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Division of
Women and Criminal Justice
Book Review
The Female Homicide Offender: Serial Murder and the Case
of Aileen Wuornos
by Stacey L. Shipley and Bruce A. Arrigo Pearson Education 2004
Prentice Hall
Reviewed by Kim Davies, Augusta
State University
The Female Homicide Offender by Shipley and Arrigo is like
no other academic manuscript that I have read on women and homicide
and I am still struggling with my take on it. According to Shipley
and Arrigo, their eleven chapter manuscript "aims to rectify the
paucity of research on female predatory homicide, drawing attention
to the phenomenon of ASPD (antisocial personality disorder) and its
impact on and relation to the act of predatory murder." Using
what they call an "instrumental case study" of Aileen
Wuornos, they seek to address the question of "how women
diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder (ASPD) or with
psychopathic personality traits experience their crime."
As one might expect, the first chapter starts much like many of us
who teach women and crime courses begin our courses, with a
discussion about statistics on women and crime followed by a
presentation of theories explaining women's criminal behavior.
Importantly in Chapter One, they point out many of the shortcomings
of the UCR data. However, they misstate some of the statistics or at
least present them in a confusing manner. For example, they note that
in 1996, among "nonindex offenses and arrests overall,
prostitution and commercialized vice arrests were the highest (60
percent)." The way that this is written, it seems to imply that
60% of women arrested for nonindex offenses were arrested for prostitution
or vice, however this is not the case. The percent of arrests of
women that were for commercialized vice or prostitution was closer to
2%. The 60% of which they speak is the percent of prostitution and
vice arrest that were female. In other words, 60% of all prostitution
and vice arrests were arrests of females and closer to 2% of all
non-index arrests of females were for prostitution or vice. They make
a parallel incorrect conclusion about larceny-theft.
The presentation of theories is much smoother then the discussion
of statistics. Shipley and Arrigo begin with classical theoreticians
such as Lombroso and Ferrero, Freud and W.I. Thomas before moving on
to the more recent Pollack and then the work of Adler and Simon and
end by paying attention to more recent work by Chesney-Lind on the
link between economic marginalization, victimization and crime among
women. They then turn toward more psychological discussions of
aggression and violence among women before a section on other factors
that have been linked to women's criminality including divorce,
single-parent households, intimate partner violence, drug use and
even menstruation. Finally, they note that while women who commit
crimes against their gender roles are often viewed as pathological,
"most reliable and valid research indicates that mental illness
is a factor in only a small percentage of female crimes."
Nevertheless, most of the remainder of the book is dedicated to an
investigation of the link between ASPD (psychopathy) and women who
commit predatory homicide.
Chapter two focuses on women as homicide offenders and includes
statistics on women and homicide. Again, this statistical discussion
is lacking clarity. Nevertheless, they do present the argument that
because female predatory homicide is so rare, there is little focus
on it and thus their book could fill a need. In this chapter, the
authors also present an accurate profile of women homicide offenders
in terms of their motives, race/ethnicity, age, socioeconomic status,
the role of drugs, their victims, the weapons they use and where they
commit their crimes. Holmes and Holmes typologies of women who kill
are presented and all the relevant academic research on female serial
killers is included in the remainder of this chapter
In the next four chapters (3-6), Shipley and Arrigo explore the
connection between mental illness and female homicide offenders with
particular attention to ASPD and psychopathy. They do an excellent
job of carefully explaining ASPD and attachment theory in a way that
the non-psychologist will easily understand. In fact, during the time
I have been reading this manuscript, I have also been attending a
trial of a man accused of serially killing four women. Reading this
text has helped me to understand what the defense is beginning to
present as the reason for his crimes. It should also be noted that
Shipley and Arrigo make the important point that stereotypical
assumptions about women have colored the way women's violence and
their mental illness has been explored and explained. They point out
that the diagnosis for ASPD, like much medical/psychological
research, is based largely on studies of men only.
Shipley and Arrigo provide their justification for using an
instrumental case study of Aileen Wuornos in Chapter 7. It is here,
that I struggle most with their work. They are correct to note that
it would be difficult if not impossible to perform a large-scale
study because of the small number of women offenders with ASPD.
However, they then discuss how much of the research on women and
homicide has been empirical and that what is needed is qualitative
studies. Perhaps, I am liberal in my understanding (and teaching) of
empirical research but I do not see qualitative research as
anti-empirical. Empirical simply means relying on observation.
Observation is key to much, if not all, qualitative research and
perhaps on one level more important in qualitative than in
quantitative research. These authors "contend that the
instrumental case study method allows the investigator to consider,
assess, and interpret the meaning of this relationship, thereby
growing current knowledge about this phenomenon and returning the
focus back to the individuals' unique life experience." To do
this, they rely on "assorted published books and interviews with
Aileen Wuornos." Though what they eventually tell us about
Wuornos is interesting, I believe their method is inadequate for
answering the questions they believe they will answer such as
"do women present with this personality disorder in precisely
the same way as men? To what degree, if at all, does one's attachment
style as an infant and a child correlate with a sense of detachment
toward others while an adult?" Important questions, I agree. But
using information gleaned from secondary sources about one woman
convicted and executed for murder is simply, in my estimate, not
enough to answer these questions. This is a beginning investigation
perhaps, but not an answer.
In chapter 8, they present their case study of Aileen Wuornos.
This case study information appears to be largely based on Damsel
of Death by Russell (a journalist) and two Court TV programs. As
noted, before, it is interesting. It reads much like a shortened true
crime novel telling the story of Wuornos early childhood through the
killing of her first victim.
Finally, in chapter nine, we get to the heart of the matter. It is
here that Shipley and Arrigo apply the case history they have
constructed on Wuornos to attachment theory and the attachment
disorder symptom checklist. While previously they made the excellent
point that "ASPD, psychopathy, and predatory homicide are all
gendered constructs" and thus "associated with and
interpreted through a masculine lens," I am sorry to say, I am
not convinced that they go beyond this. They do not seem to expand
the diagnosis any. Instead they appear to make good arguments for how
Wuornos could fit the existing diagnosis with what they were able to
learn about her through court TV and pop-criminology books written
about her. Perhaps in this discussion they could have made greater
inroads into the sexist theories they are using. They note that
Wuornos was rejected by many in her neighborhood for her promiscuous
behavior, that she was seen as hostile and aggressive by many. I
wonder how the fact that she was a girl played into the
interpretation of others about her. Had she been a boy, would she
have been rewarded, instead of punished for some of this behavior? In
other places the authors make excellent points about the deficits of
the theories they use with regard to gender. Here, when they can
delve into important discussions about the limitations of the
assessment tools and suggest changes, for the most part, they simply
assess what they know of Wuornos in the terms of these theories and
diagnostics.
In chapter 10, Shipley and Arrigo present implications, future
research, and conclusions. Here they make important points about the
link between abuse, parenting, juvenile delinquency, and adult
criminal behavior. Further, they make the argument that clinicians should
pay more attention to screening women for ASPD and that women are
vulnerable to committing predatory homicide. Though, every empirical
study indicates that this is less likely among women than men, I
agree with the authors that we should not simply ignore the reality
that some women have been and unfortunately will continue to be
predatory killers.
In the epilogue (chapter 11), the authors end with their best
chapter. Here, they discuss the ethics of capital punishment in cases
such as Aileen Wuornos where it seems clear that mental illness
exacerbated at the very least, if not caused by her treatment as a
child, led to her taking the lives of others. The value of
restorative justice is an important point here. And perhaps, it takes
a book about a sexy topic like Aileen Wuornos to get the attention of
some to read about restorative justice. I only wish this more
philosophical bent would have been threaded throughout the entire
manuscript.
I definitely learned about ASPD while reading this text and the
epilogue introduced excellent points with regard to restorative
justice, but overall I found the focus too narrow and too
psychological. It is important to note however that I was trained by
quantitative criminologists in sociology. Others may find this book valuable.
I can imagine its value in an abnormal psychology course or a
criminal justice course that includes psychological perspectives and
maybe even for those studying the connection between environment and
mental illness. Ultimately, because the final chapter delves into
discussions of Marxist criminology and restorative justice, this
psychologically based manuscript ends with strong sociological
implications.
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