Title: Breaking the
Silence of the Lambs: Female Serial Killers and Collective Amnesia
Author: Richard
Stephens
Written for A Voice for Men
Date: March 5, 2017
(1210m); (first draft: Sep. 19, 2015)
Word count: 3,979
***
This article focuses on female serial killers, yet its real
subject is the fear of thinking honestly about violence by women.
1. Monster Love
Scott Bonn is an American PhD criminologist who in 2014
published a book titled Why We Love
Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Killers. Bonn
is a frequent expert commentator on network and cable television and is,
according to Emmy-winning TV host and best-selling author, Rita Cosby,
“considered one of the world's top experts on criminal behavior.” His book’s subject is the public’s perennial
fascination with this particular type of criminal.
This is how Dr. Bonn announces his topic:
“In many ways, serial killers are
for adults what monster movies are for children — that is, scary fun!”
He follows this observation by noting that this it is not
simple clean fun, but rather comes at a certain cost, a feeling of guilt:
“Research … reveals that many
people who are fascinated with serial killers refer to it as a guilty
pleasure,” we learn. [1]
Fair enough.
The fact is, however, that Bonn’s book discusses, almost
exclusively, the phenomenon of public fascination with male serial killers. When he does devotes his attention – just a
sliver – to the females, though, he gets it all wrong. Reading about and
watching movies about male serial killers is “scary fun,” for lots of people.
But there is no “love” for the female of the species – no subculture of
devotees and collectors devoted to them as there clearly is with the males.
The male serial killer is the perfect monster, society’s archetype of evil. Yet the female of the
type is the sort of monster society would rather pretend does not exist
(Elizabeth Bathory, “The Blood Countess” and Aileen Wuornos being the two
exceptions). [2] Stories of real-life female serial killers simply do not provide “scary fun” Bonn describes.
The female psychopath is a type of criminal that is, I shall
argue, just too scary to wrap our
minds around in today’s “politically correct” culture. We have in the West been
conditioned by decades of ideological indoctrination that has caused us to
avoid so much as thinking clear thoughts about feminine monstrosity, let alone
talking freely to one another about this nearly taboo subject. We are in
denial. [2A]
2. Guns and
Arsenic
In Why We Love Serial
Killers, Bonn trots out big impressive-sounding ideas such as “societal
notions” and “paternalism” when describing the one and only FSK that a large
number of Americans have heard of, Aileen Wuornos:
“Until Wuornos, the mass media
almost always depicted a serial perpetrator as a deranged man due to the
erroneous and paternalistic societal notion that women could not commit such
crimes. Unlike the obscure and rarely discussed Black Widow killers throughout
history, Wuornos became a modern-day celebrity monster and popular culture icon
because she defied stereotypes and did not kill demurely as a woman ‘should.’”
[3]
We learn from another source that “Bonn believes that is a
key reason for her fame” is simply that she “murdered with a gun.” [4]
Bonn is bogged down in stereotypes. He is parroting
present-day ideologically orthodox notions that are not based in historical
fact. The “societal notion that women could not commit such crimes” is a
historically recent invention. The notion is a product of false claims of
academic propagandists and is reinforced by intrinsic biology-based male
chivalry. The truth is that before
the 1960s the idea that female serial killers were relatively common was in
common knowledge. And while Black Widows make up a large share of the nearly
thousand known female serial killer cases, there have been a great many not in
that category.
Take a look at the brief time-slot of 1871 to 1873 and you
will see eight cases of female serial killers in the US. [5] The public was at
that time well aware of that there were plenty of “female fiends” dotting the
landscape (along with the male ones).
Take a look at the crop of female serial killers from the
year 1925. You will find eight US cases in this year alone. Yet Professor Bonn
and the other criminologists who specialize in the study of serial killers are
not even aware that most of these historical cases even exist.
The widely published 1925 newspaper illustration just below
shows just how aware of female serial killers the public actually was before
the current era of forgetting, the era of political correctness taboos.
Della Sorenson, seen on the right, poisoned nine children
and adults, killing seven of them. Said
Della after her arrest:
“After the death of my little
daughter, Minnie, I had a feeling of elation and happiness. Then, after I got
to thinking about what I had done, I was afraid and tried to hide it. I had the
same feeling after the death of every one of those I poisoned.” [6]
Mrs. Sorenson represents the “typical” Black Widow type, a
poisoner of husband, her own children and neighbors. But female killers are
exclusively poisoners.
Let’s consider Bonn’s peculiar speculation about Wuornos’
fame deriving from her use of weapon. As far as guns are concerned we can count
quite a few FSKs of the “shoot ‘em up variety,” scores of them. [7]
When criticizing serial killer stereotypes in the future, Bonn and his colleagues might want to
give a hard stare at the pair of pictures below. First, here’s a still from the
movie-version of Aileen Wuornos’ life, the 2003 film Monster, showing actress Charlize Theron playing the “heroine.” [8]
Compare this 2003 film image to the 1924 newspaper
illustration of Winona Green (later known as Winnie Ola Freeman), a young
woman who was, in the 1920s, already a double murderess, yet to become a
full-fledged serial murderess that
was to be her destiny decades later. [9]
Nice parallel of
depictions, wouldn’t you say? Back in 1924, the “societal notion” was in
reality that women could be most definitely be violent monsters. Before the
onset of political correctness, there was no fear of frankly depicting and
discussing female aggression and violence by women. Our current demureness, the
taboo, the various forms of censorship backed by disinformation about violence
by women is the product of a mentality that only took hold in the 1970s.
Gun-wielding Winona shot her mother-in-law
and father-in-law to death in 1924 and had also plotted to kill her husband.
After serving time she went on to, in 1946 and 1953, murder two more men.
Winnie was what you might call a really cheeky type of sociopath. Listen to
what she had to say for herself in 1924:
“Who ever heard of a woman being
electrocuted or hanged in Arkansas?” she demands whenever the death penalty is
mentioned to her. Furthermore she is not remorseful. “I’m not sorry for my
deeds, she repeats again and again. “I planned both murders, thinking them all
out thoroughly in advance. Now that I have admitted everything, I am willing to
meet whatever fate awaits me.” [10]
Winnie served some time, escaped, was recaptured, got
released, and went on to murder: again and again. She was the type of
historical criminal that ideology-bound scholars like Bonn are simply incapable
of imagining.
Aileen Wuornos was not, as is commonly averred, a Lesbian
Avenger Wonder Woman carrying out the battle against the “patriarchy,” but
merely an ordinary bandit. There have been plenty of female serial killer
bandits in the past and criminals of this type continue to crop up. [11]
One of the pervasive stereotypes of female serial killers is
that poison, a method used by a large share of female serial killers, is a
gentler sort of killing method. This assumption is just plain wrong. As Harold
Schechter, a leading authority on historical crime, observes: “The truth is that, compared to the lingering agonies
suffered by the average poisoning victim, the deaths meted out by male serial
killers like Jack the Ripper, Son of Sam, or the Boston Strangler – the swift
executions by knife blade, bullet or garotte – seem positively humane.” (The
Ripper’s grotesque mutilations were executed upon the corpse, not as acts of torture.).
[12]
Beyond guns and poison as methods used by female serial
killers we must add hatchets, axes, arson, strangulation, drowning, starvation,
battery with blunt objects (hoe, drum sticks, hammer, iron bar) [13]
Let’s take another pictorial stab at Bonn’s assumptions
about the past’s demure “societal notions,” a pair of illustrations of one of the crimes of prolific and wildly
savage serial killer Lizzie Halliday (incarcerated from 1893 to her death in
1918). The reproduced artists’ conceptions of Halliday’s final murder date from
1906. [14]
These illustrations of a once internationally known and
reviled female serial killer have been utterly forgotten for 109 years. They do
not fit the official academic narrative that experts like Bonn were trained to
believe and to perpetuate.
3. Collective
Amnesia
Wuornos was not only not America’s first female serial
killer, but was more like the 275th and she was, according to my current count,
the 13th to be executed in this country. [15]
The experts have determined that “female serial killers are
rare” (in comparison with their male counterparts). The experts, represented,
for example, by 135 participants from 10 countries in the FBI’s 2008
international conference on “Serial Murder,” [16] base their claims on
incomplete research (without ever stopping to wonder whether availablre
historical research has been even slightly systematic, let alone as complete as
can be reasonably managed). [17]
The “official” number of historical US female serial killer
cases (up to the last few years) often stated is “62,” and the most commonly
cited estimate of the ratio of male to female serial killers is 1:6. In
contrast, my own list of US cases from the period 1829-2008 includes 330. [18]
We might ask just how rare are these criminals when there are in reality 5
times as many as the experts have reported there are?
The longest published roster of female serial killers
(internationally) I have come across totals 140. My own list, based primarily
on research in archival newspapers, now numbers over 950. [19]
Why such extreme disparity? What on earth is going on here?
There is bot only an answer but there is even a term to
explain the anomaly. Patricia Pearson’s brilliant and hard-hitting book, a 1997
exposé on violence-by-women, When She was
Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence. [20] Pearson makes a crucial
and precisely accurate observation regarding the hullabaloo in 1990 over the
Wuornos case and the attendant false claim that she was America’s “first female
serial killer.” Pearson points out the falsehood of the claim and convincingly
explains that this forgetful fantasy was an indication of what she called
“collective amnesia.” This is a profoundly important observation.
Bonn’s book, coming eighteen years later than Pearson’s,
with its paternalism-blaming explanation of this society-wide unwillingness to
face up to the hard facts of the female of the serial killer species – with its
blindness toward female aggression, female sadism, physical violence initiated by women (not to mention
extreme indirect violence) – is, with its self-censored gaping lacunae, in
itself an instance of chivalry-based denial. Bonn’s blindness is the product of
a chivalry dipped in feminist dogma, a nanny-monitored, a mommy-supervised,
maternalistic condescending nod to the thought police of the specious claims of
fashionable “critical gender theory” (Neo-Marxist ideology applied to the
relations between the sexes).
Bonn’s Why We Love
Serial Killers is a most telling
and blatant symptom of today’s collective amnesia.
4. Sexual Violence
The perfect monster
is, as we are taught, the violent sex pervert, and is therefore (of course) a
male. But the fact is that there have indeed been female serial killers who fit
this mold. Jane Toppan [21], the prolific serial killer nurse caught in 1901
got orgasms from lying in the death-bed of her victims embracing them as they
expired. Martha Grinder [22], a Pittsburgh serial killer executed in 1866, had
a decided necrophiliac streak; she loved to watch the agonies of her dying
victims.
A Mexican case from the 1890s, publicized in the US reveals
the worst kind of monstrosity, worthy of any male monster. In Mexico City, Guadalupe Martinez de Bejarano
lured orphan girls and tortured them. Old newspapers report that, “the girl
would be enslaved and subjected to torture with a markedly sexual nature. Guadalupe especially enjoyed forcing
the girls to sit naked on a burning brazier; she would strip them and hang them from the ceiling by the
wrists and flog them with a cattle whip.” One victim “was made to endure
every cruelty and privation which the malignity of ingenious fiend could
suggest or inspire. Hunger, exposure, blows, burns, scalds, pin thrusts, cuts
and every other atrocity that can be inflicted without causing instant death,
was the daily lot of this unfortunate girl.” In the end each victim would be starved to death. [23]
There are other examples of female serial killers
experiencing sexual excitation in the act of killing such as the infamous
arch-pervert Countess Bathory [24]. Then there’s Anna Zwanziger
of Bavaria whose “admitted motive was sheer malevolent pleasure. At her trial
in 1828, she confessed that the sight of her victims’ death agonies threw her
into a transport of ecstasy.” [25] France’s amazingly prolific Helene
Jegado, arrested in 1851 who “appeared to have been actuated by a thirst for
destruction, and to have taken pleasure in witnessing the agonies of her
victims.” [26] There’s Australia’s Martha Rendell (1909) who got her kicks from
killing kids [27], and France’s killer nurse, Antoinette Sierri (1926) and what
were called her “orgies” of death [28].
There have been many other habitually lethal ladies of yore
who got a very special thrill out of
witnessing the death throes of the humans whose lives they took. We can only
guess at the specific nature of the pleasure so many other female serial
killers on record through the centuries who admitted the delight they felt as
they murdered, and murdered and murdered again. Among them are certainly more
covert sexual sadists.
In June 2016, Mexican police arrested a 28-year-old Los
Zetas cartel assassin named Juana, nicknamed “La Peque Sicaria” (The Little
Assassin). She
was responsible for multiple beheadings and mutilations of the cartel’s murder
victims. News reports described her as confessing to having become sexually aroused
by the mayhem and used the blood of her victims as an erotic stimulant.
“[I felt] excited by it, rubbing
myself in it and bathing in it after killing a victim and I even drank it when
it was still warm.”
The reports further assert that Juana “insinuated” that she
“had sex with the cadavers of those decapitated, using the severed heads as
well as the rest of their bodies to pleasure herself.” [28A]
We won’t even go into the human-sacrificing female serial
killing cultists (Voodoo, etc.), the baby-eating kidnappers (yes, real-life ogresses), the
sundry other female cannibal serial killers, nor the professional child care
providers who burned babies alive. You can look all of them up in the online
collections of Occult Female Serial
Killers and Real-Life Ogresses.
[29]
So much for the female being a kinder, gentler, seldom
sex-driven and far-rarer-than-the-male sort of serial killer. But wait, this
“collective amnesia” rabbit-hole goes even deeper.
5. Girl Secrets
“I like hurting people,” was the stunning confession made by
British girl, barely 11-years-old who murdered two boys in 1968 and had
attempted to strangle others only to be interrupted in the act. Mary Bell’s
case is famous – as an anomaly. This
child was indeed a serial killer despite the fact that her efforts – serial
efforts – were in occasion successfully thwarted. [30]
But what if this apparently “unique” case were not unique
after all? In fact, my research has turned up over twenty cases of this sort.
One involves a pre-teen Irish girl named Mary Maher, who, in 1906 on three
separate occasions murdered three sisters, deliberately making each tragedy
seem an accident or a “natural death.” After getting away with three killings
little Mary then tried to murder a fourth sister, but sensing the grown-ups
were finally on to her game and that she was in big trouble, committed suicide
– at the age of 11! [31]
Among the other serial killer girls (and would-be serial
killer girls) from the United States that turned up in my research on
historical female serial killers are these four from the late 1800s:
In 1872 a 16-year-old nurse girl in St. Louis, Missouri,
named Martha Whetstone killed four children, including her own sister, in a
space of four months. [32] In 1874 Henrietta Weibel
of New York City, 15-years-old
(or 13 according to one source) murdered one child and attempted another.
Henrietta confessed she was subject to an uncontrollable mania for setting
fires and burning babies. [33]
1892 was a bumper year for such cases.
In June 1892 a 6-year old girl in Atoka, Kentucky, whose
family name was Bottoms planned the murder of her 18-month-old sister long in
advance, succeeded in doing the deed and delighted in the result. After being
caught this precocious tyke expressed the burning desire to kill more babies in
the future. [34] In July, Ella Holdridge, of Tonawanda, New York, age 14, made
a number of attempts to murder other children who were saved by medical
intervention, but finally succeeded in killing one. Her motivation was her
passion for attending funerals. When a lull in burials had come about, allowing
little Ella no opportunities to enjoy her favorite form of amusement, she
solved the problem by poisoning other children. with respect to the corpse of
the one she did kill, Ella remarked that her victim “made the prettiest corpse
ever put under New York soil.” [35] Sometime in 1892 a girl named Annabell, aged 11, of Fairfield County, South
Carolina, committed her first murder, killing a baby. Three years later, in
June 1895, Annabell murdered and dismembered another. She then tortured a
6-year-old boy in an effort to force him to confess to the crime she had
committed. [36]
Thirty years later on, precocious Alsa Thompson, the “Baby
Borgia,” in 1925, at the age of seven [yes, that’s 7!], confessed to poisoning
eleven persons, starting with her twin baby sisters who died, and a caretaker
lady she didn’t like. [37]
The girl’s separated parents had temporarily placed her in a
Hollywood, California family, which saw Alsa wielding a razor against her baby
sister and the foster family’s daughter. The girl admitted to poisoning two
canaries and a cat. She said she had, on various occasions, put ant poison in
the coffee and in the pork chops and sulfuric acid in the stewed peaches.
Illnesses ensued. The case made headlines nationally. The papers quoted Alsa
answering her official questioners – alienists (psychiatrists) and a social
worker – who had asked about her motives, replying:
“I like to see them die, that’s all.”
[38]
Similar cases of little girls as serial killers, some of
them quite prolific have been discovered in in Australia, England, Germany, and
France.
For example, In 1894 a 14-year-old nurse girl in Novgorod, Russia, confessed to murdering seventeen babies “because they bothered her, and she disliked the trouble of
attending to them.” [39] German Ida Schnell, caught in 1906 at the
tender age of 13, serially murdered at least eight babies. I found these
forgotten old news reports by doing ambitious systematic keyword-searching
of digital newspaper archives, not by
combing through the corpus of professional literature on forensic psychology
and criminology.
6. Taboo-Busting
These “killer kid” cases, along with many other cases
involving solitary homicides on the part of young girls that my research has
uncovered (yet which have been completely overlooked by scholars), need to be
no longer ignored by researchers on violence and aggression. There is much work
to do on the facts of female agression and the experts need to get onto it, and
pronto.
There are lots of myths (founded on specious claims of
“gender theory”) to be dispelled.
Even the harshest critics of fashionable post-modernist
falsehoods are often in the dark when it comes to the nature of female
aggression. Camille Paglia, once famously quipped: "There
is no female Mozart because there is no
female Jack the Ripper."
[40] Yes there is, Camille; and not just one. Far from it.
When Lizzie Halliday was captured in 1893,
some writers speculated that since Halliday had traveled to England, she might
have been the “Ripper.” [41]
Most people do not realize that “Jack” did
not perform his gruesome acts on his living victims, but cut them up after
death. Not so with Tamara Samsonova, serial killer, serial dismemberer,
captured in St. Petersburg, Russia, on July 27, 2015, who admitted cutting away
at her final victim, whom she had drugged, while the elderly woman was still
living. [42]
It is an established, well-documented fact that feminist
ideologues have deliberately distorted systematically and on a large scale, the
academic scholarship on violence between the sexes. Dr. Murray A. Straus, a
sociologist who specializes in the study of domestic violence, has identified
seven distinct methods of academic and intellectual sabotage and coercive
censorship practiced by feminists in academia. [43] Dr. Straus’s exposé on
scientific gate-keeping goes far in explaining how our post-1960s collective
amnesia concerning to psychology and incidence of violence by women has come
about.
Although the bizarre fairy-tale notion that females do not
initiate violence (but only act violently in response to male-initiated
violence) held by marxian feminist ideologues is long-discredited, yet it still
has wide currency today among feminists, both elite and common.
As a result of “this investment in a model of gender-based
oppression,” the National Organization of Women and associated “Gender Bias
Task Forces” helped create VAWA (the Violence Against Women Act), which was less
of a practical response to real crime in real-life situations than it was an
effort to construct a violence-free utopia (and a massive bureaucracy providing
a huge number of jobs for feminist ideologues), based on the bizarre belief
that women are “inherently non-violent.” [44] It has taken decades of
coordinated trickery and coordinated and widespread intimidation of academic
scholars to accomplish the successful suppression of the fact that domestic
violence is characterized by gender symmetry, as Dr. Straus has definitively
proven. [45]
News reports keep appearing that give evidence that politically correct theories fail to describe reality. On February 15, 2015, serial killer Elena Lobacheva, aged 25, was captured. This young lady confessed that got an orgasmic thrill out of savagely thrusting her knife, dozens of times, into the twelve men she stabbed to death. [46] There have, it turns out, been many female serial killers who have mutilated their victims, but they are not discussed much. The image of the “monster” in the age of political correctness has to be male.
The facts, when they are exposed, demonstrate that the
entire subject of female aggression needs a comprehensive re-evaluation by
social scientists – in order to discard the deliberate distortions created by
ideologues. This “audit” is needed and it is needed now.
The silence of the lambs must be broken.
Scholars need to stop being cowards, terrified to speak out
about the facts that the real-life Orwellian “thought police” of repressive
political correctness forbid from being disseminated. My recommendation for the
experts on violence and “gender” is to start their effort to initiate crucially
necessary reform with an in-depth study and of historical cases of violent
female children. They can start with online sources “Serial Killer Girls” and “Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Murder –
The Forgotten “Lizzie Bordens.” [47]
Further, Peason’s book, When
She Was Bad, will be an indispensable introduction to the basics and the
YouTube videos of three major female critics of marxian feminism, Erin Pizzey,
Karen Straughan and Janice Fiamengo will serve to debunk most of the dogmas and
fallacies of establishment academia. [48]
# # #
NOTES:
* Feature image: detail from title page: Anonymous, Narrative and Confessions of Lucretia P.
Cannon (1841), New York. Cannon was America’s earliest known FSK (there is
no credible evidence that Lavinia Fisher was a serial killer, despite the
legend). The image shows Cannon burning to death a 5-year-old.
[1] Scott Bonn, Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious
Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Killers, New York: 2014, Skyhorse; Quote:
Scott A. Bonn Ph.D. “Here’s Why We Love Serial Killers: Examining Our Curious
Fascination with “Celebrity Monsters.” Psychology Today, Sep 22, 2014.
Promotional information and quotes are found on docbonn.com
[2] Wuornos was celebrated by radical feminists who liked to
see her as an avenger ion the “war between the sexes.” Elizabeth Bathory, the
early 17th century “Blood Countess” is the archetypal evil woman,
inspiring the name of a Death Metal band, novels, numerous films, plays and
other artistic productions.
[2A] Helen
Geisen-Volk; image shows exhumation of Agnes Toohey (18 mo.), who died Dec.
15, 1924.
[3] Quote: [Scott A. Bonn Ph.D. “Why Some Women Kill Again
and Again. Female killers are rarely driven by sexual sadism like men.” Psychology
Today, Jan 12, 2015]
[4] quote from: Julie Beck, “The Grisly, All-American Appeal
of Serial Killers, The Atlantic, Oct
21, 2014.
[5] 1871-1873: 1871 – Catherine
Batchelor – Lockport, Indiana; 1871
– Lydia
Sherman – New Brunswick, New Jersey; New Haven & Danby, Ct.; 1871 – Elizabeth
Wharton – Baltimore, Maryland; 1872 – Charlotte
Lamb – Trimbelle, Wisconsin; 1872 – Emily
Lloyd – Leesburg, Virginia; 1872
– Martha
Whetstone – St. Louis,
Missouri; 1873 – Kate
& Katie Bender (“Bloody Benders”) – Cherry Vale, Kansas; 1873 – Sarah
Earhardt
– Germantown, Ohio; see: Female Serial Killers of 19th Century
America
[6] 1925 female serial killers in the USA: Anna
Cunningham – Chicago, Illinois; Helen
Geisen-Volk – New York, New York; Pearl
Jackson – Birmingham, Alabama; Julia
Shepherd – Chicago, Illinois; Della
Sorenson – Dannenborg, Nebraska; Birdie
Strome – Springfield, Ohio; Alsa
Thompson – Hollywood, California; Martha
Wise – Valley City, Ohio.
Della Sorenson quote: [“Gave Poison To Children And Husband
- Nebraska Mother Admits Long List of Crimes to Police Following
Arrest - Killed Mother-In-Law Slayer Mentally Unbalanced and Will Be Sent to State Asylum,”
syndicated (AP), The Bismark Tribune (N.D.), Apr. 20, 1925, p. 1]
[7] See: “Female Serial Killers and Guns” http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2015/09/female-serial-killers-and-guns.html
[8] Monster, 2003,
directed by Patty Jenkins Charlize Theron playing Wuornos, Academy Award for
Best Actress.
[9] Winona Green (Winnie Ola Freeman) – “Outlaw Blood Made
This Choir-Girl A Demon! - Alienists See in Her Self- Confessed Slaying of Two
Relatives a ‘Throwback’ to Weird ‘ Indian Tribal Vengeance,” syndicated,
Springfield Republican (Mo.), Dec. 28, 1924, (p. ?). See: Winnie Ola Freeman
(Winona Green), “The Cat Woman”: Arkansas Serial Killer - 1954
[10] Winona Green (Winnie Ola Freeman), quote: [“Girl Who
Killed Two Thinks Her Sex Will Save Her From Death,” syndicated (NEA), Nov. 1,
1924, p. 1]
[11] Maria Oliviero; Inessa Tarverdiyeva; see: “Female
Serial Killer Bandits”
[12] poison deaths – Harold Schechter, The Serial Killer Files, Ballantine, 2003, p. 31
[13] Female Serial Killers: Weapons, Poisons & Methods
[14] Halliday images: 1) 2) “Screaming she sank …” Ada
Evening News (Indian Territory, Ok.), Nov. 5, 1906, syndicated, found in other
papers as well; “She Began Stabbing …” The Bryant Democrat (Ohio), Nov. 2,
1906, p. 6, syndicated, found in other papers as well.
[15] The Dirty Dozen: 12 Female Serial Killers Executed in
the USA – 1816-2002
Female Serial Killers Executed
[16] FBI conference: Aug. 29 – Sep.
2, 2005 in San Antonio, Texas; report: Robert J. Morton, editor, Serial Murder: Multi-Disciplinary
Perspectives for Investigators, National Center for the Analysis of Violent
Crime, U. S. Department of Justice, Federal Bureau of Investigation, 2008,
(corporate author), National Ctr for the Analysis of Violent
Crime (NCAVC) United States of America;
For a critique of the FBI report, see: Robert St. Estepohe,
“Monsters Too Scary for Words,” Sep. 7, 2915, Female Serial Killer Index
(blog), http://female-serial-killers-index.blogspot.com/2015/08/monsters-too-scary-for-words.html
[17] “Rarity” statistics, ratio pf male to female at 1:6 –
Eric W. Hickey, Serial Murderers and
Their Victims, (Wadsworth), 1991; 6th edn. 2015
[18] US cases; 330 cases 1829-2008; see: Female Serial
Killers of the USA
[19] the longest roster of FSKs: Peter Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women
Become Monsters, 2007, Berkley Books, N.Y.; see: Index: FSKs
[20] Patricia Pearson, When
She was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, Viking, 1997.
[21] Jane Toppan: see the superb book on the case by Harold
Schechter, Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a
Serial Killer, 2003, Pocket Star Books.
“Jane Toppan, Massachusetts Serial Killer Nurse – 1901”
[22] Martha Grinder – “Martha Grinder, Pittsburg Serial
Killer Executed in 1866”
[“Martha Grinder, Arch Murderess Of Pittsburg – Women Who
Poisoned Men, Woman and Children for Pleasure of Witnessing Their Dying
Torments, Hanged – Monomaniac Carried Death In Her Pocket,” The Pittsburgh
Press (Pa.), Nov. 15, 1910, p. 5]
[23] “BejaranGuadalupe Martinez de Bejarano, Sadistic Sexual
Female Serial Killer of Girls – 1892”
[Wikipedia in
Spanish; newspaper: [‘A Female Fiend. – Remarkable Career of a Mexican
Woman Who Loved Young Girls. – Every Form of Torment Visited Upon Helpless
Orphans. – The Widow Bejarano and Her Strange Passion – Tortures Young Girls
Just For the Fun if the Thing – Her Sons Partake of Her Cruel Spirit – A
Celebrated Case.’ St. Louis Dispatch (Mo.), Apr. 24, 1892, p. 25]
[24] Bathory – “The Blood Countess,” Hungarian Serial Killer
& Sadist Elizabeth Báthory - 1610
[25] Anna Zwanziger – Harold Schechter,
The A to Z Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, Ballantine, New York, 1996, p. 122.
“Anna Zwanziger (Nannette
Schoenleben), German Serial Killer – 1809”
[26] “Hélène Jégado, French Serial
Killer – 1851”
[27] “Martha Rendell, Australian Serial Killer Step-Mother –
1909”
[28] “Antoinette Sierri, French Serial Killer Nurse – 1925”
(the nale is often, erroneously, spelled “Scieri and “Scierri”)
[“Poisoned Her Patients - The Guillotine Now Awaits
Antoinette, the French Nurse, Who Couldn’t Resist Mixing Arsenic in the
Medicines as She Hurried 30 Victims to Their Graves,” The American Weekly (San
Antonio Light) (Tx.), Jun. 6, 1926, p. 7] [“Poisoned Victims to Watch Them
Squirm,” Prescott Evening Courier (Az.), May 29, 1925, p. 1]
[28A] 2016 – Juana
“La Peque Sicaria” – Baja California, Mexico
[29] Ogresses – “Ogresses: Female Serial Killers of the
Children of Others”
Cannibals – “Cannibal Murderesses”
Occult – “Occult Female Serial Killers”
Baby Burners – “The Baby Burners: Female Serial Killers Who
Burned Babies Alive”
[30] “Mary Bell, 11-Year-Old Serial Killer, England – 1968”
[31] “Mary Maher, 11-Year Old Irish Serial Killer – 1906”
[“11-Year-Old Murderess. – Irish
Child Kills Three
Of Her Sisters. - Sensational Revelations.” Evening News (Sydney, Australia),
Jan. 10, 1907, p. 2]
[32] Martha Whetstone – “Martha Whetstone, 16-Year-Old
Serial Killer – Missouri, 1872”
[“Mysterious Fatality. – The Singular Deaths of Four
Children – An Unlucky Nurse Girl.” (from: St. Louis Times), Wilmington Journal
(North Carolina), Aug. 2, 1872, p. 2]
[“A Fatal Nurse Girl.” The New York Times (N. Y.), Jul. 29,
1872, p. 4]
[33] “Henrietta Weibel, aged
15, "The Baby Burner" - New York, 1874”
[“A Young Murderess,” The Singleton Argus and Upper Hunter
General Advocate (NSW, Australia), Sep. 30, 1874, p. 3] [“Henrietta Weibel, The
Child Burner.” (reprinted from, New York Sun, Aug. 3), The Evening Star
(Washington, D. C.), Aug. 4, 1874, p. 1] [“The Baby Burner. – The Heartless
Domestic, Henrietta Weibel. – A Strange Story of Precocious Iniquity. – An
Attempt to Burn Her Next Door Neighbor’s Child.” New York Herald (N.Y.), Aug.
5, 1874, p. 4] [“A Fiendish Girl. – A Child of Thirteen with a Mania for Baby
Burning – The Mother’s Testimony – An Interview With the Youthful Prisoner.”
(from New York Herald), The Atlanta Constitution (Ga.), Aug. 5, 1874, p. 2]
[34] Bottoms –
[“Another Demon – Kentucky Produces a Veritable Female Jesse Pomeroy, –
Who Chuckled With Glee After Murdering Her Baby Sister. – She Says She Is Glad
She Killed the Infant, and Wants a Chance to Butcher Some More – Community
Horror-Stricken Over the Deed.” Public Ledger (Maysville, Ky.), Jun. 24, 1892,
p. 3]
[35] “Ella Holdridge, Funeral-Loving Teenage Serial Killer
from Tonawanda, New York – 1892”
[“She
Murdered For Fun. – The Morbid Passion of A Child Leads Her to Crime.” The
Philadelphia Record (Pa.), Jul. 21, 1892, p. 7] [“A Pair of Juvenile Fiends.”
The Tuapeka Times (Lawrence, New Zealand), Nov. 2, 1892, p. 5] [“They Looked Nice Dead. – Little Girl Near
Buffalo Liked Funerals. - For This Reason She Gave Seven-Year-Old
Louisa Stermer Poison. - She Was Not Suspected Till Many Children Were at
Death’s Door.” The Boston Daily Globe (Ma.), Jul. 20, 1892, p. 4] [“Young
Borgia. - She Had a Morbid Desire to Attend Funerals. - To Gratify Her Whim She
Poisons Her Playmates. - She Feeds Them on Rough on Rats and When One of Them
Resisted She Rammed the Deadly Stuff Down Her Throat - Horrible Crime.” Daily
Public Ledger (Maysville, Ky.), Jul. 20, 1892, p. 3]
[36] Annabell of Fairfield County, South Carolina. – [“Negro
Girl’s Crimes.” The Topeka Daily Capital (Ka.), Jul. 21, 1895, p. 1]
[37] “Alsa Thompson, the “Baby Borgia” – Los Angeles: 1925”
[38] Alsa Thompson quote: “Child Admits Killing Twins –
Seven Year Old Girl Said to Have Confessed to Poisoning Sisters,” The Oregon
Statesman (Portland, Or.), Feb. 4, 1925, p. 1; R. St. E. note: Not too many
days after the story first broke, making national front page news, however, the
papers carried the story of how little Alsa had recanted her confessions. My
close examination of all the reports leads me to believe, and against my
original opinion, that the evidence strongly points to guilt (at least, at a
bare minimum, with regard to the razor attacks and poisonings not resulting in
human death) and that the recantation stories seem to be mere official
expediency. After all, what can the cops and the alienists reasonably do with a
7-year-old murderess except to try to make her get better?
[39] “Serial Killer Girls” – includes over 20 cases.
[40] Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to
Emily Dickinson, (1990), p. 247.
[41] [“Suspected of Whitechapel
Crimes.” The Huntington Weekly Herald (In.), Dec. 29, 1893, p. 7]
[42] “Tamara Samsonova, Russian Serial
Killer Who Dismembered Her Victims – 2015”
[43]
“Processes Explaining the Concealment
and Distortion of Evidence on Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence,” European Journal on Criminal Policy, published online 14
July 2007). Method 1. Suppress Evidence; Method 2. Avoid Obtaining Data
Inconsistent with the Patriarchal Dominance Theory; Method 3. Cite Only Studies
That Show Male Perpetration; Method 4. Conclude That Results Support Feminist
Beliefs When They Do Not; Method 5. Create “Evidence” by Citation; Method 6.
Obstruct Publication of Articles and Obstruct Funding Research That Might,
Contradict the Idea that Male Dominance Is the Cause of PV; Method 7. Harass,
Threaten, and Penalize Researchers Who Produce Evidence That Contradicts
Feminist Beliefs.
[44] “inherently non-violent” – “In response
to the construction of ‘the
lesbian’ as abnormal and deviant, many Western
lesbian-feminists in the 1970s (and
some continuing in the 1980s and
1990s) (largely middle-class and
white, although not exclusively) constructed notions of ‘lesbian utopia’, based on the assumption that
women are inherently non-violent, caring and gentle, and that all lesbian relationships are based on an equal sharing of power. While
this was not a monolithic or stable discourse (Ross, 1995), it has continued to influence
the conceptualization and formation of lesbian identities and relationships as the polar opposite to the pathological construction (Taylor & Chandler, 1995;
Ristock, 1997). The lesbian
utopia discourse constructed a ‘normal’ lesbian as a strong woman engaged in healthy, stable, conflict-free,
woman-loving-woman relationships. This has
the effect of masking power
relations and violence between
women and works to keep systems
of domination intact by reproducing the binary constrict of
the normal/abnormal. As a result
of this investment in a model of gender-based oppression and the construct of lesbian utopia, many women
feel that they will not be believed when they disclose
or report same-sex abuse. …’ [p.
12, Cindy Hoimes, ‘The Politics Of Naming The Violence: Examining Constructions Of ‘Lesbian Abuse’ In
Community-Based Educational Discourses,’ Masters thesis, Sociology, University
of Toronto, Ontario, 2000]
[45] Murray Straus, PhD, “Thirty Years of Denying the Evidence on
Gender Symmetry in Partner Violence: Implications for Prevention and
Treatment,” Partner Abuse Journal,
June 2010.
http://pubpages.unh.edu/~mas2/V71-Straus_Thirty-Years-Denying-Evidence-PV_10.pdf [46] “Elena Lobacheva, Sexual Sadist Serial Killer – Russia
2015”
[47] “Serial Killer Girls” – includes over 20 cases.
“Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Murder – The Forgotten “Lizzie
Bordens.”
List of youngest murderesses from the “Youthful Borgias”
collection which includes 148 (as of the moment) cases:
Age 3 – 1906 – Ziapasa daughter
Age 4 – 1885 – Lizzie Lewis
Age 3 – 1906 – Ziapasa daughter
Age 4 – 1885 – Lizzie Lewis
Age 4 – 1897 – Retta McCabe
Age 6 – 1892 – Bottoms Girl
Age 6 – 1899 – Lizzie Cook
Age 6 – 1892 – Bottoms Girl
Age 6 – 1899 – Lizzie Cook
Age 7 – 1887 – Virginia Hudson
Age 7 – 1925 – Alsa Thompson
Age 8 – 1867 – Martin Girl
Age 8 – 2001 – Jummai Hassan
Age 8 – 1900 – Valentine Dilly
Age 8 – 1900 – Valentine Dilly
Age 9 – 1885 – Mary Cooper
Age 9 – 1884 – Annie Beebles
Age 9 – 1890 – Eleanor O’Neill
Age 9 – 1902 – Anna Peters
Age 9 – 1896 – Hattie Record
Age 9 – 1884 – Annie Beebles
Age 9 – 1890 – Eleanor O’Neill
Age 9 – 1902 – Anna Peters
Age 9 – 1896 – Hattie Record
Age 9 – 2005 – “East New York girl”
Age 10 –1873 – Sarah Reeves
Age 10 – 1897 – Geneva Arnold
Age 10 – 1886 – Jane Walker
Age 10 –1873 – Sarah Reeves
Age 10 – 1897 – Geneva Arnold
Age 10 – 1886 – Jane Walker
Age 10 – 2010 – “Sandy Springs girl”
Age 10 – 2012 – Kelli Murphy
Age 10 – 2012 – Kelli Murphy
[48] See the ongoing series, “The Fiamengo Files,” from
StudioBrulé on YouTube;.
Erin Pizzey on Wikipedia,
***
