The most cruel women of our time. The most terrible serial killers are women (16 photos)

Many believe that female maniacs are a rarity, since supposedly the fair sex is less prone to violence than men. However, in history there are many women who are not inferior to them in cruelty. However, there are indeed fewer serial killers among them than among the stronger sex. Probably because it requires planning, and women are emotional creatures and don't like it very much. However, there are not so few of them. After reading the article, you will be convinced that female maniacs are not so rare in history.

Bella (Belle) Sorenson Gunnes

The first woman we'll talk about is Bella Sorenson Gunness. She allegedly has 42 victims. She is a native of Norway who moved to the United States and married a businessman from Chicago. Bella Sorenson Guinness killed for money and just for fun. Some researchers believe that this woman also killed her two daughters. She poisoned them in order to collect insurance. Officially, the death of Bella’s children is considered the result of illness, however, judging by a number of signs, it could also have been caused by poisoning. In addition, Bella Sorenson Guinness is suspected of burning down the family business in order to collect insurance payments. Her husband later died under very strange circumstances. Of course, his wife again received money for this. Perhaps the woman sent her husband to the next world by feeding him special “medicines.” Bella later became known as the "black widow."

She wanted to buy a farm with the proceeds from the murder of her husband, but apparently she didn’t have enough money. Then the woman began to seduce older and middle-aged men. Bella started a love correspondence with them, got married, and then the husbands died, and the “black widow” received income. A very sophisticated business. According to rumors, 42 bodies are buried in the ground on plots owned by Gunness. And the woman earned about 250 thousand dollars from her “business”.

However, someone put an end to this woman's unusual "career". Her body was found burned and Gunness's head was severed. Although the question still remains open as to whether the corpse really belonged to Belle, or whether the woman got away with it again. A terrifying story, isn't it? However, other most cruel female maniacs evoke no less emotions. We will talk about one of them now.

Jane Toppan

Jane is a nurse who killed the weak and it is known that her father was crazy, and the girl spent her childhood in an asylum in Boston. As Jane Toppan grew up and became physically strong, the future criminal trained to be a nurse. During the training, teachers noticed the girl's unhealthy attraction to photographs with However, Jane managed to get an education and find a job. She began caring for patients who considered her a caring nurse. The woman was even called “Jolly Jane.” After some time, Toppan realized that bringing patients to the brink of death gave her sexual pleasure. She injected the drug into her victims, then trying to resuscitate them in order to repeat the operation again. Jane often went to bed with the dying. The woman was probably molesting them while the patients were clinging to life for dear life! Toppan began her career as an assassin in 1885 and continued her crimes until she was arrested. The woman was charged with 11 murders. Jane gave shocking testimony while in custody. She admitted that she killed 31 people. Toppan wanted to become a "record holder", a woman who had accomplished greatest number murders. Jane was declared insane. She spent the rest of her life in a mental hospital for criminals, like many others

Rosemary West

Our next heroine is Rosemary West. This woman, together with her husband, deceived young naive girls. They picked up future victims on the street, offering them food and housing. Rosemary had 8 children of her own. She made her living as a prostitute and was also a sadist. Her husband Fred was just as much of a pervert. On account of this married couple- 10 murders, including victims - own daughter Heather. In addition, Rose was found guilty of the death of Charmaine, her stepdaughter. Both Fred and Rose had difficult childhoods and were both sociopaths. Fred hinted that they were responsible for the death of more than 20 people!

Women maniacs and killers often acted in tandem with their husbands or lovers. You will get to know one of them if you read this article to the end.

Eileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos is one of the most famous serial killers today. This woman worked as a prostitute and was a lesbian. She learned sin as a child: Eileen became pregnant at the age of 13. After 2 years she was kicked out of the house. The woman is known to have committed armed robberies. In addition, she managed to marry a 70-year-old elderly man, who subsequently complained that his wife was beating him. Arrests, drunken fights, etc. helped the old man in judicial procedure ensure that Wuornos is prohibited from approaching him.

A woman entered into a lesbian relationship. Her chosen one was a girl named Tiria. In order to support herself and her, Eileen began to engage in prostitution. She killed 8 clients. Eileen swore shortly before her death that she committed her first murder in self-defense. Unlike many other female killers, Wuornos was not afraid of the sight of blood. She killed her victims with pistol shots. By the way, in 2003 the film “Monster” was released with Charlize Theron in the role of Eileen. The actress received Golden Globe and Oscar awards for this role.

Andrea Yates

Maniacs of the world, women and men, often suffer from mental disorders. And Andrea Yates probably suffered from schizophrenia. Although she has not been officially diagnosed, it is clear that the woman has serious mental disorders. Andrea killed 5 of her children by drowning them all in the bathtub. Rusty, her domineering husband, wanted to have many children, and his wife had constant depression, which even led to suicide attempts. The additional psychological stress associated with raising children turned out to be fatal.

Her husband knew that Andrea had problems with her head (although he later blamed psychiatrists for everything that happened), so he usually asked someone to be with the children and with his wife during his absence. But one day the woman was left alone. She took advantage of this to drown her children. Rusty said that he wanted to leave his wife alone for a while so that she would not get too used to the help of others. It took Andrea an hour to kill all five children one by one. The woman then called the rescue service and told about what she had done.

Andrea considered that for both her and the children there would be the best way out their death. The fact is that the woman was a religious fanatic. She called her children “unrighteous” and believed that her own sins would not allow them to grow up as worthy Christians.

Beverly Ellitt

The next woman, Beverly Ellitt, also has a child murder story. She was nicknamed "the angel of death." The woman was a registered nurse. She killed children by injecting insulin into their blood or to cause cardiac arrest. In total, this woman has 4 murders and 9 more attempted murders. Moreover, all 13 attempts to kill children occurred in a very short period of time, within two weeks! The oldest victim, Beverly, was 5 years old, and the youngest was less than two months old. Psychiatrists who studied the woman's case concluded that she suffered from a very unusual mental disorder - Munchausen syndrome. Her motive for killing and hurting others is to gain attention. Even as a child, Ellitt loved to pretend to be seriously ill. Beverly was sent to a hospital for the criminally insane. The woman was given 13 life sentences. Relatives of the children she killed are threatening to kill her if the woman is ever released.

Karla Homolka

Our next heroine is Karla Homolka from Canada, a beautiful blonde who loved Paul Bernardo, a serial killer known as the Scarborough Rapist. Feelings for her lover prompted her to help him in his crimes. Together they committed the kidnapping, rape and murder of 3 young women. Moreover, one of them was Carla’s sister! The niece begged Homolka to let her go, and she took pity and even gave her relative a teddy bear. After her arrest, Carla made a deal with the authorities in order to reduce her sentence - she spoke about the murders that her husband committed. Paul, however, insisted that she was the one who killed everyone. The discovered video recordings indicate that this woman, at a minimum, was not a victim who was forced by her husband to commit criminal acts.

Susan Smith

Susan Smith, unlike many other female killers, was not mentally ill. In her right mind, she killed her two sons, Alex and Michael. The woman tried to present herself as mentally ill, claiming that she committed the murders for religious reasons. However, the facts indicate otherwise. Tom, this woman’s lover, abandoned her shortly before the tragedy. After that, Smith brought her children to the river, released the hand brake of the car and pushed it into the water. The woman stood and watched the car with her two children plunge into the water, and then called the police and reported that a black man had committed this crime.

Susan claimed that her stepfather abused her as a child. Having grown up, the girl began to dream about perfect love, while at the same time experiencing the need for regular sex. Behind bars, she managed to sleep with two guards. One of them gave Susan syphilis.

Diana Downes

As you can see, many women maniacs killed their children. Our next heroine, Diana Downes, is no exception. When Liu, her lover, told her that children were not part of his plans, the woman decided... to kill her children! Diana had 3 children from her previous marriage - Danny, Cheryl and Christy. In order to get rid of them, she took the children to a desert area. Here a woman killed Cheryl, her 7-year-old daughter, in cold blood. She also shot at Danny and Christy, but they managed to survive, although 3-year-old Danny was paralyzed from the waist down, and Christy was also partially paralyzed. The latter was able to testify and told the court what her mother had done.

Lyudmila Spesivtseva

Our list so far consists only of foreign names. But there are also Russian women killers. One of them is Lyudmila Yakovlevna Spesivtseva. Although she did not kill herself, she actively helped the cannibal Alexander Spesivtsev, her crazy son, to do so. For some time, an elderly maniac woman worked as an assistant to a blind lawyer in court. She often brought home photographs dead people and showed them to Alexander. Is it any wonder that he grew up mentally ill and turned into a sociopath? Alexander ended up in a mental hospital, but after some time he was released. He returned to his mother and soon began to kill, and the woman not only did not interfere with him, but also began to help! Lyudmila lured girls to the cannibal and carried the remains of the victims out of the house. One of the victims managed to live long enough to give evidence (the exhausted child did die after some time). The camera forever recorded the terrifying words of the girl who said that Lyudmila fed her and the other captives the meat of their murdered friend! It is also assumed, although not officially confirmed, that she cooked the meat of the victims and sold it at the market. A family of maniacs killed at least 20 people. However, there are probably even more victims - photographs of minors were found in the Spesivtsevs’ apartment, as well as clothes that could belong to 82 people! There is an assumption that not only Lyudmila, but also his sister helped Alexander.

Saltykova Daria Nikolaevna

Female maniacs in Russia, it turns out, are not a new phenomenon. born in 1730 and died in 1801. The Russian landowner Saltychikha (Daria received this nickname) went down in history as a sadist and murderer of several dozen serfs under her control. By the decision of Empress Catherine II and the Senate, she was deprived of her title pillar noblewoman. The woman was sentenced to life imprisonment and placed in a monastery prison, where she died at the age of 71. At the age of 26, Daria was widowed, having received about 600 peasants at her disposal. The investigator in her case, based on Saltykova’s house books, compiled a list of 138 serfs whose fate needed to be clarified. 50 people, according to the records, “died of illness,” 72 were “missing,” and another 16 were considered “to go on the run” or “to join their husbands.” According to the testimony of peasants, 75 people, mainly girls and women, were killed in the villages and the landowner’s estate. Saltykova spent 33 years in prison and died in 1801. She was buried along with all her relatives in the cemetery of the Donskoy Monastery, the tombstone has been preserved.

Amelia Elizabeth Dyer

Another example from history is Amelia Elizabeth Dyer. This woman was born in 1837 and executed in 1896. A criminal from England is considered the most prolific child killer in history. At the age of 24, in 1861, the girl married George Thomas, who was 59 years old at the time of the wedding. It is known that the groom lost 10 years during the wedding, and the bride added it so that the age difference between them would not be so frightening. She committed her crimes in and was a baby farmer by occupation. This woman was executed by hanging for one murder, but she is believed to be responsible for the deaths of other children, possibly numbering more than four hundred.

Dyer's trial began in 1896, on May 22. The death sentence was carried out at Newgate Prison on June 10, 1896. Amelia's last words were: "I have nothing to say."

Female killers, as you can see, are not such a rare occurrence. Who is to blame for this? Is it just them? Probably our society itself is unhealthy if so many socially dangerous elements continue to appear in it. Without in any way justifying the criminals themselves, it should be noted that famous female maniacs are phenomena that make you think about a lot.

When it comes to serial killers, male characters usually come to mind, and few can name at least a few famous female killers. Some of them killed for love, some for money, but most were distinguished by unprecedented cruelty, and even madness. It is curious that some of them were subsequently released from punishment.

Elizaveta Bathory

Ever heard the phrase “bathe in the blood of virgins”? We owe the appearance of this phrase to Countess Elizabeth Bathory. It is estimated that she managed to kill about 650 servants and other young women living nearby. She had at her disposal a special torture chamber built for her by her husband.

Belle Gunness

Belle immigrated from Norway to the United States, where she killed her husband for insurance money. After that, she began inviting single, wealthy men to visit her farm. After a fire in 1908, more than forty carelessly hidden graves were discovered on the farm.

Dagmar Overbu

Amelia Dyer

In Victorian England, so-called baby farming was practiced, when an orphanage, for a small fee, took in unwanted children and found them adoptive families. Amelia Dyer was also involved in such activities. However she didn't care about searching for babies new family, but simply killed them. During interrogation, she told the police: “You can tell mine apart by the tape around their necks.” Hanged in 1869.

Ilse Koch

Ilse joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and earned the nickname "The Bitch of Buchenwald" at the concentration camp where her husband Karl Otto Koch worked as commandant. Ilsa liked household items made from the skin of prisoners, and she especially preferred lampshades made from tattooed skin. She committed suicide in prison in 1967.

Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzalez

These sisters kidnapped girls in the 1950s and 1960s, who were then forced to work in a brothel in central Mexico City. When girls became ill or unattractive due to forced drug use, they were killed. The sisters also killed some wealthy clients and babies. Delphine died while serving her sentence, and Maria, after serving several years, was released and disappeared in an unknown direction.

Jane Toppan

Toppan worked as a nurse in New England. She injected patients with morphine until they died. During the investigation, she stated that her goal was “to kill more people– helpless people – than any other man or woman who ever lived,” confessing to more than a hundred murders.

Ottilie "Tillie" Klimek

Chicago resident Ottilie Klimek was a fortune teller and had a habit of telling her husbands or neighbors that they were destined to die soon, after which she killed them. Her first husband died of “heart problems” in 1914, and it was only after the death of her third husband and several neighbors by 1921 that the police began to suspect that something was wrong.

Juan Barraza

Before becoming a killer, Juana Barraza wrestled under the pseudonym “The Silent Lady.” When her wrestling career ceased to bring the desired profit, Juana began pretending to be a nurse, hiring herself out to elderly people and robbing them. One day, a robbery victim laughed at Juana, and from then on a bloody rampage began. She was accused of 30 murders, but it is possible that in reality there were at least 48 victims.

Jenine Ann Jones

Jones worked as a children's nurse in Texas and took up the habit of injecting children with various drugs to show off how skillfully she saved them. She was charged with the deaths of two babies, but could be responsible for up to 60. She was sentenced to 99 years in 1985, but could be released in 2018 due to overcrowding in Texas prisons.

Leonarda Cianciulli

In the 1930s and 1940s, Leonarda Cianciulli murdered three women and made soap from their remains and tea cakes from their blood. She believed that human sacrifice could protect her children. Being arrested, she did not express any particular regret and even directed the investigation, clarifying the details.

Gertrude Baniszewski

In 1965, Baniszewski incited her own and her neighbors' children into the ongoing abuse and subsequent murder of a 16-year-old girl, Sylvia Likens, who had been left in her care. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but through petitions she achieved release in 1985. She stated that God had forgiven her and that she managed to find peace in her soul. She died of cancer five years later.

Aileen Wuornos

Eileen was involved in prostitution in Florida in the late 1980s. She robbed her clients, shot them and took their cars. In total, she committed seven murders, becoming the first woman to be listed in FBI reports as a serial killer. She was executed by injection in 2002. Just a year after the execution, the film “Monster,” based on the story of Wuornos, was released.

Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova

Oddly enough, but representatives of the fair sex are capable of cruelty, and they show aggression not for their own protection, but for the sake of pleasure. Who are they - the most cruel women stories? This will be discussed further.

The first place so strange and bloody rating occupied by Daria Nikolaevna Saltykova, who had the nickname “Saltychikha”. Years of life 1730 - 1801. Daria was widowed early, she was only 26 years old, and about 600 peasant souls had already come into her undivided possession. Seven years of life for those who depended on Saltychikha were filled with horror, pain and humiliation. She mocked people with particular cruelty and sadism: people were doused with boiling water, flogged, starved, driven naked into the cold, and the hair on their heads was burned off. Daria killed about 139 people, with the majority of those killed being women, young and old.

Daria's conclusion

It is not clear what pushed the young girl to such terrible murders. Daria was from a family of a stalwart nobleman, who was related to noble people. IN love relationships Even the grandfather of the poet Tyutchev was with the girl. True, he took another wife, for which he was almost killed by “Saltychikha”.

The atrocities of Daria Saltykova ended when Catherine II ascended the throne. The ruler used the Saltychikha case as a show trial. Daria was sentenced to death, but then it was replaced by imprisonment in a monastery prison.

Another very cruel lady can be called Antonina Makarovna Makarov. Is it true, real name Tony - Panfilova. The school teacher, while registering the children in a journal, confused the girl’s middle name with her last name, and so she became Antonina Makarova. Years of a woman's life 1921-1979.

Tonya Makarova

At the beginning of the Great Patriotic War Tonya Makarova was 19 years old. She went to the front as a nurse. Antonina miraculously managed to stay alive after the Vyazemsk operation. The girl was captured by the Germans and was able to escape. After long wanderings through the forest, she again found herself among the enemies. As a result, Makarova becomes the executioner of the Lokotovsky district. She will shoot about 1500 with a Maxim machine gun Soviet partisans, citing fear for his life. The Germans did not want to “get their hands dirty” and decided that the Soviet girl would shoot the partisans.

Partisans and the Red Army captured Lokot in September 1943. But Makarova managed to avoid capture. The fact is that in the summer of 1943, Tonya was sent to a German rear hospital to be treated for venereal diseases. Later, Makarova ends up in Königsberg, where she gets a fake nurse’s ID and gets a job in a Soviet hospital.

A war veteran and resident of the Byelorussian SSR, Viktor Ginzburg, is admitted to the hospital where Antonina works for treatment. The girl marries him and changes her last name. As soon as the war ended, the young people left for Lepel, Victor’s homeland.

Death penalty in 20 years

Due to the fact that Antonina was mistakenly recorded as Makarova, the KGB could not trace her. Chance helped. In 1976, Tony’s brother filled out a form to travel abroad, and the girl’s real name “came up.” In the summer of 1978, Antonina Makarova was arrested and convicted as a war criminal. She was sentenced to death. It is worth saying that this is the only case in which the main defendant was a female punisher.

In the United States between 1980 and 2008, ninety percent of all murders were committed by men. The media regularly chronicles the exploits and atrocities of men around the world. And in fact, the most known cases genocide and brutal regimes were led by men - the communists: Mao Zedong (60 million victims) and Joseph Stalin (40 million), the Nazis: Hitler (30 million) and King Leopold of Belgium (8 million Congolese).

But author Patricia Pearson writes in her book, When She Was Bad: How and Why Women Get Away with Murder, that even if people tend to view women as nonviolent, there is very clear and reliable evidence of their acts of evil. "Women commit the majority of child murders in the United States, a large proportion of physical ill-treatment with children, an equal amount of violence and assault on the elderly, about a quarter of child molestation, an overwhelming share of infant homicide, and a moderate preponderance of spousal assaults."

Here they are, the most brutal killer women in history. Their names were never taught in history class, but their actions are so horrific that even the best lawyers couldn't save them from the gallows.

Leonardo Cianciulli (1894 - 1970)

Known as the "soap maker of Correggio," Cianciulli was an Italian who murdered three women between 1939 and 1940. While 3 murders don't usually make our list, what Cianciulli did with her victims' organs cemented her place in top ranks of the most brutal female killers.

Convinced that a human sacrifice would protect her son from participating in World War II, Cianciulli killed everyone three women the same way - she gave them drugs in wine before killing them with an ax. She then uses their remains to make soap, which she distributes to friends and neighbors. Worse yet, she "dried [their blood] in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, added a little margarine, kneaded all the ingredients together." Then she “made a lot of crispy cakes for tea and served them to us who came to visit, and Giuseppe [my son] and I also ate them.” She died in prison.

Irma Grese (1923 - 1945)

Grese was the youngest woman to be judicially executed under British law in the 20th century. For what? As an SS guard for the Nazi concentration camps Ravensbrück and Auschwitz, she tortured and killed women for pleasure, or because they were beautiful in the past. To further show the degradation of the prisoners, she was fond of her own styles of clothing, strong perfume and meticulous personal care - all this was intended to develop in the prisoners a sense of subhumanity. She apparently dreamed of a film career once the war was over, but was hanged for her crimes instead. Her last word when they put the noose around her neck? "Schnell" - "Quickly."

Bella Gunness (1859 - 1908)

The menacing-looking 6-foot-tall, 200-pound Norwegian-born Gunness woman killed her two daughters, many suitors and boyfriends, and is suspected of killing three husbands and possibly all her children. And all for money. After receiving an insurance premium for her daughter's death, her husband accidentally died on the same day, which covered his two life insurance policies. Over the years, she dated and remarried several times, killing and robbing most of the suitors, due to her desire to continue collecting insurance payments.

Biljana Plavšić (1930 – present)

Plavsic is former president Republika Srpska (one of two entities in Bosnia and Herzegovina). Convicted as a war criminal, she was accused of masterminding the Serbian genocide of the 1990s. An experienced scientist, she has traveled extensively to conferences and has published more than 100 scientific works and articles. Unfortunately, this woman also believes that ethnic cleansing was "natural" and, as a result, she led her republic to commit genocide - more than six million Serbian dead. This cruel killer woman pled her way through her trial and received only 8 years in prison and was released in 2009.

Mary Ann Cotton (1832-1873)

Mary Ann Cotton is suspected of killing at least 21 people using the then typical method of arsenic poisoning. Everyone said she got rid of three husbands, a dozen children, a lover and a friend - all of whom died from a diagnosis of stomach fever. Motives? Money. Her victims' life insurance policies played a sinister role in their fate. Her murderous exploits and death by hanging were so gruesome that they inspired a children's song of the time:

Mary Ann Cotton, she’s dead and she’s rotten, lying in bed with her eyes wide open
Sing, sing. What song should I sing? Mary Ann Cotton is tied up with string
Where? Where? She’s up in the air, and they’re selling puddings for a penny pair

Mary Ann Cotton, she's dead and she's rotten, lying in her grave with her eyes wide open
Sing, sing. What song should I sing? Mary Ann Cotton tied with a noose
Where? Where? She's in the air and they're selling puddings for a couple of pennies

Queen Mary I (1516 - 1558)

Known as Bloody Mary, Catholic Queen Mary I burned more than 280 religious dissenters at the stake. The reign of the most brutal female killer forced hundreds of thousands of Protestants to flee England before her death in 1558.

Catherine Mary Knight (1955–present)

Catherine Mary Knight is the first Australian woman ever sentenced to life without parole. Her crimes? She tried to strangle her first husband on their wedding night when he "just" fell asleep after 3 rounds of intercourse. She cut the puppy's throat. She did this in front of her next boyfriend as an example of what could happen if he ever cheated on her, and then knocked him unconscious with a frying pan. She stabbed another boyfriend in the stomach with a pair of scissors after hitting him in the face with an iron. Finally, she stabbed her last lover to death, stabbing him 37 times, after which she skinned him, hung the skin on a hook, and boiled his head with an assortment of vegetables. She left this “soup” on the kitchen table - planning to feed it to her own children.

Elizabeth Bathory (1560 - 1640)

A Hungarian countess named Bathory became synonymous with the villain's most brutal female killers. It is widely believed that she was the most prolific female serial killer in history. Bathory and her accomplices killed hundreds of young girls. Using her political influence as protection, she killed mostly young peasant girls who were lured to her castle with the promise of good pay and secure jobs. She is accused of "severe beatings, burning or mutilation of the hands, biting off flesh from the face, hands and other parts of the body, freezing or starvation."

Dorothea Binz (1920 - 1947)

Binz was the leader of the SS at the Ravensbrück concentration camp during World War II. She is known to have gone on romantic dates with her boyfriend to watch prisoners being beaten, Binz patrolled the camp with a whip in one hand and her German Shepherd in the other. Her temper and anger were so well known that the prisoners fell silent when she approached. She was known for her preference for kicking prisoners to death or ordering them killed for even the most trivial reasons. She was found guilty of war crimes and hanged on the gallows.

Enriqueta Marti Ripoles (1868 - 1913)

As a young woman in Barcelona, ​​Enriqueta worked part-time in a Spanish brothel. Tired of selling herself, she developed a much more profitable business model - kidnapping and prostituting young children. Focusing her attention on homeless children, she chose targets for upper class, clients of pedophiles and sold her services in her brothel, which specialized in children aged 3 to 14 years.

This most brutal killer woman also tried her hand at the craft of witches, as a result of which many of her potions with ingredients made from the children she purchased were sold for sex. After killing them, she butchered their bodies for use in ointments, balms and other treatments as a “cure” for the common diseases of the day. The number of her victims is unknown, but she operated for decades, and at the time of her arrest, police found body parts of at least 12 dead children in her possession. So horrific were her crimes that she was hanged in prison by her fellow inmates without ever seeing trial.

Based on materials from www.newsforants.com