Title: The Unique Motives of Female Serial Killers | Psychology Today
Headings: The Unique Motives of Female Serial Killers
Scott A. Bonn Ph.D.
The Unique Motives of Female Serial Killers
Women kill for very different reasons than men.

Content: The methods they use for murder are more covert or low-profile, such as murder by poisoning, which was the preferred choice or modus operandi of female serial killers in the aforementioned research study. Other methods of murder that were also identified in the study of female serial killers include shooting, stabbing, suffocation, and drowning (1). Female comfort/gain killers are frequently involved in theft, fraud, or embezzlement prior to becoming serial killers due to their interest in material things. Although most female serial killers murder for money or other profit, some do it for the attention and sympathy they receive following the death of someone they cared for. It is not uncommon for female comfort/gain killers to be employed as caretakers in nursing homes for the elderly. Female serial killers generally operate in a specific place that they know well, such as their home, or a health care facility where they are employed. They rarely go trolling for victims out in the open as male serial killers often do, but rather find victims in their family or workplace. Dorothea Puente, the Sacramento boarding house landlady who robbed and murdered her elderly guests, was the prototypical, female hedonist comfort/gain killer. article continues after advertisement
Occasionally, a female serial killer will become involved with a male serial killer as part of a serial killing team. In such instances, the female will typically be the more submissive of the two and help to select victims in order to please her dominant male partner.