Why is it when we are watching a tv show like Criminal Minds or the news about a mass killing that unidentified suspect is rarely a woman? Contrary to the belief when you think of someone killing a person because they are being overly “emotional” or “can’t handle stressful situations all that great” you think of women. You think this way due to years of society putting these labels on women to put them down and make women feel inferior in yet another aspect of life when actually men are more likely to commit homicide than women. This is because of a variety of factors from the reasoning behind it to why men and women kill for different reasons to there not being enough cases of female mass killings to thoroughly study.
Overall, in accordance to Adam Lankford, a criminal justice professor, women are less likely to commit murder than women. Men commit about 13% of the murders committed in the United States compared to the 10% that women commit. Male and female serial killers choose their victims and how they kill them in very different ways. Men serial killers tend to “hunt” their victims who are most likely strangers to them and rarely women serial killers tend to “gather” their victims where they are most likely to kill someone they already knew or are around them often for whatever reason. Men stalk their victims to ensure when they are ready to grab them or confront them they know their schedule and won’t have any surprises spring on them to ruin their plan essentially. With women, they choose people they already have a relationship so they already know their schedule and everything about them.
The difference in the motive behind why male and female serial killers differ. Male serial killers commit murder for all kinds of reasons but one common factor has to do with sexual compulsion, this compulsion not always being physical but psychological and sometimes both. Meaning that male serial killers do not have to rape their victims, but torture or maim in such a way that eludes to the fact of some sort of sexual compulsion behind it. Using brute force and more violent means, like using a weapon. In most cases when profiling men as to why they committed these murders, they said they have felt driven or even compelled in a way to commit them according to Crime Investigation.
Female serial killers are polar opposite and their motive is more gain. Gain meaning that they will kill someone close to them to gain financial stability, gain that relief of revenge or justification for wrongs they were dealt with (at least in the killers’ mind), and sometimes just sympathy where this is extremely rare in male serial killers. Using fixation of some sort, drowning, and yes even poisoning to kill more so than brute force. Things that would be harder to track more so than the messier crime scene when using brute force.
Are there more male serial killers simply because they are easier to catch than female ones or because male serial killers are more driven to take the final step to kill than female ones? Well, I will let you decide, but I want you to think about how males feel more compelled to murder to prove some sort of point whether it is big or small to them for whatever their motives are, proving why it is rare for there to be female serial killers. But also remember, that anyone is capable of committing murder regardless if they are male or female.
