A serial killer is defined as someone who murders more than four individuals over time using a consistent modus operandi, often targeting victims based on specific characteristics. Female serial killers, although a minority, have distinct profiles and motives compared to their male counterparts, often killing for reasons such as profit or revenge and typically employing methods like poisoning. The document outlines various types of female serial killers, including categories like black widows, team killers, and angels of death, highlighting their characteristics, methods, and notable examples.

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
MEN WOMEN
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 10-
15 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 10-25 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
– 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, 2006
http://faculty.ncwc.edu/toconnor/428/428lect11.htm
• Forensics Science class, taught by Ms. Villani