Overall, men are somewhere between six and seven times more likely to kill than women, outside of domestic settings (around 23% of killings in partner-related homicides are committed by women – usually after themselves being physically, emotionally, and psychologically abused by their partner over a long period of time). When it comes to serial killers, female offenders are extremely rare, and of those we know of, in almost half the cases they committed their crimes with a male partner/counterpart. Earlier this month, nurse Lucy Letby was convicted of the murder of seven babies, in the UK hospital (Countess of Chester Hospital) where she worked, adding her name – especially in the UK – to a very short list of female serial killers. The fact that female serial killers are so rare, helps explain why she was able to evade detection for so long i.e., those working in healthcare settings generally believe themselves and their colleagues to have the patient’s best interests at heart. This in one of the reasons that Dr Harold Shipman (the UK’s most prolific serial killer, with 15 confirmed victims, and possibly over 200 more) was able to commit so many killings, without the coroner(s) becoming suspicious; why would a doctor want to kill elderly patients when there was no financial gain. He was only caught when he altered one of his patient’s wills, and a taxi driver who used to drop many of his patients off at the surgery, came to pick them up after their visit only to find they had died during it (most elderly patients die at home, not whilst visiting their doctor at a surgery). Lucy Letby was able to fly under the radar due to biases concerning her profession (like Shipman), and the fact that women rarely engage in such offenses. In this article I want to look at the Lucy Letby case and take a look at female serial killers (FSK), and why although there doesn’t exist either a classification system concerning FSK or a distinct profile of the “typical” female serial killer, Lucy Letby shared several characteristics with those that preceded her.
Even defining what constitutes serial killing can be difficult/problematic, as law-enforcement and academics working in different locales may have slightly different definitions of the offense e.g., length of time between killings, number of victims, length of time within which all offenses were carried out, whether to include those victims the killer knew etc. However, when it comes to the study of serial killers, most can agree that statistically such offenders are extremely rare, and the vast majority are male. This provides a challenge when engaging in the science of “bottom up” profiling and applying a scientific approach to the subject. In “bottom up” profiling only the “facts” are used to create a profile. Alternatively, the “top down” approach used by the FBI includes the “ideas” and “experiences” of the profiler; which results in some startling successes but also creates many failures. Because of the rarity of the FSK, there is only a small amount of data to use, however there is enough that nobody should have really been surprised when Lucy Letby’s offenses were discovered. In the US, around 40% of female serial killers are either nurses or work in some form of professional capacity in healthcare settings (Harrison, 2015). Letby was also not unique in the methods she used to kill. Two of her intended victims – who survived – were two prematurely born babies; she had added insulin to their intravenous food bags. Poisoning, rather than causing trauma and/or direct physical injury is a preferred method of killing used by female serial killers. Letby is also not unique in her choice of victims. Studies have shown that two groups that a FSK is likely to target are: children and the elderly.
One area where FSK differ from their male counterparts is that they tend to be geographically stable/consistent. Last year I wrote an article on the types of occupations that male serial killers tend to favor/gravitate towards (click here to read the article). When seeking employment, they tend to look for jobs that offer them a lack of supervision (nobody is watching them), freedom of movement, and solitude. Male serial killers are often found in types of employment like long distance truck/lorry drivers (Peter Sutcliffe, John Robert Williams, William Bonin, and Keith Hunter Jesperson etc.). Letby killed in one location, rather than several, as did the FSK Rose West, who along with her husband (who is now seen as likely to have been her accomplice, rather than the other way round), killed and then buried their victims in/at their home. It may be that Letby believed nobody would think to link a female nurse with a number of suspicious incidents. Beverly Allitt, another UK nurse, avoided detection until someone realized that of twenty-five suspicious incidents that had occurred at the hospital, including four deaths, over a fairly long time period, she had been present at all of them. Hospitals are places where deaths occur, and nobody wants to believe a colleague is either deliberately or negligently the cause of them, making it easier and simpler to adopt a state of denial and excuse/explain away incidents, rather than investigate something we emotionally don’t want to find a particular answer to.
We often don’t see things coming due to the biases we naturally have e.g., women don’t kill and not in a serial fashion, and those working in healthcare always have our best interests at heart. We would rather believe that a sports coach has taken a special interest in our child because they are likeable and gifted kid, than go through the thought process of questioning whether their actual motivation is darker and more nefarious. Predators don’t announce themselves and use our lack of curiosity concerning them to avoid detection. Lucy Letby looked like a typical, 30-something nurse, and Rose West appeared from the outside to be an ordinary, middle-aged housewife etc. Neither announced who they truly were.