.<\/span><\/p>\nShurman-Kauflin, Deborah S. <\/span>The New Predator: Women Who Kill: Profiles of Female Serial Killers<\/span><\/i>. New York: Algora Publishing, 2000.<\/span><\/p>\nSnyder, Michael. \u201cThe Life and Legend of India\u2019s Bandit Queen.\u201d <\/span>Roads & Kingdom<\/span><\/i>s. Last modified November 13, 2017. http:\/\/roadsandkingdoms.com\/2017\/indias-bandit-queen\/.<\/span><\/p>\nThe Specialist. <\/span>Aileen Wuornos: Damsel of Death. Youtube.<\/span><\/i> October 26, 2013. Accessed May 1, 2018, <\/span>https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=y6GVoiwsoK8&t=69s<\/span><\/i>. <\/span><\/p>\nVronsky, Peter. <\/span>Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters<\/span><\/i>. New York: Berkley Books Penguin Group, 2007.<\/span><\/p>\nYardley, Elizabeth, and David Wilson. “The Trouble with Female Serial Killers.” In <\/span>Female Serial Killers in Social Context: Criminological Institutionalism and the Case of Mary Ann Cotton<\/span><\/i>, 1-26. Bristol: Policy Press at the University of Bristol, 2015. doi:10.2307\/j.ctt1t89czh.5.<\/span><\/p>\nYardley, Elizabeth, and David Wilson. “Intersections and Institutions: New Pathways in Making Sense of Female Serial Killers.” In <\/span>Female Serial Killers in Social Context: Criminological Institutionalism and the Case of Mary Ann Cotton<\/span><\/i>, 27-40. Bristol: Policy Press at the University Of Bristol, 2015. Doi:10.2307\/J.Ctt1t89czh.6<\/span><\/p>\nTranscript<\/b><\/p>\n
\u201ca female serial killer\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cshe was like a spider, awaiting her prey\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n \u201cthere\u2019s just something inside of her; I believe she needed to die\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cAileen Wuornos\u2019 life was tragic\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n(All quotes are from The Specialist\u2019s <\/span>Aileen Wuornos: Damsel of Death<\/span><\/i>)<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Martha: This is Martha, <\/span><\/p>\nEmma: Emma, <\/span><\/p>\nIndira: Indira <\/span><\/p>\nMartha:and we\u2019re speaking from Grinnell College on May 6, 2018.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Martha: Today, we\u2019re looking at, you guessed it, serial killers. But, more specifically, we\u2019re looking at two women serial killers: Aileen Wuornos based in the United States and Phoolan Devi, based in India.<\/span><\/p>\nThe narratives constructed around these cases produce systems of victim-blaming that in turn reinforce hegemonic ideas of womanhood.<\/span><\/p>\nSo by looking at the media narratives around these cases, we hope to gain clarity about what this means about the broader culture.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Before we get into the cases themselves, we should clarify that we\u2019re not necessarily interested in uncovering the quote unquote truth of these cases or assigning guilt or blame. Cause that just gets messy quickly. Instead, we really want to explore how these cases ultimately reveal more about their underlying cultures than they do about the individuals implicated in the situations themselves.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Emma: So to begin our discussion about these two cases, we are going to give you a little bit of background about general information and the media portrayals.. <\/span><\/p>\nAileen Wuornos, sometimes called Lee, killed seven men in Florida along highway routes between November 1989 and November 1990 using a .22-caliber gun. She was a sex worker and claimed that she had acted in self-defense after each man attempted to sexually assault her. Every man she killed was shot multiple times, ranging from two to nine times. Wuornos also stole various items from the men she killed, including money and cars which she described as her \u201cfinal revenge\u201d against them for trying to hurt her. \u00a0She was arrested on January 9, 1991 and confessed to six murders after a series of taped phone conversations with her lover, Tyria Moore. She was convicted of six counts of first degree murder and was executed by lethal injection on October 9, 2002. Much of the media attention surrounding Wuornos focused on her gender, both denying and affirming her femininity in different ways. Many sources discuss how she is atypical woman serial killer and seek to masculinize- her and her killing style. However, most narratives are invested in establishing the moral character of her victims and accuse her of preying on men who were just trying to help a woman in supposed distress. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Indira: Now looking at the case from India, Phoolan Devi, also known as the Beautiful Bandit, the Goddess of Flowers and India\u2019s fiery Bandit Queen, was a lower-caste woman who sought revenge for her gangrape by joining a gang and killing the perpetrators in what was called the \u201cBehmai massacre.\u201d This act was seen as righteous lower-caste rebellion and Phoolan herself as an \u201coppressed feminist Robin Hood<\/span>.<\/span>(\u201cIndia\u2019 Bandit Queen)\u201d <\/span><\/p>\nMany believe that Phoolan transcended the trauma of her gangrape in 1981, when she returned to the village and recognized two men who took part in that gangrape. When they refused to reveal the identity of the others involved she lined 22 upper-caste villagers and killed them. India was rattled, it was the largest dacoit (banditry) massacre since the founding of modern India. And it was triply shocking: because of its scale, because it-it was led by a woman, and because a woman of a lower caste murdered men of a vastly higher one. After being hunted for two years, Phoolan Devi negotiated terms of her surrender. She was charged with 48 crimes, including 30 charges of banditry and kidnapping and remained in prison for 11 years. <\/span><\/p>\nIn 1996, two years after she was released, Phoolan Devi ran for local office and won. On 25 July 2001, Phoolan Devi was returning from the Parliament when she was shot dead by masked assassins. The media portrayals surrounding this case focus primarily on her sexual assault and position her as a victim in an overarching oppressive casteist patriarchal structure. However, this narrative is not fully agreed upon by Phoolan herself or by author Mala Sen who did extensive research for her book on Phoolan’s life. According to Sen, Phoolan\u2019s becoming a bandit had nothing to do with caste or rape. So, why has all this been glossed over and why is her story presented in terms of caste warfare and sexual violence? I don\u2019t think there is a clear answer to these questions.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Martha: In order to make these controversial cases digestable we\u2019ve split the analysis of these narratives into three major \u00a0categories: first we analyze Wuornos\u2019 and Devi\u2019s childhoods, then we look at the way Wuornos is demonized while Devi is glorified, and finally, we look at how constructions of masculinity and femininity strongly inform the overarching narratives. But first, since so much of true crime is concerned with serial killer behavior formed in childhood, what narratives exist surrounding Aileen Wuornos\u2019 childhood? \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Emma: Aileen Wuornos was born on February 29, 1956. She never met her biological father and her biological mother abandoned her and her older brother, Keith, with ah their maternal grandparents at an early age. So a lot of the narratives around Wuornos\u2019s early life focus on the abuse she suffered at the hands of her grandfather. He was definitely physically abusive specifically towards Aileen, and some accounts say sexually abusive as well. Another aspect that\u2019s focused on is how Aileen started having sex with boys at an early age, some say as young as eleven, in exchange for cigarettes, food, and other products. Many of these narratives sort of construct that she was lonely and awkward and sort of a, like, failure to gain boys\u2019 attention so this was the only way she knew to reach for companionship.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Indira: Yeah, I definitely seen a lot of common patterns here in the narrative, especially around sexual abuse and also you said that Aileen had sex with boys at an early age, or so it\u2019s believed in the media, and Phoolan Devi also had a reputation for quote unquote \u201cpromiscuity\u201d at an early age. In fact, it\u2019s believed that she was married off because of such a reputation early on in her life.<\/span><\/p>\nSo she was born to a lower-caste poor household on August 10, 1963 in a small village in Uttar Pradesh, India. And the media coverage surrounding her case paints a sympathetic narrative of her life and attempts to justify her taking to banditry as a result of the oppression and maltreatment she faced since the early years of her life. So most accounts stress on how she was ah married at the age of 11 to an abusive man who was thrice her age – they focus on marital rape as the primary cause for her turning to a life of banditry. In fact, the popular film based on her life called \u201cBandit Queen\u201d made by Shekhar Kapur supposedly aims to reveal the brutal \u201ctruth\u201d of the oppression of women and lower castes in India by portraying Phoolan as a victim in every stage of her life. But what\u2019s interesting is that author Mala Sen and Phoolan Devi herself have rejected Kapur\u2019s romanticized film version as a quote unquote \u201ctrue\u201d depiction of her life. According to her autobiography, Phoolan’s first act of rebellion was over a property dispute with her uncle at the age of 10 before she was married and so I found this interesting a quote in a blog that said \u201cshe did not to be raped to protest\u201d (Roy). And I think this really highlights the way women in India are treated. Or are looked upon as if they only have a voice after something bad has happened, or after they have been victimized, or sexually assaulted. In fact, it\u2019s believed that in Phoolan\u2019s case that it was her uncle who got her kidnapped by a band of dacoits to take revenge on the property dispute that ultimately led her on the path to join a gang. Yet, all popular media accounts write this one dimensional story of herlife making it a formula-ridden Rape-Revenge story thereby robbing her life of all its nuance and complexity. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Indira: Can you name a woman serial killer?<\/span><\/p>\nInterviewee 1: No<\/span><\/p>\nInterviewee 2: No, I don\u2019t know<\/span><\/p>\nInterviewee 3: No, I don\u2019t know single one<\/span><\/p>\nInterviewee 4: I cannot <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Martha: Next, even though Wuornos and Devi are both given the same title of serial killer, this does not necessarily mean they are treated the same way.Wuornos is demonized while Devi is glorified.<\/span><\/p>\nEmma:As mentioned earlier, there is an obsession with affirming the moral character of the men Wuornos killed. Again we not saying that whether or not these men were good people, we are simply talking about the media coverage surrounding them. So several accounts, such as the true firm novel Lethal Intent, describe one of the men she killed, David Spears as a \u201cperfect gentleman\u201d and \u201call around nice guy\u201d and most book versions I have encountered offer extensive testimonies from families of the men Wuornos killed about their moral character (Russell 182; Wuornos & Berry-Dee 75). There is also testimony from Wuornos\u2019s family about her but that\u2019s only to, like, affirm her as a criminal and as, like, out of control instead of talking about any of her, any good attributes she might have had. The first man she killed, Richard Malory, had been convicted of rape before this but most of the accounts minis this or don\u2019t mention it. One account tries to downplay this by describing him as a simply a peeping tom who was just a maladjusted harmless teenage (Russell 385). Which, there is a lot there. As Pearsons points out in her article, \u201cThe Trouble With Aileen Wuornos, \u201cFeminism\u2019s First Serial Killer,\u201d\u2019 this serves to both discredit Wuornos and absolve the men of any suspicion, casting them as purely good Samaritans that were trying to help a woman who then took advantage of their generosity (Pearsons 262). And so it serves to demonize Wuornos further by glorifying her victims.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Indira: I think that\u2019s the key difference between the two cases because Phoolan Devi was made into a hero – not just by the lower caste but by the entire nation. I found this quote in a publication that I thought was really interesting and its says,<\/span><\/p>\n\u201cJournalists; politicians; some 300 cops; and others from across the dry, impoverished center of the world\u2019s largest democracy knew Phoolan Devi as a hero, a bandit, a murderess, and a goddess long before they saw her in the flesh. Phoolan Devi, India\u2019s celebrated Bandit Queen, was not a woman, but a legend (Synder).\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nI think this concept of Phoolan becoming a legend is really interesting. And Arundhati Roy, celebrated author, mentions in her article \u201cthat Phoolan is suffering from a case of Legenditis\u201d which I think is funny because she explains that she ceases to exist as a woman or a human being (Roy). She is only a version of herself, a version constructed by the media, by politicians, by journalists and scholars. <\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
And it think this is especially true because her story is so complex and layered, yet she is only remembered as a fiery symbol against caste oppression, a criminal in the eyes of the law or a survivor who took revenge against her rapists. I also think that this glorification is problematic because \u201cPhoolan Devi in part becomes a hero because she is not quite real. She is just a screen onto which we project our fantasies of bravery, salvation, and justice (Snyder)\u201d.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
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Indira: Can you describe a woman serial killer?<\/span><\/p>\n