Multiple Murderers Including Black Widows example essay topic

While most of the violent crimes that happens most are them are belongs to men, women have not been the wilting flowers promoted so heartily by Victorian adorers and (right or wrong) often evident in today's society. Before we get into detail about the fascinating phenomenon of the Black Widow, it is worth a brief overview of women's escalating role in the world of violent crime, particularly in the United States. Since 1970, there has been an increasing and alarming rise 138 percent of violent crimes committed by women. Still, while the equivalent percentage compared to male violence is small 15 percent to 85 percent the fact that the numbers have elevated so drastically points to something changing in society. Sociologists try to explain it, so do criminologists, theologies, politicians and world historians, but the resulting message is clear, and that message is that females are not alien to committing violent acts. In recent years, women have committed some of the most heinous crimes.

Darlin Router killed her two sons for reasons blamed on personal economics. Diane Downs killed one of her three children (she tried to kill all of them) in order to win back a lover who didn't want kids. Susan Smith drowned her boys in a neighborhood lake because her boyfriend did not want the responsibility of raising some other man's children. Karla Homolka and husband Paul Bernardo sexually assaulted, tortured and killed several young women for thrills. There are now 130 women on death row in prisons across America.

Both Betty Lou Beets and Christina Riggs were put to death this year: Beets by lethal injection in February for her husband's murder, and Riggs by lethal injection in May for killing two offspring. Throughout history, violent women and women with violent intent have starkly emerged from many countries, carving their niches in myths and legends. The creation of these stories suggests that men began to notice lethality in feminine charm centuries back. Judi as Bueno ano, who is sitting on death row in Texas, masqueraded under various pseudonyms for years while she went about killing a couple of husbands, a fianc " ee and a son for their money.

Diana Lumbrera, between 1977 and 1990, smothered her six children to death, one at a time, including a three-month-old daughter. Eventually, Texas doctors got wise, realizing they were not dealing with an unfortunate mother with a streak of bad luck. Lydia True blood of Pocatello, Iowa, poisoned an offspring, five husbands and an in-law earlier in the 20th Century. During the 1960's and 1970's, Germany's Maria Vel ten poisoned two husbands, a lover, an aunt and even her father. Black Widows are a category of female multiple murderers. Whether they should be called serial killers is open to debate.

Generally, female multiple murderers do not kill for the same sexual motives associated that male serial killers do. If one accepts a frequently proposed definition that requires sexual motivation and a murderous quest for power over another individual as the definition of the term serial killer, then this is not the appropriate term for most female multiple murderers, including Black Widows. According to Brian Lane's and Wilfred Gregg's Encyclopedia of Serial Killers, the majority of serial killings is perpetrated by males and includes certain traits: Their killings are repetitive, often growing in frequency until the perpetrator is arrested or dies. They tend to kill face to face, one on one. There is usually no relationship between victim and murderer.

Motives are, for the most part, fuzzy. Murders generally display a gluttonous violence, a brutality, and a bloodbath. Despite their differences, there are three common denominators in both female and male genders. One, they have an ability to portray a surface normality when it is necessary for planning and survival purposes. Two, they may be psychopaths, but psychopaths are not insane. Three, as psychopaths they lack a conscience.

In 1991 a team of pyshoistist divided female serial killers into two distinct groups, Black Widows (who, simply put, marry for one purpose: to kill their husband for financial gain) and Angels of Death (mercy killers, who murder someone in their care like babies, mother, grandmother for power and, perhaps, attention). But, throughout the 1990's, as the scope of female killers widened, as the sense of assorted psychoses deepened and the focus on who was killing whom for what reason sharpened.