Seven Female Serial Killers Who Predate Aileen Wuornos

Aileen Wuornos is widely accepted as the first female serial killer. The problem is, that’s not entirely accurate. While the world of serial killers is predominately populated by men, women have been making their own contributions for generations. In fact, some experts think many female murderers and serial killers may have simply gone unnoticed as people at the time would have been much less likely to suspect a woman.

Still, there are several notable female serial killers who were operating long before Aileen was a twinkle in her dysfunctional mother’s eye.

Amelia Dyer
Years of Operation: Unknown — 1896
Body Count: 12 confirmed (200–400+ attributed)

Victorian Britain was full of unpleasantness. Harsh class divisions paved the way for squalid living conditions and lives of hardscrabble toil for many people. When a young woman found herself pregnant in Victorian Britain she would often make use of a local ‘baby farmer’.

Baby farmers would agree to adopt a woman’s unwanted child in exchange for payments to support the child. Some baby farmers would find families to adopt the children while others would care for the children throughout their lives. Trained as a nurse but widowed with two small children in 1869, Amelia Dyer turned to baby farming as a way to support herself and her two children.

Over the years, several children in her care died and she was convicted of negligence. After serving six months’ hard labour, she returned to her work as a baby farmer with one major change: she simply began murdering the children directly, often strangling them and dumping their bodies.

Eventually the bagged corpse of a baby was found along the Thames and evidence led authorities right back to Dyer. She was tried and convicted of a single murder, though authorities would eventually confirm a further dozen. The “Ogress of Reading” as she was known, was hanged on June 10, 1896 (some sources say 1897) and later would become suspected of hundreds (estimates range from 200–400).

Jane Toppan
Years of Operation: 1895–1901
Body Count: 31+

The early life of Jane Toppan is sketchy at best. Her mother died young of tuberculosis and her father, Peter Kelley, was nicknamed “Kelley the Crack” (as in “crackpot”). He was also known locally for being an alcoholic and at least a little bit crazy. Rumor had it that he eventually went so mad that he sewed his own eyelids shut. When Jane was 6, she and her older sister were dumped at the Boston Female Asylum, an orphanage for young girls. The notes there say that she was “rescued from a very miserable home”.

Two years after being placed in the orphanage, Jane was placed as an indentured servant in the home of Mrs. Ann C. Toppan in Lowell, Massachusetts. In 1885, Toppan moved on and began training as a nurse, where she developed a reputation as being friendly and engaging, earning her the nickname ‘Jolly Jane’.

Toppan would choose her favorite patients — almost always the elderly — and begin experimenting with different dosages of morphine and atropine. She would record what the changes did to their conditions and would fake chart information in order to keep hospital officials from catching on.

Jane didn’t just slowly poison and torture her victims to death, though. She also derived great pleasure from getting into bed with them and staring into their eyes as a way of seeing the “inner workings of their soul”. She derived great pleasure from the murders. She saw herself both as an angel of mercy and an aspiring serial killer of epic proportions. After she confession to 31 murders, she told investigators it was her ambition “to have killed more people — helpless people — than any other man or woman who ever lived”.

In 1902, Toppan had confessed to 31 murders and was declared insane, much to her dismay. She was found not guilty by reason of insanity and committed for life in the Taunton Insane Hospital where she died in 1938.

Amy Archer-Gilligan
Years of Operation: 1910–1917
Body Count: 10–50

Amy Archer-Gilligan ran a nursing home in Connecticut called “Archer Home for the Elderly and Infirm.” Between 1911 and 1916, nearly 50 of her residents — including 5 of her husbands — died. All five husbands had “sizable” insurance policies that were put in place shortly before their deaths. She often befriended the people in her care and became close enough that they would amend their wills to include the kindly Amy Archer-Gilligan. Spoiler alert: Once they changed their wills, residents would more often than not experience a rapid decline in health followed by death.

In the end, Archer-Gilligan was arrested and charged with five murders, though her lawyers managed to have the charges reduced to a single count of murder. In 1917 she was found guilty and sentenced to death. She appealed her case and was granted a new trial in 1919. This time she pled insanity but was once again found guilty of murder. She was ultimately sentenced to life in prison and died in 1962. Her story served as inspiration for the movie Arsenic and Old Lace, starring Cary Grant. The film was a popular hit and remains in production in various playhouses today.

Tillie Klimek
Years of Operation: 1914–1921
Body Count: 5–7

Ottilie “Tillie” Klimek was brought to America as an infant by her Polish immigrant parents. Her family settled in the Chicago area where she married John Mitkiewicz in 1895. After being married nearly 20 years, John passed away after a brief illness, leaving Tillie a widow. Thus began an unlucky streak for Tillie in terms of romance. Joseph Ruskowski, her second husband, also succumbed after a short illness as did a boyfriend … after he dumped her.

By that time Tillie’s third husband, Frank Kupczyk, died in 1921. After being widowed three times — four, if you count the boyfriend — in the span of seven years, people started asking questions. Even then, it took her fourth husband, Joseph Klimek, falling ill before anyone took action. Klimek was tested for arsenic poisoning and the results were positive. As a result, the bodies of Tillie’s previous husbands were exhumed and tested. Each came back positive for arsenic poisoning while the dirt around them tested clean.

As information was uncovered about Tillie’s previous relationships, details emerged that implied she relished in the slow death arsenic poisoning delivered. Over time, she developed a reputation for being psychic since she would tease her husbands about dying soon and then, lo and behold, they would die.

In the case of her third husband, Frank Kupczyk, the jokes were well-known by the couple’s neighbors. Tillie would often tell neighbors that Frank “would not live long” and would joke that he didn’t have “two inches to live.” In the mornings she would even greet Frank by saying “It won’t be long now,” and “You’ll be dying soon.”

While Tillie’s attitude about her husband’s death by arsenic was jovial, it’s important to remember what it’s like to die by arsenic poisoning.

First — it’s not a quick death. Even if someone gives you a fully fatal dose, the experience usually lasts at least 24 hours. Since all of Tillie’s husbands were known to have suffered from some kind of acute sickness before their deaths, it’s reasonable to assume they suffered for a week or more. Common symptoms include the standard abdominal pain, diarrhea, nausea and vomiting as well as the more exotic swollen and inflamed skin, abnormal heart rhythm and tingling of fingers and toes. All the while, Tillie would have needed to maintain or increase the amount of arsenic she gave them.

In March 1923, Klimek was found guilty of the murder of her third husband, Frank Kupczyk. She was sentenced to life in prison, the harshest sentence that had ever been leveled against a woman at that time in the Chicago area. She later died in prison on November 20, 1936.

Nannie Doss
Years of Operation: 1927–1954
Body Count: 11

Nannie Doss was born Nancy Hazel in 1927 and was one of five children. Her family life was dysfunctional. She had a childhood marked with neglect, abuse, manipulation and sexual molestation. When she was 7 years old she and her family boarded a train to visit relatives in southern Alabama. Along the way the train made an emergency stop which sent the young Nannie flying headfirst into a metal bar. For years after the incident, she would suffer headaches, blackouts and depression.

Nannie was an avid reader of her mother’s romance novels and later, the magazines that came into the house. She was especially interested in the ‘Lonely Hearts’ columns. She would read through the personal ads and daydream about the kind of romantic life she would have once she escaped her childhood home.

That chance came when Nannie was 16 and met Charley Braggs, a co-worker at a linen factory. The two dated for four months and then married with the approval of Nannie’s father. Charley was the only child of a single mother whom insisted on living with the young couple after they were married. While his mother took up much of Charley’s time and attention, he and Nannie managed to have four daughters between 1923 and 1927.

Over time, Nannie became increasingly stressed out by motherhood. She began drinking more regularly and took up smoking. The couple fought constantly and each suspected the other of having an affair. The truth was they both routinely cheated on each other. Tragedy struck in 1927 when the couple suddenly lost their two middle daughters. Their deaths were attributed to food poisoning. Charley fled not long after and took his first-born daughter with him. His mother died shortly after. He returned in 1928, demanding a divorce.

Nannie granted the divorce and soon began using the ‘Lonely Hearts’ columns she loved as a child to find her next chance for love. Over the years Nannie would find love again, but also tragedy. As she wound her way through several marriages she would lose several members of her family.

Of course, none of those losses would come as a surprise to Nannie since she was eventually connected to their deaths. In the end, the Giggling Granny would confess to killing four husbands, two children of her own, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson, and a mother-in-law. On May 17, 1955 Nannie Doss pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life in prison. She died a decade later, at the age of 59, from leukemia in the hospital ward of the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Mary Elizabeth Wilson
Years of Operation: 1955–1957
Body Count: 2–4

Mary Elizabeth Wilson (nee Cassidy) and John Knowles were married in 1914. The couple celebrated 41 years of marriage before John died in 1955. After his death, Mary would experience the same troubled love life that befell so many of the women in this list. Over the next two years, three more men would die shortly after meeting and marrying Mary.

In each case, Wilson would pocket the man’s estate, though she didn’t exactly aim that high. Among the four men, Wilson inherited a total of £192 — roughly $5,600 today. Wilson also became increasingly cavalier about going through the motions with her husbands. Ernest Wilson, Mary’s fourth and final husband, died within a year of meeting her. He was her biggest payout with an estate of £100, but Mary didn’t even bother swinging by his funeral after she cashed the check.

In the end, the Merry Widow of Windy Nook was ultimately convicted of murdering two of her husbands with beetle poison and was sentenced to death. Later, her sentence was commuted to life. She died at 70 years of age in HM Prison Holloway in 1963.

Velma Barfield
Years of Operation: 1969–1978
Body Count: 6

Velma Barfield had it tough from day one when she was born to an abusive father and an indifferent mother. Her childhood traumas swung from violent physical abuse to criminal levels of neglect. She escaped her dysfunctional home at the age of 17, when she married Thomas Burke. Over the next few years the couple had two children and reportedly got along well.

Then Velma had a hysterectomy and developed chronic back pain, which led to a change in behavior. The couple began to fight bitterly and the altercations became increasingly dramatic — and violent. One night in 1969, Velma gathered her children and left after Burke had passed out. When she and her children returned, they found the house burned to the ground with Burke still inside.

Less than a year later, Velma’s new home (which was heavily insured) would burn down again. In 1970, she married Jennings Barfield, a local widower. Although in good health when they married, within a hear Jennings would be found dead. His death was ultimately attributed to a ‘heart condition’.

In 1974, Velma’s mother Lillian began to feel sick and exhibited symptoms such as intense diarrhea, vomiting and nausea. She recovered within a few days, but that Christmas the sickness returned. Lillian was admitted to the hospital on December 30, 1974, but died just a few hours later.

As time went on, Velma moved on to supporting herself and her children by caring for various elderly people. In 1976 she began working with Montgomery and Dollie Edwards. Within a year, the couple was dead after a bout of acute sickness. The pattern was repeated with another man, Rowland Stuart Taylor. Taylor had been Velma’s boyfriend and didn’t become sick until he began to suspect Velma had been forging checks on his account.

Eventually this repeating pattern attracted the attention of law enforcement. She was arrested in 1978, and while she eventually confessed to several murders she was only officially charged with that of Rowland Stuart Taylor. Velma was imprisoned at Central Prison in Raleigh, North Carolina. Since there was no separate area for female prisoners at the time, she was housed with inmates who were mentally ill or were known to be escape risks. Eventually a space for female inmates was established at the North Carolina Correctional Institution for Women, and Barfield was transferred to the death row there.

Barfield attempted to appeal her case but failed. After her appeal was denied, she told her lawyers to abandon any further appeals. For her final meal, Barfield chose a bag of Chee-tos and two bottles of Coke. On November 2, 1984 Barfield became the first woman to be executed by lethal injection.

Main Photo adapted from Luve Christian on Unsplash

For more serial killer fun, check out Kelly’s book Killer Word Games available on Amazon or Lulu.