By Stephen J. Giannangelo
Studying women serial killers has always been a challenge.
It’s always been hard enough to construct a working definition of what the serial killer is. That’s always been a goal, defining the elements of the serial murderer. The typology. The personality and behavioral characteristics.
Then you add gender and everything goes out the window.
It always seemed that serial killers, usually men, committed lust killings. They preferred to kill hands-on. Their killings did not generally seem to be motivated by financial gain. Their victims were of a consistent gender. They were rarely considered insane.
Female serial killer cases defied all these conventions.
Over multiple decades, Norwegian Belle Gunness killed anywhere between 25-40 people in Illinois and Indiana, culminating in 1908. She murdered them mainly for valuables and insurance. Gunness’ run came to a spectacular end when she reportedly faked her own death in a fire, leaving behind a headless corpse.
Between the 1920s and 1950s, Nannie Doss murdered between 8-11 victims in multiple states. They all consisted of family members and husbands. For insurance money. The “Giggling Granny” finally confessed after the death of her 5th husband.
In the 70’s and 80’s, Marybeth Tinning suspiciously suffered the loss of 8 of her nine children, one at a time. She blamed the deaths on SIDS. She reportedly enjoyed the attention. Later, she said she just started killing her children after she lost her first to acute spinal meningitis. Marybeth was also in the process of poisoning her husband. She was paroled in 2018.
Beverly Allitt, a UK nurse, received 13 life sentences in 1993 after being convicted of the murders of 4 children and the attempts to murder 9 more in her care at a hospital children’s ward. Allitt is also to be considered for parole soon.
Another “Angel of Death” nurse, Kristen Gilbert in the mid-1990s, was thought to have been responsible for 80-350 deaths and 300 assaults in a Massachusetts VA hospital from injections of epinephrine, resulting in patients who needed to be resuscitated after cardiac arrests. It’s thought many were to gain attention and praise from her hospital security/Police boyfriend. She also dodged a potential death sentence after a conviction of 4 murders.
Gilbert’s and Allitt’s glory-seeking behaviors could also be viewed as similar to those individuals with Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, another condition associated with female serial killers. Tinning’s crimes are often linked with Munchausen.
Who are these women? They are examples of what we have thought of when we consider the female serial killer. Hard to believe they did it. Hard to catch. Often getting away with their crimes for much longer than they should. Easily considered insane and rarely executed. And at the very least, any observer would note that some of these heinous crimes were not punished as you might expect a male offender would. Some of the cases end in parole.
They also seemed to fall into similar motivational categories: Murders for money. Insurance. Often killing husbands or family. Or babies. Suffering from Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy or another mental illness. Or functioning as real-life Angels of Death, executing scores of victims within a hospital setting.
Female “team” killers seemed to be pretty consistent in their actions… pleasing their mates or partners but unwillingly operating under duress. Or at least trying to make that case at trial. Karla Homolka was last seen quietly living in Quebec after raping and murdering 3 (including her little sister) with her husband and serving a short prison term due to a gifted plea deal. Caril Fulgate, however, unsuccessfully tried to blame her boyfriend for her role in their 10 murders and received a life sentence. More than one female team killer who seemed more than enthusiastic in participating in the crimes suddenly developed a coerced victim status post-capture.
This is the stuff movies are made of. And long-held stereotypes.
Then Aileen Wuornos sauntered into our consciousness. The homicidal prostitute lured targeted men into vulnerable situations and killed them with no warning, shooting them at close range. Is this a new kind of killer? Predictably, some tried to excuse away her behavior as an understandable reaction to abusive clients. People questioned the very existence of female serial killers when the story went national in the early 90s. But we knew better.
It was possible Aileen was a different kind of killer. She did seem to be a more active, aggressive, hands-on predator than what we were used to. She did seem to truly dislike the men she murdered and was acting out of a long-held rage, possibly suffering from Intermittent Explosive Disorder. But on the other hand, she was routinely stealing money and personal items for her girlfriend Ty all along. So maybe she wasn’t that different from the prototypical serial murderer after all.
Wuornos did wander into male killers’ territory in one important way: she was actually executed for her crimes in 2002.
These days, we still have plenty of stories about females with Munchausen, putting their children at risk of death for attention and profit. There’s still stories about Angels of Death… Canadian Elly Mae Westlaufer was one, who commented on an unexplainable need to kill with a childlike explanation: “it seems all so stupid now. I’m so embarrassed.” She confessed to the murders of 8 senior citizens and 7 other attempts after her arrest in 2016.
To be fair, there’s been plenty of male Angels of Death in medical settings.
But it does seem the women of today have taken the next step. Consider:
Danilla Poggiali, after a few rounds in the Italian court system, was finally convicted of murder for repeated executions of elderly patients in her care as a nurse. She received a sentence of 30 years in 2020. It seems her disregard for human life wasn’t much different than Gilbert’s who was known to ask if she could get off early if one of her patients died. But Poggiali took a modern twist when decided to pose for selfies with the corpses of recently deceased patients, complete with goofy mugging for the camera.
Another woman displaying new characteristics was Johanna Dennehy, the author of the Peterborough (England) Ditch Murders. Over a 2 week period, she stabbed to death 2 of her housemates and her landlord. With the help of male minions (another oddity for the female killer) dumped the bodies in ditches and later attempted to stab strangers to death in broad daylight.
Dennehy said she “killed to see if I was a cold as I thought I was” and then got a taste for it. She attempted to continue to “have her fun” while she was being investigated.
She also posed at least one of the bodies sexually, after being clad in a black sequin dress. Significant, different behaviors? Seems so.
She was given a life sentence (a ”whole-life tariff”) in 2014.
Elena Lobacheva, aka the “Bride of Chucky,” also represents the new breed in female serial killer. The Russian-born killer took part in murders with a gang of roving attackers who murdered homeless men on the street. Lobacheva helped to butcher 14, stabbing and using a hammer on them in an attempt to clean the Moscow streets of vagrants.
She told Police that “randomly stabbing the body of a dying human brought her pleasure compared to sexual pleasure.”
Lobacheva said that she “enjoyed killing” and the attacks were so violent, parts of one victim’s brain was found 16 feet away from the body.
She also professed a hero-worship of Russian serial killer Alexander Picushkin, who killed 49 people.
Seems there’s still benefits to gender: she received a sentence of only 13 years in 2017.
Lobacheva wasn’t the only woman now emulating the exploits of a male serial murderer. Another Russian, Tamara Samsonova, known as “The Granny Ripper,” was reportedly obsessed with the horrific crimes of the terrifying Soviet serial killer Andrei Chikatilo. Samsonova, who confessed to 11 murders in her diary also admitted to cutting up victims into pieces to dispose of them and eating parts of the bodies, like her hero Chikatilo. She reportedly killed over a period of 21 years and was arrested in 2015.
Today we have a potential new serial killer team couple in the U.S. Lori Vallow and her husband Chad Daybell, who are charged with the murders of Vallow’s 2 children and conspiracy in the executions of both of the couple’s previous spouses and possibly her brother. The bodies of Vallow’s children were found buried in Daybell’s back yard after they seemingly vanished for months.
Daybell, a professional gravedigger turned doomsday novelist, developed extreme religious beliefs of the impending end of the world. Vallow, a fan whose interest developed into a cult-like obsession, reportedly believed she was chosen by God to carry out His mission of the apocalypse. She also felt part of her mission, as a god, was to eliminate the darkness, the “zombies,” the demonic and the evil. These included her husband and eventually her children. Vallow’s brother, who shot Vallow’s husband also died mysteriously, as did Daybell’s wife.
Each person’s specific roles in the deaths are still unclear, but Lori Vallow’s participation in several people’s deaths, including her 2 children, remains a strong possibility as the ticket to her future label as a modern female serial killer.
And mere days ago, Chinese female/ team serial killer Lao Rongzhi, after 20 years on the run, was sentenced to death for her active participation in 7 murders which included a 3 year-old. Unsurprisingly, she blamed her boyfriend for forcing her to help kill. He was executed in 1999.
So, in recent years, female killers have taken many new steps. Posing for selfies with dead bodies. Describing sexual pleasure in stabbing people to death. Enlisting male surrogates. Posing and dressing up corpses. Gleefully describing the enjoyment of murder with a dismissive absence of remorse or empathy. Murdering children. Aggressive violent hands-on personal attacks. Engaging in cannibalism. Hero worship of famous male serial murderers. Maybe even doomsday plots and systematic executions of their husband and children.
The prototypical female killers of hospital patients due to mental illness, babies for attention and husbands for insurance money have evolved. The clear-cut gender differences between the male and female serial killers of the past are feeling more like a memory. The study of serial murder is unlikely to ever be the same.
Stephen J Giannangelo is a retired Criminal Investigator and has taught Serial Murder and Psychology of the Offender at the university level for over 20 years. He’s also the Author of 2 textbooks: Real-Life Monsters: A Psychological Examination of the Serial Murderer and The Psychopathology of Serial Murder: A Theory of Violence.
Editor's note: this article ran in Serial Killer Magazine and is reproduced as written. It was written before several of the cases it treats as open were resolved, and three figures need checking against this archive. Kristen Gilbert is recorded here at four convictions and two attempted murders, with a higher number suspected and never proved; the eighty to three hundred and fifty deaths cited here is the outer speculative range from the hospital review and is not a finding against her. Marybeth Tinning lost nine children and was convicted of one count, the murder of Tami Lynne, which is why this archive carries her at two to nine and files her outside the confirmed tier. Tamara Samsonova is recorded at one established death with eleven or more attributed, those eleven being the ones she claimed in her own diary. Two cases have moved since publication: Lori Vallow was convicted of murder in Idaho in 2023 and again in Arizona in 2025, and Lao Rongzhi was executed in December 2023. Caril Ann Fugate, whose surname is misspelled here, was convicted of first degree murder and paroled in 1976; she maintained throughout that Charles Starkweather held her hostage, and that account has never been disproved, so the article's reading of her as a willing participant is one side of a case that remains argued. Belle Gunness was never tried. She disappeared after the fire at her Indiana farm in 1908, the headless body recovered from it was never positively identified as hers, and an exhumation in 2007 produced no usable DNA. The twenty five to forty deaths given here is an attributed range and not a finding against her.