Jennifer Wright - She Kills Me: The True Stories of Historys Deadliest Women

Editor: Samantha Weiner

Managing Editor: Glenn Ramirez

Designer: Jenice Kim

Production Manager: Rachael Marks

Library of Congress Control Number: 2021932572

ISBN: 978-1-4197-4846-2

eISBN: 978-1-64700-000-4

Text copyright 2021 Jennifer Wright

Illustrations/photographs copyright 2021 Eva Bee

Cover 2021 Abrams

Published in 2021 by Abrams Image, an imprint of ABRAMS.

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Section 1
PSYCHOSBUT NOT THE WAY MISOGYNISTS SAY IT

Section 2
PRETTY POISONERS

Section 3
BAD FAM

Section 4
BLACK WIDOWS

Section 5
SCORNED WOMEN

Section 6
MURDEROUS MERCENARIES

Section 7
KILLER QUEENS

Section 8
BADASS WARRIORS (NOT PRINCESSES)

Section 9
AVENGING ANGELS

For every woman in this book, there is an apologist. In the guise of playing the devils advocate or insisting that you look at all aspects of a situation, someone will always enthusiastically offer an argument in defense of somethingor someonecontroversial or unpopular.

You can find a report saying that someone talked the Beautiful Beast of Auschwitz, Irma Grese, into torture and murder, and she was just a girl in love. The heroic Soviet aviators, the Night Witches, will be discounted as an urban legend. And there are multiple movies that try to prove the ax murderer Lizzie Borden was innocent. As late as 1998, Roy Hazelwood of the FBI claimed, there are no female serial killers.

People are very apt to believe that a woman cant kill someone. Not without a man forcing her into it, anyway. Sometimes women contend that these killers must have been framed by the patriarchy. Sometimes men, who conducted some obscure experiment with a Barbie doll and a fork, try to prove women are too weak to pick up swords. I am more inclined to understand the former reasoning since the patriarchy did, in fact, treat women terribly and cavalierly claim they were witches through much of history.

But none of these explanations change the fact that some women commit murder. Maybe for great causes, sometimes for terrible reasons.

If you are reading this, there is a good chance that you are a woman. You are also a person. And as a human, you have felt great anger at some point in your life.

I know you have.

It is something of a dirty secret for women, the fact that we can be very angry. Women shouting or visibly upset, no matter how justified, are dismissed as hysterical. Men scream and rage on podiums and seem manly; women preface reasonable suggestions with Sorry, I just think that maybe... and conclude by saying does that make sense?

For much of history, women have been very good at masking their anger, largely from fear. You can look to the scolds bridlesseventeenth-century torture instruments that were fitted over womens heads and their tongues to stop them from speaking when men considered them to be nags. Through the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries it was acceptable for men to decide to imprison problem wives in asylums. Do a quick Google search on Elizabeth Packard, who quarreled with her husband and then spent the next three years trying to prove to doctors that she was not insane. Then remember those burned witches, who were generally simply women who lived independently and didnt appear too fond of men and society.

If your life and liberty hinges upon acting sweet, you will comply. We became so good at hiding our feelings that men started to think we didnt feel anger at all. Any instance of female dissent can still seem surprising. That is why men think it is a scary time for them when women say, Hey, stop harassing us at work.

In fact, women are perfectly capable of creating a genuinely scary time for men. The women in this book did. And for the record, a genuinely scary time does not mean women telling men to stop offering them shoulder massages at the office. It means women will just start poisoning your food.

Some of the deeds in this book are so scary and atrocious that weve noted them in the headers. If you do not want to read about women eating people, thats understandable. If you dont want to live in a world where women occasionally mention that theyre not loving shoulder massages, then youre going to be in for a hard time.

There are flames of rage in the heart of every woman, as there are in the heart of every man. Because of the way women have been treated, there is every reason that these urges might burn hotter and brighter. And every so often, there is a woman who actsand becomes a killer.

To deny women full-throated, murderous anger is to refute that they possess the full range of human emotions. Anger still has a way of seeping out. Let the following women show you moments when it did.

Yeah, thats right,
women can be horrible people, too.

Countess Elizabeth Bthory couldnt have been better born. She was the niece of the king of Poland and the Prince of Transylvania. Her father was a baron, and she grew up in a castle. She was trained in all manner of studies, and she was known for her attractive appearance. She had it allwealth, education, beauty. She also had an unparalleled bloodlust that would make her historys most notorious female serial killer.

Elizabeth was no stranger to brutality on her familys Hungarian estates. When she was a child, she watched as a thief was sewn inside the belly of a dying horse. The punishment, which wasnt uncommon, ensured that the thief would struggle to free himself, causing the horse to fight back and guaranteeing maximum displeasure for both. (Even when lying perfectly still, being surrounded by horse guts couldnt have made for a pleasant death.) Rumor has it that Elizabeth delighted at the sight, with some reports going so far as to say that she urinated with excitement.

There were other unnerving childhood experiences. The inbred Elizabeth was spoiled and humored as she dealt with seizures and fits of rage. She was said to be very close to her sadomasochistic aunt and Satanist uncle.