By Robert St.
Estephe, August 8, 2015 (updated Aug. 9)
Want to learn about the full range of human aggression and
violence? Forget about the universities; forget about the top law enforcement
education programs – at least as your starting point. For a more accurate
picture you’d do better to start out with tabloid TV? Shocking? Yes, but true.
The pros are, most of them at least, afraid to talk honestly
about – even to think honestly about
– female aggression, about violence BY women.
Just ask Candice DeLong, who has deep experience with both
worlds; Candace Delong, “the “accidental profiler” of the baddest of the
bad girls,” the star of cable TV’s Deadly
Women and Facing Evil.
Ms. Delong, is,
as Wikipedia notes, “often been compared to the protagonist of the movie The
Silence of the Lambs, Clarice Starling.”
As an FBI agent stationed in Chicago, Special Agent Delong
studied criminal psychology at the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in Quantico, Virginia. There, she
“learned about the psychology, motivation, and especially the
behavior behind all kinds of violent crimes, but almost nothing about
female killers.”
She notes that in 1984 the instructor “began the
class with the proclamation ‘There
is no such thing as a female serial killer.’” She tells us that back then:
“I had no
proof that he was wrong because I hadn’t studied the subject
myself, but his statement did give me pause.”
As the hard-boiled hostess of 8 seasons of the hit TV series
Deadly Women, former Special Agent
Candice DeLong can speak with seasoned authority. Reflecting back on the
orthodox views on female agression that was demonstrated by the FBI
institutional chivalric bias, she says:
“It’s too bad the
FBI didn’t have access to our incredible research team!”
On Deadly Women,
now going into its 9th season, hundreds of cases, some serial, many
merely sadistic, cynical, and extremely violent have been covered and there is
no end to the supply of stories to pick from for future shows.
DeLong rushes into the breach where tough-guy FBI agents
fear to tread. Rank-and-file media wonks keep the “War Against Truth”(with
regard to the facts of female aggression) barreling forward, but with renegades
like Candice DeLong running loose, the orthodox consensus is under threat.
Two More
Criminologists
There are signs of the ice breaking. Recent article on
female serial killers by Prof. Marissa Harrison, Associate Professor of Psychology at
Penn State Harrisburg. In her June 29, 2015 article Prof. Harrison gives the public an
overview of her new research:
“But it wasn’t until last year when an undergraduate
student, Erin Murphy, approached me about studying female serial killers (FSKs)
that I realized how little scientific literature existed on this topic. Many
routinely hear about male serial killers (MSKs) – the Jeffrey Dahmers and Ted
Bundys of true crime lore – and one can indeed find volumes of literature
analyzing their killing sprees. On the other hand, few have heard of Belle
Gunness and Nannie Doss, whose crimes were no less heinous: Gunness killed more
than 25 people in the late 19th century, including her children and husbands.
Doss killed 11 people in the first half of the 20th century, including her own
mother and grandson.”
Harrison’s research has gotten a
lot of play in the media, yet as is so often the case, sloppy reporting has
distorted the message. Harrison studied 64 cases, all of the from from the US.
This is in fact quite a large number, a time-consuming task. But reporters
imply, or sometimes plainly state, that the number 64 represents the known
number of cases. It does not. Even for the USA, there are well over 300 known
cases of female serial killers, internationally over 800 (and the list would be
much longer were it not for the fact that there are only a scant few people
even trying to collect the data on FSKs from historical sources. Kelleher
Kelleher (1998) and Vronsky (2007) have done vitally important work, but the
digging up of historical cases and cases from across the globe is yet to
receive the attention of professional crime historians and criminologists.
We ought to mention another
significant and bold researcher here. In 2000, an important academic book was
published by forensic profiler Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, PhD detailing
her findings from interviews with incarcerated female serial killers. Her
research uncovered the fantasy life of the female serial killer, an important
part of the psychological equation that should help to grasp with twisted
mental workings of these women. This research has, however, had little effect
as of yet on mainstream thinking.
One might hope that Dr. Marissa
Harrison’s study would inspire other academics to go further and broader into
an inquiry on FSKs, but we should not hold our breath. The censors have a hold
across academia, the cherished fallacies of “feminist theory” (or “critical
gender theory” and its neo-Marxian parent, Marcusean “critical theory”) much of
which has been disproved and discredited remains an orthodoxy which, if contradicted,
will in short order cost a flegling researcher his or her job – and reputation.
Indeed, the slightest offense given to the anti-scientific “gender” dogma
protected by the censors can get a Nobel Prize Winner or an Ivy League
university president shown the door.
So it is left to a few very rare
brave professors working in relative obscurity, bloggers such as the author of
this article, and, in the most influential manner to those in the popular media
who have the guts to get the word out on a large scale. Candice Delong is the
champion here.
We ought to be grateful that the
producers of Deadly Women have such
an incredible research team. If it weren’t for Candice DeLong’s crew, the
public would be in the dark “the silence
of the FBI” and the lackadaisical conformist mainstream media.
New Frontiers, Forgotten Stories
Let us not get too comfortable.
Let us not think we are beyond scratching the surface at this stage of the
game, however.
All parts of the world (54
countries by the latest count), all races (despite false claims in the press
asserting otherwise). They include human sacrifice, dismemberment, cannibalism
and a wide range of killing methods using an array of weaponry and techniques.
Though a “typical” FSK might accurately be described as a poisoner who targets
those in her immediate proximity,” this merely describes perhaps half or
two-thirds at most of these women. There have sadistic bandits of the Aileen
Wuornos type (may of whom worked with male underlings), vengeance killers who
set out to punish the male sex, or the female sex – and there have been sexual
sadists among FSKs. More than a hundred female serial killers are known, at
this point in ongoing research, to have been executed for their crimes. Wuornos
was approximately the 275th female serial killer in the US and the 13th to be
put to death by the State.
There have been far more juvenile
FSKs than any criminologist is aware. A striking illustration of just how
impoverished criminological research still is with respect to female aggression
and criminality is the fact that over two dozen forgotten cases of "serial killer girls" have been
uncovered which are still ignored or unknown to professional criminology. The
case of little Mary Maher, a story rediscovered after more than a century of
obscurity by this writer only a few months ago, shows what awaits the serious
historian of crime in the dusty (and inconveniently politically incorrect)
archives.
• In
a period of three months in 1906 in Dunkitt, County Kilkenny, Ireland,
11-year-old Mary Maher murdered three of her sisters (aged
1, 3, 4 ½). After attempting to kill a fourth sister (aged 8) the eye of
suspicion fell upon Mary and the grownups began to consider that her siblings
had not died by accident as previously thought. Mary, apparently expecting to
be found out, committed suicide.
There are many other sensational
cases of little girls with a mania for murder. Yet these cases are part of
neither the professional nor the popular dialogue on “violence and gender.”
• Credonia Mwerinde, a Ugandan cult
leader who started off her serial killing career in a conventional manner, killing
off brothers (plus one stranded motorist), later graduated to mass murders,
getting international attention when on March 17, 2000 she incinerated a worship hall called “The Ark” while packed with her followers, killing 738. Her total number of victims is estimated to be 1,186 in
9 separate events.
• Guadalupe Martinez de Bejarano, Mexico City was a sadistic serial killer of teenage girls. “The crime which first attracted attention to the doings of this monster occurred in 1878. On the 17th of June of that year a young girl, Catarina Juarez, died in one of the hospitals in the City of Mexico as a result of the injuries received at the hands of “La Bejarano.” The history of the sufferings of the poor girl, covering a period of several months passed in the service of her tormentor, is perhaps unequaled in the annals of crime. She was made to endure every cruelty and privation which the malignity of an ingenious fiend could suggest or inspire. Hunger, exposure, blows, burns, scalds, pin thrusts, cuts and every other atrocity that can be inflicted without causing death were the daily lot of this unfortunate girl.”
• Maria Vukitch, of Nagy Kikinda, Serbia, hanged along with her compatriots for murders resulting from a conspiracy concocted during a “Bible study” club called the Society of St. Lucretia. The club’s name was a dark joke. It was not names after the patron saint of the blind, but rather after the notorious Lucretia Borgia, who still in 1926 was the archetype of the poison murderess, whom the devout ladies had in mind as they plotted their respective individual salvation. It turned out that was her supply arsenic mixed with opium that Maria was sharing with her devotees, not scripture. Maria killed two husbands with this mixture and assisted seven other women in their widow-making efforts.
“Every one of the dead men had been wealthy and respected in the little community. Some of the widows spent more money than they had ever done before, purchased costly clothes, automobiles, and led the lives of grandes dames. … Nine men died through the proceedings of the Society of Saint Lucretia. The seven who had brought about their death went to the gallows in 1927.”
These were many other such
“husband-killing syndicates” in Serbia and the Eastern European countries in
the 19th through mid-20th centuries, many of them with
much higher body counts.
These stories are but a tiny sample from the vast and unknown criminological history of violence by women.
These stories are but a tiny sample from the vast and unknown criminological history of violence by women.
FBI Update
In 2011 a team of criminologists led by Dr. Amanda L. Farrell made a sincere attempt to explore the possibility that FSKs were more common than previously thought. Their study, however was hampered by the failure of FBI statisticians to properly research their subject before issuing statistics. The authors were told by “the Justice Department” that only “36 female serial killers have been active over the course of the last century.” So much for progress from the days when Candice DeLong was told the number of FSKs was “0” to 25 years later when the FBI researchers managed to discover only a tiny fraction of the true number.
Known FSK cases in the USA from 1910 through 2010 number 247 in an online roster, “Female Serial Killers of the USA.”
Attention: Quantico, we have a problem!
This Year’s Crop
(so far)
• February 12 – A woman from Břeclavsko, Dolni Dunajovice, Czech Republic, whose
name has not yet been released to the public was arrested on February 12, 2015
after remains of three newborns, born over a period spanning 15 years, each of whom she
is suspected of murdering, were discovered in her home.
• February 15 – Elena Lobacheva, a 25-year old sexual sadist, arrested in Moscow on Feb. 15, 2015, along with her
20-year-old male accomplice, whose alternative sexuality preference involved
stabbing 12 men (up to 107 times), all strangers, randomly selected, to death,
and photographing them “with their stomachs cut open.” The Russian sadist was inspired by the
movie “Bride of Chucky,” and has a tattoo of the character on her arm. Elena
confessed that “randomly stabbing the body of a dying human brought me pleasure
comparable to sexual pleasure.”
• March 4 – A woman named Noh,
living in Uijeongbu, Gyeonggi, South Korea is suspected of poisoning five
persons over a period of several years, killing three of them. Her daughter and
mother-in-law Kim survived but two husbands and mother-in-law Lee met their
death. Although Noh’s daughter survived three separate poisoning incidents, the
mother still received insurance profits (USD $6,300) from the child’s
illnesses. She was arrested for questioning on March 4, 2015 for questioning.
Noh received “huge” sums from life insurance payouts after each death.
• July 27 – Tamara Samsonova
of St. Petersburg, Russia was arrested July 27, 2015. The former Soviet era
KGB-sanctioned prostitute/spy kept a diary of her grisly murders, 14 of them,
in which she dismembered her victims and scattered parts of their bodies
throughout St. Petersburg. She had a fascination for the occult and is thought
to have possibly eaten the lungs and other organs of at least some of those she
murdered. The investigation has just begun.
Up from "Correctness"
Candice DeLong, more than any other criminologist with a
truly large audience, is fearless in face of the people who are among the most
terrifying to the largest number, including criminologists: the politically
correctness censors who monitor “correct” thinking, “correct” speech, and,
behind-the-scenes “correct” social science. She is a taboo breaker of the first
order.
At present, the most potent antidote for the silence of the
lambs (with respect to violence by women) is the voice of the intrepid Candice
DeLong, heard in all its bold frankness by millions of cable-TV subscribers.
There is a market, a large and an apparently growing one,
for the kind of truth these tabloid shows expose. Perhaps we are reaching the
point where a broader public (including even professional criminologists and
others who self-censor) can peek out from the covers and begin to face reality
and dispense with the ideology-based myths, superstitions and taboos that for
so long have kept the actual truth about the nature, extent, incidence and extremity of
violence by women a hush-hush topic.
Candice once described one of the deadly women during an episode as being “a Disneyland of emotional problems.” This gal does not mince words.
If only those tasked with informing the public would finally grow up and decide to escape the politically correct Disneyland of their own fear of being called names by those “gender theory” enforcers who have done so well in sweeping huge swaths of history underneath the rug.
Candice once described one of the deadly women during an episode as being “a Disneyland of emotional problems.” This gal does not mince words.
If only those tasked with informing the public would finally grow up and decide to escape the politically correct Disneyland of their own fear of being called names by those “gender theory” enforcers who have done so well in sweeping huge swaths of history underneath the rug.
• Former FBI
Profiler Candice DeLong Explains Why It’s Never “Normal” When Women Kill,”
Crimefeed.com, Aug. 7, 2015
• Marissa Harrison, “How evolutionary psychology may explain
the difference between male and female serial killers ,” The Conversation, Jun.
29, 2015
• Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, “Fantasies of Female Serial
Killers,” Psychology Today, Aug. 22, 2011
• Robert St. Estephe, “Women’s Clubs Devoted to Murdering
Husbands,” Jul. 1, 2015
• Maria Vukich case – “Arsenic
Poisoners - Past and Present.” The Wellington
Times (Australia), May 8, 1930, p. 5
• Bejarano case – “A Female Fiend Incarnate - Widow Bejarano, Who Has Tortured Little
Orphan Girls to Death.” The News (Frederick, Md.), May 14, 1892, p. 6
• Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, Victoria B. Titterington (August 2011). "Lethal Ladies: Revisiting What We Know About Female Serial Murderers" (PDF). Homicide Studies 15 (3): 228–252. – “Abstract: Serial murderers are rare offenders, and this, coupled with challenges to accessing data about them, poses a significant challenge to empirical investigation. It is also true that female serial murderers are thought to be rarer than their male counterparts and have often been excluded from being labeled “serial murderers” due to narrowly constructed definitions. Thus, female serial murderers are an even more elusive population to study. The results of this exploratory analysis, using newspaper articles to gather data about the crimes of a subset of 10 female serial murderers in the United States, suggest that not only are these women different from men who commit serial murder but also that the scant information published about these rare offenders may have underestimated the female serial murderer in terms of both offender and offense characteristics.”
Books:
• Amanda L. Farrell, Robert D. Keppel, Victoria B. Titterington (August 2011). "Lethal Ladies: Revisiting What We Know About Female Serial Murderers" (PDF). Homicide Studies 15 (3): 228–252. – “Abstract: Serial murderers are rare offenders, and this, coupled with challenges to accessing data about them, poses a significant challenge to empirical investigation. It is also true that female serial murderers are thought to be rarer than their male counterparts and have often been excluded from being labeled “serial murderers” due to narrowly constructed definitions. Thus, female serial murderers are an even more elusive population to study. The results of this exploratory analysis, using newspaper articles to gather data about the crimes of a subset of 10 female serial murderers in the United States, suggest that not only are these women different from men who commit serial murder but also that the scant information published about these rare offenders may have underestimated the female serial murderer in terms of both offender and offense characteristics.”
Books:
• Deborah Schurman-Kauflin, The New Predator: Women Who Kill – Profiles of Female Serial Killers,
Algora, 2000]
• Michael D. Kelleher and C. L.
Kelleher, Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer, Praeger, (1998)
• Peter Vronsky, Female Serial
Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, Berkley Books, (2007)
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