Lady Killers

August 7, 2017
In her debut work of nonfiction, Telfer, who writes for the Awl and Vice, exhumes the horrific criminal histories of 14 female serial killers. Each woman receives an individual portrait that outlines her crimes in gruesome detail. Among the women portrayed are Kate Bender, the “beautiful throat cutter” from Kansas who lured unsuspecting travelers to their deaths in the second half of
the 19th century, and Nannie Doss, the “giggling grandma” from Alabama in the mid-20th century who was so dissatisfied with her string of husbands that she killed them off one by one. Telfer calls out the misogynistic tropes at play­—the witches, femme fatales, and black widows, to name a few—in fictional depictions of female murderers. She also calls attention to how sexuality and beauty are often written into the popular narratives of these crimes. During the trial of Tillie Klimek for the murder of her husband in the 1920s, a reporter for the Chicago Tribune bluntly wrote that “Tillie Klimek went to the penitentiary because she had never gone to a beauty parlor.” The oldest story in the book is that of Hungarian noblewoman Erzsébet Báthory, “the OG female sadomasochist,” who tortured and killed hundreds of young women in the 16th century. With a breezy tone and sharp commentary, Telfer draws out the tired stereotypes with just enough wit and humor to make the topic of female murderers enjoyable.