They find out that they gain control and gain more money by killing people. “Their overall motivation is material gain in some way, and it escalates into murder.
#What percentage of serial killers are men serial#
What are some signs of a future female serial killer?īonn said that many female serial killers become involved in theft, fraud or embezzlement prior to becoming murderers. For example, they believe that they are killing for God or the devil. He said that there is also a percentage of male serial killers known as visionary serial killers who think that they are killing for a particular cause. Sometimes it’s about material gain," said Bonn. “In some cases it’s about controlling people and domination, and not sex. The other half have different motivations. He said about 50 percent of all male serial killers are driven by sexual fantasy in one form or another. She said those factors often push some women "to kill to cash in." She said she has profiled women with children to support, who are desperate to keep their husbands from divorcing them and leaving them penniless.Īccording to Bonn, most male serial killers tend to be driven by sexual motivations and fantasies. Martin added that other motives include infidelity, dissatisfaction with the marriage and the threat of divorce. At least one woman killed her husband on the day the policy was going to expire," she said. In some cases they even initiated the insurance policy-with murder in mind. "Of the more than 350 cases we’ve profiled on Snapped, money is by far the most common motive: women who killed to cash in a life insurance policy. Although Snapped does not focus on serial killers, it features women accused of murder. Sharon Martin, narrator and executive producer of Snapped told Oxygen that she has noticed that women generally kill for money. Newspapers had dubbed Puente the "Death House Landlady" according to news reports.Īccording to Sci Tech Connect, even though most female serial killers killed for money, the majority of them came from middle and upper class families. She (Puente) would take over their social security checks and kill them and bury them in the backyard,” said Bonn. “Elderly people would check in and never check out. In the 1980s, Puente ran a boarding house in Sacramento, California. She is believed to have murdered between nine and 15 people, all for financial gain. She also had anger towards these men, but it was mostly about material gain.”īonn cited another comfort/gain female serial killer, Dorothea Helen Puente. Bonn said that Wuornos was also a comfort/gain killer. Female serial killers tend to be more practical in their reason for killing than males," said Bonn.ĭoss murdered for financial gain. “The most common female serial killer is what is known as a comfort or gain killer. She collected the insurance policies of several of her victims.īonn and Oxygen discussed how men and women become serial killers, and why. Her victims included her five husbands, two of her sisters and two of their children, a mother-in-law and her own mother. One such example is an Nannie Doss, who killed 11 people in Oklahoma between the 1920s and 1954. You can go back through recorded history and see instances of female serial killers,” said Bonn. Oxygen conducted an interview with Scott Bonn, a professor of criminology and author of Why We Love Serial Killers: The Curious Appeal of the World’s Most Savage Murderers on the subject. In 1998, according to Psychology Today, a member of the FBI stated outright at a conference that there are no female serial killers, period. But before Wuornos, most people believed that female serial killers didn’t exist.