Notorious Female Serial Killers: A History Across Time

This collection of short, action-filled stories of the Old West’s most egregiously badly behaved female outlaws is a great addition to Western author Robert Barr Smith’s books on the American frontier. Pulling together stories of ladies caught in the acts of mayhem, distraction, murder, and highway robbery, it includes famous names like Belle Starr and lesser known characters, and contains archival illustrations and photographs.

Some famous females earned their criminal status through less-than-ladylike pursuits, making a living by capitalizing on the other sex’s weaknesses of drinking, gambling, and enjoying the company of women. More than a few, like Cecilia and Edna “The Rabbit” Murray, weren’t above robbing a bank or two to stay afloat for a while. Others, however, were much more sinister in their aims, earning a living by making sure others kept dying. Visitors to the homes of Kate Bender and Belle Gunness–dozens, no less–went missing over the years, only to be dug up months or years later, when suspicions were finally aroused.

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A true crime account of the life, trial, death, and aftermath of Britain’s first female serial killer.

A female thief, with four husbands, a lover and, reportedly, over twelve children, is arrested and tried for the murder of her stepson in 1872, turning the small village of West Auckland in County Durham upside down. Other bodies are exhumed and when they are found to contain arsenic, she is suspected of their murder as well. The perpetrator, Mary Ann Cotton, was tried and found guilty and later hanged on 24 March 1873 in Durham Gaol. It is claimed she murdered over twenty people and was the first female serial killer in England.

With location photographs and a blow-by-blow account of the trial, this book challenges the claim that Mary Ann Cotton was the “The West Auckland Borgia,” a title given to her at the time. It sets out her life, trial, death, and the aftermath and also questions the legal system used to convict her by looking at contemporary evidence from the time and offering another explanation for the deaths. The book also covers the lives of those left behind, including the daughter born to Mary Ann Cotton in Durham Gaol.

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Told in her own words, this is the story of serial killer Aileen Wuornos, who was portrayed in an Oscar-winning performance by Charlize Theron in the film Monster. There have been few female serial killers, but Aileen Wuornos, who was executed in 2002, was a remarkable example of this rare breed of death row inmate. All too often, female prostitutes have been the victims of male serial killers—Wuornos’ killings were the inverse of this pattern. After escaping an abusive childhood at the hands of her grandparents, she became a child prostitute, progressing into a disastrous adulthood of prostitution and damaging affairs with both men and women. Her eventual metamorphosis from victim to attacker had brutal consequences—a stream of dead men. This is her story, as told to Christopher Berry-Dee, editor of The New Criminologist and director of Britain’s Criminology Research Center.

In the pantheon of serial killers, Belle Gunness stands alone. She was the rarest of female psychopaths, a woman who engaged in wholesale slaughter, partly out of greed but mostly for the sheer joy of it. Between 1902 and 1908, she lured a succession of unsuspecting victims to her Indiana “murder farm.” Some were hired hands. Others were well-to-do bachelors. All of them vanished without a trace. When their bodies were dug up, they hadn’t merely been poisoned, like victims of other female killers. They’d been butchered.

Hell’s Princess is a riveting account of one of the most sensational killing sprees in the annals of American crime: the shocking series of murders committed by the woman who came to be known as Lady Bluebeard. The only definitive book on this notorious case and the first to reveal previously unknown information about its subject, Harold Schechter’s gripping, suspenseful narrative has all the elements of a classic mystery―and all the gruesome twists of a nightmare.

In 1927, Charley Braggs arrived home to find two of his children dead. The doctor who observed the children in their last moments diagnosed food poisoning as the cause.

There was no need for an autopsy. His wife, Nannie, blamed tainted grains as the source but Charley wasn’t convinced. Charley didn’t feel safe around his wife. In the middle of the night, he took his eldest daughter and ran for his life.

The outpouring of sympathy doubled for Nannie when they discovered her husband’s treachery. To her community, she was a sweet lady renowned for her cheerful disposition. But behind the facade was a much darker and sinister reality. A truth that four of her future husbands, two of her sisters, her mother, her mother-in-law, her nephew and her grandson would perilously discover.

Black Widow is a dramatic and chilling account of one of the most shocking true crime stories in American history. Ryan Green’s riveting narrative draws the reader into the real-live horror experienced by the victims and has all the elements of a classic thriller.

In 1988, detectives from the Sacramento Police Department were called to investigate the disappearance of a man at his last known address, a boarding house for the elderly, homeless and mentally ill. The owner, Dorothea Puente, was an adorable old lady who cared for stray cats and the rest of society’s castaways. She had a strong standing in the community and was celebrated for her selfless charitable work.

The search revealed nothing untoward but one of the guests recalled some unusual incidents leading up to the disappearance. He shared stories about holes being dug in the garden and filled in overnight. Guests who were taken ill and vanished overnight, and a number of excuses why they couldn’t be contacted. This was enough to launch a thorough investigation and on 11th November 1988, the Sacramento Police Department headed back to the boarding house with shovels in hand.

Were they wasting their time pursuing a charming and charitable old lady or were they closing in on a clandestine killer who exploited the most vulnerable members of society? The investigation gripped the entire nation and the answers lay Buried Beneath the Boarding House.

The shocking true story of America’s first female serial killer, half of a husband and wife team who terrorized Charleston, SC, in the early 19th century.
 
On February 18th, 1820, John and Lavinia Fisher were executed in front of some two thousand South Carolinians. To this day, legends of the husband-and-wife serial killers range from the fearsome to the fantastical—and many swear they have encountered Lavinia’s ghost haunting the Old Charleston Jail House. But in Six Miles to Charleston, local historian and former homicide investigator Bruce Orr uncovers their horrifying true story.
 
When a young man outwitted John and Lavinia in 1819, he escaped death and went straight to the authorities. Orr recounts the investigation from the initial police raid on the murderous couple’s Six Mile Inn—with its reportedly grisly cellar—to their capture, incarceration and dramatic last moments of life. But as Orr reveals, there still may be more sinister deeds left unpunished. An overzealous sheriff, corrupt officials and documents only recently discovered all suggest that there is more to the tale.

At the Veterans Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts, Kristen Gilbert was known as a hardworking, dedicated nurse. Yet so many emergencies and sudden deaths occurred under Kristen’s watch that others jokingly called her the “Angel of Death.” No one suspected the horrifying truth: that over the course of six months, Gilbert had caused the deaths of as many as forty patients. With new insight into the sociopathic mindset of nurses who kill, and the latest details on Gilbert’s ongoing prison sentence, M. William Phelps exposes how one person’s good intentions went so chillingly, killingly wrong . . .

A deep dive into the lives and crimes of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley—featuring newly released photos from a collection called “The Tartan Album.”

In the mid-1960s, the serenity of Saddleworth Moor was forever interrupted, even if people didn’t yet know it, as the area became a grave for the innocent child victims of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley.

The couple’s vile torture and killings have shaken up British history ever since, with the couple often considered two of the most evil people to have lived. However, the public still have many questions about who they were and how their dysfunctional relationship operated.

In this book, many artifacts become public for the first time, including photographs from Ian Brady’s “Tartan Album,” police interviews and witness statements, which shed vital new light on Brady, Hindley and the dangerous cocktail their union became.

On 30 March 1896, a bargeman hooked a parcel from the river Thames at Caversham. Inside the brown paper package was the body of a baby girl – she had been strangled with tape. When two more tiny bodies were found in a carpet bag, the police launched a nationwide hunt for a serial killer.

A faint name and address on the sodden wrapping provided Reading police with their first clue. Can Chief Constable George Tewsley and his colleagues catch this heartless baby farmer before more infants meet a similar fate?

The first in a new historical true crime series, Victorian Supersleuth Investigates, Angela Buckley recounts the frantic race to stop Amelia Dyer – one of Britain’s most prolific murderers.

The true crime bestseller about Fred and Rose West a couple virtually unique in British criminal history who loved and killed together as husband and wife.

During their long relationship the Wests murdered a series of young women, burying the remains of nine victims under their home at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, including those of their teenage daughter, Heather. What was left of Fred West’s eight-year-old stepdaughter was dug up from under the Wests’ previous Gloucester home; his first wife and nanny were buried in open country outside the city. Several victims had been decapitated and dismembered, their remains showing signs of sexual torture. These twelve are just the ones the police found when the Wests were arrested in 1994. There may be more whose bones have not been located.

Howard Sounes broke the first major story about the Wests as a journalist, and covered the murder trial of Rosemary West, before writing this , the classic book about the case. Beginning with Fred’s and Rose’s bizarre childhoods, Sounes charts their lives and crimes in forensic detail, creating a fascinating and truly frightening account of a marriage soaked in blood.

It made national the true story of how state enrolled nurse Beverley Allitt murdered four children on her ward and attempted to take the lives of many others. Liam Taylor’s death, on 21 February 1991, was to become the first in a string of infanticides carried out by the soon-to-be-notorious ‘Angel of Death’. Between February and April 1991, four babies were murdered and another nine attacked.

Recounting the emotional turmoil of those parents, the 3-month police investigation, Allitt’s motive and accounts from her early life, John Askill and Martyn Sharpe tell a sensitive, at times harrowing, tale of how this ‘plain’, rather ‘ordinary’ girl from the small village of Corby Glen became one of Britain’s most notorious serial killers.

Imagine being invited in for tea and cakes… only to later learn you were fed human remains.

From suicide attempts, to claiming her mother cursed her, to miscarriages and losing ten of her fourteen children, Leonarda’s life wasn’t easy. Protecting her four surviving children became something of an obsession for the woman. Perhaps tragedy loosened her grip on reality, or maybe the fear of losing her oldest to war caused a mental break.

Whatever the cause, Leonarda’s chilling deeds will raise the hair on the back of your neck and leave you wondering if those around you are capable of the same evil.

Follow along her twisted journey that’ll make you question how much one person can take before they do the unthinkable… or if her tragedies were simply an excuse for murder, desecration, and turning remains into cakes and soap. Read and judge for yourself in this true account of Leonarda Cianciulli, the superstitious mother who turned victims into soaps and cakes.

In this book, readers are given a rare glimpse into the life of Hungary’s most controversial noblewoman, Countess Erzsébet (Elizabeth) Báthory. Over 40 letters and documents, many of which have been recently discovered and translated, are presented here for the first time in English. Read the private letters Lady Báthory sent in secret to fellow nobility, learn how she administered her estates, and experience life as she knew it. Historical background is provided as well as biographical material. This book is an excellent resource for the Báthory scholar and enthusiast who is looking for new and factual information on the so-called Infamous lady.

Emily Jacobs is the descendant of a serial killer. Now, she’s become the hunted.

She’s on a quest that will take her to the secret underground of Europe and the inner circles of three ancient orders—one determined to kill her, one devoted to keeping her alive, and one she must ultimately save.

Filled with adrenaline, romance, and reversals, The Progeny is the present-day saga of a 400-year-old war between the uncanny descendants of “Blood Countess” Elizabeth Bathory, the most prolific female serial killer of all time, and a secret society dedicated to erasing every one of her descendants. It is a story about the search for self filled with centuries-old intrigues against the backdrop of atrocity and hope.

This book contains graphic descriptions of violence.

One of Canada’s finest crime reporters tells the whole story of the Bernardo-Homolka case.

The sensational trials of Paul Bernardo and Karla Homolka for abduction, rape, manslaughter and murder caused widespread controversy, as did the twelve-year sentence Homolka received as part of her deal with government lawyers. Yet, even though the publication ban on the case has been lifted, there is much the Canadian public still has not been told.

Nick Pron now gives us a comprehensive account of previously banned information about Bernardo and Homolka’s backgrounds and early relationship; of Homolka’s role in the death of her sister, Tammy; of what turned Bernardo into a sadistic rapist and killer; of slip-shod police work and lack of communication that gave Bernardo and Homolka the opportunity to murder schoolgirls Leslie Mahaffy and Kristen French; of the fifteen-month suppression of key videotape evidence; and a host of disturbing facts that were ruled inadmissable at the trial.

The surprising true story of Mexico’s hunt, arrest, and conviction of its first female serial killer

For three years, amid widespread public outrage, police in Mexico City struggled to uncover the identity of the killer responsible for the ghastly deaths of forty elderly women, many of whom had been strangled in their homes with a stethoscope by someone posing as a government nurse. When Juana Barraza Samperio, a female professional wrestler known as la Dama del Silencio (the Lady of Silence), was arrested–and eventually sentenced to 759 years in prison–for her crimes as the Mataviejitas (the little old lady killer), her case disrupted traditional narratives about gender, criminality, and victimhood in the popular and criminological imagination.

Marshaling ten years of research, and one of the only interviews that Juana Barraza Samperio has given while in prison, Susana Vargas Cervantes deconstructs this uniquely provocative story. She focuses, in particular, on the complex, gendered aspects of the case, asking: Who is a killer? Barraza–with her “manly” features and strength, her career as a masked wrestler in lucha libre, and her violent crimes–is presented, here, as a study in gender deviance, a disruption of what scholars call mexicanidad, or the masculine notion of what it means to be Mexican. Cervantes also challenges our conception of victimhood–specifically, who “counts” as a victim.

The Little Old Lady Killer presents a fascinating analysis of what serial killing–often considered “killing for the pleasure of killing”–represents to us.