1. What is a Serial Killer?
A serial killer is a person who murders more than four people, one at a time, using the same modus operandi each time over a period of weeks, months or years.
Serial killers are different from mass murderers in that killings are one after another instead of all at one time.
Usually, but not always, the killer has no prior acquaintance with the victims and chooses randomly or by a set group of characteristics (such as gender, hair color, age, resemblance of a relative, etc.)

2. Profile of a Serial Killer
Unable to hold long-term close relationships (although many have been married or have children, they are usually emotionally distant from their family)
Intelligent and sane
Charismatic
History of a troubled childhood or broken family
History of violent acts, such as cruelty to animals and arson, as a child
White
And MALE

3. A Different Type of Serial Killer
Female serial killers are vastly in the minority among serial killers comprising only 20% of such murderers in 1997, (although the number of females committing violent crimes is on the rise).
Female serial killers also follow different trends and fit different profiles than the vast majority of male serial killers.

4. Differences Between Men and women Serial Killers
Tend to stalk victims
Victims are strangers
Tend to kill relatives, friends, or dependants
Violent murders – shoot, stab, strangle, batter, or rape victims
More passive – poison is common (80% of female serial killers use it)
Kill for sexual pleasure 50% of the time
Kill for profit (75%), control (13%), revenge(12%)
Kill for months, at most four years
Kill for six to eight years, sometimes decades.

5. Types of Female Serial Killers
Black Widow
Team Killer
Angel of Death
Sexual Predator
Revenge Killer
Profit Killer

6. Black Widow
Most victims are relatives, especially husbands, lovers or children, although other personal relationships, friends and relatives may be victims as well
Usually profit from life insurance and live off the money they collect from each victim
Usually kill approximately 6-8 victims over years
Preferred weapon: poison

7. Examples of Black Widow Killers
Diana Lumbrera:
suffocated her 6 children and blamed hospital when they could not revive them
Lydia Trueblood
Poisoned five husbands, one in-law and one child with arsenic
Disguised the murders as typhoid.
Margie Velma Barfield
53 years old and a grandmother
Killed seven husbands and her mother
Burned her victims to death in their beds, disguising their deaths as accidents created by smoking in bed

8. Team Killer
About 33% (the plurality) of female serial killers fit this category
Kill with a partner, usually male though sometimes a sister or close female friend
Would not initiate serial killing on own, but given prompting from partner is equally involved in murders.
Killings usually sexual in nature
Usually kill approximately 9-15 victims over 1-2 years
Preferred weapon: guns, knives, etc.

9. Examples of Team Killers
Martha Beck and Raymond Fernandez
Placed personal ads to attract women to Raymond, whom they could then con out of their money
If victims caught on, they would beat them to death
Over 20 victims
(Martha also showed signs of a revenge killer, killing the women if they and Raymond became too close)
Charlene and Gerald Gallego
Raped, tortured and buried alive over 20 teenage girls
Charlene agreed to help Gerald after he convinced her that it would cure is impotence to have virgins

10. Angels of Death
Work in hospitals and nursing homes where death is not unusual
Exhilarated by their own power over life and death
Often bring victims to the brink of death and “cure” them when no one else know how. Eventually most victims are killed.
Often difficult to arrest and convict because to prove murder over a natural death is often difficult and requires a large amount of statistical proof. On the other hand they are likely to brag about their murders
Often suffer from Munchausen's by proxy syndrome or a God Complex
Usually kill approximately 8 victims over 1-2 years
Preferred weapon: available medication that mirrors natural diseases and maladies.

11. Examples of Angels of Death
Genene Jones
Nurse who worked with terminally ill children in clinics all over Texas
Killed between 11 and 46 infants by injecting digoxin into them and than pretending to try to save them
Continued killing even while under investigation
Beverly Allitt
Killed four children
Attempted to murder at least 20 others by injecting them with insulin

12. Sexual Predator
Extremely rare, in fact only one in US history, though others in other countries.
Geographically mobile
30’s or middle aged
Driven by sexual fantasies of killing
Usually kill approximately 6 victims over 3 years

13. Example of a Sexual Predator
Aileen Carol Wuornos
Only known American woman to fit this description
Prostitute, all victims were clients
Declaring the situation abusive, Wuornos would shoot or stab her clients during sex
Unclear if completely driven by sexual pleasure as she also obtained a profit and had a lesbian lover

14. Revenge Killers
Rare among female, repeat offenders (women who kill for revenge usually do so once in a crime of passion).
Obsession driven, often involve love, hate or jealousy
Victims usually family members or representative of a group that the killer believes to be offensive in some way
Generally show remorse after arrest
Usually kill approximately 3-4 victims over 2 years

15. Examples of Revenge Killers
Ellen Etheridge
Jealous of the attention that her husband paid to her four step children (his biological children)
Used arsenic to poison all four children. She poisoned two at the same time, then the other two a few months later
Martha Ann Johnson
Killed her children to obtain revenge against her husband. She suffocated a child each time they had an argument.
Martha Wise (“Lady Borgia of America”)
Poisoned family members and a pastor, and burnt down a church to eliminate barriers to marrying a man of whom her family did not approve.
Claimed the devil made her do it

16. Profit Killer Kill for money or profit
Different from Black Widow killers because they are hired as opposed to choosing their own victims
Essentially “hit women”
Dispassionate
Most intelligent type of female serial killer
Usually kill approximately victims over 10 years

17. Example of a Profit Killer
Madame Popova
Russian hit woman
Hired herself out to women to kill their cruel or abusive husbands
Killed over 300 men
Anna Marie Hahn
Conned 25 elderly men under her care out of their money before killing them after which she continued to collect their social security checks

18. Other types Question of Sanity Questionable motives Unsolved Crimes
This category includes women who do not understand the effect of their actions. The women previously mentioned all had clear knowledge of their own actions
Questionable motives
women who’s motive to not fit into any of the prescribed categories or possibly do not even know their own motives
Unsolved Crimes
Crimes likely committed by women but the criminal is unknown

19. Conclusion
Female serial killers are an uncommon group. However, once they begin, they kill over a greater amount of time, and frequently go undetected longer.

20. References
Multiple Homicide: Patterns of Serial and Mass Murder, by James Alan Fox; Jack Levin, Crime and Justice © 1998 The University of Chicago Press
Corporal Evidence: Representations of Aileen Wuornos, by Miriam Basilio Art Journal © 1996 College Art Association, Inc. Published by College Art Association
Lack Widows: Veiled In Their Own Web Of Darknes, By Joseph Geringer, ©2007 Courtroom Television Network LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Bureau of Justice Statistics: Special Report: Women Offenders, by Laurence A. Greenfeld and Tracy L. Snell,1999
The Legal Side: Nurses Accused of Murder, by Beatrice Croft Yorker The American Journal of Nursing © 1988 Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.
Female Serial Killers by Dr. Tom O’Connor,
Forensics Science class, taught by Ms. Villani