Profiling Female Serial Killers
Is your mom, sister, daughter, grandmother, wife, girlfriend, babysitter, the nurse taking your kids’ temperature, or the home-care worker who looks after your granny a serial killer just waiting for an opportunity to strike? Probably not, but she could be. What might be the warning signs, other than the burning sensation you might have in your throat after drinking a cup of coffee she sweetly offered you?
There are some warning signs—common behavioral traits that we have seen in the women featured in the case studies:
That’s right—many are characteristics that millions of average men and women all might exhibit. In other words, there are very few warning signs without context. A bounced check might be nothing but an error in balancing a checkbook—but in a Black Widow it may be a warning of trouble to come. The problem is having enough information to have a context.
There are characteristic indicators of a psychopath:
But not all psychopaths are killers—many, especially the intelligent ones, cause all sorts of perfectly legal havoc, some from congressional seats and corner offices.
There are some warning signs for Munchausen syndrome by proxy, but again these can only be seen in context. They are helpful for the physician or health-care worker who can gather and evaluate this kind of information, but for the family it is of less help:
While this is of help to the physician, it does not help the child’s father at home. How much did Mary Beth Tinning’s husband know about what his children were suffering or allegedly suffering while he was away at work in the factory; and even if he did, how many times did he accompany his wife into the physician’s interview and examination? Would he have even been in a position to recognize any lies that she might have been telling the doctor had he been there?
Kim Iannetta, a Hawaii-based forensic handwriting examiner, looks for indicators of predatory characteristics revealed in people’s handwriting. She has nearly three decades of experience in forensic behavioral profiling through written communication and forensic document examination and has reviewed the handwriting of many female singular and serial killers.259
When asked what differences she finds in profiling men and women, Iannetta says, “In the broadest sense the range of profiling differences between men and women or women and other women seems to be an element of style as a function of the killer’s personality. That is, their methods of killing could be interpreted as an extension of their very personalities, which could reflect not only who they are but who they wish to be.
“More specifically, as men and women settle into society’s cultural expectations, their handwritings give us an opportunity to assess their level of comfort or discomfort in their roles. Typically, women still function as the more passive sex, taking on nurturing, caregiving, caretaking, organizing, and administrative responsibilities. As society demands more assertive behavior from men: arrogance, pride, and aggression become more associated with male style. Common to both male and female killers, however, is that level of socio-or psychopathic detachment, which allows them to pursue the ultimate release of their anger, rage, and unfulfilled needs—the killing act itself.
“The most significant difference between men and women who kill is women’s expert ability to act in a passive-aggressive manner with a carefully crafted persona. Comfortably playing a conventional role and accepted as ‘normal,’ they ‘blend right into’ society. Their goal then becomes easier to attain. This insidious behavior makes them particularly dangerous.
“Acting out in their conventional roles, some female killers often have a deep hunger for excessive attention. They may habitually invade other people’s space, showing little or no respect for social or personal boundaries. They also tend to be emotionally immature, and like Karla Homolka, may play the role of ‘cute little girl,’ still trying to capture Mommy’s or Daddy’s attention. Like some male killers, they may have repetitive, obsessive sexual thoughts (Karla Homolka and Carol Bundy), which distort their value systems. Readily seen in Christine Falling’s handwriting is a compulsively convoluted thinking style, which twisted her notions of values…
“The most outstanding difference I see in women who kill, as opposed to men, rests in their ability to fabricate a methodically crafted persona or mask of cultivated charm and seductive, ingratiating behavior. Men seem to be much less interested in role-playing, more drawn to sex in order to dominate, and often to avenge their ‘honor’ and pride.”260
If women, indeed, have “expert ability to act in a passive-aggressive manner” as Iannetta suggests, then their predatory aggression might be truly invisible until it is too late. Aggressive behavior in men is more overt and easier to track—aggression is often expected and encouraged in men at work, sports, and duty. One judges the male by the nature of his aggression—and against whom he directs it. But when women from whom we expect no aggression at all—never—cloak their aggression entirely, it becomes more difficult to discern what is happening. There is no visible aggression to judge as appropriate or inappropriate as we do with men. We do not see it until it is truly too late.
We know a number of things about predatory aggression (as opposed to “affective” aggression—a response to being attacked).261 Predatory aggression is a cerebral process. There is little autonomic “fight or flight” arousal in the predatory aggressor. It is a controlled and calm attack, although it could bounce back and forth between affective and predatory once underway in some cases—mostly with sexual offenders.
There is an absence of emotion. Male serial killers report that they are most emotional—feeling a sense of exhilaration—prior to killing, often during the stalking stage. The killing itself is often committed in an emotionally deadened state.
Females appear to invest their exhilaration into the murder itself. Genene Jones, Jane Toppan, Aileen Wuornos, for example, were all thrilled by the actual murders. That was their point of exhilaration, not the buildup to it. That is why murder could actually be the female serial killer’s primary signature. The predatory violence is planned and purposeful. Rarely are there “disorganized” female serial killers. Most have a plan and it frequently involves some kind of deception or intimate seduction of the intended victim.
Predatory aggressors manifest an inflated self-worth—a grandiose perception of their self-importance balanced by a diminished perception of the victim’s worth. Again, this was very evident in the case of Aileen Wuornos and her denigration of her victims as “rapists;” in Dorothea Puente, who perceived her derelict victims as worthless to society; in Jane Toppan, who thought many of her victims were too old to live on; and in the Manson women who saw their victims as wealthy “piggies.”
There have been attempts to categorize female serial killers as Black Widows, angels of death, cult followers, missionaries, accomplices, vengeance killers, or Munchausen syndrome by proxy killers, etc. But we see that in many cases it is impossible to attribute such a singular motive to any female serial killer:
Rarely do we have these kinds of ambiguities in our analysis of male serial killers.