Typical female serial killer is a caregiver who knows her victims
What is the profile of a typical female serial killer?
Penn State psychology professor Marissa Harrison set out to find the answer with a study of 64 female serial killers that reached back to 1821, the Washington Post reports. That was the year a woman who kidnapped people and sold them into slavery killed the first of at least four victims.
Most female serial killers, however, are in caregiving positions such as nursing or child care in which they are around people who are more helpless than themselves. Most come from fairly mundane backgrounds, and their most common killing method was poison. They tended to be young, middle class and married. They knew most or all of their victims, who typically were family members.
Most victims of male serial killers, on the other hand, are strangers. Another difference is that women are more likely to kill for money or power, while most male serial killers are driven by a desire for domination, control, humiliation and sadistic sex.
Harrison sees an evolutionary influence in the differences. “It struck me that women would kill for resources, which was their primary drive in the ancestral environment, and men kill for sex,” she told the Washington Post.
