree to rid the world of its societal ills, often claiming to hear voices in his head and having a difficult time trying to integrate into normal society. The mission-oriented type is described as having a similar mission as the visionary type, but is capable of presenting a well-integrated façade to the outside world. In addition, this type does not hear voices in his head or see visions, but imagines he knows how the world should be and defines societal ills in his own terms. The thrill-oriented type simply commits his crime for the thrill of the chase and the ultimate satisfaction of the kill at the end. He is not particularly sexual in nature. The lust killer, on the other hand, derives his pleasure from the suffering of his victims and is often motivated by sexual urges. Through his research, Mitchell asserts that men have additional motives for becoming serial killers, however, including murder for hire as part of a gang or mob and those who kill for personal gain (1997). Women and men are typically presented as differing in the means of carrying out their crimes as well. Although women do more often turn to less obvious methods of inflicting death, case studies have shown that they are just as capable of turning to more violent means. Research conducted by North Carolina Wesleyan College indicates that in a subsample of 62 of 399 female serial killers, 80 percent of them opted to use poisons or other drugs to commit their murders, 16 percent opted for suffocation and 5 percent opted for drowning as the relatively ‘non-violent’ means of death. However, 20 percent resorted to shooting, 16 percent turned to bludgeoning and a final 11 percent used stabbing as their means of death (“Female”, 2005). In addition, Kelleher and Kelleher list various ways in which a woman will operate that are different from the means by which men operate (2005). While men are classified generally as lust killers, thrill-seekers, visionaries or mission-style killers, women are classified in two distinct groups – those acting alone and those acting in teams. Of those acting alone, the women are typically described as “mature, careful, deliberate, socially adept and highly organized who typically attack victims in their home or place of work. They tend to favor a specific weapon, like poison, lethal injection or suffocations.” Women who act in teams are generally younger, more aggressive, vicious in their methods, more disorganized and show a striking inability to plan their attacks carefully. This form of killer is most notable for using the more violent means of attack including knives, guns and torture (“Female”, 2005). Similar to some degree, the methods used by men in committing their crimes tend to gravitate more toward subjugation and humiliation, utilize more violence in weaponry and are more geographically widespread. Moreover, males are usually more likely to stalk and kill strangers while females tend to stick with people they know (Scott, 1996). Like the single female killer, though, many male killers are typically thought to be well-organized, having typically planned out their attack days, months or sometimes years in advance. “Their crimes are orderly and played out in a meticulous detail. There are usually three separate crime scenes, where the victim is confronted, where the murder is committed, and where the body is disposed of” (“Types”, 2004). In describing this killer, the article states they will typically bring all their implements of torture and destruction with them and know intimate details about forensic science and law enforcement methods. With each additional kill, they become highly skilled at avoiding detection. In contrast, the unorganized male killer is described as being someone who attacks spontaneously and randomly, often upon meeting with the victim and become very difficult to find purely because of their lack of pattern (“Types”, 2004). The victim is often very violently murdered and left at the scene of the crime. As proof of his accomplishment, this type of killer is said to usually keep souvenirs of his victims in place of any kind of social life. When women decide to kill, a majority of the victims are someone they know or someone they perceive as being more vulnerable than they are themselves. More than 200 women kill their own children in the United States every year (Nuti, 2002) while nurses seemed to have gone on a rampage in the 1980s by quietly putting their patients out of their misery, whether they welcomed the gesture or not (Ramsland, 2005). It is thought that a majority of these killings, especially among the nurses, are considered mercy killings by their perpetrators. But other murders are thought to be the outward actions of inner fantasies on the part of the nurse who wishes to “be present at real life-and-death dramas, … by reviving the people whose hearts and breathing they have stopped, they cast themselves in a heroic light” (Dalrymple 2001). In the cases of parents killing their children, Nuti says the reason more women than men are perceived as carrying out the crime is both because women are more often placed in the role of caregiver and society tends to react more vocally when it is the mother, rather than the father, who has murdered the children. At about the same time that Andrea Yates drowned her five children in a Houston, Texas bathtub, a father in California purposely asphyxiated his children while they slept by releasing gas into the air (Nuti, 2002). Messing and Heeren argue women who kill their children seem to be under a similar delusion as that of the majority of nurses, that of being in a rescue position. They see themselves as saving the ones they love from the evils and temptations of the material world (2004). Yet the same cultural response that says mothers are caregivers prevents these women from obtaining the help they seek before the tragedy. “Women in jail reported that no-one believed them when they said they wanted to kill their children” (Nuti, 2002). Of those women who kill their spouse or significant other, research argues that most are acting out feelings of repressed aggression, attempts to defend themselves from a real or perceived threat or those who have cold-bloodedly determined to acquire wealth by marrying, and then killing, wealthy lovers. “Women’s violence is often the result of the structural inequalities between men and women” (Gill, 2002, p. 27). Other findings indicate that the relationship between equality among gender correlated negatively with the incidence of female violence, seeming to indicate women killed only as a means of bringing the social system into a more gender-neutral balance (Mitchell, 1997). However, a societal tendency to immediately attribute acts of violence to this mistreatment may be promoting some of the increase in female homicides. A study conducted in 1996 by Criminologist Coramae Richey Mann of female killers found 78 percent of the women in the study had prior arrest records and 55 percent had a history of violence (Correy, 2002). In addition, only 59 percent of them had claimed self-defense when facing trial. Patricia Pearson further points out that: Women commit the majority of child homicides in the United States, a greater share of physical child abuse, an equal rate of sibling violence and assaults on the elderly, about a quarter of child sexual abuse, an overwhelming share of the killings of newborns, and a fair preponderance of spousal assaults...The sole explanation offered by criminologists for violence committed by a woman is that it is involuntary, the rare result of provocation or mental illness, as if half the population of the globe consisted of saintly stoics who never succumbed to fury, frustration, or greed. Though the evidence may contradict the statement, the consensus runs deep. Women from all walks of life, at all levels of power — corporate, political, of familial, women in combat and on police forces — have no part in violence. It is one of the most abiding myths of our time (1997, p. 5). That the issue remains so clouded is evidence that more research into the mind of a female killer is indeed necessary. When men kill is as difficult to predict as when women kill and is as dependent on the type of killer the multiple murderer happens to be. The more organized the killer, the more predictable the killing pattern. In addition, the type of killer, whether he is a thrill-seeker, sexual predator, visionary or missionary killer, will determine to some extent the volume of killing an individual will do. Two-thirds of all male homicides can typically be accounted for in one of four scenarios: honor contest violence, secondary violence, dispute resolution and sexual predation. Honor contest violence is violence in which one male feels it necessary to defend his honor from some real or imagined sleight. Secondary violence refers to murder committed in the act of committing another form of crime. Dispute resolution violence occurs in situations in which one male feels it necessary to settle disagreements through the use of violent means. Sexual predators use violence as a device of ultimate control in sexual situations (Polk, 1997). Of these, all scenarios lend themselves easily to acts of violence upon strangers and/or to random acts that don’t necessarily require pre-meditation or undue provocation. This contrasts sharply with the tendency of women to select victims they typically associate with closely. In comparing the behaviors of female serial killers with those of male serial killers, one can readily see several similarities, but also several differences. While females tend to select individuals they share close relationships with, men tend to gravitate toward victims who are strangers, whether the crime is premeditated or spontaneous. The victims of women are generally including children, elderly people of whom they are caretaker, spouses and significant others. In addition, while men are shown to be more prone to use violent methods during the commission of their crime, women have been shown to resort to similar methods at times. Depending upon the nature of their victim, women have been known to use guns, knives and bludgeoning as preferred weaponry. The use of such materials as poison, drugs, suffocation and drowning are more frequently associated with murders involving the elderly and children, presumably as a part of the mercy aspect of whatever fantasy in which the serial murderer is operating. In deciding when to commit a crime, women are frequently found committing their murders in or close to their homes, very infrequently traveling around geographically. Men can often prowl territories as large as the northeastern section of the United States to find new victims that match the particular type they have targeted. Both men and women have been shown to have a variety of motives for launching on their crime spree, including revenge, self-preservation, self-advancement, murder-for-hire, mercy killings and sexual predation. Unlike men, research into the motives why women turn to serial killing remains insufficient to give an adequate portrait of potential risks or to provide adequate treatment of perpetrators once they’ve been apprehended. While society remains convinced all female killers are little more than victims of an oppressive environment, little progress is being made to understanding what makes a woman turn killer. Instead, the message being relayed into the public seems to be one of carte blanche as long as the killer can provide any evidence of abuse. References Ahn, Karen. “Dressed to Kill: The Modern-Day Female Serial Killer”. (1999). Twilight Lane. Retrieved on November 26, 2005 from http://www.mysterynet.com/buchanan/dressedtokill.shtml Correy, Charles E. “Women Who Kill Their Family Members”. (2002). Equal Justice Foundation. Retrieved on November 28, 2005 from http://www.dvmen.org/dv-130.htm Dalrymple, Theodore. “Attack of the Killer Nurses: A look at the curious phenomenon – nurses who kill their patients”. (2001, May 28). National Review. Retrieved on November 28, 2005 from http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m1282/is_10_53/ai_74362323 “Female Serial Killers”. (2005, October 14). North Carolina Wesleyan University. Retrieved on November 27, 2005 from http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/428lect11.htm Gill, Rebecca Ann. (2002, December) “The Female Serial Killer: An Analysis and Profile”. California State University. Kelleher, C.L. & Michael D. Kelleher. (1998). Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer. Westport: Praeger. Levine, Samantha. “Famously Evil.” (2002, October 21). U.S. News and World Report. p. 24. Messing, Jill Theresa and John W. Heering. “Another Side of Multiple Murder”. (2004, May 2). Homicide Studies. Vol. 8, No. 2. Mitchell, Edward W. (1997). The Aetiology of Serial Murder. Towards an Integrated Model. Unpublished M.Phil. thesis, University of Cambridge, UK. Retrieved November 26, 2005 from http://users.ox.ac.uk/~zool0380/masters.htm “Modus Operandi – Serial Killers”. (2000). Retrieved November 27, 2005 from http://members.fortunecity.com/hiper22/index.html Nuti, Paul. “Why Women Kill Their Children”. (2002, March 25). American Anthropological Society. Retrieved on November 28, 2005 from http://www.aaanet.org/press/motherskillingchildren.htm Pearson, Paula. (1997). When She Was Bad. New York: Viking. Polk, Kenneth. “When Men Kill: A Comparison of Everyday Homicide With Images of Media Violence”. (1997, December 4-5). University of Melbourne. Retrieved November 28, 2005 from http://www.aic.gov.au/conferences/violence/polk.pdf Ramsland, Katherine. “The Malignant Hero”. (2005). Notorious Murders. Retrieved November 27, 2005 from http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/angels/female_nurses/ Schurman-Kauflin, Deborah S. (1999, October 16). “Profiles of the Female Multiple Murderer”. Scott, Jan. “Serial Homicide”. (1996, January 6). BMJ Journals. Retrieved on November 28, 2005 from http://bmj.bmjjournals.com/cgi/content/full/312/7022/2 “Serial Killer Types”. (1999). Serial Killers Exposed. Retrieved on November 27, 2005 from http://members.tripod.com/~SerialKillr/SerialKillersExposed/index.html “Types of Serial Killers”. (2004, March 21). Mob Magazine – Research Library. Retrieved on November 28, 2005 from http://www.mobmagazine.com/ManageArticle.asp?C=120&A=7283 Read More