This article includes descriptions of crimes that some may find upsetting.
In the United States, it’s reported that 11% of convicted murderers are women. Yet it still feels like society sometimes struggles with the idea of women who kill.
Criminologist Professor David Wilson describes murder as “a man’s business” and says that in the rare cases where women do kill, they’re more likely to “smother, strangle or poison” rather than shoot or stab. Similarly, forensic psychologist Kerry Daynes says that women are more “practical and clean” in their killing methods, doing just enough to complete the task without unnecessary violence or bloodshed.
We took a look back at the cases behind some of the USA’s most notorious women on death row...
BBC
Aileen Wuornos
The infamous case of Aileen Wuornos - who murdered seven men on the Florida highways between 1989 and 1990 - became international news, the subject of several documentaries and the basis of an Oscar-winning film, way before audiences became obsessed with the cases of Robert Durst and Steven Avery.
Despite Wuornos claiming that her victims had either raped or attempted to rape her while she was working as a prostitute and that all of the killings were committed in self-defence, she was convicted and sentenced to death. She was executed by lethal injection in 2002.
Criminal psychologists have commented that Aileen's methods - she shot each of her victims with a .22 calibre pistol - were more commonly attributed to male murderers, which along with her lack of remorse made her one of America's most well-known serial killers. In her final year on death row, she remarked: "I robbed them, and I killed them as cold as ice, and I would do it again, and I know I would kill another person because I've hated humans for a long time."
AP
Lisa Ann Coleman
Lisa Ann Coleman was executed in Texas via lethal injection after being found guilty of the murder of her girlfriend’s son. Nine-year-old Davontae Williams was discovered by paramedics ‘beaten and bound' and his final cause of death was recorded as starvation and pneumonia.
Davontae’s mother, Marcella Williams, was also tried with murder but made a plea-bargain which saw her sentenced to life in prison, but saved from death row. Some felt that the severity of Lisa’s sentence reflected prejudices in the justice system. Her attorney, John Stickels, argued that whilst her deeply troubled upbringing made her an unsuitable guardian, she was not a violent killer. After her sentencing, he added: “the state singled Lisa out and figured some way to get her the death penalty because she was black, a lesbian and an easy target … it was a slam dunk.”
BBC
Lois Nadean Smith
Nicknamed ‘Mean Nadean’, 61-year-old Lois Smith was executed for killing Cindy Baillie, the ex-girlfriend of her son, Greg Smith. The mother and son are said to have collected Cindy from a motel and interrogated her in the back of a car over rumours she had tried to arrange for Greg to be killed and would then reveal his drug dealing to police. Lois was then said to have choked the girl and stabbed her in the throat, before taking her to a house and forcing her into a chair. Witnesses say they saw Lois fire multiple gun shots, before 'jumping up and down' on Cindy's neck.
The brutality of the murder was widely focused on in the press, with much emphasis placed on Lois being a woman and a mother. Criminal psychologist Eric Hickey says: “female murderers do not generally inflict mutilation damage, engage in victim torture, or stalk their victims”, making her crimes particularly shocking.
crimemuseum.org
Velma Barfield
52-year-old Grandmother Velma Barfield was put on death row in Raleigh, North Carolina, after being found guilty of poisoning her fiancé with arsenic. She was the first woman to be executed after the 1976 resumption of capital punishment in the USA, and the first woman ever to be given the lethal injection.
Although only convicted of one murder, Velma later confessed to the deaths of three others, including her own mother. At one of many funerals held for relatives who had died suddenly of 'gastroenteritis', her son is reported to have said: "it's the saddest thing - it seems that everyone my mother gets close to dies."
Women killing their lovers and family members is not uncommon - Marissa Harrison, an evolutionary psychiatrist featured in The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology, said that in almost all the cases she has studied, women murdered those close to them.
BBC
Emilia Carr
Florida native Emilia Carr is currently on death row for her involvement in the murder of Heather Strong. She had been engaged to her co-defendant Joshua Fulgham, who then married Heather a month later, leading many to think she killed her love rival in a jealous rage. Emilia was seven months pregnant when she is said to have lured Heather into a trailer and suffocated her - she insists she is innocent and was coerced into confessing by police.
Discover the true story and see real evidence from Emilia's case in Life and Death Row: Love Triangle, online now.
