Female Serial Killers & Knives (and Other Blades)

Female serial killers are generally believed to be limited in method to “indirect aggression” methods, such as poisoning. Yet “blade violence” is as direct a form of aggression as you can find.

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940 – “White-necked Crow” – China – knife

Bandit leader: “the several thousand men under her control were all subservient to her. When asked whether she had a husband she said that she had several dozen in the past, and when they gave the slightest dissatisfaction she knifed them with her own hand. Everyone who heard this cried in anger!”

1819 – Ane Nielsdatter – Copenhagen, Denmark – hatchet

“She had murdered [six children] all in a very violent manner, by suffocating them, or killing them with a hatchet. The one was three years old; the others only half a year, or several months old. Besides these infanticides, she had killed a sixth too.”

1860 – Mary Jane “Bricktop” Jackson – New Orleans, Louisiana, USA – knife

“New Orleans prostitute Mary Jane Jackson (the scourge of Gallatin Street) was as “a husky, full-bodied strumpet whose mop of flaming red hair had earned her the sobriquet of Bricktop”. She was never bested in a brawl (against man or woman), and during her career as prostitute in New Orleans she killed four men and stabbed many others.”

1865 – Marie-Françoise Bougaran – Brest & Lesneven, France – knife

“When interrogated she confessed that she had killed all the children by forcing them to swallow excrements, and then cutting the veins of the neck with a knife, which she inserted in the mouth.”

1865 – Maria Oliviero – Cattanzaro, Italy – axe

“At the age of twenty, Maria Oliviero murdered her sister, hacking her 48 times with an axe for slander and joined the gang of her husband, Pietro Monaco.”

1867 – La Gizzi – Volturara district, Italy – axe, knife (or sword ?)

“It is related that on one occasion, after stabbing three of her captives, she collected the blood that flowed from their wounds in a jar and then poured it over the head of her lover, telling him that that should be his baptism of blood.”

1877 – Elizabeth Kirkbride – Liverpool, England – blade (cutting throat)

“A most extraordinary discovery has just been made near Liverpool. In June last, Mrs Kirkbride, a widow, who for ten years had been a schoolmistress near Penrith, Cumberland, left that town and came to Liverpool, leaving behind her at an hotel two boxes to be called for. About a week since, not being called for, they were opened owing to a bad smell coming from them, and. were found to contain the bodies of two young children. One with his throat cut, and the other apparently having been suffocated.”

1883 – Emma Stillwell – Waterford, Ohio, USA – axe

“In March, 1877, she claims that her mother and brother, Chester Hoard, entered into a conspiracy to get him out of the way and secure his property; that he came home drunk one night that her brother threw him upon his face on the floor, when she struck him on the back of the head with an ax, breaking his skull.”

1893 – Lizzie Halliday – Burlingham, New York, USA – axe, scissors

On June 21, 1894, Halliday was convicted at the Sullivan County Oyer and Terminer Court for the [axe-murders] of Margaret McQuillan and Sarah Jane McQuillan. She became the first woman ever to be sentenced to death by electrocution, via New York State's new electric chair, but governor Roswell P. Flower commuted her sentence to life in a mental institution after a medical commission declared her insane. Halliday was sent to the Matteawan State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where she spent the remainder of her life. In 1906 she killed a nurse, Nellie Wickes, by stabbing her 200 times with a pair of scissors. [Wikipedia]

1908 – Belle Gunness – LaPorte, Indiana, USA – axe

Belle Gunness murdered 2 husbands & dozens others, mostly “fiancés,” plus a number of children (she had been a baby farmer when residing in Chicago); men were killed with drugs or an axe.

1910 – Esteis Liberis – Barahona, Haiti – axe

Voodoo sacrifices, prosecuted in court: “When all were assembled the girl was fetched from her hiding-place, laid in front of the altar, and strangled by her uncle. Her head was cut off, and all those present drank some of the blood, which was collected in a bowl. The flesh was subsequently cooked at Conzo’s house, and instead of being eaten, as had formerly been customary, was preserved. Two girls who had overlooked the cooking of the flesh were declared to have offended the god, and these, too, were then similarly sacrificed, their deaths being followed by two more a few days later. Such is the story as given by the police inspector. It would appear that the woman Liberis, who is stated to be now in prison in the capital awaiting trial, was directly responsible for the killing and eating of five children.”

1911 – Clementine Barnabet (Bernebet) – Lafayette, Louisiana, USA – axe

Clementine Barnabet: “I am the axe woman of the sacrifice sect,” She shouted from her prisoner’s stand, where she is guarded by three deputies. “I killed them all, men, women and babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.”

1920 – Raya & Sakina Aly Hammam – Alexandria, Egypt – axe

Sakina: “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.”

1921 – Ekaterina Pishianova – Chita, Russia – axe

“Ten desperadoes were sentenced to death here today for the murder of more than a hundred victims. Chief among the condemned was the notorious woman bandit, Ekaterina Pishianova, wife of the leader of the gang, who himself was known to the intimidated peasantry as ‘the Jack the Ripper of the Ural mountains.’ The woman was accused of killing her victims with an axe.”

1951 – Lala Wanh – Bhatanta, East Punjab, India – axe

“Lala Wanh, of Bhatinda, in the East Punjab, was married, according to normal Indian custom, at 14. Three weeks later her husband died and was cremated on the day of his death – another Indian custom. Lala married again. Her second husband also died a speedy death. Undeterred, she again remarried – 17 times in all, over a period of six years. Only recently did the police become suspicious. They arrived to arrest Lala, but were too late to save husband No. 17. Lala had just finished him off with an axe.”

1963 – Magdalena Solis – Villagran, Mexico – (machete?, axe?)

“The High Priestess of Blood” – “Magdalena Solis also known as the High Priestess of Blood, was a serial killer, a member of a cult in Mexico that was responsible for orchestrating several murders, and participated in drinking the blood of the victims. She was convicted of 8 murders and sentenced to 320 years in prison.

1975 – Doretta Kirksey – Akron, Ohio, USA – knife

“Doretta Kirksey stabbed her first husband to death during a Christmas Eve party in 1957. In 1971, Mrs. Kirksey fatally stabbed her second husband in an argument during a poker game. Law officials said the man had tried to poke her because he was angry he was losing in the game.Today [1975] Mrs. Kirksey stands accused of murder in the Wednesday night stabbing of another man.”

1989 – Sara Maria Aldrete – Matamoros, Mexico – machete

“During a five-hour interrogation, Little Serafin [Serafin Hernandez Garcia, 20] described how gang members had lured the drunken college student into their truck. After a night of torture and sodomy, they lopped the top of his head off with a machete and boiled his brains. It was all part of the rituals of a religion known as palo mayombe, a violent voodoo cult that originated in Africa. Police found this horrific bit of evidence in a kettle that had all the earmarks of being a cauldron for black magic potions in a shack filled with bloody relics of ritual slayings.” [Mara Bovsun, “Spring break revelry turns to horror as Mexican druglord kills University of Texas student in sicko human sacrifice voodoo ritual,” New York Daily News, Mar. 21, 2015]

1991 – Dorothy Williams – Chicago, Illinois, USA – knife

Williams stabbed Cesar Zuell, 63, to death on December 6, 1988.

1998 – “PK” – Switzerland – knife

She first killed in 1991, after stalking women in a town near where she lived. In 1992 she was arrested for arson and was in and out of jail for four years. PK’s second murder was committed in 1998. The victim was a 61-year-old woman who PK savagely attacked, stabbing her about 30 times and slamming her with a large stone.

1999 – Laurene Dye –Vancouver, B. C., Canada – knife

2003 – Jaroslava Fabianova – Decin, Czech Republic – meat cleaver

From the beginning, Fabiánová’s killings are particularly savage. At the age of 17 her victim was subjected to a battering with a masonry hammer consisting of three blows on the head, followed by twenty knife stabs in the face. Her final murders, in 2003, involved attacking an 84-year-old man with a meat cleaver and the stabbing of another man 38 times.

2003 – Dana Stodolova – Kutna Hora, Czech Republic – knife

For over a year in 2001-2002 Czech serial killer couple Dana Stodolová (29) and husband Jaroslav Stodolová (33) preyed upon elderly neighbors and other old folks they take short trips to find. They were after money but often found it convenient to murder those they stole from. They murdered at least six though strangling, smothering or stabbing to death. One of the murders was committed by Dana on her own in which she stabbed her victim,  Mary Čondlovou (78) of Henry Hradec, to death.

2009 – Karina Rybalkina – Siberia (Russia)

2009 – “Sao Paulo Girl” – São José do Rio Preto, Brazil – knife

She asserted she had over a period of two years stabbed the 30 young men to death motivated by a desire “for money, revenge and to bring justice”. During her interrogation, which was videotaped, she was calm and smiled as she related her story, telling police: “I don’t have enough courage to hold a gun — but I can hold a knife.”

2010 – Irina Gaidamachuk – Yekaterinberg, Russia – axe

Gaidamachuk, 40, killed seventeen elderly women so she could rob them. She attacked her victims in the Urals region pretending she was a social worker so they let her into their flats. Once inside, she attacked the women with an axe or hammer.

2010 – Cristina Soledad Sánchez Esquivel – Nuevo Garcia Leon, Mexico –

She would lure her victims to an abandoned reservoir in the Icamole area where she would shoot the drivers and dump their corpses into the water. The gang would sell the purloined taxi in Coahuila and split the proceeds.

La Matataxista was captured Jun. 6, 2010 by police in the town of Garcia after she wounded another taxi driver, Manuel Neri Balderas (31), who managed to escape with only a slight knife wound after La Matataxistas tried to slit his throat.

2012 – Silvia Meraz – Nacozari, Sonora state, Mexico – knife? (ritual blood let sacrifice)

The prosecutor’s office spokesman reported that all three victims’ throats were slit, that their wrists had been slit and that their blood had been collected in a vessel and then poured around La Santa’s altar after they bled to death. Silvia Meraz said her motive for the murders was her belief that the female saint would give her money in exchange for the sacrifices.

2013 – Joanna Dennehy – Peterborough, Cambridgeshire, England – knife.

This 31-year-old Englishwoman told her friend, “I want my fun. I need you to get my fun.” This fun consisted of finding a male stranger to stab in the heart. Ms. Dennehy was able to, over a period of several weeks, to engage in this form of amusement on five occasions, resulting in three deaths.

2015 – Elena Lobacheva – Moscow, Russia – boxcutter, knife.

Elena Lobacheva is quoting as stating: “Randomly stabbing the body of a dying human brought me pleasure comparable to sexual pleasure.”

2015 – Tamara Samsonova – St. Petersburg, Russia – knife.

The “Granny Ripper,” arrested July 27, 2015, kept a diary of her deeds. She is suspected of up to 14 murders, all of them involving dismemberment of the victims’ bodies, the parts of which were distributed throughout St. Petersburg. The final victim was dismembered while still alive. Internal organs were removed from bodies and it is suspected Samsonova may have eaten these parts, particularly lungs. The investigation continues.

2016 – Juana, “La Peque Sicaria” – Baja California, Mexico – (machete?, axe?)

Juana, a 28-year-old executioner for Los Zetas in Tamaulipas cartel. She was in charge of multiple decapitations and confessed to be excited by blood, using it – and, apparently, severed body parts – as a sexual stimulant.

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SEE MORE: Female Serial Killer Collections

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