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Key points
- Female team killers follow a similar behavioral pattern as male-female teams.
- Some female team killers are suprisingly young and possibly influenced by a desire for social media visibility.
- The team hierarchy can influence the sentencing.
This week, we learned that a Portugal court sentenced Maria Malveiro to 25 years in prison for murdering Diogo Goncalves last year. Inspired by the manner in which a TV character, Dexter, had disposed of his victims, the 20-year-old had enlisted her girlfriend, Mariana Fonseca, to assist her with dismembering his corpse. They knew that Goncalves had received an insurance settlement and they’d planned to exploit his crush on Malveiro to steal it.
Fonseca, a nurse, supplied drugs and waited in her car while Malveiro drugged Goncalves, tied him to a chair, and choked him until he passed out. Fonseca entered and revived him. A struggle ensued and Malveiro strangled Goncalves again. This time, he died. The women loaded the body into their car. Elsewhere, they used a meat clever to dismember it. Then they distributed the body parts in various locations before withdrawing money from Goncalves’ bank account. Fonceca claimed she’d participated because she’d been in love with Malveiro and under her influence. The judge accepted this excuse and gave her a much lighter sentence.
Traditional ideas about female killers hold that they’re motivated primarily by gain, are less violent than males, are largely reactive, and are not sexually compelled. When they use the "love" excuse for killing with a partner, judges and juries typically soften the penalty. But women who kill have certainly been predatory, cruel, and brutal. A few have even been sexually compulsive, especially in partnerships with other women. Most of these teams involved a dominant person with a scheming mind and a weaker person who complies.
A good example: Catherine May Wood worked as a supervisor at Michigan’s Alpine Manor, where she got involved with Gwendolyn Graham. It remains unclear who was the mastermind when they became killing partners in 1987, but Wood's version formed the legal case against them. Alpine Manor recorded the names of deceased or discharged patients in a book. Wood and Graham wanted to spell M-U-R-D-E-R by sequentially placing into this book the first initial of the last name of six people they'd kill. Read down, "MURDER" would appear. When this goal proved difficult to achieve, they focused on vulnerable patients. Their motive, Wood later said, was to have leverage with each other so they’d be bonded forever in murder. The excitement enhanced their sexual activities. Wood said she’d agreed to the plan because she feared losing Graham.
Eventually, they broke up. Wood confided what she'd done to her former husband, who went to the police. Wood turned state's witness against Graham for a reduced sentence. Graham was convicted and given six life sentences.
Killing couples, no matter what gender, follow a common pattern: Two people meet, feel a spark, and develop an intimacy that includes sharing fantasies—even violent ones. They might venture together into crime to seal their bond. The dominant person is generally charismatic and maintains psychological control. She’s often narcissistic, controlling, and manipulative, feeling energized by her control over a submissive person. She will generally devise the killing plan. In court, this dynamic has often given an advantage to the weaker member, as happened with Mariana Fonseca.
But not always.
Jemma Lilley’s bucket list included killing someone by age 25. She was 26 in 2016 when she persuaded her 44-year-old friend, Trudi Lenon, to help her murder 18-year-old Aaron Pajich for “fun.” The women have offered different versions of what happened, but Pajich was acquainted only with Lenon and a video from the murder day shows her carrying a knife. Pajich was lured to the home, which Lilley called Elm Street in honor of Freddy Krueger, on the pretext of downloading software. One of the women used a garrote to disable him before one (or both) stabbed him three times. The women buried his body in the backyard. Lilley wrote a message to Lenon the next day stating that she felt “incredibly empowered.”
When caught, each woman claimed the other had committed the actual murder. The jury heard how Lilley had aspired to become like her role models, serial killers. She’d adopted the persona, "SOS," a character from a book she’d once written about serial killers. Lenon had played the role of "Corvina," a "sycophantic submissive" character she’d used for BDSM rituals. According to news reports, the women had exchanged disturbing messages in which they’d discussed "SOS's first kill," a "screaming, pleading victim" and bloodstained streets. The Court didn't sort out whose version of events was true. Both were convicted and given equal sentences.
Some female killing teams are quite young, but they’re still in it for the thrill. In Britain, a 13- and 14-year-old posted selfies on Snapchat of their seven-hour fatal stabbing assault in 2014 of 39-year-old Angela Wrightson. She had over 100 injuries, most to her head. The girls thought it was fun. One suspect took photos of both of them smiling next to the injured woman. The teens made a Facebook call, in which one urged the other: "Go on. Smash her head in. Bray her. F------ kill her."
In June 2020 in Australia, two teenage girls, 15 and 16, encouraged the torture of two young men whom they’d invited to a party to rob. One victim tried to escape and plunged out a window to his death. The girls uploaded their video to social media. They were both charged with murder, torture, and robbery.
Participation on some social media platforms might encourage this acting out if friends or followers approve of cruelty or violence. In the minds of certain offenders, gaining attention as a “media star” seems to justify these extreme acts. But the buzz they get from killing someone likely recedes pretty fast in prison.
