Title: The return of the female serial killer – Trouble and Strife
Headings: The return of the female serial killer
The return of the female serial killer 2
Mythologizing murder
The female serial killer: monster, victim or psychopath?
Joanna Dennehy’s story
The question of sex
Becoming a hero
Cognitive dissonance
The sexual politics of serial killing

Content: I last wrote about this mythical figure in 1996, following the trial of Rosemary West. Now, almost 20 years later, she is back in the news, and it seems there might be something new to say about her. Mythologizing murder
When I refer to ‘the female serial killer’ as a ‘mythical figure’, I don’t mean to imply that she does not exist at all. But discussions of ‘the female serial killer’ as a ‘type’ give the impression that the examples we have heard of are just the visible tip of some vast hidden iceberg. That is a myth. In reality, as opposed to fiction, serial killing is a rare crime, committed by few individuals of either sex. And among those few individuals, the number of women is negligible. Before Joanna Dennehy, Britain had produced only two examples of the ‘female serial killer’—Myra Hindley and Rosemary West—in the space of fifty years. The other way in which ‘the female serial killer’ is mythologized is through the stories which are told about her—stories about who she is, why she kills, and above all what her killing has to do with her femaleness. Male serial killers are also mythologized, but without the same obsessive focus on their gender.