There is a theory that women are more ruthless than men.
The crimes below would suggest that women are just as capable of ruthlessness but whether or not they are more ruthless than men, I have no idea.
Maybe the fact that they are women only makes it seem worse because we always see them as the more superior species.
10. Mary Ann Cotton
Estimated number of victims: 21
Mary Ann Cotton is one of the first people in the world to jumped into and believed in the power of insurance.
Husband 1: William Mowbray – Mary Ann married Mowbray when she was 20. Four of their five children died from gastric fever or stomach pains. William and Mary Ann moved back to the North East where they had, and lost, three more children. William eventually died of intestinal disorder in January 1865. William’s was insured by the British and Prudential Insurance .
Husband 2: George Ward – She had another relationship with Joseph Nattrass. But he was engaged with another woman. During this time, her 3½-year-old daughter died, leaving her with 1 child out of the 9 she had borne. She sent her remaining child, Isabella, to live with her own mother, the child’s grandmother. This is when she met George Ward whom she later married. He died to of paralysis and intestinal problems. Mary Ann collected insurance money from her husband’s death.
Husband 3: James Robinson – James hired Mary Ann as a housekeeper in November 1866. They later fell in love and got married. Mary Ann’s mother, old by this time, started getting sick. Mary Ann went to her and took care of her but she died, too. Mary Ann’s daughter Isabella, from the marriage to William Mowbray, is now back with her. She started getting sick too and later died. James’ two children died too. Mary Ann bore another baby but fell ill with familiar symptoms and died.
James felt something was fishy and investigated Mary Ann. She learned that she if deep into debts so he threw her out.
Husband 4: Frederick Cotton – Frederick is a widower and so Mary Ann acted as the step mother of his children. She became pregnant and their son Robert was born.
Mary Ann also started an affair with one of her former husbands, Josepth Nattrass. Meanwhile, her current husband got sick and eventually died. Nattrass moved in with Mary Ann. She worked as nurse and got pregnant by one of her patients, John Quick-Manning.
Frederick Jr. died followed by the infant Robert soon after followed by Nattrass.
Someone finally noticed the pattern when her last surviving son Charles Cotton, healthy and well suddenly died.
Some parish guy went to the police and insisted they investigate her.
9. Dagmar Overbye
Estimated number of victims: 25
She worked as a child caretaker and murdered most of them via drowning, strangling, and burning. One of the children she killed is her own.
Her lawyer claimed that her difficult childhood that pushed her to her “psychological condition”.
8. Belle Gunness
Estimated number of victims:49
Peter Gunness, Belle’s first husband, was supposedly struck and killed by a meat grinder which fell off a kitchen shelf. Belle is big, 280 pounds, showed no sadness. She went from one relationship to another but all of them died except one, Ray Lamphere. He helped her fake her own death after relatives of some of the missing men began questioning their disappearance.
Bodies of the men she murdered was unearthed around Belle’s farmhouse, each cut up and wrapped in oil cloth. Most of the victims died of poisoning. She murdered them for money, according to Lamphere.
Belle was never found.
7. Genene Jones
Estimated number of victims: 50
Genene Anne Jones used injections of digoxin, heparin and later succinylcholine to induce medical crises in her patients, with the intention of reviving them afterward in order to receive praise and attention. Many children however, did not survive the initial attack and could not be revived.
6. Maria Swanenburg
Estimated number of victims: 67
Maria Catherina Swanenburg had five sons and two daughters. She poisoned twenty-seven people with arsenic between 1880 and 1883 for money. She failed in her attempt to kill at least another fifty using the same method Victims included her own mother and father.
5. Darya Saltykova
Estimated number of victims: 100
Daria Ivanova married young into the famous Saltykov family. She inherited a substantial estate, where she lived with her two young sons and many servants. Servants started dying soon after.
Empress Catherine II decided to try Saltykova. She was found guilty of having killed 38 servants by beating and torturing them to death but she was suspected to have killed more.
4. Miyuki Ishikawa
Estimated number of victims: 85-169
Not much is written about Isikawa except that her sentence was four years imprisonment but paved the way to many more killings in Japan.
3. Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner
Estimated number of victims:Up to 200
Maria Gruber, Irene Leidolf, Stephanija Meyer, and Waltraud Wagner (Born 1960) was the all star crime team. They were Austrian nurses working at Lainz General Hospital in Vienna, and together murdered scores of patients.
They were caught after they bragged about their success.
2. Amelia Dyer
Estimated number of victims: 400
Dyer came from a well to do family but her mother had a pychological problem. Her mother became violent and was forced to take care of her until she died.
She later got married and started a baby farming career. She offered unmarried pregnant women (a huge scandal at that time) a place for their child for a fee. She assured them she is married and respectable. Once she has the baby, she will murder them and keep the money all to herself.
1. Elizabeth Bathory
Estimated number of victims: 80 – 650
Countess Elizabeth Báthory de Ecsed was a countess from the renowned Báthory family. Although in modern times she has been labelled the most prolific female serial killer in history, evidence of her alleged crimes is scant and her guilt is debated.
She was accused of torturing and killing over 600 people. It was said that she believed the blood of her victims keeps her young so she bathed in them. She was never tried nor convicted.
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