The Serial Killer Files by Harold Schechter Read Free Book Online Page B

intensification,” in the words of Dr. Richard von Krafft-Ebing) of normal male sexuality.
    But if this intensely savage type of serial murder is exclusive to men—a monstrous expression of male sexuality—what, then, is the equivalent female form? Clearly, it must reflect female sexuality. Generally speaking, female serial killers differ from their male counterparts in roughly the same way that the sexual responses and behavior of women typically differ from those of men.
    A useful analogy here is pornography. It is a truth universally acknowledged that—while men are aroused by extremely raw depictions of abrupt, anonymous, anatomically explicit sex—women in general prefer their pornography to involve at least a suggestion of emotional intimacy and leisurely romance. Whether these differences in taste are a function of biology or culture is an open question. The indisputable fact is that the differences are real.
    An analogous distinction holds true for serial killers. Female psychopaths are no less depraved than their male counterparts. As a rule, however, brutal penetration is not what turns them on. Their excitement comes—not from violating the bodies of strangers with phallic objects—but from a grotesque, sadistic travesty of intimacy and love: from spooning poisoned medicine into the mouth of a trusting patient, for example, or smothering a sleeping child in its bed. In short, from tenderly turning a friend, family member, or dependent into a corpse—from nurturing them to death. (What made Aileen Wuornos unusual was that she was a rare, though by no means unique, example of a woman who killed her victims in the assaultive, phallic style of male serial stalkers like David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz.) The majority of female serial killers throughout history have relied on poison to dispatch their victims.
    For most people, there is a quaint Arsenic and Old Lace quality associated with such crimes, as though disposing of a few people by feeding them arsenic-laced oatmeal were a rather genteel form of murder.
    The truth is that, compared to the lingering agonies suffered by the average poisoning victim, the deaths meted out by male serial killers like Jack the Ripper, “Son of Sam,” or the Boston Strangler—the swift executions by knife blade, bullet, or garrote—seem positively humane. Female poisoners, in other words, differ from the popular stereotype of the dotty old maid getting rid of a burdensome houseguest with a little nip of lethal hot cocoa. Many are terrifying sadists who derive intense perverted pleasure from the sufferings of their victims.
    There is no doubt that male serial sex-murder tends to be more lurid—more spectacularly violent—than the female variety. Whether it is more evil is another matter. After all, which is worse: to dismember a streetwalker after slitting her throat, or to cuddle in bed with a close friend you’ve just poisoned, and to climax repeatedly as you feel the body beside you subside into death?
CASE STUDY
    Jane Toppan, the Jolly Psychopath
    Like so many other serial killers, Jane Toppan was the product of a severely unstable upbringing. Her real name was Honora Kelley. She was born in Boston in 1857, the child of a poor Irish couple. Her mother died when Honora was a baby, leaving her in the dubious care of her father, Peter, a chronic drunk prone to violent outbursts and so wildly eccentric that his neighborhood nickname was “Kelley the Crack” (as in “crackpot”).
    In 1863, Kelley—eager to be free of his family burdens—deposited Honora and her older sister Delia in the Boston Female Asylum, an institution for orphaned and other desperately needy girls. He never saw his children again.
    Less than two years later, Honora was “placed out”—signed over as a full-time, live-in servant—to Mrs.
    Abner Toppan, a middle-aged widow from Lowell, Massachusetts. Though never formally adopted, she was given the name Jane Toppan. Her position in the household