SHE DEVILS
AROUND THE WORLD
By SYLVIA PERRINI
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Copyright © 2012
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DISCLAIMER
In researching this book, I gathered material from a wide variety of resources, newspapers, academic papers and other material both on and offline. In many cases, I have referenced actual quotes pertaining to the content throughout. To the best of my knowledge, the material contained is correct. Neither the publisher nor the author will be held liable for incorrect or factual mistakes.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
SHE DEVILS AROUND THE WORLD
AUSTRALIA
MARTHA RENDELL
FRANCES KNORR
KATHLEEN FOLBIGG
AUSTRIA
ELFRIEDE BLAUENSTEINER -The Insatiable Gambler
“LAINZ ANGELS OF DEATH ”
CZECH REPUBLIC
MARIE FIKACKOVA –SILENT BABIES
FRANCE
MARQUISE MARIE BRINVILLIERS
JEANNE WEBER
MANETTE BONHOURT
HÉLÈNE JEGADO
GERMANY
SOPHIE CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH URSINUS
ANNA MARIA ZWANZIGER
GESINA GOTTFRIED
ELIZABETH WIESE
CHRISTA LEHMANN
MARIA VELTEN
SABINE HILSCHENZ
SABINE RADMACHER
UNNAMED MOTHER
HOLLAND
MARIA SWANENBURG
ITALY
TOFANIA
HYERONYMA SPARA
NEW ZEALAND
MINNIE DEAN
RUSSIA
DARYA NIKOLAYEVNA SALTYKOV
MADAME POPOVA
SOPHIE CHARLOTTE ELIZABETH URSINUS
SLOVAKIA
ERZSÉBET BÁTHORY
SPAIN
ENRIQUETA MARTI
SWITZERLAND
MARIE JEANNERET
UNITED KINGDOM
SARAH MALCOLM
ELIZABETH BROWNRIGG
SARAH AND SARAH MORGAN METYARD
CATHERINE WILSON
MARY ANN BRITLAND
MARGARET WATERS
MARY ANN COTTON
BLACK WIDOWS OF LIVERPOOL
JESSIE KING
AMELIA ELIZABETH DYER
ADA CHARD-WILLIAMS
ANNIE WALTERS and AMELIA SACH
RHODA WILLIS
MARY ELIZABETH WILSON
BEVERLY ALLITT
UNITED STATES
ELIZABETH VAN VALKENBURGH
THE MYSTERIOUS MRS ROBINSON
MARTHA GRINDER
LYDIA SHERMAN
SARAH WHITELING
SARAH JANE ROBINSON
JANE TOPPAN
BELLE GUNNESS
TILLIE KLIMEK
ELLEN ETHERIDGE
AMY ARCHER-GILLIGAN
LYDA CATHERINE AMBROSE
LYDIA SOUTHARD
BERTHA GIFFORD
MADAME EVA COO
ANNA MARIE HAHN
LOUISE PEETE
NANNIE DOSS
RHONDA BELL MARTIN
ANJETTE DONOVAN LYLES
JANIE LOU GIBBS
VELMA BARFIELD
CHRISTINE FALLING
SHIRLEY ALLEN
JUDIAS "JUDY" BUENOANO
BETTY LOU BEETS
DOROTHEA HELEN PUENTE-
BLANCHE KISER TAYLOR MOORE
AILEEN WUORNUS-
DANA SUE GRAY
CONCLUSION
OTHER BOOKS BY THIS AUTHOR
SHE DEVILS AROUND THE WORLD
Murder has existed since the Biblical days when Cain killed Abel and has fascinated man ever since. It has been committed for material gain, money, power, gratification, and/or revenge.
Serial killings, or multiple murders, are not a new phenomenon. They have been going on for centuries around the world. The only thing that is new is the term “serial killer.” This term was first used about twenty years ago by an FBI behavioral-researcher, Robert Ressler, to describe these multiple murderers.
Normally, when one thinks of serial killers, it is a male that comes to mind such as Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, or Jeffrey Dahmer. However, women have been multiple killers since early times also.
Society finds women serial killers particularly gruesome as women are meant to represent gentleness, caring, and nurturing and although they may not be as numerous as the male serial killer they are, however, just as deadly - maybe even more so. Overall, they tend to be quiet killers and more subtle.
There are important differences between male and female killers:
• While men regularly pursue strangers, women generally tend to murder those who are intimately close to them such as family members and those who are dependent upon them in their role as caregiver.
• Men overall are more physical when killing: they batter, shoot, strangle, and stab; women generally choose more undetectable methods such as poison or suffocation.
• With men, their motive for killing 50% of the time is sexually driven. Females have a tendency to kill for profit (75%), for control (13 %), or for revenge (12 %).
• A male killing spree lasts from several months to, at the maximum, four years. While recorded times of women’s activities average between six to eight years, but some women have avoided being caught for two to three decades, which makes one wonder how many were never detected.
Despite these differences, there are three common characteristics in both men and women killers:
1. They have the ability to present to the world a surface normality.
2. They may well be psychopaths, but that doesn’t make them insane.
3. As psychopaths, they have no conscience.
John Douglas, a former FBI profiler, was reported as saying that, “A serial killer's greatest defense is that he/she is virtually unrecognizable by sight. The general public thinks (they look) like Hannibal Lecter, but they actually look like you and I, like the delivery man, the postman, who comes to your door."
Dr. Helen Morrison, a forensic psychiatrist has said, "One of the things is you cannot spot a serial killer by what they show you…….. Serial killers can be very charismatic and charming. They are not the psychopath running down the street; they are the man/woman next door. They’re so completely ordinary, and that is what gets a lot of victims into trouble."
Robert Ressler, the FBI behavioral-researcher, defined a serial killer as someone who kills three or more people with sufficient time intervals between each, known as a “cooling off period.” However, there is no absolutely agreed upon single definition of a serial killer, male or female. There are as many definitions as there are experts on the subject.
To my mind, the planned murder of two or more people for any reason is serial homicide and defines a serial killer.
In earlier centuries, many women went undetected simply because forensic science was not available and many of the poisons used by women to kill mimicked many other common illnesses of the time. Moreover, deaths of newborn babies were very common so if an infant died, no one would be suspicious.
As stated earlier, women serial killers have a tendency to evade detection, on average, for over eight years, double that of the male serial killer. This is for a variety of reasons; unlike their male counterparts, women serial killers are f
ar more subtle: scenes of bloody violence are extremely rare, her choice of weapons, general careful selection of victims, and methodical planning of the crime, such as poisoned food or domestic accidents, are carefully staged.
Killing with poison is particularly sinister and pre-mediated, in my mind, than other methods of murder. It is less spontaneous and direct than an act of violent shooting, an ax murder, a stabbing, or a beating which could be performed during the heat of the moment. Poisoning takes planning. Furthermore, the death is slower, more agonizing, and prolonged for the victim than a more violent death. Poison seems more malevolent and underhanded because the murderer often seems to be presenting the victim with what could be considered a gift-sustenance or something to diminish thirst. (The word “gift” in German means poison.)
Why do women prefer to murder with poison? I have come to suspect three reasons:
1. It avoids physical confrontation.
2. It is cleaner than the ugly, bloodied scenes of guns or knives.
3. The women serial killers believe it is a method that will allow them to get away with murder.
Those lucky few victims who have managed to survive an attempted murder by these women have described being poisoned as being equal to being devoured alive, as if by a gruesome creature such as a shark.
Poisoning accounts for eighty percent of the methods women use to kill their victims. Other methods used include:
• Guns (20%)
• Bludgeoning (16%)
• Suffocation (16%)
• Stabbing (11%)
• Drowning (5%)
Only on rare occasions do woman serial killers move and conceal the body.
Kelleher Typology
One study on women serial killers has produced what is known as the “Kelleher Typology,” which divides women killers into five groups:
Black Widows
Angels of Death
Sexual Predators
Revenge Killers
Profit Killers
The Black Widows and Angels of Death are the most common type of a woman serial killer.
The Black Widow
This is a nickname that refers to the highly poisonous spiders that destroy their mates when their usefulness is over. Three-quarters of the time, the Black Widow Serial Killer kills strictly for profit and then lives off of life insurance policies, pensions, and other assets gained from the "sudden" deaths of close relations as she systematically murders stepchildren, multiple spouses, children, grandchildren, brothers, sisters, fathers, and mothers.
The Black Widow is also willing to, and capable of, murdering others with whom she has developed a personal relationship. The Black Widow is normally organized, intelligent, manipulative, and patient. Her activities are planned with meticulous care, a methodical masterpiece as it were. The Black Widow's crimes frequently span a relatively long period of time and rarely is she suspected of murder until the victim count has become significant.
These women often wear the “Mrs. Beeton apron” and portray a June Cleaver facade of wife and mother that hides their murderous instinct. She is able, with the right words, smile, and feminine charm, to embrace a man to her body and ingratiate herself into his complete trust whilst draining his bank account down to the last penny oftentimes.
Historically, Black Widows met their husbands through lonely-heart ads or through mutual friends who fail to spot something not quite right about their friend. These days, many meet over the internet. Sometimes as one husband dies, the Black Widow relocates to a completely new area of the country and assumes a new name, personality, and a wholly fabricated background.
This type of murderess violates our basic assumptions about friendship, love, and loyalty.
Angels of Death
This is the nickname given to serial killers who utilize their qualifications in the care-giving or medical environments to find their victims. Sometimes, they kill with the idea that they are providing peace or relief for their patients.
This type of serial killer tends to have a pathological interest in matters of life and death; thus, this type of killer is frequently drawn to the medical profession. Here, in their workplace, they can find an abundant source of elderly, helpless, and sick patients over whom they can hold the right of life or death, although occasionally there may be a motive of profit behind their killings.
An Angel of Death sees herself as a Godlike figure. She preys on those who, in her opinion, are already marked for death: an aged relative for whom she cares for or the ill patients in hospitals. Her tools are either chemical, like a lethal injection, or suffocation both equally difficult to trace.
The “Angel of Death” typically operates where death is a regular occurrence such as a hospital, a nursing home, or other places where murder is easy to disguise. The Angel of Death enjoys the power of choosing who will live or die.
Apart from the motivation of “relieving a victim’s suffering,” many Angels of Death are sometimes motivated by other factors such as:
• Profit from the patients they have cared for - they inherit money or assets
• Sadistic pleasure
• Enjoyment of watching someone die
• Killing simply because they can
• To be seen as a hero by causing the near death of a victim and then pretending that they are trying to save the victim, making it look like they are the hero
All Angels of Death have a need to kill that drives them to kill frequently.
What is normal amongst many of these types of serial murderers is an ego that needs total domination over their victims.
Victims of these serial murderers normally display:
• Inability to ward off an attack – they are either infants, elderly, or too sick to fight
• They have total trust in their caregiver
Revenge Killers
Revenge Killers are rarer than Black Widows but do occur. In 1989, Martha Johnson was arrested for murdering her two children, Ann Wright and James Taylor. She confessed to murdering them as an act of revenge to punish her husband, with whom she had earlier quarreled.
A forty-year-old woman from Ohio, Martha Wise found her first love, Walter Johns, when she was forty-years-old. Her family and priest did not approve as Walter was many years her junior. In revenge, she burned down the church and fed three of her family members a killer dose of arsenic.
The Sexual Predator
The Sexual Predator is motivated by acts of a sexual nature.
Female serial killers are rarely involved in sexual homicides which is the overwhelming motivation for most male killers, unless they are a part of a male partnership.
The Profit/Crime Killer.
According to the Kelleher Typology, the Profit/Crime female serial killer must exhibit two characteristics that differentiate her crimes from that of a Black Widow:
(1) She must clearly murder for profit
(2) She must focus her deadly efforts on individuals who are not members of her family
In simple terms, the Profit/Crime serial murderer must be in the business of seeking out non-family members as victims, killing for profit, and acting alone.
Female Profit/Crime killers usually commit murders for others such as jealous wives who want their abusive or cheating partners six feet under. An example would be the Russian Madame Popova. Her first act of murder took place in 1879 and during her career, she poisoned around three hundred men until she was stopped and was executed by a firing squad in 1909.
What leads a woman to commit serial murder? After much study, I’ve concluded there are several reasons:
• The vast majority of serial murders committed by women have been committed for money and materialistic gain.
• They have a need to overpower either someone who is abusive or someone who is physically stronger.
• They have attention seeking behaviors and/or personality disorders such as schizophrenia, Münchausen syndrome, and Borderline Personality Diso
rder to name just a few.
• In a few isolated cases, they kill for revenge.
CHILD KILLERS
While people are appalled by women who kill their own children, it's more common than we think.
In 1999 a report by the US Bureau of Justice on Women Offenders gave shocking and sickening results about child killings. The report shows that in the years from 1976 to 1997, parents and step-parents murdered 11,000 children. Mothers and stepmothers were directly responsible for 50% of these murders.
Authors Michael and C.L. Kelleher report in their book, Murder Most Rare, that, "Medical experts now believe that between one and 20 percent of the 7,000 to 8,000 babies who are annually diagnosed as having died of SIDS may have actually died of other causes and that, sadly, many of these infants may have died at the hands of their mothers."
Particularly disturbing in these cases is the fact that the motive for killing is never understood in the deaths of these children. This is troubling as they allow for no insight as to why they occurred. Bearing in mind that the most primitive beast of the wild struggles to the death to protect its dependent helpless young from danger, this is a sad reflection on the human animal.
In this book, I have included women who have killed their own children along with other relatives. However, apart from a couple of cases, I have decided the topic, “Mothers Who Kill,” should be a book on its own.
The women in this book represent a range of killers around the world from greedy to delusional to outright psychopathic. They killed mainly on their own and for their own reasons — and not for something that a male thought up.
Welcome to the world of the female serial killer.
AUSTRALIA
MARTHA RENDELL
Martha Rendell was born in Adelaide, Australia on the 10th of August in 1871. Martha did not conform to the womanly ideals of her day. She left home when she was sixteen and had a series of lovers, which resulted in the birth of three illegitimate children. She then began an affair with a married man, Arthur Morris, a carpenter who had nine children; an affair that scandalized her neighbors and friends in Adelaide at that time. When Arthur Morris and his family moved west to the city of Perth in the mid-1890s, Martha abandoned her children and family to join him.