Female serial killers - women who have killed three or more people - have fascinated criminologists for centuries. Mostly because women are far less likely to be serial killers – five out of six serial killers are men – but also because, until the last century, women were seen as too delicate to commit murder. The definitive study on female serial killers wasn’t released until 2015, and law enforcement is still far less likely to suspect that any serial murderer could be a woman.
Today we know that not only can women commit these crimes, but their body count can be much higher than their male counterparts. Male serial killers usually kill strangers and are motivated by sex. And because they are more likely to use violent weapons like knives and guns, it means that they will usually be caught within two years.
Research has shown that women who commit serial murder generally kill those close to them for tangible motives like money and overwhelmingly use methods that are hard to trace – such as poison – meaning that, on average, it takes eight to 11 years to catch them. This makes the history of female serial killers not only longer, but much more deadly.
Click through to see the murderous women who made history for their crimes.
Elizabeth Báthory Elizabeth Báthory AKA The Bloody Countess
1560 – 1614
Crimes
Torturing and murdering between 30 and 650 young women on her vast estate in Hungary.
Most of her victims were said to be servant girls who she punished in cruel and unnatural ways for even the tiniest infraction. These included forcing her victims to cook their own flesh and eat it, lacerating their genitals, forcing them to stand to the neck outside in freezing water until they died and stitching their lips together. The stories of Elizabeth's bloodthirsty lust for punishment were so twisted she's been cited as an inspiration for Dracula.
Motive
The explanation of Elizabeth's sadistic crimes at the time ranged from the possibility she herself was sexually abused to a theory she she was bisexual, syphilitic and menopausal (those well known triggers for murderous psychopathy). She was also rumoured to have bathed in the blood of virgins to keep her young and beautiful, but this was laster disproved.
Discovery and Punishment
In 1610 a high ranking nobleman, György Thurzó, raided Elizabeth's home. He announced he had caught her in the act torturing a servant with bodies strewn around the castle. She was thought too high ranking to be tried as a common criminal but public outcry was so great the Holy Roman Emperor was forced to act. Elizabeth was tried in a private court before being stripped of her land and power and bricked inside her own castle, never being allowed to speak to another human until her death four years later at age 54.
But Was She Guilty?
Possibly not. Accounts of Elizabeth Báthory do suggest she enjoyed punishing her servants and it's possible these punishments were so severe as to have been fatal. However, it should be considered that György Thurzó, the man who accused and sentenced her, gained a lot of money and power from doing so. He also never actually proved he caught her red handed. The Holy Roman Emperor, who insisted on her trial, owed her a huge amount of money which he didn't have to pay back after her conviction. Most of the allegations made against her were hearsay and local gossip. With two very powerful men accusing her, Elizabeth was sentenced with no lawyer and without ever being allowed to speak in her own defence.
Delphine LaLaurie AKA Madame LaLaurie
c.1780 – 1849
Crimes
Imprisoning, abusing and murdering slaves, while being the belle of Louisiana high society.
On April 10th 1834, a fire broke out in the opulent New Orleans mansion Delphine lived in with her husband and daughters. When firemen tried to unlock the slaves quarters, to save the people trapped inside, Delphine refused and told them to save the furniture instead. When the door was eventually broken down the firemen were overwhelmed with the smell of rotting flesh. Seven men and women, all enslaved to Delphine Lalaurie, were found emaciated, chained to the wall, and in some cases horribly mutilated. After her surviving victims were freed, the police found the bodies of less fortunate slaves buried in shallow graves on the property.
Motive
Stories that some victims had been subjected to crude sex changes or that one woman’s bones had been broken and reset at odd angles to make her walk like a crab were used as evidence that the slaves were used for medical experimentation by Delphine and her doctor husband. These stories have since been disproved and the likely motive was that Delphine was a violent, sadistic woman who simply didn't see the slaves she owned as human beings.
Discovery and Punishment
Rumours that Delphine's slaves were being mistreated had been circulating for years but like so many female serial killers, no-one could believe such a beautiful and charming woman could do such things. When the truth was discovered, an angry mob gathered outside her house. Delphine and her family jumped into a carriage and hastily escaped from New Orleans. Despite the torture and murder of slaves being illegal in New Orleans at that time, Delphine had already fled to France where she could not be prosecuted for her crimes.
But Was She Guilty?
Madame Lalaurie's reputation as a brutal torturer and serial killer was cemented by Kathy Bates chilling portrayal of her on American Horror Story, and it is likely well deserved. Though the more outlandish tales of abuse may be exaggerations, Delphine Lalaurie was certainly a killer who escaped being punished for her crimes.
Mary Ann Cotton AKA Mary Ann Cotton, She's Dead And She's Rotten
1832 – 1873
Crimes
Becoming the most notorious serial killer of the 19th century.
In 1872 Thomas Riley came to Mary Ann's home to hire her as a nurse. Her husband had just died and he noted how healthy her stepson seemed despite his father’s death. Mary Ann replied that Riley shouldn't be fooled, "He’ll go like all the rest of the Cottons". Five days later the boy was dead and Riley immediately went to the police. It soon emerged that while she had lived in the north of England, three of her husbands, eleven of her children, her lover, her mother and her sister in law had all died in suspicious circumstances. Often these family members lives had been heavily insured by Mary Ann or they had changed their wills in her favour before their deaths. Her stepson, husband and lover, who had all died in the six months before her arrest, were exhumed and found to have been killed by arsenic poisoning.
Motive
Mary Ann seems to have been able to easily attract men, craved money and hated to be bothered by children. She married several times, even becoming a bigamist along the way, but seemed to only care about the money she could rob or extort from her husbands before killing them. She also reportedly tried to have her young stepsons committed to a workhouse for the destitute, despite having enough money to care for them, because they were annoying her. The workhouse refused to take them, and the children died soon afterwards, almost certainly by arsenic poisoning.
Discovery and Punishment
The first inquest into her stepson's death found her innocent through lack of evidence, but Thomas Riley was sure she was guilty and put pressure on the police. Eventually her story began to spread and the number of family members who had died in suspicious circumstances came to light. She was tried and sentenced to execution by hanging in 1873. Her trial led to a huge scandal throughout British society and her execution was attended by over 200 spectators.
But Was She Guilty?
Mary Ann Cotton proclaimed her innocence until the day she died, but almost certainly poisoned most of her family. When anyone she was suspected of poisoning became ill they would all complain of the same symptoms including stomach pains, a sign of arsenic poisoning, and Mary Ann would never allow anyone else to nurse them. She also kept arsenic in a pot in her home and was once reported to have danced and sung when she found out her husband was dead.
Kate Bender AKA The Bloody Bender Daughter
c.1846 - ?
Crimes
Being the brains behind a family of vicious serial killers operating out the Wild West.
Along with a man she claimed was her brother and her supposed mother and father, Kate ran a store and bed and breakfast along the Osage trail. When lonely travellers would stay with them they were sat in the best kitchen chair with their back to a thick curtain. Kate would flirt with them and make sure they were travelling alone while her brother and father stood behind the curtain. The men would use sledgehammers to crush the victim’s skull from behind the curtain. Kate would then cut their throat to make sure they were dead before dropping them through a trapdoor into the cellar. 11 bodies were eventually found on their property, including a little girl seemed to have been buried alive.
Motive
The Bender’s victims were all lonely travellers who were robbed of their valuables. However, most people travelling through the Wild West frontier weren't carrying much money so the family didn't gain much from these murders. Kate was known to be a spiritualist who claimed she could speak with the dead which raised suspicions at the time the murders may have been tied to witchcraft. Evidence found in the cabin also suggested the Benders were not actually related but may have been people drawn together by a wish to murder, and settled far away from other people to be able to kill as many people as possible.
Discovery and Punishment
Suspicions had been growing throughout the area for years, both as so many travellers had disappeared and because the Bender's behaviour was so strange. Eventually a vigilante mob descended on to the Bender's home only to find the family had fled leaving behind everything they owned. The house was pulled apart and the remains of their victims were found buried all over their property. The "family" was never found or punished for their crimes.
But Was She Guilty?
Once the bodies were discovered, would-be victims began to come forward and tell of their near fatal stays at the Bender home. A Catholic priest once fled their house after seeing the Bender men hiding behind him holding hammers. Two other men refused to eat at the kitchen table due to the blood stains on the curtain and were chased from the house by Kate with a kitchen knife.
Jane Toppan AKA Jolly Jane
1857–1938
Crimes
Killing almost all her patients, and being loved for it.
Jane Toppan began training as a nurse in 1885 and started to "experiment" on her patients almost immediately. When she was alone with a sick person she would inject them with morphine until they were almost on the brink of death and then inject them with atropine to bring them back. 30 murders can be attributed to her "nursing", but she may have been responsible for the deaths of closer to 100 of the invalids in her care. Despite the number of her patients that died, her happy, helpful nature made her incredibly popular as a nurse, likely adding to the body count around her.
Motive
Jane admitted in her later years that she received a sexual thrill from her murders and would get into bed with her patients while they were hovering on the point of death. A surgery patient later told of waking up after being given a "bitter tasting medicine", to find Jane in her bed, kissing her face. She also referred to herself as an "Angel of Death", she claimed that the suffering she saved her patients from meant that her murders were really mercy killings.
Discovery and Punishment
Jane began to be suspected when her landlord’s son-in-law returned from a sea voyage to find that his wife and her entire family, who had been healthy a month before, were all dead after being nursed by Jane. When she was questioned, Jane admitted not only to those murders, but to killing 27 other patients before that. At her trial she was found to be not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of her life in Taunton Insane Hospital.
But Was She Guilty?
Jane's conviction, both for murder and mental illness, seem well justified. Though the "proof" used at the time that she was definitely insane because her father had been committed after sewing his own eyelids shut would not be admissible today. During Jane's later years in the mental hospital she admitted killing scores of patients and even poisoning her own foster sister with strychnine.
Linda Hazzard AKA "Dr" Linda Hazzard of Starvation Heights
1867 – 1938
Crimes
Causing the deaths of at least 40 patients who signed up for her "starvation cure" following her claims that eating was unnecessary and fasting could cure disease.
Hazzard, who was never trained as a doctor, would feed her patients only a cup or two of broth a day for up to 50 days. While they were in this weakened state Hazzard would massage them so violently witnesses said it looked like a beating and give them enemas which could last for hours at a time. When her patients died, Hazzard would perform her own autopsies and give their cause of death as natural causes before sending them to a funeral home, who she was alleged to have been bribing to keep these skeletal bodies secret.
Motive
When her patients would become disorientated from starvation Linda Hazzard would have herself or her husband assigned as their legal guardian and rob them of land, money and possessions. Suspicions were first raised about her when she announced the death of a patient to their next of kin, while wearing the deceased woman's clothes and jewellery. She was eventually found to have even sold her victims’ gold fillings to local dentists.
Discovery and Punishment
In 1911 a pair of wealthy British sisters began Hazzard's "cure", two months later one sister had died and the other was clinging to life, penniless and under the legal guardianship of Hazzard's husband. She was eventually rescued by her family and nursed back to sufficient health to testify against Hazzard at her trial for manslaughter in 1912. Hazzard was found guilty but only served two years in prison before being released, stripped of her license and forced to leave the state. She emigrated to New Zealand where she continued to practice, before returning to the US where she tried to establish her sanitarium as a "school of health".
But Was She Guilty?
Definitely, but the deaths she caused were not called murder at the time. Despite the number of dead bodies at Linda Hazzard's "sanitarium", authorities were unwilling to prosecute her. Starvation was for a short time heralded as a ground breaking medical treatment, all of her victims had signed up to the regimen which killed them and, most frustratingly, as Linda was not a real doctor she couldn't be charged with medical malpractice. She did get away with murder but Linda Hazzard's last victim was herself, she died in 1935 after a prolonged self imposed starvation.
Leonarda Cianciulli AKA The Soap-Maker of Corregio
1894 – 1970
Crimes
Killing her friends as human sacrifices, then turning their bodies into soap and tea cakes.
From her early childhood Leonarda had been obsessed with fortune tellers and been told by them that her children would not live to adulthood. When her favourite son was called to fight in World War II she decided that the only way to save his life was by committing human sacrifice. When three of her friends came to her wanting to get away from the small town they lived in she took her chance. She told her first victim that she had found her a husband in another town and her next two that she had found them jobs in big cities. When the women came to her to begin their journey she drugged their wine, chopped up their bodies with an axe and boiled down their bodies with caustic soda. She used the fat that she drew from boiling their bodies to make teacakes and soap, which she gave as gifts to her neighbours.
Motive
Leonarda claimed that she committed these murders on the occult belief that if she took the lives of others, she could prevent her children from dying. This may well have been true, however she also extorted large amounts of money from her victims as payment for finding them a husband or a job. She was likely looking out for her children’s financial interests as well as their supposed "spiritual" interests.
Discovery and Punishment
When her third victim disappeared directly after visiting Leonarda's house, her neighbours began to become suspicious. When the police questioned her, she immediately admitted to all the crimes. She told police that if she had not confessed, the sacrifices she had made to protect her children would no longer work. She was tried, convicted and sentenced to thirty years in prison and three years in a mental asylum. She died of a stroke in the mental asylum at the age of 76.
But Was She Guilty?
Leonarda not only admitted her crimes to the police who arrested her, but she remained unrepentant throughout her trial. When she took the stand in her own defence she was reported to have shone with an "inner wild pride", believing that the lives that she had taken had preserved her children’s lives for the future.
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