Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers (30 page)

Some crime books have suggested that Karla can’t be a psychopath because she loved animals and psychopaths don’t usually care for anyone, far less so-called inferior creatures. But a closer look at Karla’s love for pets shows something is awry.

First, as a child she taught one of her cats to perform tricks - something that got
Karla
attention rather than something which was good for the cat. Second, when working as a vet’s assistant, she sent a friend a puppy’s tale and a note which said it was ‘neat’ that they removed the tails without an anaesthetic. A true animal lover would be shocked by this.

Similarly, when Karla wanted a dog she spent ages pouring over breeding books before choosing an expensive pedigree Rottweiler puppy. Again, this was about attention and the way things looked to others -
rather than rescuing a mongrel Karla chose a breed that is impressive and possibly dangerous. Less impressively, the Rottweiler would urinate copiously each time someone entered the house so it’s not clear that it felt secure and loved.

Finally, she brought home a sick iguana, another designer pet, and nursed it back to health. But it bit Paul and he cut off its head in front of friends - at which point a genuine animal lover would surely have become very emotional. Instead, Karla autopsied the three foot lizard for her friends and then they barbecued it and Karla ate a little bit.

Psychopaths use people for their own ends - and it seems that Karla used animals in the same way, seeing them as designer objects. Chillingly, after she got the iguana and the Rottweiler she started telling friends that she wanted a child…

Three hundred thousand people signed petitions against Karla getting out, but the judiciary said that it couldn’t go back on its plea bargain. Soon her lawyers were trying to get her out of prison and into a halfway house though the authorities - at the time of writing in 2000 - have so far refused. But by 2001 she is eligible for parole and by 2004 she must be released.

Her family are allowed to visit her every six weeks, staying in a little trailer in the grounds. Mr Homolka sometimes stays at home to look after the Rottweiler. Karla has told them that she wants to return to the area where she briefly lived with her aunt after having her eyes blackened by Paul. She continues to celebrate Christmas, explaining that Tammy wouldn’t want her to be miserable during a time of year that she herself always enjoyed.

In July 2000 Court TV broadcast a programme on the internet about Karla Homolka as part of their
Mugshots
series. There, psychologists from both standpoints put forward their assessment, with one seeing her as a ‘vulnerable young woman… terrorised’ whilst another had real doubts about the Battered Wife Syndrome defence.

Some of her friends were interviewed and they described her as ‘strong willed, independent’ and ‘a leader, not a follower.’

It emerged that Karla had told psychologists that within the first six to seven months Paul subjected her to intense psychological abuse and advised her that she was worthless. Again, her friends disagreed saying that Karla and Paul were totally in love, totally into each
other. The programme broadcast photos of them together looking exuberant.

Karla would initially tell police that her first three years with Paul were happy - but by the time she spoke to psychologists and to the courts she had decided that they were bad years, and that fear of him had led her to drug and sexually assault her sister Tammy. She said that Paul hadn’t told her that he was the Scarborough Rapist until they were on their honeymoon.

But Lesley was killed before they married - and Karla suggested in court that they couldn’t let Lesley go because they’d find Paul’s sperm in her and link it to the sperm they’d taken from him as a rape suspect. This suggests that she knew of his rapes before she married him.

Karla relayed most of the information about the crimes without showing undue emotion - and the police said she was matter of fact when talking about Lesley’s death.

At one stage they took her back to the house she’d shared with Paul, the house that Lesley and Kristen had been murdered in. Karla asked what would
happen
to her furniture and asked if she could have some of the perfume in the bathroom for her sister. She seemed completely oblivious to the fact that this had been a house where young women had been forcibly held, raped, sodomised and ultimately killed.

The prosecutor said that when he got tough in court
that Karla got tougher and that her claim of being a subjugated woman clearly wasn’t true.

Stephen Williams, the author of
Invisible
Darkness,
was asked by the programme makers what he thought the motive for the deaths was. He said that it was to conceal the sexual crimes. He added that Paul didn’t kill any of the women he raped in the street, so why would he start killing those he’d blindfolded and brought home to rape? It was
Karla
who was terrified of being caught, of going to jail - therefore Lesley and Kristen, whose bodies contained Paul’s sperm, had to die.

The programme makers explained that Karla had been given her deal before the hellish videotapes had come to light, but that the tapes showed her part in the atrocities was much bigger than originally suggested. They added that the prison sees her as ‘a model
prisoner
… no danger to the public’ who will be released in 2004.

14 We are family

Classifying female serial killers

As the profiles in this book have shown, women can kill multiple times and kill brutally. Yet the reality of the female serial killer has never entered popular consciousness in the way that the male serial killer has. Indeed, many newspapers wrongly dubbed Aileen Wuornos - who killed between 1989 and 1990 - as the first ever American woman to fall into this category.

Though the FBI doesn’t fully classify such multiple murderesses - putting them all into the inadequate category of
compliant
victims
- other criminologists and true crime writers have defined specific motivations for such female crimes.

The much respected author Brian Lane identified seven motives in his
Encyclopedia
Of
Women
Killers.
That is, Gain, Jealousy, Revenge, Elimination, Lust, Conviction and Thrill. He believed that Thrill Killers were distinct from Lust Killers in that the main motivation was the taking-of-a-life thrill, though they might engage in sexual abuse as a secondary stimulus. The Gwen Graham & Catherine Wood team fit into this category.

More recently (1999) Michael and C.L. Kelleher have
outlined various categories in
Murder
Most
Rare.
The classifications they offer are Question Of Sanity, Black Widow, Revenge, Angel Of Death, Team Killers, Profit Or Crime, Sexual Predator, Unexplained and Unsolved. Some killers fit into more than one category.

Brian Lane’s motive of Conviction is similar to the Kelleher’s classification of Question Of Sanity in that conviction usually involves the woman hearing voices or having religious delusions that urge her to kill.

The following paragraphs give my interpretation of various female serial killer typologies.

Such Question Of Sanity murderesses kill in a seemingly haphazard way and as a result their mental health becomes suspect. This insanity may be episodic: for example, women can become temporarily unbalanced following childbirth as huge hormonal surges and falls cause them to behave in uncharacteristic ways. Question Of Sanity cases are thankfully rare - of the women profiled here, only child killer Jeanne Weber fits into that camp and even then I suspect Weber only drifted towards insanity at the end of her killing spree.

The Black Widow, who murders mainly family members, usually does so for financial gain. She will often poison her victims over an extended period and nurse them conscientiously till their deaths, which then look like the result of long term illness. She gains the insurance money or their legacy, moves to another part of the country and remarries. Soon her second husband becomes ill and dies, then her third… Providing she remains mobile and manages to conceal her earlier identity, it may be years before she’s suspected of any crime.

Anna Zwanziger has some of the Black Widow characteristics in that she used poison and used her nursing skills to confuse witnesses. She killed a woman in order to steal the woman’s husband. But she also killed a man who refused to marry her, which puts her partly in the next category, that of
Revenge.

The Revenge Killer annihilates a lover who has scorned her or she kills a rival. These women often operate under a strong level of neurosis so will see treachery and rivalry when there isn’t any. Their rage can cause them to kill again and again.

Martha Ann Johnson was a Revenge Killer, murdering her children because of the heartache it would cause Earl Bowen who had jilted her. Unlike most serial killers she had a low IQ, but she still knew exactly what she was doing and took four young lives in the hope of hurting her ex-lover or forcing him to return to her.

Babykilling nurse Genene Jones also partially fits into the
Revenge
typology because she killed children who were being cared for by certain other nurses that she hated. She then tried to put the blame on to them.

Genene Jones also fits into the
Angel
Of
Death
category. Women like her often work in an outwardly caring capacity, especially with vulnerable groups like babies or the elderly. They enjoy the drama of life and death situations and may go to supposedly heroic efforts in order to try to save - or pretend to save - the dying child.

Angels Of Death like to be in control of everything so it gives them enormous emotional satisfaction to be able to decide when a person lives or dies. They often have a history of failed relationships with other adults - but killing their young or elderly charges is something at which they can succeed again and again.

The Angel Of Death feels no guilt at her own actions
for she is able to convince herself that these people would have died anyway, or that they have gone to a better place, so she believes she has done nothing wrong.

Most Angels Of Death operate alone - but Gwen Graham and Catherine Wood operated as a pair and also fit into the category of
Team
Killers.
Such couples are usually heterosexual, but Graham and Wood were lesbian lovers though both had had heterosexual relationships in the past.

Team
Killers
often have a dominant individual who plays a greater part in the killings than his partner, such as in the Moors Murderers case. Ian Brady was very much the mastermind behind the children’s abductions, with Myra providing the reassuring female presence and the car. Similarly, Catherine Birnie drove the abduction vehicle and asked women if they wanted a lift, then David Birnie raped them again and again.

But the initially compliant partner often participates in the sexual assaults more and more as time goes by, and may enjoy looking at the victims videoed ordeal or moments of torture captured by photographs. The aforementioned Catherine Birnie later joined her common law husband in assaulting their young victims,
and she took photographs of them both alive and dead. Similarly, Charlene Gallego allegedly bit the nipples of her victims and forced them to perform oral sex on her. Karla Homolka was captured on video fondling her teenage victims and instructing them how to please her and her husband, Paul.

Myra Hindley told a ten-year-old child to put a gag in her mouth and to stop complaining. Her fingerprints would later be found on photos of the girl in pornographic poses. Rose West assaulted young girls with dildos and with her fingers - and may have participated in far worse excesses with the girls that Fred actually abducted. It’s known that she enjoyed blindfolding her consensual lovers, placing a pillow over their heads and terrorising them.

The
Profit
Or
Crime
murderess has a very different slant on life. She kills alone in order to enhance her income - but unlike the
Black
Widow
she often kills strangers. Aileen Wuornos fits into this category - and as her profile has shown she also fits into the typology of
Revenge,
as she got her own back on the male sex.

Profit Killers carefully weigh up potential victims, working out how much they are worth and how easy it will be to kill them. In Wuornos’ case she got the short
term use of their cars and also managed to steal their possessions which she pawned to make money to keep her female lover by her side. She even hired a garage in which to keep the stolen goods.

Wuornos followed the classic
Profit
Or
Crime
approach of isolating her victims so that she could murder them and then rob them at her leisure before putting distance between herself and the crime.