This book is about some of the evil acts that have been committed by wives, girlfriends and common-law wives. It contains stories of deceit, betrayal and, ultimately, murder. The victims of these women are more often than not family members: mothers, fathers, sisters, brothers and, in almost every case, husbands.
All of the murderers presented here were caught and each one of them received justice of a sort. Most of these criminals initially denied any involvement in the crimes that they had committed, despite being faced by overwhelming evidence to the contrary. However, many of them eventually came up with interesting explanations, even excuses, for their actions.
It is said that no one is innocent. We are reminded of this many times over by the various defences mounted on behalf of the accused. Victims are often made to share the blame for their demise, as was the case in the murder of Pastor Matthew Winkler. After admitting that she was guilty of his murder, the dead man’s wife expressed her wish that the reputation of the pastor, ‘a mighty fine person’, should not be tarnished. Yet, during the subsequent trial she did just that.
Contradicting her statement to the police, Mary Carol Winkler portrayed her dead husband as a physically abusive pervert. Winkler’s testimony was strikingly similar to the statements of other women who have been accused of killing their spouses. Many of their victims were depicted as dark individuals with heavily guarded secret lives. Husbands with no history of violence suddenly became physically abusive brutes, who often made their wives engage in sexual practices that they found distasteful.
This treatment is not limited to spouses, nor is it exclusively meted out to the dead.
When Marie Hilley was accused of murdering her husband, mother and mother-in-law with arsenic the evidence against her was overwhelming. Yet she did not hesitate to blacken her daughter’s character. Hilley’s lawyers attempted to explain the high levels of arsenic in her daughter’s system by portraying the young woman as an unstable, drug-addicted, suicidal lesbian, who was more than capable of poisoning herself. Marie’s use of poison is reminiscent of a time when women had a reputation for being ‘quiet killers’. Poisoning was once the preferred method of female murderers. No more. The arsenic-laced plum cakes and coffee that were served by Nannie Doss between the 1920s and 1954 have been replaced by handguns, shotguns and knives.
One thing that has not changed in recent decades is motive. The vast majority of murders committed by women are carried out for profit. This is particularly true of female serial killers. On the other hand, men are often sexually motivated when they commit murder. The methods adopted by male and female serial killers are also significantly different. While men prey on strangers, women tend to murder those who depend upon them in some capacity, including immediate family members.
Many people find it difficult to believe that women are capable of serial murder so female killers have often been able to avoid apprehension for extended periods. Thus, Dorothea Puente was permitted to leave her property and disappear, even as bodies were being excavated in her back garden. It is unlikely that a man would have received the same treatment. Likewise, it seems inconceivable that Marie Hilley could have avoided suspicion had she not been a woman.
The concept of the evil wife seems so much more shocking than that of the evil husband, perhaps because women are so closely associated with nurture and support in western society. In the case of most women society’s trust is not misplaced, but one must be ready to accept that there are always exceptions.
John Marlowe
Montreal, Quebec