Now, I do have to break it to you that there aren’t any serial killers in this one. Turns out girls just aren’t into that kind of stuff.
I can, however, promise plenty of jealousy, insurance schemes, infanticide, and lots of dead husbands and boyfriends.
Another difference between male and female killers seems to be the almost total lack of movies based on the women’s crimes. Lots of documentaries, but very few hot starlets standing in for our murderesses.
NOTE: I already covered Karla Homolka under the boys, so won’t repeat her here (though she definitely qualifies).
#18 – Mindy Saghera
This one’s got a nice little international vibe to it. First of all, we’ve got our venue – Manchester, England. Next, we’ve got our murderess, a cute little Sikh (whose given name was Harmohinder). Finally, we’ve got our victim, a 17-year-old pregnant Muslim newlywed. Turns out the former was having an affair with the latter’s husband. End result: major overkill (40 stab wounds with a kitchen knife).
#17 – Linda Calvey
And here's a traditional English rose. Ladies and lads, may I introduce Linda Calvey.
Linda started out pretty much as a gun moll. She later moved up to driving getaway cars and even wielding a gun herself.
She would then wield a gun on her boyfriend of the time, one Ronald Cook. Turns out she had hired someone else to do the job, but the bloke got cold feet, so she finished the job herself. Oh, by the way, that gun was a shotgun.
After 28 years in prison, Linda got out and immediately got hitched:
Sadly, her hubby passed away just the other week ago.
#16 – Darlene Gentry *
The bubbly and beautiful Darlene Gentry was a real-live Texas homecoming queen. After high school, she became a dental assistant and married a hunky local boy who was good with his hands.
Then she shot him. It was staged as a robbery, but the cops were suspicious from the get-go. Strains in the marriage and almost a million in insurance money didn’t make her look any more innocent. Darlene sealed the deal, however, when she was taped trying to retrieve move the murder weapon.
Unlike most female killers, Darlene was portrayed on screen, in the TV show Deadly Women, and by the beautiful actress Jacqui Story:
If you’d like to correspond with Darlene, you can do so right here.
#15 – Estibaliz Carranza
Estibaliz Carranza owned an ice cream shop in Vienna, Austria, in the basement of which were the bits and pieces of 2 former lovers. Seems she shot them, dismembered them with a chainsaw, then dumped the results in some buckets which she then filled up with concrete.
The gruesome remains were discovered by some unlucky contractors. Carranza would then go on the lam, getting captured soon after in Italy. Two months pregnant at the time, she would later give birth to the baby in prison, then marry the father there as well.
The “Ice Cream Killer” will be spending the rest of her days in a mental hospital.
#14 – Molly Jane Roe
Eww, this one is not pleasant. The lovely lady above just so happened to go to prison for raping and murdering an infant, the child of the man she was dating. I guess it was some kind of evil stepmother sort of thing.
There’s actually a fair amount of stuff out there that says that infanticide and abuse of stepchildren is not that uncommon. There’s also an explanation for that from the field of evolutionary psychology. Called the “Cinderella Effect,” this theory posits that, because stepchildren do not share any genetic material, they are not worth investing any effort in (from an evolutionary standpoint at least) and might even kind of get in the way.
All this happened in a small town in Tennessee, back in 2011. Rowe is currently serving a life term.
#13 – Isabella Yun-Mi Guzman
Speaking of crazies … Would you believe this lovely young lady stabbed her mother over 150 times then beat her with a baseball bat? Isabella Yun-Mi Guzman was all of 18 at the time. Though notoriously difficult and rebellious, she also seemed to be a pretty normal teenager.
It would be pretty obvious at her trial, however, that things weren’t quite right. Isabella would talk to herself, laugh inappropriately, and generally act crazy. Diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, she is currently locked away for good in a Colorado state hospital.
#12 – Rachel Marie Wade
Just your basic teenage love triangle. It’s an old story … Girl meets boy. Girl loses boy. Boy meets other girl. First girl stabs other girl. You know how it goes … All this fun stuff happened in Florida, about 10 years ago. All involved were teenagers.
Mix in a little social media, a Stand Your Ground defense, confrontations at Applebee’s, and a 27-year sentence, and you’ve got yourself a pretty good story. No major motion pictures yet, but the drama has been featured on Oxygen, HLN, E!, Discovery, and even NBC.
#11 – Tracey Grissom *
When you look this good in your mug shot …
Well, there’s really no doubt she did it. Tracey Grissom fired 6 shots into her ex’s back when she just so happened to see him at a local boat landing (and in front of witnesses).
The real question is why. Grissom claimed that he had raped and assaulted her. She had the bruises and scars to prove it, and went to the police immediately after the incident. They were unable to charge him however, and Tracey would get 25 years.
#10 – Nasim Aghdam
Women simply don’t do mass murders. Jealousy? Sure. Insurance schemes? No problem. Like serial murder, though, mass murders are really just a guy thing.
Nasim Aghdam is our exception to the rule. Remember her? She went psycho at the YouTube campus in Mountain View, CA. Though she actually ended up not killing anyone (though she did wound 3), she did take her own life.
She also seemed to be bat-shit crazy. Aghdam seemed to live mainly for her social media, which was devoted primarily to bodybuilding, animal rights, veganism, and rants against modern culture. She also seemed to have some paranoid ideas about YouTube’s censoring her and keeping money that was due her. Put it all together …
The only movies Nasim was ever in were the crazy stuff she posted on YouTube:
#9 – Amber Hilberling *
Here’s another one that is actually a little sad. Amber Hilberling would push her husband out of a 25-story window.
Her side of the story was that she was defending herself (and her unborn child). His story (well, actually his family’s story) was that she was a druggie, he wanted a divorce, and he was walking out on her when it all went down. 19 years old at the time of the murder, Amber would be given a sentence of 25 years.
The sad part here is that Amber would commit suicide in jail only 5 years later, at age 25.
#8 – Megan Martzen
This one’s a little complicated. Megan was the babysitter of a 4-year old who ended up dying. Megan said the kid fell, but doctors thought otherwise. Her subsequent trial resulted in a hung jury, with Martzen pleading guilty of manslaughter and being put on probation. There’s a chance that she may not have even done it, with the child’s family actually supporting her. All of this happened about 10 years ago, in California.
#7 – Kristin Rossum *
Kristin Rossum’s background is one of privilege. The daughter of a college president, she attended a swanky girls prep school. Every picture taken of her seems to show a blonde society type who would look best in pearls or around some horses.
At the same time, she also had a nasty meth habit, had an affair with her boss, then killed her husband so he wouldn’t rat her out. A toxicologist, she gave her hubby an overdose of fentanyl then staged a suicide scene.
She’s now serving a life sentence in state prison, where she supposedly still uses meth and has also had a lesbian affair.
Like Mechele Linehan, Rossum would also be inspired by a movie:
#6 – Casey Anthony
More infanticide. And, yes, I know she got off somehow. But I think we all know she did it.
This one’s been covered ad nauseum – the missing month, the car that smelled like a corpse, the mysterious nanny, the online boyfriend, the non-existent job at Universal Studios, the Google searches …
Hard to believe it was all 10 years ago. I understand Casey is living in West Palm Beach now, works for a private detective on her former defense team, and is dating. According to this article, she is also weighing the pros and cons of posing in the nude.
Anthony has been played by actress Holly Devaux, among others.
#5 – Jodi Arias
Crazy girlfriend alert! Crazy girlfriend alert!
A true-life fatal attraction story, Jodi Arias couldn’t stand that her ex-lover was ditching her. So, she stabbed him two dozen times, shot him in the head, and nearly decapitated him. The crime scene photos were particularly horrific.
Though Arias was suspected from the outset, her constantly changing stories – from no knowledge or involvement, to mysterious attackers, to self-defense – didn’t really help things any.
As with Casey Anthony’s, Jodi’s trial would turn into a real media circus. She’s currently serving life. You can buy her art at jodiarias.com.
Jodi has been portrayed by the extremely hot Tania Raymonde in the made-for-TV movie Casey Anthony: Dirty Little Secret:
#4 – Mechele Linehan *
Well, heck, the girl was a stripper. So, not only is she going to be hot and sexy, but the story's going to be extra lurid as well.
Turns out Mechele was dating two men at one time, and got the one to help her kill the other (the one she had a $1M insurance policy on, that is). She would not be fingered, though, until 10 years later. In the meantime, she would move from Alaska (where the murder happened and where Mechele was employed by the Great Alaskan Bush Company) to the lower 48, meet and marry a doctor, and have a family. I’ll bet she had some explaining to do.
Though convicted, she was later set free after that judgement was overturned on appeal. Sounds pretty clear that she did it though.
In a twist on how these things typically go, Mechele may have been inspired by a movie, The Last Seduction, and not the other way around:
#3 – Amanda Knox
Boy, this one had it all. An ingenue abroad. A fresh-faced, preppy, girl-next-door with a dark side. Sexual innuendo. Drugs. A heavy-handed investigation. A sensational, circus-like trial. Blatant anti-Americanism and something bordering closely on an international incident.
Knox would be convicted and sentenced to 25 years. After 3 years in prison, she would be acquitted and released. She would later pen a book about the whole thing, Waiting To Be Heard , mostly to pay for legal fees. She is currently a journalist and activist in her hometown of Seattle.
Amanda would be portrayed by the very hot and also somewhat well-known (unlike the other actresses here) Hayden Panettiere:
#2 – Bambi Bembenek *
I’m pretty sure Bambi Bembenek is the only former Playboy bunny to have been convicted of murder.
What’s really interesting about Bembenek, though, is that she was also a former police officer. With a penchant for smoking pot and dancing at the local strip club, though, she would eventually be kicked off the force.
Marrying a cop, she would then use his service revolver to get rid of his ex (supposedly, to save him the alimony payments). Though there was some doubt whether she actually did it, Bembenek would be convicted and given a life sentence.
She would later escape and live on the run for several months, becoming something of a folk hero in the process. She would be released from prison after 10 years, but her life would go quickly downhill – alcoholism, drugs, depression, hep C, an amputated leg … She would die at 52 from kidney and liver failure.
Bambi would be portrayed by Lindsay Frost in the immortal TV movie Calendar Girl, Cop, Killer? The Bambi Bembenek Story.
#1 – Vera Renczi
Vera who? Yup, this is an old one, happening almost 100 years ago.
Known as the Black Widow and the Chatelaine of Berkerekul, Vera Renczi poisoned 35 husbands and lovers in Romania and Hungary in the 1920s and ‘30s. Insanely jealous, she would do away with her latest paramour after only a short while, saying that they all had abandoned her. She would instead keep their bodies in caskets in her basement. Her teenage son, who had discovered the coffins, would die as collateral damage.
Great stuff, huh? Unfortunately, it may not actually be true. There is a distinct lack of documentary evidence, though some claim that it was destroyed in World War II. We may never know …
* - author read the book / watched the doc
More true crime:
No comments:
Post a Comment