It's a bloodlust, I guess you can say

May 26th
1:26 PM

45 notes

Female Killers

Nearly one out of five serial murderers are women. In fact, they are often more deadly and more prolific than typical male serial killers. Female serial killers are described as the “quiet killers” because they rarely leave bodies dumped by the roadside, which alarm a community. Their killing careers last twice as long as men’s: eight years for women to the male serial killer’s average of just over four years. Their killing is often committed at home of in a professional setting such as a hospital, retirement home, boardinghouse, or hotel, where sometimes it is not even notices or recognised as a murder. A study of incarcerated female non-serial murderers found out that on average 77 percent were unemployed when they committed their offends, 65 percent were black, and 76 percent had children, and their median age was twenty-seven. Female killers are young and poor, and often function in a socioeconomic class where interpersonal violence is more frequent and “acceptable.”

The statistics for specifically female serial killers are substantially different: 95 percent were white, their median age was thirty and only 10 percent were known to be unemployed, while 10 percent were skilled workers, 15 percent were semiskilled, and 11 percent were other, such as self-employed or business proprietors (and 42 percent unknown). Poor unemployed women living in a society where often responding with interpersonal violence is the only way to survive may commit a spontaneous homicide in the heat of a moment. But the more middle-class female serial killers contemplated and planned their murders carefully.

The motives of female serial killers are substantially different from those of the female single killer or even the male serial killer. On average, 74 percent of female serial killers were at least in part motivated by personal financial gain, a sad reflection on their middle-class aspirations.

May 18th
2:47 PM

28 notes

Near Christmas time, 1989, the body of Richard Mallory was found in woods in Ormond Beach, Florida. He had been shot 4 times with a .22 handgun. Twelve more months past, 6 more dead men were found. All the victims were middle aged and found near highways. They had been robbed of money and valuable possessions, and their cars had been stolen and found shortly afterwards. All the victims had been shot by a .22 handgun. The FBI knew that there was one or two female serial killers on the loose. If the killer/s was male, there had been no evidence of homosexual activity. It was clear that the motive wasn’t just gain. The announcement of a female serial killer set the media into a frenzy. Soon after witnesses came forward to give police descriptions of two women seen abandoning a car belonging to that of one of the dead men. The descriptions were released in December 1990, soon after people came forward who recognised the pictures as 28-year-old Tyria J. Moore and 34-year-old Aileen Wuornos. Moore was arrested by police and agreed to testify against Wuornos, who was her lesbian partner.

In January 1991 Wuornos was arrested and confessed to killing the men in self defense as they had tried to rape her. The question raised that brought her claims to be false was why would a woman shoot several men who had supposedly tried rape her in the space of just 12 months. She also told of how Moore was not involved in any of the crimes committed. She then went to go on about her past of how her grandfather had sexually abused her and that she was raped at 13. Moore was released and Wournos faced trial. In court the evidence summed up and Wuornos was sentenced to the electric chair. Wournos was unlike other female serial killers, who’s motive is usually profit. But in this case the motive seemed to be revenge, because Wuornos had been raped and abused by men.

May 14th
8:52 AM

44 notes

Martha Beck was born into poverty in 1920. Raped at the age of 13 by her brother, she continued to gain weight, appeared emotionally unstable, and suffered from low self-esteem. By the time she’d been married and divorced several times, she was declared an unfit mother, and authorities removed her two young children. One of the children was illegitimate. When Martha pressed for marriage, the father elected suicide rather than marrying her. She was able to complete high school and worked as a nurse at a city maternity hospital until she was fired in 1947. At some point, she began sending letters to the “Lonely Hearts Club” from an advertisement in the local newspaper, and in this way met her future murder accomplice.

Ray Fernandez was born in spain in 1914. Considered a shy, introverted man, he was happily married until he received a head injury at age 31. His demeanor changed, as did his personality, and he began to believe that he possessed psychic powers that enabled him to make women fall in love with him. For the next few year, he was described as a “sleazy gigalo with a toupee and a gold tooth” and managed to swingle dozens of women out of their financial assets but was caught in 1949. When Fernandez was released from prison, Beck proposed that the two of them become partners and continue the confidence games together. She would pose as his sister. Altough Fernandez fought her unattractive, they became sexual partners as well, engaging in extremely “degenerate” practices. Martha eventually became jealous of the relationships Ray developed with their victims and began putting barbiturates into their food. Ray then murdered the unsuspecting victims. In one case, Martha “assisted” by drowning a dead woman’s 2-year-old child in the bathtub. She initiated the killing and appeared to enjoy watching the child die. In another instance, she struck the victim repeatedly on the head. The two were linked to approximately 20 murders by the time they were apprehended and convicted, and they were executed on March 8th, 1951.

May 12th
2:19 PM

24 notes

A prolific familicide, Nannie Doss of Tulsa, Oklahoma, notched up at least eleven murders including five husbands, her mother, two sisters and two of her children. Her first marriage was to George Frazer, in 1920, though Nannie’s numerous affairs, conducted in the pursuit of “Mr Right,” did little to cement the union. The final straw for George was when he came home from work to find his two children lying dead on the floor - “accidentally” poisoned. Not waiting around to see who might be next, Frazer wisely took a speedy leave of his wife. Husband number two, Frank Harrelson died of “stomach trouble” later in the same year. Arlie Lanning lasted a bit longer - from 1947 until his death from “stomach trouble” in 1952. A comfortable insurance of $1500 ensured to Richard Morton lasted no longer than necessary, and finally Nannie’s fifth husband, Samuel Doss, contracted “stomach trouble” after eating a bowl of his wife’s stewed prunes. In this last case, Nannie came up against a more painstaking doctor, who not only refused to sign a death certificate but insisted on an autopsy and called in the police.

When post-mortem examination proved without the least doubt that Sam Doss had died of a massive dose of arsenic, Nannie confessed all. Nevertheless, the defiant Nannie Doss, who had freely admitted her misdeeds, indignantly denied the prosecution attorney’s suggestion at her trial that she had murdered solely out of greed. It had been, she insisted, a search for true love: “I was looking for the perfect mate, the real romance of life.” Nannie Doss was convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment in 1964. She died in prison of leukemia the following year.

May 11th
6:16 PM

17 notes

Known as “The Tiger Woman,” Winnie Ruth Judd (born 29 January 1905) was convicted of the Phoenix Trunk Murders in 1931. She worked with her husband, Dr William Judd, in his medical centre in Phoenix, Arizona, where she became friends with Agnes Le Roi, 27, and Hedvig Samuelson who shared a flat. On 16 October 1931 there was a shooting at the flat and the next day Miss Le Roi did not turn up for work and Judd was late for work. Later that day Judd telephoned a removals firm to arrange for a large trunk to be shipped. On 18 October she boarded a train bound for Los Angeles, accompanied by two trunks. As porters carried the trunks off the train at Union Central Station in Los Angeles, it was noticed that one of the trunks was leaking a dark liquid. Judd was asked to explain but instead she fled. When the trunks were opened they were found to contain the dismembered the bodies of Agnes Le Roi and Hedvig Samuelson. Police found a letter from Judd to her husband. The letter detailed all sorts of sex orgies that had taken place in the Le Roi-Samuelson home, orgies that featured every kind of sexual coupling. On 23 October, after an appeal by her husband, Judd gave herself up to police. She was taken to Arizona where she stood trial. She was convicted and sentenced to death but that was commuted to life imprisonment on 24 April 1933 after psychiatrists said that she was mad. She was finally released on 22 December 1972 and died on 23 October 1998, aged 95.

May 8th
1:38 PM

104 notes

The Execution of Aileen Wuornos

Highway prostitute Aileen Carol Wuornos, known as the “Damsel of Death” for the seven slayings she is believed to committed, was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002 at the Florida State Prison. The 46-year-old serial killer was pronounced dead at 9:47 a.m. 6 minutes after the injection process began. She was executed for the 1989 killing of Palm Harbour, Fla., electrician Harry Mallory, but has confessed to five others and was a suspect in a seventh. Mallory’s trial was held in Daytona Beach. “We did wake her up at 5:30. She requested a towel and washcloth to wash her face and freshen up,” said prison spokesman Sterling Ivy before the execution. “She was very calm this morning. Not as talkative as she has been in the past.” Wuornos declined the traditional last meal, which could have been anything she wanted for under $20, and instead was given a cup of coffee.

A half-dozen anti-death penalty demonstrators were outside the prison, but were outnumbered by corrections officers. Wuornos was strapped to a gurney and hooked to two intravenous lines. Thirty-two witnesses watched as she was wheeled into the death chamber where an executioner pumped deadly chemicals into her system. “We can testify that that lethal injection is certainly more of a humane way to terminate life than the electric chair,” said State Attorney John Tanner, who prosecuted the case in Daytona Beach. “She expressed in her last psychiatric examination relief that the electric chair had been abolished in the state of Florida.” Wuornos went to her death willingly. She fired her attorneys and opposed appeals made on her behalf. Two appeals were turned down by the Florida Supreme Court Tuesday. They both contended Wuornos was insane and not competent enough for her execution. In her final statement, Wuornos said: “Yes, I would just like to say I’m sailing with the rock, and I’ll be back, like Independence Day with Jesus. June 6, like the movie. Big mother ship and all, I’ll be back, I’ll be back.” She had written the Florida Supreme Court last year to say she “would prefer to cut to the chase and get on with the execution. Taxpayers’ money has been squandered and the families have suffered enough.”

May 1st
9:08 AM

82 notes

Lainz General Hospital is the biggest of its kind in Vienna and many of its patients are old or suffering from terminal illnesses. It would, therefore, not be too difficult for a determined killer to get away with murder. No one could imagine that in 1983 there was four killers at work at Lainz. It would be six years and more than 40 deaths before the quartet, comprising leader Waltraud Wagner and her cohorts Maria Gruber, 19, Ilene Leidolf, 21, and 43-year-old grandmother Stephanija Mayer, was brought to justice. Wagner was 24 when she was asked by a 77-year-old patient to “end her suffering”. Wagner was more than happy to oblige and found that she enjoyed having power over life and death. She recruited the others and they planned whom they were going to kill while they worked on the night shift. The foursome murdered their patients through drug overdoses and “oral hygiene treatment”, where one nurse held the patients head back while a second poured water down their throats until they drowned. It was an agonizing way to die and almost undetectable as murder. When examined, many elderly patients had fluid in their lungs. At first the women euthanized (as they saw it) patients but progressed to killing anyone who annoyed them by soiling the bed or asking for help. They were caught not through police work or a hospital investigation, but because of their own big mouths. One day the four were having drinks and boasting about what they had done when a doctor overheard them. He immediately went to the police and, after an investigation lasting six weeks, the women were arrested on 7 April 1989.

The women confessed to 49 murders with Wagner giving a “free bed with the good Lord” to 39 of them. One of the others believed that Wagner had actually murdered more than 200 in the previous two years. Awaiting trial, Wagner claimed that in fact the death toll was just ten and they were all mercy killings. The trial opened on 28 February 1991 and on 28 March they were all found guilty. Wagner was convicted of 15 murders, 17 counts of attempted murder and two counts of assault. She was jailed for life. Leidolf was convicted of five murders and also received a life sentence. Gruber and Mayer were both jailed for 15 years for manslaughter and attempted murder. Wagner and Leidolf were paroled on 7 August 2008 and given new identities at taxpayers’ expense. Gruber and Mayer had already been released and provided with new names.

April 27th
2:16 PM

55 notes

It is still uncertain whether Belle Gunness committed the murders for money and property, or whether she was affected by the circumstances of her life. It wasn’t for nothing that Belle was known as the Black Widow after the species of spider that eats it own mate. She would give out matrimonial ads for partners, marry these men, adopt their children (if any) and ask them to shift to her house in La Porte. Once they were there, she would drug them and slaughter them in the same fashion as she would her pigs. She would them bury them in the land around her farm. This continued for several years before, in 1908, her farm was reduced to ashes by a fire. It is believed that Bell Gunness died in this fire. It was in the aftermath of the fire, that many of the severely butchered bodies were discovered which led to her being included in this list of famous serial killers in history.

April 26th
5:41 PM

57 notes

In September 1982, a 15-month-old baby girl mysteriously died in Kerrville, Texas, after a routine examination by a ocal pediatrician. A powerful muscle relaxer, Anectine, which had not been prescribed, was later found to be the cause of death. Six other children at the clinic had suffered similar attacks in a six-week period, with nurse Genene Jones always nearby. Aiding healthy babies did not offer a great enough challenge, so Jones created “life-and-death” situations. She became euphoric when administering CPR and other life-saving techniques to her victims. A subsequent investigation in San Antonio uncovered more horrors. When Jones worked the night shift at a local hospital, more than twelve inexplicable deaths had occurred, earning her the name of the “Death Nurse.” On February 15, 1984, she was convicted of murder and sentenced to ninety-nine years in prison.

April 23rd
9:47 AM

32 notes

German-born Anna Hahn preyed on elderly men in the Cincinnati area in the 1903s, poisoning them with a mixture of croton oil and arsenic. She posed as an official nurse and seduced men to secure their inheritances before dispatching them. She claimed two victims in one week in June 1937, prompting the police to exhume the bodies. The ‘Angel of Mercy,’ as she called herself, was undone and was electrocuted on 7 December 1938.

April 21st
4:49 AM

122 notes

“All I want to do is go back to the prison, wait for the chair and get the hell off this planet, that is full of evil.”

Near Christmas time, 1989, the body of Richard Mallory was found in woods in Ormond Beach, Florida. He had been shot 4 times with a .22 handgun. Twelve more months past, 6 more dead men were found. All the victims were middle aged and found near highways. They had been robbed of money and valuable possessions, and their cars had been stolen and found shortly afterwards. All the victims had been shot by a .22 handgun. The FBI knew that there was one or two female serial killers on the loose. If the killer/s was male, there had been no evidence of homosexual activity. It was clear that the motive wasn’t just gain. The announcement of a female serial killer set the media into a frenzy. Soon after witnesses came forward to give police descriptions of two women seen abandoning a car belonging to that of one of the dead men. The descriptions were released in December 1990, soon after people came forward who recognised the pictures as 28-year-old Tyria J. Moore and 34-year-old Aileen Wuornos. Moore was arrested by police and agreed to testify against Wuornos, who was her lesbian partner. In January 1991 Wuornos was arrested and confessed to killing the men in self defense as they had tried to rape her. The question raised that brought her claims to be false was why would a woman shoot several men who had supposedly tried rape her in the space of just 12 months. She also told of how Moore was not involved in any of the crimes committed. She then went to go on about her past of how her grandfather had sexually abused her and that she was raped at 13. Moore was released and Wournos faced trial. In court the evidence summed up and Wuornos was sentenced to the electric chair. Wournos was unlike other female serial killers, who’s motive is usually profit. But in this case the motive seemed to be revenge, because Wuornos had been raped and abused by men.

April 18th
1:08 PM

74 notes

Kristen Gilbert was born on 13 November 1967 in Fall River, Massachusetts as Kristen Stickland. At school she was a typical teenage girl but as she got older she began to develop dishonest habits in her relationships, which were also tinged with violence. After school she went to Greenfield Community College, in Massachusetts. She began stealing and then denying it. She even told one victim that she had not stole her blouse even though Gilbert was wearing it at the time. In 1988 she married Glen Gilbert and shortly after began to work on Ward C of the Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center in Northampton. Her colleagues found her friendly and sociable and her bosses gave her performance top marks. In 1990 she gave birth to her first son - life seemed great. When she returned to work on the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, things began to go wrong. Patients began to die when Gilbert was on duty. She often gave her unqualified medical opinion, leading her colleagues to name her the Angel of Death. Many of the patients died of heart attacks, even when there was no history of cardiac problems. In 1993 Gilbert gave birth to her second son. Her home life changed and Glen told friends that he thought his wife was trying to poison him. She began an affair with James Perrault, a security guard at the hospital. In December 1994 she left her husbands and son to move in with Perrault. The death count on the hospital began to rise. Her colleagues checked the stock room and found that there was a shortage of epinephrine (synthetic adrenaline), a drug that stimulates the heart. One day Gilbert asked her boss if she could leave work early if one of her patients died and she was told that she could. Shortly afterwards, the patient died.

In February 1995 an Aids sufferer had a relapse under Gilbert’s care and her fellow nurses went to the hospital authorities. In Gilbert’s seven years on the ward, 350 men had died. It was believed that Gilbert would dose the men with epinephrine so they would go into cardiac arrest, when her lover would be called. She would then impress him with her nursing skill. When she was suspended from the ward the death rate returned back to normal. In mid 1996 James Perrault tired of the affair. Kristen Gilbert took an overdose and was admitted to a psychiatric ward. When some of the victims’ bodies were exhumed, epinephrine was found in the body tissues. In 1998 Gilbert was charged with murder and Perrault testified against her. He claimed that she had told him, “You know I did it. You wanted to know I killed those guys.” On 14 March 2001 Gilbert was convicted of three counts of first-degree murder, one count of second-degree murder, and two counts of attempted murder. She was sentenced to life in prison.

April 15th
2:03 PM

18 notes

Known as “The Tiger Woman,” Winnie Ruth Judd (born 29 January 1905) was convicted of the Phoenix Trunk Murders in 1931. She worked with her husband, Dr William Judd, in his medical centre in Phoenix, Arizona, where she became friends with Agnes Le Roi, 27, and Hedvig Samuelson who shared a flat. On 16 October 1931 there was a shooting at the flat and the next day Miss Le Roi did not turn up for work and Judd was late for work. Later that day Judd telephoned a removals firm to arrange for a large trunk to be shipped. On 18 October she boarded a train bound for Los Angeles, accompanied by two trunks. As porters carried the trunks off the train at Union Central Station in Los Angeles, it was noticed that one of the trunks was leaking a dark liquid. Judd was asked to explain but instead she fled. When the trunks were opened they were found to contain the dismembered the bodies of Agnes Le Roi and Hedvig Samuelson. Police found a letter from Judd to her husband. The letter detailed all sorts of sex orgies that had taken place in the Le Roi-Samuelson home, orgies that featured every kind of sexual coupling. On 23 October, after an appeal by her husband, Judd gave herself up to police. She was taken to Arizona where she stood trial. She was convicted and sentenced to death but that was commuted to life imprisonment on 24 April 1933 after psychiatrists said that she was mad. She was finally released on 22 December 1972 and died on 23 October 1998, aged 95.

April 9th
8:24 PM

115 notes

Source

Lavinia Fisher who was born in 1793 is believed to be the first American woman serial killer. Along with her husband John operated a boarding house in Charleston South Carolina named the ” Six Mile Wayfarer House ” in the early 1800’s. They preyed upon their guests killing many of them. The boarding house was located six miles north of Charleston and that is why it was called the Six Mile Wayfarer House. Lavinia was a very beautiful woman and she used her charms to help her husband to kill and rob many male travelers. Over the years in the early 1800’s many reports were filed saying that the last time the person was seen was in Charleston South Carolina. And the reports were many. It is believed that the Fishers killed several hundred travelers and most were killed for money or other trade goods they were carrying. If the Fishers saw you with a large sum of money you did not leave the Six Mile Wayfarer House alive. After their arrest by the Sheriff of Charleston the Six Mile Wayfarer House was searched and the grounds were dug up. The Sheriff said the house had many hidden passages and the only way into the attic was by a hidden passage. It was in the attic that the Sheriff reported finding items that could be traced to over a hundred travelers that the Fishers had killed. In the basement and grounds of the house over a hundred sets of remains were found.

The couple was tried in Charleston South Carolina and found guilty of multiple murders and robberies. John Fisher accepted the consul of a local priest and is said to have begged the priest to save his soul if not his life but Lavinia Fisher would have nothing to do with the priest. On the morning of February 18th 1820 the Fishers were hung on the gallows just behind the Charleston Jail. John Fisher went quietly praying with the priest. Lavinia had made the request that she be hung and buried in her wedding dress and she was allowed to wear the dress but she had to be picked up and carried to the gallows. She screamed and yelled as she was being prepared to be hung. When she was asked if she had any last words she said “Hell give me your words and I’ll carry them straight to the devil.” And with that she leaped off the gallows actually hanging herself. It is now widely accepted that Lavinia Fisher was the first female serial killer in America. Though most people don’t even know that she existed.

April 5th
12:35 PM

157 notes

Source

Female Serial Killers

Most women who become serial killers tend to become murders either to fulfill some material need or because of emotions of passion and vindictiveness. Many female serial killers tend to be suffering from a syndrome known as the Münchausen syndrome but this is not a given. It is much more difficult to pin down the psychological motivation of female serial killers compared to men. Given below is a list of those women who are some of the most famous serial killers in history.

Aileen Wuornos

If you have watched the blood chilling movie Monster, then you probably know the story of Aileen Wuornos. She had a tough childhood and at the age of 14 she was the victim of sexual assault by a stranger which left her pregnant. All these circumstances had a huge effect on her psyche and led her to choose a life as a commercial sex worker. It was in this phase of her life that her violent streak started displaying itself. She killed seven men, all of whom were people she had solicited. She would shoot them and rob them. On being apprehended in 1991 she claimed to have killed these men in self defense. She was sentenced to death by lethal injection and was executed in the year 2002. She was probably one of the most famous serial killers in America.

Amelia Dyer

For over twenty years, Amelia Dyer terrorized the city of London killing innocent babies and gaining the moniker of Baby Butcher in the process and becoming one of the most famous serial killers in history. Her modus operandi was simple. She would advertise in the paper and offer adoption services to unmarried women charging them a certain amount in return. She would take the babies and promise the mothers of giving them an life they would have dreamed of. Once she adopted these babies she would completely neglect them, which caused their death in several cases. Later she started strangulating them and using opium injections to kill them. Caught in 1896, and sentenced to death, she was one of the most prolific female serial killers killing almost 247 babies.

Belle Sorenson Gunness

It is still uncertain whether Belle Gunness committed the murders for money and property, or whether she was affected by the circumstances of her life. It wasn’t for nothing that Belle was known as the Black Widow after the species of spider that eats it own mate. She would give out matrimonial ads for partners, marry these men, adopt their children (if any) and ask them to shift to her house in La Porte. Once they were there, she would drug them and slaughter them in the same fashion as she would her pigs. She would them bury them in the land around her farm. This continued for several years before, in 1908, her farm was reduced to ashes by a fire. It is believed that Bell Gunness died in this fire. It was in the aftermath of the fire, that many of the severely butchered bodies were discovered which led to her being included in this list of famous serial killers in history.

Countess Elizabeth Bathory

This Hungarian Countess has been held responsible for almost 650 murders. All of her victims were young girls. Tales abound that the Countess used the blood of these young girls to have baths to retain her beauty and youth. As many as 300 witness accounts were collected against accomplices. She was never tried or even convicted but she was kept under house arrest at her castle where she died four years later. It is believed that the character of Count Dracula is partially based on her. This and other such stories make her one of the most famous serial killers in history. Countess Elizabeth Bathory has always been an interesting case study for experts studying serial killers psychology.