We all tend to focus on the evil men in the world and forget some of the truly evil women that have lived. I hope to correct that with this list. Here we have not just serial killers, but other utterly despicable women who have caused tragedy in many people’s lives.
So, without further ado, here are the top most evil women in history.
(See also Top 10 Public Enemies)
(See also Top 26 Mass Murderers In History)
(See also Top 25 Most Evil People in History)
30. Mary Ann Cotton (1832 - 1873)
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| (Mary Ann Cotton) |
Most of the dastardly women on this list committed their crimes relatively recently, within the last century or so. However, evil women have been around for much longer, as is evident with Mary Ann Cotton. Over the course of her life, she moved all over England. At each place she settled, tragically she lost people close to her. Her three husbands all died, as did a lover, her friend, her mother, and all of her thirteen children. At this point in any other story our hearts would be breaking for this woman, but in her case the story's a little darker. All of those who died had life insurance policies taken out in their names... and all of them died after having the same symptoms of stomach pains and intestinal problems.
It turned out that she had poisoned them all with arsenic, in order to gain the money from their life insurance. What makes her more evil than many other serial killers is that everyone she murdered was meant to be close to her. Women are traditionally nurturing, loving and caring, but she killed in cold blood those people who she was meant to have those very feelings for. She must have been one of the most cold-hearted women in history. She was sentenced to death for her crimes, so was hanged aged 40. However, she didn't die of a broken neck, as usually happened in hangings. The rope was too short for a clean execution (apparently on purpose) so she died a slow death of suffocation. Hats off to that hangman.
29. Leonarda Cianciulli (1893 - 1970)
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| (Leonarda Cianciulli) |
Cianciulli was an Italian woman who killed three women between 1939 and 1940. Although that is a low body count, what she did with them was horrifying. Cianciulli used the remains of the bodies to make soaps that she would later bathe with. In addition to soap, she used dried blood from the victims in her tea cakes that she served to friends when they would visit. She also claimed that she enjoyed eating them.
28. Tracey Wigginton (born: 1965)
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| (Tracey Wigginton) |
Tracey Wigginton’s thirst for blood became insatiable. For some time she fed on pig and cow blood from the butcher and, romantically enough, drank from her lover Lisa Ptaschinski’s carefully slit wrists. So one evening, the soon-to-be infamous “Lesbian Vampire Killer,” her lover, along with two female friends, Kim Jervis and Tracey Waugh, embarked on a night cruise looking for a fresh meal. They lured drunken Edward Baldock, age 47, into their car as he left a bar on Oct. 20, 1989. They stopped at a nearby park along the Brisbane River, where Wigginton stabbed him so many times in the chest and back that his head almost fell off. Her friends watched Wigginton drink from the spurting fountain that was his body. Police found her cash card in his shoe the next day and Wigginton received life imprisonment. But she has since returned to a solid food diet and made bail!
27. Gertrude Baniszewski (1929 - 1990)
.jpg "Public Enemies: Gertrude Baniszewski") |
| (Gertrude Baniszewski) |
Four failed marriages, two involving the same husband, left Gertrude Baniszewski with some kids and a bitter taste for abusing others. In 1965 an unsuspecting circus couple asked her to watch over their two teenage daughters, Sylvia Marie and polio-stricken Jenny Faye Likens, for $20 a week. Baniszewski beat the girls with a mallet for tiny indiscretions, but what makes her truly evil is that she coerced her own seven children and other neighborhood kids to beat, torture and sexually abuse her captives, particularly Sylvia, aka “Cookie.” One incident involved forcing Sylvia to rape herself with a Coke bottle. On Oct. 26, 1965, Indianapolis police were called to 3850 E. New York St. where Sylvia's body lay on a mattress, starved, bruised, bleeding, burned and found “I Am A Prostitute” tattooed to her stomach. Baniszewski blamed a gang of boys, but the cops didn’t buy it. She spent 20 years of a life sentence in prison.
26. Dorothea Puente (1929 - 2011)
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| (Dorothea Puente) |
A sweet little old lady who runs a boarding house for elderly, unwell and otherwise vulnerable people is hardly your first candidate for murder, but that's exactly what Dorothea Puente was. In her younger days, she drugged people, stole from them, ran a brothel, and did time in jail. However, after she moved to Sacramento, CA., she started up a boarding house where she took in people in need. Some people praised her for her kind nature and hospitality, while others saw a darker side... some 25 sick, troubled elderly men were trapped and killed.
Her motives were monetary, as she continued to forge their Social Security checks, spending the money on clothes, makeup and even plastic surgery. Anyone who places such materialistic items above the value of human life is clearly the lowest of the low, the most evil of all.
25. Elena Ceaușescu (1916 - 1989)
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| (Elena Ceaușescu) |
Elena Ceaușescu was a Romanian self-proclaimed scientist, wife of Romania’s Communist leader, Nicolae Ceaușescu and Vice Prime Minister of Romania. Romanians hold Elena Ceaușescu responsible for the elimination of birth control, which created crisis conditions during the 1970s and 1980s, resulting in a flood of unwanted infants, babies and children, that were housed in substandard state operated orphanages throughout the country. She also headed the State health commission, which denied the existence of AIDS in Romania, leading to one of the largest outbreaks (including pediatric cases) in the western world. She was also responsible for the destruction of churches and the food rationing that took place in Romania in the 1980s. She was eventually executed for her crimes against humanity, and died screaming “go to hell” to her executor. I wonder how she is finding it there.
24. Beverly Allitt (born: 1968)
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| (Beverly Allitt) |
In the days of modern medicine, when we send our children into hospital, we trust that they'll be looked after and have a pretty good chance of coming out in a better condition. Not so if the nurse was Beverly Allitt, who was dubbed the 'Angel of Death'. Anyone who is given that for a nickname has got to be evil, right?
She was working as a paediatric nurse in England when she killed four children, injured five more, and attacked another four who were in her care. Her methods of killing included insulin or potassium injections, or smothering. Remarkably, all of these deaths took place within the space of less than two months!
As an outsider, it's difficult to see how someone who had worked so hard to reach that point in her career could snap so suddenly, causing such devastation over such a short period of time. However, Münchausen syndrome is probably the underlying reason: it's a horrendous condition where someone in a position of care deliberately causes mental, psychological or behavioural problems to their patients. This isn't an excuse for what she did, but it's a reason - could she have been born to kill?
23. Enriqueta Marti (1868 - 1913)
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| (Enriqueta Marti) |
This cruel woman preyed on homeless children and would put them into prostitution or murder them, then use their remains for ointments that she claimed cured tuberculosis. She was eventually arrested and hung by her prison mates before trial.
22. Aileen Wuornos (1956 - 2002)
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| (Aileen Wuornos) |
Having a difficult childhood, Aileen grew up hating all men and became a serial killer. She stole cars, stuck up convenience stores and killed a lot of different men before she was arrested and killed in 2002.
21. Wu Zetian (624 - 705)
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| (Wu Zetian) |
This evil Chinese empress put countless people to death for threatening her rule. She even put her own infant daughter to death as well as other family members.
20. Elizabeth I of England (1533 - 1603)
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| (Elizabeth I of England) |
Elizabeth I, in order to suppress Catholicism, had thousands of Catholics in England and Ireland murdered. While she did good things with regards to parliament, she was an evil tyrant who is, unfortunately, portrayed as “Good Queen Bess” these days (as we know, the victors write history). Additionally, Elizabeth gave Mary, Queen of Scots refuge, then immediately betrayed her and kept her prisoner for nearly 19 years, before murdering her (with no intervening freedom!). She encouraged piracy against Spanish ships and allowed the slave trade to thrive.
19. Queen Mary I (1516 - 1558)
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| (Queen Mary I) |
Mary was the only child of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon to live past infancy. Crowned after the death of Edward VI and the removal of The Nine Days Queen-Lady Jane Grey, Mary is chiefly remembered for temporarily and violently returning England to Catholicism. Many prominent Protestants were executed for their beliefs leading to the moniker “Bloody Mary”. Fearing the gallows a further 800 Protestants left the country, unable to return until her death.
18. Griselda Blanco (1943 - 2012)
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| (Griselda Blanco) |
This infamous cocaine godmother, who was already kidnapping and murdering children at age 11, ran the cocaine trade with murderous force in New York and Miami before being shot in the head in 2012.
17. Marybeth Tinning (born: 1942)
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| (Marybeth Tinning) |
Between 1972 and 1985, Tinning had 8 children and adopted another one, all of whom she murdered. Throughout the period of the deaths, no one had any suspicion that she was murdering them, and genetics was blamed. This happened despite the fact that her adopted child was the seventh child murdered. She confessed to smothering her children, but later retracted the confession. She was eventually sentenced to 20 years in prison – since then, both attempts at parole have been denied.
16. Belle Gunness (1859 - 1931)
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| (Belle Gunness) |
Belle Gunness was a formidable woman. She stood at 6 ft (1.83 m) tall and weighed over 200 lb (91 kg). A strong, powerful woman, she was born in Norway but moved to America at around the age of 20. As if any one reason could be more appalling than another, what would you consider to be the worst reason for killing? I would suggest that murder for monetary gain (rather than out of anger or spite) is the most awful, because it is so cold and selfish. However, that's exactly what Belle Gunness did. She killed for money - mostly life insurance policies or cash - eventually earning around a quarter of a million dollars, an extortionate amount at those times. To build up this sort of wealth, she murdered both her husbands, all of her children, friends, and most boyfriends and admirers.
The number of dead tops 20, but rumors suggest that she could have killed as many as 100 people. Perhaps most shockingly of all is that she was never caught or charged. After a fire at her home (during which another woman died, who was believed to be Gunness for some time) she fled and escaped, and managed to live out her days without ever facing repercussions for what she'd done. In this case, to say life is unfair is the understatement of the century!
15. Ilse Koch (1906 - 1967)
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| (Ilse Koch) |
“Die Hexe von Buchenwald” the Witch of Buchenwald, or “Buchenwälder Schlampe” the Bitch of Buchenwald was the wife of Karl Koch, commandant of the concentration camps Buchenwald from 1937 to 1941, and Majdanek from 1941 to 1943. Drunk on the absolute power rendered by her husband, she reveled in torture and obscenity. Infamous for her souvenirs; tattoos taken from the murdered inmates, her reputation for debauchery was well earned. After building an indoor sports arena in 1940, with 250,000 marks stolen from inmates, Ilsa was promoted to Oberaufseherin or “chief overseer” of the few female guards at Buchenwald. She committed suicide by hanging herself at Aichach women’s prison on September 1, 1967.
14. Irma Grese (1923 - 1945)
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| (Irma Grese) |
Another product of the Nazi’s final solution, Irma Grese or the “Bitch of Belsen” was a guard at concentration camps Ravensbrück, Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen. Transferred to Auschwitz in 1943, (she must have shown particular enthusiasm and dedication to the job), she was promoted to Senior Supervisor, the 2nd highest ranking female in camp, by the end of the year. In charge of over 30,000 Jewish female prisoners, she reveled in her work. Her work included; savaging of prisoners by her trained and half starved dogs, sexual excesses, arbitrary shootings, sadistic beatings with a plaited whip, and selecting prisoners for the gas chamber. She enjoyed both physical and emotional torture and habitually wore heavy boots and carried a pistol to facilitate both.
13. Katherine Knight (born: 1956)
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| (Katherine Knight) |
The first Australian woman to be sentenced to a natural life term without parole, Katherine Knight had a history of violence in relationships. She mashed the dentures of one of her ex-husbands and slashed the throat of another husband’s eight-week-old puppy before his eyes. A heated relationship with John Charles Thomas Price became public knowledge with an Apprehended Violence Order that Price had filed against Knight and ended with Knight stabbing Price to death with a butcher’s knife. He had been stabbed at least 37 times, both front and back, with many of the wounds penetrating vital organs. She then skinned him and hung his “suit” from the door frame in the living room, cut off his head and put it in the soup pot, baked his buttocks, and prepared gravy and vegetables to accompany the ‘roast’. The meal and a vindictive note were set out for the children, luckily discovered by police before they arrived home.
12. Lizzie Borden (1860 - 1927)
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| (Lizzie Borden) |
Was an American woman who was tried and acquitted in 1893 for the 1892 axe murders of her father and stepmother in Fall River, Massachusetts. The case was a cause célèbre throughout the United States. Following her release from the prison in which she had been held during the trial, Borden chose to remain a resident of Fall River, Massachusetts, for the rest of her life, despite facing significant ostracism. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts elected to charge no one else with the murder of Andrew and Abby Borden; speculation about the crimes still continues more than 100 years later.
11. Maria 'Chata' Leon (born: 1965-66)
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| (Maria 'Chata' Leon) |
As the head of The Avenues, Chata ran one of the most dangerous street gangs in the history of Los Angeles. From her fortress home on Drew St., she ran a criminal enterprise based on drugs, murder and intimidation.
Much of the gang's higher leadership was made up of her children.
10. Phoolan Devi (1963 - 2001)
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| (Phoolan Devi) |
Phoolan Devi was an Indian Dacoit (armed robber), who had a brief career as a politician later in her life. In the 1970s she was kidnapped by a gang of dacoits, and she eventually joined them in their crimes. At one point she was raped by a group of men in Behmai, a village they attacked. She managed to escape and continued her life of crime, stealing from the wealthy. She eventually returned to Behmai, where she ordered all of the men in the village lined up and shot. At least 22 men were murdered at her command. She was finally arrested, and spent 11 years in jail. She went in to politics but her short lived career ended due to abuse of her power. Shockingly, in 1998, Phoolan Devi was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by some members of the British Parliament. In 2001, she was assassinated by a man in revenge for the murders she caused in Behmai.
9. Myra Hindley (1942 - 2002)
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| (Myra Hindley) |
Myra Hindley and Ian Brady were responsible for the “Moors murders” occurring in the Manchester area of Britain in the mid 1960’s. Together these two monsters were responsible for the kidnapping, sexual abuse, torture and murder of three children under the age of twelve and two teenagers, aged 16 and 17. A key found in Myra’s possession led to incriminating evidence stored at a left-luggage depot at Manchester Central Station. The evidence included a tape recording of one of the murder victims screaming as Hindley and Brady raped and tortured her. In the final days before incarceration, she developed a swagger and arrogant attitude that became her trademark. Police secretary Sandra Wilkinson has never forgotten seeing Hindley and her mother Nellie, leaning against the courthouse eating sweets. While the mother was obviously and understandably upset, Hindley seemed indifferent and uncaring of her situation.
8. Isabella of Castile (1451 - 1504)
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| (Isabella of Castile) |
Isabella I of Spain, well known as the patron of Christopher Columbus, with her husband Ferdinand II of Aragon, are responsible for making possible the unification of Spain under their grandson Carlos I. As part of the drive for unification, Isabella appointed Tomás de Torquemada as the first Inquisitor General of the inquisition. March 31, 1492 marks the implementation of the Alhambra Decree; expulsion edicts forcing the removal or conversion of Jews and Muslims. Roughly 200,000 people left Spain; those remaining who chose conversion were subsequently persecuted by the inquisition investigating Judaizing conversos. In 1974, Pope Paul VI opened her cause for beatification. This places her on the path toward possible sainthood. In the Catholic Church, she is thus titled Servant of God.
7. Rosemary West (born: 1953)
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| (Rosemary West) |
She formed an infamous killing and torturing partnership with her husband Fred West during the 1970s. Together, they kidnapped, locked up, tortured, raped and killed girls and young women, each over a period of several days. Then they buried these young girls' bodies under their house. Horrifically, this included one of their own daughters, as well as one of Fred West's daughters from a previous relationship. Including these two, it is known that they killed ten women. However, it has been suggested that this could be a reflection of only about half their true number of victims.
Rosemary West did not have the best start in life, as her father was a paranoid schizophrenic who repeatedly sexually abused her, but that's no excuse for the life she went on to lead. After her conviction in 1995, West was given a whole life sentence - only the second British woman in history to be handed this, after Myra Hindley. Although justice can never truly be done for those poor young girls, a less severe sentence would have been inadequate.
6. Dorothea Binz (1920 - 1947)
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| (Dorothea Binz) |
As the SS supervisor at the Ravensbruck concentration camp, her dedication to her work was described by her fellow Nazis as "unyielding."
Known for patrolling the camp with a whip in one hand and a German Shepherd at her side, inmates reportedly fell silent upon her approach. Her reputation of whipping, beating and even shooting female inmates earned her the job of supervising the torture bunkers at the camp as well as training guards.
5. Biljana Plavsic (born: 1930)
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| (Biljana Plavsic) |
As the former president of Republika Srpska, she led Bosnia-Herzegovina during the Serbian genocides of the 1990s.
It was her comments that ethnic cleansing was a "natural thing," and that six million Serbs needed to die, that rallied her republic to perpetrate genocide. After her arrest, she plea bargained with the war crimes tribunal and remained in prison until her release in 2009. She is currently staging a political comeback.
4. Delphine LaLaurie (1775 - 1842(?))
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| (Delphine LaLaurie) |
LaLaurie was a sadistic socialite who lived in New Orleans. Her home was a chamber of horrors. On April 10, 1834, a fire broke out in the mansion’s kitchen, and firefighters found two slaves chained to the stove. They appeared to have started the fire themselves, in order to attract attention. The firefighters were lead by other slaves to the attic, where the real surprise was. Over a dozen disfigured and maimed slaves were manacled to the walls or floors. Several had been the subjects of gruesome medical experiments. One man appeared to be part of some bizarre sex change, a woman was trapped in a small cage with her limbs broken and reset to look like a crab, and another woman with arms and legs removed, and patches of her flesh sliced off in a circular motion to resemble a caterpillar. Some had had their mouths sewn shut and had subsequently starved to death, whilst others had their hands sewn to different parts of their bodies. Most were found dead, but some were alive and begging to be killed, to release them from the pain. LaLaurie fled before she could be bought to justice – she was never caught.
3. Fusako Shigenobu (born: 1945)
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| (Fusako Shigenobu) |
After a career as a student activist, she volunteered with the PLO before forming the Japanese Red Army. In her attempts to unite Japan under Communist revolution, she became a full-fledged terrorist.
She is responsible for orchestrating the 1974 attack on the French embassy in The Hague, and assisting the 1960 hijacking of TWA flight 840. Until her arrest in 2000, she was the most wanted terrorist on earth.
2. Jiang Qing (1914 - 1991)
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| (Jiang Qing) |
Jiang Qing was the wife of Mao Tse-tung, the Communist dictator of China. Through clever maneuvering she managed to reach the highest position of power within the communist party (short of being President). It is believed that she was the main driving force behind China’s Cultural Revolution (of which she was the deputy director). During the Cultural Revolution, much economic activity was halted, and countless ancient buildings, artifacts, antiques, books and paintings were destroyed by Red Guards. The 10 years of the Cultural Revolution also brought the education system to a virtual halt, and many intellectuals were sent to prison camps. Millions of people in China reportedly had their human rights annulled during the Cultural Revolution. Millions more were also forcibly displaced. Estimates of the death toll – civilians and Red Guards – from various Western and Eastern sources are about 500,000 in the true years of chaos of 1966—1969, but some estimates are as high as 3 million deaths, with 36 million being persecuted.
1. Elizabeth Bathory (1560 - 1614)
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| (Elizabeth Bathory) |
Countess Elizabeth Bathory is considered the most infamous serial killer in Hungarian/Slovak history. Rumors had circulated for years about missing peasant girls; offered well paid work at the castle, they were never seen again. One of these rumors reached the ears of King Mathias II, who sent a party of men to the massive Castle Csejthe. The men found one girl dead and one dying. Another was found wounded and others locked up. Described atrocities, collected from testimony of witnesses, include; severe beatings over extended periods of time, the use of needles, burning or mutilation of hands, sometimes also of faces and genitalia, biting the flesh off the faces, arms and other bodily parts, and the starving of victims. The victim total is thought to number in the hundreds occurring over a twenty-five year period. Due to her social status she was never brought to trial but remained under house arrest in a single room until her death. The idea that the Countess bathed in the blood of her victims is folklore, and one of the few things she did not do.