#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
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Hello, friends, welcome back to the show. My guess today is talk to marries a Harrison. She's a psychologist, professor, researcher and an author.

All the most informal serial killers are men, but one in six serial killers, a women, a group who have totally slept under the radar. So who are these women? What are their motives? And why haven't we heard of them?

Expect to learn why female serial killers are so neglected and research what the average demographic of a female serial killer is, who are the most likely victims of a female serial killer, why they kill the methods they use, and much more. This episode is brought you by the R P hyperdrive py APP. This APP has made a huge impact on my gains and my enjoyment in the gym over the last year.

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Why is IT particularly interesting to study female serial? cheers.

I think it's interesting because there seems to be this prequel sive notions that all serial killers Operate the same way. And when we think of a serial killer, we think of in the united states, at least ted bundy, or at camper, we think about monstrous males who commit sex crimes. And female serial killers might be monster is for some people's definitions, but they tend to be more low key.

They tend to poison people. They tend to kill for money and power. First is male serial killers tend to kill for sex, so there are profound sex differences. So I think it's interesting to bring that to public attention.

right? So you're like a promoter of females. Not not a promoter. Not quite saying that they're good, but just maybe that a little bit more attention should be paid. Why have they been so neglected beyond the fact that maybe the way that they kill is less extravagant? I I agree .

with you first. Let me say when I was writing the book just as deadly, the psychology of female serial killers, I was thinking to myself, is this a feminist book because i'm saying women can do that too and that's a really horrible argument of equality but the thing is they can um so you had asked, why might people pay attention to males more so than females? And I think there is this age old notion, and i'm certainly not the first person to say this, but I think this is this age old notion.

Women can't be damaging. Women can't be dangerous. Women are nurturing and caregivers, right? So if I said to you, grandma, you might think of what? Let me ask you this, Chris, what do you think of when you think of grandma?

Soft, gentle, caring, modern, sleepy.

sleepy. exactly.

What if I told about the giggling grand in nani? Does who killed her mother? Her, likely her sister, her, I think three husband's, some of her grandchildren oh and when they interviewed about her about IT SHE so that doesn't fit my schema of grandma um and he looked like a grandma, right so what we might think a grandma would look like maybe I don't want to get trouble of saying this, but you know maybe like a house on old school, ninety eighties house code in the kitchen and cooking bread, all about kind of stuff. And you wouldn't suspect that he would do these things. And I think that's why we or maybe not so quick to catch female serial killers, and we're really not so quick to think, yeah, he did that and I have some stories for you .

if you would like like.

oh my so I get some interesting I can't say fan male, but attention from a Lucy let by committed crimes in the united king them in in in chester right chester england um and cheshire united kingdom Lucy let me was a neonatal nurse he was a very skilled nurse and SHE was convicted last year twenty twenty three of killing I think he was seven infants and I was asked to talk about that on on some podcast and mother interviews in the united kingdom.

Well, I got my share of colorful emails. I'm wrong. I'm true.

How could I ever be so stupid? They made fun of my american accent. Thank you. They said, I must be in kaos with the crown. And like the only time i'm you know making a DDL of the crown is when i'm binge watching the series on netflix. Um you know what i'm going by is the evidence that the crown prosecution service presented that the jury convicted her on and that justice got sentenced by uh and also Lucy fit some of the parameters of previous data of known female sero killers, some just going by that but i've got all kinds of emails and notes and twitter posts and stuff that tell me all kinds of things about me yeah what's .

the issue that people have with you coming at this for me very well? I think I think you got a thousand plus references of some kind in your book. It's not like you'll just making up some wsc dark story. You're trying to assess this using the latest in scientific methods.

Thank you for saying that so absolutely so I I mean i'm not i'm not a popular media writer. I I conduct academic research you're right in the book just as deadly. I literally have twelve hundred references ah and they're not like zip y's blog of murder.

I go into academic papers, are going to court documents and go to birth certificate, census records at sea, uh, and my team and I gather data to determine some of the quantite typical parameters of female sea killers. And we came up with we put in a position from twenty and fifteen published in the journal of forensic psychiatry and psychology. And so based on date, all these data that we looked at, we know some things about some female serial lers and Lucy fs, those.

So what would be my angle? I, I, I don't know her. I don't want to know her. I am just going by my, you know, corn called expert formed opinion and i'm going by the fact that a jury of her appear is SAT through the entire trial and wait the evidence and decided that he was the one who did this so I have no, you know, personal stake in the game other than to hopefully get killers off the streets or a Better yet, prevent IT before that happens.

What were the criticisms that you were getting from the people that were tween things that you or or being critical of the work that you were doing? What do you make of that motivation? Imagine you have thought about why these people had such a visceral response .

to you just coming in to do analyst sure about. okay. I can tell you what. Again, they said I was a stupid, blind, uneducated. I must have looked at the correct data.

I must be on the side of the crown um i'm half british but I an united states citizen I am doubt with the crowd they're cool but I have nothing to do with with the case that they presented uh and again, like I said, they even said they don't like my american accent okay, well, cheers, cheers to that. Now why they would do that? I mean, people, just when somebodies convened something is true.

They dig their heels and and even in the face of contrary evidence, they might dig in even further. And instead of addressing the message, as you know, an ad hom and a attack to attack the person that that delivered the news. I'm just giving an opinion. Now I also think I wonder, seriously, I wonder if I were a male researcher delivering this news. If if the seat of such and the response to such would be different, i'm not .

sure interesting. Why do you think IT is that the entire world, IT seems, is so interested in cereal killers? I don't think i'd really growing up ever thought of that.

And then this sort of flourishing true crime industry comes out, especially in podcast audio box. And now netflix documentary in my feed on netflix is just filled with different murder mystery es from the eighties and the nineties and stuff. Uh, why do you think this mobile curiosity comes from?

sure. absolutely. I'm sure there are many, many factors that go into why somebody might be interested in that phenomenon.

And the level to which somebody is interested in that phenomenon may coming from an evolutionary perspective, because i'm a trained evolutionary, a psychologist. Just what you said more bacteriology. So I do believe more about curiosity, informers, protective vigiLance.

What does that mean? We are free program to pay attention to the things that could hurt us. Like, wow, look at that, right? If anybody has ever, haven't forbid past traffic accident, right? Paying attention to IT can keep your eyes off IT.

I think we are literally genetically preprogram to pay attention to the things that could hurt us so that we can take in information. And I do want to add that this is very likely all unconscious, right? You're not going to say, oh, my goodness.

Let me watch this latest documentary on john win cases so that I can make sure he doesn't hurt me dead, right? So I just think it's part of human nature to pay attention to the things that can harm us. So I I started studying myself.

I if I started studying female serial murder or serial murder because I was interested in I have traditionally studied romantic attraction between men and women um one of my friend's uh doctor, Thomas powers, was conducting a project on mass murder and I said, hey, time can I be on your team? I can add some evolutionary, you know, opinions to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

And then what I was doing, that a really great student named the erie, came up to me and said, doctorate Harrison, can we do an independent study on cereal murder? And so, oh yes, right. I didn't even ask why or water, how or who or when.

Yes, let's do that because, you know, was just so interesting. But i'll tell you what, as I got really into the topic years and years of research, I I am really grateful for media outlets seriously like your and and there is some really authentic networks out there that want to uncover the truth. But I do take exception to using the genre as some kind of morbid museum like like dripping blood down the wall or what not in and drinking alcohol while talking about victims. That's just not I don't think that's very impatient to the victims and their their families, which and their friends, which are consider co victims.

Yeah I guess IT turns out a crime into a recreation activity. And you know you you forget I suppose the even with a netflix now they're taking real cases and dramatizing them beautifully with attractive actors and it's shot very nicely and that really does I never thought this before. It's a great point IT blaze the line between something which actually happened and fiction and you know it's a it's a true story yeah but I mean, like was IT as glamorous as this did everyone have super smooth skin? And you know I don't know it's it's a very interesting question .

to ask the I I absolutely agree with you and I could tell you that I have a colleague um whose uncle was murdered and IT is a well known murder. I don't feel the liberty to to say which one IT was. I'll let her tell that story.

Um but he agreed to do a very popular podcast, not years Christian good guy but he agreed to do a podcast and out uh the the victim was involved in the entertainment industry and really did have good looking people around and after the interview was done and my colleague spoke on behalf of the family, they pumped music to the final cut and said, oh, wasn't that a sexy murders? Now let me tell you that really hurt this person's family. My college couldn't believe they did that, and they said, I thought.

This was a legitimate interview and I was representing the interest of the family. And so you tell me, uh, you know, when I get asked to speak to the murder club and I kind of current, I just, you know, look to each their own, but I do wish as a society we had more, you know, I wish we had more empathy for the victims. Then again, i'm researching and I you know a selling a book that describes IT. But I really, truly hope I i've put for that message. I'm trying to give out data out there so that we can respond to, or a Better yet, prevent these kind of things from happening.

What percentage of serial killers are female?

So no one really knows, but the estimate is one out of six, at least in the the united states.

That's what I know about yeah how how many again, whatever IT is some joke about the only time is a crime is when you get caught, right of serial killers that we have by the court to whatever figure is that we use as a total number. How many is that for you? What is what is one out of six is so what we talking about, ten people a year, we talking about one.

That's a really good point. I the truth is, I don't know, but I can tell you, female serial murder is very rare since i've been studying this, which is probably twenty fourteen s so probably the past ten years, the cases i've been out to look at, maybe three or four, wo that's .

not historical, right? That's ongoing. So in the decade you're found .

around about one was ongoing, right? I'm sorry, I the cutch off .

so you you .

would ask ongoing. So since my research trajectory emerged, there were about four cases that I became aware of. For example, read maze in the united states, Lucy like me in the united um and there I believe two more h there was one a case that I actually consult IT on that I probably can't talk about.

They they got her um they know what SHE they got the tribal um rAngely indictment came out. SHE knew this and SHE died by suicide before they could arrest her. So it's it's true.

H I am good friends with the lead detective on that. I said, how do you feel I just wanted the families to have justice. I said they did so you to job.

yeah. wow. Ah, what is the let's go into the meeting potato es of this talk to me about the demographic of female serial killers.

who are they? So um is IT OK if I referred to my paper here, right? So we published a paper in twenty fifteen where we took the data that we had.

The sample size we had was sixty four female serial killers who committed their crimes in the united states really since the is spending united states so two hundred and something years please don't make me do them up on that and here's what we came up with. Um she's likely White. She's probably been married at least once but several times um probably in number twenty years and thirties probably Christian probably middle class probably has committed her crimes in the suburbs.

Um she's probably employed and there's a very good chance she's going to be a health care worker like a nurse or nurses assistance about forty four zero percent of female serial killers are nurses or nurses assistance. Um we know that she's very likely in charge of taking care of helpless others. So whether that's a mother or a nurse or a nurse's aid, so somebody whose vulnerable and can't fight back, a child and elderly person are disabled to veteran eeta.

Um she's probably at the very least of average attractive ess attractiveness or maybe even good looking. Um probably had some childhood problems herself self with abusive parents, maybe some sexual lust, csa childhoods, xy abuse SHE experienced when he was Younger um eeta um and the motives that we found um money was the number one mode of so money resources, but very close second to that was power. And so let me just say this, if I could do this paper again, if I could do this entire project again, which took a long time to deal, I focused on primary motive. And if I could go back and reinvent this, I probably would have looked at multiple motives, because I don't, after all this knowledge gained h over the years, I don't think you can really split IT out. I don't know of money and power, Michael hand in hand, I could just say, numerically, money was the number one motive and power was the number two motive when we looked at this person's primary motive.

Okay, let's get back to those democrat. So they were moderately educated. They, 我 gainfully employed， typically are many were in marriages or in relationship. So just immediately thinking to compare this to the side of lower man on the street, guy in a cabin solo sigma a danger person, the I of the world, night stalker person of the world. This, this seems like a big difference. So using your revolutionary lens, why is IT simply that the fewer female female homeless people is that that does something the states and the foundation of a family gives a female potential female serial kill of the uh stability that they need to be able to go on commit a more uh.

outrageous crime was sure I think everything what you everything you just said could come into play again. I'm an evolutionary psychologist so I do look at sex differences and we do see profound male, female, zero killer, six differences. We wrote a paper on that um we're published IT in evolutionary behavioral sciences and we looked at stuff like for example, men are far more likely than women sera killers, of course, to target a stranger.

Um women are far more likely than mail to target somebody familiar to them again, primary motive for men was sex. Primary motive for women was money. Men tend to be understood, cared. Women tend to have at least some college that's not speaking to intelligence, that speaking to .

level of education attainment, the educated ate. Uh, what do you think IT? Is that driving more uneducated men or more educated women to commit murder? I'll give you my bro sign theory of White might be from my perspective um those states men have less to lose and so you economically, if you know that you're a little bit further down the the hierarchy rather dice where's for women? That's not as much of a driver.

right? I think what you believe would play into what I believe in that allow status males far less likely than the middle school or high class mail to get a date or to the a relationship. And so this there's this aborn sex drive. The other thing the other way we can look at is like this. And I haven't thought about this before, but when you you were talking IT, maybe think is IT somebody was under educated or is is that somebody so pathological that they couldn't go through the educational system regarded?

right?

So that just brings me to another male, female, zero killer sex difference, which I am not really sure IT. Let me say this. Our data show that at least ninety percent nine, zero percent of male seroit lers had some form of mental illness in female serial killers.

Our data show that forty four, zero percent had some form of mental illness. Now we could say, well, men, or twice as likely to be mentally ill, but i'm not sure. So sure, right? Because we have to visit the silence of diagnostic systems over time. Whether this person actually was ever assessed, i'm not sure.

In fact, after conducting the research that I have, after assembling research to write the book just as deadly and convinced there has to be some form of mental illness present for somebody to commit these hainous crimes, there must be, they don't think like we do. You and I wouldn't do these things to babies or elderly people or women. Library, you've got to be thinking, ability, renting. So, absolutely.

what did we say? The very beginning, this sort allow parents care, give a typical mothering, nursing type trend that women have, this previous position that many women have, at least on averaging comparison with men.

That, to me, would suggest that in order to overcome that nature and do what is the opposite of caring for, I mean, think about little girls in the school yard, right? At least little boys are practicing warfare, these aliens, or this cowboys, or there's whatever that they're waging war on. But what are the girls doing? They're caring for something, a small rabbit, or at all, or whatever IT might be.

We're playing hospital. And, you know, joyce band terms of this work, this happens really, really early on in life. Okay, that to me suggest that it's an even bigger jump from the at set point, let's say, psychologically a of females to get themselves to the stage where they prepared .

to take a life. sure. absolutely. So we do know that it's not you know not all boys play with trucks and plains and not all girls play with dogs, but that's that's per minute.

I myself, I played with stop the animals. It's all good, right? So but absolutely and we do know that in women, to me, it's undeniable. There is a caregiving and there is a caregiving instinct in all of us, but there is a caregiving instinct.

And so again, i'm an evolutionary psychologist, and what we say is that an evolutionary cy behaviors evolved because that behavior LED to traits and dispositions that made you leave more descendants, right? We have this care giving thing, people who had to care giving um instinct life more descendants. But we also say an evolutionary psychology that there is this Polly distribution of of inherit traits.

I'm going to draw the bell curve for your views, right? So if you took a statistics class, remember the bell curve. And let's say, let's say mom, most of or or even nurses, right? Most of them are right in the middle, the right amount of care giving. Let's let's go with moms, the right amount of care giving most of us turn out, okay.

But if you look in the belcher, when you look down all the way in one tail, you'll see the extreme people who are overbearing and overanxious, and they monitor child's every single move, and they get sick to their stuff when their kid goes to probe something like that art, that's one tail what about all the way in the other end of the other table tale, sorry, the other end of the other tail? We have people who are abusive um people in the grateful and then deep down in that other end of that other tail, we have people who kill their own kids, right? So there is this caregiving instinct gone or right? And I do believe that is the case.

Now you mentioned something going back to nurses as female serial killers. Uh, I actually have dated in nurse. I've actually dated in neonatal intensive q nurse.

And when I told her about a lucilla, I couldn't believe IT. How could somebody who has devoted their whole entire training and life harm the person? To which they took an oath that they would help.

So how does that happen? And we don't really know. I could say that right now, not my research, but some other research has suggested that I don't know if a nurse goes bad.

I think maybe sometimes that personality type goes into the field. I don't know if it's to have the control. I don't know if it's to save my self.

I have the urge to kill people, let me help them, I am not sure um but I do think maybe that kind of person goes into the field. Now that being said, please let me say this. Almost every nurse or almost every mom that's ever lived and we will ever live, we'll never hurt somebody like that, let alone because a serial killer. We know that but that's just speaking to the extreme. And that's the the research field that I ventured。

I wonder whether it's like a misfiring Angel of mercy thing. If you can somehow convince you yourself, if you could spend all of this time caring for Young people or role people are something else that I don't know what do they say about, like, you, in retrospect, is IT seem like they think they're doing something good, that they doing IT for pleasure. Like, I don't understand the money that you get from killing a child or an old person.

Okay, so if and this, this is really awful, but i've read some i've created some case studies from from history. I put the data together where there were people that like me to give me an example, there was a female serial killer in connect gate united states, uh, at the turn of the last century. So, you know, civil war time in the united in there, after her name was lady sherman and SHE was a serial killer, SHE killed her own kids.

SHE killed her step kids. SHE killed several husband's, gave them arsonists. And when SHE finally admitted, yeah, I I did this.

Why did you kill your kids? Well, you know, my husband lost his job, and the little kids couldn't really do anything. They couldn't do anything for me. They couldn't do anything for themselves. So I got them of the way SHE couldn't, quote, herd them into eternity was the quote.

So got getting them out of the weight is that Angel of mercy in some weird, imagine terrible angle? I I guess now in terms of nurses, I have red cases where somebody say what the risk I was doing them favorite. Yeah right.

But take, for example the case of Christian gilbert, who is a serial killer from master hute united states in the middle name late eighties midnight up to the midnight nineties um there was one disabled veteran SHE killed. His name was Kenneth cutting. He was a really nice guy.

He was in his forties in the hospital. SHE asked her supervising nurse, if this guy dies, can I leave? Only go home.

And he wasn't on that store. Anything in the supermarket said, sure, sure enough. Kenneth died by the end of her shift.

SHE caused him to have a heart attack. So that's just getting somebody out of the way. So aneela of mercy. Maybe we have experience ed fat and assign times, but I, I, I don't buy IT whose motor y you know, whose murcer are you defining? Whose murcer y executing?

Yeah it's interesting what the single this is married thing does. Why do you think that again, women is is just that on average, women are more likely to be married than men at this age?

I am not. That's a good question. So why the so one one I guess reason at the forefront would be that women can kill their husbands, right?

So they're going to get married and they're going going to kill him and they're going to take his insurance and his inheritance and everything else. Write that out for a while. Get married again.

Let's take kill him. Take his stuff. Yeah married again.

Take his stuff of the lady sherman that I was talking about. Her nickname was the dirty poisoner. Ah that's what.

Then SHE killed his husband. I'll get him out of the way. Then he married an old uh, widowers, uh, and he was dead within months. Then SHE married mr. Sherman, who was fairly wealthy, and he got him out of the way, attempted to collect the insurance money, but he didn't get away with that one and they were back in some of the other crimes so right that might be one reason for the multiple marriage marriages multiple targets um but what what I wanted to go back to if I can, is right in the beginning you were describing, well, you know they're marry. They are sort of educated this um that's exactly who you wouldn't suspect right? Like if I said Chris describes somebody who is not a serial killer, well, a grandma who you know stays at whole, makes cookies, maybe has had two marriages, maybe have three kids, now will goes to to church cell stuff at a bake sale, goes to synagogue ll stuff at the bake sale. You know, that's the person you wouldn't .

suspect hiding in the side.

hiding in plain side. Exactly right.

What about life events potentially contributing or priming female serial killers to be more likely od psychos? Social factors?

This is interesting. So when I documented, I did that analyses more a thoroughly on female serial killers. We have found everything from mothers who died when they Young, abandon them, fathers who are abusive.

We found physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. So we define that in female serial killers history to a degree greater than chance, right? So more so than someone in the general population would experience.

But let me tell you something that I don't necessarily have data on, that I probably could gather data on but when I wrote the book justice deadly, I put together about twenty seven different case studies um and I I tried to write about the psychology and what not and what I did was I wrote about five men and then the restore women and I wrote about the men to show just how different females who are killers are and I can tell you in almost every one of those cases that person was severely sexually abused when they were Younger. And i've heard people come out of the would work and say, no, it's a myth that serial killers were sexually listed. No, it's not.

No, it's not. I I have read this now again, let me stress for people who have had that terrible thing done to them when they were kids, almost everybody would never grow up and hurt somebody else, let alone kill them. But if you want to see a common denominator in both male and female serial killers, you see this profound C. S. A childhood sexual abuse, I i've seen IT in the data.

The interesting thing there is as you identified previously, and as we onna get into in a bit in terms of motives, men a lot of the time are killing its in and around sex actually motivated in one from another. But the women that isn't but for both men and for women, a childhood sexual abuse is predictive of becoming a serial killer tor in life so what that suggests to me is there is what seems be most likely uh, child hod sexual abuse does not make men more likely to use killing as a sexual weapon because you have a split test, which shows that women don't. They still do.

So what is he doing the way that you see the world, this, uh, reactivity toward aggression, this requirement to use physical force in order to be able to enact your will? IT seems like that, but I am not fascinating, right? You basically have the same scenario, both predicting the same outcome. But the way that the outcome is deployed is motivated .

in a different way. absolutely. You said that are brilliantly tly. You're absolutely right.

And when somebody experiences that violation when they are Younger, I mean, it's shown in the the research that I don't conduct for definitely behavior neuroscience research. Your nervous system literally requires itself. So imagine somebody who is violent when they are, are a child. Certainly, they are more reactive. Their nervous system is more sensitive to any kind of aggression at ata at saturn.

Um it's terrible IT absolutely changes who the person is and you're write the and male serial killers again, I don't study them as thread as I do female serial killers, but IT is my understanding most are sex crimes and they might start out as experiencing a paraphrase so what that is is like an abNormal sexual interest maybe in like i'm not saying it's abNormal, do what you need to do. But h there are um psychological classifications that would say, for example, a shoe fetishes have Normal at that. So IT might start out with that and then I might eventually to watching somebody in unrest and maybe that doesn't fulfill the the gratification or the fantasy.

So IT eventuates and get right as sorry as lives， right to attacking somebody. So we see that there is somebody by the name of drone, brutal. It's strong, bad as who was a serial killer.

And he started off with the shoe fetish. Then he started killing women and literally keeping their legs, literally severe ing their body parts, and keeping their legs sexually assaulting them, and then keeping their legs to show off his shoe collection. And so that's a really, really worst case scenario, right? But, but IT IT happened.

And again, serial murder is rare. In female serial killers are even, you know, rare. But IT does happen.

Do female serial killers take trophies?

That's really interesting. So ah my colleagues and I if I winkle jan black clear elli and I are looking at that. It's a study that we're currently working on, if not gonna published yet.

But yet we do see that males are you know very likely to keep tropes more likely than females are. Here's the thing. I actually didn't think as many female serial killers would keep trophy.

But in the again, these are new data. We don't have a released yet, but I did see that that they did. Now that depends on your definition, definition of a trophy.

If a male sea real killer keeps IT is IT to, you know, being Frank master bate to a to relieve the sensation the, you know, the sexual gratification of the crime IT could be some kind of glorification told them and what not I ve found women, they're going to, they might keep like a necklace or a lipstick or something. And then I don't know if it's a trolled ure. That's because they like IT, right, looks again. So nice lipsticks.

Why should I throw IT away? So not really sure about that, but I saw trophy keeping in both sexes just a lot more in mail serial killers. There are some other teams that say that they didn't witness that in the data.

but my team and I did find IT in the data. What about substance abuse?

I have seen that as well. Again, I don't have those data in front of me, but I have known cases of female serial killers who had drug abuse problems. Um there's one female serial killer who used to get A.

I did not say a name because it's it's not coming me right now. But he would uh, SHE was SHE had profound substance abuse. She's to hide drugs and SHE would wear her hair in curlers, like how women curder hair leave the curlers and SHE would hide pills in her curlers and in her toilet paper in her bathroom. SHE had really profound substantives, uh, problem. But I don't see that as like if you asked me to pull up my data from the sixty fourth female serial killers we initially, uh, we initially studied, I didn't really see .

that as a salient factor.

Have you got any idea how common that is among male serial killers, the drinking and killing or taking drugs and killing, or that they are self medicating for maybe some psychological disturbance? I would guess again, what we need to try and separate out here is what's the base rate difference, right on average, between the sexes? Again, more women are caregivers, but probably not IT shouldn't come out at forty percent of them as being caused vers. So that's not that you know I mean.

i'm sure you you're exactly right. So I I don't know you're right, not only in male versus female serial killers, but male serial killers versus men in general, female serota versus females in general. So I I don't I don't know that I have seen because i've studied some people in debt like, oh yeah, he did that or yeah he did that.

But I I don't know the data overall. Um IT seems to me though that would be not a cause, but one of the effects of whatever went wrong initially, pathologically trying to none myself and then committing those crimes as well. But I really see the drugs and alcohol is fuelling the crime.

so that we have this psychological this position may be disturbance downstream from that. Lots of things happen.

Self medication may .

be drinking another one of them, maybe being killing lots of people. Okay, so let's get on to victims. Who do female serial killers kill? What's interesting about that? What's different about that?

okay. So most commonly, a female serial killer will have both male and female victims. Most commonly a male serial killer will have female victims. Um but like we said before, women tend to kill um elderly people. People have you know of age infants or uh people with some kind of disability or illness that all of these people can't fight back. That's the common denied.

absolutely.

That's a good way to put IT. absolutely.

Why why is that? Is that safety? There's no retribution.

There's no there's no retribution. and. Wouldn't one be less likely to be caught if somebody who was in the hospital foreign illness dies? right? Couldn't IT be attributed or explained away as a product of their illness or injury, or a baby who dies? I mean, again, I studied, ed, some female serial killer cases from back in the day IT wasn't unusual for infants to die back then right there was a higher infant mortality rate.

Um so I would think that the victims could be explained the way um also for women who killed their husbands back in the day. Um IT wasn't unusual for somebody to die of stomach disease or what non so these women intend to use arsenic and poisons that would mimic stomach disease um heart attack at seta. So I think it's the the victims that people might not suspect are they .

ever sexually motivated from women?

That's a very good question. I have not really seen that frequently. I've heard anecdotally that maybe one or two might have had some sexuality going on there.

For example, again, I didn't see this in any official reports or newspapers or anything, but there's some rumors s out there that jolly jane tos SHE was a nurse from boston, the boston area of united states, from the turn of the ent last century, like the one hundred hundred hundreds, and SHE used to give her patients central nervous system stimulants and depression to put them to the brink of death, bring them back to life. And he wanted to lay in bed and hug them as they died, so he could feel the breath going under them. And there was rumors that he may have kissed some of them or mounted them.

That was just some, some rumors, but i've not really seen that socially corroborated. I read reports where SHE actually said I gotten to bed and help them to experience their last breath. And he thought that was a glorious event. So the power involved there is interesting.

What's the split of male to female victims .

for female killers that i'm not sure? Well, give me once second going to look at my paper, see if I have that written down.

I'm just interested, you know, i'm wondering whether when you i'm wondering ing whether the split get skilled, when you get rid of children, when you get rid of .

infanta iy apps that one I know for sure. Men are far less likely than women to kill children only. Far less likely. I've seen IT done.

But far, far less like are women more likely to kill Young people like children .

than manner um let's see so in terms of killing only adult victims, it's equal about forty nine percent of male serial killers and about forty nine percent of female serial killers both adults and children forty seven percent male series culture twenty three percent female serial killers um only children about four percent of male serial killers and about twenty seven percent .

of female serial killers so you got in ancient killer stuff going on how much of have you got any idea um again, if you were to separate uh how often is IT for A A mother to kill her own child as part of a serial killing career and where in fantasy is a thing that happens from mother's children but doing IT as a cereal? absolutely.

So going back to the definition of serial killers, that we use three or more deceased victims with a cooling off period and use the term cooling off however you want, just the time gap of at least one week between victims. So we might have somebody, A A mom with one child syndrome by proxy, uh, we call these days factitious disorder imposed on another who would kill child after child year after year and they would be considered a female serial killer um how often that happens IT does happen. It's not very often.

There was a female serial killer named um mary beth tinning in connecting new york, united states and IT is suspected that he killed at least eight of her children I don't think he was convicted of all eight um but the story goes they think that her first the right that the story goes that they think her first baby died natural causes and that maybe he saw all the attention he was getting and so the the next baby and the next baby and the rumor was that he had some kind of nursing knowledge so SHE knew how to market present symptoms uh and that he would back then even in the these and eighties, medical records were not as centralized as they were now, as they are now says he would go to different hospitals with these different infants. Um there is a book writing about her and the author of the book, i'm sorry, the name escapes me. Where is a very good book? SHE said that reports say that at each funeral, marie beth would get all this attention, and he seemed to coin could be having a good time at the funeral of the babies.

Everyone saying, oh, my good is what a poor mom. What a good mom you are. And finally, somebody called the hotline and anonymous ly incident, aren't you gonna do anything about this and they looked into IT um and finally, with the death of tamil in her last child, they they they caught on.

In fact, mary beth s allegedly try to kill her own husband and they didn't even really do anything about IT. But child after child, year after year, suggest this person would be conder sidel, a female serial killer. Let me have one thing about the mury beth tinning case.

It's the first modern case that i've been reading about these for ten years now. It's the first modern case where I saw the prosecution and the defense say, well, there's something really mentally wrong with this individual. They need help reverses in the past. In the forties and the fifties, i've seen, you know, retribution like, let's put this person to death. In this case i've seen, well, use this got to be something really wrong for somebody to do this, let's try to get some help is the first kind of compassionate case I saw. Again, i'm not trying to say I feel bad for serial killers, but if, you know, some things have happened to these people and if I may if I may just add this um I it's tough because i'll give talks and i'll say there are some serial killers I I feel bad for and I I don't want that taken out of context and then get cancelled over because .

I have really a lot .

of empathy for the okay, it's good. Let me see this. Let me tell you a story. What if I told you a story of a Young boy who his father named him a very mass skill and name, but IT turned out he was a little bit feminine. So the father used to beat the crap out of beam in the head till he was unconscious. This boy was molested when he was at eight, five by a female baby sitter.

Little bit later, when he was about eight years old, he was molested by a male local contractor and his sister caborn these things um his mother was so physically abuse that the father would beat the hell out of both the son and and the mother I wonder if somebody would feel sorry for that person. I do right, but that person is john in jasie. So if I said, do you do you feel bad for johanan gacy, by the way, he killed at least thirty three Young men and bury their remains under his house and through them in the river.

You don't feel bad for that. But if I told you the story of that boy that they call john y back then, you would say, oh my gosh, right now, again, most people or abused never ever would harm somebody like hidden. But we look at that, we say, well, you know, if somebody had come in there and help joining, and his mom, maybe those thirty three Young men would still be alive.

So I think that you know something, yeah, we want to solve crimes, but as a psychologist, let's solve the psychology. Let's solve the real. And we getting there maybe help people before they go down this path.

Can we talk about ah the motives but using an evolutionary lens so yeah you said money now and then given evolutionary perspective to that. And then can you compare that as well with the mail motives?

absolutely. So ah i'm an evolutionary psychologist by training. Actually, my degree is bioscience logy, but i'm an evolutionary psychologist. IT all comes down to sperm and eggs are IT always does. So men produced millions of spam on a daily basis.

Women have all they are born with all the eggs the ever used, the probably only obvious ate maybe couple hundred times in their lifetime. So if you look at reproductive potential, then could father as many people as they could find reproductive partners. Women, you're only going to get pregnant once, right?

So men have a lot more chances for reproduction compared to women. Men have a higher sex drive compared to women worldwide. I'm not saying you're going to meet a woman who's not the horne's person you've ever met your lifetime.

I'm not saying that. But on average, men have far greater sex strive than women do. And we evolutionary psychology attribute that to underlying biological differences.

Okay, so how does that play into cereal murder? Like, okay, so women with these very limited eggs, very limited reproductive opportunity in the ancestral environment, IT would have benefited to a female to pair with somebody who had a lot of resources, right? Because not now.

Alright, we are women here, us were. But back in the ancestral environment, you females were far more slender and helpless. And what not IT would have been really reproductively advantage, advantage to pay with the alpha male who had a lot of access to resources and territory.

So men seek sex. Women seek money worldwide. Women prefer people with resources. What are the number one motives for female for for serial killers? Sorry about that one more time.

What are the number one motives for serial murder for men? Is sex for women? It's money.

That didn't surprise me at all. Absolutely not. And then there was another perspective that I had and IT takes a little bit more. You you got to bear with me on this one. But my team and I came up with the hunter gathered hypothesis of cereal murder.

And it's not the only explanation, trust me, but I could be a part of the explanation for serial learns in that IT is thought that anthropology, gc, ally speaking, we evolve from societies were Mandated, the hunter ing, and men did the hunting and women did the gathering, right? And so what do we see male serial killers as hunters? They stock victims, unfamiliar victims.

They write down their times of day in and where they work in their friends, and they follow them just like a hunter with hunt prey. And they keep trophy, right, like a hunter. Does women use this one a little bit more figures vely.

They gather victims. They gather the people around them. They look around who is around me and let me, and then they gather profits as well.

So we did come up with a hundred gather hypotheses and when we everything we tested uh in our study, we you know show to be to be sell. So then target strangers. They kill people outside their birth place. H at cena eta. Um so there is some evolutionary perspective but let me add, I know IT is not the only factor you have to consider developmental um components, developmental trajectory, parent school, the childhood illness, society generals, you know time in history have to consider all of these things to think about what makes a cereal murder. But I do think there is an evolutionary component.

Yeah it's it's interesting because you always hear that a uh wife was killed was the first place you look the husband well, by your evidence seems the men are more likely to kill strangers than they are to kill them into my partner.

That is interesting. However, the number one mode of last time I checked in north amErica for murder was male perpetrated jealousy. So there you get the intimate .

female part.

Yeah, so I am sorry. So a man kills a woman because he's yellow for something. Last time I check the statistics, and I want to go back to check the statistics. But ignorance, amErica .

rejected. I'm falling in state. My woman is .

cheating on me that kind of thing, or I think she's cheated on me. And David boston colleagues, i've done a lot of .

research on that how do women kill one of the methods .

of choice poison? So I A lot of people call those passive methods are not sure. Um if you ever read about what arcon ic dance to somebody's body, chronic acute, I do take .

some arsenic oh my god, you'd say you .

take some arthenay. Well, you going to get in self light as europe brain is going as well. All of your internal organs are going as well.

And then fail your your gas ran testa system is going to believe you are going to vomit blood. You are going to have bloody. You are going to be doubled over in cramps until you die.

So we don't want, don't, we don't want body to do that. It's horrible. It's painful.

And IT might not even be that day. IT might be days of this person suffering OK. orrible. what?

It's it's a poisoning, a variety of different ways that they use. IT, i'm gna guess.

right? yes. And so I I say poisoning, but I use actual poisoning, like terror, rat killer and killer, that kind of thing. Arcon ic that used to be able to buy, just buy the else at the a, the poky back in the day and prescription drugs, so they might inject somebody with insulin and do the heart attack, and then they die by heart attack, and if they're in the hospital anyway, and they say, oh, well, hey, he had a heart attack and people might not suspect that so um yeah so IT could be poison in terms of illegal use, poison or pharmacological to a poisonous, a advocacy.

I wonder if much of the reason that you have this higher prevalence of cake gives as a nurse is simply that they are around the weapons that they are going to be able to use .

IT IT could very well be so I have a good friend who is a nurse, somebody with high school, and she's been a clinical nars twenty five, thirty years. And I called her. I said, why, right? why? As he said, maris, it'll take this the wrong way.

But right now I can tell you one hundred ways I can kill you and no one, whatever. Now she's, that's one thing that comes to my mind SHE is no one would know. We know how to do these things the way they so they have the means in the access. And again, if somebody dies in a hospital, it's not the most peculiar thing that ever happened. So the means .

to get exactly, oh, you've spent all of this time studying a lot of female sea real killers of all of them who has been the most outlier psychologically that you found.

I would say the outlier is. I would say the outlier is alien. Warn us because he shot men, left their bodies in the woods to to decompose and rob them.

I mean, so you have the financial motive there. But I mean, he was really abused. He had some mental in this. He was a psychopath at center at center. So I don't know was SHE was really the outlier there um again, I think even in the absence of any diagnosis that I have read, you've glad to be mentally ill to do something like this. So I don't know this any psychological outliers, but if you name a mentally disorder I have seen in serial killers of female series killers, skids, ophrys of by polar disorder, uh, anxiety disorders, months and center by proxy, now called factors cious disorder, post on another, if you name IT, it's a modeling personality disorder. It's represented in serial killers.

What about female serial killer wives of male serial killers like killing couples?

interesting. So I never studied killer couples, and i'll tell you why I wanted to study psychology and I wanted to know the what we call the auto gene motive, like coming from you. So if this is my husband and we are killing, how do I know who IT came from? How do I know who, who thought of these things, or who persuaded whom to do what? I don't know.

So i'd never study paired serial killers. There is a pair i'm thinking about. I've not studying them, but the pair from the united kingdom was IT in. And sorry, mara hardly is IT.

Yes OK right. So what's .

really interesting about them? And maybe go on of a little taner here, but please follow me. I don't even really remember his last name, but I remember her.

And from what I recall and i've had, I have some friends for britain, have some family for britain. They tell me SHE is one of the most hated people in britain, and like you. But what is wasn't IT in's idea.

And then I get about people hate her. why? I think because he violated the female role. SHE was a good looking woman who enticed kids to go on a journey whatever those awful people did to those kids.

And and people hate more for being the accomplish than they hate for coming up with the crimes. He chops somebody up with an eggs, right? They hate their head.

The other one, IT, feels like she's contravened some sacred of protector code. It's almost like I I guess again, it's sort of the public perception thing that men, we expect that animal likely to be serial killers. So when you see a woman assisting a man in doing something you already know is harness, you feel like it's almost double inss in. Oh.

absolutely, they really do. I just don't want to get her her name. Run mira handle is because .

people .

say there is the lady, there were the book, but doesn't know mirror .

andy is talk to me about the social cultural environment that we've got a at the moments um and a sort of living set up. Again, if you take an evolutionary lens with this, we are in a novel environment necessarily, right now. What do you make of that for the A A persuasion or dissuasion a killers? Male, female?

The thing is, I don't think IT is so. Again, i've studied female. Serial killers are at length compared to my study of male cyrille, as which i've studied somewhat.

And they got away with IT, largely because their methods were undetected for a long period of time. I think we have increasingly sophisticated medical examination techniques, medical recording systems. I mean, somebody who killed somebody if they died of arsenic poisoning, we're going to know on the first try.

So I really think that's going to dissuade e female serial killers. That being said, that the kind we're used to, I don't know there might be some kind of woman that does these things and gets away with IT that we haven't caught or written about. Now in terms of male serial killers, in terms of the typical profile of, uh, stalking and killing strangers, I am not sure.

Think about the victims being so interconnected in the stand age with social media and and i'm tagg myself here and I have cameras all over my house. I'm not so sure that would be easy to to get away with that. And again, to meet the criteria for sera killer IT would be three or more victims with a cooling off period of one week in between or a time out of at least one week in between. So even if somebody was horrible enough and stupid enough to kill the first person, are they going to be able to get away with the second and the third time?

Yeah, I I really think about this a lot, especially given my nighttime punched for watching netflix, true documentation and like that ah so much of this is, you know it's sixties and seventies and eighties it's out west somewhere in alabama aware of the fucker is it's going on and I like why I don't hear much about modern day serial killers. Is that just that forensic techniques are so good that one potential serial killers are much motivated? Ed, from starting or two. There's so good that after the first step, perhaps the second, they don't get chance to get to the third because they're been popped by some great investigator like your friend, the detective.

right? IT could very well be, I think you're on to something you're absolutely right. And also, I mean, what about internet detectives, right? Put a picture on on on facebook or or twitter and say, catch this person, they did x you.

They're caught in twenty minutes, right? So I think you really can't get away with stuff these days. I wouldn't even try. I wouldn't I wouldn't recommend IT. So I do think the detective work and the science is there to prevent or at least catch before someone eventuates to the level of syria murderer. That being said, let's hope not and I also know that if people really want to do something awful, they will I don't want to go down this slippery slope, but honestly, um there are mass murderers who if they don't have guns, they set a house sand fire or they push a card from the the train they'll stab you we'll find a way right so I now deep.

so I can say all of the spicy things. Now you know how there is some good evidence that women commit or attempt, should I say suicide more than men, but men are more for wonderful, a Better word, successful. They, they complete at a higher rate.

I wonder whether this could go either way. Could be men or women? A men or women are less successful at not being caught as serial killers? You would imagine these sex differences in everything pretty much. So lets say, for instance, I would guess on average, that females are more likely to be Better at hiding the tracks, being conniving, planning, doing that sort of stuff. So maybe the one in six number is that they are over represented because they are failure rate the amount of times that they kick some invisible trip wire that a man who being a little bit more clumsy, less planned out, less sort of calculated in the way that he goes about his serial killing ventures, uh, I get the sense that maybe they're over represented because I actually quite good that the disposition helps them.

I absolutely. So it's it's interesting. I collected those data twice and once, uh, the data show that women got away with IT longer.

And then the second time I did another study, IT was just about equal. And I have those day a in front of me. The killing span we call IT.

The main years killing for men was eight point seven years. For women IT was seven point eight years. So just about, just about equal. Uh, so they get away with that but but you write, I mean, if somebody is leaving this, the female seen real killer is sexually assaulting victims in leaving this trail of you know unfortunate dead bodies around the town, you're going to say, oh, there's somebody there, let's catch them. They can work really hard at IT a versus female, female serial killers if there's this is awful, but babies dying in a hospital IT takes somebody to go hold on weights, that there is a statistically statistics. L anonymous summer, let's go back and check IT out.

People just Normally turn up with access in their heads, but babies do .

sometimes going on exactly exactly right. Um so IT IT seems like we have to catch a male serial killer, but we have to detect a female.

And I think .

there's a difference there.

How cool is there anything else that we haven't said from the sort of evolutionary lens perspective thing around female serial killers? Any closed loops?

I think I just i'd like to to close up with this. And IT might not be evolutionary, but I conducted research to be able to write my book with amperage on university press. But then I learned from writing the book, right? And I know for sure from the data that i've seen and from the case that I worked on, that we need more police resources, right? So the world is not like csi, where you send date, you know, you send special down to the lab.

And my friend from the FBI says it's hot men and women analyzing DNA to a banging musical soundtrack. right? right?

The world doesn't work like that. They need money for these tests. They know the police organization sometimes don't have these.

We need more money for police and detective work. We need more of IT. Secondly, we need more psychologists, right? Because, let's say, somebody intervened back in the day. I like murano was so sexually abused in rape when he was Younger. SHE SHE absolutely got set on fire.

Her grades went down in school, and the the school, Collins said, hey, could we give her counselling note? right? Well, some, if if SHE got a case worker, maybe things would have been different for those seven or eight minutes he killed, right? So we need more psychologists to get out there and in intervene because of something bad happens to someone.

The earlier you'd get there, the Better. According to psychological data, you can treat trauma, if at all. You could give a Better shot at IT when IT happens, if somebody y's a kid, when you get right there and do IT right then and there.

So we need more psychologists, and we need more. We need more psychologists and we need more police resources. And that might tackle the problem.

Well, you may have inspired some fledged criminal psychologists or detectives to get into the world of female serial killers today.

I hope so, hope, I hope they take what what my team and i've done and do IT on a grander scale and and create change, stop crime, help people where they needed. I really hope someone thank you for saying .

that I appreciate more. Harrison, ladies and gentleman, minister, where should everyone go? They wants to keep up to date with this stuff that you're doing.

I could check out my faculty. Page pen state Harrisburg or you can take a look at my book, uh, just as deadly, the psychology of female serial killers, camera university press, twenty twenty three. But the paper back edition is coming out soon, so it's available at any retailer. Thank you so much.

Congratulations, appreciated.

Thank you. Thank you, Chris.