Cruelty without borders or female killers in the world. The most brutal female killers

Who would have thought that women could be so cruel: kill people, while getting pleasure, or assert themselves, taking the lives of their victims. Around the world, women are not far behind male criminals in their ruthless treatment of those they kill. Despite the fact that a woman is a weak creature, she can still kill with particular cruelty. The most brutal killer women went down in history, making them known to the whole world.

Among the large number of female maniacs, it is still possible to single out the 10 most brutal female killers. Studying information about them, investigators were perplexed: where did these ladies have so much hatred and heartlessness in order to commit such bloody crimes, what were their motives, that even their own children did not stop them?

So who are these 10 most brutal female killers?

Marquise de Brenvilliers

There have been legends about this lady for a long time; her cruelty is shocking. She was born in 1630, and over the 46 years of her life she managed to “glorify” her name as one of the bloodiest female killers in history. This noble lady began her bloody path by depriving the life of her father, then brothers, sisters, husband and even her own children.

In the biography of the marquise, there is information about her extramarital affair with a certain captain of Sainte-Croix, perhaps because of him she wanted to get rid of everything that could interfere with their relationship, but this still does not at all justify the fact that she took the lives of her children. Undoubtedly, this woman’s cruelty knew no bounds, and she had never even heard of morality.

Bloody Gonzalez Sisters

Most female killers act alone, constantly hiding in anticipation of a new victim, but there are still cases where maniacs acted in pairs, for example, serial killers who were closely related to each other - the bloody Gonzalez sisters from Mexico. The activity of these sisters was that they took care of the affairs of the brothel, looking for suitable girls to work in the brothel, sending out advertisements. Prostitutes who, for one reason or another, did not satisfy the hostesses of the brothel, from whom clients left and no income came from them, were easily killed by Maria and Delphine.

But not only girls of easy virtue died at the hands of the sisters: if someone entered the brothel, Gonzalez was also among the victims.

Not only prostitutes were killed: the number of female killers included a woman of easy virtue, Rosa. A married prostitute, who was also the mother of eight children, committed murders not alone, but with her husband, and they killed for pleasure; the victims were also selected according to special criteria. Rose and Fred chose as victims only young girls, often students, those for whom not everything was going well. At first glance, a benevolent married couple kindly offered this or that girl, meeting them simply on the street, shelter and food, care from the bottom of their hearts, without any payment for it.

Rose, being a sexual sadist, tortured the girls to death. The victims of this woman included not only the unfortunate girls who believed her kindness, but also Rosa’s stepdaughter and even daughter.

The witch of the Third Reich, the warden of one of the concentration camps, Ilse Koch, went down in history as a merciless torturer of prisoners. She took great pleasure in the fact that the prisoners suffered from her abuse. The horror of the Third Reich, Koch, often starved them so that they would attack the concentration camp prisoners with even greater viciousness. The whip never slipped out of the killer woman’s hands; she beat many prisoners to death. Koch selected victims for the gas chambers and watched with pleasure as they died in agony.

Another murderer-warden in the concentration camps was Irma Grese. The bloody daughter of the Third Reich inflicted inhumane torture on Auschwitz prisoners, and for her cruelty she received the nickname “Devil with Blonde Hair.”

Some women who began to kill innocent people, regardless of whether they were relatives or not, had no reason for this - perhaps they did it because of some deviations in their psyche. But some female killers developed hatred for their offenders from childhood, especially if they were men. Growing up, such girls began to take revenge on everyone who belonged to the stronger sex - one of these women was Aileen Wuornos. It all started with the fact that, while still a little girl, she was raped by her own grandfather - this is the reason for Eileen’s subsequent hatred of men.


Having had early sexual experience, the girl gave birth by the age of 13, after which her grandfather kicked the young girl out of the house. Wuornos not only killed, but also robbed, and made a living by selling her body. Ultimately, the woman who committed more than one crime was declared mentally ill, but she still managed to take more than one life.

Many women who took the path of violence and cruelty were either prostitutes, or thieves, or experienced psychological disorders, but some of them, being mentally unstable, occupied quite respected positions in society. No one could even imagine that such a good and responsible nurse as Beverly Allitt was capable of such terrible things that she did and did not repent of it at all, because she received money from it.

Beverly took the lives of several small children by injecting them with insulin. At first it was difficult to make out the true one, because a heart attack caused by insulin was similar to a natural death. Why or why this woman did this is still not known.

Belle Sorences Guinness

There is a place in the history of America for Bella Guinness, but her fame was brought to her by completely unkind deeds, and her cruelty and exorbitant desire to kill. The woman did not experience any childhood psychological trauma, she did not defend herself from anyone, she did not receive pleasure from killing, she simply pursued one single goal - .

She saw the path to wealth in killing and receiving money with which the victims insured their lives. Guinness, pursuing her own selfish goals, took the lives of her own daughters, husbands (she had two), and a dozen lovers. The woman wanted to get the money, despite the fact that it was in the blood of the people she killed.

Women killed in different ways, but still they often used poison in order to kill quietly and for sure. Anne Cotton is the queen of arsenic, who poisoned more than twenty people with this poison. The woman married repeatedly, and each new husband died at her hands. Cotton took the lives of not only her husbands, but also her own mother and her own children. Why Anne committed these murders remains a mystery.

The true reason why a woman becomes a killer is still unknown. Among the prostitutes, thieves, nurses, marquises, there are those who have done terrible things. One of the most dangerous women, known for her cruelty, was Daria Saltykova. What did the wealthy lady lack in life that she never stopped taking lives in the most cruel ways from her serfs? Saltychikha, as the bloody landowner was called, chose as her victims the most defenseless of her subjects, namely women and little girls, killing them in the most terrible ways.

As sad as it is to say this, not all women are gentle and kind, not everyone is afraid of the sight of blood and is ready to take pity on a small child. Among the representatives of the weaker sex there are still maniacs, women without pity - those who do not care about human life, who like to mock the weaker. Women can be cruel, the names of the most ruthless have gone down in history.

These women went down in human history thanks to their terrible atrocities. Queens and seemingly respectable ladies turned out to be cruel sadists and murderers.

Gertrude Baniszewski

This Indiana woman left a terrible mark on American history. Gertrude Baniszewski, a seemingly decent mother, and her noble family for a long time mocked Sylvia Likens, whom she and her younger sister took in to raise.

The girls' real parents had no idea what hellish torments they had doomed their daughters to. Hostility towards Sylvia arose immediately, as soon as she crossed the threshold of the Baniszewski house. At first there were the usual nagging and insults, then it came to assault. The bruises did not go away from the girl’s body. Gertrude, who had gone into a rage, pursued Sylvia with some kind of bestial tenacity. The torture became more and more sophisticated every day. One day Sylvia was forced to bathe in a bath with boiling water: the noble family watched her torment with a smile. The children of Gertrude Baniszewski made it a habit to constantly beat the unfortunate girl. It got to the point that even Jenny, Sylvia's younger sister, was forced to take part in this. The inhumane, sadistic attitude could not but affect the girl’s body. And one day Sylvia died. It was necessary to see with what haste, with fear of punishment for their actions, the Baniszewski family covered their tracks.

When this terrible story became public, the entire American public demanded the death penalty of an executioner in the form of a woman. But Themis handed down an unexpectedly lenient sentence to Gertrude - life imprisonment. And nineteen years later, Baniszewski was released for exemplary behavior. Her children, who participated in their mother’s bloody deeds, were not harmed in any way. They live peacefully and have started families. And it seems that the ghost of the tortured Sylvia does not come to them at night...

Mary I Tudor (Bloody Mary)

She was born in the year of the height of the English sweating epidemic. And, unfortunately, it left a sad mark in the history of the British Middle Ages. Bloody Mary, aka Mary I Tudor, is considered a symbol of the evil that was caused to the country. Although she never laid claim to the English throne and, by chance and circumstances, received the crown of queen. Mary the Catholic (as she was called at court) had no skills in government at all. Her education boiled down to the fact that in her free time the princess read stories about Christian saints, sat well in the saddle and passionately loved falconry. By the way, she was afraid of men like fire: this fear was instilled in her by the holy fathers from childhood. And hardly anyone suspected in her the future threat of Protestant rebels, with whom she would wage a merciless and cruel war. But the first victim of the royal disgrace was Mary’s relative, 16-year-old Jane Gray. Because of high state considerations, sometimes feeling pity, she sent her to the chopping block. And then Jane’s husband and father-in-law fell onto the platform into the hands of the executioner. A little time passed, and bonfires began to play ominously throughout England, in the fire of which hundreds of church fathers who refused to convert to Catholicism died. For this, the people will call her Bloody Mary.

According to some historians, Mary I Tudor was not, in essence, a bloodthirsty ruler. It’s just that, as they say now, politicians at court used her as a puppet to achieve their specific goals.

Elizaveta Bathory

Bloody Countess Elizabeth Bathory experienced incredible pleasure when poor peasant girls were tortured before her eyes, subjecting them to the most sophisticated tortures. Czede Castle in the Kingdom of Hungary, with its dark and deep cellars, was a place that well kept the dark deeds of a noblewoman. There were even rumors among local residents that Elizabeth Bathory loved to take baths filled with the blood of murdered victims. When the countess’s crimes were revealed, a terrifying picture was revealed: she was responsible for about a hundred tortured and murdered girls. The surviving victims who escaped the massacre were a pitiful sight. The Bloody Countess committed her atrocities with the help of faithful servants, three of whom were women. Elizabeth Bathory spent the last days of her life in her own castle, in one of the rooms, tightly walled up. There wasn't even a ray of sunshine here. The room only had openings for serving food. The guards, on pain of death, never spoke to the Bloody Countess.

Irma Grese

She was born into a simple German peasant family, which had four other children. Irma Greza clearly did not want to study at school; she was not attracted to high sciences. A fifteen-year-old girl is obsessed with power in order to experience superiority over people. She joins the League of German Youth, believing that it will be useful to her in the future. At first, changing one profession after another, Irma Grese rushes through life, not finding a worthy use for herself.

She greets the war with joy and joins one of the auxiliary units of S.S. Irma, as if breaking free from the chain, plunges headlong into a new job - as a concentration camp guard. This position will be just right for a girl in whose soul a real monster has awakened.

Time will pass, and the prisoners will call her the Angel of Death, the Blonde Devil, the Beautiful Monster. The senior guard of the Virkenau concentration camp will spread horror and fear everywhere. It’s strange, but this girl, not without external attractiveness, will dream of a post-war career as a screen star. Even seasoned Nazis were timid before her atrocities. They would never, for example, have thought of unleashing a hundred unfed vicious dogs on prisoners. Irma Grese’s favorite pastime is to sit on a chair and shoot women walking in a column. She also took pleasure in beating her victims to death with a heavy whip.

Irma Greza did not escape punishment for her bloody deeds. During the Belsen trial, she was sentenced to hang. On the last night before her execution, the would-be screen star laughed and had fun, singing songs with her friend Elisabeth Volkenrath, a monster like her.

Daria Saltykova

The “tormentor and murderer” landowner Daria Saltykova could neither read nor write. And now you can’t understand why this illiterate noblewoman was warmly and friendly received in the enlightened houses of the Musins ​​and Pushkins. Davydovs, Tolstoys. Maybe they had never been to the Saltykov family estate, where there was a quiet, devilish pestilence? The neighboring landowners considered this place to be plague-ridden and tried to avoid it. And at the rural cemetery of Daria Saltykov’s estate, more and more graves appeared. The local people remained completely silent, crushed by fear.

But in the spring of 1762, the secret of Daria Saltykova’s estate was revealed, and the case of Saltychikha, the executioner lady, began to quickly unfold. Serf peasants Saveliy Martynov and Ermolay Ilyin managed to reach St. Petersburg at the risk of their lives. It was they who conveyed to Empress Mother Catherine II a complaint about the lawlessness and atrocities Saltychikha committed against her peasants. The Empress, having received the paper and read it, immediately ordered the opening of a criminal case against Daria Saltykova. During the investigation, it turned out that the landowner killed more than a hundred people. Moreover, she liked to subject the guilty peasant woman to sophisticated torture throughout the day and night (and Saltychikha invented the guilt herself). It cost her nothing to throw boiling water in the victim’s face and set her hair on fire.

The empress herself was involved in drafting the text of Saltychikha’s verdict. And instead of a surname, the following words flashed: “freak of the human race,” “inhuman widow.” The court made its decision, according to which Daria Saltykova had to spend her life in the Donskoy Monastery prison. And before that there was a “disgraceful spectacle” on the Execution Ground on Red Square. No one saw tears of remorse on Saltychikha’s face...

Mary Ann Cotton

Oddly enough, the laurels of England's first serial killer went to the woman Mary Ann Cotton. This eternal black widow sent a bunch of people to the next world, not even sparing her own children. And all for the sake of one goal: to be a wealthy woman who does not need anything. Mary Ann was not a beauty, but she certainly had a certain charm that attracted men. She was born into a poor mining family, and after the death of her father, the sixteen-year-old girl went to South Hatton for a better life. Over time, Mary Ann realized that you won’t earn much money from righteous labors. Especially on a farm where work was paid mere pennies. Therefore, to begin with, she did not pretend to be a picky bride: she took and married miner William Mowbray. During their marriage, Mary Ann gave birth to five children. But she did not feel maternal feelings for them: the prospect of living in need and in constant worries did not at all appeal to her. And the children, one after another, died from a mysterious intestinal disorder. And then the turn came to William Mowbray himself. According to some rumors, the kind-hearted doctor, in order to console the widow, went, on the advice of neighbors, to the cemetery, where she was supposed to pour out her grief. Imagine his surprise when he saw Mary Ann in a new fashionable dress, and even dancing... The insurance received from her late husband Mowbray must have delighted her.

She continued to play her role as an eternal widow, causing suspicious and mysterious deaths of husbands, her own and other people’s children. For the time being, everything was attributed to “stomach fever”, which literally followed on the heels of Mary Ann Cotton’s whereabouts. Until persistent journalists unearthed the truth. Autopsies on black widow victims revealed the presence of arsenic in their tissues in quantities that could kill even a horse.

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Ilse Koch

As soon as she entered the parade ground, everyone’s heart sank with fear and horror. There was no more bloodthirsty and cruel creature in the concentration camp than Ilse Koch. As an executioner and torturer, she surpassed even her husband, Karl Koch. The commandant of the Buchenwald concentration camp was clearly inferior to her in sophisticated atrocities, preferring to personally tear out the gold crowns from dead and living prisoners. Even their colleagues were afraid of this sweet couple. Especially after the incident when Karl Koch shot his subordinate, an SS officer. And Ilse soon got another nickname: Frau Abuazhur. With devilish ingenuity, she took up an unusual task: she sewed (and quite skillfully!) handbags and even underwear from human skin. But she was especially successful with the lampshades in the house, which became the pride of Ilse Koch.

The exorbitant cruelty of the spouses aroused the indignation of the highest Nazi officials. But perhaps the whole point was that Karl Koch did not share the loot, preferring to steal quietly. For this, the commandant of Buchenwald paid with his head: by court decision he was shot. And Ilse managed to escape punishment. When she fell into the hands of the Americans, the pregnant sadist even managed to fool the High Commissioner of the occupation zone. He released her, guided by “high moral considerations.” However, she was immediately arrested by the German police. And during the investigation, the court sentenced Ilsa Koch to life imprisonment. She committed suicide in prison on September 1, 1967, by hanging herself with a rope made from a sheet.

Gonzalez sisters

This four killer sisters put the most notorious Mexican thugs to shame. And it is known that Mexico, where Delfina, Maria del Jesus, Carmen and Maria Luisa Gonzalez Valenzuela were born, has always been distinguished by its steep criminal morals. The sisters’ shared passion for enriching themselves was quite understandable: they were born into the poorest family, surviving on bread and water. And they began their notorious path with ordinary prostitution. The money earned was put into a common pot. But this could not continue for long: it was impossible to achieve the cherished goal in this way. And one day one of the sisters came up with the idea of ​​opening her own brothel on a ranch in the state of Guanajuato. Having promised the peasant girls mountains of gold, they never stopped wanting them. If only the local beauties knew into what hands they fell! Time passed, and the girls, intoxicated by alcohol and illegal substances, began to call the Gonzalez sisters’ ranch a “hellish brothel.” For any offense, young prostitutes were beaten to death and tortured. It was useless to contact the local police, bribed by the sisters. And the officials themselves willingly used the services of the brothel. It seemed that there would be no end to the criminal lawlessness of the killer sisters. Beautiful girls were kidnapped directly from villages and nearby towns. When the investigation began, a horrifying picture of what happened was revealed. It turned out that the Gonzalez crime family had killed about a hundred girls. The sisters were tried and each received a long prison sentence. Of these, only the younger sister Maria survived, who, after her release, disappeared in an unknown direction.

The most noble human qualities, such as kindness, mercy, care, love and compassion are characteristic of the weaker sex, however, history has known many women whose main traits were cruelty, aggression, fanaticism and sadism. In our list, we propose to get acquainted with the most famous representatives of the fair half of humanity, whose actions make your blood run cold.

Saltykova Daria Nikolaevna, or, in common parlance, “Saltychikha” (years of life - 1730-1801)

The world-famous sadist killed at least 140 people, mostly young girls and women. The result of her “productive” leadership was a death sentence, which was later commuted to life imprisonment in the prison of one of the monasteries. The heartless person lived next to the Ivanovsky Monastery, not far from the intersection of Kuznechny Bridge and Bolshaya Lubyanka, but the vast majority of the crimes were committed in Troitsky, a small estate located in the near Moscow region. Daria Nikolaevna was the heiress of a pillar nobleman, with whom such famous families as the Musins-Pushkins, Tolstoys, Davydovs and Stroganovs were related. An interesting fact: for a long time Saltychikha’s lover was the grandfather of the greatest Russian poet Tyutchev, but the matter never came to a wedding. Having fallen in love with another, the poet’s ancestor abandoned Daria Nikolaevna, for which she almost killed her former beau and his newly-made wife.
At the age of 26, Saltykova became a widow, and at her disposal were left huge estates and 600 peasant souls, many of whom experienced the bloodthirsty nature of their mistress. All the years until her death, the landowner tortured powerless people, and rivers of blood were shed in her estate and the surrounding area. The cruel woman’s sophisticated torture included regular beatings and torture of men and women, who were also starved, doused with boiling water, hair on their heads set on fire, and exposed naked in the bitter cold right in the middle of the yard. By all accounts, Saltychikha was an evil and merciless old woman, but at the time of the first bullying, the woman was only 31 years old. The first complaint about harsh treatment of serfs reached Catherine II in 1762. The Tsarina used the criminal trial as a demonstration - it was important from the first days of her reign to demonstrate to the Moscow nobility what local abuses could lead to. As a result of the investigation and after the verdict, Saltykova was stripped of her title, ordered to stand for an hour in the center of the capital on a pillar of shame and imprisoned in a dungeon, without light and human communication.

Queen of England, Mary I Tudor (1516-1558)

The monarch was the fourth ruler of the Tudor dynasty. The well-known Bloody Mary cocktail was named after the ill-fated queen, and the date of her death began to be celebrated as a national holiday. Throughout the reign of Mary I, many innocent human lives were destroyed, mostly people professing Protestantism. The queen's father, Henry VIII, due to his marriage to Anne Boleyn, was forced to declare himself the head of the church, which resulted in the excommunication of the monarch by the Pope. Maria was the daughter of Catherine of Aragon, from whom Henry divorced, in the opinion of most Englishmen illegally; moreover, the king was sick with syphilis, and therefore Maria was born in poor health and was on the verge of life and death for a long time. After the death of the king, the country fell to Mary in a disastrous state; moreover, there were constant clashes between Protestants and Catholics, which led to casualties. Mary was a politically active person and was not known for her rancor, but this applied only to adherents of Catholicism. During the years of the queen's reign, more than three hundred Protestants were burned at the stake of the Inquisition, and about three thousand were forced to flee the country.
Maria's family life could not be called happy. Her legal husband was the son of King Charles V, Philip, who was 11 years younger than his wife. In fact, the queen’s husband did not have the right to vote and was only a figurehead, while he was never able to give an heir to the throne to Mary. Having left of his own free will for Spain, a little later he returned to England, but could not stay here for long and after three months he went back again. The Queen, suffering from various illnesses, became sad, caught a fever and died from its complications. Mary Tudor was buried in Westminster Abbey. To this day, not a single bust or monument to the ill-fated queen has been erected in the country.

Serial killer Myra Hindley (1942 - 2002)

Myra Hindley was called by her contemporaries “the most evil woman in Britain”, and is accused in the high-profile case of the “Marsh murders”, which had a great resonance. The cruel child killer was born in the suburbs of Manchester in the family of a chronic alcoholic and a simple working-class woman. After the birth of her younger sister, Myra was sent to be raised by her grandmother. Returning to her parents after some time, the girl fell under the influence of her rude and ruthless father, who taught her to fight. The constant violence instilled in Myra had a direct impact on her future fate. Having reached adulthood, the girl became involved in religion and even managed to take communion for the first time, but a meeting with Ian Brady turned her life in a completely different direction. The man loved to drink, was an atheist, idealized Hitler, reveled in stories about Bonnie and Clyde and the Marquis de Sade. Mira and Ian had their first sex, after which their love games began to resemble the struggle of two predators: they bit each other, beat each other, tied them up and photographed everything that was happening. The next stage was bank robberies, and while the plan was being developed, Mira and Ian kidnapped children, raped them and brutally killed them with everything they could get their hands on - from knives to shovels. Based on the materials of the trial, the couple is credited with at least 11 murders of young children, while none of the criminals admitted their guilt, and Myra behaved extremely arrogantly and cold-bloodedly, claiming that disappointment in Catholicism was to blame. Separated after the verdict, the killers corresponded and even wanted to get married, which was denied to them. Brady spent the rest of his life in prison and then in a mental institution, while Myra sought release and died in her cell two weeks before her eventual release from prison. At Hindley's funeral, an unknown person nailed a note to her coffin with the words "send her to hell."

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Fighter against heretics Isabella of Castile (1451-1504)

She went down in history as Isabella the Catholic, Queen of Leon and Castile. The mention of Isabella should begin with 1492 - a year that was epoch-making not only because America was discovered, Granada was taken and the end of the Reconquista was marked. It was during this period that an event occurred that served as the impetus for Isabella of Castile to become considered one of the most cruel women in history. In 1420, the Dominican monk Thomas de Torquemada, who was destined to become Isabella's confessor, was born into one of the most influential Orders. The Dominican Order was distinguished by its intolerance of heresy and heretics, and Torquemada infected the queen with religious fanaticism, for which he was awarded the title of Grand Inquisitor and became the head of the Catholic tribunal throughout Spain. The cruelty of the torturer knew no bounds - over fifteen years, more than 10 thousand people were burned at the stake of the Inquisition, and another 7 thousand were sentenced to death in absentia. Another 100 thousand were subjected to torture and torture, most of them Jews who adhered to their true faith - Judaism. Muslims who converted to Christianity did not escape such a harsh fate. Catholic courts suspected them of secretly practicing Islam. In the ill-fated 1492, Isabella, at the direction of Torquemada, expelled all Jews from the country. The total number of victims of the bloody queen and the Grand Inquisitor remains unknown to this day.

Child killer Beverly Allitt (born 1968)

The bloody nurse, murderer and criminal received the nickname “angel of death.” She has four children's lives and nine more attempts on her account. She was sentenced by the court to forty years in prison, and the ruthless episodes proven by lawyers occurred in the period 1991-1993. According to psychiatrists, Beverly had a mental disorder, which was expressed in her hatred of children. The woman believed that every sick child unnecessarily drew attention to himself by complaining about poor health. A nurse nicknamed "Evil" flew into a rage at the sight of unhealthy children who annoyed her and got on her nerves with their complaints. She planned the murder of the child in advance, injecting her victims with lethal doses of insulin or other drugs, while doctors declared the children’s deaths to be of natural causes. Fortunately, not all attempts to harass innocent patients were successful, but the public will long remember cases when a person of such a humane profession turned out to be such a desperate monster.

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"Bluebeard" Bell Hannes (1859-1931)

By origin, US citizen Bell had Norwegian roots and was distinguished by her impressive dimensions - weighing 91 kg and height 183 cm, and her compatriots nicknamed the cold-blooded killer “Bluebeard”. And there was a reason - the woman caused the death of two of her spouses, three of her own daughters and several other people who involuntarily found themselves on her life’s path. In total, Hannes has 20 people tortured by her, including those burned, poisoned and stabbed to death with huge meat cleavers. Arriving in the New World in the hope of a better life, Bell got a job in rich houses as an au pair or maid, feeling hatred for her masters. Money was her only goal and passion, and when a young wife got married, the first thing she did was insure the life of her husband. After some time, the unsuspecting husband died in a strange way, and the widow removed all the witnesses. Covering her tracks, Hannes burned the house, along with her children, and one of the charred corpses was identified under the name of Bell herself. Two decades later, the insurance situation was repeated in Los Angeles, but the widow died in prison before reaching trial. According to experts, it was Bell Gunnes, who changed her last name to another one for a lot of money.

"Black Widow" Mary Ann Cotton (1832 - 1873)

Another lover of getting rich from the insurance policies of the husbands she killed. A handsome, intelligent and decent-looking woman, she was married three times and over more than forty years of marriage she brought many innocent people to the grave. Mary Ann lived at a time when most serious diseases could not yet be properly diagnosed and therefore sudden death did not surprise anyone. A decent wife and highly moral, caring mother was always close to her own children and did not let the numerous offspring of her new husbands out of her sight. Mary Ann left no chance for anyone to live: all members of her family were insured for a large sum, after which the woman went to the pharmacy and purchased arsenic. Soon the children and husbands were overtaken by sudden death and the path to wealth was open. Impunity added excitement to the sadist, and one day, immediately after the death of another husband and his sons, the police became interested in such a coincidence. The investigation established that shortly before this, Mary Ann bought a large quantity of arsenic at the pharmacy. So the truth came out, and the bodies of all the poisoned were exhumed, after which an examination discovered poison in all of Cotton’s dead relatives. In total, Mary Ann was responsible for 15 people, for whom she was sentenced to death.

Elsa Koch (1906 - 1967)

The place of birth of the pretty German girl was Dresden. Little is known about Elsa’s childhood and youth, but her adult life can be more or less traced back to 1937, when the young Frau marries Karl Koch and begins her working career in the notorious Sachsenhausen concentration camp. After some time, Elsa's wife is waiting for a promotion - he is appointed head of Buchenwald and his faithful wife, without hesitation, goes after him. Gradually, the role of the wife fades into the background and Elsa becomes the official camp controller, and is particularly cruel to prisoners. Women's favorite pastimes are beating, torturing and torturing men and women, and if a person came across interesting tattoos on his skin, then his hours were numbered. The sadist was so sophisticated that she collected a collection of camp tattoos, as well as samples of birthmarks, scars and other natural marks. Elsa decorated the interior with chandeliers made of human skin, and went to work with a bag made entirely from the skin of one of the captives.
In 1944, Karl Koch was arrested, and his wife managed to escape. The criminal hid for a long time, but was found in 1947. Being pregnant from another woman, Elsa was counting on a reduced sentence, but the prosecution attributed more than 50 thousand victims to her. The investigation lasted for several years, after which the accused was released for some inexplicable reason, but not for long. German authorities reopened the investigation and sentenced the “camp witch” to life imprisonment. In 1967, Elsa Koch hanged herself in her cell, never repenting of any of her crimes.

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Examiner-overseer Irma Griese (1923 - 1945)

Perhaps, if not for the Second World War, the charming Irma Griese would have lived the simple life of an ordinary German peasant woman. But this knacker was destined for another role - one of the most cruel representatives of the fair sex in world history. Irma's mother committed suicide when the girl was 13 years old, and her father joined the NSDAP. Irma studied poorly and soon abandoned this unnecessary activity, becoming one of the leaders of the women's Hitlergund. For some time, the devout Nazi worked as a nurse, and then got a job at the Ravensbrück concentration camp. Irma's next promotion was the position of senior warden in Auschwitz-Birkenau, where she developed her active work. Despite her 20-year age, Griz was particularly cruel - she beat prisoners to death, shot them in crowds, set hungry dogs on exhausted people, and personally selected those who should go to the gas chamber. Her favorite weapon was a whip, and among her captives Irma was nicknamed “the beautiful beast.” To all her inappropriate inclinations were added nymphomania and sexual perversions, about which terrible legends circulated among the prisoners. A fan of Griz was “Doctor Death” himself - Joseph Mengele. Irma was captured in 1945; she was arrested at her workplace by British officers liberating Bergen-Belsen. The prosecution was merciless and sentenced the fanatic to hanging.

Australian knacker Catherine Knight (born 1956)

The only life sentence marked "without the possibility of review" was announced in Australia in November 2001. The defendant in the case was Katherine Knight, who brutally murdered her husband by stabbing him 37 times. The flayer did not rest on this - she dismembered her husband’s body and made sauce from his head. The woman tried to feed the remaining parts of the body to her children, but the police prevented Catherine from carrying out this unimaginably cruel plan. The reasons for such hatred towards a man were his sexual weakness and the desire to leave an insatiable woman after the first wedding night. Katherine worked in a slaughterhouse and famously butchered the largest pig, so the sadist had more than enough experience in this matter. After her husband left, she began to pursue him and, finding another woman next to him, dismembered her dog before her eyes, promising to do the same with her lovers. Surprisingly, during the trial, Knight fully repented and admitted her guilt, but did this make her crime any less terrible?

Previously, society believed that it was enough for a man to be a little more beautiful than a monkey, but today's society has changed. People have become much more attentive to...

"Bloody Countess" Erzsebet Bathory (1560-1614)

According to the Guinness Book of Records, Erzsebet Bathory, a native of Eced (Hungary), is recognized as the bloodiest serial killer. The exact number of murders committed is unknown, but the bloody lady allegedly killed more than 650 people over several decades. According to legend, the Countess filled a bath with the blood of her victims, which she took regularly, which allowed her to maintain her youth. Countless women and girls disappeared within the walls of her Čachtitsa castle, and local residents tried to avoid the area around the citadel. Since Erzsebet’s brother was the ruler of Transylvania (the homeland of Count Dracula), the torturer was not threatened with any trials, and she continued her bloody activities until her death.

When it comes to serial killers, male characters usually come to mind, and few can name at least a few famous female killers. Some of them killed for love, some for money, but most were distinguished by unprecedented cruelty, and even madness. It is curious that some of them were subsequently released from punishment.

Elizaveta Bathory

Ever heard the phrase “bathe in the blood of virgins”? We owe the appearance of this phrase to Countess Elizabeth Bathory. It is estimated that she managed to kill about 650 servants and other young women living nearby. She had at her disposal a special torture chamber built for her by her husband.

Belle Gunness

Belle immigrated from Norway to the United States, where she killed her husband for insurance money. After that, she began inviting single, wealthy men to visit her farm. After a fire in 1908, more than forty carelessly hidden graves were discovered on the farm.

Dagmar Overbu

Amelia Dyer

In Victorian England, so-called baby farming was practiced, when an orphanage, for a small fee, took in unwanted children and found them adoptive families. Amelia Dyer was also involved in such activities. However, she did not bother finding a new family for the babies, but simply killed them. During interrogation, she told the police: “You can tell mine apart by the tape around their necks.” Hanged in 1869.

Ilse Koch

Ilse joined the Nazi Party in 1932 and earned the nickname "The Bitch of Buchenwald" at the concentration camp where her husband, Karl Otto Koch, worked as commandant. Ilsa liked household items made from the skin of prisoners, and she especially preferred lampshades made from tattooed skin. She committed suicide in prison in 1967.

Delfina and Maria de Jesus Gonzalez

These sisters were involved in the abduction of girls in the 1950s and 1960s, who were then forced to work in a brothel in central Mexico City. When girls became sick or unattractive due to forced drug use, they were killed. The sisters also killed some wealthy clients and babies. Delphine died while serving her sentence, and Maria, after serving several years, was released and disappeared in an unknown direction.

Jane Toppan

Toppan worked as a nurse in New England. She injected patients with morphine until they died. During the investigation, she stated that her goal was to "kill more people - helpless people - than any other man or woman who ever lived", confessing to more than a hundred murders.

Ottilie "Tillie" Klimek

Chicago resident Ottilie Klimek was a fortune teller and had a habit of telling her husbands or neighbors that they were destined to die soon, after which she killed them. Her first husband died of “heart problems” in 1914, and it was only after the death of her third husband and several neighbors by 1921 that the police began to suspect that something was wrong.

Juan Barraza

Before becoming a killer, Juana Barraza wrestled under the pseudonym “The Silent Lady.” When her wrestling career ceased to bring the desired profit, Juana began pretending to be a nurse, hiring herself out to elderly people and robbing them. One day, a robbery victim laughed at Juana, and from then on a bloody rampage began. She was accused of 30 murders, but it is possible that in reality there were at least 48 victims.

Jenine Ann Jones

Jones worked as a children's nurse in Texas and took up the habit of injecting children with various drugs to show off how skillfully she saved them. She was charged with the deaths of two babies, but could be responsible for up to 60. She was sentenced to 99 years in 1985, but could be released in 2018 due to overcrowding in Texas prisons.

Leonarda Cianciulli

In the 1930s and 1940s, Leonarda Cianciulli murdered three women and made soap from their remains and tea cakes from their blood. She believed that human sacrifice could protect her children. Being arrested, she did not express any particular regret and even directed the investigation, clarifying the details.

Gertrude Baniszewski

In 1965, Baniszewski incited her own and her neighbors' children into the ongoing abuse and subsequent murder of a 16-year-old girl, Sylvia Likens, who had been left in her care. She was sentenced to life imprisonment, but through petitions she achieved release in 1985. She stated that God had forgiven her and that she managed to find peace in her soul. She died of cancer five years later.

Aileen Wuornos

Eileen was involved in prostitution in Florida in the late 1980s. She robbed her clients, shot them and took their cars. In total, she committed seven murders, becoming the first woman to be listed in FBI reports as a serial killer. She was executed by injection in 2002. Just a year after the execution, the film “Monster,” based on the story of Wuornos, was released.

When we hear about serial killers, male images immediately appear in our minds. Few people think about women at this moment. And in vain. History knows women who surpassed many of the worst male killers in their cruelty. We present to you the most cruel women in the history of mankind.

At first glance, she was an ordinary woman, a decent wife and mother. She did a favor and took in two sisters. But neither they themselves nor their parents even imagined what kind of life awaited one of the sisters, Sylvia.

As soon as the girl appeared in the house of Gertrude Baniszewski, the whole family literally hated her. The woman herself cruelly mocked the girl, beat her, and came up with sophisticated punishments. One day, little Sylvia was forced to bathe in a bath of boiling water, while the whole family stood and cheerfully looked at this spectacle. They forced the girl and her sister to be abused. Little Sylvia had bruises, abrasions, and scratches on her body. And one day the child’s body could not stand it. Sylvia died.

The Baniszewski family hastily covered up the traces of the crime, but they were never able to escape from Themis. More precisely, the mother is the head of the family. Despite the fact that the American public, amazed by her actions, demanded the death penalty for the torturer, the judge sentenced her to life imprisonment. But after 19 years, Gertrude was released. And her children, who took part in bullying Sylvia, did not suffer any punishment. They grew up and started families.

Mary I Tudor (Bloody Mary)

The future ruler of Medieval Britain was born at the height of the English sweat epidemic. She did not have a special mind, and all her knowledge consisted only in books about Christianity, although Mary herself was a Catholic. At court they called her that: Mary the Catholic. She got the reins of government by chance and coincidence. That's when her crimes began. First, she sent her 16-year-old relative Jane to the executioner. Her husband and father-in-law followed her.

Maria did not spare anyone. All who refused to accept Catholicism were executed. Very soon, bonfires were burning all over Britain, where unwanted people were burned. It was then that Mary was nicknamed Bloody. Today's historians are far from agreeing that the woman was so bloodthirsty. Many agree that she was a puppet of the people behind and above her.

Another bloody woman in human history. Countess Elizabeth Báthory lived in Hungary at Čeyde Castle. Its walls kept the grim activities of the countess: she, along with her three faithful servants (who, by the way, were also women), kidnapped young peasant girls and tortured them. There were even rumors among local residents that Elizabeth herself took baths from the blood of tortured and tormented girls.

When Elizabeth's actions with her servants were revealed, the countess was settled in her own castle, in a tightly walled tower. There was an opening just for serving food. The guards, on pain of death, did not dare talk to the bloody countess. She lived the rest of her days in the same tower.

Irma Grese worked as a senior guard at the Virkenau concentration camp. The prisoners called her the Angel of Death, the Beautiful Beast and the Blonde Devil. This woman combined angelic beauty and devilish insides. She took pleasure in torturing prisoners. Even the most seasoned Nazis could not think of such atrocities that she committed. For example, she unleashed a hundred starving dogs on a crowd of prisoners. And her favorite thing to do was sit on a chair, hum a song and shoot women prisoners walking in the crowd.

Of course, all these acts did not go unpunished for Irma. She was sentenced to death by hanging. By the way, the woman herself dreamed of getting on television and becoming a cinema star. But the dream of this cruel person was not destined to come true. Her life ended on the gallows. By the way, the whole evening before her execution, she had fun, sang songs and had fun with her friend, a fellow torturer.

It's hard to imagine, but this woman is the first serial killer in England. He spared no one - neither husbands nor children. Everyone around her, becoming unfit, immediately died from a mysterious “stomach fever.”

Mary Ann was born into a miner's family. When she was 16 years old, her father died and the girl had to spin and survive. Without thinking twice, she married a miner older than her. In marriage she gave birth to five children. But she didn’t want to eke out a miserable existence, raising constantly screaming, sick children. And therefore, her children began to die one after another. Their father followed them.

But the woman didn’t even think about grieving; on the contrary, she was very happy about the insurance that she was paid after her husband’s death. She bought herself a new dress and had fun and danced right in the cemetery.

Then she had several more husbands who also died mysteriously. Their children, whom Mary Ann hated, also left with them. And it is unlikely that her secret would have been revealed if not for meticulous journalists. They connected all the mysterious deaths around the woman and soon an autopsy of the bodies showed that there was a huge amount of arsenic in the tissues.

The woman was sentenced to hang. There is an opinion that the elderly executioner deliberately tied the rope incorrectly so that the black widow would suffer before death.