Killing them softly
‘Just As Deadly’ considers the Female Serial Killer
Sweet, helpful, 50-ish Martha Grinder seemed like the ideal North Side neighbor in 1865. It was tragic that her family and friends seemed to sicken and die.
When her newlywed neighbors got terrible nausea and diarrhea after eating snacks at her house, the couple’s doctor grew suspicious.
When the young bride died, police found poison in Martha’s house. She was jailed, and authorities found that she had killed not just the neighbor but also an Irish servant and one of her husband’s brothers. She was suspected of killing another of her husband’s brothers and her own 1-month-old baby.
So, Martha Grinder killed three to five people over a period of years, but few people today, even in her hometown, know about her.
For that matter, few people know about Belle Gunness, one of the most notorious female serial killers. Gunness lured men to her Midwestern farm in the late 1800s and early 1900s by advertising in the newspapers for a husband. Once a man appeared — generally bringing his life savings with him — Gunness killed him by first poisoning him then bludgeoning him with a hammer,butchered his body and buried his remains in her hog pit. She then stole the unfortunate man’s money. She is suspected of killing 14 to 40 people, including multiple husbands, her three children and a foster daughter. In the case of her family members’ deaths, Gunness collected life insurance.
The relative anonymity of female serial killers (FSKs) compared to male serial killers (MSKs) bothers Marissa A. Harrison, Ph.D., an associate professor of psychology at Penn State Harrisburg, who has written “Just as Deadly: The Psychology of Female Serial Killers.” She seeks to redress this disparity with her book, due out Feb. 9.
For this book, “serial killer” means someone who intentionally kills three or more people with at least one week between murders.
It is true that people know more about MSKs than FSKs, and Ms. Harrison identifies why: Male serial killings are more perverse and more gruesome.
“FSKs kill people they know, particularly those who are vulnerable and in their care, often for money,” she writes. “MSKs kill unfamiliar victims, often in cruel ways, andfor sexual purposes.”
That’s the key: sex. Any hint of sex will attract more public attention, unsurprisingly. MSKs tend to murder for pleasure using sadistic methods. And they tend to keep gruesome “trophies” of their victims, the better with which to remember the thrill. These grisly facts largely explain why the public is better acquainted with the names of MSKs than female ones.
Other differences contribute to making MSKs better known. For example, FSKs kill in ways that can be passed off as natural or accidents, chiefly poison or perhaps the deliberate withholding of a needed medical intervention. It takes time to find FSKs because someone must first become suspicious that the deaths are in fact murders.
No such doubt typically exists with the victims of MSKs, whose deaths are unambiguously violent.
Then one must consider sheer numbers: There are much fewer women serial killers than men. Ms. Harris’ study charts just 64 FSKs (MSKs number in the hundreds).
Lastly, the type of victim matters to the public. Death before age 30 is relatively rare, so the demise of a healthy young person, especially one not involved in crime, will attract more scrutiny than that of an infirm 90-year-old.
From the perspective of an ordinary person, the prospect of being stalked and sadistically murdered by a stranger is both more likely and oddly more frightening than to be slowly done in by one’s mother or grandmother, even if the result would be the same.
Ms. Harrison has developed a database of serial killers, both male and female, noting various characteristics of each, such as number of victims, the presence of mental illness, childhood abuse and the place and time of the crimes.
To anyone even slightly acquainted with cases of FSKs, the results of her study hold few bombshells. As stated above, women usually kill people they know (family, dependents, boarders, hospital patients) usually for money though sometimes for power and usually via means easily confused with natural or accidental causes, such as poison or overdoses.
Because sex is not a motive, FSKs do not rape their victims, nor usually defile their corpses nor keep souvenirs of them. They tend to be better educated than male serial killers.
If these facts sound dry and academic, it’s because they are. Ms. Harris admits, “I am a science writer, and more than 20 years ago I had to scrap any ambitions of crafting artful articulations in my writing endeavors.”
If, though, taking a deep, academic dive into female serial killers sounds interesting, then read this book. But be prepared to learn much more about serial killers in general, much less about this subset of them.