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First published online August 19, 2011

Lethal Ladies: Revisiting What We Know About Female Serial Murderers

Amanda L. Farrell [email protected], Robert D. Keppel, and Victoria B. TitteringtonView all authors and affiliations
Volume 15, Issue 3
https://doi.org/10.1177/1088767911415938

Abstract

Serial murderers are rare offenders, and this, coupled with challenges to accessing data about them, poses a significant challenge to empirical investigation. It is also true that female serial murderers are thought to be rarer than their male counterparts and have often been excluded from being labeled “serial murderers” due to narrowly constructed definitions. Thus, female serial murderers are an even more elusive population to study. The results of this exploratory analysis, using newspaper articles to gather data about the crimes of a subset of 10 female serial murderers in the United States, suggest that not only are these women different from men who commit serial murder but also that the scant information published about these rare offenders may have underestimated the female serial murderer in terms of both offender and offense characteristics.

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Published In

Volume 15, Issue 3
Pages: 228 - 252
Article first published online: August 19, 2011
Issue published: August 2011

Keywords

  1. female serial murderers
  2. serial murder
  3. murder
  4. offender demographics
  5. Kelleher and Kelleher
  6. victim–offender relationship
  7. females and crime
  8. homicide

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Authors

Affiliations

Amanda L. Farrell
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, VA
[email protected]
View all articles by this author
Robert D. Keppel
University of New Haven, CT
View all articles by this author
Victoria B. Titterington
Sam Houston State University, Huntsville, TX
View all articles by this author

Notes

Amanda L. Farrell, Old Dominion University, Department of Sociology and Criminal Justice, BAL 6000, Norfolk, VA 23529 E-mail: [email protected]
Amanda L. Farrell is a doctoral student in the Criminology and Criminal Justice PhD program at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. She received her Master of Arts degree in Criminology and Criminal Justice from Sam Houston State University and her Master of Science degree in Investigative Psychology from the University of Liverpool. Her research interests include homicide, criminal investigations, and policing, with recent work seeking to holistically explore police use of deadly force incidents and the multiple individuals impacted by a single deadly force encounter.
Robert D. Keppel, PhD, is a practitioner in residence in the Henry C. Lee College of Criminal Justice and Forensic Science at the University of New Haven. For several years, he was a visiting professor of criminal justice at Seattle University. He spent 2 years as an associate professor at Sam Houston State University criminal justice program. He retired after 17 years as the chief criminal investigator with the Washington State Attorney General’s Office. He has more than 33 years of homicide investigation experience. Among his many homicide investigation experiences, he has been a consultant to the Atlanta Police on the Missing and Murdered Children’s Cases (1981), a member of the national planning committee for the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program (VICAP; 1981-1986), and a consultant to the Green River Murders Task Force, Seattle, Washington (1982-2000). He also served as a consultant to the El Paso Police Department in the Desert Area Serial Murders in Texas (1985), the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Department in the New Orleans area prostitute murders (1995), the Santa Barbara Sheriff’s Office in the Nightstalker murder cases in California (1978), and to the Oregon State Police in the Randy Kraft Murders in Oregon (1982). He received his Doctor of Philosophy in Criminal Justice from the University of Washington in 1992. He graduated from Washington State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in Police Science and administration in 1966 and a Master of Arts degree in Police Science and Administration in 1967. Also, he received a Master of Education degree from Seattle University in 1979.
Victoria B. Titterington is a professor in the College of Criminal Justice of Sam Houston State University. Her current research focuses on the intersection of aging and crime as well as lethal family violence. Projects include examining right-to-die legislation, eldercide, and intimate partner homicide. Her preacademic professional experience includes clinical and administrative positions in community mental health as well as corporate human resource management.

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