Women Are Serial Killers: How and Why They Become Monsters

Who among us can even remotely imagine our mothers, daughters, sisters, or grandmothers as brutal killers? For centuries, we have been conditioned to think of serial killers and psychopathic predators as men, while women have remained low on our paranoid radar. Perhaps that is why so many trusting husbands, lovers, family friends, and children have become victims of the "monster woman"… From the earliest recorded cases of women committing murder to Irma Grese, the Nazi beast from Belsen, from the notorious British child killer Myra Hindley to the Honeymoon Killer Martha Beck, from the Woman Dracula Countess Elizabeth Bathory to the infamous cult of Eileen Wuornos — the first female serial killer who became a celebrity. Peter Vronsky explores the phenomenon of female killers, challenging not only our usual standards of good and evil but also our fundamental common beliefs about gender roles and identity.