How rare are female serial killers?
Only 8.6% of known U.S. serial killers are female. In terms of motive, composited data shows that almost 70% of female serial killers acted for financial gain. In contrast, only 28.8% of male serial killers were motivated by financial gain.
Seventy-four percent of the murderers were from the United States, where 85 percent were male, 8 percent were female, and the sex was undetermined in the cases in which the offender was still at large. In addition, 82 percent of American serial killers were white, 15 percent were black, and 2.5 percent were Hispanic.
But, not only are they statistically rarer than men, they tend to be more difficult to identify. For one thing, in most cultures women are assumed to be less violent than men. "Women are traditionally perceived in society as nurturing caregivers — as mothers and life-givers," Vronsky explains.
It is estimated that there have been over 400 female serial killers throughout history with an average age at arrest being 33 years old and African Americans accounting for 20%.
Researchers have identified certain characteristics of female serial killers, finding they tend to be white, married at least once, of at least average intelligence, and are more likely to be employed in healthcare professions.
In fact, we found that 39% of female serial killers were nurses or health care workers. They might have a history of abuse or a recent crisis. And at least one murder will occur in a suburban area. The people familiar to her are at most risk, especially children, the ill and the elderly.
This Florida woman is one of the most well-known female serial killers in American history. Born to a broken family, Wuornos had a troubled childhood and left home at a young age to escape alleged abuse. To make ends meet, she turned to sex work while living in Florida, where she began killing men.
Gender(ed) Differences
To anyone who has ever studied crime (or even just listened to every episode of a true crime podcast), it is no surprise that most serial killers are male. A leading theory for this phenomenon is that men are simply more violent than women.
Although most female serial killers murder for money or other profit, some do it for the attention and sympathy they receive following the death of someone they cared for.
Debra Brown. Brown and Alton Coleman began their killing spree when they lured two young girls into the woods in 1984. One of the girls was raped and the other was suffocated and stomped. For the next 50 days, the two killed eight more people, raped seven and kidnapped three.
Who is the youngest serial killer?
As far as serial killers go, Amarjeet Sada is the world's youngest, and probably one of the most efficient — and heinous — killing three children between 2006 and 2007. By the time he was 10, Sada had murdered three children in the span of twelve months; and one of them was his baby sister.
Lizzie Andrew Borden (July 19, 1860 – June 1, 1927) was an American woman who was tried and acquitted of the August 4, 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts.
Lavinia Fisher (1793 – February 18, 1820) was an American criminal who, according to urban legends, was the first female serial killer in the United States of America.
These are defined as women who have killed more than three victims in a time span of at least 30 days.
The primary motive reported by female serial offenders for killing children was primarily financial gain or sad*stic pleasure. Serial killing refers to the act of murdering three or more individuals over a period of more than 30 days.
Randy Steven Kraft - 1989
Kraft became known as the "Scorecard Killer", because upon his arrest investigators discovered a coded list depicting cryptic references to his victims; and the "Freeway Killer", because many of his victims' bodies were discovered beside or near freeways.
Roberta Elder, was dubbed Atlanta's Mrs. Bluebeard, a pejorative term often referring to those that killed multiple family members, based on the children's fairy tale in which a wealthy man with a blue beard kills multiple wives and leaves their bodies to rot in a special room in his home.
African-Americans comprise the largest racial minority group among serial killers, representing approximately 20 percent of the total. Significantly, however, only white, and normally male, serial killers such as Ted Bundy become popular culture icons.
Bundy allegedly received hundreds of love letters from women while he was incarcerated, and married a woman, Carole Ann Boone, whom he had met while both were working in Washington. He proposed to her in the middle of proceedings while Boone was on the witness stand.
1. Elizabeth Bathory. The Guinness World Records considers Countess Elizabeth Bathory to be the most prolific female serial killer. She was accused of torturing, mutilating and killing around 650 women between 1585 and 1610.
Who is a black serial killer?
Wayne Bertram Williams (born May 27, 1958) is an American convicted murderer and suspected serial killer who is serving life imprisonment for the 1981 killings of two men in Atlanta, Georgia.
Are serial killers born this way or are they a product of their environment? Dr. Scott Bonn, criminologist, author and public speaker: It's likely a combination of the two. Psychopaths are born that way, while sociopaths have been socialized into it.
In 2022, there were 15,094 murder offenders in the United States who were male, in comparison to 2,107 who were female.
It is unequivocally clear that murderers are both born and made through their genes and their environment. There is some common genetic makeup amongst killers, such as the presence of the MAOA and CDH13 genes; however, a single gene is not convincing enough evidence to prove an individual is a murderer.
