Political Female Serial Killers

His dead body was found in the woods near Daytona Beach, Florida, shot with a twenty two caliber rifle. “She ended up shooting six .22 caliber bullets into him” (McDuff 202). This is just one of the many catastrophes performed by a woman serial killer. Serial killers are a problem in the United States, murdering on average 2000 people each year (Indiana University np). “In fact, serial murder in the United States alone makes up more than three-quarters of the estimated world total” (Innes 5). Although women serial killers are not very common, they still have a huge impact on the death toll of innocent victims. In order to understand how woman serial killers operate, it is important to understand their motives, the different classifications

Serial murder is one of the most baffling crimes that occur in the U.S. and all over the world. Knight (2006) defines serial murder as the killing of three or more people over a period of more than 30 days, with a significant cooling-off period. The cooling off period may be weeks, months or even years long. Researchers have proposed various psychological, biological and sociological theories that offer a partial understanding of the nature of serial murder. Some propose that the basis for criminal behavior is a predisposition to violence as well as a mix between environment, personality traits and biological factors. Serial killers are predominantly male. Only 3 percent of serial murders are committed by women (U.S. News and World Report,

Over the course of one year, from 1989 to 1990, Aileen Wuornos murdered seven men. As one of the first female serial killers, Ms. Wuornos prompted psychologists and criminologists to investigate the reason why women kill serially, as their motives differ from men. Historically, female serial killers murder by poison, which is considered less messy, therefore preferred by women, and their motives are typically financial. Aileen Wuornos murdered her victims with a gun and her motives differ from the norm. Through the application of the ideas of the attachment theory and the life course theory, further exploration into the causes of Aileen Wuornos’ crimes is achieved.

Often considered America’s first female serial killer, Aileen Wuornos was neither first nor the worst.

6. Female serial killers are rare, they tend to kill for financial gain and need to have an emotional connection to their victim. On some occasions women have been involved with male serial killers to form a serial killing team.

In 1990 seven percent of serial killers were women (Aamodt, 2014). Aileen Wuornos is notorious for killing seven men in the years 1989 to 1990 along a Florida interstate. This research paper will take a look at Aileen’s early life from a child to her teen years as well as her adult life and how the events of her life have affected her psychologically. Aileen faced many life altering events in her life that sculpted her into the person she was and died as.

There are many people who choose to do bad things and break the law; however, there are people known as serial killers who take breaking the law and harming others to an unbelievable level. Murder is a very serious crime. Murders happen for many different reasons such as turf wars and drugs for gangs, by having an argument with another person and not being able to control your anger, or murdering because of a troubled past. Serial killers often come from a troubled past and seek some sort of revenge to what happened to them when they were younger. Serial killers are people who murder over and over again. There are many different types of serial killers. There are serial killers who choose to rape their victims, choose victims whom they know, choose victims because they are a different gender, choose their victims because of some fantasy that they have, or some even choose their victims to prevent them from going through what they had to go through as a young teen. There is no set description of what a serial killer looks like or if they are a woman or a man. Women serial killers tend to be more alluring with their crimes. Women tend to choose victims they may know but murder in a less heinous way. However, there are more male serial killers then women. The male serial killers tend to keep to the more violent and heinous murders. Although not all serial killers have something happen to them in order

A serial killer is a person who kills two or more people within two separate events or a different period of time. Lizzie Andrew Borden is one of the many famous serial killers that America has known. She is acquitted for the 1892 murders by an axe.

According to Jurik and Russ (1990) compared to men, women frequently kill intimates or people they had very close, social relationships with such as family or friends. Additionally, there is hardly any overkill with victims of female serial murderers. Many victims of female serial killers often have no signs of sexual assault, body mutilation, or dismemberment. Women who murder often do not torture their victims prior to their death, unlike males who are seen to engage heavily in torture. For their choice of weapon, many female serial killers used some form of poison or suffocation, known as covert methods, to kill off their victims.

Criminality is still assumed to be a masculine characteristic and women lawbreakers are therefore observed to be either ‘not women’ or ‘not criminals’ (Worrall 1990, p. 31). Female offenders are hallmarked for tireless and inescapable coverage if they fit into the rewarding newsworthy categories of violent or sexual. It is always important to note the reason for overrepresentation of women criminals in the media. “Women who commit serious offences are judged to have transgressed two sets of laws: criminal laws and the laws of nature” (Jewkes 2011, p. 125). Such women are hence “doubly deviant and doubly damned” (Lloyd, 1995). When women commit very serious crimes, such as murder, they attract

suspected a thing because she was known as Jolly Jane and was always happy and loving but she put on a fake smile each day (Whyte, 2010). Her secret ambition was to have killed the most helpless people than any other man or woman who have ever lived. Jane murdered thirty-one patients and all of the blood remains on her hands

The idea of serial killers and the role they play in our lives has fascinated people since the cases of Jack the Ripper and H.H. Holmes, although serial murderers existed before them. The infamous and mysterious complexities of these cases have puzzled and terrified people for over a century. Perhaps due to the deviant and taboo nature of serial killings, people in our society and others have tried to attribute many reasons for why they occur. In this search for answers, one major scope has been widely left out of the research: the sociological imagination. It is through this method of understanding that I will attempt to explain the development of serial killers and apply theories that explain the frequency of serial killings in our society.

Judias Buenoano, who is sitting on death row in Texas, masqueraded under various pseudonyms for years while she went about killing a couple of husbands, a fiancée and a son for their money. Diana Lumbrera, between 1977 and 1990, smothered her six children to death, one at a time, including a three-month-old daughter. Eventually, Texas doctors got wise, realizing they were not dealing with an unfortunate mother with a streak of bad luck. Lydia Trueblood of Pocatello, Iowa, poisoned an offspring, five husbands and an in-law earlier in the 20th Century. During the 1960s and 1970s, Germany's Maria Velten poisoned two husbands, a lover, an aunt and even her father.

If someone was asked to guess what England’s first serial killer may have looked like they would most likely think of a maliciously looking man staring blankly in front of them. In reality, England’s first serial killer does not fit the characteristics that one might expect of someone with that label. Mary Ann Cotton was a mother and a wife but contrary to the expectations of a woman and a member of “the gentle sex” Cotton was also England’s first serial killer. English society during the 19th century was shocked at the discovery of the crimes committed by Mary Ann Cotton and as a result she changed the way humans viewed their drive for money as well as their expectations of women.

Female serial killers (FSKs) provide an interesting stimulus for the sociological mind. Females are seven times less likely than males to commit murder, but female killers remain understudied. Females who murder are more likely to become serial killers, rather than committing a single homicide (Andreas et al. 2006). The General Theory of Crime/Self-Control Theory is used to explain this behavior. Aspects of the theory will be introduced before presenting a scholarly analysis.