Americans have long been obsessed with serial killers. From televised trials and true-crime podcasts to feature films and documentaries, the public fascination with the darkest side of humanity shows no sign of ebbing.
But while much of the media fascination has focused on male serial killers like Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer and John Wayne Gacy, female serial killers should not be underestimated. They may be less common in the United States than their male counterparts, but they can be just as lethal. And because they often use methods that are harder to detect, they can be tougher to catch.
Peter Vronsky, a filmmaker and crime historian who wrote Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, tells A&E Crime + Investigation, “We are slow to recognize the prevalence of female serial killers because we are still saddled with old societal tropes, in which females are seen as passive and nurturing mother figures and primarily as victims when it comes to serial murder.”
Jana Monroe, who became one of the first female agents with the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the 1980s, credits the fact that female serial killers are significantly rarer than males to “a complex interplay of psychological, biological and sociological factors.”
“Men tend to express aggression outwardly, while women are more likely to internalize aggression, leading to self-harm, depression, or relational manipulation rather than physical violence,” Monroe, whose work as a serial profiler inspired the Clarice Sterling character portrayed in The Silence of the Lambs, tells A&E Crime + Investigation. “Testosterone plays a major role in aggression, dominance behavior and risk taking. Estrogen and oxytocin, by contrast, are associated with bonding, empathy and caretaking behaviors, which act as protective factors against extreme violence.”
The subtle ways in which women kill can make it harder for investigators to recognize a female serial killer may be at work. According to Penn State psychologist Marissa Harrison, author of Justice Deadly: Psychology of Female Serial Killers, “Men kill overtly; they leave more brutal evidence behind. Female serial killers kill covertly and use means that are not as readily detectible. Police won't likely know it's homicide until they string together a series of deaths that are statistically unlikely—a hospital setting, numerous dead spouses, many dead children.”
