Murder isn't just a man's world — and these disturbing true stories of female serial killers are all the proof you need.
Amelia Dyer
Instead, after pocketing the money, Dyer made the children overdose on opioids and hid their bodies. It took about 30 years before anybody figured out her gruesome scheme. By the time she was caught and later executed for her crimes, Dyer had murdered up to 400 children.Wikimedia Commons
Karla Homolka
After that, the serial killer couple abducted, raped, and murdered two more young girls. Karla Homolka eventually cooperated with police, and claimed that Paul Bernardo had controlled and abused her. Though Bernardo was sentenced to life in prison for his crimes, Homolka was released due to her cooperation with authorities — and walks free to this day.YouTube
Gwendolyn Graham And Cathy Wood
The murderous lovers allegedly picked their victims based on the initials of their first or last names, in hopes of spelling out "M-U-R-D-E-R." They were caught before they could do so, and Graham remains in prison to this day. However, Wood was released in 2020. Wikimedia Commons
Aileen Wuornos
Lavinia Fisher
Legend has it that Lavinia would serve their visitors poisoned tea and invite them to lie down when they didn't feel well. Then, her husband John would rob them — and sometimes finish the job of killing them if the tea didn't work. They were eventually executed for other crimes in 1820, and since then, some have questioned whether this couple was truly as murderous as legend claims.Wikimedia Commons
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova
When investigators finally searched her home, they found that about 138 of the serfs under her care had died, all under suspicious and brutal circumstances. Saltykova was then sentenced to life in prison for her crimes.Wikimedia Commons
Mary Bell
After getting away with her first murder, Bell teamed up with a friend named Norma Bell (no relation) to kill again. The pair strangled a three-year-old this time and then brutally cut his flesh with scissors, mutilating his penis, and carving an "M" for "Mary" into his stomach. When she was caught, Mary Bell was sentenced to 12 years in prison. And after the widespread outrage over her release, she was eventually given a new name and a secret address to protect her privacy.Wikimedia Commons
Myra Hindley
Gesche Gottfried
Rosemary West
Elizabeth Bathory
At first, Bathory only murdered peasants, luring them in by hiring them as serving girls in her castle and then beating and torturing them to death. When she realized that she was getting away with all of her crimes, she began luring in some of the lesser gentry, as well.
Bathory would burn, starve, and mutilate the girls under her care. She'd scald them with tongs, cover them in honey and ants, and even bite the flesh off of their faces before giving them the "mercy" of death. She was eventually sentenced to house arrest for life due to her crimes, but in the years since then, some historians have questioned whether at least some of Bathory's murders were exaggerated.Wikimedia Commons
Dorothea Puente
Puente killed at least nine people under her care in order to cash their Social Security checks, and buried most of their bodies in her backyard until she was finally caught and sentenced to life in prison.YouTube
Leonarda Cianciulli
When Cianciulli's son went to fight in World War II, the Italian mother became convinced that the only way to keep him safe was through human sacrifice. So, she killed three women, and then used their remains to make soap and teacakes. After she was caught, she was sentenced to 30 years in a prison and three years in a criminal asylum.Wikimedia Commons
Hélène Jégado
But the deaths that seemed to follow Jégado in the 19th century weren't a tragic coincidence. She was a serial killer who murdered up to 36 people at her places of employment, usually with arsenic. And her killing spree didn't end until her arrest in 1851. Soon afterward, she was executed for her crimes.Wikimedia Commons
Juana Barraza
Between the late 1990s and the early 2000s, Barraza killed at least 16 victims — but she may have been responsible for up to 40 deaths. She would trick them into thinking that she was going to help them with groceries or other tasks, and then either bludgeon or strangle them to death. She later said that she killed the women because they reminded her of her mother, a neglectful alcoholic. Barraza was eventually sentenced to 759 years in prison.Flickr
Genene Jones
Though her exact motives are unknown, Jones may have enjoyed the excitement of medical crises and the opportunity to be a hero if the children she targeted ended up surviving. She remains in prison to this day, but she'll be up for parole at age 87 in 2037, if she's still alive. Betmann/Getty Images
Miyuki Ishikawa
But Ishikawa's motives were complex. During the postwar era when many families could hardly afford food, let alone raise a child, Ishikawa made a deal with desperate parents to quietly murder their children.
When she was finally caught, Ishikawa successfully argued that the children's deaths had been the fault of their parents. She was sentenced to just eight years in prison, and some scholars believe that her case helped lead to legalized abortion in Japan.Wikimedia Commons
Amelia Sach And Annie Walters
But in reality, the women poisoned the babies they were given and disposed of their bodies. They massacred at least a dozen infants before they were caught and were hanged in 1903.Wikimedia Commons
Jane Toppan
Waneta Hoyt
It wasn't until years later that a forensic pathologist named Dr. Linda Norton looked over Hoyt's case while studying SIDS and realized that her children's deaths had been no accident. In 1994, Hoyt finally admitted that she'd smothered all five babies because she couldn't stand their crying. She was sentenced to 75 years to life in prison as a result.Wikimedia Commons
Belle Gunness
For Gunness, though, murder wasn't a one-time thing. She made it a living, luring in men with ads that called herself a "comely widow" and then murdering them for their money. She ultimately killed up to 40 victims, including her children, before she either died or disappeared following a mysterious house fire in 1908.Wikimedia Commons
Maria Swanenburg
It took years before the people figured out what she was doing. By the time authorities caught her in 1883, Swanenburg had murdered at least 27 people with arsenic. She was sentenced to life in prison for her crimes.Wikimedia Commons
Delphine LaLaurie
In her attic, rescuers found slaves chained and bound to the walls, all horribly beaten and tortured, some with their skin flayed off and eyes gouged out. LaLaurie's abuse was shocking even by the brutal standards of American slavery, with one victim wrapped in human intestines and another with a mouth filled with excrement and then sewn shut. It's believed she murdered numerous enslaved people, but she reportedly fled the city before she could be questioned by authorities — or killed by angry locals who had gathered around her home.Wikimedia Commons
Judy Buenoano
It emerged that Buenoano murdered her husband, her next boyfriend, and her own son, apparently in order to collect life insurance money. She wasn't caught until her plot to murder yet another boyfriend went awry, and police realized that she'd been poisoning her loved ones with arsenic for years. And in 1998, she became the first woman to die in the electric chair in Florida.Middle District Of Florida/United States District Court
Kristen Gilbert
Indeed, Gilbert had orchestrated a number of the deaths in order to get the attention of a hospital security guard she was having an affair with. She was eventually convicted of four murders, though some suspect that she killed dozens more. Gilbert was ultimately sentenced to life in prison for her crimes.Getty Images
Nannie Doss
According to investigators, Doss couldn't stop laughing while recounting how she'd killed her husbands. “I was searching for the perfect mate," Doss eerily explained to the police, "the real romance in life.” She was eventually sentenced to life in prison. Bettmann/Getty Images
Joanna Dennehy
“I want my fun," she told her accomplice, Gary “Stretch” Richards, as they searched for more victims. "I need you to get my fun.” Dennehy was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.West Mercia Police
Amy Archer-Gilligan
The owner of a home for "elderly people and chronic invalids" in Windsor, Connecticut, Archer-Gilligan took care of patients who paid her a one-time fee of $1,000 or paid a weekly rate. In 1916, however, police arrested Gilligan on the suspicion that she'd killed some of her patients as well as her husband.
She was only officially found guilty of one murder, but it's believed that she killed at least five people and perhaps as many as 20 victims. She spent the rest of her life in prison and then later an insane asylum.Public Domain
Beverley Allitt
Dubbed the "Angel of Death," Allitt killed or tried to kill multiple young patients in the early 1990s, often by injecting them with large amounts of insulin. Allitt ended up murdering at least four. She likely suffered from Munchausen syndrome by proxy and killed for attention. And she was ultimately sentenced to life in prison.David Giles - PA Images/PA Images via Getty Images
Giulia Tofana
Tofana allegedly sold a poison called Aqua Tofana to Italian women who wanted to get out of unhappy and abusive marriages. When she was finally found out, Tofana reportedly confessed to helping 600 women kill their husbands. She was later executed alongside her assistants, and some of her customers.Public Domain
Mary Ann Cotton
Cotton's weapon of choice was arsenic, which caused reactions that mimicked the symptoms of gastric fever. She was eventually found out and hanged for her crimes in 1873.Public Domain
Delfina And María De Jesús González
After abducting victims, the sisters killed anyone who resisted them or got too sick to work in the brothel. They would also sometimes kill wealthy clients. Ultimately, they were both sentenced to 40 years in prison.Bettmann/Getty Images
K.D. Kempamma
Kempamma's M.O. was especially cruel. She befriended women at temples and suggested that they drink "holy water" to fix their problems. Having convinced the women to wear their best clothes and jewelry, Kempamma then gave them a drink laced with cyanide — and robbed them once they were dead. She was initially sentenced to death for her crimes, but this was later commuted to life in prison. YouTube
In the late 1990s, an elite FBI profiler allegedly stated: "There are no female serial killers." But that's not true — female serial killers have appeared throughout history. Like their male counterparts, they're motivated to kill for many reasons, including greed, a thirst for attention, and sadism.
Many female murderers have targeted those closest to them — like family members — for financial gain. Others have used their positions as nurses to kill scores of people. And some have simply had a taste for blood.
In the gallery above, discover the harrowing stories of 33 of history's most ruthless female serial killers. And below, learn about some of the reasons why these women decided to commit such heinous crimes.
The Female Serial Killers Who Murder For Money
YouTubeBelle Gunness may have killed as many as 40 people.
Some of the most insidious female serial killers are women who murder for money, often targeting the people closest to them. One of the most infamous examples is the "Indiana Ogress," Belle Gunness.
A Norwegian immigrant in La Porte, Indiana, Gunness seemed like a woman haunted by tragedy. Her first husband died of a cerebral hemorrhage, and her second husband was killed after a sausage grinder fell on his head.
But it just so happened that her first husband died on the only day when his two life insurance policies overlapped. And Gunness' foster daughter Jennie later told her classmates that Gunness had killed her second husband with a "meat cleaver." That is, before Jennie inexplicably vanished.
Gunness' most devious crimes, however, were yet to come. She started posting lonely hearts ads in Norwegian-language newspapers, pretending to be looking for a new husband. Describing herself as a "comely widow," she offered lonely Norwegian men stability and old-country cooking.
Whenever someone took her bait, Gunness acted quickly to kill them. A farmhand who allegedly acted as her accomplice later said that Gunness would spike the men's coffee, bash their heads in, and cut up their corpses. Then, the farmhand would bury the remains in Gunness' hog pen.
La Porte County Historical Society MuseumInvestigators searching Belle Gunness' farm for bodies in 1908.
But just as one of the men's relatives started asking questions, a fire suddenly broke out at Gunness' farmhouse, apparently killing her and her three children. In the aftermath, investigators found 11 burlap sacks buried in her pig pen. They all contained human body parts. Tellingly, authorities eventually found the remains of Gunness' missing foster daughter — and it soon became clear that Gunness had committed multiple grisly murders.
All told, Gunness may have killed as many as 40 people, including her former husbands, her lovers, and her foster daughter. What's more, some believe that she set the farmhouse fire herself — and that she escaped the blaze.
Though Gunness' corpse was initially believed to have been found in the ashes, it seemed much too small to belong to the 200-pound woman.
Since Belle Gunness collected the insurance policies of her husbands and money from her suitors, it can be assumed that she killed primarily for financial gain. Other female serial killers who murdered for money include Judy Buenoano, who murdered her husband, son, and boyfriend for the insurance payout, and Dorothea Puente, the "Death House Landlady" who killed her elderly tenants to collect their Social Security checks.
But some of the most frequent female serial killers are women who've seemingly dedicated their lives to helping others — nurses.
Nurses Who Killed Their Patients
TwitterNurse serial killer Beverley Allitt (right) with one of her victims, and the victim's mother.
The gallery of female serial killers above includes multiple nurses.
In England, the most notorious nurse serial killer is Beverley Allitt. As Biography notes, Allitt seemed deeply disturbed from a young age, faking injuries in order to get attention. As an adult, Allitt continued to seek treatment for medical ailments that didn't seem to exist.
Then, she became a nurse, obtaining a position in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital in Lincolnshire in 1991. Before long, very young children started to die unexpectedly on her watch.
As the strange deaths mounted, investigators noted an unsettling pattern. During the 25 suspicious incidents that had happened at the hospital in recent months — including four deaths — Allitt had been present.
Allitt was charged with murder in November 1991 and later sentenced to life in prison for her crimes. It eventually came out that Allitt likely had Munchausen's syndrome and Munchausen syndrome by proxy, which meant that she invented illnesses and injuries as a way to get attention.
There's certainly an element of sadism in Allitt's story, as there is in the stories of fellow nurse killers like Kristen Gilbert and Genene Jones. But they weren't as sadistic as some of the other female serial killers covered above.
The Most Sadistic Female Serial Killers
West Mercia PolicePure sadism drove Joanna Dennehy to kill her three victims in 2013.
Though killers like Belle Gunness were primarily motivated by money, and killers like Beverley Allitt were primarily motivated by attention, some female serial killers murdered just because they liked how it felt.
Take Joanna Dennehy. Over the course of 10 days in March 2013, she went on a murder spree that left three men dead — and Dennehy had hoped to kill more before she was caught and sentenced to life in prison.
"I want my fun," she allegedly told her accomplice, Gary "Stretch" Richards, as they drove around looking for random victims. "I need you to get my fun."
Indeed, sadism like Dennehy's can be found in some of history's earliest known female serial killers. Between 1590 and 1610, Hungarian noblewoman Elizabeth Bathory — the so-called "Blood Countess" — allegedly tortured and murdered as many as 650 girls and young women.
Wikimedia CommonsElizabeth Bathory allegedly killed hundreds, though some believe that the charges against her have been exaggerated.
Bathory reportedly went to great lengths to ensure her victims died a painful death. She burned them with hot irons, stuck needles under their fingernails, covered them in honey and exposed them to bugs, sewed their lips together, and used scissors to viciously mutilate their bodies and faces.
Likewise, 18th-century Russian noblewoman Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova routinely tortured and beat the peasant girls who worked for her. More than 100 died by her hand, though it took years for anyone to pay attention to her horrific crimes because of her social status and power.
For killers like Saltykova, Bathory, and Dennehy, no outside motivation was needed. They killed simply because they felt like it.
As the gallery above demonstrates, female serial killers kill for a myriad of reasons — just like men. Some kill for money. Some kill for love. Some kill because they wanted attention. But plenty kill just because they can.
After learning about some of history's worst female serial killers, read the horrifying stories behind history's worst child murderers. Then, go inside the enduring mystery of the identity of the Zodiac Killer.
