preview

Women Serial Killers or Partners to One

Decent Essays

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

Get Access