While male serial killers outnumber their female counterparts 85 to 15, it could be said that the shock factor alone makes each case of murderous women even more chilling and terrifying, due to society’s ideals about the way females are supposed to behave.
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Updated 2/10/2020 – These ten disturbing women are far from the ideal.
More than simple cases of women being scorned or devalued, these serial killers had their own twisted and bloodthirsty motivations for their horrifying acts of torture and murder.
From abuse, greed and retribution to poisoning and bathing in blood, nothing was too ghastly for these evil and deadly females.
The 10 Most Prolific Female Serial Killers From Around the World
10) Dagmar Overbye – The Angel Maker – Nørrebro, Denmark
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With a victim count ranging between 9 to a possible 200, Dagmar is infamous mostly because of the fact that her victims were helpless babies.
Between 1913 to 1920, she ran an unofficial adoption agency known as a baby farm, where she was considered the foster mother to infants born out of wedlock.
Receiving money from parents, she drowned, strangled and burned the babies to death.
Once apprehended, her death sentence was commuted to life in prison, after being charged for 9 deaths, although it’s believed that the count was much higher, as 180 of her babies were missing – one of which was her own child.
9) Dorothea Puente – Death House Landlady – Sacramento, CA
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This deadly landlady ran a boarding house in the 1980’s, where mentally afflicted and elderly boarders had their Social Security checks taken from them.
If they didn’t like it, they were killed and buried in the yard to shut them up.
Seven bodies were eventually found although she was only charged for three of them.
After a childhood of abuse and later charges of vagrancy, running a brothel, marrying older men and forging their checks, she drugged her tenants before killing them.
After many reports of strange activity, missing persons and a body found dumped away from the house, she received a life sentence without parole.
8) Vickie Dawn Jackson – Angel of Death – Nocona, TX
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Between 2000 and 2001, this Angel of Death is considered to have murdered more than ten male and female patients at Nocona General Hospital by injecting them with mivacurium chloride, which paralyzed them and stopped their breathing.
Vickie had always dreamed of being a nurse and many considered her to be kind and caring.
One of her victims was her third husband’s grandfather and her own family had no qualms about reporting that she was capable of these heinous acts, including her daughter.
Vickie had a history of verbally and physically abusing members of her family and at forty years of age, she was sentenced to life in prison, in October 2006.
7) Rosemary West – House of Horrors killer – Gloucester, England
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This despicable woman assisted her husband Fred West with the sexual abuse, torture and murders of innocent girls at their home – ten of which were attributed to her between 1973 and 1987 – even though she continued to point the finger at her husband.
She was convicted of murder in 1995 and is now an inmate in Durham.
It’s believed that she murdered her eight year old stepdaughter in 1971 and forced one of her husband’s daughters to prostitute herself.
One girl managed to escape and alert authorities.
The couple picked their victims up from bus stops, imprisoned and tortured them for days before killing them and burying them in their yard.
6) Delfina and María de Jesús González – Las Poquianchis – Guanajuato, Mexico
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These two sisters ran a huge prostitution ring from the 1950’s to the mid 1960’s called “Rancho El Ángel” – where more than ninety one murders were conducted – considered the most prolific murder partnership by the Guinness World of Records.
A woman who procured victims for them tipped off the local police.
When their property was searched, they found the bodies of 11 men, 80 women and fetuses.
The women who worked for them had been drugged and later on killed if they became ill or not able to attract customers.
They also killed rich customers for their money and in 1964 they were sentenced to forty years in prison.
5) Irina Gaidamachuk – Satan in a Skirt – Sverdlovsk Oblast, Russia
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This Russian serial killer murdered 17 old women between 2002 and 2010 to fund her alcoholism, seeing as her husband wouldn’t pay for her vodka.
She pretended to be a Social Worker and once she got inside their homes, she bludgeoned them with a hammer or an axe and stole their money.
Sometimes she set their homes on fire.
When one of her victims escaped in 2010 and told the police, they were surprised as they assumed the killer was male.
After following leads, they apprehended her and she admitted to her crimes.
She was charged with the murders in June 2012 and was sentenced to 20 years in prison.
4) Aileen Wuornos – Monster – Daytona Beach, FL
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Considered a true serial killer for seeking out and murdering people in a sequential fashion rather than in a spree, Aileen Wuornos shot seven men from 1989 to 1990 – all at point-blank range.
She tried to defend her grisly deeds by saying that she was raped and assaulted by her victims before retaliating.
After a childhood and young life riddled with sexual, drug and alcohol abuse, prostitution, homelessness and many brushes with the law, she decided to take the law into her own hands.
With huge media coverage, she was sentenced to death six times and executed in October 2002.
3) Nannie Doss – The Giggling Nanny – Various States in the U.S.
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Between the 1920’s and 1954, Nannie Doss killed 11 people, including two children, four husbands, her two sisters, her mother, mother-in-law and a grandson.
One of her husbands was procured through a lonely hearts ad and when his autopsy was done, it was reported that he had enough arsenic in his body to kill forty horses.
This sweet and happy serial killer finally confessed to the murders in October 1954 but pleaded guilty in May 1955 for the murder of the husband she found in the ad.
She wasn’t charged with all the other deaths and she later died from leukemia in Oklahoma State Penitentiary in 1965.
2) Juana Barraza – The Old Lady Killer – Mexico City, Mexico
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Sentenced to 759 years in prison for the murder of at least 42 elderly women from the late 1990’s to 2003, Juana Barraza was a professional wrestler in Mexico who had a terrible start in life.
Sold for three beers as a child by her alcoholic mother to a man who repeatedly raped her, she eventually became pregnant and had four children.
Her lucha libre wrestling name was “The Silent Lady” which became an alter ego, while in real life she targeted women over 60 years of age who lived alone.
She strangled or bludgeoned them to death before robbing them.
She was charged in 2008 after police initially thought that two people were involved.
1) Elizabeth Báthory – The Blood Countess – Hungary
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This Hungarian Countess is considered the most prolific female murderer by the Guinness World of Records, even though the exact number of deaths is still debated.
Also known as the female Dracula, this bloodthirsty Countess and her assistants tortured and killed hundreds of young girls and women between 1585 and 1609.
During her trial it was revealed that the number of victims was upwards of 650.
There are many stories about her drinking and bathing in the blood of the murdered girls to retain her youth and beauty.
She was eventually imprisoned in a tower with walled windows where she was said to have died five years after going insane.
