How Female Serial Killers Actually Work | How Crime Works | Insider

[00:00] I was an FBI agent for 20 years. violent offenders and serial killers. (machine whirring)

[00:14] There are certain crimes and certain people should never get out. I interviewed a female serial killer who was a nurse.

[00:27] She is responsible for the murders of 10 of her patients. God only knows how high the body count would be. (machine clicking)

[00:42] About 8% of all serial killers are women, and sometimes they start when they're teenage girls. Some female killers are very prolific.

[00:54] They may kill many, many people over a few years, something might be amiss. Serial killers by FBI definition is three victims,

[01:08] The series of murders that were eventually determined the detectives were assisted by the FBI Profiling Unit,

[01:20] women were not violent serial killers. Our society wasn't ready to accept that women could be killers.

[01:35] but Aileen Wuornos would hitchhike. She wanted a single male alone in that car.

[01:47] He lets her in the car. She would talk him into pulling over. And that wasn't her intention at all.

[02:00] And the interesting thing about Aileen Wuornos it appeared to me to be motivated killing men by hitchhiking

[02:15] as well as financial gain. She was horribly sexually abused when she was a young girl. She killed seven men.

[02:33] Had her lover not turned her in, she would've kept doing it. sentenced to death, and executed. Female serial killers, like all serial killers,

[02:47] generally speaking, plan the murder. Sometimes the first murder wasn't planned; it happened.

[02:59] And then the killer realizes after the murder, and perhaps they benefited in some way. Women use various methods when they kill people.

[03:18] A frequently seen method is poisoning. What makes murder easy for the poisoner, they have no trouble contaminating food or drink

[03:32] because chances are they live with the victim. to torture and sexually assault their victim

[03:44] We see that far more often in male serial killers. is the female poisoner who puts enough poison in the food

[03:59] to make their victim sick but not die. Just historically, women get away with murder especially in an era when we didn't have

[04:13] you take them to the doctor or to an emergency room, but back in the 1800s and early 1900s, and people would feel badly for you.

[04:28] "She's just had so much bad luck with her. "And did you hear her mother died last week unexpectedly?" That made it very easy over centuries

[04:43] - I'm Liz Meriwether. of Hulu's new crime thriller, "Furious." and the different paths that they take

[04:58] We have such iconic male serial killer characters in complicating that narrative in "Furious" who you're both feeling for and scared of.

[05:16] to watch these kinds of shows is the why. Women are so often underestimated

[05:29] I think that there aren't as many female serial killers, but we just have never found them. (machine clicking)

[05:45] - Generally speaking, female serial killers have different motivation than male serial killers. Female serial killers are motivated by one of three things.

[05:58] The most common motivation is they do it for financial gain. and will have life insurance on their husband and kill him.

[06:11] And they do it over and over and over with a new husband. motivated for financial gain is Dorothea Puente. Dorothea ran a boarding house in the Sacramento area,

[06:26] and she eventually started killing her tenants of collecting their social security check. She cashes somebody else's check.

[06:40] There's her reward right there for killing again. She was eventually caught in 1988. On rare occasion, we will see a female serial killer

[06:52] or they are angry at the world, An example of a female serial killer is Joanna Dennehy of Great Britain.

[07:09] because it's unusual for women to kill for that reason. and it appears that she saw herself

[07:22] But of course that's nonsense. One evening she stabbed two men. Generally speaking, female serial killers victimize people

[07:41] I interviewed a female serial killer She was a nurse working in a very, very small rural hospital in Texas:

[07:53] Part of her motivation was frustration and anger and she took out that negative energy on killing people,

[08:06] people who were dependent on her for care. Between the year 2000 and 2001, she is responsible for the murders of 10 of her patients.

[08:19] with some kind of medication that she had access to. in my first career as a psychiatric nurse and Vickie Jackson was the toughest nut to crack

[08:36] She steadfastly refused to admit Had she not been caught, (machine clicking)

[08:52] The term profiling or profiler is a popular description. My certificate upon completion of my training

[09:06] It says crime scene analyst analyzing the crime scene.

[09:19] to know exactly what happened, from analyzing a crime scene. For example, when someone who is severely mentally ill,

[09:33] or some other types of serious mental illnesses when they kill someone, the crime scene is going to be very chaotic, messy.

[09:49] I was with my partner at a woman's house in suburban Chicago. She had been stabbed to death by an intruder,

[10:03] and my partner and I were there a couple of days afterwards. and a woman walks up to us with her little boy

[10:17] And I look down at this cute little boy and he holds it up, "What have you got there, little man?"

[10:31] It was the murder weapon. The blade was this long, bloody blade.

[10:43] She said he found it under his swing set. was it told us after he killed the victim.

[10:57] the killer runs to safety. Home, he dropped the knife, probably panicked, into that neighborhood over there.

[11:12] walking up to someone on the street, There's not much of a crime scene there. they're usually playing out some kind of fantasy they have,

[11:29] a crime scene is, evidence perhaps that the killer drank blood that tells profilers a lot

[11:43] and it also tells profilers, "This is going to happen again, maybe pretty soon." Back in the '80s, the FBI started a program

[11:56] the Department of Justice called the VICAP, V-i-C-A-P, where let's say a detective is working on an unsolved murder in San Francisco,

[12:10] and he fills out all this information on a form. It's put in the central computer. And a detective from Minneapolis

[12:22] or he's working on and sends it into ViCAP, we have an exact same bizarre behavior

[12:34] and it looks identical to what happened here in Minneapolis. And the answer is yes, it could be. is they tend to travel for a variety of reasons.

[12:51] They don't want to draw attention to a particular area Sometimes female killers will relocate.

[13:03] and they are targeting a man who has something they want: money, things, land, and they kill him, Then they move on to another location

[13:19] Obviously they do that so they are not drawing suspicion to themselves. Highly intelligent, methodical, organized serial killers,

[13:31] male or female, tend to not leave much evidence frequently. The body isn't even found. Of course, that is not the case with healthcare killers

[13:45] and family mothers killing people in their family. than it was over 50 years ago because computerized systems can pick up things

[13:59] and if one person is repeatedly buying and those kids are dying, Healthcare killers such as Vickie Jackson was,

[14:16] the crime scene isn't recognized initially It's an older person generally who died, "They are in the hospital because they're sick.

[14:31] "Maybe a heart attack, a fatal stroke." So she didn't come under suspicion for quite a while for a small rural hospital.

[14:46] (machine clicking) starting in the late '70s, early '80s.

[14:58] and determining the type of person their lifestyle, their education, how they live,

[15:10] Profiling is part art, part science. and I worked with them with John Douglas, Robert Ressler, Roy Hazelwood,

[15:24] I worked with them on cases that were happening in the Chicago Division and secondarily the San Francisco Division.

[15:36] is it draws a sketch, a personality sketch and a lifestyle sketch of the unknown offender. Are they employed?

[15:51] Did they bring their own weapon? in male to female murders is strangulation.

[16:03] We rarely see strangulation as a method These are things police need to know and that's where profiling comes in,

[16:18] studying hundreds and hundreds of similar types of crimes. Also, a critical component of developing a profile

[16:30] This victim, what kind of person were they? that walked the streets to get customers,

[16:42] who rarely left her house? One of those types is far more likely to be victimized So the victimology is very important.

[16:56] Crime scene analysts do not go into the case It's important to let the photographs speak for themselves

[17:09] and let the autopsy explain what happened. from the experienced, highly intelligent, than a 16-year-old pizza delivery boy.

[17:27] One of them is going to be much more chaotic than the other. A profile of an unknown offender, generally speaking, addresses the gender of the killer,

[17:41] the approximate age of the killer, the marital status and sexual history of the killer which we rarely see on female killers

[17:57] The interesting thing about serial murders is each murder by the killer tends to look like the previous murder,

[18:11] is murdering someone is fantasy driven, and fantasy-driven murders tend to be ritualized.

[18:23] to change the method of murder, or think they got away with it, "Wow, I pulled that off!

[18:39] Some serial killers have a cooling-off period, before they do it again and again and again.

[18:53] (machine clicking) The ViCAP system, Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, and it is alive and well today,

[19:09] Unless a murder happens on federal land it comes under the purview of the state where it happens, and homicide investigators are in charge of it,

[19:24] because the resources are so vast, to develop a profile of the unknown offender.

[19:37] Vickie worked in a small rural hospital. People were dying on the night shift Yes, people sometimes check into a hospital

[19:50] and don't check out, but there's a predictable number. The problem that Vicki got herself into was she was very prolific.

[20:02] and she was the only nurse on duty, and people were dying at three or four times the rate. (machine clicking)

[20:17] I never made an arrest where there weren't at least usually bigger men.

[20:29] The day an FBI agent in training graduates from the academy, they are issued the gun they have been training with and handcuffs, and you always have those with you.

[20:42] I was assigned to surveil a house and this suspect,

[20:55] was suspected of being a hitman I was with another young agent.

[21:08] The subject of the surveillance came out of his house, "We can't let him go." I though my partner was right behind me.

[21:22] "Halt, FBI, don't move." He was back in the car calling the two agents that had (laughs) left.

[21:36] because when we were handcuffing him, he wet his pants. There has to be a certain amount of evidence

[21:50] to believe that person committed that crime, and usually an arrest warrant is sought beforehand.

[22:02] almost a year after her last murder. It takes time to build a case properly, can sink a conviction.

[22:17] (machine clicking) I've interviewed many female killers, and almost every single one of them denied

[22:30] of the crime they were in prison for. a police interview, an interrogation interview What you want to do is get them nailed down to a statement

[22:48] an incriminating lie. The suspect is the last person interviewed if they are truly believed to be responsible for the crime.

[23:00] He had been a Chicago homicide detective and we went to profiling school at the same time. Sometimes, when we interviewed someone together,

[23:17] I would play dumb, and one of the things we found was that, especially if the suspect was a male suspect,

[23:31] that he would disregard that I was even in the room If my partner left, and I would start interacting with the suspect,

[23:44] he is seeing me as a stupid woman, and like, "Well, she's stupid. I could say anything." I don't mind being considered stupid

[23:59] if it's a path to get the information. between my two professions: psychiatric nurse for 10 years and an FBI agent.

[24:12] was fearing that I might not ask but I got over that pretty quickly.

[24:24] who was on death row in Texas, in fact, two different men on death row in Texas, and one of them had been convicted

[24:38] of killing his girlfriend and her two sons His stance was he didn't do it. And he, toward the end of the interview,

[24:53] and just for a moment, the way he glared at me was unsettling.

[25:06] because I was just there to chat. and he agreed to an interview. "If this is what his girlfriend and kids saw

[25:24] "right before he killed them, yikes!" Serial killers I'm familiar with tend to be deniers. in American history,

[25:38] but the FBI thinks possibly over 100, maintained until two days before his execution date

[25:50] and he actually married a woman and she had his baby. She believed him to the last minute

[26:05] until two days before his execution, he decided to talk. She was not forthcoming. "The FBI is wrong. Everybody's wrong.

[26:19] But I knew she did. and some other killers that I've interviewed is she had an air of defiance.

[26:32] "I didn't do it. I didn't do it," whereas almost all of the other people I interviewed that denied the murder they were convicted of

[26:46] It was more like, "Poor me. The jury got it wrong. "I didn't do anything," whereas Vicki was, "You're stupid. I didn't do this.

[27:00] - And that actually, "Yeah, she's probably 100% guilty."

[27:14] (machine clicking) Vickie was convicted of murder, multiple murders, in 2006 and sentenced to spend the rest of her life in prison.

[27:28] Juries are always advised, "The defendant has a right "Don't hold it against them," unless you are low IQ or mentally ill,

[27:42] and say, "I did not do this." "What am I doing here?" "and you can't look at me

[27:56] "and explain that you're wrongly arrested?" Do people get convicted wrongly and go to prison? There is one person I interviewed

[28:09] who was convicted of killing six people, a family: that at the end of the interview, "This woman was wrongly convicted.

[28:22] because she said something about the case when we were talking that indicated to me she did it, and she absolutely does not belong in prison.

[28:39] She was being held as a sex slave and abused by the couple, and she didn't know anything about fires, the place would fill up with smoke,

[28:53] and she could run away, No prosecutor's or a governor's going to let her out. There are some crimes in America

[29:07] as much as the horror Some of them are where there's a high body count.

[29:19] They just want 'em put away. (machine clicking) between male serial killers

[29:33] is that most male serial killers are fantasy-driven murders with a sexual component. Victims of female serial killers are killed

[29:48] for some kind of financial gain for the killer. Female serial killers, generally speaking, starting with family.

[30:01] killing their own baby or their own little child, Male serial killers are far more likely

[30:13] Their motivation? since they were an adolescent, I've interviewed some male killers and serial killers

[30:29] that were honest, upfront. but they admitted to the murders and why they did it, that were absolutely defiant

[30:45] and spent the entire three hours talking with me trying to convince me that they were wrongly imprisoned. With women, I think some of the people I interviewed,

[30:57] were their goal was to convince me The average killer in prison They're not monsters as such.

[31:13] And as difficult as it must be to accept still there are certain crimes and certain people

[31:28] should never get out. if they have the opportunity to kill again, One of the first documented cases of a female serial killer

[31:44] is a woman who was of royalty in Eastern Europe. She was held in very high regard, wonder what was happening to their daughters and sisters

[32:01] that would go to work in the castle and never be seen again. Real serial killers generally are not as interesting When Hollywood is doing a story of a female killer,

[32:17] she's usually pretty, charming, good verbal skills, and she's a trickster. kill them, and get away with it,

[32:30] but that's not how real life is, that's boring (laughs) about real life. (machine clicking)

[32:45] Psychopath is under the category known as antisocial personality disorder.

[32:58] If somebody is afflicted with this, they do not feel guilt about anything they did, They do not have remorse.

[33:13] their crimes can become serialized. Guilt is a tremendously powerful motivator.

[33:25] the chances of us doing it again are pretty low, but serial killers don't feel that guilt.

[33:37] In fact, they do anything they can to relive the moment. Sometimes they make recordings or take pictures,

[33:50] take jewelry, or take something from the victim It's like a prop in a play. And they don't feel guilt.

[34:02] So they do it again and again and again. For serial killers, if a child is engaging in harmful behaviors to others

[34:18] and has a chronic disregard they are not diagnosed with antisocial personality. They're diagnosed with conduct disorder.

[34:33] is the human brain is not fully developed until someone is in their mid-20s. before their brain is even formed as an adult is unfair

[34:50] because there are cases of kids that grew out of it and became responsible adults that don't hurt other people.

[35:03] not everybody with that diagnosis hurts other people. They may be what's called a white-collar psychopath. They may do bad things: steal, embezzle, that kind of thing,

[35:17] in raping or killing, torturing anybody, than the violent kind.

[35:29] Insanity is not a clinical term; it is a legal term, and it means the individual, the accused, did not fully understand at the time they did the crime

[35:42] For example, Richard Trenton Chase absolutely, totally believed he had to replace the blood

[35:56] or he would die. That is psychotic. For 10 years as a psych nurse,

[36:09] I worked with people who had to be hospitalized to protect them from being hurt on the outside are frequently attacked and violated.

[36:24] So it's to protect them, but it's also to protect society. to a maximum security psychiatric unit. or they are so gravely disabled

[36:38] they cannot take care of themselves. especially schizophrenics, are very rare, because the crime scenes are so bizarre.

[36:53] that she was accused and convicted of I was pretty well convinced she was a psychopath or she wouldn't have done it 10 times.

[37:08] It was serving a need. So I've never interviewed or studied a serial killer

[37:21] and some of them are very open and honest, like, "If you let me out, I'm going to continue killing. The vast majority

[37:35] male or female, had terrible upbringings: bad parenting, neglect, abuse.

[37:47] We do see sexual abuse as a child Every now and then a killer will come along,

[38:00] a serial killer will be arrested, and a deep dive into their history and interviewing siblings and neighbors

[38:12] A couple of famous ones: there was some unusual things in his childhood and he started being a real serious problem

[38:26] The kids in the neighborhood avoided him. It's a little bit different with women. little girls being abused or neglected,

[38:39] tend to remain quiet about it. (machine clicking) I wanted to work with people that were mentally ill.

[38:53] I felt especially drawn to help someone that was having that much trouble getting through life So I graduated nursing school,

[39:06] and I eventually became a psychiatric nurse where I, after many years, became head nurse. I was giving a community lecture

[39:21] on mental illness and mental health, and a gentleman came up to me and introduced himself, and he had been in the audience.

[39:33] And he said, "I think the FBI could use a woman like you." "Well, in case you missed it, I'm a nurse!" The first female agent was admitted in 1972: one,

[39:50] It turns out, that night I couldn't sleep. I was at the FBI Academy, Quantico, Virginia.

[40:04] And then spent, I went back to Chicago, and I began my 20-year career. About four years in to my career,

[40:17] I found out there was a rapist in my neighborhood I wanted to get involved in the case. I was not trained.

[40:29] "and offer my services to the local police?" "Yes." And so I did that. He was raping women as they got off the Burlington train

[40:45] And then, in 1984, I'd been an agent for four years. They wanted to have an agent in every field division,

[40:58] to kind of be a liaison in my case, Chicago, And that's how it all got started.

[41:11] I was assigned to the Unabomber investigation. We didn't know who we were looking for until David Kaczynski, Ted's brother, turned him in.

[41:26] Nothing prepared me more or better than having been a psychiatric nurse.

[41:38] They interact with people that are upset, are disturbed, are exhibiting behaviors that can be dangerous to them dealing with people that are stressed out or ill

[41:54] or behaving badly or behaving crazily, and there was one or two other agents in my class or a detective on major police departments,

[42:10] and they, like me, were similarly prepared Interestingly enough, teachers, grade school teachers

[42:22] on the testing to get in, Hey, if you can control a classroom of 10 year olds, When I learned about profiling

[42:36] to become a special agent, and John Douglas came into our class one day and was showing slides, crime scene photos,

[42:51] Part of the reason is the vast majority of cases that lend themselves to profiling are the victims are women or children.

[43:04] Well, I'm a woman, and I had a child. So a little too close to home, but I wanted to do it. known as desensitization.

[43:18] it doesn't have the same impact. Excessive exposure to it minimizes the response, And so there, at that point,

[43:33] once I mastered that problem, I was on my way. When I graduated the academy and went back to Chicago, there were 8,000 agents nationwide,

[43:47] and I was the 404th female agent. Definitely male-dominated profession at the time. because I was raised with three brothers and no sisters.

[44:01] Dealing with boys, men, or men acting like boys was just common for me, Sometimes jokes that weren't funny, things like that,

[44:19] for women and minorities in the FBI. For the last 30, 40 years,

[44:33] I mean, TV shows, movies are replete with female agents. that I was asked to contribute to

[44:45] and it's about women who kill. It was a prison interview show with someone convicted of murder

[44:59] and talk with them about their life, what happened, I interviewed 36 people. and then I go in an in-depth study

[45:16] of why did this person end up taking the life And I love it. (machine whirring)

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