Murder Call

Violent interactions in which people are engaged are based on experiences and expectations of reality. For that reason, an understanding of violence and its extremes must consider the offender’s construct of reality. As was defined “behavior is the product of one’s own sense of reality regardless of the degree to which that reality matches the objective facts of that person’s life”. Moreover it has been   stated that the rationale behind scientific inquiries is that there is an attempt to understand the causes and outcomes of human actions in order to determine or formulate sets of “relatively simple explanatory principles laying beneath immediate appearances, and behind what people say [or do]…[in defining] the reasons for their actions”.   Therefore, violent offenders normalize their psychologically constructed violent propensities, realities, and motivations so as to normalize for themselves and within their life the violence they commit against others. The current ...

More specifically, I seek to lend understanding to those serial homicides committed specifically by women in dominant roles as murderer. Women who acted alone or in concert with another where the accomplice was in a subordinate role are also examined. Patterns suggest that women who commit serial murder and are dominant tend to have significantly different patterns of action when compared to those of men in the same role. Trends include, but are not limited to, the following: women are less likely to use physical violence, are more likely to use poison, are more likely to choose children and men as part of their victim pool, and have a higher estimated kill ratio than men. Implications of the lack of recognition of these killers’ actions for both research and detection are discussed. Diverting the gaze from the acts of men, however, to the more rare acts of women might serve to highlight some of our sexual biases when we look at the criminal acts of women. The women outlined ...