How Bad Can Girls Be? Female Serial Killers In The USA

Registered by citrus on 2/11/2004
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6 journalers for this copy...
Journal Entry 1 by citrus on Wednesday, February 11, 2004
this is a part of my final exam i just recently finished (yes, i wrote it...) and if someone is interested, i would like to make it a bookring to hear what other people think about it...

Journal Entry 2 by citrus on Sunday, February 15, 2004
i want to do a ring on this one... just pm me if interested...

participants to far:

1. juettpbb (Germany)
2. Amusedbythis (USA)
3. mojosmom (USA)
4. spaceystacey (USA)
5. powerslave (Portugal)
6. 21stcentury (Germany)
7. Marielsd (Germany)
8. back to me...

Journal Entry 3 by citrus on Monday, February 16, 2004
the paper starts its journey today... thank you all for participating.

sending it to juettpbb.

Journal Entry 4 by juettpbb from Bochum, Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany on Tuesday, February 24, 2004
Ist gut bei mir angekommen, Danke. Ich werde die Arbeit demnächst lesen.

Journal Entry 5 by juettpbb from Bochum, Nordrhein-Westfalen Germany on Monday, April 5, 2004
Oje da hab ich das Werk aber lange behalten - SORRY!!!! Ich bin platt - so etwas wird in Östereich zum Abitur (bzw. zur Matura) geschrieben? WOW! Ich habe schon bestandene B.A.-Arbeiten gelesen, die schlechter waren. Ich habe auch bei sehr kritischer Lektüre nur ganz wenige Fehler gefunden und wenn ich die hier sagen würde, wäre das dreist, denn das Werk ist klar überdurchschnittlich und ich selbst hätte wohl auch nicht weniger gemacht.

Released on Tuesday, April 06, 2004 at Briefkasten Bochum Schützenstr. in International, Postal Release Controlled Releases.

Journal Entry 7 by Amusedbythis from Chicago, Illinois USA on Thursday, April 15, 2004
Received this today. Can't wait to read it.

Journal Entry 8 by Amusedbythis from Chicago, Illinois USA on Sunday, April 25, 2004
This was a quick read. Thank you for sharing your term paper. However, some of your research is based on old data and some of your conclusions are fallacious.

The sources are based on large part oon research from the internet, which consists of secondary sources. If you had scratched the surface, you would have read the Justice Department's Bureau of Statistics 2000 report on female offenders. That report indicated that 1 of 14 female murderers victimize strangers. That is clearly higher than the 1 in 4 males, but is not so large to be statistically insignificant with a large pool of female murderers. That BJS article also listed the number of women on death row in 2000, some of whom were presumably serial murderers. One, in Illinois, in fact was a serial murderer. Over the course of three years, she robbed and killed three seniors who were living in three separate senior apartment buildings and robbed, hurt and/or stole from six others. She also gave separate court-reported confessions to all three murders, which flies in the face of the analysis of this term paper. That defendant strangled in separate incidents an old man and a woman and stabbed an old man. She was sentenced to death for the woman's murder and plead guilty and was sentenced to two life sentences for the deaths of the two men and a term of years for the robbery of another old man. In 2003, along with all others in Illinois, her death sentence was commuted to natural life.

Also, with a rising number of women offenders, I cannot fathom the conclusion on pp.11-12 that for a woman to be convicted of murder, the evidence needs to be far more overwhelming than to prove the guilt of a man. Although I did not check each and every one of your sources, if one states that premise, it too must be outdated. The burden of proof for all defendants charged with a crime in the United States is "beyond a reasoanble doubt." This is a high burden for the prosecution to overcome in all cases.

At any rate, you should be commended for trying to research this subject. You are correct that it is a subject that bears more study. Thank you for sharing your hard work.

I have contacted mojosmom and am awaiting her address. I am very interested in reading her comments.

Released on Saturday, May 08, 2004 at US Postal Service in Chicago, Illinois Controlled Releases.

sending to mojosmom.

Journal Entry 10 by mojosmom from Chicago, Illinois USA on Tuesday, May 11, 2004
I just received this from amusedbythis. I'm curious to see what citrus has found on this subject.

Journal Entry 11 by mojosmom from Chicago, Illinois USA on Tuesday, August 24, 2004
Like amusedbythis, I'm put off by the excessive reliance on Internet sources. I also noted that most of the non-Internet references were to one specific book, Kelleher's Murder Most Rare, which has been criticized for the same failing.

You adopt Kelleher's categories without any analysis, and, in at least one instance, I think that is absolutely, clearly wrong. To say that Aileen Wuornos was a sexual predator is to totally misunderstand the context of her killings.

There is also no cultural or societal context presented for these women, which I think is important, given that you use examples going back to the 19th century in the U.S. and the 16th Century in Hungary!

It's an interesting topic, especially the question of what you and Kelleher call "Team Killers". I'd like to see someone do an in-depth analysis of the relationship dynamics in those cases. (BTW, Debra Brown was not married to Alton Coleman. Also, though it's not clear from the text, she was not involved in his first murder. I also think it's wrong to say that they ever "selected their victims carefully"; from the outset, their victims varied as to age, circumstances of killing, etc. There was no evidence that they ever killed for "fun".)

This is an area that is difficult to research without access to primary research, particularly interviews with people involved (not necessarily the offenders, but police, lawyers, etc.) In recent years, there is the possibility of mental health evaluations having been done, though access to these would, of course, be restricted. That would certainly shed some light on the motivations and causations of serial killers.

It's a area definitely worthy of more research.


[I'm waiting for an address for the next person, and will send this out as soon as I have it.]

Journal Entry 12 by mojosmom at on Monday, September 13, 2004

Released 19 yrs ago (9/13/2004 UTC) at

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On its way to the next person in the ring.

Journal Entry 13 by spaceystacey from Bridgeton, New Jersey USA on Monday, October 11, 2004
Received in the post during the month of September. Just finished reading today. It was a shock for me to read that the major of the sources for the research on this term paper were found on the internet.

On the way to Portugal. 10/21/04

Journal Entry 14 by powerslave on Tuesday, October 26, 2004
Here it is! I'm looking forward to read this one!

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