Crimes occur every day throughout the whole world, and sometimes it is hard to identify the motives and the reasons for committing this or that crime. There is a wide range of crimes starting from small robberies and non-substantial financial frauds and finishing with mass murders, terrorist attacks and huge fraudulent activities that lead to serious consequences. Different motives drive criminals to commit terrible things: whether a greed for money, a desire of revenge, a need to become famous no matter for what, pure anger, psychological problems, etc. It is often a challenge for the investigation team from special agencies to find true motives and to develop explanation of various types of crimes: every case is extremely specific.
There is also a radical difference in the crime committed by men and women: gender plays a significant role in the statistics. The data shows that females commit a significantly lower number of crimes than males, taking into consideration the representatives of different ethnic or racial groups and of different historical times. In addition, male criminals have higher rates of committing violent crimes, while such crimes as thefts, forgeries and embezzlement are the most typical deeds for female criminals. Probably, many of us have heard more about the crimes committed by men: mass murders at public places, serious financial frauds that led to famous bankruptcies, terroristic attacks or famous bank robberies. In such a way, women commit a lower number of crimes than men, with the exception to prostitution that is a crime in most of the countries. The numbers state, “Since the 1960s in the United States, the extent of female arrests has generally been less than 15 percent for homicide and aggravated assault and less than 10 percent for the serious property crimes of burglary and robbery” (Law.jrank.org).
Both men and women have different motives for committing crimes, and psychological gender differences have an influence on the level of violence and on the size of a crime. There are many famous stories of women, who had huge businesses with drugs or who committed large financial frauds in order to have more money and more power. However, despite the fact that females rarely become serious criminals, there are still cases of terrible things committed by women throughout history. The paragraphs below will provide an example of a terrible story that has shaken American society at the end of 1980s and 1990s.
Aileen Wuornos earned her black fame for becoming the first female serial killer in America and was sentenced to capital punishment from lethal injection that occurred in the year 2002. During the period from 1989 until late 1990s, the police in Florida found seven bodies of white men of middle age, and the assailant had taken all of their personal things and had stolen their cars after killing them. All of those men were the representatives of different professions, such as police office or a rodeo worker (men from low to middle class). Those men became the victims of Aileen “Lee” Carol Wuornos, who, at that time, worked as a prostitute in Florida. She has shoot seven of her clients and has stolen all of their things in order to sell them and get more money. In order to understand what drove Wuornos in her actions, it is worth to look at her childhood and at her life in general (Capitalpunishmentincontext.org).
Aileen Wuornos was born in Michigan in a very problematic family, in which her father was in prison for committing crimes of sexual type against children. In jail, Aileen’s father committed suicide, and the mother of a family left Aileen and her brother with her parents (Aileen’s grandfather and grandmother), who also did not represent a caring community: grandfather started to beat a girl and grandmother was an alcohol addict. Wuornos started her path on providing sexual services since she was 11, which sounds like a truly terrible things: she was offering various services in exchange not only for money, but also for cigarettes and alcohol. When Aileen was 14, she gave a birth to a child, whom her family gave for adoption. After that, grandparents forced Wuornos to leave her home and to go away, no matter where. Aileen moved to Florida after her brother had died from cancer, and in this state, she started to work as a prostitute (Capitalpunishmentincontext.org).
At that time, Aileen was already a woman with an extensive criminal history: robberies, illegal possession of firearms, assaults, forgeries and other crimes. Aileen lived a wild life and she was actually dating a woman (Tyria Moore), while working as a prostitute with a majority of male clients. Together with her partner, Wuornos sold the things that she had stolen from her murdered clients, and it is still a mystery whether Moore was fully aware of Aileen’s actions (Capitalpunishmentincontext.org).
During the trial process, Wuornos claimed that the clients, whom she had assassinated, raped and beat her and this became the major reason for her anger and for the commitment of crime: in fact, she stated that all of the killings she committed were the acts of self-defense and that those men expressed very violent attitude towards her. However, during the trial the court refuted those statements, because every time Wuornos told a story she stated different facts and significantly confused in her testimonies (Capitalpunishmentincontext.org).
The actions of Aileen Wuornos are extremely immoral and outrageous, and it is hard to believe that a woman can commit such things. The stereotype in most of the societies that men commit more crimes and that the performers of violent crimes are mostly male, which also has a support in the numbers, leads us to the conclusion that women cannot express high level of violence that would lead to a murder. Aileen Wuornos was not just a murderer who killed one person: she was a serial killer, who maybe even had a strategy of her actions and who committed not two, not three, but seven killings, which already points out at her insanity. Serial murders is not a very often phenomenon, and every case becomes very loud, because the concept of serial killing is a very mysterious and serious issue. The official portal of FBI provides the information that “serial murder is a relatively rare event, estimated to comprise less than one percent of all murders committed in any given year” (Fbi.gov).
Different causes could have become the motives for the Wuornos activities. Her difficult childhood, her heredity from her parents, continuous assaults from her father and indifference of her mother, sexual activities from an early age – all of those issues served their role in Aileen’s personality development and in the formation of her views and moral principles. In fact, she probably did not have serious moral beliefs, because her actions definitely do not imply any sorts of morality. Many claim that most of serial killers are psychopaths who have serious brain abnormalities (Brogaard, 2012). The investigation did not find any evidence that Wuornos has mental issues. In such a way, the major reason for her actions was her anger for her life and the desire to hurt other people, as she was a subject of assault for a long period. We can suggest one more version of the major reason of her activities: maybe it was truly self-defense and maybe it was true that those clients got pleasure from abusing her and making her cry from pain. Still, the reasons here are both psychological and physiological (either pain from raping or the ‘bruises’ from childhood).
Without any doubt, Aileen Wuornos is not the only example of a female criminal, who committed extremely violent murders. Thorough research can reveal more cases of severe actions committed by women. Different causes serve as the major motives for committing a crime at various scales. However, proper and careful investigation of the process, as well as a thorough work of social services and appropriate policies within the society can help to reduce the number of homicides and of various types of harassments in childhood that often lead to serious psychological problems that become anger drives and make people commit terrible things.
References
Aileen Wuornos. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from http://www.capitalpunishmentincontext.org/node/77455
Brogaard, B. (2012, December 7). The Making of a Serial Killer. Retrieved March 30, 2016, from https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-superhuman-mind/201212/the-making-serial-killer
Gender and Crime - Differences Between Male And Female Offending Patterns. (n.d.). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from http://law.jrank.org/pages/1250/Gender-Crime-Differences-between-male-female-offending-patterns.html
Serial Murder. (2010). Retrieved March 30, 2016, from https://www.fbi.gov/stats-services/publications/serial-murder
