NOTES

GIRLS WILL BE GIRLS

1 Letters from Anthony Riggs to Tina Killie: Paul Srubas, “ ‘Angel Tina’ loved letters from Riggs,” Gannett News Service, March 23, 1991.

2 “the great American tragedy”: Brenda Ingersoll, “Relatives stunned that soldier slain after returning from war,” Detroit News, March 19, 1991.

3 “during every 100 hours on our streets”: James Gannon, “U.S. faces another war—in the streets of America,” Gannett News Service, March 23, 1991.

4 “a new war needs to be fought on the home front”: Yolanda Woodlee, Heidi Mae Bratt, “City mourns Gulf soldier slain 2 days after return,” Detroit News, March 23, 1991.

5 “I can’t believe I’ve waited”: Cato Riggs interviewed by Brenda Ingersoll, “Relatives stunned that soldier slain after returning from war,” Detroit News, March 19, 1991.

6 “what I did, I did for a soldier”: Holley quoted by Bill Nichols, “A not-so-random slaying?” USA Today, March 27, 1991, p. 1. The same article reported the rumors about Toni Cato Riggs.

7 Primate origins of human aggression: Richard Wrangham and Dale Peterson, Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996).

8 “their greater endowment of aggression”: Anthony Storr, Human Aggression (New York: Penguin, 1968), p. 85.

9 “authority, control”: James Messerschmidt, Masculinities and Crime: Critique and Reconceptualization of Theory (Lanham, Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1993), p. 85.

10 testosterone, the oldest chestnut: J. Archer, “The Influence of Testosterone on Human Aggression,” British Journal of Psychology 82 (1991). For additional refutation of causative effects, see M. Haug et al., eds., The Aggressive Female (Den Haag, The Netherlands: CIP-Gegevens Koninklyke Bibliotheek, 1992); David Adams, “Biology Does Not Make Men More Aggressive Than Women,” in Kaj Björkqvist and Pirkko Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women: Aspects of Female Aggression (New York: Academic Press, 1992), pp. 17–25.

11 psychologist David Benton: “Hormones and Human Aggression,” in Of Mice and Women, p. 42.

12 head injury: “Woman Blinded by Spring from Truck,” Lindsay Scotton, Toronto Star, April 10, 1995.

13 “bullying, vandalism …”: Herbert Needleman, Julie Riess, Michael Tobin, Gretchen Biesecker, Joel Greenhouse, “Bone Lead Levels and Delinquent Behavior,” Journal of the American Medical Association 275 (February 7, 1996), 363–369.

14 rodent version of soccer hooligans: Natalie Angier, “Gene Defect Tied to Violence in Male Mice,” The New York Times, November 23, 1995.

15 “chronically low levels of arousal”: Adrian Raine, Mark Williams, and Peter H. Venables, “Better Autonomic Conditioning and Faster Electrodermal Half-recovery Time at Age 15 Years as Possible Protective Factors Against Crime at Age 29 Years,” Developmental Psychology 32:4 (July 1996), 624.

16 primate loyalty: Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, The Woman Who Never Evolved (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1981), p. 173.

17 primate killing and exclusionary tactics: Reijo Holmström, in Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, pp. 297–305.

18 “there is very little support in the psychological literature”: Anne Colby and William Danon, “Listening to a Different Voice: A Review of Gilligan’s A Different Voice,” in M. R. Walsh, ed., The Psychology of Women: Ongoing Debates (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987).

19 Seventy percent of respondents to a 1968 survey: R. Stark and J. McEvoy III, “Middle-Class Violence,” Psychology Today 4 (November 1970): 52–65.

20 Every year since 1976: Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (Washington, D.C.: United States Department of Justice). In 1991, more than twice as many men as women responded “yes” to this question: 52 vs. 22 percent. Nearly twice as many American men as women were the victims of violent crime of any kind. Moreover, in 1994, 13 percent of men, vs. 10 percent of women, answered “yes” to the question “When you were growing up, do you remember any time when you were punched or kicked or choked by a parent or guardian?”

21 “culture of honor”: Richard E. Nisbett and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1996).

22 British men follow a different cultural model: Elliott Leyton, Men of Blood: Murder in Everyday Life (Toronto: McClelland & Stuart, 1996).

23 women engage publicly in physical aggression: Victoria K. Burbank, “Female Aggression in Cross-Cultural Perspective,” Behavior Science Research 21 (1987), 70–100. Burbank found that adultery was one of the most frequent reasons for women’s physical aggression against mates. She also found that other women were by far the more frequent targets of female aggression, noted in 91 percent of the 137 societies, whereas men were targets in only 54 percent. See also V. K. Burbank, “Cross-Cultural Perspectives on Aggression in Women and Girls: An Introduction,” Sex Roles 30:3/4 (February 1994).

24 Margarita Island, off the coast of Venezuela: H. B. Kimberley Cook, “Matrifocality and Female Aggression in Margariteno Society,” in Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, pp. 149–61.

25 Aboriginal women in Australia: V. K. Burbank, Fighting Women: Anger and Aggression in Aboriginal Australia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), pp. 98–104.

26 aggressive strategies on the island of Vanatinai: Maria Lepowsky, “Women, Men and Aggression in an Egalitarian Society,” Sex Roles 30:3/4 (February 1994), 199–213.

27 female rulers have mysteriously disappeared: Antonia Fraser, The Warrior Queens (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1988).

28 At the height of international terrorism: Richard W. Kobetz and H. H. A. Cooper, “Target Terrorism: Providing Protective Services” (Risk International, 1979). See also Eileen MacDonald, Shoot the Women First (London: Arrow Books, 1991).

29 slaughter at Kubaye Hill: “Prison Nuns Exemplify Dimensions to Carnage,” Vincent Browne, Irish Times, October 2, 1996; Rwanda: “Women Turned Killers,” The Guardian, August 26, 1995.

30 “I have no illusions”: Carol Tavris, Mismeasure of Woman: Why Women Are Not the Better Sex, the Inferior Sex or the Opposite Sex (New York: Touchstone/Simon & Schuster, 1992), p. 91.

31 Of 314 studies on human aggression: A. Frodi, J. Macaulay, and P. R. Thome, “Are Women Always Less Aggressive Than Men?” Psychological Bulletin 84 (1977), 634–660.

32 “In our view”: Claudia Frey and Siegfried Hoppe-Graff, “Serious and Playful Aggression in Brazilian Girls and Boys,” Sex Roles 30:3/4 (February 1994), 249–269. See also J. Condy and D. Ross, “Sex and Aggression: The Influence of Gender Label on the Perception of Aggression in Children,” Child Development 56 (1985).

33 indirect aggression defined: Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, p. 8.

34 what girls did to compete with rivals: Kaj Björkqvist, Karin Osterman, and Ari Kaukiainen, “The Development of Direct and Indirect Aggressive Strategies in Males and Females,” Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, p. 51–63.

35 high school girls most afraid of “other girls”: Frederick Mathews, The Badge & the Book: Building Effective Police/School Partnerships to Combat Youth Violence (Ottawa: Solicitor General Canada, 1995), p. 11.

36 modes of female aggression: Ilsa M. Glazer and Wahipa Abu Ras, “On Aggression, Human Rights, and Hegemonic Discourse: The Case of a Murder for Family Honor in Israel,” Sex Roles 30:3/4 (February 1994), 269–302.

37 “When I was a leader of a gang”: Frederick Mathews, Youth Gangs on Youth Gangs (Ottawa: Solicitor General Canada, 1993), p. 26.

38 Polynesian aggression: Rolf Kuschel, “Women are Women and Men Are Men: How Bellonese Women Get Even,” in Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, pp. 173–185.

39 “It seems unlikely”: Colin Wilson, The Mammoth Book of True Crime (London: Robinson Publishing, 1988), p. 175.

40 “criminality of women is largely masked criminality”: Otto Pollack, The Criminality of Women (New York: A. S. Barnes, 1961), p. 3.

41 trauma reenactment syndrome: Dusty Miller, Women Who Hurt Themselves: A Book of Hope and Understanding (New York: Basic Books, 1994).

42 tattooing: Mary Valentis and Anne Devane, Female Rage: Unlocking Its Secrets, Claiming Its Power (New York: Carol Southern Books, 1994), p. 85.

43 “schizophrenic …”: Miller, Women Who Hurt Themselves, p. 154.

44 female suicide attempts: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance Survey (Washington, D.C.: National Center for Health Statistics, 1992).

45 African-American women have a different experience of violence: Laura T. Fishman, “Slave Women, Resistance and Criminality: A Prelude to Future Accommodation,” Women & Criminal Justice 7:1 (1995), 35–63. “The slave women who struck back did not suffer a paralysis of fear,” Fishman notes; “it was not unthinkable to stand up and fight.” See also Lamb and McDermott (Criminology 23:4 (1985), 81–97), who conducted a study with the National Crime Survey on juvenile offenders from 1973 to 1981. The data support the proposition that differences by sex in violent criminal behavior are greater among whites than among blacks, and that differences by race are greater among females than among males.

46 Cato’s school experience: Correspondence with author.

47 homicides in Chicago: Carolyn Rebecca Block and Antigone Christakos, “Partner Homicide in Chicago Over 29 Years,” Crime & Delinquency 41:4 (1995).

48 female homicide in six U.S. cities: Coramae Richey Mann, “Black Female Homicide in the United States,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence, June 1990, pp. 176–197.

49 “resource for self-protection”: Nancy C. Jurik and Russ Winn, “Gender and Homicide: A Comparison of Men and Women Who Kill,” Violence and Victims 5:4 (1990), 227–242.

50 AP wire stories: “Woman Charged with Killing Infant Nephew with Stun Gun”; “Woman Sentenced to Prison for Killing Infant Son”; “HIV-infected Woman Sentenced After Biting Elderly Man”; “Daughter Accused of Setting Fatal Housefire Because of Dispute with Mom”; “A Daring Escape, a Trip, a Capture”; “Mother Charged with Lighting House Fire That Killed Her Two Children.” November 23, 1994.

51 robbery arrest rate for women: Darrell Steffensmeier and Cathy Streifel, “Trends in Female Crime, 1960–1990,” in Concetta C. Culliver, ed., Female Criminality: The State of the Art (New York: Garland, 1993), pp. 368–74. By 1990, the arrest rate was 31 per 100,000 women. By 1992, the arrest rate had increased to 50 per 100,000 women: U.S. Department of Justice, “Crime in the United States,” FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992, Washington, D.C.

52 aggravated assault and robbery rates for girls, 1960 and 1990: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992.

53 felony arrest rates for girls, 1991 and 1992: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992.

54 proportion of arrests: FBI Uniform Crime Reports, 1992.

55 suicide drop: Centers for Disease Control, Atlanta, Georgia.

MAYBE YOU MISTOOK ME FOR AN ANGEL

56 Margaret Drabble, The Waterfall (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1969)

57 “You’re innocent. You’re the victim:” Quoted in Scott Burnside and Alan Cairns, Deadly Innocence (Toronto: Warner Books, 1995), p. 354.

58 “Women will try to use their femininity”: Interview with the author.

59 police identifying female offenders with their mothers, sisters, or daughters”: H. Allen and C. Simonsen, Corrections in America (New York: Macmillan, 1986).

60 women least likely to be processed beyond arrest stage: M. D. Krohn, J. P. Curry and S. Nelson-Kilger, “Is Chivalry Dead? An Analysis of Changes in Police Disposition of Males and Females,” Criminology 21 (1983), 417–438. Police are particularly unlikely to arrest if there are children at home and no alternative caretaker. See Meda Chesney-Lind, “Judicial Paternalism and the Female Offender: Training Women to Know Their Place,” Crime and Delinquency 35 (1977).

61 vocabulary of motive: Allison Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 50. The vocabulary of motive was first proposed in 1940 by C. W. Mills: “Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive,” American Sociological Review 5 (1940), 904.

62 menstruation studies: Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice, p. 50.

63 Rikers Island inmates: Robert J. Kelley, “Vindictive Vindications: Crime Causation from the Inmates’ Standpoint,” The Keeper’s Voice 17:2 (1996), 9–13.

64 “They appear to have a distinct problem in self-consciously acknowledging … rage”: Jack Katz, Seductions of Crime: Moral and Sensual Attractions in Doing Evil (New York: Basic Books, 1988), p. 50.

65 premenstrual syndrome as homicide defense: Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice, p. 51.

66 “Many women who kill their abusers start out intending to commit suicide”: Lenore Walker, cited by Alene Kristal, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby: The Battered Woman Syndrome Revisited,” New York Law School Journal of Human Rights 9 (1991), 111–160.

67 suicide rates in Chicago: Block and Christakos, “Partner Homicide in Chicago.”

68 “Some severely depressed parents”: John McCormack, Newsweek cover story, November 14, 1994.

69 “It is a crucial moment”: John Glenn Gray, The Warriors: Reflections on Men in Battle (New York: Harper Torch Books, 1970), p. 184.

70 psychiatrists’ reports: All cited by Kirk Makin, “Bernardo Might Have Killed Homolka, Doctors Say,” Toronto Globe & Mail, September 5, 1995, p. 10.

71 Carol Bundy to Doug Clark: Quoted by Louise Farr, The Sunset Murders (New York: Pocket Books, 1993), p. 216.

72 a book she was reading in prison: Christine McGuire and Carla Norton, Perfect Victim: The True Story of “The Girl in the Box” by the D. A. Who Prosecuted Her Captor (New York: Dell, 1988).

73 case of Francine Hughes: Faith McNulty, The Burning Bed: The True Story of Francine Hughes—A Beaten Wife Who Rebelled (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1980).

74 Sturm: David France, “Life After Death: Battered Women Who Killed Their Husbands,” Good Housekeeping, July 1995.

75 learned helplessness: Lenore E. Walker, The Battered Woman (New York: Harper & Row, 1979), p. 49.

76 “only men kill in anger”: Walker, cited by Gerald Caplan, “Battered Wives, Battered Justice,” National Review, February 25, 1991.

77 domestic violence not an appropriate example of learned helplessness: Christopher Peterson, Steven F. Maier, and Martin E. P. Seligman, Learned Helplessness: A Theory for the Age of Personal Control (London: Oxford University Press, 1993), p. 239.

78 “reasoning doesn’t explain how women who are that helpless”: Gerald Caplan, “Battered Wives, Battered Justice.”

79 men in war: Paul Fussell, Wartime: Understanding and Behavior in the Second World War (New York, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989), p. 281.

80 survey of California’s female prisoners: Barbara Owen and Barbara Bloom, “Profiling Women Prisoners: Findings from National Surveys and a California Sample,” Prison Journal 75:2 (1995), 179.

81 sample of 1,880 female offenders: J. Crawford, “Tabulation of a Nationwide Survey of State Correctional Facilities for Adult and Juvenile Female Offenders” (College Park, Md.: American Correctional Association).

82 women incarcerated in Florida: William Blount, J. Kuhns, and Ira Silverman, “Intimate Abuse Within an Incarcerated Female Population: Rates, Levels, Criminality, A Continuum and Some Lessons About Self-Identification,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 413.

83 standpoint epistemology: women have “a more complete view of social reality”: Joyce McCarl-Nielson, ed., Feminist Research Methods: Exemplary Readings in the Social Sciences (Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press, 1990), p. 10.

84 “centrality of consciousness raising”: See Mary Margaret Fonow and Judith A. Cook, eds., Beyond Methodology: Feminist Scholarship in Lived Research (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1990).

85 Veronica Compton, guest editorial, Prison Life, September/October 1995, p. 12.

86 Coramae Richey Mann on abuse and self-defense as rationale: “The Battered Woman Syndrome Is Not a Legitimate Defense,” in Violence Against Women: Current Controversies (San Diego, Calif.: Greenhaven Press, 1994), pp. 292–300.

87 1848 manifesto: Seneca Falls Convention, “Declaration of Sentiment,” cited by Naomi Wolf, Fire with Fire: The New Female Power and How It Will Change the 21st Century (New York: Random House, 1994), p. 201.

88 Presentence investigations reports: Kathleen Daly, Gender, Crime and Punishment (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 1994), p. 83.

89 Guinevere Garcia described in The New York Times: Don Terry, “Hours Before Execution She Sought, Illinois Woman Is Given Clemency,” The New York Times, January 17, 1996, p. 10.

90 ACLU to Christian Science Monitor. James Tyson, “Woman’s Pending Execution Revives Death Penalty Furor,” January 16, 1996, p. 3.

91 “serious crimes” data for 1987: Rita Simon, “Women in Prison,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 375.

92 Phoenix, Arizona, study: J. B. Johnston, T. D. Kennedy, and I. Shuman, “Gender Differences in the Sentencing of Felony Offenders,” Federal Probation 51 (1987).

93 Average sentences for spousal homicide: Patrick A. Langan, U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Statistics, October 1995.

94 Men 11 percent more likely than women to be incarcerated: Darrell Steffensmeier, John Kramer, and Cathy Streifel, “Gender and Imprisonment Decisions,” Criminology 31:3 (1993), 411–446.

C. Frazier, E. Bock, and J. Henretta, “The Role of Probation Officers in Determining Gender Differences in Sentencing Severity,” Sociological Quarterly 24 (1983), 305–318. Authors found a 23 percent discrepancy between male and female sentences, with women more likely to be described in psychological terms.

95 1987 review of London crown courts: Hilary Allen, “Rendering Them Harmless: The Professional Portrayal of Women Charged with Serious Violent Crimes,” in Pat Carlan and Anne Worrall, eds., Gender, Crime and Justice (Philadelphia: Milton Keynes, 1987), pp. 81–94.

For additional research see: Hilary Allen, Justice Unbalanced (Oxford: Open University Press, 1987). The argument is frequently advanced that women receive greater lenience because they are often mothers with sole responsibility for their children. But a 1989 study of male and female offenders in the Seattle and New York courts found that the courts were more lenient to the women supporting families than to the men supporting families even if the women were separated or divorced and without the children. Kathleen Daly, “Neither Conflict, Nor Labelling, Nor Paternalism Will Suffice: Intersections of Race, Ethnicity, Gender and Family in Criminal Court Decisions,” Crime & Delinquency 3:1 (1989). Daly, like other scholars, points to women’s childcare responsibilities as perhaps the single greatest argument to keep them out of jail. But to say that women should be freed because they have children is to make too eager a generalization. Some women are in prison because they assaulted or killed their children. A third are there for drug offenses that involved a lifestyle in which their children were the least of their priorities. According to Ralph Weisheit, “What information was available indicated that nearly half of the mothers with children did not have custody of those children at the time of the offense. Surprisingly absent from the reports of prison psychologists were references to distress over separation from children.” Ralph Weisheit, “Female Homicide Offenders: Trends over Time in an Institutionalized Population,” Justice Quarterly 1:4 (December 1984), 471–488.

96 “This is a masculine system”: Interview with the author.

THE PROBLEM THAT STILL HAS NO NAME

97 “With regard to the public”: Quoted in Donna Osborne, “The Crime of Infanticide: Throwing the Baby Out with the Bath Water,” Canadian Journal of Family Law 6 (1987), 52.

98 “power of the mother”: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born: Motherhood as Experience and Institution (New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1986), p. 68.

99 killing of infant children between 1985 and 1988: Karen McCurdy and Deborah Daro, “Child Maltreatment: A National Survey of Reports and Fatalities,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9:1 (1994), 75–94. According to the National Center on Health Statistics, the homicide rate for children under one year old rose 55 percent between 1985 and 1988, climbing to 8.2 per 100,000 children. But, say McCurdy and Daro: “It should be noted that these figures undercount the actual incidence.… Research has consistently found that some percentage of accidental deaths … and SIDS cases might be more appropriately labeled a child maltreatment death if comprehensive investigations were routinely conducted.”

There is evidence that child homicide and infanticide are on the rise in the United States. Reports of child abuse increased 50 percent nationwide between 1986 and 1992, with a total of 2,936,000 children allegedly abused in 1992, of whom 1,160,400 were confirmed as abused by investigators—a 10 percent increase over 1991. Child fatalities rose 49 percent between 1985 and 1992, from 1.3 per 1,000 children to 1.94. Forty-six percent of all child fatalities were infants.

100 data on infanticide compiled by WHO: Katherine K. Christoffel and Kiang Liu, “Homicide Death Rates in Childhood in 23 Developed Countries: U.S. Rates Atypically High,” Child Abuse & Neglect 7 (1983), 339–345. The median homicide rate for children under one year of age was 1.7 per 100,000, as compared with a median rate of 1.2 homicides per 100,000 for all age groups. Japan had the highest rate, at 8.6 infants killed per 100,000. The U.S. homicide rate for male children under the age of one year was 4.8 per 100,000; for female children it was 3.3. Adding in possible homicide, the rate became 8.7 infants per 100,000, compared with a rate of 8.2 homicides per 100,000 for all ages. “The incidence of infanticide, unlike the incidence of child homicide, tends to be as high [as] or higher than the rate of homicide for adults.” The data, conclude the authors, “may indicate that the susceptibility to infanticide is reinforced by features of our society, perhaps particularly social isolation of parents.” See also Murray Straus, “State and Regional Differences in U.S. Homicide Rates in Relation to Sociocultural Characteristics of the States,” Behavioral Sciences and the Law 5 (1987), 61–75.

101 “neonates are discarded but not found”: Patricia M. Crittenden and Susan E. Craig, “Developmental Trends in the Nature of Child Homicide,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 5:2 (June 1990). In Dade County, Florida, between 1956 and 1986, 171 child murders were recorded by police. Mothers accounted for 86 percent of newborn deaths, 39 percent of infant deaths, 22 percent of toddler deaths, 23 percent of preschooler deaths, and 8 percent of child deaths. These figures don’t include the 22 percent of cases where the perpetrator was unknown, or possible child homicides where no body was found. “Should a mother decide either to end the neonate’s life or to dispose of a body which she believed to be dead, there would be no observers or official records of the death.” This would follow from the fact that in seven of the thirteen neonate cases, “the murder was discovered only when the infant’s body was accidentally found after being discarded.”

102 “Infanticide Increasing, Experts Fear”: Martha Shirk, St. Louis Post Dispatch, April 7, 1991.

103 Long Island Newsday editorial: “Compassion fits this crime, not punishment,” March 22, 1991.

104 Suffolk County Detective Lieutenant Gierasch: Interview with the author.

105 extrapolating from animal behavior to human mothers: An in-depth account of this research is cited in Diane Eyer, Mother-Infant Bonding: A Scientific Fiction (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1992).

106 skin-to-skin bonding: Ibid. Although this sort of bonding is still being touted in pregnancy and birth books, many researchers have rejected its significance, pointing out that mothers with premature infants, as well as adoptive mothers, have no trouble bonding with their offspring in the long term.

107 Dr. Stuart Asch: Interview with the author.

108 Letters to the editor: Suffolk Times, “Ellwood Case: Unequal Justice,” March 28, 1991; Newsday, “Questions in Ellwood Case,” March 4, 1991.

109 “Under Christianity”: Adrienne Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 259.

110 Thirty-three percent of Paris women: William Langer, “Infanticide: A Historical Survey,” History of Childhood Quarterly 1 (1974), 353–374.

111 Infant abandonment and killing in Greece and Rome: Shari Thurer, The Myths of Motherhood: How Culture Reinvents the Good Mother (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1994).

112 “a preschool-age stepchild is 100 times more likely”: Margo Wilson and Martin Daly, “Evolutionary Social Psychology and Family Homicide,” Science 242:4878 (1988), 519.

113 A new name for Medea: Ira Daniel Turkat, “Divorce Related Malicious Mother Syndrome,” Journal of Family Violence 10:3 (1995), 253–263.

114 maternal resentment and infanticide in ancient Greece: Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. 77.

115 infanticide in colonial America as “revolutionary”: Ann Jones, Women Who Kill (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1980), p. 55.

116 Personal impulses in the murder of infants: Brandt F. Steele, “Psychology of Infanticide Resulting from Maltreatment,” Child Abuse & Neglect 120:1 (1987), 76–85.

117 “women who commit infanticide run a wide spectrum”: Stewart interviewed by the author. See also C. Erlick Robinson and Donna E. Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders,” Canadian Medical Association Journal 134 (January 1, 1986).

118 Infanticide Act: K. O’Donovan, “The Médicalisation of Infanticide,” Criminal Law Review 5 (1984). In two reviews of the act—by the Butler Committee (1975) and the Criminal Law Revision Committee (1980)—its medical basis was challenged, and social stress was conceded. Noted members of the Butler Committee: “the operative factors in child killing are often the stress of having to care for the infant, who may be unwanted or difficult.” And: “mental disorder is probably no longer a significant cause of infanticide.” The CLRC went beyond that concession and recommended that the act be revised to include “environmental or other stresses,” including poverty, incapacity to cope with the child, and failure of bonding. Nevertheless, as O’Donovan notes, “the Committee was careful to link such factors to ‘the fact of the birth and the hormonal and other bodily changes produced by it.’ Thus, to enable the court to take account of socio-economic factors, yet still forgive women, the medical model was retained” (p. 263).

119 link between postpartum hormones and violent behavior: See, for example, Robinson and Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders.” “Despite terms like lactational psychosis,” note the authors, “researchers have been unable to confirm a link between postpartum psychosis and levels of prolactin or for that matter, levels of thyroxine, estrogen, progesterone, adrenal corticoids, follicle-stimulating hormones or B-endorphins.”

120 coroner’s inquests: Cited in O’Donovan, “The Medicalisation of Infanticide.”

121 “courts regularly returned ‘not guilty’ verdicts”: Osborne, “Crime of Infanticide.”

122 defending the diagnosis of lactational insanity: J. H. Morton, “Female Homicides,” Journal of Mental Science 80 (1934), 64–74.

123 “studies linking life history to depression”: Michael O’Hara, Janet Schlechte, David Lewis, Michael Varner, “Controlled Prospective Study of Postpartum Mood Disorders: Psychological, Environmental, Hormonal Variables,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100:1 (February 1991), 63; Steven E. Hobfoll, “Depression’s Birth in Poor Women,” Science News 147:24 (June 17, 1995), 381; Phyllis Zelkowitz and Tamara Milet, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders: Their Relationship to Psychological Adjustment and Marital Satisfaction in Spouses,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 105:2 (May 1996), 281; Susan B. Campbell and Jeffrey Cohn, “Prevalence and Correlates of Postpartum Depression in First-time Mothers,” Journal of Abnormal Psychology 100:4 (November 1991), 594.

124 fathers and postpartum depression: E. J. Anthony, “An Overview of the Effects of Maternal Depression on the Infant and Child,” in H. L. Morrison, ed., Children of Depressed Parents: Risk Identification and Intervention (New York: Grune & Stratton, 1983), pp. 1–17. See also W. V. Diskin et al., “Postpartum—After the Baby is Born,” in Our Bodies, Ourselves (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1976), pp. 297–316.

125 Kathleen Householder: “Why Mothers Kill Their Babies,” Time, June 20, 1988; Josephine Mesa: “Women Who Killed Child Remains Free,” Tom Gorman, Los Angeles Times, April 26, 1989; Sheryl Massip: “Judge Won’t Confine Massip,” Andrea Ford, Los Angeles Times, March 11, 1989.

126 depression and psychosis less severe in early twentieth century: Katherine Dalton, Depression After Childbirth (New York: Oxford University Press, 1989).

127 Harris and Thompson on “Oprah Winfrey” show episode: “Mothers Who Killed Their Children,” February 6, 1991.

128 account of professional woman giving birth to twins: Robinson and Stewart, “Postpartum Psychiatric Disorders.”

129 “the parent may decide it is a hopeless task”: Steele, “Psychology of Infanticide,” 83.

130 “I was like I gotta do this”: Paula Sims to Audrey Becker, Dying Dreams: The Secrets of Paula Sims (New York: Pocket Books, 1993), p. 328.

131 Of eighty-eight infanticidal women in a 1988 study: Martin Daly and Margo Wilson, Homicide (New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1988).

132 women admitted to Broadmoor: Patrick McGrath, “Maternal Filicide in Broadmoor Hospital, 1919–69,” Journal of Forensic Psychiatry 3:2 (1974).

133 “morbid and mistaken maternal solicitude”: J. Baker, “Female Criminal Lunatics,” Journal of Mental Science 48 (1902), 13–28.

134 men in Brixton prison convicted of infanticide: P. D. Scott, “Fatal Battered Baby Cases,” Medicine, Science and the Law 13 (1973), 197–206.

135 Jennifer Uglow on Toni Morrison: “Medea and Marmite Sandwiches,” in Katherine Grieve, ed., Balancing Acts: On Being a Mother (London: Virago, 1989), pp. 148–159.

136 average prison sentence: Mann, When Women Kill, p. 150. Thirty-seven percent of the women convicted of killing their offspring in Mann’s study were sentenced to prison. The remainder received probation, were remanded for psychiatric treatment, or were dealt with in some other manner.

137 British imprisonment rates for infanticide: Allison Morris and Ania Wilczynski, “Rocking the Cradle: Mothers Who Kill Their Children,” in Helen Birch, ed., Moving Targets: Women, Murder and Representation (London: Virago, 1993), pp. 198–217.

138 Phillip Resnick interviewed by Long Island Newsday: Carolyn Colwell, “The Pregnancy Denial Defense,” March 11, 1991.

139 number of U.S. cases involving postpartum psychosis defense: G. Laverne Williamson, “Postpartum Depression Syndrome as a Defense to Criminal Behavior,” Journal of Family Violence 8:2 (1993), 151–164.

140 Dade County, Florida, prosecutions: Crittenden and Craig, “Developmental Trends.”

141 use of postpartum psychosis as a reason why women shouldn’t vote: O’Donovan, “The Medicalisation of Infanticide.”

142 “myth-making by legislation”: Nigel Walker, Crime and Insanity in England. Volume I: The Historical Perspective (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1968), p. 121.

MEDEA IN HER MODERN GUISE

143 “ideal mother”: Cited in Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. xxvii.

144 “powerless women”: Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 38.

145 MSBP as “a ‘career’ pursued by ostensibly wonderful mothers”: Herbert A. Schreier and Judith A. Libow, Hurting for Love: Munchausen by Proxy Syndrome (Guilford, Conn.: Guilford Press, 1993), p. 88.

146 “The disorder is far from rare”: Ibid. p. 38.

147 “substantial challenge: “Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” The FBI Law Enforcement Bulletin 64:8 (August 1995), 5–7. A clearly coercive, instrumental form of self-directed violence is Munchausen syndrome. It has been noted that such individuals can often shift the direction of their aggression, becoming threatening or physically violent toward medical staff. See, for example, Donald A. Swanson, “The Munchausen Syndrome,” American Journal of Psychotherapy 35:3 (July 1981). Women with Munchausen syndrome by proxy often threaten to commit suicide. The FBI Bulletin on MSBP investigation notes that 60 percent of the women in a sample of the disorder had attempted suicide.

148 “Because I’m a woman”: Joyce Egginton, From Cradle to Grave (New York: William Morrow and Company, 1989), p. 99.

149 MSBP as a “form of psychopathy”: Schreier and Libow, Hurting for Love, p. 53.

150 analysis of psychopathic speech patterns: Interview with author. See also Robert Hare, Without Conscience: The Disturbing World of the Psychopaths Among Us (New York: Pocket Books, 1994).

151 psychopath described: Hervey Cleckley, Mask of Sanity, 5th ed. (St. Louis, Mo.: C. V. Mosely, 1976).

152 psychopath’s brain likened to a reptile’s: J. Reid Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind: Origins, Dynamics and Treatment (Northvale, N.J.: Jason Aronson, 1988), p. 34.

153 Psychiatrist’s interview with psychopath: Patricia Pearson, “Frankenstein’s Orphan,” Saturday Night, November 1991.

154 women more likely than men to perpetrate child neglect: Leslie Margolin, “Fatal Child Neglect,” Child Welfare LXIX:4 (July-August 1990), 309–318. Two-thirds of fatal neglect victims are male. See also Nino Trocme, “Ontario Incidence Study of Reported Child Abuse & Neglect” (Toronto: Institute for the Prevention of Child Abuse, 1994). This investigation of child abuse and neglect in Ontario tracked 46,683 cases. Child neglect involved a mother as the perpetrator in 85 percent of the cases. In abuse, mothers were responsible in 39 percent of cases, as compared with 40 percent for fathers.

155 “Neglect is continual”: Dr. Mindy Rosenberg, in testimony at the sentencing hearing of Dorothea Puente.

156 “soul murder”: Alice Miller, For Your Own Good: Hidden Cruelty in Child-Rearing and the Roots of Violence (New York: Noonday Press, 1990), p. 248.

157 “inability to socialize”: Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind, p. 35.

158 “a baby was an extension of herself”: Egginton, Cradle to Grave, p. 188. 100 “You could paper the walls”: Ibid., p. 326.

159 “projective containers”: Meloy, The Psychopathic Mind, p. 51.

160 “I’ve seen psychopaths cry like a baby”: Bill Tillier, interviewed by the author.

161 “doing his best to elicit a confession”: Egginton, Cradle to Grave, p. 225.

162 “the Roman mother’s use of her own sons”: Thurer, Myths of Motherhood, p. 78.

163 “A woman whose rage is under wraps”: Rich, Of Woman Born, p. 206.

164 anomie theory: Virginia Morris, review of Allison Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice, in Women & Criminal Justice 1:1 (1989). Morris was quoting Eileen Leonard, from Women, Crime and Society, p. 93.

165 scientific mothering: Rima D. Apple, “Constructing Mothers: Scientific Motherhood in the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries,” Social History of Medicine 8:2 (1995), 161–178.

166 comments about Genene Jones: Peter Elkind, Death Shift (New York: Viking Penguin, 1989).

167 “That we have so much difficulty seeing these mothers”: Schreier and Libow, Hurting for Love, p. 102.

168 Roy Meadow research: “Suffocation, Recurrent Apnea, and Sudden Infant Death,” Journal of Pediatrics 117:3 (September 1990), 351–357; see also C. P. Samuels et al., “Fourteen Cases of Imposed Airway Obstruction,” Archives of Diseases in Children (1992); Ian Mitchell et al., “Apnea and Factitious Illness,” Pediatrics 92:6 (December 1993), 810; W. Alexander and R. Smith, “Serial Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” Pediatrics 86:4 (1990); Diana Brahms, “Video Surveillance and Child Abuse,” The Lancet 342:8877 (October 16, 1993). See also W. Alexander and R. Stevenson Smith, “Serial Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy,” Pediatrics 86:4 (1990).

169 Chicago study of crib deaths: K. K. Christoffel, E. J. Zieserl, and J. Chiarmonte, “Should Child Abuse and Neglect Be Considered When a Child Dies Unexpectedly?” American Journal of Diseases of Children 39 (1985), 876–880.

170 SIDS concealing homicides: See, for example, John S. Emery and Mary Newlands, “Child Abuse and Cot Deaths,” Child Abuse & Neglect 15 (1991), 275–278; Robert M. Reece, “Fatal Child Abuse and Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: A Critical Diagnostic Decision,” Pediatrics 91:2 (1993).

171 Martha Woods case: V. DiMaio and J. D. Bernstein, “A Case of Infanticide,” Journal of Forensic Sciences 34:2 (1975).

172 “A lot of doctors are very naive about these cases”: DiMaio interviewed by Egginton, Cradle to Grave, p. 203.

173 proposed genetic cause of SIDS: A. Steinschneider, “Prolonged Apnea and the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome: Clinical and Laboratory Observations,” Pediatrics 50 (1972), 646–654. When Connie Chung asked Steinschneider about his article’s influence, he replied: “Not the paper. I’m influential. I’m a big man”; from “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung,” June 16, 1994.

174 account of Deborah Gedzius: “Eye to Eye with Connie Chung,” June 16, 1994.

175 child abuse rates nationwide: Karen McCurdy and Deborah Daro, “Child Maltreatment: A National Survey of Reports and Fatalities,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9:1 (1994), 75–94.

176 mothers more likely than fathers to commit child homicide: Fifty-five percent of parental-child (under-twelve) killings were carried out by mothers. U.S. Department of Justice, “Murder in Families” (Washington, D.C., 1993). The figures were based on prosecution and convictions, and some critics charge that they don’t tell the whole story. It’s possible that fathers, stepfathers, and boyfriends have a greater propensity than mothers to kill the children in their care; by the same logic, of course, it’s equally possible that mothers have a higher rate than reported. For child homicide in England, see Morris and Wilczynski, “Rocking the Cradle,” in Birch, ed., Moving Targets, p. 201.

177 smaller samples: According to Murray Straus, Richard J. Gelles, and S. K. Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors: Violence in the American Family (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1980), mothers had a 62 percent greater rate of physical child abuse than fathers. Mothers beat their children nearly twice as often as fathers do, and fathers are less likely than mothers to throw objects at, slap, spank, or hit their child with objects. See also Leslie Margolin, “Child Abuse by Mothers’ Boyfriends: Why the Overrepresentation?” Child Abuse & Neglect 16 (1992), 451–551. Margolin notes that the majority of physical abusers are women.

Sexual abuse rates are the most difficult of all to determine, because the whole framework of inquiry is geared toward the assumption that men molest children. Only recently have data emerged to challenge that assumption. See, for example, David Finkelhor and Diana Russel, “Women as Perpetrators: Review of the Evidence,” in Finkelhor, ed., Child Sexual Abuse. See also F. F. Knopp, F. F. Lackey, and L. B. Lackey, Female Sexual Abusers: A Summary of Data from 44 Treatment Providers (Orwell, Vt.: Safer Society Press, 1987); K. Faller, “Women Who Sexually Abuse Children,” Violence and Victims, 2 (1987); K. L. Kaufman et al., “Comparing Female and Male Perpetrators’ Modus Operandi: Victims’ Reports of Sexual Abuse, Journal of Interpersonal Violence 10:3 (1995); R. L. Johnson and D. Shrier, “Past Sexual Victimization by Females of Male Patients in an Adolescent Medicine Clinic Population,” American Journal of Psychiatry 144:5 (1987).

178 “Women are linked more intimately”: Steffensmeier and Streifel, “Trends in Female Crime,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality.

179 “When a person cannot talk”: Miller, For Your Own Good, p. 242.

180 influence of child abuse on subsequent criminal behavior: Several studies of wife-assaulters reveal that these men were abused as children and that the abuser was as likely to be the mother as the father. See, for example, Lynn Caesar, “Exposure to Violence in the Families-of-Origin Among Wife-abusers and Maritally Non-violent Men,” Violence and Victims 3:1 (1988), 49–63; C. Cappell and R. B. Heiner, “The Intergenerational Transmission of Family Aggression,” Journal of Family Violence 5 (1990), 135–52.

Cathy Spatz-Widom’s research on the relation between child abuse or neglect and adult arrest for crime shows that 16 percent of girls who were abused (in her sample) were later arrested for adult crime, twice as many as girls who were not abused. “Child Abuse, Neglect, and Adult Behaviour: Research Design and Findings on Criminality, Violence, and Child Abuse,” American Journal of Orthopsychiatry 59:3 (1989).

181 impact of sexual abuse on subsequent sex offending: A. Nicholas Groth, “Sexual Trauma in the Life Histories of Rapists and Child Molestors,” Victimology 4:1 (1979): 10–16; Freda Briggs and Russell Hawkins, “A Comparison of the Childhood Experiences of Convicted Male Child Molestors and Men Who Were Sexually Abused in Childhood and Claimed to Be Nonoffenders,” Child Abuse and Neglect 20: 3 (1996): 221–33; David Finkelhor and Diana Russel, “Women as Perpetrators: Review of the Evidence,” in David Finkelhor, ed., Child Sexual Abuse: New Theory and Research (New York: Free Press, 1984).

182 “Defenselessness and helplessness find no haven”: Ibid., p. 117.

BALANCING THE DOMESTIC EQUATION

183 “shameful secrets”: Ann Jones, Next Time, She’ll Be Dead: Battering and How to Stop It (Boston: Beacon Press, 1994), p. 236.

184 “responsibility of women in domestic abuse”: Judith Shevrin and James Sniechowski, “Women Are Responsible, Too,” Los Angeles Times, July 1, 1994.

185 lesbian abuse: See Claire Renzetti, Violent Betrayal: Partner Abuse in Lesbian Relationships (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications 1992); Nancy Hammond, “Lesbian Victims of Relationship Violence,” Women and Therapy 8 (1989), 89–105; M.J. Bologna, C. K. Waterman, and L.J. Dawson, “Violence in Gay Male and Lesbian Relationships: Implications for Practitioners and Policy Makers,” paper presented at the Third National Conference of Family Violence Researchers, Durham, N.H., 1987 (the authors found that 18 percent of gay men and 40 percent of lesbians admitted to being victims of aggression in their current relationship); Gwat-Yong Lie and S. Gentlewarrior, “Intimate Violence in Lesbian Relationships: Discussion of Survey Findings and Practise Implications,” Journal of Social Service Research 15 (1991), 41–59 (in their 1990 survey of 1,099 lesbians, Lie and Gentlewarrior found that 52 percent had been victims of aggression by their partners); G. Y. Lie et al., “Lesbians in Currently Aggressive Relationships: How Frequently Do They Report Aggressive Past Relationships?” Violence and Victims 6:2 (1991).

186 percentage of severe violence in spousal abuse: Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors, p. 40.

187 male approval of spousal assault: Murray Straus and Glenda Kaufman Kantor, “Change in Cultural Norms Approving Marital Violence from 1968 to 1994,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, Los Angeles, August 1994.

188 survey of family violence: Straus, Gelles, and Steinmetz, Behind Closed Doors, pp. 40–41.

189 research “patriarchal”: See, for example, M. Bograd and K. Yllo, eds., Feminist Perspectives on Wife Abuse (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1988).

190 resurvey of family violence: Murray Straus and Richard J. Gelles, “Societal Change and Change in Family Violence from 1975–1985 as Revealed by Two National Surveys,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 48 (1986), 465–479. “We found that among couples where violence occurred, both partners are violent in about half of the cases, violence by only the male partner occurs one-quarter of the time, and violence by only the female partner occurs one-quarter of the time.… These results cast doubt on the notion that assaults by women on their partners primarily are acts of self-defense or retaliation.” In terms of damage done, the study found that levels of medical care, days off work, and time spent bedridden were not significantly different between the sexes (162–163). Women, however, reported much higher levels of depression.

See also “Physical Assaults by Wives: A Major Social Problem,” in Richard J. Gelles and Donileen R. Loeske, eds., Current Controversies in Family Violence (Newbury Park, Calif.: Sage Publications, 1993).

191 study of young American military couples: J. Langhinrichsen-Rohling, P. Neidig, and G. Thorn, “Violent Marriages: Gender Differences in Levels of Current Violence and Past Abuse,” Journal of Family Violence 10:2 (1995), 159–175.

192 new books on the self-help market: See, for example, Patricia Evans, Verbal Abuse: Survivors Speak Out on Relationship and Recovery (Holbrook, Mass.: Bob Adams, Inc., 1993).

193 high degrees of female verbal hostility by women in violent marriages: See, for example, D. Vivian and K. D. O’Leary, “Communication Patterns in Physically Aggressive Engaged Partners,” paper presented at the Third National Family Aggression Research Conference, University of New Hampshire, July 1987.

194 battered husband syndrome: S. K. Steinmetz, “The Battered Husband Syndrome,” Victimology 2:3/4 (1977).

195 familiar with Murray Straus as a man: Pat Marshall’s remarks described by David Lees, “The War Against Men,” Toronto Life, December 1992. Lee quotes Marshall as saying: “I know Murray.… I was speaking at an international conference a few years ago in Jerusalem.… Met a woman there and … didn’t know her name … I have never met a woman who looked so victimized. Never in my whole, whole life. By coincidence, it happened to be Murray Straus’s wife. I have never met somebody who was trying so desperately to be invisible in the space that she occupied. I mean, it was just dramatic.”

196 Kentucky Commission on Violence Against Women: M. Schulman, “A Survey of Spousal Violence Against Women in Kentucky” (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1979). The raw data were reviewed by C. A. Hornung, B. C. McCullough, and T. Sugimoto, “Status Relationships in Marriage: Risk Factors in Spouse Abuse,” Journal of Marriage and the Family 43 (1981), 675–692. The authors found that 38 percent of the violent attacks in the Kentucky survey were by women—against men who had not assaulted them.

197 emergency medical admissions in Detroit: Christina Hoff Sommers, Who Stole Feminism: How Women Have Betrayed Women (New York: Simon & Schuster 1994), p. 201.

198 violent dating: Walter DeKeseredy and K. Kelly, “The Incidence and Prevalence of Woman Abuse in Canadian University and College Dating Relationships: Preliminary Results from a National Survey,” unpublished report to the Family Violence Prevention Division, Health and Welfare Canada, 1993.

199 physical aggression by young women in premarital romance: See, for example, D. B. Sugarman and G. T. Hotaling, “Dating Violence: Prevalence, Context and Risk Markers,” in M. A. Pirog-Good and J. E. Stets, eds., Violence in Dating Relationships: Emerging Social Issues (New York: Praeger, 1989); Diane Follingstad et al., “Sex Differences in Motivations and Effects in Dating Relationships,” Family Relations, 40 (January 1991), 51–57: Two and a half times more women than men cited “control” as a motive for assaults. More males cited jealousy. Twenty percent of females said they had the right to use violence, whereas no males did. See also A. DeMaris, “Male vs. Female Initiation of Aggression: The Case of Courtship Violence,” in E. Viano, ed., Intimate Violence: Interdisciplinary Perspectives (Bristol, Pa.: Hemisphere Publishing, 1992); P. Marshall and L. Rose, “Gender, Stress and Violence in Adult Relationships of a Sample of College Students,” Journal of Social and Personal Relations 4 (1987); Sarah Ben-David, “The Two Facets of Female Violence: The Public and the Domestic Domains,” Journal of Family Violence 8:4 (1993).

For female sexual coercion in dating relationships, see, for example: L. O’Sullivan and S. Byers, “Eroding Stereotypes: College Women’s Attempts to Influence Reluctant Male Sexual Partners,” The Journal of SexResearch 30 (1993); Kate Fillion, Lip Service: The Truth About Women’s Darker Side in Love, Sex and Friendship (Toronto: HarperCollins, 1996).

200 survey on alcoholism and domestic violence: Reena Sommer, “Male and Female Perpetrated Partner Abuse: Testing a Diathesis-Stress Model,” unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Manitoba, 1994. See also R. Sommer, G. E. Barnes, and R. P. Murray, “Alcohol Consumption, Alcohol Dependence, Personality and Female Perpetrated Spousal Abuse,” Personality and Individual Differences 13:12 (1993), 1315–1323.

201 Therapist Michael Thomas: Interview with the author.

202 differences among women: Mildred Pagelow, Family Violence (New York: Praeger, 1984).

203 “specious notion”: Susan Brownmiller, “Hardly a Heroine,” The New York Times, February 2, 1989, p. 25.

204 Nussbaum: Jones, Next Time, She’ll Be Dead, pp. 167–198.

205 “search for causation a wild-goose chase”: E. Wilson, What Is to Be Done About Violence Against Women? (London: Penguin, 1983).

206 “If a man abuses his wife”: Final Report of the Federal Panel on Violence Against Women, Ottawa, Canada, 1993, p. 8.

207 “same old crap”: Ann Jones, “Where Do We Go From Here?” MS., September/October 1994, p. 57.

208 “For men, abuse is a double whammy”: Murray Straus, in interview with the author.

209 “slapping the cad”: Straus, “Physical Assaults by Wives: A Major Social Problem,” in Gelles and Loeske, eds., Current Controversies in Family Violence, p. 58.

210 “I suspect that some academic”: Jones, Next Time, She’ll Be Dead, p. 81.

211 abused lesbians unable to go to local shelter: Renzetti, Violent Betrayal, pp. 93–94.

212 “When shelter workers”: Hammond, “Lesbian Victims,” 95.

213 no “lesbian utopia”: Barbara Hart, “Preface,” in Kerry Lobel, ed., Naming the Violence: Speaking Out About Lesbian Battering (Seattle: The Seal Press, 1986), p. 10.

214 “tactics may look the same”: “Women Who Batter Women,” Ms., September/October 1994, p. 53.

215 “Women use the same rationalizations”: Laurie Chesley, interview with the author.

216 patriarchal attitudes about marriage: P. Burke, “Gender Identity, Self-Esteem, and Physical and Sexual Abuse in Dating Relationships,” in Pirog-Good and Stets, eds., Violence in Dating Relationships.

217 distinction between “strength” and “power”: Renzetti, Violent Betrayal, p. 117.

218 “many … believe”: Walker, The Battered Woman, p. 96.

219 “I was his one-eyed teddy bear”: Quoted in Joyce Johnson, What Lisa Knew: The Truth and Lies of the Steinberg Case (New York: Zebra Books, 1990), p. 209.

220 “intense displays of rage”: Arlene Istar, “The Healing Comes Slowly,” in Lobel, ed., Naming the Violence, pp. 163–172.

221 female abusers with “personality disorders”: L. K. Hamberger and J. Hastings, “Characteristics of Male Spouse Abusers Consistent with Personality Disorders,” Hospital Community Psychiatry 39 (1988), 763–770.

222 “Violence is a learned behavior”: Debbie DeGale, in interview with the author.

223 children who are beaten by their mothers more likely to become victimizers: Langhinrichsen-Rohling, Neidig, and Thorn, “Violent Marriages.” See also J. Malone and A. Tyree, “Cycle of Violence: Explanations of Marital Aggression and Victimization,” paper presented at the 86th Annual Meeting of the American Society of Anthropology, Cincinnati, Ohio, 1991.

In R. Sommer, unpublished doctoral dissertation, 1994, 34.78 percent of males and 40.91 percent of females who perpetrated physical abuse had observed their mothers hitting their fathers, a higher rate than for those who had observed fathers hit mothers.

224 “Domination begins with the attempt to deny dependency”: Jessica Benjamin, The Bonds of Love: Psychoanalysis, Feminism, and the Problem of Domination (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988), p. 52.

225 “dependency” for lesbians: Renzetti, Violent Betrayal, p. 116.

226 “couples’ violence ultimately results from partners’ insecurities”: William A. Stacey, Lonnie R. Hazlewood, and Anson Shupe, The Violent Couple (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1994), p. 104.

227 “dance of mutual destructiveness”: Shevrin and Sniechowski, “Women Are Responsible Too.”

228 “spent most of their time drinking”: Eve Lipchik, “Spouse Abuse: Challenging the Party Line,” The Family Therapy Networker, May/June 1991.

229 case of Favell and Pelly: For a different interpretation of the relationship, see Lisa Priest, Women Who Killed, p. 15.

230 “abuse aimed at the men’s resources or abilities”: Stacey et al., The Violent Couple, p. 63.

231 “According to former patrol officer”: R. Kim Rossmo, in interview with the author.

232 Green and Julio: “the official victim is the one who submits”: Jeanne P. Eschner, The Hitting Habit (New York: The Free Press, 1984), p. 21.

233 “As one Austin woman”: Stacey et al., The Violent Couple, p. 63.

WOMAN AS PREDATOR

234 Epigraph quotes: Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 1990, p. 247. Toppan cited in Eric Hickey, Serial Murderers and Their Victims (Belmont, Calif.: Wadsworth, 1991), p. 124.

235 percentage of serial killers who are women: Hickey, Serial Murderers, p. 107.

236 nicknames of multiple killers: Ibid.

237 “We can be fascinated without being afraid”: James Alan Fox and Jack Levin, “Female Serial Killers,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 260.

238 gender differences in serial murder superficial: Candice Skrapec, “Female Serial Killer,” in Birch, ed., Moving Targets, p. 263.

239 twenty-two killers arrested between 1972 and 1992: Belea T. Keeney and Kathleen M. Heide: “Gender Differences in Serial Murderers: A Preliminary Analysis,” Journal of Interpersonal Violence 9:3 (September 1994). Keeney defined serial homicide in her 1992 master’s thesis as “the premeditated murder of three or more victims, committed over time in separate incidents, in a civilian context, with the murder activity being chosen by the offender” (unpublished, University of South Florida, Tampa, Fla.).

240 use of guns by female serial killers: Hickey, Serial Murderers, p. 117.

241 FBI definition of serial murder: R. Ressler, A. Burgess, and J. Douglas, Sexual Homicide (Lexington, Mass.: Lexington Books, 1988). For account of BSSU research, see also R. Ressler and Tom Schactman, Whoever Fights Monsters (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1992).

242 “routine activities theory”: See, for example, R. V. Clarke and M. Felson, eds., Routine Activity and Rational Choice (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1993); D. K. Rossmo, “Targeting Victims: Serial Killers and the Urban Environment,” in T. O’Reilly-Fleming and S. A. Egger, eds., Serial and Mass Murder: Theory, Research and Policy (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1994).

243 female serial killers average a greater number of victims: Hickey, Serial Murderers, p. 126.

244 “white male drifters”: Phyllis Chesler, “A Double Standard for Murder?” The New York Times, January 8, 1992, p. 19.

245 Serial killer as henchman: Jane Caputi, The Age of Sex Crime (London: Women’s Press, 1987).

246 “the State says …”: Susan McWhinney, “Petite Treason: Crimes Against the Matriarchy,” in Amy Scholder, ed., Critical Condition: Women on the Edge of Violence (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1993), pp. 48–51.

247 “Many years ago, I was a boy drowning in the sea”: Nilsen quoted by Brian Masters, Killing for Company: The Story of a Man Addicted to Murder (New York: Dell, 1993).

248 quotes from Sharon Smolick and inmates at Bedford Hills: Interviews with Matthew Scanlon, “Women in Prison,” Psychology Today 26:6 (November-December 1993).

249 function of temperament: H. J. Eysenck, Crime and Personality (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1964), p. 91.

250 right man syndrome: Colin Wilson, Written in Blood: A History of Forensic Detection (London: GraftonBooks, 1989).

251 “nightmare artworks”: Joyce Carol Oates, The New York Review of Books, March 24, 1994.

252 “Poisoning is a cloak-and-dagger kind of crime”: Quoted by Tom Kuncl, Death Row Women (New York: Pocket Books, 1994), p. 190.

WHAT’S LOVE GOT TO DO WITH IT?

253 women “the distaff half of a murderous couple”: Joyce Carol Oates, “I had no other thrill or happiness,” The New York Review of Books, March 24, 1994, p. 52.

254 account of Hindley and Brady: Emlyn Williams, Beyond Belief: The Moors Murderers (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1967).

255 “In 1967”: Diana Bryden, “Monsters and Virgins,” Fuse 18:3 (1995).

256 “soft touches for clever men”: Henry Weinstein, “Woman bandit’s sentence to be restudied,” Los Angeles Times, July 8, 1991, p. 1.

257 “a woman who would do anything for love”: Farr, Sunset Murders.

258 “only wanted to be loved”: Dan Darvishian, “Blood Ties,” Sacramento, April 1984, p. 29.

259 Homolka a “brutalized” victim: Susan G. Cole, “Homolka Not Like Bernardo,” Now, July 13–19, 1995, p. 11.

260 Lord Astor: Patricia Pearson, “How Women Can Get Away with Murder,” Toronto Globe and Mail, August 18, 1993, p. 9.

261 “compliant victims”: Roy Hazelwood, Park Dietz, and Janet Warren, “Compliant Victims of the Sexual Sadist,” Australian Family Physician 22:4 (April 1993), 1–5.

262 “Women like us”: Farr, Sunset Murders, p. 207.

263 sample of co-killers with one or more women: Hickey, Serial Murderers p. 175.

264 Rosemary West: “In Darkest England,” National Review, November 6, 1995; Judith Neely: Candice Skrapec, “The Female Serial Killer”; Tina Powell, Gwendolyn Graham, and Diedre Hunt: all three cases discussed in Tom Kuncl, Death Row Women.

265 “I killed the bitch”: Hickey, Serial Murderers, p. 179.

266 “Learning crime”: Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice, p. 76.

267 account of Karla Faye Tucker: Beverly Lowry, Crossed Over: A Murder, A Memoir (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1992).

268 FBI survey of seven women involved with sexual sadists: Hazelwood, Dietz, and Warren, “Compliant Victims.”

269 comments by Carol Bundy: Testimony at the trial of Douglas Clark.

270 shared psychotic disorder: Jose M. Silveira, M.D., and Mary V. Seeman, M.D., “Shared Psychotic Disorder: A Critical Review of the Literature,” Canadian Journal of Psychiatry, October 1995.

271 study of sixteen female sexual offenders: Ruth Mathews, Jane Kinder Matthews, and Kathleen Speltz, Female Sexual Offenders: An Exploratory Study (Orwell, Vt.: The Safer Society Press, 1989).

272 “When they talked about it all”: Farr, Sunset Murders, p. 123.

273 “One key to understanding a woman who kills repeatedly”: Skrapec, “Female Serial Killer,” in Birch, ed., Moving Targets, p. 263.

274 “I was unwilling to at first”: Mathews, Matthews, and Speltz, “Female Sexual Offenders,” p. 15.

275 “I felt like I was seventeen years old again!” Letters published by Toronto Sun, September 12, 1994, pp. 3–5.

276 “I do not think Kristen French died from ligature strangulation”: Kirk Makin, “Homolka Testimony Challenged,” Toronto Globe & Mail, September 5, 1995, p. 1.

277 “too late, too late”: Farr, Sunset Murders, p. 208.

ISLAND OF WOMEN

278 “air of viciousness”: Josie O’Dwyer in Pat Carlan, ed., Criminal Women: Autobiographical Accounts (London: Polity Press, 1985), p. 143.

279 percentage of inmates who are psychopaths: K. Howells and C. Hollin, eds., Clinical Approaches to Mentally Disordered Offenders (New York: Wiley, 1993). See also S. B. Guze, Criminality and Psychiatric Disorders (New York: Oxford University Press, 1976).

280 data on female inmates and drug use/drug crimes: Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Special Report: Women in Prison.”

281 recidivism rates: Ray Belcourt, Tanya Nanners, and Linda Lefetarve, “Examining the unexamined: Recidivism among female offenders,” U.S. Department of Justice Report, April 12, 1996.

282 U.S. infraction rate for 1986: Bureau of Justice Statistics, U.S. Department of Justice. A study comparing male and female inmate misconduct in North Carolina found that “non-violent sexual offenses” and “escapes” were more common among the women. Craddock, “Misconduct Careers,” The Prison Journal, March 1996.

283 British infraction rates: Morris, Women, Crime and Criminal Justice, p. 121.

284 infraction rates in two Texas prisons: Dorothy Spektorov McClellan, “Disparity in the discipline of male and female inmates in Texas prisons,” in Women & Criminal Justice 5:2 (1994), 71–97.

285 four in ten inmates have prior record of violent crime: Washington, D.C., Bureau of Justice Statistics, “Special Report: Women in Prison,” 1991.

286 “You can get into a fight every ten seconds here”: Interviews with Scanlon, “Women in Prison.”

287 “When I came out of Borstal”: O’Dwyer in Carlan, ed., Criminal Women, p. 147

288 O’Dwyer attacking Hindley: Ibid., p. 164.

289 “Scholars have generally failed”: Clemens Bartollas, “Little Girls Grown Up: The Perils of Institutionalization,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 471.

290 hierarchy building: Imogene Moyer, “Leadership in a Women’s Prison,” Journal of Criminal Justice 8 (1980). See also A. Mandaraka-Sheppard, The Dynamics of Aggression in Women’s Prisons in England (London: Gower Press, 1986).

291 Frontera study on snitches: D. Ward and G. Kassebaum, Women’s Prison: Sex and Social Structure (Chicago: Aldine, 1965), p. 33. See also Vergil Williams and Mary Fish, Convicts, Codes and Contraband: The Prison Life of Men and Women (New York: Ballinger, 1974), p. 118.

292 “Common messages gleaned from female prison films”: Karlene Faith, Unruly Women: The Politics of Confinement and Resistance (Vancouver: Press Gang Publishers, 1993).

293 “Lesbianism is not the issue”: Veronica Compton, Prison Life, September/October 1995, p. 12.

294 account of Bedford Hills aggressors: Jean Harris, “They Always Call Us Ladies”: Stories from Prison (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988), p. 112.

295 national correctional officer survey: J. M. Pollock, Sex and Supervision: Guarding Male and Female Inmates (New York: Greenwood Press, 1986), p. 35.

296 gang behavior in Los Angeles: George T. Felkenes and Harold K. Becker, “Female Gang Members: A Growing Issue For Policy Makers,” Journal of Gang Research 2:4 (Summer 1995), 1–8. Asked to reply “yes” or “no” to the statement “If you have a good reason, you don’t have to obey the law,” 71.8 percent of girls said “yes” versus 54.1 percent of boys. The law, apparently, also applied to the rules of the gang. Boys were much more likely than girls to say they would kill or commit some other crime specifically if asked to do so by the gang, although 50 percent of the girls had committed a crime. A majority of both sexes said they were not forced to join the gang against their will.

297 “Negative feelings toward staff lead inmates to respond emotionally”: McClellan, “Disparity in the Discipline of Male and Female Inmates in Texas Prisons,” Women & Criminal Justice.

298 account of P4W riot: Commission of Inquiry into Certain Events at the Prison for Women in Kingston, Madam Justice Louise Arbour, presiding, March 1996.

299 “a place that has tended to view women as victims”: Henry Hess, “Report Vindicates Women’s Prison Staff,” Toronto Globe & Mail, January 21, 1995.

300 drugs “for the purpose of social control”: Mandaraka-Sheppard, Dynamics of Aggression, p. 134. See also Concetta C. Culliver, “Females Behind Prison Bars,” in Culliver, ed., Female Criminality, p. 397.

LET THE GUN SMOKE

301 Lynda Hart, Fatal Women: Lesbian Sexuality and the Mark of Aggression (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).

302 Elliott Leyton, Men of Blood: Violence in Everyday Life (Toronto: McClelland & Stuart, 1996).

303 liberation hypothesis: Freda Adler, Sisters in Crime: The Rise of the New Female Criminal (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975).

304 “Women have only themselves to blame”: Jim McDowell, “You’ve Come a Long Way, Baby,” Alberta Report, July 31, 1994, p. 24.

305 Finnish girls’ aggression: Vappu Viemerö, “Changes in Patterns of Aggressiveness Among Finnish Girls over a Decade,” in Björkqvist and Niemela, eds., Of Mice and Women, p. 105.

306 New York City girls’ offenses against teachers: United Federation of Teachers, New York chapter. A corroborating number was requested from the New York City Board of Education, Department of Safety, but was never supplied.

307 L.A. gangs: See Felkenes and Becker, “Female Gang Members”; see also Mary Harris, Cholas: Latino Girls and Gangs (New York: AMS Press, 1988); James Diego Vigil, Barrio Gangs (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1988). Vigil confirms that the kind of violence engaged in has grown more severe for both males and females, although males still command the most respect and seniority.

308 homicidal women in Julia Tutwiler Prison: Penelope J. Hanke, “A Study of Victim-Offender Homicide Relationships,” paper presented at annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Miami, Fla., November 1994.

309 study of homicide in six U. S. cities: homicidal women, change in motive—Weisheit, “Female Homicide Offenders.”

310 Mann, When Women Kill.

311 male-bashing slogans: Cited by Tama Starr, Eve’s Revenge: Saints, Sinners and Stand-up Sisters (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1994).

312 “anger and need for empowerment will be directed at the power-brokers”: Skrapec, “Female Serial Killer,” in Birch, ed., Moving Targets, p. 265.

313 “They’re treating me like a criminal!”: “Canadian Immigration Bar ‘Foolish,’ Activist Says,” Toronto Star, February 20, 1994.

314 “Various factions … have their spiritual leaders”: Compton, Prison Life, September-October 1994, p. 12.

315 of 254 female killers at Bedford Hills in 1994: Henry H. Brownstein et al., “The Evolution of Motive and Circumstance in Homicides by Women,” paper presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Miami, Fla., November 1994.

316 New York State statistics: Ibid.

317 Burbank, Fighting Women, p. 274.

318 Richard Ford, “In the Face,” The New Yorker, September 16, 1996.

319 Ellie Nesler: “Mother Gets 10 Years for Slaying Molester Suspect,” The New York Times, January 8, 1994.