The Creepiest Female Serial Killer Quotations

A selection of particularly creepy statements made both by well-known and little-known female serial killers: 75 cases featured. [Revised Oct. 16, 2021]

***

►Mariam Abiola – Ilasamaja, Lagos, Nigeria – contract killer for a cult (2018)

“Charms make me see human beings as flies.”

“I do not feel bad after killing anyone because I see it as a job I paid to do.”

 

***

►Anna Allas – Munhall, Pennsylvania – accomplices Gizella Young (see listings below), Mary Chalfa – The three-woman team murdered relatives to collect insurance money. Gizella Young was a fortune teller. (1932)

Gizella Young did a tarot card fortune-telling reading for Anna Allas who had poisoned her stepson, Andrew.

Gizella Young: “There’s an ill person in your house”

Anna Allas: “Will he die?”

Young: “He won’t live three days.”

Allas: “Thank God!”

“If they take him out of the ground twenty different times, American doctors cannot discover that.” [referring to the poison she used to murder her victim, Andrew Allas, 16-years-old.]

“Why don’t you get a doctor?” George Allas Jr. demanded of his stepmother.

“We don’t need a doctor. The undertaker will take care of things,” was the response.

***

► Sakina Aly Hammam – Alexandria, Egypt – with her sister murdered and robbed 17 women; both were executed (1920)

“I myself have cut the throats of six women,” she began. “My first victim was called Hanem. I leaned over Hanem as if to whisper in her ear. Soon after death had passed.”

***

► Elisabeth Ashmead – New York, N, Y.; Philadelphia, Pa.; Millville, N. J. – murdered a hundreds of babies, sometimes throwing them alive into a furnace (1910)

“Mrs. Ashmead said to me: ‘We wrapped the babies up in a newspaper and laid them aside until they died, when we either threw them into the heater or out on the dump,’ ” said Dr. Joseph H. King.

***

►Susan Atkins (Charles Manson “Family”) – Los Angeles, California – savagely murdered at least 9 persons (and perhaps more than 20 in total), including a pregnant woman (1969)

“Wow. What a trip! I thought, ‘To taste death, and yet give life.’ Have you ever tasted blood? It’s warm and sticky and nice.” (V, 400)

“They didn't even look like people... I didn't relate to Sharon Tate as being anything but a store mannequin... [Tate] sounded just like an IBM machine... She kept begging and pleading and pleading and begging [for the life of her unborn child], and I got sick of listening to her, so I stabbed her.”

 

***

►Clementine Barnabet – Lafayette, Louisiana – convicted of 17 murders, victims were “horribly mutilated” (1912)

“I killed them all, men, women and babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.”

“We weren’t afraid of being arrested because I carried a ‘voodoo,’ which  protected us from all punishment.” [“Forty Hideous Murders Charged to Negress, Who Says She Sought To Gain Immortality; Strange Woman Heads ‘Church of Sacrifice,’” The Cincinnati Enquirer (Oh.), Apr. 3, 1912, p. 1]

***

► Suzan Carson Barnes – California – Member of a messianic mini-cult who murdered men for “sexually assaulting” her, meaning that they accidentally brushed against her slightly (1983)

“You kill that demon or I will.”

***

►Mary Flora Bell – Scotswood, England – Mary, just a child, attempted numerous murders and finally killed a 4-year-old boy just before her 11^th birthday and another boy the two months later – 1968

“I like hurting people.”

“Brian Howe had no mother, so he won’t be missed.”

“If I was a judge and I had an eleven-year-old who’d done this, I’d give her eighteen months. Murder isn’t that bad, we all die sometime anyway.”

Norma, Mary's 13-year-old best friend, who took part in the second murder, stated that Mary told her: “I squeezed his neck and pushed up his lungs that’s how you kill them. Keep your nose dry and don’t tell anybody.”

***

►Taitu Betul – Dowager Empress of Abyssinia (Ethiopia) – murdered 10 husbands (1914)

“If you would gain a throne and hold it, fear not to make of human skulls thy stepping stones.”

***

► Elfriede Blauensteiner – Vienna Austria – lonely hearts serial killer with a gambling addiction. She murdered at least five men (including two husbands) and one woman, suspected of many more murders. (1996)

“I wash my hands of it.”
“If there’s a vampire among you, he will turn you to a heap of ashes.”
“I pity no man when he dies.” (“Es ist um keinen Mann schade, wenn er stirbt”).

***

►Cynthia Buffom – Little Valley, N.Y. – killed husband, 2 children, crippled another (1913)

“I loved Ernest Frahm so much more than I did my husband that I would have done anything, everything for him. He told me to kill my husband and poison my children. I did what he told me to do — but it was he, he, he who made me do it.”

***

► Mary Chalfa – Munhall, Pennsylvania – accomplices Gizella Young (see listings above and below), Anna Allas – The three-woman team murdered relatives to collect insurance money. Gizella Young was a fortune teller. (1932)

Mrs. Chalfa told Gizella about her sufferings. Gallstones, for one thing. Gizella took her down to Braddock in October, 1931, and introduced her to Dr. John Zock. Mrs. Chalfa didn’t bother to mention her gallstones. She came straight to the point. She came straight to the point. She wanted Dr. Zeok to sell her poison “for my husband, because he’s a drunkard.” “Mrs. Chalfa!” exclaimed the horrified physician. “I wouldn’t sell you poison for $1,000 or one million dollars.”

“Why don’t you get a doctor?” George Allas Jr. demanded of his stepmother.

“We don’t need a doctor. The undertaker will take care of things”, was the response.

***

► Leonarda Cianciulli – Reggio Emilia, Italy – Murdered and cooked 3 women (1941)

“I threw the pieces into a pot, added seven kilos of caustic soda, which I had bought to make soap, and stirred the whole mixture until the pieces dissolved in a thick, dark mush that I poured into several buckets and emptied in a nearby septic tank. As for the blood in the basin, I waited until it had coagulated, dried it in the oven, ground it and mixed it with flour, sugar, chocolate, milk and eggs, as well as a bit of margarine, kneading all the ingredients together. I made lots of crunchy tea cakes and served them to the ladies who came to visit, though Giuseppe and I also ate them.” [from the murderess’s published autobiography]

Virginia Cacioppo, a former soprano said to have sung at La Scala “ended up in the pot, like the other two... her flesh was fat and white, when it had melted I added a bottle of cologne, and after a long time on the boil I was able to make some most acceptable creamy soap. I gave bars to neighbours and acquaintances. The cakes, too, were better: that woman was really sweet.” [from the murderess’s published autobiography]

“While my victim was drinking an elixir I had prepared, I got an axe, placed myself behind my victim and, summoning my strength, struck the back of her neck – a rattle, nothing else. … It was a master stroke that almost beheaded her.” [from the murderess’s published autobiography]

***

► Tammy Eveans Corbett – Brighton, Illinois, USA – murdered her three children over a period of three years. (1989)

Tammy, according to testimony, told Richard “that she knew what she was doing when she killed each child and that she could have stopped herself.” She added the chilling detail that “she had looked into their son’s eyes while she held her hand over his mouth . . . telling him “His eyes were saying, ‘Help me mommy.’” [9-22-90, SLPD]

In 1993 trial testimony one witness, Gina Eveans, disclosed that at the hospital in 1987 about a week before baby Robert died, “she heard Corbett say as she stood over his crib, “Don’t worry, baby, I got even.” [2-3-93, SLPD]

When Corbett put her had over Robert’s mouth (her 56-day?-old son), she said. “This is for you Ricky [husband Richard Eveans Sr.].”

Corbett’s 10-year-old stepdaughter  told her father that moments before Tammy smothered the 3-year-old that she said something like “You’re going to die,” or “I hope you die.” [9-22-90, SLPD]

***

► Anna Cunningham – Crown Point, Indiana – Murdered her husband, three teenaged children, and attempted to murder another, who survived but was partially crippled (1925)

Something told me to draw in my head and told me I had to get rid of them. I thought that I was going to die and wanted to take them with me. I only poisoned the ones I loved best and I poisoned the ones I like best in turn because I wanted them with me. [She was intending suicide, she claimed.]

***

► Lillie May Curtis – Center Texas – She shot her husband while he slept in 1935. She received a suspended sentence and murdered six of her own children three years later. (1938)

“I was able to care for them, that is, not physically able and not able in the way of money. I had not undressed when I went to bed, and I was thinking kinda about killing them when I went to bed. I knew it was wrong to kill these children. I did not kill the oldest one (James Travis) because he is big enough to work for himself.”

***

► Joanna Dennehy – Bifield, Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England – She stabbed male strangers in the heart as a for of amusement, leaving 3 dead, 2 seriously wounded. (2013)

“I want my fun. I need you to get my fun.” She told her friend, when she asked him to provide transportation in her hunt for the next victim. 

“As she lifted the knife like Norman Bates in Psycho and plunged it into her final victim, she showed little emotion and appeared not to enjoy herself. ‘Oh, look, you’re bleeding,’ she told John Rogers, who nearly died from his wounds. ‘I’d better do some more.’” [Paul Peachey, “Joanna Dennehy: The girl from a loving home who became a serial killer,” The Independent (UK), Feb. 13, 2014]

***

►"La Diabla of Medillin" – Medellin, Colombia - hitwoman who has murdered men, womanb and children. (2019)

“I love the madness. Not when I was a little girl, but from the age of 15 I’ve loved seeing things fall down around me.” Regarding her most recent hit she admitted that: “We chopped him up, put him in a bag, and threw him in the river and goodbye. Nobody is going to see him again. I will carry on until I get killed, until that’s it. There’s no turning back.”

***

►Amelia Dyer – Caversham (near Reading), England – baby-killer for hire and bogus foster parent; hundreds of babies murdered (1896)

“After I got a baby something seemed to say in my ears, ‘Get rid of it.’”

***

►Christine Falling – Perry, Florida – baby sitter, killed 3 children (1982)

“I love young ‘uns. I don’t know why I done what I done … The way I done it, I seen it done on TV shows. I had my own way though. Simple and easy. No one would hear them scream. I did like, you know, simple, but it weren’t simple. I pulled a blanket over the face. Pulled it back. Then again I did the blanket pulling over the face …just the right amount for the little one. A voice would say to me, ‘Kill the baby,’ over and over …very slow, and then I would come to and realize what happened.” (V, 287)

***

► Marie Fikackova – Susice, Czechoslovakia – a nurse who murdered two babies and “attacked,” according to her confession, ten others, none of whom died. She was executed in 1961 by hanging. (1960)

“When I was pressing little Prosserová’s head, I could feel my fingers sinking into it. I did not feel any skull cracking at that time. I was just pressing the little head and my fingers got deeper and deeper. My anger faded away after a while and I could continue working.”

***

► Julia Fortemyer – St. Louis, Missouri – murdered a large number of babies (1875)

As the doctress sat in her cell at the station-house muttering to herself, she was overheard to say, “Ashes tell no tales.” Another hasty search was made, and in the stove were found the calcined bones of a child.

***

► Winnie Ola Freeman (Winona Green) – Little Rock, Arkansas – A 30-year career of murder, fraud featuring two jailbreaks (1954)

She is certain she will escape jail – because she is a woman. “Who ever heard of a woman being electrocuted or hanged in Arkansas?” she demands whenever the death penalty is mentioned to her. Furthermore she is not remorseful. “I’m not sorry for my deeds, she repeats again and again. I planned both murders, thinking them all out thoroughly in advance. Now that I have admitted everything, I am willing to meet whatever fate awaits me.” (Quoted in 1924, early in her murder career).

***

►Irina Gaidamachuk –Yekaterinburg, Russia – robbed and murdered 17 women (2012)

“I did it for money. I just wanted to be a normal mum, but I had a craving for drink,” “My husband Yury wouldn’t give me money for vodka.”

"I hate old women!" - said the Ural maniac during interrogations.

***

► Helen Geisen-Volk – New York, N. Y. – Child care provider and child trafficker who abused, battered and murdered scores of children, mostly babies (1925)

“Babies and animals should be disciplined all the same. When they become unruly, I hold them under water or push them in closets or bang them. I’ve trained children for 20 years that way.”

“Didn’t fifty-three infants die in your place?” asked District Attorney Pecora. “No,” was Mrs. Geisen-Volk’s reply. “There were only twelve or fourteen deaths.”

***

► “Hadfield’s Maid” – Florence, Italy – Murdered four Hadfield children under the delusion she was performing “a good act,” sending them to Heaven. (c 1763)

One day a maid servant went in the nursery, took me in her arms, and said: “Pretty little creature, I have sent four to heaven I hope to send you also.”

***

► Lizzie Halliday – Burlingham, New York – Known to have murdered at least 5 persons over a period of 13 years, with many additional confirmed murder attempts, and numerous arson escapades (including one that was fatal). A particularly vicious and reckless specimen. (1893 / 1906)

1906 murder: Throttling the nurse, Mrs. Halliday snatched a pair of scissors from Miss Wickes’s belt. With a frenzied cry, she sunk the sharp blades again and again into the nurse’s throat. Miss Wickes’s screams brought half a dozen to the door. Dr. Lamb was summoned, and he opened the door with a duplicate key. On the floor lay Mrs. Wickes, gasping her last breath. Mrs. Halliday stood by a window, calmly watching the death struggles. A maniacal smile of triumph lighted her face.

“She won’t leave me now,” she said, and laughed as she spoke.

Miss Wickes was hurried to a cot, but died within an hour without recovering consciousness. Mrs. Halliday laughed gleefully when told she was dead. Superintendent Lamb had Mrs. Halliday locked in a room and placed under special guard. She sat gazing with amused interest out of the window. She seemed to know precisely what she had done, but was indifferent. When Coroner Goring asked her why she had committed the murder she replied:

“She tried to leave me.”

***

►Sabine Hilschenz – Brieskow-Finkenheerd, Brandenburg, Germany – Murdered nine newborns. (2005)

Sabine Hilschenz’s defense team argued that her alcohol consumption during labor would cause her to pass out. When she awoke, she would find the child dead and buried in soil on her balcony.

“I would sit on the balcony and talk to them in the flowerpots,” she told police before the trial.

***

►Ella Holdridge – Tonawanda, New York – A would-have-been serial killer: a girl of 14 years whose morbid passion for seeing death and funerals has led her to kill one of her playmates and cause the serious illness three others by poison. (1892)

She remarked with respect to the corpse one of her victims, Louisa Stormer who she said “made the prettiest corpse ever put under New York soil.”

“I guess she’s dead now, ‘cause they’re all in there crying and there’s a man there with a box. She’s dead, she’s dead, I knew it!” and she danced off out into the street. When Ella was asked hew she knew the poison would kill the children, she said: “If it killed rats and mice it would kill children.”

***

►Karla Homolka – St. Catharines, Canada – with her boyfriend she tortured, raped her sister and 2 other girls (1992)

“Dr Arnold was right. I did kill somebody. I killed my sister. How can anyone ever be forgiven for that? I think about what I did every day. I really do.”

“I hope they let me do my hair in jail. I would just die if my hair went to hell.” (V, 363)

Because police and prosecutors were duped by bogus feminist theories, Karla Homolka got away with a wrist-slap.

***

► Martha Ann Johnson – Clayton County, Georgia – murdered four children, her own. (1989)

“On the tape [Martha Ann Johnson] confessed to suffocating Jennyann and James as a way of getting back at her husband after they’d argued. Her actual words to the police were ‘…I was just in a rage. I was mad. It hurt.’ Of the suffocation, she explained ‘I took Jennyann to bed with me and laid on her so she could not breathe. When she stopped moving I knew it was over with.’ At another juncture she said ‘I hated him (Earl Bowen) so much for what he put me through.’ But she denied killing the two children actually fathered by him.” [Carol Anne Davis, Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers, 2001, Allen & Busby Ltd, London, p. 58; spellings “Jennyann,” “Tibitha,” in original text retained]

***

► Juana, “La Peque Sicaria” – Baja California, Mexico – executioner in Los Zetas in Tamaulipas cartel (2016)

“[I felt] excited by it [blood], rubbing myself in it and bathing in it after killing a victim and I even drank it when it was still warm.”

***

►Maria Kardos – Hungary - co-conspirator in husband-killing syndicate which killed scores (perhaps hundreds), of victims mostly married men at the behest of wives (1929)

Mrs. Kardos testified, telling of the last moments of her 23-year-old son’s life: “I gave him some more poison,” said Mrs. Kardos in court. “Suddenly remembered how splendidly my boy used to sing in church, so I said, ‘Sing, my boy! Sing my favorite song!” He sang it with his lovely clear voice, then suddenly he cried out, gripped his stomach, gasped, and was dead.”

Marie Aszendi [Kardos] has been charged with having murdered her son, because he made her look too old. Did you know that the midwife Susan Fazekas was poisoning your son?” Aszendi who was terrified, wavered and confessed that she did know, “We cooked a nice supper,” she said, “and put poison in it. I paid Fezekas ₤2. My son died. It took three doses of poison to kill my husband. The poison was put in his food.”

***

►Sharon Kinne – Independence, Missouri – murdered 3 persons (1964)

“I’ve shot men before and managed to get out of it.”

***

►Tillie Klimek (Gburek) – Chicago, Illinois – murdered an estimated 20 persons (1923)

When visiting a fabric store to purchase black material to make a dress for her fourth husband, Joseph Guszkowski’s funeral, the clerk offered her condolences and asked Tillie when her husband died. "My husband's," said Tillie. "When did he die?" “Ten days from now,” Tillie's next stop was at an undertaker's, where she bought the cheapest coffin in the place and had it delivered to the basement of the tenement. (Alan Hynd, Murder, Mayhem, And Mystery: An Album Of American Crime, 1958, p. 360)

“It’s too bad that I have such bad luck with husbands. I hope the next one lasts longer.” (Alan Hynd, Murder, Mayhem, And Mystery: An Album Of American Crime, 1958, p. 360)

 

*** 

► Piroska Jancsó Ladányi – Törökszentmiklós, Hungary – rape murders of 5 girls (1954) 

 

Piroska said: "Initially, I gave different stories because I was ashamed to reveal the real reason for my act. That's why I also said that I got the little girls for Russian soldiers and then strangled them so that they would not reveal what happened to them. I was ashamed to admit that I killed the girls because of my perverted sexual desires. I'm still very ashamed of that.”

 

***

►Elena Lobacheva – Moscow, Russia – 25-year old sexual sadist, with her 20-year-old male accomplice, whose alternative sexuality preference involved stabbing 12 men (up to 107 times), all strangers, randomly selected, to death, and photographing them “with their stomachs cut open.” She was inspired by the movie “Bride of Chucky,” and has a tattoo of the character on her arm. (2015)

“Randomly stabbing the body of a dying human brought me pleasure comparable to sexual pleasure.”

***

►Margaret McCloskey – New York, N. Y. – child care provider, at least three babies died (1876)

Mrs. Clifford found the youngest child apparently dying from starvation, and was told by one of the women that Mrs. McCloskey had been angry because the other infant had been removed, and had struck the little one, saying:

“Let it die; it’s paid for.”

***

►Mary McKnight – Michigan – (1903) – Suspected of having murdered 11 persons, including two husbands

Here is a self-serving rationalizing confession, that leaves out McKnight’s eight other suspected murders and other crimes: “The baby woke up and cried while its mother was gone, and I mixed up a little strychnine in a glass with some water and save a spoonful to the baby. I didn’t mean to harm the little thing at all. I confessed all to the Lord this afternoon, and I feel that he has forgiven me. When Gertrude came home and found the baby dead she got awfully nervous. She came to me and said: ‘Mary, can’t you give me something to quiet me; something that you take yourself?’ I said that I would, and I really didn’t think that it would hurt her if I gave her one of the capsules. She had spasms right after that, and I suppose that it was the strychnine that killed her. I really didn’t mean to hurt her. Then John seemed to feel so badly about it, so broken up, that I often thought after Gertie died that it would be better if he were to go, too. John was feeling bad one night a couple of weeks after Gertrude died. He came to me and wanted something to quiet him. I had two or three of the capsules on my dresser, and I told him to go and get one of them. I didn’t mean to hurt him, but I thought that it would sooth him, and then I thought that. It would be for the best if he were to go, anyway. He helped himself, I don’t know whether he took one or two. Then he went to bed, and by and by he called me. Mother came, too, and he began to have those same spasms. I suppose that the strychnine was working.”

***

►Eva Micsik – Csoka, Hungary – murdered her own children, 8 of them (1888)

“I have had eight children and have killed them all. … They were all previously baptized. I did not want any children. My husband knew nothing of what I had done. I lived on bad terms with him, and wanted to vex him.” 

***

► Robin Murphy –Fall River, Massachusetts, USA – with her pimp, she murdered 3 prostitutes (1980)

Miss Marsden was beaten to death with a rock before her throat was slit, her body mutilated her neck in a swampy woodland in Westport in February 1980. Witness Robin Murphy, 17, who Monday testified she was present during the murders of the two woman and a third prostitute, said Tuesday she participated in Miss Marsden’s murder while in a trance-like state. . . . “I wouldn’t do anything like that to Karen,” Miss Murphy told her the crowded courtroom. “I loved her. I did it, yes, but not because I wanted to.” . . . Miss Murphy testified . . .  that Drew broke Miss Marsden’s neck, ordered her to slit the woman’s throat, then tore the head from the body with his bare hands. After the murder, Miss Murphy said she went to Miss Fletcher’s home where she “ate some chicken, drank a beer and smoked a joint.”

***

►Marie Noe – Philadelphia – murdered 8 of her own children before they reached the age of 2 years (1998)

After the birth of one of her sons, a nurse overheard Noe threaten him while trying to feed him, “If you don’t take this, I’ll kill you.” Some suspected foul play, but no one acted.

***

►Lydia Olah – Nagyrev, Hungary – sister of serial killer Suzi Olah, co-conspirator in husband-killing syndicate which killed scores (perhaps hundreds), of victims mostly married men at the behest of wives (1929)

“We are not assassins! We did not stab our husbands. We did not hang them or drown them either! They died from poison and this was a pleasant death for them!” (N, 159)

***

►Agnes Pandy – Brussels, Belgium – incestuous cannibal father and daughter serial killer team; confessed to five murders (1997)

“It was my task to take out the organs while Pandy [Andras, her father] was cutting up the remains. I just used a kitchen knife. You have to exercise strength. It’s not that that easy.” Agnes Pandy, explaining how she had eviscerated one of her own stepsisters. (S, 79)

***

► Mrs. Perkins – Bratford, Canada – 6 victims (1865)

Indirect quote: “She said she had a mania to destroy human life, and it was by the greatest self-denial that she could restrain herself from secretly poisoning all persons with whom she was on terms of friendship.”

***

► Martha Petromany – Knees (Knez; Satchinez), Temesvar, Romania ("Hungary") – very large number of poisonings (1906)

“I know that you live unhappily with your husband. If you pay me, I’ll bring you poison. If you give this to your husband, he will die in a few days and you are rid of him!”

***

►Brittany Pilkington – Bellefontaine, Ohio, USA – murdered her three sons over an extended period of time. (2015)

“Prosecutor Bill Goslee said Brittany confessed to the murders, and said she was motivated by jealousy that her husband, 43-year-old Joseph Pilkington, paid more attention to their sons than he did to their surviving 3-year-old daughter, Hailey.”

***

►Isabel Cristina Pires da Silveira – Garanhuns, Brazil – Cannibal cult killings by couple and young mistress; 3 cannibal murders (2012)

In her statement to the State Police, recorded on videotape, Isabel said she also sold empanadas made with body parts of her victims in hospitals and police stations. "I even sold one to you," she told one of the officers.

Trial testimony: “Bruna took the knife out of my hand and handed it to Jorge so he could kill her [Jessica]. I was holding the small child [Jessica’s 18-m-o daughter)]. I was very nervous. She said she ate the meat of Jessica grilled with rice. The child also ate. She was there with us, was part of the family.” [“Julgamento dos Canibais de Garanhuns será retomado nesta sexta,” Diario de Pernambuco; Estadão Alagoas, Nov. 14, 2014]

***

► Anujka de Poshtonja (Anna Pistova, Baba Anujka) – Vladimirovac, Yugoslavia (Serbia) – Sold poison for the murder of primarily husbands to women for 50 years before being arrested at the age of 90. She was known as “The Witch of Vladimirovac.” (1928)

To a young police sergeant: “I work with the devil, young man. If you imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying day. Don’t play with the forces of evil.”

“If it [the poison she sold] was good enough to kill Gaja Marinkov it will do for anyone.”

***

► Marie Emilie Raymond – Galan, Hautes-Pyrénées, France – serial killer nurse (1952)

“I love looking at dying people. The last smile on a dying face gives me a great thrill.”

She also had a rake because, “I love raking freshly filled graves.”

“The dying, they’re so inspiring.”

***

►Vera Renczi – Bekerekul, Yugoslavia – murdered a husband, a son, and 33 paramours and kept their corpses in storage (1925)

“Why did you kill all these human beings?” asked the judge. “They were men,” she answered. “I could not endure the thought that they would ever put their arms around another woman after they had embraced me.” “But,” the judge stammered, “you also murdered your own son.” “He had threatened to betray me,” said Madame Renczi. “He was a man, too. Soon he would have held another woman in his arms.”

***

►Tamara Samsonova – St. Petersburg, Russia – suspected of murdering more than 10 persons; dismembering bodies and distributing fragments throughout the city; cannibalism suspected. (2015)

“I came home and put the whole pack of Phenazepamum - 50 pills - into her Olivier salad. She liked it very much. I woke up after 2am and she was lying on the floor. So I started cutting her to pieces.”

***

► Amy Lynn Scott – Florida – babysitter who murder 3 babies of parents she had met in church. (1989)

“After Rachel Whitmer’s baby - the last of the three - died, Whitmer remembered Scott telling her in 1989, ‘I had seen a lot of death in my life and that I feel that I am an instrument to help people, spirits, go to the next life.’”

***

► Dr. Virginia Helena Soaresde Souza – Brazil  – doctor suspected of being responsible for the deaths of up to 320 of her patients (2013)

“I want to clear the intensive care unit. It’s making me itch” (statement obtained via wiretap recordings.)

***

►Della Sorenson – Dannenborg, Nebraska – murdered 8 relatives, including 3 of her own children (1925)

“They bothered me, so I decided to kill them.”

“Every time I gave poison to one of Mrs. Cooper’s children, I said to myself, “Now I’m going to get even with you (Mrs. Cooper) for what you have said about me,” the confession said.

“After the death of my little daughter, Minnie,” the poison slayer said. “I had a feeling of elation and happiness. Then, after I got to thinking about what I had done, I was afraid and tried to hide it. I had the same feeling after the death of every one of those I poisoned.”

“We [Della and husband, Joe] had a quarrel, a bad quarrel, one day. I had it in for him. After he died and I came to, I was sorry for what I had done and wished I had never done it.” [Michael Newman, Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, Loompanics Ltd., 1993, p. 159]

“I had feelings which would steal over me at times forcing me to destroy and kill. I felt funny and happy. I like to attend funerals.”

“Mrs. Cooper was always running down my reputation and to get even with her, I decided to kill three of her children.” [Michael Newman, Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, Loompanics Ltd., 1993, p. 160]

“I put strychnine in some chocolate candy and gave it to the Knott children because their father stole my wine and I felt like I wanted to get even with him.” (signed confession) [“Killer of Seven Sent to Asylum,” The Lincoln Star (Nebraska), April 20, 1925, pages 1 – 2]

*** 

Cecilia Steyn – Krugersdorf, South Africa (2016)

Testimony of Hannelie Scheepers (Marcel’s father’s ex-wife) on Cecilia Steyn’s character: “It was like, you know,  she really liked the term ‘serial killer.’ Because she used it a lot. I’m thinking of the beginning of the year, when that person killed forty people in [inaudible], she said to me the he made her look like a tart, because he killed forty people, she only killed eleven.” [Krugersdorp killer 'liked the term serial killer', TimesLIVE Video (South Africa),  Aug 13, 2019, 2:21]

Court Testimony: Nov. 20, 2018 – According to Candice Rajivec, a friend of Cecilia’s who testified, Cecilia told her that her birth was foretold and that she had to grow up in the occult in order to one day be able to open the gates to hell on earth. Cecilia said her whole family was part of the occult and she was abused not only as a child, but even when she was already married her father would “astral-project” to rape her by using her husband. At times he would send demons to rape her. Rajivec said one of Cecilia’s powers was astral projection and that she had even been to the moon. [“’Church’ killings Krugersdorp,” Onafhanklik, Jun. 24, 2019]

"Wherever I go they fall like flies," is one of many threatening messages Ria Grunewald got when she cut ties with Cecilia Steyn. [Nomahlubi Jordaan, “Death threats and church murders: Krugersdorp witness testifies,” Times Live (South Africa), Nov. 14, 2018]

***

Miranda Steyn – Krugersdorf, South Africa (2016)

"I told her pray, I am going to kill you now. Then she started praying and then I killed her," Steyn told the High Court in Johannesburg on Friday [Nov. 16, 2018] afternoon. [Iavan Pijoos, “'Pray, I am going to kill you now,' Krugersdorp murderer tells victim,” Times Live (South Africa), Nov. 20, 2018]

“Witches will kill you”: said by Marinda Steyn to her daughter, Marcel. [“'Witches will kill you,' Marcel Steyn's mom tells her in prison,” News24 (South Africa), Aug. 27, 2019]

“Kill her or I’ll shoot you!” said by Marinda Steyn to her son, Le Roux. [Jana Marx, The Krugersdorp Cult Killings, 2021, LAPA pub.]

***

►Irmgard Swinka (Kuschenski) – Hamm, Germany – convicted of murdering 5 women; attempted 10 others; she used poisoned cigarettes (1948)

“I have dedicated myself to Satan!”

***

►Josefa Szanyi (Josephine Tzany) – Budapest, Hungary – an avowed predatory misandrist who sought out men, mostly married ones, to seduce and then murder, 12 of them. (1926)

“I am an enemy of the male sex. Years ago a man wronged me deeply and broke my girl’s heart. I vowed to be revenged on him and his sex. I have kept my word, for I have made men suffer something of what I have suffered. They may say I am responsible for the death of these men, and they may even take my life for what they call my crime. If they do I shall be glad to die with the knowledge that I have paid my debt in full. I do not deny that I have derived pleasure from the sufferings of the men they call my victims. I have enjoyed every pang they suffered, every agony they endured. Pangs and agony have been balm to my wounded and bruised heart. My one regret is that I was not able to strike directly at the man who wronged me.”

***

►Alsa Thompson – Hollywood, California (1925)

“I guess I was just mean and liked to see them suffer,” the girl is said to have declared in admitting the poisonings. In speaking of the deaths of one of her little sisters, Alsa showed only a slight trace of emotion, saying “she was so pretty – I was sorry I had given her anything.” [“Second Grade School Girl Poison Fiend – Alsa Thompson, 7, Confesses Causing deaths of Sisters and Woman,” Logansport Pharos-Tribune (In.), Feb. 3, 1925, p. 1]

“It’s all true; I did it because I enjoyed watching them suffer,” she said.

***

► Lillian B. Thornman – York, Pennsylvania – A 15-year old servant girl murdered a child who was “roasted from head to toe” by placing the youngster on the stove. She had murdered 2 children the same way previously. (1906)

Lillian Thornman’s  confession contained this remarkable statement: “I am a devil and I will burn them.”

***

►Marybeth Tinning – Schenectady, New York – murdered her own children, 9 of them (1985)

“I smothered them with a pillow,” she told detectives, “because I’m not a good mother.”

***

►Jane Toppan – Lowell, Massachusetts – nurse, murdered up to 100 patients and others (1901)

“I could have worked for years longer at poisoning if I hadn’t killed four people in one family almost all at once. That was the greatest mistake of my life.” [Harold Schechter, Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Serial Killer, Pocket Books, 2008,  278]

“I went to the funeral and felt as jolly as could be. And nobody suspected me in the least.” [Harold Schechter, Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Serial Killer, Pocket Books, 2008, 135]

“This my ambition: to have killed more people, more helpless people, than any man or woman has ever killed.” (P. 146)

“Then came the wait. I would have to watch and watch and watch as the pupils contracted, and, at the right moment then inject the atropine and watch and watch until the pupils were again wide and vacant. This was hard, precise work, all of it. I had to dose the patients slowly, a little at a time. It took days, sometimes weeks to kill them.” (Nash, 367)

She worried herself into an emaciated state and became so frail that doctors gave her only a few weeks to live. Finally, one physician asked her why she was worrying. Jane replied, “Because I have no remorse for murdering all those people.” (Nash, 367)

***

►Lise Jane Turner – Christchurch, New Zealand – 2 own babies, 1 other baby & 4 other attempts (1984)

“I thought, okay. I never got caught for [the first baby's] death, I don't want this child, how am I gonna get rid of it, you know, so I smothered her the same way as I did with [the first baby].”

***

►Frieda Trost  – Philadelphia, Pa. – murdered 2 husbands and 3 children (1912)

“I want his soul,” she said, referring to her second husband, before she murdered him.

► Maria Varlane – Fundul Galbenei, Hîncesti District, Moldova – Victims: small son, small daughter, her father, her mother, her sister 3 or 4 domestics, her lovers, 5 or 6 shepherds. (1931)

“I loved the smell of burnt flesh among the scent of fir trees!”

***

►Waltraud Wagner (“Lainz Angels of Death”) – Group of serial killer murders who confessed to 49 individual murders. Waltraud Wagner was considered the “leader.” (1989)

In custody, the “death angels” confessed to forty-nine specific murders. Wagner allegedly claiming thirty-nine on her own. “The ones who got on my nerves,” she explained, “were dispatched directly to a free bed with the good Lord.” It was not always simple, she allowed: “Of course the patients resisted, but we were stronger. We could decide whether these old fogies lived or died. Their ticket to God was long overdue in any case.” [Michael Newton, Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, Loompanics Unlimited, 1993,  pp. 8-9]

***

► Jeanne Weber – Paris, France – strangled 8 children of various ages to death, most of them relatives – (1908)

“I am neither lunatic nor criminal.” (“Je suis ne folle ni criminelle.”)

(Note: Weber was certainly among the most insane criminal killers in history.)

***

► 1903 – Elisabeth Wiese – Hamburg, Germany

“Children’s blood and the blood of white doves brings good luck.”

“The carbon residue resulting from the burning of a placenta brings good luck.”

***

►Mary Elizabeth Wilson – Jarrow on Tyne, England – murdered 3 husbands and one male boarder (1957)

At the registrar’s office where she had to record her husband’s deaths, Mrs. Wilson joked: “There should be a discount for me.”

At her wedding reception, for her third marriage, a friend asked her what she was going to do with the large number of sandwiches and cakes that were left over. Her reply: “Keep them for the funeral.”

“Men like me, and I like men,” Mrs. Wilson explained during the course of her trial.

***

► Lillie Winter – Fairfield, Illinois – 3 Suspected murders & 1 attempt, including 3-year-old grandson (1948)

“Grandma told me,” Marjorie [who survived a small dose of arsenic] testified, after she had related how she became ill, “that sometimes ‘God tells us to do certain things. We can’t understand why but we just have to do them.”

***

►Martha Wise – Hardscrabble Valley, Ohio – murdered 3 persons (1925)

“I liked their funerals. I could get dressed up and see folks and talk to them. I didn’t miss a funeral in twenty years. The only fun I ever had was after I kilt people.”

***

►Ada Wittenmyer – Nashville, Tennessee (1984)

After her arrest Ada told her cellmate she was going to go through life finding men with money and poisoning them, using the lonely hearts club ads. She said that she enjoyed to see them in pain from the poison.

***

►Aileen Wuornos – Volusia County, Florida – murdered 7 men (1990)

 “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.”

***

► Gizella Young – Munhall, Pa. – Murdered numerous children for insurance money, attempted to murder child relative using a blackjack, but she survived, causing the investigation which uncovered serial killings involving accomplices Anna Allas and Mary Chalfa. (1932)

[Andrew] Young came to the county detective’s offices and made his accusations against his wife [Gizella Young]. Mary [cousin, Mary Chalfa], he said, visited his home so frequently at one time that he protested to his wife. She answered, Young said:

“Oh, that’s all right. I just told her fortune,”

“What was it?” Young said he then asked and his wife replied:

“Well, she’s having a lot of trouble with her husband. so I told her to insure him and he would die in three months.”

Young told [Detective] McDermott he asked his wife how he knew Chalfa would die in three months and she answered: “I’ll give her something to give him.”

***

►Lila Gladys Young – Fairfax, Nova Scotia, Canada – Child care provider, child trafficker who murdered hundreds of babies (1936)

The following quotation comes not from the serial killer Lila Gladys Young herself, but from her employee. Yet it is a startling one and thus is included in this collection:

“Handyman Glen Shatford would later admit burying between 100 and 125 babies in a field owned by Lila’s parents near Fox Point, adjoining the Adventist cemetery. ‘We buried them in rows,’ he said, ‘so it was easy to see how many there were.’”

[Michael Newman, Bad Girls Do It!: An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, Loompanics Ltd., 1993, p. 190]

***

►Maria Zwanziger – Bavaria, Germany – murdered at least 3 persons (1809)

She stated: “Yes, I killed them all and would have killed more if I had the chance.” Then she referred to arsenic as her “truest friend.” Before being beheaded in July 1811, she told her executers “It is perhaps better for the community that I should die, as it would be impossible for me to give up the practice of poisoning people.”

***

Notations:

“N”: Nash, Robert Jay, Look for the Woman: A Narrative Encyclopedia of Female Poisoners, Kidnappers, Thieves, Extortionists, Terrorists, Swindlers and Spies from Elizabethan Times tom the Present, Evans, 1981

“P”: Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, Viking, 1997

“S”: Harold Schechter, The Serial Killer Files: The Who, What, Where, How, and Why of the World’s Most Terrifying Murderers, Ballantine Books, 2004

“V”: Peter Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, Berkley Books, New York, 2007.

***

The listed date represents the year in which the perpetrator has been identified as a serial killer (after at least 3 murdered are identified).

***

“Female serial killers … haven’t received anywhere near the same amount of attention from the media or from criminologists as males have. Even researchers on psychology have tended to focus on male populations. There’s a common erroneous assumption that because females are “nurturing,” they won’t be violent. But we’ve had female serial killers who have shot, stabbed, smothered (with her enormous weight), and even used chain saws and ice picks.” [D. P. Lyle, MD, “Forensic Psychologist Dr. Katherine Ramsland Talks About Serial Killers,” The Writer’s Forensics Blog, June 25, 2009]

***

***

***

[21,511-3/6/21; 29,878-10/16/21]

***