Female Serial Killers (The Kelleher Typologies)

Female serial killers are first divided into two groups: those who act alone and those who act in partnership. Those two categories are then further divided.

Acting in partnership – characteristics:

Killers of this type tend to be younger, aggressive, vicious in their attack, sometimes disorganized, and usually unable to carefully plan. They usually attack victims in diverse locations. They tend to use guns, knifes, or torture:

• Team Killer – kills or participates in the killing of others in conjunction with at least one other
• Question of Sanity – kills in apparent random manner and later judged to be insane
• Unexplained - kills for reasons that are totally inexplicable or for unclear motives
• Unsolved - a pattern of unsolved killings that may be attributed to a woman (or women)

Acting alone – characteristics:

Killers of this type are often mature, careful, deliberate, socially adept, and highly organized. They usually attack victims in their home or place of work. They tend to favor a specific weapon, like poison, lethal injection, or suffocations:

• Black Widow - systematically kills multiple spouses, partners, or other family members
• Angel of Death - systematically kills people who are in her care for some form of medical attention
• Sexual Predator – systematically kills others in clear acts of sexual homicide
• Revenge - systematically kills out of hate or jealousy
• Profit or Crime – systematically kills for profit or in course of committing another crime

Finding Karla

A reporter has tracked down Karla Homolka, who is married and has three children, and lives in the Caribbean. 

From what I understand, she was able to get Karla to agree to an interview with her in exchange for the reporter handing over all the information used to find Karla - so that Karla could make sure it wouldn’t happen again.

(The e-book is published by the Canadian Writers Group and is available on Kindle Singles, Kobo, iBooks and Nook for $2.99.)

Female Serial Killers - The 6 typologies

1. Black Widow: Most of their victims are relatives, romantic relationships, or close friends. Black widows kill for monetary gain, most often life insurance. These women often kill 6-8 people over a period of ten to fifteen years and their preferred method is poison.

   Example: Lydia Trueblood killed five husbands, her brother in-law, and her baby daughter.

2. Angel of Death: These women are workers in hospitals or senior homes where death is not uncommon. They are exhilirated by their power over life and death and often bring their patients to the brink of death before miraculously curing them, though most victims are eventually killed. These women often suffer from Munchausen’s by proxy syndrome or a God complex. This type of killer usually claims 8-12 victims over a 1-2 year period. They kill slowly with drugs or poison that mirror the effects of disease and sickness.

   Example: Genene Jones killed between 11 and 46 terminlly ill infants by injecting them with digoxin and pretending to try to save them. Jones continued to kill even while under investigation.

3. Sexual Predator: The rarest of female serial killers; only one known North American case. These women are usually in their 30’s and and geographically mobile. They are driven by sexual fantasies of killing and kill on average 6 people in a 3 year period.

   Example: Aileen Carol Wuornos worked as a prostitute and killed 7 male clients. She would claim that they tried to rape her and would shoot or stab them during sex.

4. Revenge Killer: Also rare, and generally only found among repeat offenders. These women kill family members or friends that they beleive offended them. Revenge killers usually kill 3-4 victims over a two year period and tend to show remorse after the act.

   Example: Martha Wise killed family members and a pastor and also burnt down a church because she viewed them as barriers that kept her from marrying the man she loved. She later claimed that the devil made her do it.

5. Team Killers: These women often do not kill on their own but are coerced into doing so by a partner. Teams are most often male-female, however the partner may also be a sister or close female friend. 35% of female serial killers fall into this category. Killings are often sexual in nature and there are usually 9-15 victims in a two-year period.

   Example: Charlene and Gerald Gallego raped, tortured and buried alive over 20 girls. Charlene helped Gerald because he claimed that taking virgins would cure his impotency.

6. Profit Killers: Essentially hit women, these women tend to be the most intelligent of the female serial killers are very dispassionate.

   Example: Madame Popova was a Russian hit woman that hired herself out to women who had cruel and abusive husbands. She killed more than 300 men.

Female Serial Killers (The Kelleher Typologies)

Female serial killers are first divided into two groups: those who act alone and those who act in partnership. Those two categories are then further divided.

Acting in partnership – characteristics:

Killers of this type tend to be younger, aggressive, vicious in their attack, sometimes disorganized, and usually unable to carefully plan. They usually attack victims in diverse locations. They tend to use guns, knifes, or torture:

• Team Killer – kills or participates in the killing of others in conjunction with at least one other
• Question of Sanity – kills in apparent random manner and later judged to be insane
• Unexplained - kills for reasons that are totally inexplicable or for unclear motives
• Unsolved - a pattern of unsolved killings that may be attributed to a woman (or women)

Acting alone – characteristics:

Killers of this type are often mature, careful, deliberate, socially adept, and highly organized. They usually attack victims in their home or place of work. They tend to favor a specific weapon, like poison, lethal injection, or suffocations:

• Black Widow - systematically kills multiple spouses, partners, or other family members
• Angel of Death - systematically kills people who are in her care for some form of medical attention
• Sexual Predator – systematically kills others in clear acts of sexual homicide
• Revenge - systematically kills out of hate or jealousy
• Profit or Crime – systematically kills for profit or in course of committing another crime

“Don’t blame me, blame my nature. I can’t change what I was meant to be, can I?” 

- Jane Toppan

Female Sex Offenders (stats from a British study)

• 86% of survivors of sexual abuse were not believed when they said the abuser was a woman.
• most people believe women only molest children when coerced by a male; in fact research shows that women often take the lead
• Women commit 25% of all child sexual abuse
• despite the seriousness of these offences, women generally escaped custodial sentences
• It was more traumatic to be sexually abused by a woman - children feel more betrayed, they feel very angry, they feel the woman should have cared for them, should have loved them instead of abusing them.
• Victims often report excessive force equivalent to if not greater than that of a man
• Half the women in a recent survey of 50 convicted female sexual abusers said they derived sadistic pleasure from inflicting pain onvictims
• they often acquire a position of trust

criminalprofiler:

Female Murderers and Serial Killers

Female murderers and serial killers are often viewed as compliant victims, passive women who are driven to violence by the influence of a dominant male partner. This is true in a number of cases. Many female serial killers come from abusive or unstable homes and suffer from poor self-esteem, which makes them highly susceptible to threats from a lover that he will leave or abuse them if they do not cooperate in sex crimes such as abduction and rape. But this does not explain the motive of every woman serial killer. There have also been many female serial killers who have either worked alone to commit murder for revenge or financial gain, or were from the outset wiling participants in the sex crimes of their partners.

Categories of Female Murderers and Serial Killers:

Temporary Insanity Due to Hormonal Imbalance and Postpartum Depression

• Temporary insanity related to hormonal imbalance or recent childbirth is one factor that is considered in cases where a woman commits a sudden, violent crime. PMS and postpartum depression is sometimes used as a defense if it can be proven the woman was not in her right state of mind when the murder or murders were committed.
• One well-known example of a woman driven to kill involves the case of Andrea Yates, who drowned her five children in a bathtub while suffering postpartum depression and severe psychosis after recent childbirth.

Black Widow Serial Killers

• Black widows are women who, like the spider for which they are named, kill off their mates. Black widows may not stop at husbands but murder other family members as well for financial gain.
• The black widow’s murders often involve poisonings, falls or car wrecks made to look like accidents. Tip-offs are often multiple marriages where the husbands die mysterious deaths, and large payoffs on insurance policies on spouses and children. Serial killer Lydia Catherine Ambrose killed five husbands and lovers for their insurance money

Female Revenge Killers

• Many female murderers fall into the revenge category. These women usually lack self-esteem and become obsessed over a lover. They may begin by killing or wanting to kill someone who they perceived has betrayed them, such as a husband or lover, and their motive is to get even.
• Also in this category are women who kill their children to spite the lover, husband or boyfriend who has betrayed them. Women who fit into this category include Aileen Wuornos, a prostitute who murdered the Johns she picked up because of pent-up resentment from suffering years of abuse from men.

Angel of Death Mercy Killers

• Angel of mercy serial killers are some of the most difficult to spot because their crimes hide behind the mask of caring and compassion for the sick and weak.
• These killers are usually employed in a caring occupation such as a nurse at a hospital or care center. They may either see themselves as mercy killers who relieve suffering, or kill for the thrill and the attention of almost saving a victim, then letting the victim die.
• Genene Jones, while working as a pediatric nurse, is believed to have killed between 11 and 46 infants and children in her care.

Male and Female Team Sex Crime Serial Killers

• Team killers are influenced by a dominant partner. The woman is usually not the lead partner but often participates in the abduction of victims and the crime, such as in the case of Karla Homolka and Paul Bernardo. Karla Homolka helped Paul Bernardo subdue and rape victims — even her own sister — and was believed to have participated in several of the murders of young women for which the pair were convicted.
• Other categories of women serial killers include sexual predators and thrill killers. Women sexual predators are rare, and female thrill killer are usually part of a team. Other murders committed by women may be either unexplained or remain unsolved.

On January 20, 1972, Marybeth Tinning rushed her two-year-old son, Joseph Jr., to the emergency room in Schenectady, NY. She claimed he’d suffered some kind of seizure, but doctors couldn’t find anything wrong with him. Hours later, she returned again and, this time, little Joseph Jr. was dead. Tinning said she’d put him to bed, then found him tangled in the sheets. It seemed a horribly tragic loss for Tinning and her husband, Joe — her father had died of a heart attack the previous October and their newborn daughter, Jennifer, had died just a month before, from meningitis and had never even left the hospital.

Police investigated, the but there was no evidence of a crime. However, less than six weeks later, Tinning returned to the emergency room with their remaining child, Barbara, age 4. The doctors wanted to keep Barbara, but Tinning insisted on taking her home. Hours later, Tinning returned with an unconscious Barabara, who later died. All three Tinning children had died within 90 days of each other.

Sadly, it didn’t end there. Over the years, the Tinnings continued to have more children, and even adopted an infant, and most of them survived only a few months. Some deaths were blamed on SIDS, though the odds of it occurring more than once to the same family are astronomical. Doctors did all kinds of studies to see if the problem was genetic, which seemed to be ruled out when their adopted son, Michael, died as well. Questions were asked, but not enough people from different organizations put their information together to launch an investigation. Each time the Tinnings had another child, some people would wonder how long the baby would live.

It wasn’t until the death of the Tinning’s ninth child, Tami Lynne in 1985 (fourteen years after her killing spree began), that police finally arrested her. Tinning confessed to smothering Tami Lynne with a pillow, then confessed to killing two of the others. Later, she tried to recant her testimony. She was eventually convicted in of murdering Tami Lynne, the only one for which police could obtain enough evidence. Efforts were made to try her for two others, but were later dropped. She was convicted of second degree murder in July, 1987, and is currently up for parole.

Beverly Allitt(born October 4, 1968), a state enrolled nurse, was convicted of murdering four children, of attempt to murder three others and of causing grievous bodily harm to six more. Dubbed the UK’s first female serial killer, she allegedly suffered from the Munchhausen by Proxy syndrome. She spent considerable time in hospitals seeking medical attention as she often complained of a series of physical ailments, which culminated in the removal of her perfectly healthy appendix. It failed to heal because Allitt would pluck at her surgical scar. She eventually became a nurse and was soon suspected of odd behaviour, such as smearing feces on the walls or putting it into the refrigerator for others to find. When she realised that her fake illnesses were not getting her the attention she sought, she found another venue by abusing children. Her first victim was the seven-week-old patient Liam Taylor. He was brought into the hospital with a chest cold. Allitt took care of the boy and assured the parents that he would be fine. Later that night, Liam went into cardiac arrest and stopped breathing. Allit’s nursing colleagues were confused by the absence of alarm monitors at the time, which had failed to sound when he stopped breathing. Liam suffered severe brain damage, and remained alive courtesy only of life-supporting machines. On medical advice, his parents made the agonizing decision to remove their baby from life support, and his cause of death was recorded as heart failure.Beverly Allits main way of killing her victims was to inject them with extremely high doses of insulin. Allitts victims went into cardiac arrest and either died, were permanently brain damaged, or seriously injured. Allitt went on for months killing and injuring young children. Finally, one of her patients, Claire Peck, was given an autopsy. Doctors found traces of the drug lignocaine in her tissues, a substance used in circumstances of cardiac arrest, but never in a baby. Within three weeks of the investigation, police arrested Beverly Allitt. She denied having any part in the murders and she was extremely calm under interrogation. Allitt was charged and convicted to 13 life sentences for murder and attempted murder. It was the most severe sentence ever given to a woman. During her trial she rapidly lost weight and became anorexic. During her time in prison, she burned herself with boiling water and cut herself with glass.

Marie Alexander Becker

Born in 1877, Marie Becker spent most of her adult life as a housewife in Liege, Belgium. In 1932, when she was 55 years old, she entered into a tempestuous affair with Lambert Beyer, a local lothario several years her junior. Soon after their first meeting, in a local grocery market, Becker poisoned her husband with digitalis and began spending all her time with her lover. Romance paled as Beyer failed to keep up with her pace, and Marie soon dispatched him, as well.

Bent on recapturing lost youth, Becker became a fixture in the local nightclubs, performing wild dances with men half her age, bribing a series of young lovers to share her bed. It all cost money she could ill afford, and soon Maria opened a modest dress shop in Liege, supplementing her income by robbing and poisoning elderly patrons. Before her sideline was discovered, it is estimated that she murdered ten, at least, obtaining minor sums of cash from each.

A female friend was Becker’s undoing, running to Maria with complaints about her husband, declaring that she wished the no-good rascal dead. Maria suggested digitalis, offering a sample from her own supply, and after several days of cooling off, her friend reported the discussion to the police. Maria was arrested in October 1936, with tests revealing poison in the bodies of her husband, Lambert Beyer, and a number of her female customers. At trial, she gloated over details of the several deaths and drew a term of life imprisonment. She died in jail, while World War II was underway.

(Source: )

Anjette Donovan Lyles

A self-styled practitioner of black magic and voodoo, Anjette Lyles was born in Georgia during 1917. In 1958, authorities in Macon received an anonymous letter , charging that Lyles’ daughter Marcia was being poisoned at home, and they felt obliged to investigate. The girl died before police intervened, but an autopsy revealed lethal traces of arsenic. The grieving mother spun a tale of accidental death, with Marcia eating poison during a game of “doctor and nurse,” but homicide investigators weren’t convinced. Their background search had turned up other family skeletons, including Anjette’s last two husbands and one of her mothers-in-law. On exhumation, all three victims tested positive for arsenic, and Lyles was shown to have received insurance benefits upon the death of each. Convicted and sentenced to death at her trial, the defendant was later ruled insane by court psychiatrists, packed off to the state hospital at Milledgeville for life.

(I’ve lost the source for this - if anyone knows they can send it to me and I’ll include it!) 

Some Facts about Female Serial Killers

• they are more efficient than their male counterparts, and often kill more people
• they are twice as likely to have killed someone close to them than the males
• in a study by Kelleher and Kelleher of 100 female serial killers, it took an average of 8 years to catch them - twice as long as the average to catch a man

The Motives of Female Serial Killers

• Money (74%)
• Control (13%)
• Enjoyment (11%)
• Sex (10%)
• Drugs, cult involvement, cover up, or feelings of inadequacy (24%)

The Weapons Female Serial Killers Choose

• Poison (80%)
• Shooting (20%)
• Bludgeoning (16%)
• Suffocation (16%)
• Stabbing (11%)
• Drowning (5%)

Karla Leanne Homolka, also known as Karla Leanne Teale (born 4 May 1970 in Ontario, Canada), is a convicted killer, torturer and sexual deviant.She attracted worldwide media attention when she was convicted of manslaughter following a plea bargain in the 1991 and 1992  rape-murders of two Ontario teenage girls, Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French, as well as the rape and death of her own sister, Tammy. Her husband, Paul Bernardo, was arrested in 1993 and in 1995 was convicted of the two teenagers’ murders. He received life in prison, the full maximum sentence allowed in Canada. Homolka, however, “portrayed herself as the innocent victim of a murderous monster”. She struck a deal with prosecutors (later dubbed the ‘Deal with the Devil’) and pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the deaths in exchange for a 12-year prison sentence. Videotapes of the crimes, found after the plea bargain, showed her to be a more active participant.

Prior to her imprisonment, Homolka had been evaluated by numerous psychiatrists, psychologists, and other mental health and court officials. Homolka, reported one, “remains something of a diagnostic mystery. Despite her ability to present herself very well, there is a moral vacuity in her which is difficult, if not impossible, to explain.”As Homolka proceeded through the Canadian prison system there were frequent flashes that illuminated this perception.In Joliette (a medium security prison, nicknamed Club Fed), Homolka had a sexual affair with Lynda Veronneau, who was serving time for a series of armed robberies and who re-offended so she could be sent back to Joliette to be with Homolka.Her letters to Veronneau, were “in French and on the same sort of childish, puppy-dog-decorated paper she once wrote to her former husband… the same kind of girlish love notes she sent to him.” Her language, Blatchford noted, was “equally juvenile”.

Homolka took correspondence courses in sociology through nearby Queen’s University, which initially caused a media storm. Homolka was required to pay all fees, as well as her personal needs, from her bi-weekly income of about $69,although, she told author Stephen Williams in a subsequent letter, “I did get some financial assistance”.Homolka later graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Psychology from Queen’s.News of Homolka’s self-improvement courses was greeted in the media with disdain: “Nothing has changed. Concepts of remorse, repentance, shame, responsibility and atonement have no place in the universe of Karla. Perhaps she simply lacks the moral gene.”

One forensic psychologist, Dr. Glancy, wrote that she was a case of hybistrophilia, an individual who is sexually aroused by a partner’s violent sexual behaviour, but later changed that opinion.

Public outrage about Homolka’s sentence had barely cooled by the time of her extremely high-profile release from prison in 2005”.She lived in the province of Quebec for a time and in 2007, was speculated to have left Canada for the Antilles, new partner and baby in hand.  

http://www.unsolvedcanada.ca/index.php?topic=4263.30

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karla_Homolka