Bishop, Hoyt, Homolka: do killers in the making go undetected because they are women?

"If the killer’s own family and neighbors miss the red flags, what hope do the rest of us have?" writes Patrick Radden Keefe, author of the article linked below. As there's not really a graf encompassing all of the piece's subject matter, I snipped half a paragraph and went with it.

Keefe wrote a piece last week, also in The New Yorker, about Amy Bishop, who was sentenced to life in prison following her shooting of six fellow faculty members at University of Alabama-Huntsville and who, 23 years before, had shot and killed her own brother; it's linked here, and it is not to be missed. It is lengthy, and it is enthralling.

Here, he uses that case, as well as those of Waneta Hoyt and Karla Homolka, to focus on the question he raises in the title:

Did a murderer in waiting go undetected because she was a woman? (The New Yorker)

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In a 1998 article about gender bias in the criminal-justice system, Larissa MacFarquhar, reviewing two books about female killers, observes, “The message that emerges from this collection of tales is clear enough: be a woman, act like a woman, and you may blithely strew your neighborhood with bloody axes and severed heads, since the chances are that you will get away with murder.”
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Click to expand...

the rest at the links above

Our stereotypes about gender do persist. I think most of us would tend to trust a female stranger or neighbor over a male. And that equals opportunity.

Terri Lynn McClintic and Tanya Bogdanovich are two more for the list.

Excellent article re Amy Bishop. I was unaware of the other incidents between the time she shot her brother and the murders at U.A.H.:

She punched a woman in the head at an IHop because the patron was using the last booster seat for her child - charges dropped; and

Amy and her husband were questioned by the ATF as suspects in a pipe bomb incident where a colleague of Amy's receieved a pipe bomb in the mail - no charges filed.

Amy Bishop, herself, was a ticking time bomb, but over and over again she was given a pass. I do believe that her gender played a major role in those decisions.

Haven't given it much thought lately, but used to think about it when I was learning about serial killers and noticed a difference in ratio of men to women. Wondered how many women got away with it simply because of their gender, looks if they had them, and guile.

I think there was a time when women were overlooked, but hopefully that is changing with more and more violent female crime being recognized. We have a lot in this city. I trust no gender now, am leery of anyone unknown to me.

There are just some messed up angry people in this world, women and men.