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Hello, this is Dr. Grande.
Today's question is: can I discuss the construct of female serial killers?
Specifically as opposed to the behavior we'd expect to see with male serial killers.
I also have another question, here - to take a look at one particular female serial killer named Nannie Doss,
otherwise known as the "Giggling Grandma".
I'll talk about the construct of female serial killers
and then look at the specific instance - the specific case - of Nannie Doss.
When it comes to female serial killers, I think one of the weird things here is that,
for a long time, a lot of people didn't even believe that women were capable of serial murder.
If we look at a lot of the early definitions of the term "serial killer",
we see that they were limited to murders that involved a sexual component.
Of course, we know that female serial killers rarely involve a sexual component.
We also see that there are some experts out there who have argued, and some that currently argue,
that there's no such thing as a female serial killer.
That there are women who do commit more than one murder, but they're really nothing like serial killers, as we understand them.
I'm going to run under the premise here that, of course, there are female serial killers.
If you look at the research literature, we see that about 16% of all serial murderers are, in fact, women.
This really goes against this misconception that women, by their very nature, are incapable of multiple murders.
We know, of course, they are.
But this misconception is not innocent. It actually does come at a cost.
We know that female serial killers go undetected for a longer period of time when compared to male serial killers,
and we think that this misconception contributes to this phenomenon.
I can see there are a lot of misunderstandings around female serial killers, and we do need a lot more research on this construct.
The other problem, here, is that there aren't very many female serial killers, as compared to male serial killers.
I used a few references for this video, and I'll put those references in the description for this video.
We see that one looked at a sample of 64, and this is actually a very large sample size for this type of study.
Again, we simply don't see a lot of females who are serial murderers.
So, what do we know based on this limited sample size?
Well, we see that 98% of female serial killers are white.
They start at around age 31 to 38.
That's that's when they start killing, usually, but the range of the initiation of killing is actually 16 to 65.
It's just more likely they would start between 31 and 38.
We also see they tend to be educated.
Many of them were married at the time they were killing, or were married before that.
We also see that many of them had a caregiving role, like a nurse or other other type of health care worker. A mother.
We actually see that, in terms of Nursing, a third (⅓) were nurses.
So, really a large proportion in terms of that caregiving role.
We also see that, in terms of the average age when they stop committing crimes, this is around 40.
Around 40 years old.
In terms of their murders, they tend to kill female and male victims with about equal frequency.
We don't see a predisposition toward just killing men or just killing women. Again, equal frequency.
We also see that the average number of victims of female serial killers is about 6.
The average victim age is around 48.
It's important understand, here, that the age for the victims, this is not normally distributed
because a number of these female serial killers operated in nursing homes or similar environment,
so they had a number of elderly victims.
And another portion of these killers really targeted children.
We see a lot of older ages and a lot of younger ages, and that's how we get this average of 48.
We see this age is older than the average victim age for a male serial killer.
In terms of adults and children as victims, the proportion, and what female serial killers do in terms of targeting,
we see that 30% of female serial killers killed both adults and children.
45% killed only adults and 25% killed only children.
We also see that female serial killers generally murder within their local area.
Around 44% did that, and they infrequently traveled long distances.
So, even when they didn't murder in their local area, they still didn't go too far away.
We see that, with male serial killers, sometimes they do travel quite a bit to commit a murder.
If we look at the way that female serial killers tend to kill victims, meaning the method of killing,
we see that poisoning is the most common method, but suffocation and staged accidents are also represented highly.
More unlikely, but we have seen this, we do see burning, shooting, bludgeoning, being stabbed,
and being beaten as methods of murder, as well.
A lot of times, these female serial killers are thought of as much different than male serial killers
because of the method. It doesn't seem as vicious.
But they are every bit as vicious as male serial killers.
Part of this perception difficulty really comes in terms of how the media represents female serial killers.
We see that when they choose a name for these types of killers,
they really focus on the idea that the killer was a woman, rather than looking at the brutality of the crimes.
Consider some of the names the media has given to female serial killers:
"Death Row Granny".
I mentioned before the "Giggling Grandma". Of course, that was Nannie Doss, who killed 11 people.
We see "Tiger Woman"...
And then we compare these to some of the names given to male serial killers, like:
"The Forces of Evil", "The Brooklyn Strangler", "The Warwick Slasher", or the "Classified-Ad Rapist".
Those names really focus on how terrible and vicious and brutal the crimes were,
but the names given to the female serial killers really just point out that they were, in fact, women.
With these names, the female serial killers really seem less deadly, less intimidating, and less imposing.
But, of course, we know that, if somebody's killing someone else, that's always a vicious crime.
So, a lot of the misperception does seem to start with how the media presents these types of killers.
How about the motives for female serial killers? Are they different than the motives we see for male serial killers?
Well, I think that the evidence does show pretty clearly that the motives seemed to be different, for the most part.
We see the most common motive here for female serial killers is financial gain.
That is a motive for some male serial killers, but not many.
We would think that power, control, and satisfying some sort of sexual need would be higher on the list for most male serial killers,
and we don't really see that with too many of the female serial killers.
If we break it down by motive type, we see that around 50% of female killers have hedonistic reasons.
Again, financial gain would be a big part of that.
Around 20% have that power seeking motive.
Around 3% have that visionary motive, we see.
This is where somebody is responding to command hallucinations.
These are auditory hallucinations usually associated with a mental disorder like schizophrenia.
So, they're being told to commit the murders, essentially, by a symptom manifestation of the mental disorder.
Again, only 3% for visionary.
For missionary, it's also 3%.
This is where somebody views their serial killing as a mission. Like, to rid the world of undesirable people or bad people or something like that.
This is somewhat common with male serial killers. Visionary is as well, in terms of being a motive.
But again, we don't see it very often with women.
Female serial killers also tend to target people that they're familiar with.
About 80% of the victims are known by the killer. About 62% are related to the killer.
This is much different than male serial killers, who typically target strangers.
And we look at these victims - again, mostly relatives and often familiar - and we see that they're often defenseless.
We see that they're often elderly individuals or infants or children
who are not capable of fighting back due to age or due to illness.
So, we see a much different profile, here, in terms of the victims.
Usually, when you look at male serial killers, they oftentimes bind their victims or otherwise try to dominate their victims.
We don't really see that with female serial killers.
Their victims, due to a variety of reasons, are weak, and they don't have to bind them.
They don't have to physically dominate them.
We're looking at killers that target defenseless individuals.
In the same area, we see that female serial killers usually don't torture their victims, stalk their victims, or mutilate their victims.
They're rarely involved in any type of sexual deviance with victims.
This is really in contrast with what we see with male serial killers.
So, what about the contribution of mental disorders? Mental illness?
We know with male serial killers, we oftentimes think of illnesses like Antisocial Personality Disorder.
So, a mental disorder that has features of psychopathy and narcissism.
We also see, sometimes, there's schizophrenia.
In particular, the psychosis element of schizophrenia that's active during the time of killing. With male serial killers.
But what about female serial killers?
Here we see that about 40% appeared to suffer from some type of mental illness,
but we see a wide range of potential mental disorders here.
Among the mental disorders we see sometimes with female serial killers, we see all of the Cluster B personality disorders.
So, not only Antisocial Personality Disorder,
but also Narcissistic Personality Disorder, Histrionic, and Borderline personality disorders.
There have also been reports of Schizoid Personality Disorder which, of course, is a Cluster A personality disorder.
We also see mental disorders that aren't personality disorders, like:
Bipolar Disorder,
Autism Spectrum Disorder,
Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy, which is a factitious disorder imposed on another. That's the technical name for it.
We also see, of course, schizophrenia, which, as I mentioned, is somewhat common with male serial killers.
Now, looking at the percent of female serial killers that had a history of abuse,
because we know that history of abuse sometimes contributes to serial killing - we think, at least, it might contribute...
We see that about 30% of the female serial killers had a history of sexual and physical abuse,
and 25% had a history of Substance Use Disorder.
Now that I've covered some of the characteristics here of female serial killers,
I'm going to look specifically at one example, a woman named Nannie Doss.
Just my general disclaimer here, I'm not diagnosing anybody.
I'm just really speculating on what happened here based on the evidence that's available.
When looking at the case of Nannie Doss,
we see that this case reflects a lot of the characteristics I discussed in this video.
We see a lot of names that were assigned to Nannie Doss by the media.
"The Giggling Grandma", I mentioned that one before....
"The Lonely Hearts Killer",
"Lady Bluebeard", and "The Self-Made Widow".
We see a lot of nicknames that really do point to mostly, here, a female killer.
"The Lonely Hearts Killer" - you could argue that's not specific, but again,
none of these names are really vicious or brutal-sounding
in the same way as the names we see assigned to male serial killers.
We believe that Nannie Doss became active around 1927, and she continued killing until 1954.
So, a period of 27 years.
We see that Nannie Doss is thought to have had about 11 victims.
She didn't confess to all these killings, but the authorities were fairly sure there were 11 victims here.
This would include 2 children,
4 husbands,
Nanny Doss' mother,
her Mother-in-Law,
her grandson, her sister, and a granddaughter.
In terms of an explanation of what happened,
Nanny reported that, when she was traveling from one area of Alabama to another on a train,
the train stopped suddenly and she hit her head, and this led to depression-type symptoms.
But there's really no clear evidence of that leading to the depression.
We don't even know if that happened for certain, and there wasn't clear evidence of depression in her history.
If we look at the evidence, it does appear that she murdered mostly for money,
although it's a little unclear because she did indicate that she was angry with some of the victims.
But we do know that money appears to be a motive in most, if not all, of the murders.
Specifically, here, she was looking for life insurance money.
She was only convicted of her last murder, which was her last husband.
This occurred in Oklahoma, not in Alabama.
She was sentenced to life in prison in Oklahoma, and she was never tried for any of the other murders.
She died in 1965 from leukemia, and of course, she died in prison, in this Oklahoma prison.
In terms of some interesting characteristics about Nannie Doss, she was active for 27 years.
I mentioned that. That's a long period of time, even for female serial killers.
Usually they're active for about twice as long as male serial killers. On average.
So, about eight years compared to about four years.
So, 27 years really stands out.
We also see with Nanny that there was a long period between some of the murders.
There doesn't appear to be a real compulsive component,
but there may have been an impulsive component when she became angry.
Again, we don't really know too much about this.
Moving back to female serial killers in general:
How come they have a longer duration than males?
Well, we really don't know, but they typically don't discuss their crimes.
We think they're really not bragging, so they tend to get away with murders for a longer period of time.
Part of this is a little surprising, though, in terms of the rate at which they're apprehended,
because they do tend to murder people they know, so you'd think they would be suspects right away?
But they're not. They're not suspected.
Again, we think this is because they're women.
As I mentioned, I obtained a lot of information for this video from certain articles. I put those references in the description.
One of them really looked at male vs. female serial killers from a different perspective.
I didn't think the article was particularly good, but I still put the reference in the description.
It was an OK article.
It really made this distinction between male and female serial killers around this idea that the
males tend to be hunters and the females tended to be gatherers.
They explained serial killing in a hunter-gatherer way.
Again, I didn't think it was a great article, but it made some good points.
We also see, here, that from 1975 to the there's been a 150% increase in the apprehension of female serial killers.
But a lot of this, I think, is because of detection. We're detecting them at a higher rate.
I don't think the prevalence of females involving themselves in murder and serial murder is really increasing.
I think it really is about detection.
But still, it's an interesting area,
and we need to keep our eye on it, particularly because, again, women aren't usually suspected for these crimes,
and they can get away with it for a long period of time and kill a number of victims.
As with any topic related to mental health or potentially related to mental health, there's going to be a variety of opinions.
If you agree or disagree with any of my points here in this video or have other opinions,
please put those in the comments. They always generate an interesting dialogue.
As always, I hope you found this description of female serial killers to be interesting.
Thanks for watching.