Female Serial Killer Behaviour & Psychology, Explained

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Photo: Peter Cosgrove/AP Photo.

When asked to name a famous serial killer, plenty leap to mind (especially in the age of true crime). Maybe your mind goes to Ted Bundy or Dennis Raider, aka the BTK Killer. Maybe you think of Jeffrey Dahmer or the Zodiac Killer. Aileen Wuornos might be among the top five people you come up with, but you're more than likely to name a man before a woman in this hypothetical guessing game.

But, of course, there are women who commit serial homicides — they aren't as common as men, but that hasn't stopped criminologists from developing their own theories and profiles of Wuornos and her ilk.

Ahead, we spoke with Peter Vronsky, author of Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters and the recently released Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers from the Stone Age to the Present, about what's considered "normal" among female serial killers — and what makes them "overall better" than men at serial homicide.

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