Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(5) Helen Gavin

 

Evil or Insane? The Female Serial Killer and Her Doubly Deviant Femininity(5) 

Helen Gavin

4. Deviant sexuality (5)

    According to Stone, when we think of serial killers, the image we have is of serial sexual homicide, compulsive killing for sexual release of one nature or another.[i] Paraphilia features strongly in the serial killer population. Prentky et al  identified high incidence of paraphilia and paraphiliac fantasy in serial killers, and Dietz et al suggested that a large pr
oportion of male serial killers exhibit more than one paraphilia, some of them clearly not harmless, involving death, dying and murder.[ii] Necrophilia and erotophonophilia feature largely in the life histories of some serial killers, but are they as equally attractive to the female serial sexual murderer?

    Necrophilia in females is extremely rare, notwithstanding any practical difficulties (which are reportedly possible to surmount). Moreover, there is no recorded instance of a female necrophile killing to achieve her goal of a dead and supremely compliant partner, unlike the men who litter the pages of lurid tabloids and academic journals alike. There is no female equivalent of Jeffrey Dahmer or Ed Gein. Are there female erotophonophiles? Erotophonophilia is a paraphilia dependent on erotic satisfaction from killing. It is closely linked to sexual sadism; where the sadist is female, it is thought that the onset is later than in men, so developmental theories may not be as compelling as explanation, and, often, this sadism is triggered by relationships with men who want to be dominated.

    Thus, lust murder represents the integration of sexualised violence and murder. Freudian concepts of unresolved sexual conflict, infantilisation, and maternal over-protection or rejection, are scattered about the literature as some form of explanation, together with hatred of a significant female as an unresolved Oedipal conflict. Thankfully, there are alternative, and more sensible explanations from positions such as learning theory, suggesting access to violent pornography and subsequent orgasmic conditioning as the culprits. None of these psychological positions suggest that women would be included in the pantheon of erotophonophiles. There are very few female killers that exhibit or admit to sexual arousal from the act of killing. Silvio et al suggest that such women are overwhelmingly found within killing teams, rather than as solo killers.[iii] They present gender role socialisation as the most likely theoretical explanation of this finding, rather than any physical or fundamental, psychological difference.

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[i] Michael Stone, ‘Serial sexual homicide: biological, psychological, and sociological aspects,’ Journal of Personality Disorders 15.1 (2001): 1-18.

[ii] Robert Prentky, Ann Burgess, Frances Rokous, Austin Lee, Carol Hartman, Robert Ressler, and John Douglas, ‘The presumptive role of fantasy in serial sexual homicide,’ The American Journal of Psychiatry. 146.7 (July 1989): 887-891.

[iii] Heather Silvio, Kathy McCloskey and Julia Ramos-Grenier, ‘Theoretical consideration of female sexual predator serial killers in the United States,’ Journal of Criminal Justice 34.3 (2006): 251-259.