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Telly addicts

Why are there no female serial killers?

96 replies

1dayatatime · 11/09/2020 08:56

So during the lockdown I've been watching a few series (some of which involve serial killers (The Fall, Luther etc) and it for me thinking about that out of the hundred of serial killers in history why are there no female serial killers?

OP posts:
Spudlet · 11/09/2020 08:57

Aileen Wournos?

NerosFiddle · 11/09/2020 08:57

Aileen Warnos (sp?) was considered a serial killer.

PlanDeRaccordement · 11/09/2020 08:57

There are. Just do a bit of research.

QuentinWinters · 11/09/2020 08:58

Beverly Allitt
Myra Hindley

DrDetriment · 11/09/2020 08:58

Rose West.

MrsBudd · 11/09/2020 08:58

Beverly Allitt

HasaDigaEebowai · 11/09/2020 08:58

Myra hindley

wildcherries · 11/09/2020 08:58

There are several.

PumpkinsMum18 · 11/09/2020 08:59

Rose West. Myra Hindley. Joanna Dennehy

YippeeKayakOtherBuckets · 11/09/2020 08:59

Women kill for very different reasons to men. And a larger proportion of men than we like to admit genuinely hate women, and get a sexual thrill from violence.

People will be along in a minute to name the very few female serial killers, but if you dig down they all killed for very different reasons than male serial killers do, or were killing alongside a man.

QuentinWinters · 11/09/2020 08:59

it is much rarer though. It seems to me like a lot of male serial killers are motivated by sex fetishises and those kinds of fetishes are largely absent in women. Whether that's biological or societal, who knows. Probably a bit of both.

YippeeKayakOtherBuckets · 11/09/2020 09:00

Cross posted with all the people naming the handful of women...

1dayatatime · 11/09/2020 09:00

Oh I asked my sister the same question and she just gave an intense stare said "because women are smarter and don't get caught" then laughed manically all the while stroking a kitchen knife. But she's always had a weird sense of humour 😀

OP posts:
SlopesOff · 11/09/2020 09:00

Women are too smart to get caught?

SleepingStandingUp · 11/09/2020 09:02

Yeah Rose West and Myra Hindley came to mind immediately and I don't follow this stuff so there must be many more.

Perhaps why are there proportionally more men is more relevent but the violent crime etc rates will answer that for you.
Why are men more violent then when? Nature / Nurture? Is it because they've been given all the power and so weild it to our detriment or is there something in the Y chromosome that triggers a more violent personality?
Is it just down to strength- GENERALLY men are stronger physically? Socialization? Are women just smarter and caught less?

1dayatatime · 11/09/2020 09:03

But a lot of these women Myra Hindley, Rose West etc were led this into by male partners. I genuinely don't think either of these two women would have committed these crimes alone on their end initiative.

OP posts:
WiserOlder · 11/09/2020 09:03

They are much rarer though.

I think it's a combination of things. Women know that they cannot use their physical strength to kill (not usually). Women tend (generalisation I know) to internalise the rage they feel. Men have more testosterone. Men HATE women and it's women that they want to kill, for not having sex with them. Women if they do become killers have already been abused by men who had sex with them whether there was consent or not.

These individual reasons can be argued with I know but if you get a female killer who has killed a few men, I wouldn't be surprised if she'd already been abused for a long time.

Women sometimes tune in to a rage that makes them want to kill when they've been raped.

Male killers tune in to that urge to kill for being denied sex.

PlanDeRaccordement · 11/09/2020 09:04

One webpage is just the “58 most notorious female serial killers”
hellhorror.com/female-serial-killers/

There are more than a handful (5 or so).

WiserOlder · 11/09/2020 09:05

@1dayatatime

But a lot of these women Myra Hindley, Rose West etc were led this into by male partners. I genuinely don't think either of these two women would have committed these crimes alone on their end initiative.
Yeh, I agree, I think they were damaged and pathetic characters who were vacuums. They had no sense of themselves at all and went along with killing. Extremely weak and shocking but would they have killed if they had met a man who was in to train spotting?
Calledyoulastnightfromglasgow · 11/09/2020 09:08

I feel men are hard wired differently with many feeling less empathy.

My husband is a lovely man - not a serial killer - but he feels things differently and this is true for many men I meet. In a very few this is very extreme

PlanDeRaccordement · 11/09/2020 09:08

A book listed in Wikipedia if you’re interested in further reading.

Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters is a non-fiction true crime history by Peter Vronsky, a criminal justice historian. It surveys the history of female serial killers and female-perpetrated serial homicide and its culture, psychopathology, and investigation from the Roman Empire to the mid 2000s.[1]

Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters
Cover
Author
Peter Vronsky
Language
English
Genre
True crime, history
Publisher
Berkley Books Penguin Group
Publication date
2007
Published in English
2007
Pages
496
ISBN
0425213900
OCLC
123390943
The book describes historical cases of female-perpetrated serial murder from early recorded instances in ancient Rome to medieval and Renaissance Europe and Victorian Britain and its rise and escalation in the United States and the world in the postmodern era. Vronsky's central contention is that female serial killers, while exhibiting different forensic 'signatures' from male counterparts, inevitably kill for the same reasons that male offenders do: for power and control. The major difference, according to Vronsky, between female and male serial killers is that females (unless partnered with a male offender) tend not to sexually assault or physically mutilate their victims.[2][3][4]

Vronsky cites statistics indicating that nearly one in six (16 percent) of serial killers apprehended in the United States since 1820 was a female, either acting alone or as a partner of a male or female offender.[5] Vronsky argues that, contrary to popular belief, female serial killers prefer to murder their male intimates or family members, while recent data indicate that currently female serial killers marginally prefer strangers as victims[6] and that historically in the United States, 53 percent of female serial killers had murdered at least one adult female, and 32 percent at least one female child.[7]

BarkandCheese · 11/09/2020 09:08

Serial killers are fairly rare and women commit violent crime at a much much lower rate than men do, so it stands to reason there are far fewer female serial killers.

YesIDoLoveCrisps · 11/09/2020 09:10

Women are too smart to get caught?
Yeah. And also we are too busy doing do so much we don’t have as much free time to go around killing people Grin