Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers

by Carol Anne Davis

  Women Who Kill

  Profiles of Female Serial Killers

  CAROL ANNE DAVIS

  For Ian

  Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Acknowledgements

  Preface

  1. Candle in the wind

  ANNA ZWANZIGER

  2. Lost in France

  JEANNE WEBER

  3. Mad about the boy

  MYRA HINDLEY

  4. If I can’t have you

  MARTHA ANN JOHNSON

  5. Slave to love

  CHARLENE GALLEGO

  6. Land of make believe

  GENENE JONES

  7. Cold as ice

  JUDITH NEELLEY

  8. Giving it up for your love

  CATHERINE BIRNIE

  9. Trying to get the feeling again

  GWEN GRAHAM & CATHERINE WOOD

  10. Love don’t live here any more

  ROSE WEST

  11. Midnight at the lost and found

  CAROL BUNDY

  12. It’s my turn

  AILEEN WUORNOS

  13. Karma Chameleon

  KARLA HOMOLKA

  14. We are family

  CLASSIFYING FEMALE SERIAL KILLERS

  15. Everybody wants to rule the world

  FABRICATIONS OF FEMININITY

  16. Do you really want to hurt me?

  THEORIES ABOUT WHY WOMEN KILL

  Select Bibliography

  Index

  About the Author

  By Carol Anne Davis

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Researching a book that involves so much suffering and death takes its toll - and there were times when I saw nothing but hatred and weakness in the world. But the many people who gave freely of their time and knowledge helped restore me to a more balanced view.

  I’m very grateful to the Rev Peter Timms who agreed to meet me and answer my questions. Peter is a former prison governor and an experienced counsellor. He is also the man who Myra Hindley confessed to about her role in the murders of Keith Bennett and Pauline Reade.

  I’d also like to thank Robert Adams, Professor of Human Services Development at the University of Lincolnshire and Humberside for allowing me to interview him. Robert has been a prison officer and the deputy and acting governor of a young offenders institution. He also spent seven years as the director of a community programme keeping young offenders out of institutions and is the author of the compassionate and detailed book The Abuses Of Punishment.

  It is easier to get detailed information on certain cases if you contact someone in the country where that crime occurred. To this end, thanks are due to true crime reviewer Lisa DuMond for providing additional information on several of the American cases. Lisa is a science fiction writer and author of the novel Darkers, but here she kept strictly to the facts. Thanks also to Australian policeman Ron McKay for giving me up to date information on the Catherine Birnie case.

  Closer to home, thanks to Chameleon TV, the British producers of the Moors Murders programmes, for providing videotape and transcripts of this three part series. Thanks also to Channel 5 who aired the series and helped me obtain the information I required.

  I’m equally grateful to EPOCH for sending me their materials. If they can help stop adults hitting children then we might grow into a society without violent adults. They are a small charity who deserve to make giant steps.

  Finally, my grateful thanks to Allison & Busby’s Publishing Director David Shelley who suggested I write this book.

  Preface

  Why does a young woman lure teenagers into her car then participate in their extensive rape and torture? What makes a nurse lethally inject the healthy babies in her care? Women, statistically, aren’t a deadly breed -females comprise only two percent of the world’s serial killers. But when the distaff side does commit multiple murders, they can be as cruel and compassionless as the male.

  Chapters one to thirteen profile such female serial killers, with each being given her own detailed chapter. Catherine Wood and Gwen Graham share a chapter - but have their early lives separately profiled - as they killed as a team.

  Most crime books jump from past to present and back again but I’ve worked hard to put events into chronological order so that the reader can see how the woman changes in personality and in criminality as her life unfolds.

  The first two profiles are historical ones, notably Anna Zwanziger the mass poisoner who was born in 1760 and Jeanne Weber the strangler who was born in 1875. They show many of the serial killing patterns we see today - the predatory targeting of a victim and a willingness to wait till the coast is clear before offering violence. These cases also show that female serial killers aren’t a modern phenomenon brought about by video nasties, violent computer games or television.

  The other cases are much more contemporary, with the killers mainly active in the eighties. Though America produces many of the killers featured there are also cases from Britain, Australia and Canada plus those previously mentioned which are set respectively in Bavaria and France.

  Chapter fourteen examines the classifications that female serial killers fall into - for example, the Profit Killer, the Revenge Killer or the whimsically-named Angel Of Death.

  When selecting which female serial killers to profile, I concentrated mainly on the Thrill Killer cases as these are the most fascinating and also the hardest to understand. After all, most of us can empathise with a Profit Killer desiring wealth, even though we personally wouldn’t murder for it. Similarly, we can comprehend the motivation of a Revenge Killer, who wreaks suffering and death on her unfortunate foes. But the female Thrill Killer who lures innocent people to hours or even days of suffering is much more difficult for the layperson to fathom, especially when she commits these murders again and again.

  Chapter fifteen looks at how these women are often erroneously regarded by the courts as helpless pawns who murdered for love or because they were terrorised into it. It also looks at those rare instances where women are more harshly treated because of their sex.

  If these findings seem in part contradictory it’s because they are - one aspect of a case will depict the woman as the victim of her team killing partner, whilst in another instance she’ll demonstrate that she’s the sadistic one, the one in charge.

  All too often, when the evidence is partially contradictory like this, the writer leaves out the facts which don’t suit his or her cause. This makes for a simplified read - and it may please the casual reader who can then say ‘oh, she was mad’ or ‘she was bad’ or ‘she was a clear victim.’ But he will be responding to a biased interpretation of the case rather than the truth.

  The final chapter looks at theories about why women kill with such brutality and at how we might change our world to make it a non-violent and desirable place.

  1 Candle in the wind

  The nomadic misery of Anna Maria Zwanziger

  Anna was born in Nuremberg in 1760 to a couple named Schonleben who ran an inn. In her formative years she had some security but both of her parents died by the time she was five, leaving her doubly orphaned. The pretty, intelligent child was then foisted on to various relatives.

  It was doubtless an unhappy time - we know that, even today, stepchildren are often treated less well than natural children are, with all the attendant problems that abuse or a simple lack of love can bring.

  The next five years passed in this way and then ten-year-old Anna was rescued by one of her richer guardians. He ensured that she was well read and educated, and imbued her with a love of good literature that w
ould last the rest of her increasingly harrowing life.

  The teenager had some stability during the years of being educated in the merchant’s home but when she was just fifteen he introduced her to a man more than twice her age and insisted she marry him. Her new suitor was an alcoholic solicitor called Zwanziger who was over thirty years old. Anna pleaded with her guardian that she had no feelings for this man, but he was determined and the marriage went ahead.

  Two suicide attempts

  It was a disaster from the start. Her husband spent all of his time away from home - when he was there he was downing cheap wine by the bottle. Anna was left alone to read the heavily dramatised and often woeful novels and plays of the day. She gave birth to two children - and one of them, her daughter, would spend time in prison as an adult for swindling and theft.

  Anna herself was given to periods of increasing melancholy and twice attempted to take her own life. Psychologists say that most people who attempt suicide really want to kill someone else, in Anna’s case probably her penurious husband or a relative who had abused her. But for now her aggression was simply turned in on herself.

  When her suicide attempts failed, Anna regrouped her defences and searched for a means to survive. Her husband kept spending all of the family purse and begging her not to leave him, so she took to prostitution to support her brood. At this time she was still an attractive woman who looked and sounded genteel. It was important to her to maintain a sense of status so she only slept with refined gentlemen and maintained an air of discretion. Anna was one of the successful upmarket escort girls of her day.

  When she was thirty-three, her husband died leaving her even more penniless. She had various jobs and at one stage gave birth to an illegitimate child which died in a children’s home. Increasingly unstable, she began to drift from one housekeeping and cooking job to the next. She became pregnant by another man who then left her. She had a miscarriage and thereafter attempted to drown herself. Her later life took on the pattern of men either ignoring her or leaving her and she flickered from one delusional relationship to another, as fragile as a candle in the wind.

  Theft

  Eventually at age forty-four Anna got a job as a domestic in Weimar but she ran off with one of her employer’s diamond rings, presumably an attempt to find financial refuge in a world that offered no social security. She then went to live with her grown up daughter and son-in-law. But her employer advertised her theft in the local paper, destroying any good name that Anna might have clung on to, and when the son-in-law saw the advert he threw her out.

  Anna now determined to find herself a second husband who could offer her some stability. When a Bavarian judge, who was separated from his wife, took her on as a housekeeper/cook, she saw him as a potential candidate. Anna tempted the wife back into the marital home then duly poisoned her by putting large doses of arsenic - which was widely available at the time - into her drinks. Arsenic is a particularly cruel poison whose symptoms include severe stomach inflammation, vomiting, bloody diarrhoea and extreme weakness, occasionally including temporarily paralysis. The later stages can include convulsions and coma. Poor Mrs Glaser died within three days, suffering an agonizing death.

  Many of the Glaser’s guests also suffered from stomach complaints after eating Anna’s meals. When the newly widowed Judge Glaser still showed no sexual interest in her and expressed concern at how ill his dinner guests were becoming, she left his employ and became the housekeeper of another legal professional instead.

  But this new employer, Judge Grohmann, already had a fiancee and had no intention of replacing her with the thin and sallow Anna. Rebuffed again, the woman put arsenic in his tea. He too died in terrible pain but as he had suffered from gout his death was put down to natural causes and Anna was free to kill again. More sympathetic sources suggest that Anna genuinely liked Grohmann and believed the arsenic would help cure his illness, for it was used in small amounts for medicinal purposes. Other sources say that she killed him out of jealousy after his marriage banns were read out.

  The latter is more likely, for poisoners seem to become addicted very quickly to their cruel powders, and she would later refer to arsenic as her truest friend. It’s also true that the poisoner takes a childish glee in administering her toxic substances and controlling the outcome. It would have pleased Anna to know that Grohmann would never live to consummate the marriage with his young fiancee. Criminologists believe that there is a psycho-sexual motive behind many poisonings, and it may well have aroused the reluctantly-celibate Anna to watch the man writhing in agony.

  Her next choice of employer was a magistrate, Gebhard. It’s known that serial killers are often drawn to police and legal circles - Ted Bundy studied law, Ken Bianchi frequented police hangouts and pretended to be a policeman, Tim. Harris was a state trooper who carried out his fantasies of hanging women and Dennis Nilsen was a probationary policeman for almost a year. Female serial killers also share this interest. Karla Homolka, profiled later, wanted to be a detective and Myra Hindley, also profiled, actually applied to join the police.

  Magistrate Gebhard wanted a nurse as his sick wife had just given birth. Anna again believed that the magistrate wanted a sexual relationship with her so she killed his wife with her beloved arsenic. As Mrs Gebhard’s health failed, she accused the new nurse of poisoning her, stating that her food tasted strange. Sadly no one believed her and she too died in terrible pain.

  Once again Anna waited for signs of desire from her newly widowed employer - and once again she was disappointed. Now she went into an arsenic-fuelled frenzy, poisoning anyone who visited the Gebhard’s household. She also poisoned Gebhard’s servants who all disliked her and when she was questioned about the pain that everyone was in she said that she must have over-spiced the meals. When Gebhard found a white silt at the bottom of his brandy glass he asked her to leave, little realising the revenge she would exact.

  Further deaths

  Going to the kitchen, she put large amounts of arsenic in the coffee, salt and sugar jars. (Some sources say that she just poisoned the salt - but the salient fact is that she poisoned a foodstuff she knew would be used daily by everyone in the household.) She also gave the baby a sweet or a biscuit as she left the house and it too became violently ill.

  Realising that a mass poisoning had taken place, the magistrate had the kitchen ingredients tested and white arsenic was found, a substance that is conveniently almost tasteless. The law now wanted to talk to Anna Zwanziger but the cook from hell had disappeared…

  For the next few weeks the murderess travelled around seeking a place to live and work. Her son-in-law, now separated from his wife, refused to accommodate her and she moved back to Nuremberg. In October 1809 she was arrested there with a packet of arsenic in her pocket. Still she continued to deny everything, even trying to blame Judge Glaser for his own wife’s death. She - like many of the other female killers featured in this book - was a plausible witness, able to answer all of the prosecutions questions convincingly. The trial dragged on for months.

  Then the police exhumed the bodies of Fran Glaser and Judge Grohmann and found arsenic in their systems. (If arsenic has been used over some time it remains in parts of the victim’s body, including the hair and fingernails.) Anna then screamed out in court that she had killed them all and would have killed more if given the chance. When asked how she could cause such suffering to her acquaintances, she said that she couldn’t bear to look at their healthy, happy faces and wanted to see them writhe in pain. She added that if undetected she would have gone on poisoning men, women and children indiscriminately for many years, that she had a compulsion to kill. It was the law’s turn to take a life and she was beheaded by the sword in 1811.

  Typology

  Anna Zwanziger doesn’t qualify as a Black Widow style of killer because Black Widows mainly kill people with whom they have a strong personal relationship. Conversely, Anna deliberately poisoned many strangers who came to dine at her employer’s ho
use.

  She at first fits into the Profit typology, in that she hoped to profit from a first wife’s death by becoming the second wife.

  Later, she moved into the Revenge category, injuring or killing those who refused to become sexually intimate with her or who simply enjoyed a zest for life that she herself now lacked. Her motivation seems similar to that of the spree killer who decides that he hates life but will injure and annihilate as many others as possible before he shoots himself. The only thing that distinguishes her from other Revenge Killers is that they usually claim their first victim in their twenties whereas Anna was twice as old.

  Was she a Question Of Sanity case as some criminologists suggest? It seems doubtful. After all, she took care to hide her poison in substances where it wouldn’t be detected. She left the area after poisoning the salt canister. And when brought to trial she denied the crimes for six whole months, only admitting to them when incontrovertible evidence was found in the bodies. (She might not have known that such forensic tests were possible as the method had only been perfected four years before.)

  When she at last admitted some of the poisonings - she was tried for the deaths of two women and a child - Anna was quite clear about her motives. She had hated the health and happiness of those around her, which contrasted starkly with her own faded looks. Misery likes company and Anna set about making everyone around her as miserable as she possibly could.

  Anna Zwanziger was dealt a bad hand in life, losing her mother and father and then being passed around like a parcel between her indifferent relatives. Her route from educated teenager to young prostitute to menial housekeeper understandably engendered further distress and bitterness. But she lost the sympathy that she was entitled to when she turned that rage on innocent bystanders and made them die early and agonising deaths.