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Alexis Porter

Professor Malcolm Campbell

UWRT 1104

2/14/19

Housewife Made Killer

Introduction/Overview

Understanding people is hard enough, but criminal minds are by far more difficult to

comprehend. They learn to blend in with the norm of everyday people but hide a facade

underneath it all. They can live with their families without them even knowing. In the world of

criminals, females have been proven to be harder to tag to murders. Is it because of their cunning

or their charisma? Could it be because of the standards that the world holds against women

versus men? My desire of the topic is to be better knowledgeable about what ticks in the mind to

decide it needs to commit to murder as a way out.

I hope to uncover what ticks and switches that trigger a criminal into killing and later

returning back to the person who everyone thinks would not be able to hurt a fly. I also want to

understand how these killings happened without going into too gory of detail.

While talking about the mind, it was always complex and beyond much of the

understanding than what we know. Unlike normal or typical minds, criminal minds are often

phased and show different areas of activity. They show different frequencies within areas of little

concentration of activity. As the same goes with mental illnesses, criminal mindsets choose to be

shown in ways that can still be masked by the right face. As a depressed person can smile and

say everything is fine, a criminal can smile and say they did not do it. Many people believe that

criminals can hide within plain sight, just as these people with depression or anxiety. Others
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believe that there are ticks that when looked at closely, showing the true nature of the people and

can even lead to their conviction. In this belief, scientists could potentially look at a criminal

mind under a machine and be able to tell you that these parts of the brain describe them as a

killer. In the world where shootings are covering all parts of the news and the black market is

going with all kinds of firearms, this issue of killers in general is huge. It may not all be female

killers, but female killers are become more widely known. Many news stations, such as ABC and

NBC, talk about murders on everyday news and with publications from colleges and criminal

institutions, the research is astounding.

When looking into names of famous female killers, many stick out when looking into

female killers. The big names of killings come up: Judias Buenoano, Nannie Doss, and Kristen

Gilbert. I started with a news report from ABC about understanding the rates of female killings

to male killings. There is a high difference between the convictions between male and female

killers. Male killers are more often caught and convicted. Maybe there is a reason? From there, I

discovered the ideals for motives. Female killers have higher rates of murder when it comes to

cases of love or gain. Love can include finding out a husband or wife is cheating, the proposed

love cut off all connections, or children are being taken away from them. When it comes to gain,

females are typically killing for financial, influence or property gain. Afterwards, I found the

website RealClearLife that gave away names of the more notorious female killers, which started

way to learning more about the common female killers.

Initial Inquiry Question(s)

How do female killers work in the scheme of normal lives? How does the standard

between women and men affect the number of female murderers behind bars? What notorious

cases helped seal the idea of the motives behind female killers? Will criminologist ever find a

way to start noticing ticks at a young age and prevent the mind from continuing on its path?
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What ticks and switches allow a criminal to change between a typical personality and the

criminal personality?

My Interest in this Topic

My interest in the topic of killers started as a kid. My father was always watching the

documentaries on murders and in about every ten shows, there would be one focused on a

female. Since most of the documentaries were old at the time, the pictures were not the best

quality and audio from the recordings were outdated. Nevertheless, we would sit and watch,

pinpointing what she or he did wrong and how the police were able to discover the clues. Take it

now about 10 years later, I still watch the murder documentaries on my own. I learn to watch

ticks and switches. I quite enjoy learning about the mind. As a teacher, these facts can come in

handy since once students hit middle grades, their mindset changes. It can either mature or fall

apart. Many different documentaries stated that as puberty hits, the mind changes and this is

often when the ticks and switches start to show up. If a teacher can spot it early, maybe it can

help the student and possibly future people from getting hurt. Beginning to understand the

motives, ticks and switches for killers can help, but my focus on female killers is due to the ever-

changing rate of women not being caught for crimes. I want to understand how there are often

few females taken into jail for crimes or, why if confessed to the crime, they will be told it is not

possible and it’s silly to think that.

Next Steps
I plan to visit the criminology section of many different libraries, from Atkins Library at

University of North Carolina at Charlotte and the Gaston Country Library. Each library carries

different works, and both can be beneficial to the understanding of the topic. I also want to
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discover famous criminal writing articles such as the Criminal Behavior and Mental Health, the

British Journal of Criminology and many more as I come to find them. I believe that these

sources can help give me a better understanding of the means, motive, ticks and switches behind

the female killer’s mind and how to possible stop the growth in adolescence to crime.