When women kill together

Forensic Examiner, The, Spring, 2007 by Katherine Ramsland

Traditional ideas about female serial killers include that such offenders are motivated primarily by gain, are less violent than males, tend to commit murders out of reaction rather than their own initiations, and are not sexually compulsive in their bid to kill. But there are exceptions to every rule, particularly when it comes to stereotypes about serial killers. Some women who repeatedly kill have certainly been predatory and brutal. A few have even been sexually compulsive. There's no reason to believe that females are immune to an erotic rush from the act of murder, and this article examines several cases to illustrate this. Not surprisingly, many turn up in the health care industry.

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Jane Toppan, a nurse at the end of the nineteenth century, experimented on patients with a mixture of drugs that killed slowly. As they gradually lost consciousness, she would climb into bed to cradle them while they slipped into oblivion (Schechter 2003). After she went to work for a family, its members began to die, one by one, with gentle Jane by their side. Finally, someone grew suspicious and examined these deaths more closely, leading to Toppan's arrest. During her examination and trial, Toppan admitted to being aroused by death, which places her squarely in the category of a lust killer. In fact, she said that her sole regret was that she had been stopped so soon, and had she married and had a family, she was certain she would have killed them all as well.

There has been little to no research on female lust killers, in part because it's an unexpected phenomenon and in part because the cases are rare. However, similar to male lust murder, the female counterpart is often driven by a paraphilia, such as arousal upon viewing a corpse or when rubbing inappropriately against someone. Often, there's something deviant in their sexual development that consistently triggers arousal and thus feeds a compulsion.

Erotic motivation is even more prevalent among women who kill in partnerships with other women, although this behavior does not show up in all cases. There aren't many documented examples, but those this article identifies involved at least one person with a scheming mind, a degree of psychopathy, and the capacity for getting a thrill from deciding that others should die, in the first case involving two women, it's not altogether clear who was actually the dominant partner, but violence apparently gave them both a sexual rush.

Catherine May Wood was described by her former husband, Ken Wood, as flighty, overly sensitive, moody, and unpredictable (Cauffiel 1992). She would start something and even pursue it for months, but would then drop it to do something else. He said that he could never count on her to commit and believed that she had never known unconditional love. As a result, he thought, she was both needy and insecure. She surprised him once by admitting that she wondered what it would be like to stab someone. She also felt no maternal affection for their daughter. Bothered by her excessive weight, she nevertheless continued to eat junk food.

The Woods separated in 1986, but not before Ken caught a glimpse of the kinds of friends Cathy was keeping at the Alpine Manor nursing home in Walker, Michigan, where she worked as a supervisor. Apparently, a clique of lesbians employed there had become party friends, Cathy among them. Her sense of morality, already tenuous, seemed to Ken to have taken a back seat completely.

Cathy told Ken that she was in love with an aide, Gwendolyn Gail Graham, but that some of the things they did together frightened her. Graham had arrived from Texas, and this 22-year-old motorcycle rider had a tough side. Cauffiel (1992) states that people viewed her as masculine. She had been seriously injured several times and she often displayed the scars on her arms, sometimes lying about how she got them. She apparently had severe reactions to what she perceived as abandonment, which included the type of self-mutilation common to people with borderline personality disorder. Several of Grahams coworkers liked her, but she took up with Cathy and they became lovers. Then they became killing partners.

Alpine Manor, with more than 200 beds, averaged about 40 deaths a year, so six unnatural deaths--especially of total care patients who required the most attention--did not stand out. One victim had gangrene, another had Alzheimer's, and all of them had been expected to die there at some point. It was an easy situation to exploit, especially with 70 staff members covering all the shifts.

According to Wood, whose tale became the primary legal record, it was Graham who first broached the subject of murder. At first Wood claimed she was just a witness, but later admitted to participating. Under interrogation and later at trial, Wood described how they had practiced sexual asphyxia to achieve greater orgasms, so she thought Graham was kidding when she suggested killing a patient. Yet the linked pain and pleasure of their sexual games had become threaded with images of cruelty against others. Just talking about murder, she said, got them both sexually excited. Finally, they decided to do it.