Female Killers

Cases where a woman was the killer, or one of them.

87 cases

Rat Alley

In Newcastle's crumbling Scotswood slums in 1968, four-year-old Martin Brown was found dead in a derelict house — and the trail led police to Mary Bell, a ten-year-old girl the neighborhood children already feared.

The Stolen Cradle

In September 2000, two expectant mothers met by chance in a Walmart and discovered they were neighbors — days later, Theresa Andrews vanished along with the Jeep Wrangler she had arranged to sell to a mystery buyer.

Written in Blue Ink

Nine-year-old Elizabeth Olten set off on the four-house walk home from a neighbor's in tiny St. Martin, Missouri, and never arrived — and her cell phone signal pointed hundreds of searchers into the dark woods directly behind their homes.

The Coffee Killer

Jessica Wongso arrived oddly early at Jakarta's trendy Olivier restaurant and ordered a Vietnamese iced coffee for her old college friend Mirna Salihin — a drink investigators would later determine contained a lethal dose of cyanide.

Arizona Torso Murder #1

Petite French stylist Valerie Pape and her brash bar-owner husband Ira Pomerantz were fixtures of Scottsdale society — until a witness saw a blonde woman in high heels and gloves backing a blue Jaguar up to a supermarket dumpster.

Arizona Torso Murder #2

Six-times-married showgirl Marjorie Orbin finally landed the comfortable Scottsdale life with art dealer Jay Orbin — then Jay vanished on the road, and a blue Rubbermaid container turned up at the edge of the desert.

The Killer Bride

Days after her Kalispell, Montana wedding, reluctant bride Jordan Graham was confiding doubts to friends — and then her new husband Cody Johnson disappeared, followed by a mysterious email claiming he had fallen from a cliff in Glacier National Park.

Taking a Chance

Rick Chance, the windshield king of Phoenix TV commercials, arrived at a hotel-room business meeting carrying a briefcase holding more than a million dollars in jewelry — unaware of what Brandi Hungerford had planned for the evening.

The Tiger Parents

Hann and Bich Pan pushed their daughter Jennifer toward perfection at any cost — and when she told police three armed men had burst into the family's Toronto-area home, investigators noticed her story didn't quite add up.

A Grisly New Orleans Tale

Bartenders Zack Bowen and Addie Hall became French Quarter folk heroes for riding out Hurricane Katrina in style — a year before a note found on the roof of the Omni Royal Orleans Hotel sent police to their Rampart Street apartment.

The Alligator Theory

On the morning of his sixth wedding anniversary, Mike Williams set out alone to hunt ducks among the stumps of Lake Seminole and never returned — and with no body to recover, investigators reasoned the lake's alligators had left nothing to find.

The Homeschoolers

Eleven-year-old Hana Alemu was adopted from Ethiopia into Larry and Carri Williams' strict homeschooling household of nine in Sedro-Woolley, Washington — a rescue rooted in faith, and in the harsh discipline of a book called To Train Up A Child.

Unlucky 13

On Friday the 13th of April 2012, Brittany Killgore was packing to leave Fallbrook, California when Marine Louis Perez offered a Hornblower dinner cruise in San Diego — an evening entangled with Dorothy Maraglino, a woman who despised her.

Coercive Control

Sally Challen was fifteen when she fell for car dealer Richard Challen, and she stayed devoted through four decades of his cruelty and control — until a Saturday lunch at their Surrey home ended with the hammer she had carried in her handbag.

The Black Widow

Lonely widower Fred Weeks proposed within days of white-haired, rosy-cheeked 'Millie' knocking on his Nova Scotia door — and on the honeymoon ferry to Newfoundland, he suddenly couldn't remember how to start his own car.

Devious Dixie

On Halloween night 1984, accountant Mel Dyson worked late at his Huntington Beach office while his common-law wife Dixie kept to her routine — a routine that, along with two men named George Ira Lamb and Enrico Vasquez, would draw hard questions from detectives.

Like Mother, Like Son

In Pennsylvania's Pocono Mountains, Cheryl Kunkle raised her son Greg Rowe on resentment and control. When sixteen-year-old Kristin Fisher refused the abortion Greg demanded and gave birth to baby Kaylee, mother and son came to share far more than a grudge.

A Heartless Mother

After her young son David died, St. Louis mother Ellen Boehm bought a new car rather than pay his $2,348 funeral bill — and seemed more upbeat than ever. She still held a $5,000 life insurance policy on each of her surviving children.

The Egyptian Beauty

Fifty-six-year-old Texan Bill Nelson met Omaima Aref, a twenty-three-year-old Egyptian beauty, over a game of pool in a Costa Mesa dive bar, and a whirlwind romance began. Weeks later, a Thanksgiving Day phone call to his stepdaughter was the last anyone heard from Bill.

Her Dissociative State

Betty Devore carried the scars of a brutal Iowa childhood — beatings, rape, and a mother in and out of mental institutions. Three weeks after meeting charming antique dealer Harold Frieberg at a singles meeting in Fairfield, she married him. Her buried past came along.

The Dinner Theater Murder

Hoping to rekindle a stagnant marriage, Steven Hricko booked a Valentine's weekend at a Maryland resort featuring a murder-mystery dinner theater show. His wife Kimberly — a surgical technologist whose job included disposing of unused drugs — was suddenly, surprisingly affectionate.

Mommy's Little Helpers

Hilma Witte's Indiana household was ruled by her husband Paul's beatings — until it wasn't. Before the story ended, a grandmother lay dead in her bed, shot with a medieval crossbow as she slept, and Hilma's teenage sons carried the secrets.

A Staged Scene

Daniel Carlson came home to the family's trailer in tiny Kapowsin, Washington, to find his wife Lisa shot to death on the couch. On the 911 call he spoke in a flat monotone, unable to recall his own address — and police found no forced entry.

The Killer Clown

Just before 11:00 a.m., Marlene answered the doorbell of her Florida home to find a clown in an orange wig holding balloons and a basket of flowers — a gift, she assumed, from her husband Michael Warren. What happened next took decades to unravel.

Worlds Worst Mom

Driving near Lake Tahoe at dawn in June 1984, Maybel Harrison spotted flames beside the highway: a young woman burning on a makeshift pyre, bound, gagged, and unidentifiable. Nearly a decade later, Terry Knorr told police a story about her own family that no one believed.

Baby Lollipops

A utility crew working along Miami's North Bay Road spotted what looked like a candy wrapper behind a hedge. It was a lollipop decal on a tiny shirt — worn by a battered, starved toddler no one could identify, a boy the case would name Baby Lollipops.

Beyond Redemption

Sixteen-year-old Jason Sweeney saved every paycheck from his father's construction company to pay for military academy — his first step toward becoming a Navy SEAL. In Philadelphia's Fishtown, his lifelong best friend Eddie Batzig and the Coia brothers were growing jealous of every dollar.

Rat in the Oven

Deltona limo driver Jimmy Sheaffer owed everyone — banks, payday lenders, bookies — so he quietly arranged for his neighbor Angela Stoldt to cash his disability checks for a hundred dollars a month. It was a favor between friends that wouldn't stay friendly.

The Bears

Susan Barnes traded a posh Scottsdale life for LSD and free love, then met marijuana dealer James Carson. Reborn as 'Michael and Suzan Bear,' they believed God had tasked them with ridding the world of witches — and aspiring actress Keryn Barnes became an early follower.

The Closet

At 3:00 a.m. in Akron, Ohio, patrol officers found three emaciated, shoeless boys wandering the sidewalk, drinking from garden hoses and digging through trash cans. Over foot-long sandwiches — the best food they'd ever tasted — the brothers began to explain what their lives had been.

A Perfect Holiday

Failed stage hypnotist Martin Smith controlled every corner of Lianne's life — even after his crimes surfaced and the family fled Britain for Spain under false names. For her children, Rebecca and Daniel, the perfect holiday their mother promised would be their last.

Wheres Savanna

Nursing student Savanna Greywind, twenty-two and pregnant, lived with her close-knit family in a Fargo apartment building where neighbors rarely got past hello in the hallway. Then the woman from the third floor knocked on the Greywinds' door — and Savanna answered.

They Got in the Way

Louise Porton had been an angry outsider since childhood near Birmingham, England; by eighteen she was openly selling sex and bragging about the money. Motherhood arrived in the form of two little daughters — and Louise came to see them as obstacles.

Pretty in Pink

Eighteen-year-old artist Ezra McCandless fell for Jason Mengel, a National Guard medic nearly twice her age — then came Alex Woodworth, the barista they both knew from Racy's coffee shop in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. The triangle could not hold.

The Sunday School Teacher

Eight-year-old Sandra Cantu skipped across the street outside her Tracy, California mobile home park on March 27, 2009, and was never seen again. At a community vigil, a tearful Sunday school teacher named Melissa Huckaby pressed a note into the hands of police.

Hidden Betrayal

Interior designer Jade Janks had cared for her ailing stepfather, Tom Merriman, through his decline in Solana Beach, California. Then, on his computer, she discovered more than a hundred intimate photos of herself — meticulously organized, some dating back to when she was sixteen.

The Kuwaiti Wedding

Nasra al-Enezi's mental illness went undiagnosed her whole life in Kuwait, where stigma kept her suffering in silence as she raised two special-needs sons. When her husband Zayed decided to take a second wife, the wedding celebration ended in catastrophe.

Better Off in Heaven

To her Pittsburgh-area church and school colleagues, Laurel Schlemmer was sweet, kind-hearted, and devout — a woman who had never wanted the children her husband Mark insisted on. One morning, with their grandmother watching television downstairs, Laurel ran a bath for the boys.

The Wrong Wife

Chef Daniel Brophy unlocked the Oregon Culinary Institute at 7:22 a.m., just as he always did. Minutes later, a colleague found the beloved instructor dead on the kitchen floor — two bullets aimed at his heart, a scene as calm as a calculated assassination.

The Ice Cream Killer

Since age seven, Esti Carranza had soothed herself with vivid fantasies of killing her abusive father. Years later, she and her husband Holger opened the Schleckeria, a Vienna ice cream shop with a cellar below — and a marriage curdling behind the counter.

The Goleta Postal Massacre

Coworkers at the Goleta mail facility knew Jennifer San Marco as the quiet sorter who argued with someone who wasn't there. After being forced out of her job, she moved to New Mexico, bought a handgun — and in January 2006, she came back.

The Cosplay Cam Girl

Melissa Turner had reinvented herself — shedding ninety pounds and building a career as a cosplay cam girl — before an October 2019 call to 911 reporting her boyfriend Matt Tressler unresponsive in their backyard. The security cameras told a different story than she did.

The Frame-up

Pam Hupp was the last person to see her friend Betsy Faria alive — and the newly named beneficiary of her life insurance. When Betsy's husband Russ was convicted of her murder, the story seemed over. It was only beginning.

The Suitcase Killer

Bill McGuire vanished after a heated argument with his wife Melanie, a New Jersey fertility-clinic nurse, in April 2004. Then three suitcases surfaced in the Chesapeake Bay — each holding part of a grim answer.

Harvard Trained

Amy Bishop grew up in Braintree, Massachusetts, forever in the shadow of her effortlessly brilliant younger brother, Seth. What happened between them one afternoon in 1986 would be ruled an accident — and stay buried for more than two decades.

The French Nanny

Sabrina Kouider craved fame and glamour long before she and her partner Sam Medouni brought a shy French au pair named Sophie Lionnet into their London home to care for the children. Behind that front door, Sophie's life became a nightmare no one outside could see.

The Slumber Party

After her bitter second divorce, Sandi Nieves gathered her daughters for a special slumber party, letting them fall asleep together in the kitchen of their California home. What the morning brought would put her at the center of one of the state's most disturbing trials.

Friendly Reminders

No one outside the family noticed that thirteen-year-old Erica Parsons had been missing for a year and a half — until her adoptive brother Jamie, kicked out after a fierce argument, walked into the Rowan County Sheriff's Office with a chilling accusation about their parents.

No Body, No Crime

On Mother's Day 2018, hairstylist Joleen Cummings failed to pick up her three children in Yulee, Florida. Suspicion fell on a coworker at Tangles Hair Salon — a woman who, it turned out, had lived under eighteen different names across fourteen states.

The Krug Park Killers

A jogger's trembling 911 call one October morning in 2016 reported a body on a trail in St. Joseph, Missouri's Krug Park. Seventeen-year-old Kaytlin Root had been lured there by a Facebook message from someone calling herself 'Amanda Panda.'

The Butcher of Aberdeen

On the last day of February 2000, coal miner John Price told coworkers in Aberdeen, Australia, 'If I'm not here tomorrow, it's because Kath killed me.' Hours earlier, he had taken out a restraining order against his partner, Katherine Knight.

Langworthy Road

Two motorists on a country lane outside Manchester stopped for a horribly burned girl staggering toward the road. 'Help me. I'm Suzanne Capper,' she rasped — then named every one of her tormentors, exposing a week of horror at 97 Langworthy Road.

The Pizza Bomber

Pizza deliveryman Brian Wells robbed an Erie, Pennsylvania bank with a bomb locked around his neck, pleading with police that someone had forced him into a deadly scavenger hunt. Minutes later, on live television, the collar began to beep.

Child of Chaos

Lorraine Thorpe was fifteen, drifting between squalid flats, and caring for her alcoholic father among Ipswich's forgotten street drinkers in the summer of 2009. What unfolded inside that hidden world would force Britain to confront an almost unimaginable case.

The Unraveling

To neighbors in Gilbert, Arizona, Marissa DeVault and Dale Harrell looked like a typical family — generous enough to take in a brain-injured Army veteran the kids called 'Uncle Stan.' What detectives found in the master bedroom shattered that picture.

Shared Psychosis

Swedish twins Ursula and Sabina Eriksson lived quiet, unremarkable lives an ocean apart for forty years. Then, in May 2008, within hours of reuniting in Ireland, something shifted — setting off one of the most bizarre and baffling cases ever caught on camera.

Count to Three

A security camera caught sixteen-year-old Skylar Neese slipping out her bedroom window at 12:30 a.m. and climbing into a waiting car in Star City, West Virginia. She knew the people inside — which made what happened next all the more incomprehensible.

The Pink Notebook

Tracey Richter told the 911 dispatcher that two intruders had attacked her in her Early, Iowa home and that she had shot one to save her children. The dead man was a quiet twenty-year-old neighbor — and a pink notebook would tell a far stranger story.

Bail Granted

Dr. Andrew Bagby, a young physician beloved by his Pennsylvania patients, was found dead after ending his turbulent relationship with Shirley Turner, a medical-school classmate twelve years his senior. She fled to Newfoundland — carrying Andrew's unborn son.

The Witch's Castle

Hunters walking a frozen Indiana soybean field in January 1992 thought they had found a burned mannequin. It was twelve-year-old Shanda Sharer — and those responsible were four teenage girls, drawn together by jealousy over a single classmate.

The Forbidden Closet

For years, Michele Kalina kept one closet in the family's Reading, Pennsylvania apartment locked, forbidding her daughter ever to look inside. In July 2010, nineteen-year-old Elizabeth finally opened it — and called 911 about what she found in a cooler.