Revision: February 23, 2019 (Original version: Jul. 23,
2018; corr: 3/10/19; 6/8/19)
Title:
Female Jesse Pomeroys – 26 Female Serial Killers under the age of 18
ABSTRACT
(281 words): The subject of female aggression has never received its due from
research scholars. In 1977, American psychologist Ann Frodi determined that of
314 studies she reviewed that focused on human aggression the share that
discussed female aggression was only 8%. The consequences of this absence of
attention has reinforced erroneous assumptions of scholars of an ideological
bent and has intensified prejudices in the culture at large.
Patricia
Pearson, investigative journalist, author of When She Was Bad (1997), notes that both the academy and the
general public have a blind spot, a collective amnesia, when it comes to female
aggression: “Violence is masculine. Men are the cause of it, and women and
children the ones who suffer. . . . Though the evidence may contradict the
statement, the consensus runs deep. Women . . . have no part in violence. It is
one of the most abiding myths of our time.”
Jesse
Pomeroy (1859-1932), an American boy jailed for assault in 1872 and in 1874
sentenced to death for murder at the age of 15, is often characterized as the
youngest known American serial killer. Yet there have been several female
serial killers of similar age preceding and subsequent to Pomeroy. None
received anything like the publicity of the Pomeroy case. None resulted in a
death sentence. “Female Jesse Pomeroys” contributes to advance the study of
female aggression by collecting and discussing forgotten but significant cases
of extreme aggression of girls aged 3 to 17. This paper focuses is on girls who
murdered or attempted to murder at least two persons. The geographical
distribution is broad, including cases from Asia, Africa, North and South
America and Europe, ranging from 1865 to 2011.
Paper: 10,969 words (plus checklist, notes and addendum).
***
CHECKLIST OF CASES
– age
apprehended (age of first killing) – year apprehended – number of victims.
Single Homicide (4 cases)
Hill,
Josephine – 6 – 1897 – New York, N. Y.
Lewis,
Lizzie – 4 – 1885 – Port Jefferson (Long Island), New York, USA;
McCabe,
Retta – 4 – 1897 – Troy, New York
Ziapasa
girl – 3 – 1906 – Bernwood, West Virginia
“Serial Killers” (26 cases)
Barnabet,
Clementine – 15 (or 17?)/18 (or 19?) – 1911 – Lafayette, Louisiana, USA – 22.
Bell,
Anna – 14 – 1895 – Fairfield County, South Carolina, USA – 1, & intended.
Bell,
Mary – 11 – 1968 – Scotswood, England – 2, & 3 attempts.
Bonnaud,
Jeanne – 17 – 1904 – Chatain, Haute Vienne, France – 4, & 2 attempts.
Bottoms
girl – 6 – 1892 – Atoka, Kentucky, USA – 1 (desire to murder more babies).
Bougaran,
Marie-Françoise – 15 – 1865 – Brest & “Lanseven,” France – 4, & 1
intended.
Doiselet,
Marie – 13 – 1889 – Bar-sur-Aube, France – 2.
Hassan,
Jummai – (13) – 2001 – Maiduguri, Nigeria – 51 (accomplice in cult sacrifices).
Kanieko,
Ineigo – 18 – 1921 – Kumakura, Japan – 18 (with accomplice).
“La
Perris” – 14 (17) – 2011 – Medellin, Colombia – multiple.
Maher,
Mary – 11 – 1907 – Dunkitt, County Kilkenny, Ireland – 4, & 1 attempt;
suicide.
Norman,
Agnes – 13 (15) – 1871 – Agnes Norman – London, England – 4, & 1 attempt.
“Novgorod
Nurse” – 14 – 1894 – Novgorod, Russia – 17.
Ouvrard,
Augustine-Marie – 12 – 1875 – Pourcellerie, Luché-Pringé, Sarthe, France – 2
(desired +).
Pellois,
Honorine – 10 – 1834 – Bas-Val, Ornre, France – 2, & 1 attempt.
Post,
Jenny – 16 – 1878 – Spring Valley, New Jersey, USA – 3 (1 survived).
Riefer,
Katharina – 12 – 1930 – Saarbrucken, Rhenish Prussia – 1, & 4 attempts.
Samuels,
Rebecca – 10 or 11/12 – 1885 – Barnesville, S. C., USA – 2.
“Sao
Paulo girl” – 17 (15) – 2009 – São José
do Rio Preto, Brazil – 30.
Schnell,
Ida – 13 – 1907 – Munich, Germany – 8.
Scovell,
Fanny – 13 – 1896 – Oswego, New York, USA – 2.
Take,
Okato –15 – 1904 – Sasebo, Japan – 1, & 2 attempts.
Thornman,
Lillian – 15 – 1906 – York, Pennsylvania, USA – 4, & 2 attempts.
Wanh,
Lala – 17 (14) – 1951 – Bhutanda, East
Punjab, India – 17.
Weibel,
Henrietta – 15 (13) – 1874 – New York, NY, USA – 1, & 1 attempt.
Whetstone,
Martha – 16 – 1872 – St. Louis, Missouri, USA – 4.
***
PART I : Forgotten Killers
1. Jesse
Pomeroy, “The Boston Boy Fiend”
On July 19, 1874 the mutilated body of a ten-year-old
Boston girl named Katie Curran was discovered in the basement of Ruth Ann
Pomeroy’s dress shop, barely concealed in an ash heap. Katie had gone missing
March 18. A city-wide search effort was initiated. Fourteen-year-old Jesse
Pomeroy – who had been arrested two months earlier (April 24) for the torture
and murder of 4-year-old Horace Millen– confessed to killing Katie.
From the age of 12 the Pomeroy boy had been habitually
viciously attacking and torturing other children, ranging in age from four to
eight, and had been imprisoned for those crimes. Jesse was free on parole when
Horace and Katie were murdered. Following a sensational four day trial the
following December, Jesse, now 14 years of age, was convicted of the murder of
little Horace. A second conviction for the Curran murder followed.
The first degree murder charge carried with it a mandatory
death sentence upon conviction. Jesse’s penalty was fiercely debated in public
and in August 1876 the sentence was commuted to life without parole. The press
dubbed him variously the Boston Boy Friend, The Boy Torturer, The Red Devil,
The Demon. Jesse Pomeroy continued to be a well-known public figure until his
1932 death. [1]
For
decades to come after the 1874 trial “Jesse Pomeroy” became a generic term
employed by journalists to label any sadistically violent child. From time to
time this usage was seen in phrases such as “Another Jesse Pomeroy” and “a
female Jesste Pomeroy, as in this 1897 clipping:
Josephine Hill, a 6-year-old girl is inder arrest for
torturing a baby until it went into convulsions. . . . The little thing is evidently a female
Jesse Pomeroy. [2]
In
this paper we will discuss, for the most part, those “female Jesse Pomeroys”
who, like the male original, were juveniles with a homicidal obsession that led
them to multiple murders or attempted murders, in other words, “serial killer
girls.”
2. Henrietta Weibel
Twelve
days following the gruesome discovery of Katie Curran’s decomposing corpse
another sensational story of a homicidal child hit the news. Henrietta Weibel,
a 13-year-old girl was arrested on a charge of
“attempted murder and incendiarism.” Henrietta worked in a West Farms, Bronx,
hotel and had attempted to burn a tenant’s baby to death. Henrietta confessed that she felt a compulsion for setting
fire to children and houses. It was soon learned that the previous spring the
girl had attempted to burn the baby of Mr. Kinney, of Tremont.
During the summer Henrietta’s other acts of mischief
included vandalism, breaking out windows, thefts, terrorizing a 3-year-old boy by threatening to cut off his foot, apparently poisoning the same boy on two
occasions, setting a 2-year old’s clothing on fire and setting another fire in
a room with an infant sleeping inside.
The
Weibel girl displayed an unsettling insouciance, as we see in this snippet of
dialog with a reporter from The New York Herald.
“Henrietta,” queried the writer, “is it true that you
tried to burn a baby at West Farms?”
“Yes, sir,” was the prompt and apparently ingenious reply.
“What could have prompted you to attempt such a wicked
deed?”
“I don’t know, sir; something told me to do it.”
“Would you not have been sorry had you succeeded in
killing the child?”
“No, sir, I don’t know that I would.”
“Then you don’t seem to like babies?”
“No, sir.” [3]
While
Henrietta’s series of baby-burning projects failed to terminate a single life,
we can be pretty sure that, had she not been so conspicuous in her method, the
little arsonist would surely find success.
The
parallel between Weibel and Pomeroy that the newspapers made seems a stretch if
understood strictly in terms of death toll rather than that of character or
pathology. Yet the comparison is entirely reasonable. Henrietta Weibel was a
serial killer in the making, stopped in her tracks only because she carried out
her wickedness so close to home.
3. The
Youthful Borgias
There
have been female Pomeroys younger than 13-year-old incendiary Henrietta Wiegel.
While our focus is on serial murderesses,
it is nevertheless helpful to look at cases of girls who might have only
committed a single homicide, but who are so young it is hard to believe.
Henrietta
Weibel was but 13, but there have been much younger Female Pomeroys. Our focus
is on serial murderesses, yet it is important for us to grasp just how young a
murderess – meaning one who commits a premeditated killing – can be.
A, Ziapasa daughter,
3-Years-Old
A
report dated April 11, 1906 from Wheeling, West Virginia describes a bizarre
act of such heinousness as that which took place on an April day in West
Virginia it is impossible to fathom.
The youngest murderess in the history of this state is the
3-year-old daughter of Michael Ziapasa, of Benwood, who so badly wounded a
2-months-old baby of a neighbor, Edward Schepech, that it died. In the absence
of the baby’s mother, the Ziapasa child attacked it with a butcher knife,
cutting off its nose, stabbing it in the breast in many places and almost
severing its arm. [4]
This
gruesome case, while certainly unusual, is not unique. Thirty years earlier, a
case much like Ziapasa was reported in New York involving a murderess of the
tender age of four.
B. Lizzie Lewis,
4-Years-Old
Four-year-old Lizzie Lewis tried to coax her older brother
into joining her in the scheme to “till” (her childish pronunciation of “kill”)
their baby sister of six months.
The events of the afternoon of May of 1885 in Port
Jefferson on Long Island, New York are nothing less than bone-chilling, doubly
so since the girls act was premeditated and openly conducted.
Mrs. Lewis, mother of four, “after bidding little Lizzie
and her 6-year-old brother Henry to take good care of the baby she hurried on
to her work Lizzie suddenly jumped to her feet and lisped : “Lets till baby,
will we?”
The little boy followed her into the house and into the
room where the baby was quietly sleeping. Placing a chair in front of a shelf
on which lay the knife that her father uses in dressing fish, Lizzie obtained
it, and toddled over to the side of the cradle, saying to Henry: “Watch me.”
Lizzie was laughing, while the boy, half frightened for fear she was in
earnest, said, “Don’t hurt her, Lizzie, or she’ll cry.” Reaching the cradle
they both stood by it watching the sleeping babe, when suddenly Lizzie’s arm
was uplifted and fell, the knife penetrating the infant’s eye. The blood
spouted and the baby screamed, while the boy, now thoroughly alarmed, rushed
from the house screaming and crying. Lizzie did not mind the blood, but as the
baby screamed and cried it seemed to add to her delight, and she kept on
slashing and cutting until satisfied, when she threw the knife into the cradle
and started for the yard.” . . .
Mrs. Lewis, who had been informed of the occurrence by her
son, hurried home. Lizzie met her at the gate, and clasping her little hands
together, on which were spots of blood, exclaimed: “Oh, mamma, dust see baby,
all tut up,” [sic] and she laughed . . .
Lizzie has always evinced a hatred for the baby, and frequently
told her mother that it should be cut up. [5]
C. Retta McCabe,
4-Years-Old
A
dozen years later in New York, a murder, as shocking as the Lewis horror, was
carried out by a 4-year-old. Retta McCabe was the little killer’s name;
reporters called her “the Child Jekyll And Hyde.” What was meant by the “Jekyll
and Hyde” analogy was this: “From a pretty, smiling child with laughing eyes
and dancing dimples she is transformed in an instant into an uncontrollable
little demon,” and it was the latter mode which led Retta to pummel her infant
brother to death.
She seized the helpless babe and hurled it to the floor
with stunning force. Then this wicked little creature sprang upon the babe and
beat it with all her might. The infant died a week later. And when Retta heard
that her baby brother was asleep to wake no more she chuckled.
While
under the protective custody of the Humane Society incorrigible Retta would
attack other children and one of her “favorite amusements is to catch children
of her own age and stuff buttons and beans into their ears and nostrils.” Just
a few weeks after the death of her brother Retta was rescued from a train track
where she had parked herself awaiting her own destruction.
Passengers waiting in the station saw her peril and several
women nearly fainted. The child was dragged from the track. She screamed, bit
and fought. The policeman who held her in his arms had to put her down more
than once for fear she would seriously disfigure his face. At the Second
Precinct Station-House it was found necessary to place the child in a cell.
Behind the massive iron bars she raved and tore madly at her beautiful blond
locks. [6]
The
“Four-Year-Old Jeckyl and Hyde” was
immortalized by the New York Journal with an illstration depicting the shocking
scene of a toddler pummeling an infant to death.
D. Lizzie Cook,
6-Years-Old
Two years on, it was discovered that a 6-year-old in
Tuscaloosa, Alabama named Lizzie Cook burned her two-year-old brother to death. The girl deliberately drew “a
brand from an open fire and set the baby’s garments aflame. The mother heard
the babe’s screams as she was returning from the store and hurried home to find
its garments burned completely from its body and the babe in the agony of
death.” Lizzie readily admitted she set the baby on fire. [7]
E. “Jesse Pomeroy In
Skirts” : The Bottoms Girl, 6-Years-Old
In
the summer of 1892 an astoundingly gruesome case was reported involving a small
girl who was an unrepentant homicidal sadist. The six-year-old daughter of Mose
Bottoms, a black man living in rural Kentucky, deliberately roasted her infant
brother to death.
Although
it had been eighteen years since Jesse Pomeroy’s sensational trial nrewspaper
carried headlines such as “Jesse Pomeroy in Skirts” and “The Bottoms Girl Is A
Veritable Jesse Pomeroy.” The girl had actually anticipated committing the
atrocious deed far in advance.
The youthful murderess expresses no regret for her act,
but says she always intended to kill the baby, and would have done so long ago
had she not been watched so closely that she could not.
She is fairly intelligent, and never manifested any
special viciousness until a desire to harm her baby sister was first noticed
when she mashed the poor little innocent’s finger and toe-nails off with a
hatchet ten days ago. She experienced more pleasure in thinking and talking
about what she had done than pain over the severe whipping she received for her
unnatural act.
When the fifteen-year-old colored girl, who had been
watching the children all day to keep the eldest from harming the baby,
returned to the room she found the murderess in great glee, and still swinging
the deadly club in her hand, while at her feet lay the lifeless form of her
victim. … When asked this morning if she
would like to kill any one else, she answered that she would like to kill some
more babies. [8]
PART II : Serial Killer Girls
The
Ziapasa, Lewis, McCabe and Cook cases – involving 3, 4, and 6-year-old
murderesses – establish the fact of extremely young girls’ capacity for planned
and cruel homicide. We need not look art
further examples of pre-teen and early
teen murderesses [9], which are numerous. Our focus is on repeat murderesses:
girls who’ve killed two or more – or who attempted multiple murders. Cases we
shall look at took place in the United States, England, Ireland, Australia,
France, Germany, Russia, Brazil, Colombia, India and Japan.
They date from the mid-nineteenth century to 2017. The
methods vary: smothering, strangling, burning, drowning, battering, poison,
stab, and, most grotesquely, dismembering or immersion in lye.
1. Honorine
Pellois – The Classic Case
The
story of 10-year-old Honorine Pellois, whose murderous escapades took place in
the summer of 1834 at a place called Bas-Val in the Orne in north-west France,
is, in every detail, a classic example of a “serial killer girl.” She liked to
torture animals – dogs, poultry, sheep – and children too, throwing dust in
their eyes and then rubbing nettles in for good measure. In the space of a
week, Honorine had committed two murders – of tiny girls a little over two
years of age – and made several attempts at larger quarry, namely an
11-year-old boy, but without success.
The
toddlers were thrown into wells near Honorine’s home, one of them only a few
yards away. The deaths were presumed accidental, but stories circulated in the
village implicating Honorine, who had been spotted with one of the victims at
the well in which her corpse had been found. When she finally confessed she told how she was “tired of
hearing that these little girls were nicer (gentille)
than she.”
After the death of tiny Amelie Alexandre, Honorine’s
first victim, when that death was still thought to have been accidental, the
covert murderess arrived to the parents’ home once the corpse of the toddler
had been laid out, opened the door and stood at the threshold grinning and
cackling like a demon. And the evening at the child’s funeral Honorine “was seen
following the convoy, asking to carry a candle.”
Once
she had confessed Honorine demonstrated a complete indifference to both the
outcome of her deeds and the opinions of adults. At trial, during the testimony
of the mothers of the murdered girls, it was observed that Honorine bore an “animated
and joyous expression [in] her piercing gaze,” and “that she revels in the
midst of this maternal grief, of which she is the cause.” The child’s
perversity of mind was further demonstrated by her response to being told of
the gruesome deeds of an infamous grown
up psychopath:
During the course of the
indictment process, Honorine had ceaselessly strolled here and there with the
utmost carefreeness; but in concluding, the King’s Prosecutor exclaimed that
henceforth she must take her place next to infamous murderers Louis Papavuine
and Antone Leger; and as he related to the little prisoner that Leger had
dragged a young girl into her lair, and that after having raped her, he had
torn her out and sucked her heart – it was noticed that Honorine listened
attentively, her eyes sparkling, and it was evident that she is thrilled by
that horrible image.
Honorine had openly confessed to two murders and
several attempts at another and had shown no remorse for either victim or
grieving family. The judge sentenced the 10-year-old to twenty years in prison.
[10]
2. Agnes
Norman – Animals Too
The chilling British case, that of 15-year old Agnes
Norman, whose serial murder career lasted two years, was long forgotten but in
recent times was rediscovered by Victorian true crime buffs, involves not only
the serial murder of four child victims but also the wanton killing of animals,
one of the childhood behaviors cited in the standard profile of the adult male
serial killer. Jesse Pomeroy was known to twist the heads off his mother’s pet
canaries. Agnes, in addition to having “murdered five children in succession, and tried to
murder a sixth, and that while in service she was constantly killing canaries,
dogs, cats, and so on.”
The
victims of the apparent murders by “compression” (the medical examiner’s term)
– which occurred in the two-year and two-month period February 10, 1869, when
Agnes was 13, through April 7, 1871 – were all babies or toddlers. But it was
an attempt to suffocate an eleven-year-old boy that ended Agnes’s killing
career.
[O]ne night [Charles Parfitt] awoke by feeling something
hurting him, and upon looking up found this delectable young woman, who lived
as a servant in the same house, stooping over him with one hand on his mouth,
and the other tightly grasping his throat. Not relishing such treatment the
little fellow cried out, upon which the girl relaxed her hold and bribed him
with “sweeties” not to mention what had occurred.
Agnes
was tried and, due to insufficient evidence, none of the charges of murder laid
against her resulted in a guilty verdict. But the Parfitt boy who survived
Agnes’s attempted to strangle him to death testified at court and for that
crime she was found guilty. Agnes was sentenced to ten years of penal
servitude. Her motives were never ascertained – and the question was worrisome:
None of the ordinary motives
of cupidity or revenge would seem to have influenced her; and one is naturally
led to ask how a mania of this kind is to be distinguished from that of
insanity, which relieves its victims from responsibility. In other directions,
it is true, Agnes Norman would
seem to be sane enough. There is something, however, very horrible in the
notion of an apparently quiet girl going about a house in the character of an
assistant domestic, with her thoughts perpetually turning on the possibility of
killing something. Will ten years’ penal servitude cause the leopard to
change its spots? [11]
The
baffling nature of the Agnes Norman case, in which no motive could be found, is
echoed in dozens of reports of young female serial killers. The unspeakable
cruelty we observe in the cases discussed above is seen in many of the girls
who have killed, and attempted to kill, in succession.
3. Anna Bell: dismemberment & false
accusation
It
was in 1895, Fairfield County, South Carolina that 11-year-old Anna Bell killed
a baby “but was cleared at her trial because of her age.” Three years later
Anna dismembered a 3-month-old baby whom she had been left to look after. After
accomplishing the gruesome deed she set about trying to pin the blame upon
another child. She “hung a 6-year-old boy over a well and terribly burned him
with a torch because he had refused to agree to say that it was he who had
killed the baby.”
Little
Anna’s macabre predilections had revealed themselves two months earlier when
she had been caught disinterring a corpse for the purpose of stealing a breast
pin she coveted. [12]
4. Lillian Thornman
In early 1906 Lillian B. Thornman, a teen-aged Pennsylvania house
servant, was charged with roasting 3-year-old Helena Dorsey to death. Lillian
confessed to having previously abused two other children in a similar manner,
giving their parents the impression that they had fallen on the stove
accidentally while climbing to reach something.
With
a mania for burning children when they are bad, because, as she says, “I am a
devil and will burn them,” Lillian Thornman, a 13-year-old colored girl,
[placed] upon a red hot stove a two-year-old daughter of Robert Dorsey, also
colored, and for several seconds calmly watched her struggle to get off the
stove and away from the boiler of hot water, which was poured over her body as
she alighted on the stove. Another girl then ran in from the yard and saved the
child from further injury. This was the Thornman girl’s third victim.
Two months before the torture
of baby Robert Lillian threw hot grease over a small boy named Leon Johnston,
About ten months before that she set Esther Louise Harris, aged three years, on
a red hot stove and held her fast until she made the statement that she was a
devil.
Little Helena Dorsey, roasted
from head to foot, died two days following the torture Lillian subjected her
to. When informed of Esther’s death Lillian’s reply was:
“Well, I ‘spose they’ll hang me; but I couldn’t help it;
the devil that was in me made me do it.”
She
explained her reasoning thus:
“All Thursday morning the three Dorsey children were
teasing me about my being sent back to Philadelphia, and at that I got mad. My
temper got the better of me and I threw Helena on the stove.”
Lillian was jailed on a charge
of aggravated assault and battery with intent to kill. She ended up pleading
guilty to a homicide charge. [13]
5.
Marie-Françoise Bougaran
It
was in 1865 that Marie-Françoise Bougaran, a fifteen-year-old servant girl from
Brittany, murdered three children in two different families in a brutal and
astonishingly disgusting manner. She was compelled to kill – she stated this
herself – and would have most certainly led to murdering the rest of her
employer’s children.
All month
long in November 1865 the girl systematically poisoned the children in the
Robinaud family, the third of whom was saved from death by medical
intervention. Marie’s method was both ingeniously perverse and chillingly
consistent. Family members noticed that the sick child’s symptoms abated as
soon as the child was removed from the Robinaud home. The teen-aged murderess,
realizing the jig was up, promptly sought employment elsewhere.
She
was next taken on by a Mr. Menou in Lesneven. There she promptly set about
attacking the child in her charge, a girl of two, whose brief life ended
November 29. It was then that this and the previous unexplained deaths were
investigated, resulting in Marie’s arrest.
When interrogated she confessed that she had killed all
the children by forcing them to swallow excrements, and then cutting the veins
of the neck with a knife, which she inserted in the mouth. The post-mortem
examination of the poor children has fully proved this statement to be true.
The girl affirms that she committed the crimes under an irresistible impulse,
and that, had she remained longer with Mr. Menou— she should have murdered his
other child in the same manner. [14]
6. Rebecca Samuels, the Lye-Killer
Scant
information is available on twelve-year-old Rebecca Samuels of Barnesville,
South Carolina who in June 1885 murdered a six weeks old baby named Lucy Graham
by the horrifying method soaking the child in a pot of concentrated lye, an excruciatingly painful torture that corrodes the skin instantaneously.
It
was discovered after Lucy’s murder that “[t]his is the second crime of the same
kind she has committed within the past two years.” [15]
7.
Antoinette-Marie Ouvrard
The
1875 case of Antoinette-Marie Ovrard, 12-year-old French girl with a compulsion
to kill is distinguished by having been well-documented in a fully developed
formal psychiatric report that was published in the major journal on criminal
psychiatry.
Brought
up by an adoptive mother, Antoinette-Marie never knew her mother and her father
was a drunkard. She was the sixth of nine siblings. She hired out to a farming
couple named Lerat who, until they discovered they had hired a petite homicidal
maniac, were fully satisfied with their young domestic. Yet, under her care,
both the Levat daughters passed away without any discernible cause – the first
aged 20 months, and three weeks later the 3 ½-year-old. An investigation was
initiated and the girl confessed to smothering each with a handkerchief. She
got the idea when one day she observed a boy strangle a partridge that was
about to be plucked for cooking. She waited three days until she found the
opportunity to kill the baby in privacy. When asked why she waited three weeks
to murder the other child she said she wanted to delay the act until the
parents were no longer so upset about the first death.
Marie
was examined by doctors and found not to be legally responsible for her
actions. Because her lack of remorse she was, nevertheless, considered a threat
to others and sent to the the Hôtel-Dieu at at La Fléche operated by
Hospitallier Sisters. There, Marie was well-behaved and performed her duties
with diligence. One day a woman with a two-year-old with her was
incarcerated at the Hôtel-Dieu. It was noticed that Marie became gloomy. She confessed
to one of the attending nuns that she was obsessed with the idea of killing
this child and “that she would like to hurt the sick, but that she can not
because she is being watched and she is afraid of being punished.” [16]
It was determined little Marie was impelled by “an
unnatural force” to murder.
8. Mary Bell : “I like hurting little things
that can’t fight back.”
Now
for Mary Bell, the mid-20th century 11-year-old child of poverty
whose parentage was much like that of the Ovrard girl of similar age who lived
nearly a century before.
If
you’ve heard of any young female serial killer, it would be 11-year-old Mary
Flora Bell, the “Tyneside Strangler,” whose sensational crimes shocked England
crimes in the late 1960s. Though only two of the children Mary attacked died,
she should most certainly would have continued killing had her child-strangling
career not been nipped in the bud.
Mary
Bell’s story is extremely well documented and offers copious psychological data
valuable to scholars who study aggression. Because the case is of recent date
and information is readily available the mistake is often made of assuming the
case is unprecedented. This paper demonstrates that this is untrue and further,
argues that the Bell case should not be treated as a curiosity and aberration
but rather as an example that can be better understood by comparing it to
others in its class.
Katharina
Riefer’s story, dating from 1930 Germany, is parallel to Mary Bell’s in many
respects. At Saarbrucken, the body of a 3 ½ year old girl was found hidden in a
in a hollow near a disused cemetery. Rodents has already begun to to do their
work on the corpse. The body was marked all over with wounds, the most notable
of which were the eyes, which had been pushed into their sockets. The cause of
death was strangulation. An effort was made to identify the murderer but over
the next week four additional children in the area had been similarly attacked,
choked and had their eyes pressed down harshly.
The
girl at first denied guilt but was identified by her four victims, boys and
girls aged three to five, positively identified her. The papers note that “Her
parents are excellent citizens.”
When
interrogated about her motive, the 12-year-old said: “I had to do it!” [17]
The
story of a German girl with a compulsion to strangle children named Katharina
Riefer prefigures that of the fictional 8-year-old Rhoda Penmark, created by
William March in his 1954 novel, The Bad
Seed, whose villainess “was raised in a loving, stable household by a loving
Mommy and Daddy [and whose] evil was innate.” [18]
The
significant difference between the Riefer and Bell cases is family environment.
The contrast could not be greater, belying the pat “social construction”
formula holding that environment and learned behavior are the only determinants
to be considered. The reality is, however, that 12-year-old Katharina Riefer
and 11-year-old Mary Bell acted out in a strikingly similar way in terms of
serial homicidal aggression, despite the radically different environmental
factors.
Far
from being “excellent citizens,” Mary’s parents were of the lowest class. The
mother, Betty, was a prostitute and the child was present during her mother’s
provisions of services. Her father, Billy, was a petty criminal and drunkard.
It is
thought that Betty more than once attempted to kill the child “and make her
death look accidental during the first few years of her life.” Betty would give
the toddler pills telling her they were candy. According to Mary’s account of
her home life she had been sexually abused. She told of how her mother forced
her from the age of four to perform sexual acts with Betty’s “tricks.”
Mary,
before she had ever snuffed out another child’s life, had repeatedly been
caught by grown-ups in the act of choking other children. We should expect
these adults would not have suspected Mary’s actions were homicidal in intent.
In addition to the choking episodes that anticipated the two murders, Mary
injured a toddler leaving him with a head wound.
Mary
had a controlling personality. She had a
13-year-old friend Norma who share a last name and over whom the younger Mary
domineered. The pair were together on May 11, the day Mary’s 3-year-old cousin
lying on the ground behind an empty bleeding from the head. Mary later
confessed to having pushed him off a ledge.
The
following day, three girls playing together were attacked and choked by Mary,
with Norma nearby. Norma later revealed that after choking but releasing the
necks of two girls “Mary went to the other girl and said, ‘What happens if you
choke someone, do they die?’ Then Mary put both hands round the girl’s throat
and squeezed. The girl started to go purple.” The events were reported to
police, whose official report of 15th stated, “The girls Bell have been
warned as to their future conduct.”
Ten
days after that report Mary Bell committed the first of two murders, killing
4-year-old Martin Brown, whose corpse was discovered by children playing in the
area. The following night, a Sunday, Mary broke into the local Day Nursery,
vandalizing the property and leaving notes that claimed responsibility for the
killing:
“I murder SO That I may come back.”
“WE did murder Martain [sic] Drown Fuck of[f] you
Bastard.”
More
than two months passed before Mary struck again, this time with Norma in tow.
Brian Howe, 3, was their victim. Mary returned to the corpse alone and
mutilated the remains, carving an “M” into the belly with a razor, and with a
scissors mutilating his legs and genitals.
Police
investigation pointed to the two Bell girls as suspects. Under questioning
Norma opened up and told how Mary had taken her to the murder scene and
described her method.
“I squeezed
his neck and pushed up his lungs that's how you kill them.”
Norma told Mary ran her fingers along
the dead boy’s purple lips. And said she had enjoyed it. Next day both girls were under
arrest. Norma Bell was acquitted but Mary Bell was convicted of manslaughter on
the grounds of diminished responsibility.”
Mary
revealed a chilling absence of empathy, saying:
“I like hurting little things
that can’t fight back.”
“If I was a judge and I had an
eleven-year-old who’d done this, I’d give her eighteen months. Murder isn’t
that bad, we all die sometime anyway.” [19]
9. The Girl
Who Loved Funerals
Mary Bell liked the way dead
children felt; Ella Holdridge liked the way dead children looked. On 1892
14-year-old Ella lived in Tonawanda, New York, and she absolutely adored
funerals.
Mrs.
Holdridge described her daughter’s peculiar obsession:
“She seemed always to have a perfect mania for deaths
and funerals. Every time any one died she learned of it in some way and would
dance up and down with joy, clapping her bands and saying: ‘He’s dead! He’s
dead!’ Then if she could she would slip away and go to the cemetery to the
funeral.”
In
the summer of 1892 there was a lull in funeral activity in Tonawanda.
Consequently,
Ella, it seems, took upon herself the duty of supplying
subjects. She administered rat poison to several pupils of Father Baker’s institution
at Limestone Hill. They suffered frightfully while she stood by and coolly
awaited the coming of death.
Her [method] was to administer rat poison, which she
made as agreeable to take as possible by mixing it with cocoa. When the
children refused to take it willingly she threw them on their backs and forced
it down their throats, leaving them to die if they would, but watching their
suffering from a distance and gloating over it.
In
this manner the girl poisoned several pupils of Father Baker’s orphanage. “They suffered
frightfully while Ella stood by and coolly awaited the coming of death.” The
orphans were terrified of the girl and “ran shrieking from her presence.”
Next she poisoned a neighbor
girl named Louisa Stermer. “Ella made frequent trips to the Stermer house,
tiptoed her way to a window and peeked in. Every time she ran back to her
mother and cried almost joyously, ‘I guess she’s most dead now.’” [sic]
Little
Louisa died after two days of agony. The first intimation Mrs. Holdridge had of
the death was when Ella ran into the house clapping her hands and dancing up
and down, saying gleefully:
“I guess she’s dead now, ‘cause they’re all in there
crying, and there’s a man there with a
box. She’s dead, she’s dead; I know it.”
Then
the girl danced into the street. Louisa’s family buried her on July 11.
Ella thought “her funeral was awful nice.”
Two days later Ella poisoned
the Eggleston girls, Jennie, 5, and Susie, 10. And shortly after that Henry
Garlock, 5.
The
child, too, had been playing with Ella Holdridge and told of eating food
prepared by her. Dr. Edmunds sent for the Holdridge girl and forced her to
confess that she not only poisoned the children at the institution, the
Egglestons and little Garlock, but actually murdered Louisa Stermer. She
described with great earnestness and tragic effect the horrible sufferings of
her victims and seemed to gloat over the death of Louisa Stermer who she said
“made the prettiest corpse ever put under New York soil.” [20]
10. Superstition
A. Superstition: Také
We
know that young children think magically and not until about the age of 7 do
they start to think empirically. Yet superstition knows no age at all.
In
early February 1904 and Japan was about to go to war with Russia. A
fifteen-year-old girl named Okato Také
from Sasebo had a brother who was a navy gunner on the battleship Mikasa, the
flagship of Admiral Togo. The girl worried terribly for her brother’s safety,
even though he carried talismans with him to sea. Okato “visited many temples at
Sasebo, rang gongs and beat the brass at main shrines. and called to many gods,
her prayers being ever for her brother’s safety.” At the Temple of Amida, she
met a 22-year-old woman, Shimizu Osho, who convinced the simpleminded girl
that “that if four children were thrown into wells for the sake of one [sailor]
at the front the gods would guard that [sailor], and he would surely come home
safely.” Consequently, Okato Také
set out to to murder four children to fulfill the gods’ requirements.
Okato
failed in her first effort, the chosen victim, a 7-year-old girl, having
survived her fall into the well. That day was the fourth day of the
Russo-Japanese war. On her second
drowning attempt four weeks later, however, Okato succeeded in her killing
campaign: she drowned a 4-year-old boy. It was another two months that a third
attempt was made – on another 7-year-old girl, but the child put up resistance
and got away. The victim reported the attack but could not identify her
assailant.
Okato’s
campaign to protect her brother through a quartet of human sacrifices “might
never have been known to anyone but the woman who put her up to the idiotic
scheme “but for the remorse which seized her and caused her to go to the
police-box by the roadside at Sasebo, sobbing bitterly, to tell of her crimes.
She told the whole tale of superstition to the police, who wrote it on the
records. Then they arrested Osho,” the woman who started it all. [21]
B. Superstition: Hassan
Thirteen-year-old
Jummai Hassan, following her arrest on July 17, 2001 in Maiduguri, Nigeria,
confessed to being a member of a ritual-killing cult based in Lagos state. She
told investigators that she participated in 51 cult killings, including the
murder of her father, beginning in the year of her initiation in 1994 at the
age of six.
She
was already known to the police. Previously she had been arrested in the past
for burning down a woman’s house, for quarreling with her mother and for
throwing a girl into a ditch, but always avoided conviction.
What
led to Jummai’s arrest this time was the recent disappearance of a 2-year-old boy, Ibro Joseph. In custody the
girl confessed that she slew and buried the toddler and led police to the
grave. In her confession, Jummai disclosed than in her cult,
“We always use a powder to kill. Once we apply it on a
person, he dies and we take away his heart.”
Gangs
of this kind, which murder in order to seize body parts to be used in ritual
magic, are common in Nigeria and are operated for profit. They are particularly
virulent in Lagos, where in 2017 one cult, the Badoo Boys, was rounded up
resulting in 200 arrests. [22]
11. Killing Grown-ups: Jennie Post
Historical
cases of young girls who poison adults – or who mass-poison whole families –
are numerous. These one-off crimes are serious, but it takes a high degree of
callousness to poison a another person after having witnessed the prolonged and
excruciating agonies endured by the victim of arsenic poisoning (which is the
most common used poison by murderers).
In
1878 in Spring Valley, New Jersey, USA, a 16-year-old named Jennie Post murdered
an employer, whose death was thought to be from natural causes. She was taken
in by a wealthy German. The mistress of the house had a passion for helping
poor children. Although Jennie was caught stealing from her benefactors they
still kept her on. In spite of their generosity Jennie murdered the man of the
house and then poisoned the benefactress. The intervention of a doctor saved
the widow.
Jennie
admitting her crimes to another servant and asserted she would poison the
doctor and the cook if they detected her guilt.
It was a peculiarity of Jennie’s that if anybody refused
her anything she had set her heart upon, no matter how trifling, she would
straightway vow his destruction, generally expressing herself in the terms ‘You
just wait; I’ll fix you.’”
Jennie
was an unusually resourceful connoisseur of the art of poisoning, having
employed in her toxic palette no fewer than three varieties of poison in her
campaign to eliminate Mrs. Von Weicht: arsenic, nitric acid, and muriatic acid.
[23]
12. Killing
for Profit: Iniego Kaneiko
Life insurance fraud is a common element among women
who murder repeatedly. Yet a precocious Japanese teenager named Ineigo is
perhaps the champion of this type of serial killer. She was found out and put
on trial in 1921.
Ineigo Kaneiko, 18-years-old, of Kumakura, Japan,
was, along with her husband, arrested and tried on a charge of poisoning 18
people whose lives she had insured in her favor. The girl, sophisticated and
pretty, cleverly tricked both doctors and insurance companies she had relied
upon for authorization for the payments she received.
At the trial, her husband
confessed after a severe cross-examination, during which the woman shouted,
“You are like all men – an arrant coward!”
It is not clear from available sources at what age
Kaneiko began her murder career, but with a body count of eighteen victims it
is reasonable to suppose she may well have initiated her profitable enterprise when
merely 16, or even younger. [24]
13.
Blaming others: Margaret Messenger
Margaret
Messenger of Cumberland, England, was 13 years old when she committed her first
murder. She was nanny for the children of Mr. and Mrs. John Pallister. A little
more than two weeks following the commencing her employment she committed her
first murder by tossing little Mark Pallister, 2, into a well. “The idea
occurred to her,” she later confessed “as she was chopping sticks in the yard
and she took him to the well and drowned him.”
Incredibly,
the couple continued to trust the girl with their children. A week following
the apparently accidental drowning of their 2-year-old son, the couple left the
Messenger girl in charge of their two daughters, Margaret, 5, and Elsie, 6
months.
Whilst at work about 10 in the
morning, a hired boy named Haffen was startled by hearing a baby’s scream, and
on going into an adjoining field be found the eldest child with the nurse, who
told him that a tall man had taken the infant away. Later on she was seen
bringing the dead body of the child towards the house and on being questioned
told various discrepant stories as to what had taken place. Further
investigation proved that Messenger had laid the infant face downward in a
boggy place, placed a stone upon its head, and so suffocated it. She even
confessed later on that she had herself killed the baby alone and unaided.
Margaret
was tried for murder in November at the Cumberland Assises and despite her
youth was sentenced to death. A month later she received a reprieve and was
released from prison in January 1892. [25]
14. More
Smotherers, Stranglers and Poisoners
When
the death of 2-year-old Fern Field in the hamlet of Mexico, New York on October
31, 1896 was determined to have been caused by arsenic poisoning, it was
realized that death another child the previous July might also have been
murder. Fern had felt pain in her stomach after having been given milk by Fanny
Scovell. On retrospect Mrs. Fern recalled suspicious behavior on the part of
Fanny. She
had seen her throw Fern down two or three times about a
week before she died; while Fern was lying in the house dead Fanny appeared
very cheerful and happy; Fanny carried bottles containing a white substance
around with her; when asked what the bottles contained she would reply “I don’t
know.”
An
autopsy discovered arsenic in the stomach. 13-year-old Fanny, who looked after
the children, was determined to have been the culprit and was put under arrest
despite her denials. [26]
In
France a thirteen-year-old nursemaid named Marie Doiselet did not like the
bother of looking after children so she killed the two boys – 2 ½ year old Paul
Caratnauti and his 6-month-old baby brother in her charge exactly one month
apart: June 23 and July 23, 1888. Her method was to place a handkerchief over
the mouth and nose, and pressing heavily on the chest until suffocation ensued.
After the second death suspicions were aroused and she confessed to both
murders. She was tried but acquitted of criminal charges and instead was
sentenced to remaining in a “house of correction” until her 20th
year. [27]
Back
in 1872, when Jesse Pomeroy was busy pursuing his avocation of torturing – but
not yet killing – children, there was in St. Louis an “unlucky” 16-year-old nurse
girl named Martha Whetstone. Her “bad luck” meant that while under her care
four children, three 4-year-olds and a baby, one her own sister, in a space of
four months. It could not be determined through existing evidence that any of
the deaths was directly caused by Martha, therefore no police action could be
taken.
The
New York Times compared the American Martha Whetstone case to the British Agnes
Norman case, observing the similarities and the fact that neither case could be
proved, allowing the suspects to go free. [28]
15. Diversity
of Method: Jeanne Bonnaud
Jeanne Bonnaud, 17, of Haute Vienne, France, was identified as the killer of “two young children named Habrias [who] were found half dead at the bottom of a well in the village of Chatain.” Jeanne was arrested and she quickly put the blame on the victims’ grandmother. Later she attempted a jail escape, was caught, and then broke down and offered a unexpected confession. What she told was shocking:
She not only admitted having thrown the Habrias children
into the well, but declared that she had also killed their eldest sister, aged
five, by forcing a potato down her throat; that she killed another child, a
little boy, by making him swallow a large stone; and that she was also
responsible for the death of two other children, who were found at the bottom
of another well some months ago. In addition, she confessed that her own
sister, Marguerite, had died from the effects of taking large quantities of
paraffin oil administered by her.
Jeanne
was considered mentally ill but her friend and accomplice was not and thus was
open to conviction. [29]
16. Six
Prolific Serial Killer Girls
A. Novgorod Nurse Girl
In
1894 a 14-year-old child care provider from Novgorod, Russia confessed to
murdering 17 babies. She “was arrested on suspicion of
having caused the death of a baby she was nursing, and confessed to the police
that she had killed them because they bothered her, and she disliked the
trouble of attending to them.’” [30]
B. Ida Schnell
Thirteen
years later in Ampermoching, near Munich, another nurse girl, 13-year-old Ida
Schnell, demonstrated the same disdain for crying babies that impelled the
Novgorod girl to do away with the children in her charge. Ida worked for
farming families looking after their babies, mostly newborns while the mother
was in the fields. Ida was undeveloped for her age and dull-witted, but seemed
to do a decent job – when being watched. But she was known to slip away and
play on the swing or engage in some other childish amusement. It was not until
14-day-old Peter Bilcher met his death that serious suspicions arose that Ida
Schnell might be a serial baby-killer.
The
baby’s remains were disinterred and it was revealed that little Peter’s death
“had been brought about by perforation of the yet soft infantile skull with
some sharp instrument.” After repeated denials, Ida finally confessed that she
had murdered the boy with a hair pin. She also confessed to five identical
killings during the course of her peripatetic child care career. “Asked as to
her motive, the girl said that the crying of the infants roused in her
unconquerable revulsion, and excited her to such a degree that she lost all
control over herself, and would do anything to make them quiet.”
Further
investigation disclosed that Ida had “carried the coffins of two of her victims
to the grave, and unconcernedly pocketed the fee usually paid for such a
service.” [31]
A
lurid illustration from a Paris tabloid depicts the “ogress” as she is called
in the act of murder (albeit not quite accurately, showing a toddler rather
than a newborn being attacked in an improbable, yet pictorially dramatic,
fashion).
C. Clementine Barnabet
On April 17, 1912, the Atlanta Constitution published a photo
of a young black woman named Clementine Barnabet. She is the earliest of the
serial killer girls for which there is an extant portrait, a striking photo of
a handsome and strong-looking girl with a white Creole head scarf. For exactly a century, the photo was
forgotten until 2012 when it was rediscovered and reproduced on the internet,
spreading her image and her story far and wide.
The case of Clementine
Barnabet is a thorny one, loaded with contradictions, complicated tangents, and
is obscured in many respects by Clementine’s own not always reliable
confessions. I’ll be offering merely a rough outline of Clementine’s story here.
Beginning in the autumn of 1909, when the Opelousas family of four was
brutally slaughtered one night with an axe in Rayne, Louisiana, families of the
rice belt lived in terror of the nighttime. Neither motive nor suspect could be
divined.
Every cabin door and window is locked and barred and no
family sleeps without a guard. Every ax, every piece of iron, everything which
might be used as an instrument of murder, is picked up and carried inside.
More
than a year passed following the November 11, 1909 Opelousas massacre until a
similar mass murder of an entire family occurred. On January 31, 1911, at
Crowley, a family of three named Byers was killed. Just four weeks later the
Andrus family suffered the same treatment at Lafayette, with the butchering of
four members of the Andrus family.
At
the onset of the investigation several arrests of men were made that turned out
to be innocent. At one point it seemed the case was solved by the arrest and conviction on October 24, 1911
of one Raymond Barnabet, whose son daughter testified at trial. Despite the
imprisonment of the presumed axe-killer the slaughters continued.
Late on the night of November 26, 1911 the Randall family was
massacred in Lafayette, leaving six mutilated corpses strewn about the small
clapboard house.
The
victims were Norbert Randall, his wife and three children and nephew. They occupied a three-room house . . .
The discovery of the murder was made by the oldest child of the Randall family, a girl about ten, who had
spent the night at her uncle's
house. She found the kitchen door open and upon entering saw her parents and the children in bed murdered. . .
. The murder was committed with an axe, which was found in the house washed
off.
Hours later Raymond Barnabet’s daughter Clementine, who
lived nearby the murder scene, was arrested, along with her brother, Zepherin.
Garments found locked up in a closet were seized. Chemical analysis identified blood and brain
matter on the fabric. Clementine was questioned and “the clothes were proven hers and she owned they belonged to her.” Two days
later Clementine Barnabet confessed at a court hearing to having committed 17
grisly murders.
The tall young woman was thought to be between 18 and 20, which would
mean she would have been 16 or 17 at the time of the Opelousas killings.
Almost
a year after her arrest, Clementine was tried for a single murder, that of Mrs.
Randall, yet she was eager to confess on the stand to more. She was convicted
of murder on October 25, 1912.
Clementine
Barnabet, self-confessed “axe woman of the sacrifice sect,” was found guilty of
murder today and sentenced to life imprisonment. The woman confessed to
seventeen murders, and testimony introduced in her trial showed that she had
slain twenty-two. . . . The jury agreed that the woman was responsible for her
crimes, even though a degenerate. It is said 300 persons have been slain by the
“sacrifice sect” within the last six years.
“I
am the axe woman of the sacrifice sect,” she shouted from her prisoner’s stand,
where she is guarded by three deputies. “I killed them all, men, women and
babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.
The
cult aspects of the case are definite if not clearly understood. Clementine
boasted she had purchased canja bags that would protect her and her accomplices
from detection. Reports of there being a Church of Sacrifice where Clementine
was based were widely disseminated but were based on error. Nevertheless there
is little doubt that the murders were
part of a cultic human sacrifice ritual. [32]
D. Lala Wanh
For the story of Lala Wanh, the Bhatinda serial bride
who wed and slayed from 1945 through 1951, we must, at present, rely on the
following astonishing 90-word news report:
Lala Wanh, of Bhatinda, in the
East Punjab, was married, according to normal Indian custom, at 14. Three weeks
later her husband died and was cremated on the day of his death – another
Indian custom. Lala married again. Her second husband also died a speedy death.
Undeterred, she again remarried – 17 times in all, over a period of six years.
Only recently did the police become suspicious. They arrived to arrest Lala,
but were too late to save husband No. 17. Lala had just finished him off with
an axe.
The list of habitual husband killers is a long one,
with 250 cases documented so far, but no serial black widow can match this
simple 17-year old for the vigor of her spouse-terminating career. [33]
E. “Sao Paulo Girl”
On July 6, 2009 in City of São José do Rio
Preto in the state of São Paulo, Brazil a 17-year-old schoolgirl,
who had been arrested in a street scuffle in Gymslip district of that city,
made a confession to police that, beginning at the age of 15, she had committed
30 murders. Every single victim a young man.
The girl, whose name by law could not be released to the press, asserted she had, over a period of two years, stabbed all her victims to death using the same knife, for various reasons, “for money, revenge and to bring justice.” She provided details of eleven killings. One revenge killing involved butchering a man for throwing a glass of brandy in her face in a bar fight. During her interrogation, which was videotaped, she was calm and smiled as she related her story, telling police:
The girl, whose name by law could not be released to the press, asserted she had, over a period of two years, stabbed all her victims to death using the same knife, for various reasons, “for money, revenge and to bring justice.” She provided details of eleven killings. One revenge killing involved butchering a man for throwing a glass of brandy in her face in a bar fight. During her interrogation, which was videotaped, she was calm and smiled as she related her story, telling police:
“I don’t have enough courage to hold a gun — but I can
hold a knife.”
She told detectives she decided to confess while still protected by the law’s limits on punishment of minors in order to avoid the risk of later being found out and charged as an adult:
She told detectives she decided to confess while still protected by the law’s limits on punishment of minors in order to avoid the risk of later being found out and charged as an adult:
“I am confessing because I
promised I would do so before becoming 18 — to avoid upsetting my family.”
The
case was widely publicized throughout the world after the arrest. The
videotaped confession was posted online by police, allowing only fleeting
glimpses of her eyes, mouth or the back of the head. Despite the wide publicity
the disposition of the investigation has not been reported.
Stabbing
strangers to death is a fairly uncommon modus operandi among female serial
killers. Yet in recent years two striking cases have come to light. Joanna
Dennehy, 31, of Cambridgeshire, England, who described herself as a lesbian,
stabbed strangers, always male, for “fun” as she expressed it. During a
fourteen day period in March 2013 she stabbed five men on five different
occasions, leaving one survivor. One of them who was stabbed 40 times lived a
year and a half before succumbing to his injuries.
Another
murderess who derived sexual excitement from killing savagely is Elena
Lobacheva, the 25-year-old Russian “Bride of Chucky,” arrested in 2015. She was
given her nickname for her tattoo of the movie character, admitted she got an
orgasmic thrill from piercing the chest of a man with a knife. Elena, paired
with her boyfriend, is thought to have murdered 16 men, all but one of them
homeless. [34]
F. “La Perris”
Because
“La Perris” was a minor at the time of her arrest in July 2011 her real name
was not made public. Police photos released to the press show her from the back
only. The 17-year-old, who headed a group of Colombian hit-men, was in the
employ of one of the chiefs of Oficina de Envigado gang, since she was
14-years-old. The nickname derives from a hugely popular TV series, El Capo, where the character La Perrys
is lieutenant to a drug crime boss.
“La
Perris,” under suspicion of having committed five contract murders, had been in
custody after having been arrested for possession of a firearm but had
escaped. After a shootout involving three accomplices, she was recaptured at
Itagui, a city near Medellin. Police
also suspect that the teen was involved with training or assisting young
assassins in the Antioquia department's capital city of Medellin.
“La
Perris” was also charged with shooting three because the teens refused the
invitation she extended to join up with her gang. She killed a 16-year-old girl
and wounded a 13-year-old and a 6-year-old.
[35]
PART III : Up From Amnesia
It
has been nearly a century and a half since Jesse Pomeroy came into the public
eye – and he is still a hot topic. Books offering new perspectives on the case
have come out in 2000, 2015 and 2017. [36] Dawn Keetley’s Making of a Monster revives one of the “expert” theories that was
trotted out back in 1874: that when Jesse tortured and killed he was
“recreating the violence he had seen depicted in the dime novels.” [37] Yet it is known that Jesse had long been
bullied by other boys, was regularly beaten by his father and felt despised for
the deformity of his right eye. Further, low brow fiction in the form of Dime
Novels was widely read in the late 19th century, yet there was no
national epidemic of fiction-inspired serial killers.
Some
contemporary commenters attributed Henrietta Weibel’s unspeakably perverse
behavior to poverty. Yet the same logic applies to the 1874 case of Henrietta
as for Jesse. Henrietta most certainly lived in unpropitious circumstances. But
so did her siblings and many thousands of other children in New York City. Yet
these poor children displayed no sign that they felt impelled to murder babies,
again and again.
The
generic male serial killer makes the perfect monster, contemporary
society’s archetype of evil. The female serial killer is a type of monster
society would rather pretend does not exist (Countess Bathory being a rare
exception), or when useful to elevate as the archetype of victim seeking
revenge, as in the mythic “feminist avenger” version of the Aileen Wuornos
story. Generally, the excessively violent male embodies intrinsic Danger, while
the excessively violent female embodies a predilection to “snap” under
unbearable stress of environment or circumstance. The misperception is
dangerous.
It is a common but mistaken belief among law enforcement
and forensic professionals that people who commit violent, incomprehensible
crimes must be crazy, psychotic, or they “just snapped.” This perception is
reinforced in the media. [38]
In
clinical terms this difference would be that killers of one sex can be looked
at as possibly having a psychopathic personality disorder, while the other can
only be seen as suffering from a distorting environmental stressor such as
brain damage or temporary excitement.
The female psychopath is thus rendered forensically invisible.
Up
until the second half of the twentieth century reports of female serial killers
made frequent appearances in the press. Look at US cases in the 1870s and the
year 1925, as in the article “Three Women Who Admit Poisoning 29 Persons,”
about serial killer cases in three states at various stages of investigation,
and you will find female serial killers were common enough that a news report
might mention two or three concurrent cases. [39]
Something
happened in the second half of the century to make people forget. For one
reason or other, a collective amnesia regarding the topic of female aggression
set in both the academy and popular media.
Finnish
psychologist Kaj Björkvist has observed that expert scholars, Arnold H. Buss
(US) and Dan Olweus (Norway), have long dismissed female aggression as trivial
in significance. In 1961 Buss claimed females are so seldom aggressive that
there was no good reason to study the topic. Olweus made a similar assertion in
1978. In 1977, Ann Frodi (US) determined that the subject of female aggression
accounted for only 8% of 314 studies reviewed. [40] In 2013, forensic
psychologist Kathleen Ramsland (US) warned that “So far, we have solid data on
treatments only for boys at risk for adult psychopathy.” [41] Also in 2013,
British forensic psychologist Zoe Stephenson noted more generally that there
was still a “dearth of gender-specific research” on violent juveniles and in
her study, “Sex differences in predictors of violent and non-violent juvenile
offending,” concluded that “more attention needs to be paid to the mental
health of female offenders.” [42]
The
consequence of this absence of attention has been a reinforcing of erroneous
assumptions of scholars of an ideological bent and has intensified prejudices
in the culture at large. The most prominent commentator of this avoidance of
reality is investigative journalist, Patricia Pearson, author of When She Was Bad (1997). Pearson notes
that both the academy and the general public have developed a massive blind
spot, a “collective amnesia” as she incisively terms it, when it comes to
female aggression.
Violence is masculine. Men are the cause of it, and women
and children the ones who suffer. . .
. Though the evidence may contradict the
statement, the consensus runs deep. [43]
This
ethos of denial perpetuates an idealized stereotype of female intrinsic
non-aggressiveness that draws from disparate philosophical and moral positions:
chivalry, self-serving group interest and utopianist ideology.
The message being conveyed is that women, being blameless,
are entitled to victimize without consequence. [44]
As I’ve studied adolescent female killers, I’ve seen a
softer attitude toward them in the clinical and legal arenas, no matter how
vile their acts. It’s as if we believe there is something inherent in females
(“sugar and spice and everything nice”) that makes even the coldest killers not
really as bad as they seem. [45]
How
many of us know of the effect on murder prosecutions that resulted from
perfervid peak that gallantry reached in the early twentieth century (circa
1910-1930), both in the United States and France around when it became nearly
impossible to convict a female of a homicide charge. In 1912 The St. Louis
Dispatch observed that it is declared that on an average a man is slain by a
woman every day in the United States, and that scarcely one conviction occurs
in 50 such cases. [46] Ten years on, the Brooklyn Eagle describes the same state
of affairs:
We no longer stage a purely judicial proceeding for the
trial of a woman accused of murdering a man from whom she has suffered real or
fancied wrong. Instead we stage a melodrama, with the defendant as the
persecuted heroine and the dead men as the villain.” [47]
By
1930 in France the male-jury-approved conjugal slaughter on the part of the
fair sex was given the label “la mode rouge.”
Last
year [1929] 47 French wives were tried in the Assize Court for the murder of
their husbands. Not one of these vengeful ladies paid the supreme penalty for
her crime. This year, to date, 37 husband killers have been released without
even a short sentence. Judges protest, but French juries continue to acquit
women who have killed their husbands because their married life was unhappy.
[48]
That
forensic psychology has for decades avoided serious examination of
psychopathology in female subjects has fostered a pernicious and pervasive
denial of reality that ends up directly undermining criminal justice, forensic
practice, public policy and popular educational.
Attorney
Frank Perri and psychologist Terrance Lichtenwald, authors of the important
2010 study, “Last Frontier: Myths and the Female Psychopathic Killer” sum up
the consequences of this denial:
Women have been perceived to be capable of committing only
reactive or “expressive” violence—an uncontrollable release of pent-up rage or
fear—and that they murder unwillingly and without premeditation. [49]
. . .
Psychopaths tend to engage in violence, especially
homicide, in a more predatory, instrumental manner and are willing to take their
time to plan the kill as contrasted to non-psychopathic killers. The behavior
of the psychopath often is motivated by a clear goal, void of emotional
reactivity, rather than a powerful emotion of rage or despair associated with
crimes of passion. [50]
Instead
of reliance upon empirical social science findings a large part of society is
left to unsound published claims made in the name of “social construction
theory” that, despite its sophisticated intellectual lineage, manages to occlude
as much or more truth than it uncovers, and denying the evidence of biology,
evolution and neuroanatomy – hence, the fashionable notion of a “social
construction” called “toxic masculinity.”
Perri
and Lichtenwald do however observe that fact is gradually supplanting myth, if
at a molasses-pour rate:
[T]he area of female criminality adheres to myths still
accepted by the majority of society but has slowly been changing. [51]
This
paper, primarily a catalogue of overlooked important juvenile case histories,
whose aggregate effect is greater than any individual case, is meant to augment
these new explorations by providing data, exemplifications that may inform and
enrich the topic’s discourse, thus furthering a more enlightened understanding
and practice with respect to domestic violence, criminal justice, forensics,
treatment and pedagogy, and dispel some stubborn myths.
Women . . . have no part in violence. It is one of the
most abiding myths of our time. (Patricia Pearson, 1997) [52]
IV : Last Word
We
close our study with one of the most inscrutable “female Pomeroy” of the lot.
The
story of little Mary Maher, an 11-year-old Irish girl who died in 1906, has
been forgotten for 110 years. The following excerpts from the news reports tell
a tale that baffled all observers. Perhaps the case’s inscrutability is what
has led the Mary Maher story to fade into oblivion rather than be studied by
psychologists as an important case study.
A mysterious series of tragedies, which have created
considerable sensation in Dunkitt, County Kilkenny, Ireland, would (says the
“News of the World”), in the light of a terrible sequel, seem to have been the
awful handiwork of a little girl of 11 years. Mary Maher, the girl in question,
committed suicide, and in her tragic end the police think, lies the true
solution of the fate of her three sisters, Katie, Bridget, and Statia, aged
respectively 1, 3, and 4 ½ years, who died in quick succession without any
apparent cause.
Before taking her life, Mary Maher had tried to murder her
only surviving sister, Maggie, aged 8, by strangulation. In the grim annals of
crime no parallel exists to the formidable indictment which is presented by an
official list, or diary, of events. Summarised, the shocking story is told in
these words:
August 21, 1906.— Katie, a 12-months-old baby, in good
health, dies suddenly.
August 27.— Bridget, aged 3 years, succumbs mysteriously.
September 8.— Statia, 4 ½ years old, found dead under
singular circumstances.
October 17.— Mary Maher, aged 11, attempts to murder her
only surviving sister, Maggie, 8 years old, by strangulation.
October 24.— Mary avoids arrest by committing suicide.
. . .
A juror remarked that he saw the child quite recently
while alive, and there was no sign of insanity on her.
Coroner: You cannot always know an insane person from a
sane person. [53]
# # #
NOTES
1]
Pomeroy – Harold Schechter, Fiend: The True Story of America’s Youngest Serial
Killer, 2000, Gallery Books.
2]
Hill – Daily Missoulian (Mt.), Apr. 15, 1897, p. 2.
3]
Weibel – quote: “A Fiendish Girl.. …,” New York Herald (N.Y.), Aug. 1, 1874, p.
3.; Poverty and Weibel case: “Child Criminals,” The Elk County Advocate (Ridgway, Pa.), Aug. 20, 1874,
p. 1.
4]
Ziapasa – “Baby Murders Baby – Three-Year-Old Cuts Infant to Pieces With
Butcher Knife.” Daily Press (Newport News, Va.), Apr. 12, 1906, p. 1.
5]
Lewis – “Probable Murder By A Little Girl. …,” Reading Tribune (Pa.), May 22,
1885, p. 1.
6]
McCabe – “Child Jekyll And Hyde. …,” The World (New York, N. Y.), Oct. 25, 1897,
p. 9.
7]
Cook – “Child Murderess. …,” Sedalia Weekly Democrat (Mi.), Mar. 3, 1899, p. 5.
8]
Bottoms – “Another Demon. …” Public Ledger (Maysville, Ky.), Jun. 4, 1892, p.
3.
9]
See: “Youthful Borgias” online for a checklist of young murderesses.
10]
Pellois – “Cour D’Assises De L’Orne (Alençon). Honorine Pellois. -- Effrayante
Monomanie Pour Le Meurte.” Gazette Des Tribunaux (Paris, France), Nov. 22,
1834, p. 1.
11]
Norman – quote 1: “London Gossip” column (“Agnes Norman” in header), Irish
Times (Dublin, Ireland), May 2, 1871, p. 5.; quote 2: “Murder As A Pastime.”
The Times (Ottawa, Canada), Jun. 10, 1871, p. 2.; quote 3: From “News of the Day” column, The Charleston Daily News (S.
C.), Sep. 2, 1871, p. 2.
12]
Anna Bell – quotes: “Negro Girl’s Crimes.” The Topeka Daily Capital (Ka.), Jul.
21, 1895, p. 1; also: “Ferocious Anna Bell. …,” Sunday Post (Boston, Ma.), Jul.
21, 1895, p. 1.
13]
Thornman – quote 1: “Says She Is Satan’s Agent. …,” Los Angeles Herald (Ca.),
Apr. 18, 1906, p. 3; quotes 2 and 3: “Baby Burner A Murderess. …,” Reading Times (Pa.), Feb. 26, 1906, p. 5];
14]
Bougaran – quote: Untitled, from “Foreign News and Gossip.” Column, The
Brooklyn Daily Eagle (N. Y.), Dec. 30, 1865, p. 1; also: Tribunaux. Cour
D’Assises Du Finistère. Présidence de M. Lambert, conseiller à cour impériale
de Rennes. Audience du 13 janvier 1866. Affaire de Lesneven. Assassinats Commis
Par Une Domestique Du Quinze Ans Sur Des Enfants. - Vol. - Horribles Détails.
Le Petit Journal (Paris, France), 16 janvier, pp. 3-4; also: Michel Amelin, “La
Chronique De Michel Amelin Andre Gide Et Annick Le Douget Au Tribunal!” La
Tête en noir, n°138,
Mai-juin 2009; refers to source: Annik Le Douget, “Femmes Criminelles en
Bretagne en XIX siècle,” 2002.
15]
Samuels – “A Nurse Girl Soaks an Infant in Concentrated Lye. …,” Salt Lake
Evening Democrat (Ut.), Jun. 27, 1885, p. 1.
16] Ouvrard – “A Young
Murderess.” The Geelong Advertiser (Victoria, Australia), Jun. 26, 1876, p. 3;
“Un Monstre De 13 Ans - Cour D’assises De La Sarthe,” Le Petit Journal (Paris,
France), Mar. 27, 1876, p. 3; Annales Medico-Psychologiques Journal: Relatifs
A L’aliénation Mentale Et De La Médecine
Légale Des Aliénés (Paris: 1878), pp. 369-88. p. 376.; Thomas
Fadlallah, “Les meurtres commis par des enfants en France au XIXe siècle : une
étude sociale,” Revue Hypermedia, Histoire de justice, des crimes et des
peines. 2014.
17]
Riefer – “Youthful Murderess. …,” Kalgoorie Miner (W.A., Australia), Apr. 12,
1930, p. 5.; Eine zwölfjährige Kindesmörderin. Unheimliche Verrung einer
Kinderseele. – Ein Kind setzt eine Stadt in Schrecken.) Illustierte Kronen
Zeitung (Vienna, Austria), Apr. 7, 1930, p. 9.; Eine zwölfjährige Mörderin,
Tagblatt (Linz, Austria), Apr. 11, 1930, p. 4.; Le crime d’une enfant de douze
ans, (photo), Le Petit Journal (Paris, France), Apr. 17, 1930, p. 1.
18]
The Bad Seed – quote: Harold Schechter, The
Serial Killer Files, Ballantine, 2003.
19]
Mary Bell – Shirley Lynn Scott, “Mary Bell: Portrait of a Killer as a Young
Girl,” Crime Library, tru.tv, undated.; quote (“I squeezed …”): Gitta Sereny, Cries Unheard -- Why Children Kill: The
Story of Mary Bell. New York: Metropolitan Books, 1999.
20] Holdridge – quotes 1 and
3: “They Looked Nice Dead. …,” The
Boston Daily Globe (Ma.), Jul. 20, 1892, p. 4]; quotes 2 and 4: “She
Murdered For Fun. …,” The Philadelphia Record (Pa.), Jul. 21, 1892, p. 7]
21]
Take – “Japanese Superstitions. - Talismans For Japanese Soldiers.” Auckland
Star, (N. Z.), Oct. 15, 1904, p. 9.
22]
Hassan– “‘Witch’, 13, up for dozens dead,” South African Press Association
(Johannesburg, South Africa), Jul. 17, 2001; “Nigeria: Ritual Murder: Borno
Police Exhume Body of Victim,” The Guardian (Lagos) Jul. 27, 2001; Misty L. Bastian is an
authority on ritual killings in Africa. See: “Nigeria: Prevalence of ritual
murder and human sacrifice and reaction by government authorities,” (March
2000-July 2005), Research Directorate, Immigration and Refugee Board, Ottawa,
NGA100384.E, 22 July 2005.; Badoo Boys: “Bloodthirsty Badoo ‘cult’ killings
spark fear,” The Guardian, Jul. 12, 2017.
23]
Post – “Jennie Post. - The New York Pauper Girl, who Seeks to Avenge her
Slightest Grievances by “Fixin” her Victims with Poison Potions. …,” The
Memphis Daily Appeal (Tn.), Jan. 20, 1878, p. 1.
24]
Kaneiko – quote: “Girl Poisoner.- 18
People Insured And Killed.- Tokio,” Daily Mail (London, England), Oct. 14,
1921, p. 8.; for the first name and spelling of last name: “Girl
Poisoner Is Being Held,” The Macon Daily Telegraph (Ga.), Nov. 20, 1921, p. 5.
25]
Quote: [“A Youthful Murderess.” (From The Standard (London), Nov, 12.) The
Argus (Melbourne, Australia), Dec. 30, 1881, p. 7] also: “Reprieve.” The Times
(London, England), Dec. 14, 1881, p. 9.; From” “Brief Mention” column, The
Richmond River Herald (Coarsaki, NSW, Australia), Jan. 29, 1892, p. 2.; also:
Messenger – Ian Ashbridge, Foul Deeds and Suspicious Deaths In and
Around Carlisle, Wharncliffe, Oct. 2006.
26]
Scovell – Quote: “The Field Inquest. …,” Oswego Daily Times (N.Y.), Nov. 28,
1896, p. 6; also: Untitled, The North Eastern Ensign (Benalla, Victoria,
Australia), Dec. 25, 1894, p. 2.; also: “A Suspicion of Poisoning. – Coroner
Vowinkel Investigating The Death of Fern Field,” Mexico Independent (Mexico, N.
Y.), November 1?, 1896, p. ?.
27]
Doiselet – Untitled, The Otago Daily Times (Dunedin, New Zealand), Jan. 15,
1889, p. 2; “A Young Murderess,” The Kiama Independent And Shoalhaven Advertiser
(Kiama, New Zealand), Jan. 15, 1889, p. 4.
28]
Whetstone – “Mysterious Fatality. …,” (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.
29]
Bonnaud – quote: “A Child-Slayer A French Girl’s Murders.” The Daily News
(Perth, W.A., Australia), Oct. 26, 1904, p. 8; the name “Habrain” in the
original has been corrected to “Habrias” in conformity with French sources; age
of 18 corrected to 17 based on French sources.; also: “Un Epouvantable Crime -
Cinq enfants jetés dans un puits â la giand’mère et la bonne arrêtées,” L’Auore
(Paris, France), Juillet 28, 1904, p. 3.; “Le Drame De Chatain,” Le Stéphanois
(France), Sep. 20, 1904, p. 2.
30]
Novgorod – Untitled, The North Eastern Ensign (Benalla, Victoria, Australia),
Dec. 25, 1894, p. 2.
31]
Schnell – quote: Bernard Fischer, “Girl of Thirteen Slays Six Babies –
Remarkable Record of Murder Is Confessed by a Child in Munich.” Syndicated, The
Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Nov. 10, 1907, p. 17; also” “Grim Record of Child
Murderess.” El Paso Herald (Tx.), Nov. 16, 1907, p. 18.; “Une « Ogresse « De
Quatorze Ans - Son passée ses aveux -
Sept Enfants Tués, Le Journal (Paris, France), 19 Octobre 1907, p. 1; “Un
monstre de quatorze ans - Les Crimes d’Ida Schnell - Comment On Les Découvrit.
Le correspondant du « Petit Parisien » se livre sur place à une enquête d’après
laquelle la jeune criminelle serait une déséquilibrée.” Le Petit Journal
(Paris, France), 20 Octobre 1907, P. 1; “Les crimes d’une idiote” L’Impartial
(Paris, France), 29 Octobre 1907, p. 1.; illustration: “Huit Bébés Assassinées
Par Une Ogresse De 14 Ans,” Les Faits llustres (Paris, France), Oct. 31, 1907.
No. 106.
32] Barnabet – quote 1: James
Hoare, “Clementine Barnabet: The Dark Mystery of Louisiana’s Voodoo Axe
Murders,” Real Crime Daily(UK), Oct. 15, 2015; quote 2: “Negro Family Murdered.” Lafayette Advertiser (In.), Nov. 28,
1911, p. 4.; quote 3: “The clothes …; “Chemist Metz Says Blood on Clothes of Clemintine Bernabet [sic], Charged With Murder of Randall Family, Pure.” Lafayette
Advertiser (La.), Jan. 19, 1912, p. 4.;
quote 4: “Seventeen Murders Were
Confessed To – By Clemintine Barnabet, Of The “Sacrifice Sect,” The Fort Wayne
News (In.), Oct. 25, 1912, p. 17; “Clemintine”: incorrect spelling of
Clementine in original; Also: Alan G.
Gauthreaux & D. G. Hippensteel, “The Case of the Human Five,” Ch. 4, pp.
52-64, in Dark Bayou: Infamous Louisiana
Homicides, 2016, McFarland & Co, Jefferson, N. C.; Stephanie
Weber. “The 'Voodoo' Murders of Clementine Barnabet, Who Claimed to Have Killed
35 People.” Mental Floss, Aug. 2, 2017.; illustration: “She Murdered 17,”
Atlanta Constitution (Ga.), Apr. 17, 1912, p. 11.
33]
Wanh– “India’s Lady Bluebeard,” Goulbourn Evening Post (NSW, Australia), Aug.
7, 1951, p. 8.
34]
Sao Paulo – quotes: Virginia Wheeler & Dean Valler, “Girl aged 17 knifes 30 men to death,” The Sun (London,
England), Aug. 18, 2009 (Updated: Jan.
12, 2011); “Is a 17-Year-Old Schoolgirl
from Brazil the World's Most Prolific Serial Killer?”Investigation Discovery:
Bizarre Crimes, Aug. 27, 2009.
35]
La Perris –Stephen Manker, “17-year-old Medellin girl suspected of 5 contract
kills,” July 25, 2011; “Teen Hitwoman
Arrested in Colombia,” Latin American Herald Tribune, from EFE, Jul. 25, 2011.
36]
Harold Schechter, Fiend:
The Shocking Story of America's Youngest Serial Killer, Gallery Books, 2000.;
Roseanne Montillo, The Wilderness of Ruin: A Tale of Madness,
Fire, and the Hunt for America's Youngest Serial Killer, William
Morrow, 2015.; Dawn Keetley, Making a
Monster: Jesse Pomeroy, the Boy
Murderer of 1870s Boston, U of Mass. Press, 2017.
37]
Roseanne Montillo,”The story of Jesse Pomeroy, 14-year-old serial killer,” Crimesider CBS
News, Mar. 13, 2015.
38]
Frank S. Perri, J.D., Terrance G. Lichtenwald, Ph.D. “Last Frontier: Myths and
the Female Psychopathic Killer,” Forensic
Examiner V:19 Iss:2. Summer 2010, pp. 50-67. p. 54,
citing: Herve & Yuille, 2007.
39]
Page 3 of April 17, 1872 New York Herald carried two separate articles on
cyurrent female serial killer cases (Emily Lloyd and Lydia Sherman); “Three
Women Who Admit Poisoning 29, Persons,” May 1, 1925; nationally syndicated.
40] Kaj Björkvist. Sex Differences in
Physical, Verban, and Indirect Aggression: A Review of Recent Research. Sex
Roles. Vol. 30, Nos. 3/4. 1994.
41]
Katherine Ramsland Ph.D. “What Do You Say to a Teenage Murderess?” Psychology
Today, Jan 27, 2012.
42]
Zoe Stephenson et al., Sex differences in predictors of violent and non-violent
juvenile offending. Aggressive Behavior. Volume 40, Issue 2, March/April 2014.
pp. 165-177.
43]
Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence,
1997, Viking Press, p. 7.
44]
Pearson, p. 232.
45]
Katherine Ramsland Ph.D., Jan 27, 2012.
46]
“A Man Is Killed By A Woman Every Day!” St. Louis Post-Dispatch (Mo.), Oct. 6,
1912, Sunday Magazine, p. 3
47]
“Our Double Standard of Justice.” The Brooklyn Daily Eagle (New York, N.Y.),
Apr. 7, 1922, p. 6
48]
“French Juries Easy on Mate-Killer Wives,” Anonymous, syndicated (IIN), The
Oelwein Daily Register (Io.), Dec. 22, 1930, p. 3; also: The Tipton Daily
Tribune (In.), Dec. 23, 1930, p. 6; “The Red Mode,” widely syndicated article,
The Jacksonville Daily Journal (Il.), Sep. 25, 1930, p. 2
49]
Perri and Lichtenwald, p. 53.
50]
Perri and Lichtenwald, p. 60.
51]
Perri and Lichtenwald, p. 53.52] Pearson, p. 7.
53]
Maher – “How Were They Killed? Little Girl Murders Her Three Sisters. Tries To
Strangle A Fourth.” Evening Press (Cardiff, Wales), Nov. 19, 1906, p. 2.
* * *
ADDENDUM
Seven additional Serial Killer
Girl cases not discussed in this essay.
1)
1838 – Anne-Marie Boeglin – Stetten, Haut Rhin, (Alsace), France – age 17 (3
deaths) – Anne-Marie Boeglin, 17, murdered her father and two adult brothers in
succession. The motive was, apparently, to get revenge for, and/or to prevent,
incest or incestual rape.
2)
1867 – Elizabeth Wheeldon – Shirland Delves, near Alfreton, Derby, England –
age 17 at time of apprehension. (2 deaths) – She poisoned two children of her
at employer on different occasions so that she would have less work to do.
3) 1871 – Mary Brister – Pennington, New Jersey, USA – age 11 at time of first suspected murder. (three or four deaths) –13-year-old Mary Brister was suspected of murdering three (or four) infant step-siblings she was charged with looking after, killing them over a period of more than two years.
3) 1871 – Mary Brister – Pennington, New Jersey, USA – age 11 at time of first suspected murder. (three or four deaths) –13-year-old Mary Brister was suspected of murdering three (or four) infant step-siblings she was charged with looking after, killing them over a period of more than two years.
4) 1909 – Ivanova Tamarin – Kurdino, Novaya Lagoda,
Russia – age 17 at time of apprehension. (27 deaths) – A mother, 17-year-old
daughter and accomplices robbed, murdered, mutilated and cannibalized 27
persons.
5) 1925 – Alsa Thompson – Los Angeles, California,
USA – age 7 at time of apprehension. Claimed to have committed first murder at
age of 6 (?). (multiple attempts; possibly 3 deaths) – Alsa possibly murdered
her 2-year old twin sisters and woman she had boarded with following her
parents’ separation. Later she poisoned the next family she boarded with, as
well as attacking with a razor blade her baby sister and another child. Killed
canaries and a cat with poison.
6) 1938 – Anna Vucored – Konjice, Yugoslavia (Slovenia) –18 at time of apprehension – 6 deaths. – Anna Vucored, a child care provider murdered a 4-month-old boy. When police interrogated her she admitted having murdered five others as well.
6) 1938 – Anna Vucored – Konjice, Yugoslavia (Slovenia) –18 at time of apprehension – 6 deaths. – Anna Vucored, a child care provider murdered a 4-month-old boy. When police interrogated her she admitted having murdered five others as well.
7) 1940 –
Madeleine Marchand – Beaument-les-Autels, Eure-et-Loir – age 14 at time of
apprehension – 2 deaths, & 2 attempts. –
Madeleine
Marchand at the age of 14 worked as a servant for farm families. She poisoned
two babies to death and set fire to the barn while working for the Leroy
family. Afterwards she worked for the Jardin family and attempted to murder their
baby son but police, investigating the barn fire, caught up with her and
determined she had poisoned the babies.
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Revision: February 23, 2019 (Original version: July 23, 2018; revised Dec. 3, 2018, Feb 9 & 23, 2019]
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Revision: February 23, 2019 (Original version: July 23, 2018; revised Dec. 3, 2018, Feb 9 & 23, 2019]
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[300-3/5/19]
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