American Board of Information Security and Computer Forensics

by Frank S. Perri, JD, MBA, CPA; and Terrance G. Lichtenwald, PhD

Serial Killer: The Psychopathy of Aileen Wuornos

“Everybody has a right to defend themselves. That’s what I did. These were violent, violent rapes, and the other ones I had to beg for my life.”

~Aileen Wuornos (Vronsky, 2007).

It is estimated that serial murder accounts for about 0.5-1.0% of all murders or about 70-140 victims per year (McNamarra & Morton, 2004). Only small percentages, about 5-10%, of the perpetrators are believed to be female (Hickey, 2002). Unfortunately, there are no reliable national or international data to accurately determine the prevalence of female serial killers. Many of these women are labeled psychopathic (Brown, n.d.). Unlike their male counterparts who usually kill for sexual reasons, most female serial murderers kill either for money, excitement, and power, often in institutional settings such as hospitals and nursing homes (Wilson & Hilton, 1998). Of a total of about 400 serial killers identified between 1800 and 1995 in the United States, nearly 16%—a total of about 62 killers—collectively killed between 400 and 600 victims (Hickey, 2002). More than a third of the female serial killers made their appearance since 1970, and the numbers keep increasing (Schurman-Kauflin, 2000). Regrettably, the huge increase in the number of female serial killers has been ignored by the media, and not surprisingly law enforcement agencies and society as a whole fail to realize that women are capable of such brutality (Schurman-Kauflin, 2000). The authors believe that such figures are conservative given that many female serialists kill at home or at work in the capacity of caretakers such as nurses, babysitters, etc. where a child’s mysterious death could be explained away as a medical anomaly or to old age.

Attacks occur in accepted social and professional relationships, while the means to kill are often surreptitious like poison, drug overdose, or sudden suffocation; the murder in essence becomes hidden because of the belief that someone who established a bonding relationship with the child would not kill (such as a nurturing nurse, mother, caretaker, etc). Many female serialists tend to use poison and trap their victims on territory that is familiar to them and is shared with the victim (Vronsky, 2007). Female serial killers tend to have longer killing careers than men, presumably because their crimes are more carefully planned, methodical, precise and “hidden” on the whole (Hickey, 2002). As for other serial crimes committed by women, some aid their boyfriends and husbands in abducting, torturing, and killing women; such was the kind of assistance Karla Homolka gave her husband, Paul Bernardo, when they killed Karla’s sister and two other school girls.

“I killed those 7 men 1st degree murder and robbery…Not so much for thrill kill; I was into the robbery biz. I was into the robbery and to eliminate witnesses…I pretty much had ’em selected that they were gonna die…there was no self-defense.”

~Aileen Wuornos (Myers, 2005).

Aileen Wuornos, 34 years old at the time of the murders, admitted to killing seven men in a one-year period between 1989 and 1991. It should be noted that Wuornos’ upbringing can be described as nothing short of horrendous, and her borderline personality disorder could be partially caused by her traumatic upbringing and the physical and sexual abuse inflicted upon her (Myers, 2005). In this case Wuornos scored a 32 out of a possible 40 on the Hare Psychopathic Checklist Revised, placing her in the moderate to severe range of the disorder (Myers, 2005). She also met the criteria for borderline personality disorder and antisocial personality disorder. In Wuornos’ case, it is impossible to separate her abusive upbringing from biological predispositions toward violent criminality inherited from her absent father (Arrigo & Griffen, 2004). As an interesting side note, Wuornos is atypical of other female killers in that she appears to have killed strangers in public as opposed to family and acquaintances in private settings where women can operate with less scrutiny. Prior to her execution by lethal injection, Wuornos admitted that if she was ever released from prison or if she had not been arrested, she had planned to kill a minimum of 12 men (Myers et al., 2005). One can observe the psychopathic traits of blame externalization, egocentricity and lack of remorse in her television interview with Dateline where Wuornos stated to the victim’s family, “You husband raped me violently, Mallory and Carskaddon [the victims’ husbands]. And the other five tried, and I went through a heck of a fight. You owe me, not me owe you” (Vronsky, 2007).

Criminal Trials: The Ultimate Display of the Myth

“Remember, I look innocent. Impression is worth as much as facts.”

~Carol Bundy (Pearson, 1997)

Female serialist Carol Bundy’s statement to Doug Clark, the co-defendant, could have easily replaced the word “impression” with the word “myth”; the “myth” is worth as much as facts. Our legal system functions, especially criminal trials, as a funnel that captures our societal myths, which empty and reveal themselves onto the legal stage to persuade others to accept their message as fact. One would naturally think that from a criminal perspective, those who have to defend female killers would be the ones who would most rely on myths to persuade others, most notably a jury, that because she is female she does not have the capability, either because she was coerced, abused, exhibited mental illness traits, or purely for gender stereotypical reasons, to engage in heinous acts that men do. Yet the reality is that prosecutors and the courts rely on the myth if they must in making decisions either for trial strategy or for punishment.

Information is relatively sparse on how offenders manage the image they present to the criminal justice system. It is difficult to determine the extent to which people’s interaction involves impression management or self-presentation, which is the process by which a person tries to control the impressions that other people have of him or her; one can clearly observe from Carol Bundy’s quote that she understood the power of impression management. Impression management is relevant to the investigation and prosecution of crime, interviews and court proceedings, yet it has remained a relatively unexplored concept in forensic psychology. Psychopaths in the legal system use impression management to control the players in the system such as detectives and prosecutors, and this should not be surprising when the need to control and win is so very important to these individuals (Hakkanen-Nyholm & Hare, 2009).

Impression management should be taken seriously, considering how the myth is used in court to convey messages to the jury. For example, Diane Downs, the woman who killed her two children by shooting them, came to her jury trial pregnant, projecting the image that a mother could not commit such an act. Golay and Rutterschmidt projected a disposition of two elderly, grandmotherly-like women, and Karla Homolka projected the image that she was under the control over her husband when she helped kill three young women. The power of impression management being used to gain favor by decision makers, such as judges or jurors, should not be taken lightly, especially when dealing with psychopathic killers facing trial (Hakkanen-Nyholm & Hare, 2009). For example, after serving her sentence for killing three young women, Homolka appealed common restrictions that are placed on homicide parolees (such as reporting new addresses, abstaining from using narcotics, provide DNA samples to authorities, entering therapy, etc). Superior Court Justice James Brunton granted her appeal to have these restrictions lifted because she had no record of violence in prison.

In the Golay and Rutterschmidt case, the defense used the myth of age and gender to try to convince the jury that they are innocent. University of Southern California law professor Jean Rosenbluth stated that “The prosecution has to be worried that one or more jurors will feel sorry for these two old women” (Pringle, 2008). Jonathon Simon from the University of California at Berkeley Center for Criminal Justice said the presence of two older women could evoke favorable responses from the jurors; “When we see women generally, we either view them as nurturers or as needing protection, age is a proxy for non-threateningness” (Pringle, 2008). In other words, donning the feminine mask, they can manipulate the biases of the community by maintaining the idealized image of the feminine (Pearson, 1997)

We can observe how impression management impacts the type of punishment that women who kill can receive from the court. In 1999, Marie Noe, who admitted to killing her eight children, received probation. It had been suggested that her 72-year-old appearance, mannerisms and her gender affected the decision and because society is reluctant to believe that women kill serially, law and prosecutions lacked the motivation to investigate and vigorously prosecute these women (Schurman-Kauflin, 2000). Another female serialist received only 10 years in prison after admitting to killing her five children, but the jury felt sorry for her because she had lost all the children in her life (Schurman-Kauflin, 2000). Prosecutor and defense counsel believe that part of packaging impression management for court proceeding involves the use of packaging the myth for persuasive purposes. Accepting or rejecting of the myth for impression management depends on which position one is advocating. Thus, for Homolka, it was law enforcement and the prosecution who bought her impression of being a victim then packaged the impression to the jury, even though the prosecution indicated that it was scripted (Pearson, 1997). As one police investigator would tell her, “You’re innocent, you’re the victim” (Davis, 2001).

The myth of who is likely to be in control in a male-female kill team is still widely used in the courts for strategy purposes. In cases where there are male-female homicide teams, it is not unusual for both the defense, if representing the female, or law enforcement and the prosecution using the female to get to the male co-defendant, to use impression management to project the myth to a jury that the female was not in control of the kill, but was somehow coerced into performing the act by the male defendant and thus less culpable. The question remains whether their submissive trait is actually a guise of the puppet master to control the kill, such as whether Homolka used her husband as a proxy to kill her sister because she did not like the fact that her husband was attracted to her.

In order to prepare for her testimony against her husband, Homolka read Perfect Victim while in prison, which documents the case of a California teenager who was kidnapped and kept in a box for three years: ‘What made the victim convincing in court? Someone asked in the book. The juror replied: Her deadness. Her stillness” (Pearson, 1997). Homolka read up on battered women’s syndrome and post-traumatic stress disorder, mastering the jargon and its symptoms. In describing her relationship with Bernardo, Homolka frequently used the terms “cycles of abuse” and “learned helplessness.” When Homolka appeared in court to blame the sexual assault and slaughter of three young girls on Bernardo, her face was described as blank. During the trial she showed little emotion, only dabbing theatrically at her eyes with a handkerchief when the mothers of the dead girls made statements, and during the trial, Homolka was softly spoken and in full victim mode (Davis, 2001).

Lessons for Forensic Professionals and Law Enforcement

“I don’t think most parents who murder children wake up in the morning and say,

‘This is the day I’m going to kill my kids.’ ”

~Social Worker (Van Biema, 1994)

Is this social worker’s statement correct? Does this individual understand that parents who kill may not be mentally ill but possess psychopathy traits that, in fact, make them more prone to planning their child’s death? Does this person have training on how to spot psychopathic traits or are does he harbor the view that a mother is incapable of intentionally killing her child because of her gender? If the parent did plan the murder, could this professional participate in the evaluation of such a case without resorting to myths to resolve the “shock” he or she experiences? These questions are not to be posed simply to those in the social, behavioral and forensic fields, but also to law enforcement.

From a law enforcement perspective, the psychopath can be described as one of their greatest challenges because they are more likely to encounter this group than any other professional. Unfortunately, courses designed to study psychopathy are not a traditional part of basic law enforcement curriculum or for social, behavioral and forensic professionals. Often the study of violent offenders is lumped together under the same umbrella that somehow criminals are from the same mold (Herve & Yuille, 2007). It can be particularly unnerving for professionals to realize that a female is capable of brutal violence, especially homicide, and project normalcy to those she encounters. Unfortunately, many in the law enforcement and behavioral field resort to the myth in order to resolve an uncomfortable inconsistency between what they observe and what they want to believe.

Dr. Myriam Denov’s research on the myths surrounding sexual abuse by females and the impact of harboring such myths can be generalized to myths surrounding females who kill because they both rely on the same stereotypes of female aggression to come to conclusions about culpability regardless of the type of crime. Professionals’ beliefs about female aggression influence their approach to inquiry, interviews, investigation, and their reactions to female disclosures about their criminal acts have an enormous impact on who is labeled a victim or an offender (Denov, 2003). Criminal justice professionals may be more comfortable in prosecuting, convicting, and punishing those who fit the traditional stereotype, and in many cases that is men. Studies have shown, for example, that denial by police and psychiatric professionals of female aggression assisted professionals in understanding the act by realigning it with more culturally acceptable notions of female behavior (Denov, 2003). Consequently by denying female acts of aggression, the complexities that are intrinsic to cases remain unexplored by law enforcement who are employed to solve brutal crimes. Thus, to not consider female psychopathy or its risk factors for violence because one does not want to accept the fact that females can kill in a premeditated manner is considered professional negligence and exposes others to potential harm (Nicholls & Petrila, 2005).

The question is, how does a criminal investigator who may have to interview a female psychopath or forensic examiner who may have to evaluate a female defendant for court purposes avoid Cleckley’s error of minimizing criminal intent and marginalizing the damage done by the female psychopath evident in his case analysis of Anna? First, acknowledge the myths associated with the mask of innocence and the power that the myths can have over us (Denov, 2003). To inoculate ourselves against Cleckley’s error one must have a self-awareness of one’s own version as well as society’s version of gender stereotypes. Specifically, regardless of the relationships we may have had with significant women in our own lives that may have been positive, one must be able to emotionally and intellectually consider that a range of different female experiences exist beyond our own. Moreover, regardless of our own experience, the professional must be able to manage the cognitive dissonance of the dissimilar experiences of the female as care taker and female as abuser, female as peace maker and female as perpetrator. Finally, if the investigator or examiner cannot resolve the cognitive dissonance and locks into only one version of the myth prior to beginning the evaluation, he should seriously consider excusing himself from further involvement in the case.

The bias of the examiner can lead to a flawed initial approach to a case, which leads to a series of flawed decisions and ultimately a miscarriage of justice (Perri & Lichtenwald, 2009). Next, the examiner must approach the evaluation with a solid collection of data with the intent to test for the different myths regardless of the gender of the individual being evaluated. The steadfast view of an examiner regardless of the information gathered which contradicts an examiner’s views can lead to a variety of conflicts with the ethical guidelines defined by the American College of Forensic Examiners International (Perri & Lichtenwald, 2009). It is not unreasonable to enter the evaluation process with the understanding that the examinee has much to gain and little to lose by manipulating (Hakkanen-Nyholm & Hare, 2009). For example, in the analysis of Anna, Cleckley outlines that each of Anna’s criminal acts was followed with Anna participating in a “restorative justice” episode in which she displayed the emotional expectation of the mask she wore. It is at this point that Cleckley’s fatal flaw in Anna’s behavioral study is evident, because as the accumulation of the data increasingly supported the rejection of Anna’s external mask to Cleckley, Cleckley increasingly minimizes the criminal acts behind the mask.

To achieve an impartial collection of data, the examiner must be willing to examine his emotions for countertransference, such as the feeling of disappointment that the individual is not what she first seemed. In the event that the forensic examiner is not able to move past this countertransference to the examinee and the mask she wears, then the examiner must recuse him/herself from further involvement in the case. If the forensic examiner cannot “know thyself,” especially when the dichotomy between the mask and behavior is evident, then all of the forensic interview techniques, psychological tests, behavior rating scales, document reviews, and research regarding the female psychopath will be contaminated by the examiner’s own defense mechanisms, and thus, a distorted analysis is offered to the court, complete with a mix of the examiner’s biases (e.g., caring mother, wounded female in distress, unwilling participant unable to overcome the abusive partner in crime, etc.)—all of which hide the female psychopath from her crimes and will lead to a miscarriage of justice that is nothing short of professional negligence.

Lastly, the examiner who is able to follow procedure will evaluate not only the deception of the mask, but evaluate the quality of the deception. How did the examinee respond when the deception was exposed? For example, did the examinee advance another deception? Did the manipulation incorporate the examinee incorporating the wants and needs of the examiner? Specifically, did the examinee offer ego-enhancing statements design to bolster the examiner’s self-esteem?

Conclusion

Violence, especially murder, is a human issue and not a gender-specific phenomenon. Failing to recognize that psychopaths can exact brutal violence on others exposes any gender or age group to be preyed upon. Moreover, we observe how technology can be used to debunk myths surrounding female aggression as depicted in criminal trials. For example, we observe mothers being videotaped killing or attempting to kill their children while in a hospital, Karla Homolka being videotaped by her husband Paul as she too enjoyed the thrill of killing her sister and two other girls, Lisa Montgomery being audiotaped as she tells her husband that she is fooling the forensic professional into believing that she is mentally ill, and Rutterschmidt and Golay videotaped discussing their crimes.

It has become increasingly difficult to rely on the myth, whether prosecution or defense, when technology displays images that contradict the myth, revealing criminal behaviors that are gender-neutral. Furthermore, social, behavioral, law enforcement, legal personnel, and forensic professionals must be willing to consider whether they harbor any gender stereotypes that may inhibit them from accurately performing their duties.

Although myths of gender specific aggression persist, slowly, false perceptions are being exposed and hopefully corrected by the media, academic research, field work, and technology.

Methods and Sources

Sources of information consist of published case law, news media, scholarly articles and articles retrieved from the Web.

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