Introduction. Women have fought for equality with men in the United States since the mid 1800s with the initiation of the woman’s rights movement. Not for special treatment, not for better opportunities, just equality. When it comes to killing, they are simply not viewed as aggressive creatures. They were forced to do it, they are the victims. Most people's initial reaction to a woman taken into custody for murder is “She must have been abused.” There is very limited research on female serial killers, and even less so as women in partnerships with men since they are rare cases. However, according to a study produced by Hickey (2006), 31% of the 64 female serial killers between 1826 and 2004 were in a partnership. Women who enter these partnerships either want to be taken seriously as an offender (Thompson 2009), or want to “please their murdering mates” (Fox and Levin 2012). De Beauvoir claims that a woman in love ‘‘tries to model herself on her lover’s desire… giving herself blindly’’ (1970). Women will try to preserve a relationship by doing whatever they can to please their partner. Couples who kill have a distinct set of techniques for target selection, way of killing, and means of disposing the body. Gerald and Charlene Gallego, also known as The Love Slave Killers and America's first husband-and-wife killers, were two strange lovers who found sexual thrill in using disposable young sex slaves from 1978 to 1980 in Nevada, California, and Oregon. They stole identities
In today’s world, murderers aren’t a surprising thing, as long as they are fictional. Plenty of TV shows and movies have plot lines around murder, but what about real life? As Scott Bonn states in his writing, of the approximate 15,000 murders in the United States, only 1 percent are serial killings, amounting to about 150 victims per year, with between 25 and 50 serial killers active at any given time. There are plenty of statistics on serial killers. 1 in 20 had the same three characteristics as a child: bedwetting, fire setting, and torturing animals. Animal torture is a common indicator that the child will be violent in the future. Also, over 30 percent of murderers use killing as a way for their sexual arousal (Stone). A murderer
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
Although serial killers come in all shapes and sizes, there is a general profile that criminologists go by when trying to profile a criminal. The typical serial killer is a white male in his late 20s to early 30s, kills within his own race, his targeted victims share specific characteristics, and his method of murder is “hands on” in means of strangulation. The types of serial killers include visionaries, missionaries, lust killers, thrill killers, gain killers, and power seekers. Depending on the type of serial killer, their profile may change; for example, certain clues from missionary-type killers can help decide their religious affiliation. Also, certain types of serial killers may generally have different age groups. Most serial
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.
One of the bigger controversies today is the debate over nature versus nurture. With that debate going on there are many topics that are being researched under it, like serial killers, and what drives them to do what they do. Many scientists are still researching whether or not if serial killers are driven by the way they were raised or if it is a part of their genes.
People were shocked to hear everything the elderly lady, Dorothea Puente, was capable of. Investigators weren’t suspicious of her even after corpses were found on her property because she didn’t fit the typical serial killer profile. The average serial killer is a white male in his mid to late 20’s. More than 90% of serial killers are men according to research done by criminologists James A. Fox and Jack Levin, and among these 73% were white. Only 4% had graduated with a bachelor’s degree. Victims were 67% female, with children, prostitutes, and the elderly and other common victims while 20% were males who had been raped by their attackers.
A serial killer is a person who murders three or more people, usually in service of abnormal psychological gratification, with the murders taking place over more than a month and including a significant break which can also be called a "cooling off period” between them. There are different types of serial killers. Some are mission oriented serial killers; others are visionary killers. There are equally power and control killers and thrill or hedonistic killers. There are many serial killers in the world at large with different motives for killing. Some people are serial killers on their own while others kill as a couple. In this case, we will talk about serial killers as a couple. We have the Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo who have a mix of hedonistic killers and power and control killers. We equally have Ray and Faye Copeland which also falls under power and control killers. The paper will focus on the background, victims, and trail of Ray and Faye Copeland and Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo.
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.
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
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
While most of the violent crimes that happens most are them are belongs to men, women have not been the wilting flowers promoted so heartily by Victorian adorers and (right or wrong) often evident in today's society. Before we get into detail about the fascinating phenomenon of the Black Widow, it is worth a brief overview of women's escalating role in the world of violent crime, particularly in the United States.
This perspective ponders the lack of gender equality in an economic point of view. Cliched roles and class rankings create divisions between the two sexes. For instance, women are expected to take on the housewives roles in society, whereas men are the working, money making figures. Robert may have established his assaults on a lower class than he granted himself to be in. He was a farmer who produced and distributed food to others, and many of his victims were prostitutes and drug addicts, and clearly chose this class for a reason. He might have felt that this certain crowd was helpless, and had a negative impact on society. It is common for serial killers to be drawn towards people in vulnerable situation, as they seem defenceless and will impose little or no risk on them. The unstable attention to class groups may have dulled Robert’s feelings of liability or recognition to the fact that he was murdering endless women brutally. Robert Pickton’s choice of targeting a peculiar group of women, or just women in general, emphasizes the sociological perspective of feminism in this
To thwart of these few successes, psychoanalysis develops a myth of female masochism. It argues women derive sexual gratification from the violence they experience. Even in 1960s, police used to counsel men to not beat their wife instead of arresting them. We note how a study in Chicago revealed that from September 1965 to March 1966, 46.1 percent of the major crimes perpetrated against women were domestic and police response to the calls exceeded total response for murder, rape, aggravated assault, and other service crimes(Icadvinc.org,