I am often asked: How do male and female serial killers differ? Without getting lost down the rabbit hole, leading into the Pandora’s box of the current discourse on gender and the sexes, I noted that since the 20th century criminologists and forensic profilers have identified distinct differences between male and female serial killers.
In 1998, I met Dr Eric Hickey, professor in criminology at the California State University and author of the bestseller Serial Murderers and their Victims (2003) at the University of Liverpool’s 5th Annual International Conference on Investigative Psychology: New Directions in Profiling. As Dr Hickey so aptly states:
“To say the woman cannot be a “true” serial killer unless she acts like a man, is myopic.”
Firstly, there are less female serial killers than male serial killers. Conservative estimates are that 16% of all serial killers are women. However, one should take into account that female serial killers are “quiet” killers. Notably two words stand out from case studies of female serial killers: “eventually arrested.” As discussed in my previous article, remnant from the Victoria Era mentality, female serial killers go undetected for long periods, probably because no-one would suspect a woman could commit atrocious murder and law enforcement has been reluctant in apprehending them, due to their “gentler sex status.”
Michael Kelleher and C Kelleher in Murder most Rare, Female Serial Killers (1998) examined a hundred female serial killers and found that it took an average of eight years to apprehend them, while the average period for apprehending a male serial killer was four years. Female serial killers are also less mobile than their male counterparts. Noted Dr Hickey: “…female serial killers were classified as predominantly stay-at-home killers who operate carefully and inconspicuously and who may avoid detection for several years.”
Keeney and Heide in their article, Gender Differences in Serial Murderers (1994) in Journal of Interpersonal Violence, argue that since female serial killers mostly stay static, linkage blindness – referring to the difficulty in tying various murders over a large geographic area together – should not occur. They confirm the reason for female serial killers taking so long to be detected, can be ascribed to the failure of law enforcement and other professionals to recognise that a homicide has been committed and to respond appropriately. They confirm that family and friends may be reluctant to confront female killers with their suspicions.
Which husband would voluntarily admit his wife is a serial killer? Joseph Tinning, the husband of Marybeth Tinning, a New York mother who was convicted in 1987 on the murder of her ninth child – with the previous eight dying under suspicious circumstances – did nothing to stop her behaviour, but rather suggested she seeks therapy or take steps to prevent further births. Marybeth Tinning was sentenced to life, but was released in 2018. Her husband continued to visit her in jail for three decades. She will now be 82 years old.
Female serial killers tend to target vulnerable people like unsuspecting husbands, children, the infirm and elderly. Three quarters of female serial killers do not kill strangers, they know their victims or they are related to them. “When family members were victims, husbands overwhelmingly became the primary target,” warns Dr Hickey.
Could they be detected less often because they are more intelligent or cunning than their male counterparts? Leading expert of female serial killers, Dr Marissa Harrison, associate professor of psychology at Penn State Harrisburg, and author of Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers, found male serial killers tend to have a high school education or less; and female serial killers tend to have some college education or higher qualification.
Continuing the theme of “quiet killers” female serial killers also prefer poison as their murder weapon. Dr Hickey found that 80% prefer poison, 20% used a firearm, 16% bludgeoned their victims to death, 16% suffocated them, 11% stabbed them and 5% drowned their victims.
In previous centuries it was much more difficult to detect poison and poison makes less of a mess than a bloody physical attack. Keeny and Heide also found that female serial killers tend not to do damage to the victim in the sense that male serial killers may mutilate, dismember and exhibit overkill in their murders. The same difference applies to female serial killers being less likely to torture their victims. However, historic case histories such as Countess Elizabeth Bathory, Darya Saltykova and Delphine LaLaurie, discussed in my previous article, refute this claim. Women are capable of cruelty and sadism as much as men are, for example British female serial killer Myra Hindley and partner Ian Brady chopped 17-year old Edward Evans with an axe and Rose West tortured many young girls to death. She also murdered her eight-year-old stepdaughter Charmaine in 1971. Both these women committed crime in tandem with their male partners.
Female serial killers apparently do not stalk their victims as their male counterparts do, although some of them were aggressive in procuring victims by actively seeking out boarding home tenants; they specifically targeted affluent potential husbands with life insurance or solicited prostitution for the purpose of robbery and murder, as did Eileen Wuornos. Dr Harrison points that female serial killers maintain a ‘gatherer’ style, while their male counterparts adhere to their ‘hunter’ nature.
Categories of female serial killers:
Criminologists and profilers concur that current classifications used for male serial killers do not apply to female serial killers. Kelleher and Kelleher found the organised versus disorganised classification developed by FBI profilers in the 1980’s, was inadequate for female serial killers so they devised another classification systems for female serial killers. They divided them into two main groups, being those who act alone and those who act in partnership.
Those who act alone were subdivided into the following categories:
- Black Widows who typically systematically kill multiple spouses, partners or other family members;
- Angels of Death who systematically kill people who are in their care for some form of medical attention;
- Sexual Predators who systematically kill others in clear acts of sexual homicide;
- Revenge killers who systematically kill out of hate or jealousy;
- Profit for Crime killers, who systematically kill for profit or in the course of committing another crime.
Female serial killers who act in partnership are subdivided into the following categories:
- Team Killers, who kill or participate in the killing of others in conjunction with at least one other;
- Question of sanity who kill in apparent random manner and are later judged to be insane;
- Unexplained are those who kill for reasons that are totally inexplicable or for unclear motives;
- Unsolved referring to a pattern of unsolved killings that may be attributed to a woman.
Despite their differences, female serial killers share several personality traits with male serial killers. According to Dr Hickey “the women tended to be insincere, amoral, impulsive, prone to exercise manipulative charisma and superficial charm, without conscience, and with little insight, because they failed to learn from their mistakes.” This is typical of anti-social personality disorder and there is nothing gentle about it.
Yet, the most remarkable major difference between male and female serial killers lies in the origins of their psychological motivations to kill. Male serial killers kill to gratify a deep subconscious psychological need, yet surprisingly, Dr Hickey found that the majority of female serial killers are motivated by financial gain and this is mostly affirmed by other authors and researchers.
I was inspired by Dr Hickey to investigate why female serial killers kill for money and found my answer in the 1943-theory on the hierarchy of needs of Abraham Maslow. Maslow postulated needs form a hierarchy of five tiers. Once lower needs are gratified, a person escalates to higher needs. A basic need will dominate behaviour if it is thwarted or when the person is deprived of it. Once the need is gratified, the need releases its domination over the person.
The five tiers comprise of the following: The first tier comprises the basic physiological needs such as hunger, thirst, sleep and sex. The second tier in the hierarchy encompasses the safety needs. These include such concepts as security, stability, dependency, protection, freedom from fear, as well as from anxiety and chaos, need for structure, order, law, limits and strength in the protector.
Maslow explains that should these security needs not be fulfilled “the organism may equally well be wholly dominated by them. They may serve as the almost exclusive organisers of behaviour, recruiting all the capacities of the organism in their service, and we may then fairly describe the whole organism as a safety-seeking mechanism.”
Maslow calls the third tier in the hierarchy the belongingness and love needs, pertaining to the need to belong to a family, a society, to have roots and to feel loved.
The fourth tier in Maslow’s hierarchy comprises the esteem needs. Maslow described these as follow:
“These are, first, the desire for strength, for achievement, for adequacy, for mastery and competence, for confidence in the face of the world, and for independence and freedom. Second, we have what we may call the desire for reputation or prestige (defining it as respect or esteem from other people) status, fame, glory, dominance, recognition, attention, importance, dignity, or appreciation.”
The fifth and last stage in Maslow’s hierarchy is the need for self-actualization. “It refers to man’s desire for self-fulfilment, namely to the tendency for him to become actualized in what he is potentially.” To become the best version of yourself and transcend ego, for the greater good of all.
It is my theory that there is a major difference in how men and women perceive money. To women money represents safety, the second basic tier of needs. To men, wealth represents the fourth tier – status and prestige. In antiquity men benchmarked their masculinity and success according to their physical prowess as warriors – Achilles and Hercules being the archetypes – yet today they measure each other according to their bank accounts – their wealth. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos and Mark Zuckerberg are the powerful men of the world, but it cannot be said that they resemble Achilles.
Traditionally a girl’s father was the one who provided for her basic material needs – the roof over her head, her food and clothing, but also her gifts and he was her protector – his love acted as a surety for her safety. The father was the one who went out to work – the breadwinner – so he represented society, whilst the mother stayed at home, the primary caregiver. It is not difficult to conceptualise the link between money equals a father’s love, in a little girl’s subconscious mind. There is no dispute that women can be breadwinners and that single mothers do a good job in raising their children, but men are still regarded as the Daddy Warbucks of the world – they buy presents, they pay for sex and they express love through money.
Should the little girl be rejected or abused in some form or another by the father – literally being abandoned or raped, she experiences a yearning for his love, a void that can only be filled with money – representing his love – to such an extent that some women will kill for it. Maslow’s following observation seems very accurate in explaining their behaviour: “Practically everything looks less important than safety and protection (even sometimes the physiological needs, which, being satisfied, are now underestimated.) A man (or woman) in this state, if it is extreme enough and chronic enough, may be characterized as living almost for safety alone.”
Evolutionary women have been preyed upon by men – they were the spoils of war, the sex slaves, to be bartered for and traded and beaten into submission. It is anchored in their collective subconscious. Ask a woman when last did she feel her life is in danger and she will answer “Every day.” Randomly ask men the same question and most of them will not be able to provide even a vague answer. Women’s most basic need is to feel safe. Men need to conquer and procreate and sex is a powerful tool, which revitalises their ego’s and elevates their testosterone levels. Serial killers have notoriously low self-esteem and the majority of male serial killers kill mainly for sexual gratification – to validate their virility – the first basic need. The sexual act on the crime scene can be reverted back to Sigmund Freud’s theory on the psychosexual developmental phases, as explained in my previous articles.
But in the case of the majority of female serial killers who kill for money, it is Abraham Maslow’s theory that applies: money represents safety – the second tier of basic needs.
My theory on the main difference between male and female serial killers is expanded on in my Patreon account.
Top image: Destiny by Beatrice Offor (1894 ) (Public Domain)