Anything You Can Do I Can Do Better

Anything you can do I can do better; I can do

 anything better than you.

Irving Berlin, composed for Broadway Musical Annie Get Your Gun

Don't underestimate a dangerous woman. And don't judge by appearances; evil can be pleasant and pretty on the outside. Just like poisoned candy.

-Joni E. Johnston, Psy.D.

Murder, sex, revenge, violence, greed, and brutality all fascinate us.

And, when these topics involve women, the public becomes ravenous in its mad search to find yet even more information about how and why these tragedies happen.

Don’t believe me? Turn on the television at any time, or read the newspaper, and you are guaranteed to find stories about women who had too much built up anger, who were twisted time bombs, or just plain evil. 

Our media landscape is scattered with these types of programs.

“Wives with Knives”

“Snapped”

“Deadly Women”

“Whether the motivation was revenge against a cheating husband, the promise of a hefty insurance payoff, or putting an end to years of abuse, the reasons are as varied as the women themselves. From socialites to secretaries, female killers share one thing in common: at some point, they all snapped.”

Snapped, Oxygen Media

The above are but a few of the extraordinarily popular reality television shows that exclusively focus on murderous women.

Like fatal car crashes, train wrecks, and fires, we just can’t bring ourselves to look away.

I confess. I am also enthralled with the Jodi Arias case. I have family and close friends, who all tell me that they watch the televised trial everyday because it is mesmerizing. They just can’t believe that somebody who looks like Jodi Arias could be capable of such brutal savagery. Put me on that list of people who also keep up with the courtroom drama.

If you have seen the news lately, you will generally know that Arias shot her boyfriend and stabbed him almost 30 times. This crime occurred in Arizona, which has the death penalty, and is what prosecutors are seeking as punishment for Arias.

Arias’ position is that that she had a strange sexual relationship with her boyfriend, she had a physical altercation with him, she defended herself, and then her memory is hazy regarding the murderous rampage she inflicted on her boyfriend. There are numerous questions that she has been asked by a very aggressive prosecutor concerning actions she took before and after the murder. She has been unclear and admittedly has many contradictions in her story.

Arias initially told authorities she had nothing to do with Alexander's death then blamed it on masked intruders before settling on self-defense. Her repeated stories to authorities, friends and family in the days after his death, and her efforts to create an alibi and avoid suspicion have been center stage throughout the weeks-long trial.

Arias also detailed for jurors how Alexander grew physically abusive in the months leading up to his death, once choking her into unconsciousness, and how he had sexual desires for young boys.

Arias was asked about past relationships with other men, how easily it would have been to get the gun from the victim's closet as they fought on the day of the killing, and why she worked to clean the crime scene.

Arias said she grabbed the gun from Alexander's closet during a fight at his house, and she was asked how she could have time to retrieve the gun while being chased.

"I just had the sense that he was chasing me," she said.

After killing Alexander, Arias took photos of his bloody corpse and then put the camera in a clothes washer. The jury asked her why she did that.

"I don't know why I would have done that," she said.

Interestingly, I hear comments that the prosecutor is being “too argumentative” in his cross-examination, which may not bode well for the goal of an execution. As a lawyer, there is always very fine line with cross-examination, appearance, and how it affects jurors.

As zealous advocates, lawyers want to get their point across, but do not want to overkill so much that potential points scored during cross-examination are diminished—or worse yet---the jury feels that the attorney is unnecessarily “beating up” on the witness, or repeating questions. This can make a big difference in any case, especially where prosecutors are seeking a death sentence.

Others are excited by the prosecutor, and feel that he is really “sticking it to” Arias by emphasizing her contradictions.

Watching Arias on the stand, it seems unbelievable that this meek, little, person could be capable of such savagery.

"Women are different in whom, how and why they kill," says James Alan Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University. Though women committed roughly 10 percent of murders between 1976 and 2005, they were involved in nearly 35 percent of murders of intimate partners and nearly 30 percent of murders of where the victim was another family member, according to the Justice Department.

One consistent element, however, which is catnip for a ratings-desperate media, and often perverted public, is sex — and I’m not talking about gender. From Arias and Anthony to Aileen Wournos and the older case of Charlene Gallego, these were women not just accused of murder, but also with a graphic sexual component to all of their cases.

Arias’ testimony often sounded more like a hard core porno movie than a courtroom, as she claimed self-defense alleging (in her third account of what she says really happened) that she was sexually controlled by her now-dead boyfriend, Travis Alexander.

Before her acquittal, Casey Anthony’s sex life and demeanor after her daughter went missing became a focus for the prosecution and media alike.

Serial killer Aileen Wournos’ story is marked by incest, an early pregnancy at age 13, a marriage to a 70-year-old man, a lesbian tryst, and finally, work as a prostitute where she murdered her victims.

In the 1970s, Charlene Gallego was one half of the first known husband and wife serial killer duo, known in the news as the “sex slave killers” because they murdered ten victims, luring some of them into their van where they hog-tied, raped and killed them. 

Quoting, Dan Abrams

While statistics of murderous women differ, there are generally nine categories of women who kill. These are listed as follows:

Black Widow – systematically kills multiple spouses, partners, or other family members.
Team Killer – kills or participates in the killing of others in conjunction with at least one other.
Angel of Death – systematically kills people who are in her care for some form of medical attention
Question of Sanity – kills in apparent random manner and later judged to be insane.
Sexual Predator – systematically kills others in clear acts of sexual homicide.
Unexplained – kills for reasons that are totally inexplicable or for unclear motives.
Revenge – systematically kills out of hate or jealousy
Unsolved -a pattern of unsolved killings that may be attributed to a woman (or women)
Profit or Crime – systematically kills for profit or in course of committing another crime

Quoting, Michael & C. Kelleher (1998)

Says Dan Abrams, “A young, attractive woman accused of murder is interesting, in particular, because it’s rare and defies many societal expectations. This is not to justify the coverage, but rather to simply articulate the reality. They make good copy, great headlines, and often compelling television and even movies. However, let’s take care not to lay all the blame on the media. The media wouldn’t focus on female killers if it didn’t have a partner in crime, a public obsessed with evaluating, understanding and ultimately judging these women accused of the most heinous of crimes.”  

So, why are we unable to look away from the horrific murders committed by women?

It is perhaps best put by Carrie Gunter, “we're searching for that monster within the pretty exterior, hoping it's something that we'll eventually be able to identify. All of the childhood stories indicated evil as ugly, right? We never expect to see such ugliness/evil in a (outward appearing) beautiful person.”

-Leonardo G. Renaud