Dr. Marissa Harrison
Appearances
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Oh, sure. I think everything you just said could come into play. Again, I'm an evolutionary psychologist, so I do look at sex differences. And we do see profound differences Male, female serial killer sex differences. We wrote a paper on that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Um, we published it in evolutionary behavioral sciences and we looked at stuff like, for example, men are far more likely than women serial killers, of course, to target a stranger. Um, Women are far more likely than a male to target somebody familiar to them. Again, primary motive for men was sex. Primary motive for women was money. Men tend to be undereducated.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Women tend to have at least some college. That's not speaking to intelligence. That's speaking to level of education attainment.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Right. I think what you believe would play into what I believe in that a low-status male is far less likely than a middle-class or high-class male to get a date or to establish a relationship. And so there's this aberrant sex drive. The other way we can look at it is like this, and I haven't thought about this before, but when you were talking, it made me think.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Exactly. What if I told you about the giggling granny, Nanny Doss, who killed her mother, likely her sister, her, I think, three husbands, some of her grandchildren. And when they interviewed about it, she laughed. So that doesn't fit my schema of grandma. And she looked like a grandma, right? So what we might think a grandma would look like maybe...
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Is it somebody who is undereducated or is it somebody so pathological that they couldn't go through the educational system regardless of intelligence, right?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Right, right. So that just brings me to another male-female serial killer sex difference, which I'm not really sure it – Let me say this. Our data showed that at least 90%, 9-0% of male serial killers had some form of mental illness. In female serial killers, our data showed that 40, 4-0% had some form of mental illness.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Now, we could say, wow, men are twice as likely to be mentally ill, but I'm not so sure, right? Because we have to visit... the salience of diagnostic systems over time, whether this person actually was ever assessed. I'm not sure.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
In fact, after conducting the research that I have, after assembling research to write the book, Just as Deadly, I'm convinced there has to be some form of mental illness present for somebody to commit these heinous crimes. There must be. They don't think like we do. You and I wouldn't do these things to babies or elderly people or women exiting a library. You've got to be thinking aberrantly.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So, absolutely.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Sure, absolutely. So we do know that it's not, you know, not all boys play with trucks and planes and not all girls play with dolls, but that's predominant. I myself have played with stuffed animals. It's all good, right? So, but absolutely. And we do know that in women, to me, it's undeniable, there is a caregiving. There's a caregiving instinct in all of us, but there is a caregiving instinct.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And so, again, I'm an evolutionary psychologist. And what we say is that in evolutionary psych behaviors evolved because that behavior led to traits and dispositions that made you leave more descendants. Right. So we have this caregiving thing, people who had a caregiving background. instinct left more descendants.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
But we also say in evolutionary psychology that there's this polydistribution of inherited traits. So I'm going to draw the bell curve for your viewers, right? So if you took a statistics class, remember the bell curve. And let's say, let's say moms, most of, or even nurses, right? Most of them are right in the middle, the right amount of caregiving.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Let's, let's go with moms, the right amount of caregiving. Most of us turn out okay. But if you look in the bell curve and you look down all the way in one tail, you'll see the extreme people who are overbearing and overanxious and they monitor child's every single move and they get sick and To their stomach when their kid goes to the prom, something like that. All right, that's one tail.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
What about all the way in the other end of the other tail? We have people who are abusive, people who are neglectful, and then deep down in that other end of that other tail, we have people who kill their own kids, right? So there's this caregiving instinct gone awry. And I do believe that is the case. Now, you mentioned something going back to nurses as female serial killers.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I actually have dated a nurse. I've actually dated a neonatal intensive care nurse. And when I told her about Lucy Lepe, she couldn't believe it. How could somebody who has devoted their whole entire training and life harm the person to which they took an oath that they would help? So how does that happen? And we don't really know.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I don't want to get in trouble for saying this, but, you know, maybe like an old-school 1950s housecoat in the kitchen, cooking bread, all that kind of stuff. And you wouldn't suspect that she would do these things. And I think that's why we are maybe not so quick to catch female serial killers, and we're really not so quick to think, yeah, she did that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I could say that right now, not my research, but some other research has suggested that I don't know if a nurse goes bad. I think maybe sometimes that personality type goes into the field. I don't know if it's to have the control. I don't know if it's to save thyself. I have the urge to kill people. Let me help them. I'm not sure. But I do think maybe that kind of person goes into the field.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Now, that being said, please let me say this. Almost every nurse or almost every mom that's ever lived and will ever live will never hurt somebody like that, let alone become a serial killer. We know that. But that's just speaking to the extreme. And that's the research field that I've entered.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
OK, so if and this is really awful, but I've read some, you know, I've created some case studies from from history. I put the data together where there were people that I'm going to give you an example. There was a female serial killer in Connecticut, United States at the turn of the last century. So, you know, Civil War time in the United States and thereafter. Her name was Lydia Sherman.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And she was a serial killer. She killed her own kids. She killed her stepkids. She killed several husbands, gave them arsenic. And when she finally admitted, yeah, yeah, I did this. Why did you kill your kids? Well, you know, my husband lost his job and the little kids couldn't really do anything. They couldn't do anything for me. They couldn't do anything for themselves.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So I got them out of the way. She quote unquote hurried them into eternity was the quote. So Getting them out of the way. Is that angel of mercy in some weird, you know, reimagined terrible angle? I guess. Now, in terms of nurses, I have read cases where somebody said, well, they were sick. I was doing them a favor. Yeah, right.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
But take, for example, the case of Kristen Gilbert, who was a serial killer from Massachusetts, United States in the mid, maybe the late 80s, up to the mid-1990s. There was one disabled veteran she killed. His name was Kenneth Cutting. He was a really nice guy. He was in his 40s in the hospital. She asked her supervising nurse, if this guy dies, can I leave early and go home?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And he wasn't on death's door or anything. And the supervisor said, sure. Sure enough, Kenneth died by the end of her shift. She caused him to have a heart attack. So that's just getting somebody out of the way. So angel of mercy, maybe we have experienced that in our society at times, but I don't buy it. Whose mercy are you defining? Whose mercy are you executing?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I have some stories for you, if you would like, about that type of thing.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I'm not sure. That's a good question. So one, I guess, reason at the forefront would be that women can kill their husbands, right? So they're going to get married and they're going to kill him and they're going to take his insurance and his inheritance and everything else. Ride that out for a while. Get married again. Let's kill him. Take his stuff. Get married again. Take his stuff.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Lydia Sherman that I was telling you about, her nickname was the Derby Poisoner. That's what she did. She killed this husband. I'll get him out of the way. Then she married an old widow widower and he was dead within months. Then she married Mr. Sherman, who was fairly wealthy, and she got him out of the way and attempted to collect the insurance money. But she didn't get away with that one.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Oh, my. So I get some really interesting... I can't say fan mail, but attention from Lucy Letby committed her crimes in the United Kingdom in Chester, right? Chester, England and Cheshire, United Kingdom. Lucy Letby was a neonatal nurse. She was a very skilled nurse. And she was convicted last year, 2023, of killing, I think it was seven infants.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And they went back and solved the other crimes. So, right. That might be one reason for the multiple marriage marriages, multiple targets. Right. Um, but what, what I wanted to go back to, if I can, is right in the beginning you were describing, well, you know, they're married, they're sort of educated, this, you know, um, that's exactly who you wouldn't suspect, right?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Like if I said, Chris, describe somebody who is not a serial killer. Well, grandma who, you know, stays at home, makes cookies, maybe, um, has had two marriages, maybe has three kids, goes to church, sells stuff at a bake sale, goes to synagogue, sells stuff at the bake sale. That's the person you wouldn't suspect.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Hiding in plain sight. Exactly right.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
This is interesting. So when I documented, I did that analysis more thoroughly on female serial killers, and we found everything from mothers who died when they were young, abandoned them, fathers who were abusive. We found physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse. So we did find that in female serial killers' history, to a degree greater than chance, right?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So more so than someone in the general population would experience. But let me tell you something that I don't necessarily have data on that I probably could gather data on. But when I wrote the book, Just as Deadly, I put together about 27 different case studies. And I try to write about the psychology and whatnot. And what I did was I wrote about Five men and then the rest were women.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I wrote about the men to show just how different female serial killers are. And I can tell you in almost every one of those cases, that person was severely sexually abused when they were younger. And I've heard people come out of the woodwork and say, no, it's a myth that serial killers were women. Sexually molested? No, it's not. No, it's not. I have read this.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Now, again, let me stress, for people who have had that terrible thing done to them when they were kids, almost everybody would never grow up and hurt somebody else, let alone kill them. But if you want to see a common denominator in both male and female serial killers, you see this profound CSA, childhood sexual abuse. I've seen it in the data.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Absolutely. You said that brilliantly. You're absolutely right. And when somebody experiences that violation when they're younger, I mean, it's shown in the research that I don't conduct, right? Definitely behavioral neuroscience research, your nervous system literally rewires itself. So imagine somebody who is violated when they are a child. Certainly they are more reactive.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Their nervous system is more sensitive to any kind of aggression, et cetera, et cetera. Um, it's, it's terrible. It absolutely changes who the person is. And you're right. And again, Male serial killers, again, I don't study them as thoroughly as I do female serial killers, but it is my understanding. Most are sex crimes and they might start out as experiencing a paraphilia.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So what that is, is like an abnormal sexual interest, maybe in like I'm not saying it's abnormal. Do what you need to do. But there are. Um, psychological classifications that would say, for example, a shoe fetish is abnormal, et cetera. So it might start out with that and then it might eventuate to watching somebody get undressed and maybe that doesn't fulfill the gratification or the fantasy.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I was asked to talk about that on some podcasts and some other interviews in the United Kingdom. Well, I got my share of colorful emails. I'm wrong. How could I ever be so stupid? They made fun of my American accent. Thank you. They said I must be in cahoots with The Crown. I'm like, the only time I'm making a deal with The Crown is when I'm binge-watching the series on Netflix.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Uh, so it, it eventuates and, and, and. sorry, escalates right to attacking somebody. So we see that there was somebody by the name of Jerome Bruto. It's Jerome Brutus, who was a serial killer. And he started off with a shoe fetish.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Then he started killing women and literally keeping their legs, literally severing their body parts and keeping their legs, sexually assaulting them and then keeping their legs to show off his shoe collection. And, So that's a really, really worst case scenario, right? But it happened. And again, serial murder is rare and female serial killers are even rarer, but it does happen.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That's really interesting. So my colleagues and I, Stephanie Winkle, John Black, Claire Allely, and I are looking at that. It's a study that we're currently working on. We've not gotten it published yet. But yeah, we do see that males are very likely to keep trophies, more likely than females are. Here's the thing. I actually didn't think as many female serial killers would keep trophies.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
But again, these are new data. We don't have them released yet. But I did see that they did. Now, it depends on your definition of a trophy. If a male serial killer keeps it, is it to... you know, being frank, masturbate to it, to relive the sensation, the, you know, the sexual gratification of the crime. It could be some kind of glorification, you know, totem and whatnot.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I've found women, they're going to, they might keep like a necklace or a lipstick or something. And I don't know if that's a trophy or that's because they like it, right? Let's say this is a nice lipstick. Why should I throw it away? So I'm not really sure about that, but I saw trophy keeping
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
in both sexes just a lot more in male serial killers there's some other teams that say that they didn't witness that in the data but my team and i did find it in the data what about substance abuse I have seen that as well. Again, I don't have those data in front of me, but I have known cases of female serial killers who had drug abuse problems.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
There's one female serial killer who used to get, gosh, I better not say a name because it's not coming to me right now, but she had profound substance abuse. She used to hide drugs and she would wear her hair in curlers like how women do. curled her hair and leave the curlers in, she would hide pills in her curlers and in her toilet paper in her bathroom.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
She had a really profound substance abuse problem. But I don't see that as like, if you asked me to pull up my data from the 64 female serial killers, we initially, we initially studied, I didn't really see that as a salient factor.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
No, you're exactly right. So I don't, I don't know. And you're right. Not only men, male versus female serial killers, but male serial killers versus men in general and female serial killers versus females in general. So I don't, I don't know that I have seen because I've studied some people in depth, like, Oh yeah, she did that. Or yeah, he did that. But I don't know the data overall.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
It seems to me though, that would be not a cause for, But one of the effects of whatever went wrong initially, pathologically, trying to numb myself and then committing those crimes as well. But I don't really see the drugs and alcohol as fueling the crime.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
What I'm going by is the evidence that The Crown Prosecution Service presented that the jury convicted her on and that Justice Goss sentenced her by. And also Lucy fits some of the parameters of previous data of known female serial killers. So I'm just going by that. But I've gotten all kinds of emails and notes and Twitter posts and stuff that tell me all kinds of things about me. Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Okay, so most commonly, a female serial killer will have both male and female victims. Most commonly, a male serial killer will have female victims. But like we said before, women tend to kill elderly people, people of age, infants, or people with some kind of disability or illness that all of these people can't fight back. That's the common denominator.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Absolutely. That's a good way to put it. Absolutely. Absolutely.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Wouldn't one be less likely to be caught if somebody who was in the hospital for an illness dies, right? Couldn't it be attributed or explained away as a product of their illness or injury or a baby who dies? I mean, again, I studied some female serial killer cases from back in the day. It wasn't unusual for infants to die back then, right? There was a higher infant mortality rate.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So I would think that the victims could be explained away. Also, for women who killed their husbands back in the day, it wasn't unusual for somebody to die of stomach disease or whatnot. So these women tended to use arsenic and other poisons that would mimic stomach disease, heart attack, etc. So I think it's the victims that people might not suspect.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That's a very good question. I have not really seen that frequently. I've heard anecdotally that maybe one or two might have had some sexuality going on there.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
For example, again, I didn't see this in any official reports or newspapers or anything, but there's some rumors out there that Jolly Jane Toppin, she was a nurse from Boston, the Boston area of the United States from the turn of the last century, like the 1900s.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And she used to give her patients central nervous system stimulants and depressants to put them to the brink of death, bring them back to life, and she wanted to lay in bed and hug them as they died so she could feel the breath going onto them. And there was rumors that she may have kissed some of them or mounted them.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That was just some rumors, but I've not really seen that officially corroborated. I've read reports where she actually said... I got into bed and held them to experience their last breath. And she thought that was a glorious event. So the power involved there is interesting.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Um, That I'm not sure. Give me one second. I'll look at my paper and see if I have that written down.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Oh, that one I know for sure. Men are far less likely than women to kill children only. Far less likely. I've seen it, Don, but far, far less likely.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
In terms of killing only adult victims, it's equal, about 49% of male serial killers and about 49% of female serial killers. Both adults and children, 47% male serial killers, 23% female serial killers. Only children, about 4% of male serial killers and about 27% of female serial killers.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
doing it as a serial uh sure absolutely so going back to the definition of serial killers that we use three or more deceased victims with a cooling off period and use the term cooling off however you want just the time gap of at least one week between victims so we might have somebody a mom with munchausen syndrome by proxy and
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
We call it these days factitious disorder imposed on another who would kill child after child, year after year, and they would be considered a female serial killer. How often that happens? It does happen. It's not very often. There was a female serial killer named Mary Beth Tinning in Schenectady, New York, United States. And it is suspected that she killed at least eight of her children.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I don't think she was convicted of all eight. But the story goes they think that her first baby died, natural causes, and that maybe she saw all the attention she was getting. And so the next baby and the next baby died. And the rumor was that she had some kind of nursing knowledge. So she knew how to mock and present symptoms.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And that she would back then, even in the seventies and eighties, medical records were not as centralized as they were now as they are now. So she would go to different hospitals with these different infants. There was a book written about her and the author of the book. And I'm sorry, the name escapes me, but it's a very good book. She said that reports say that at each funeral,
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Mary Beth would get all this attention and she seemed to quote unquote, be having a good time at the funeral of the babies. Everyone's saying, Oh my goodness, what a poor mom, what a good mom you are. And finally, somebody called the hotline and honestly anonymously and said, aren't you going to do anything about this? And they looked into it.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Um, and finally with the death of Tammy Lynn, her last child, um, they, they, They caught on. In fact, Mary Beth allegedly tried to kill her own husband, and he didn't even really do anything about it. But child after child, year after year, suggests this person would be considered a female serial killer. Let me add one thing about the Mary Beth Tinning case.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Thank you for saying that. So absolutely. So I mean, I'm not a popular media writer. I conduct academic research. You're right. In the book Just as Deadly, I literally have 1,200 references. And they're not like Zippy's blog of murder. I go into academic papers. I go into court documents. I go into birth certificates, census records, et cetera, et cetera. And my team and I gather data to determine
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
It's the first modern case that I've been reading about these for 10 years now. It's the first modern case where I saw the prosecution and the defense say, wow, there's something really, mentally wrong with this individual. They need help versus in the past, in the forties and the fifties, I've seen, you know, retribution, like let's put this person to death.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
In this case, I've seen, wow, there's got to be something really wrong for somebody to do this. Let's try to get her some help. This is the first kind of compassionate case I saw. Again, I'm not trying to say I feel bad for serial killers, but if, you know, some things have happened to these people.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And if I may, if I may just add this, Chris, um, I, it's tough because I'll give talks and I'll say there are some serial killers I feel bad for. And I, I don't want that taken out of context and then get canceled over it because I have really a lot of empathy for the, we said much worse things on this podcast. Okay. It's good. But let me, let me say this. Let me tell you a story.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
What if I told you a story of a young boy who, um, His father named him a very masculine name, but it turned out he was a little bit feminine, so the father used to beat the crap out of him, beat him in the head until he was unconscious. This boy was molested when he was at age five by a female babysitter.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
A little bit later, when he was about eight years old, he was molested by a male local contractor, and his sister corroborated these things. His mother was so physically abused that the father would beat The hell out of both the son and the mother. I wonder if somebody would feel sorry for that person. I do, right? But that person is John Wayne Gacy.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So if I said to you, do you feel bad for John Wayne Gacy? By the way, he killed at least 33 young men and buried their remains under his house and threw them in the river. You don't feel bad for that. But if I told you the story of that boy that they called Johnny back then, you'd say, oh my gosh, right? Now, again, most people who are abused never ever would harm somebody like he did.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
But we look at that and we say, wow, you know, if somebody had come in there and helped Johnny and his mom, maybe those 33 young men would still be alive. So I think that's
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Absolutely. So I'm an evolutionary psychologist by training. Actually, my degree says biopsychology, but I'm an evolutionary psychologist. It all comes down to sperm and eggs. All right. It always does. So men produce millions of sperm on a daily basis. Women have all they're born with all the eggs they'll ever use. They'll probably only ovulate. times in their lifetime.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So if you look at reproductive potential, men could father as many people as they could find reproductive partners. Women, you're only going to get pregnant once, right? So Men have a lot more chances for reproduction compared to women. Men have a higher sex drive compared to women worldwide.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I'm not saying you're going to meet a woman who's not the horniest person you've ever met in your lifetime. I'm not saying that. But on average, men have far greater sex drive than women do. And we in evolutionary psychology attribute that to underlying biological differences. Okay, so how does that play into serial murder?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Like, okay, so women with these very limited eggs, very limited reproductive opportunity in the ancestral environment, it would have benefited a female to pair with somebody who had a lot of resources, right? Because not now, right? We are women, hear us roar, but back in the ancestral environment, you...
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
some of the quote unquote typical parameters of female serial killers. And we came up with, we put in a publication from 2015 published in the journal of forensic psychiatry and psychology. And so based on date, all these data that we looked at, we know some things about some female serial killers and Lucy fits those. So what would be my angle? I, I don't know her. I don't want to know her.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
females were far more slender and helpless and whatnot it would have been really reproductively advantage advantageous to pair with the alpha male who had a lot a lot of access to resources and territory so men seek sex women seek money worldwide women prefer people with resources what are the number one motives for female for for serial killers sorry about that one more time
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
What are the number one motives for serial murder? For men, it's sex. For women, it's money. That didn't surprise me at all. Absolutely not. And then there was another perspective that I had, and it takes a little bit more. You got to bear with me on this one. But my team and I came up with the hunter-gatherer hypothesis of serial murder.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And it's not the only explanation, trust me, but it could be a part of the explanation for serial murders in that it is thought that, anthropologically speaking, we evolved from societies where men did the hunting and... Men did the hunting and women did the gathering, right? And so what do we see? Male serial killers as hunters. They stalk victims, unfamiliar victims.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
They write down their times of day and where they work and their friends and they follow them just like a hunter would hunt prey. And they keep trophies, right? Like a hunter does. Women, it's, you know, use this one a little bit more figuratively. They gather victims. They gather the people around them. They look around, who is around me? Let me kill them. And then they gather profits as well.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So we did come up with the hunter-gatherer hypothesis. And when we, everything we tested, In our study, it showed to be so. So men target strangers. They kill people outside their birthplace, et cetera, et cetera. So there is some evolutionary perspective. But let me add, I know it is not the only factor. You have to consider developmental factors.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Components, developmental trajectory, parents, school, childhood illness, society, gender roles, time in history. You have to consider all of these things to think about what makes a serial murderer. But I do think there's an evolutionary component there.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
They tend to poison people. They tend to kill for money and power. versus male serial killers tend to kill for sex. So there are profound sex differences. So I think it's interesting to bring that to public attention.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That is interesting. However, the number one motive last time I checked in North America for murder was male perpetrated jealousy. So there you get the intimate female part.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Yeah. So I'm sorry. So a man kills a woman because he's jealous of something. Last time I checked the statistics. I might want to go back and check the statistics. But in North America.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
My woman is cheating on me. That kind of thing. Or I think she's cheated on me. And David Buss and colleagues have done a lot of research on that.
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#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Poison. So a lot of people call those passive methods. I'm not sure. If you've ever read about what arsenic does to somebody's body, chronic etiquette. What is it?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Oh my gosh. Let's say you take some arsenic. Well, you're going to get encephalitis. Your brain is going to swell. All of your internal organs are going to swell and then thaw. fail. Your gastrointestinal system is going to bleed. You are going to vomit blood. You are going to have bloody diarrhea. You are going to be doubled over in cramps until you die. So we don't want anybody to do that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
It's painful. And it might not even be that day. It might be days of this person's suffering. It's horrible.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Right. Yes. And so I take poisoning, but I use actual poisoning like tarot, rat killer, ant killer, that kind of thing. Arsenic that used to be able to buy just, you know, buy the ounce at the apothecary back in the day and prescription drugs. So they might inject somebody with insulin and induce a heart attack and then they die by heart attack.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I'm just going by my, you know, quote unquote, expert informed opinion. And I'm going by the fact that a jury of her peers sat through that entire trial and weighed the evidence and just decided that she was the one who did this. So I have no, you know, personal stake in the game other than to, you know, hopefully get killers off the streets or better yet prevent it before it happens. Right.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And if they're in the hospital anyway and they say, oh, well, hey, he had a heart attack, then people might not suspect it. So, yeah, so it could be poison in terms of illegally used poison or pharmaceuticals used to a poisonous efficacy.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
It could very well be. So I have a good friend who is a nurse. Somebody went to high school with, and she's been a clinical nurse 25, 30 years. And I called her. I said, why, right? Why? And she said, Marissa, don't take this the wrong way. But right now I can tell you a hundred ways I can kill you and no one would ever know. She goes, that's one thing that comes to my mind.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
She says, no one would know. We know how to do these things. So they have the means and the access. And again, if somebody dies in a hospital, It's not the most peculiar thing that's ever happened. So they have the means to get away with it.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I would say the outlier is Eileen Wuornos because she shot men, left their bodies in the woods to decompose and rob them. I mean, so you have the financial motive there. But, I mean, she was really abused. She had some mental illness. She was a psychopath, et cetera, et cetera. So I don't know if she was really the outlier there.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Again, I think even in the absence of any diagnosis that I have read, you've got to be mentally ill to do something like this.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So I don't know if there's any psychological outliers, but if you name a mental disorder, I have seen it in serial killers, female serial killers, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, now called factitious disorder imposed on another. So if you name it, It's a borderline personality disorder. It's represented in serial killers.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Interesting. So I never studied killer couples and I'll tell you why. I wanted to study psychology and I wanted to know what we call the autogenic motive, like coming from you. So if this is my husband and we're killing, how do I know who it came from? How do I know who thought of these things or who persuaded whom to do what? I don't know. So I never studied paired serial killers.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
There is a pair I'm thinking about. I've not studied them. But the pair from the United Kingdom, was it Ian and, sorry, Mira Hadley, is it?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So what's really interesting about them, and I'll just maybe go on with a little tangent here, but please follow me. I don't even really remember his last name, but I remember her. And from what I recall, and I have some friends from Britain, have some family from Britain, they tell me she is one of the most hated people in Britain. I'm like, yeah, but wasn't it Ian's idea? Yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And they're like, yeah, but people hate her. Why? I think because she violated the female role. She was a good looking woman who enticed kids to go on a journey or whatever those awful people did to those kids. And people hate her more for being the accomplice than they hate him for coming up with the crimes. He chopped somebody up with an ax. Right? But they hate Mira Headley.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Who's the number one?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Oh, absolutely. They really do. I just don't want to get her name wrong. Mira Hindley.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Because people say, there's the lady that wrote the book but doesn't know who Mira Hindley is.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
The thing is, I don't think it is. So, again, I've studied female serial killers at length compared to my study of male serial killers, which I've studied somewhat. And they got away with it largely because their methods were undetected for a long period of time. I think we have increasingly sophisticated medical experts. examination techniques, medical recording systems.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I mean, somebody who kills somebody, if they died of arsenic poisoning, we're going to know on the first try. So I really think that's going to dissuade female serial killers. That being said, that's the kind we're used to. I don't know. There might be some kind of woman that does these things and gets away with it that we haven't caught or written about. Now, in terms of male serial killers,
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
In terms of the typical profile of stalking and killing strangers, I'm not sure. Think about the victims being so interconnected in this day and age with social media and I'm tagging myself here and I have cameras all over my house. I'm not so sure it would be easy To get away with that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And again, to meet the criteria for serial killer, it would be three or more victims with a cooling off period of one week in between or a timeout of at least one week in between. So even if somebody was horrible enough and stupid enough to kill the first person, are they going to be able to get away with it the second and the third time?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Sure. I'm not sure about... Okay, so I can tell you what. Again, they said I was stupid, blind, uneducated. I mustn't have looked at the correct data. I must be on the side of the crown. I am half British, but I'm a United States citizen. I'm down with the crown. They're cool, but I have nothing to do with the case that they presented.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Right. It could very well be. I think you're onto something. You're absolutely right. And also, I mean, what about internet detectives, right? Put a picture on Facebook. Facebook or Twitter and say, catch this person. They did X. They're caught in 20 minutes, right? So I think you really can't get away with stuff these days. I wouldn't even try. I wouldn't recommend it.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So I do think the detective work and the science is there to prevent or at least catch before someone eventuates to the level of serial murderer. That being said, let's hope not. And I also know that if people really want to do something awful, They will.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I don't want to go down this slippery slope, but honestly, there are mass murderers who, if they don't have guns, they set a house on fire or they push a car in front of a train. They'll stab you. They'll find a way. Right. So I wonder.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
absolutely so it's it's interesting i collected those data twice and once uh the data showed that women got away with it longer and then the second time i did another study it was just about equal and i have those data in front of me the killing span we called it the mean years killing for men it was 8.7 years for women it was 7.8 years so just about just about equal So they get away with it.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
But you're right. I mean, if somebody is leaving this, if a male serial killer is sexually assaulting victims and leaving this trail of, you know, unfortunate dead bodies around the town, you're going to say, whoa, there's somebody there. Let's catch them. They're going to work really hard at it. Versus female serial killers, if there's...
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
This is awful, but babies dying in a hospital, it takes somebody to go, hold on, wait, there's a statistical anomaly somewhere. Let's go back and check it out.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Yeah, exactly. Exactly right. So it seems like we have to catch a male serial killer, but we have to detect a female serial killer.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I think there's a difference there.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And again, like I said, they even said they don't like my American accent. Okay, well... Cheers. Cheers to that. Now, why they would do that? I mean, people just when when somebody is convinced something is true, they dig their heels in. And even in the face of contrary evidence, they might dig in even further.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I think I'd like to close up with this, and it might not be evolutionary, but I conducted research to be able to write my book with Cambridge University Press, but then I learned from writing the book, right? And I know for sure from the data that I've seen and from the case that I worked on that that we need more police resources, right?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So the world is not like CSI where you send data, you know, you send specimen down to the lab. And my friend from the FBI says it's hot men and women analyzing DNA to a banging musical soundtrack, right? The world doesn't work like that. They need money for these tests. They don't, the police organization sometimes don't have these. We need more money for police and detective work.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
We need more of it. Secondly, we need more psychologists, right? Because let's say somebody intervened back in the day. Eileen Moronos was so sexually abused and raped when she was younger. She accidentally got set on fire. Her grades went down in school and the school called and said, hey, can we give her counseling? Nope, right?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Well, if she got a caseworker, maybe things would have been different for those seven or eight men that she killed, right? So we need more psychologists to get out there and intervene because if something bad happens to someone, the earlier you get there, the better according to psychological data.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
You can treat trauma, if at all, you could give a better shot at it when the, when it happens, if somebody is a kid, when you get right there and do it right then and there. So we need more psychologists and we need more, we need more psychologists and we need more police resources and that might tackle the problem.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I hope so. I hope they take what my team and I have done and do it on a grander scale and create change, stop crime, help people where they need it. I really hope so. And thank you for saying that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
You can check out my faculty webpage, Penn State Harrisburg, or you can take a look at my book, Just as Deadly, The Psychology of Female Serial Killers, Cambridge University Press, 2023. But the paperback edition is coming out soon. So it's available at any retailer. Thank you so much.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Thank you, Chris.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And instead of addressing the message, as you know, an ad hominem attack, they'll attack the person that that delivered the news. I'm just giving an opinion. Now, I also think I wonder why. Seriously, I wonder if I were a male researcher delivering this news, if the receipt of such and the response to such would be different. I'm not sure.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Sure, absolutely. So I'm sure there are many, many factors that go into why somebody might be interested in that phenomenon and the level to which somebody is interested in that phenomenon. Me coming from an evolutionary perspective, because I'm a trained evolutionary psychologist, just what you said, morbid curiosity. So I do believe morbid curiosity informs protective vigilance.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
What does that mean? We are pre-programmed to pay attention to the things that could hurt us. Like, wow, look at that, right? If anybody has ever, heaven forbid, passed a traffic accident, right? You're paying attention to it, can't keep your eyes off it. I think we are literally genetically pre-programmed to pay attention to the things that could hurt us so that we can take in information.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I do want to add that this is very likely all unconscious, right? You're not going to say, oh my goodness, let me watch this latest documentary on John Wayne Gacy so that I can make sure he doesn't hurt me. He's dead. Right? So I just think it's part of human nature to pay attention to the things that can harm us. So I, I started studying myself.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I think it's interesting because there seems to be this preconceived notions that all serial killers operate the same way. And when we think of a serial killer, we think of, in the United States at least, Ted Bundy or Ed Kemper. We think about monstrous males who commit sex crimes. And female serial killers might be monstrous per some people's definitions, but they tend to be more low-key.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I started studying female serial murder or serial murder because I was interested in it. I have traditionally studied romantic attraction between men and women. One of my friends, Dr. Thomas Bowers was conducting a project on mass murder and, And I said, hey, Tom, can I be on your team? I can add some evolutionary, you know, opinions to that. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And then while I was doing that, a really great student named Aaron came up to me and said, Dr. Harrison, can we do an independent study on serial murder? I'm like, oh, yes. Right. I didn't even ask why or what or how or who or when. Yes, let's do that. Because, you know, it's just so interesting. But I'll tell you what, as I got really into the topic, years and years of research
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I'm really grateful for media outlets seriously like yours. And there's some really authentic networks out there that want to uncover the truth. But I do take exception to using the genre as some kind of morbid museum example. Like dripping blood down the wall or whatnot and drinking alcohol while talking about victims.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That's just not, I don't think that's very empathic to the victims and their families and their friends, which are considered co-victims.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I agree with you. First, let me say, when I was writing the book, Just as Deadly, The Psychology of Female Serial Killers, I was thinking to myself, is this a feminist book? Because I'm saying women can do that too. And it's a really horrible argument of equality, but the thing is they can. Um, so you had asked why might people pay attention to males more so than females?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
I absolutely agree with you. And I could tell you that I have a colleague, whose uncle was murdered and it is a well-known murder. I don't feel the liberty to, to, to say which one it was. I'll let her tell that story. But she agreed to do a very popular podcast, not yours, Chris, you're a good guy, but she agreed to do a podcast.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And the victim was involved in the entertainment industry and really did have good looking people around. And after the interview was done and my colleague spoke on behalf of the family, they pumped in music to the final cut and said, oh, wasn't that a sexy murder scene? Now, let me tell you, that really hurt this person's family. My colleague couldn't believe they did that.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
They said, I thought this was a legitimate interview and I was representing the interest of the family. And so you tell me, when I get asked to speak to the murder club and I kind of cringe, I just look to each their own. But I do wish as a society we had more I wish we had more empathy for the victims.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Then again, I'm researching and I'm selling a book that describes it, but I really truly hope I've put forth that message. I'm trying to give out data out there so that we can respond to or better yet, prevent these kinds of things from happening.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So no one really knows, but the estimate is one out of six. At least in the United States, that's what I know about.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
That's a really good point. The truth is I don't know, but I can tell you female serial murder is very rare. So since I've been studying this, which is probably 2014, so probably the past 10 years, the cases I've been asked to look at, maybe three or four.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So in the last decade, you've found around about... One was ongoing. Right. I'm sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off, Chris. Not at all. So you had asked ongoing. So since my research trajectory emerged, there were about four cases that I became aware of. For example, Retta Mays in the United States, Lucy Letby in the United Kingdom, and... And there are, I believe, two more.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
There was one case that I actually consulted on that I probably can't talk about. They got her. They knew it was she. They got her. The true bill ran jury indictment came out. She knew this and she died by suicide before they could arrest her.
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#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
It's true. And I'm good friends with the lead detective on that. I said, how do you feel?
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#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So is it okay if I refer to my paper here? Oh, absolutely. So we published a paper in 2015 where we took the data that we had. The sample size we had was 64 female serial killers who committed their crimes in the United States really since there's been a United States. So- 200 and something years. Please don't make me do the math on that. And here's what we came up with. She's likely white.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And I think there's this age old notion, and I'm certainly not the first person to say this, but I think there's this age old notion that women can't be damaging. Women can't be dangerous. Women are nurturing and caregivers, right? So if I said to you, grandma, you might think of, well, let me ask you this, Chris, what do you think of when you think of grandma?
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
She's probably been married at least once, but perhaps several times, probably in her 20s and 30s, probably Christian, probably middle class, probably has committed her crimes in the suburbs. She's probably employed, and there's a very good chance she's going to be a health care worker, like a nurse or a nurse's assistant, about 40, 4-0 percent
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Female serial killers are nurses or nurses assistants. We know that she's very likely in charge of taking care of helpless others. So whether that's a mother or a nurse or a nurse's aide, so somebody who's vulnerable and can't fight back, a child, an elderly person, a disabled veteran, etc.,
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
Um, she's probably at the very least of average attractiveness, attractiveness, or maybe even good looking, um, probably had some childhood problems herself with abusive parents, maybe some sexual assault, CSA childhood sexual abuse she experienced when she was younger, um, et cetera. Um, and the The motives that we found, money was the number one motive.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
So money, resources, but very close second to that was power. And so let me just say this. If I could do this paper again, if I could do this entire project again, which took a long time to do, I focused on primary motive.
Modern Wisdom
#861 - Dr Marissa Harrison - The Dark Psychology Of Female Serial Killers
And if I could go back and reinvent this, I probably would have looked at multiple motives because I don't, after all this knowledge gained over the years, I don't think you can really split it out. I don't know if money and power might go hand in hand. I could just say numerically money was the number one motive and power was the number two motive when we looked at this person's primary motives.