It is true that most violent crime is committed by the male of the species, but there is a certain kind of woman who preys on her victim, usually on a husband or partner, even a relative. This kind of woman predator is called a Black Widow.
Most women may be physically weaker than most men and statistics show that women are not nearly so inclined to violent crime anywhere in the world. Women also seem to feature more prominently in certain types of crimes, like fraud and embezzlement, even in violent crimes concerned with the taking of a life, where strangers are not often their victims. When women turn to murder, their modus operandi is usually to prey on their nearest and dearest.
Famous Black Widows
- Lyda Catherine Ambrose left a trail of five dead husbands and lovers in her quest for insurance policy payoffs.
- The publicity-seeking merry widow Elfriede "Sugar" Blauensteiner had two obsessions: Gambling and pharmacy. Her last victim, retired and wealthy answered her personal ad and survived just five weeks.
- Judias Buenoano hid behind various pseudonyms for years while she went about killing a couple of husbands, a fiancée, and a son for their money.
- Lydia Trueblood of Pocatello, Iowa, poisoned an offspring, five husbands, and an in-law earlier in the 20th century.
- Germany's Maria Velten poisoned two husbands, a lover, an aunt, and even her father during the 1960s and 1970s.
They Destroy Their Mates for Profit - Female Serial Killers
One kind of female serial killer, the most notorious and elusive, and also maybe misunderstood is theatrically called the Black Widow, a nickname that refers to the highly poisonous spiders who destroy their mates when their usefulness is over.
Three-quarters of the time, this group of women seemingly kill strictly for profit. They live off life insurance policies, pensions, and other assets gained from "sudden" deaths of close relations — husbands, children, grandchildren, stepchildren, sisters, brothers, mothers and fathers.
(It is a fact that male multiple murderers do not usually kill for financial gain. Most male serial killers have a deep psychological fantasy that they need to play out.)
South African Profiler’s Theory
Dr Micki Pistorius, a South African forensic psychologist and criminal profiler researched the correlation between the economic and psychological needs of these women and found the answer in the motivational theory of psychologist Abraham Maslow.
“Although wealth may seem to be an external gratification to others, female serial killers kill for money to gratify their deep, deprived psychological need for security,” says Dr Pistorius in her book Fatal Females: Women who Kill (Penguin, 2005).
Targets Are Changing; Strangers are Becoming victims
However, Christiana Evripidou of the University of Virginia found in a 2004 study that the traditional targets of the Black Widow may be changing. "An increase in strangers as victims has occurred in recent years," she says.
So although it seems as though the Black Widows may be targeting strangers rather than loved ones and family members more often than in the past, they may still be killing more as a substitute for security rather than just from pure greed and covetousness as many people believe.
Source:
Black Widows: Veiled in Their Own Web of Darkness by Joseph Geringer. TruTV. Criminal Psychology.
Fatal Females: Women who Kill. Micki Pistorius, Penguin Books (2004).
Crimezzz.net Serial killer crime index.
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