Do murders by females differ markedly from those by males? One might think not from reading Henry H. Brownstein's summary of a killing described to him by a woman whom he interviewed in a New York prison ["Women Who Kill in Drug Market Situations," 12 JUSTICE Q. 473, 482-83 (1995)]:

Originally [respondent] had her own business selling drugs on the street, and felt safe in her belief that being on the street made it easy to get away if the police came. One day, when she was short of money and was looking for a way to make some, a bigger dealer offered her an opportunity to work for him selling crack from an apartment. She disliked inside selling [in part] because ... she feared the beatings workers faced when they were accused (rightly or wrongly) of "messing up the money." Still the bigger dealer was insistent and she needed the money.

At first, things went well. Respondent was able to control her own [drug intake] while on the job and she showed herself to be a responsible worker, taking care of herself and her son and not "messing up the money."...

[On one occasion respondent arranged to leave work for the day and another woman took her place.] At 10 that night she returned and found that the other woman had given the bigger dealer his share of the earnings but did not have the respondent's $6,000.

On the way to the apartment, regular customers stopped respondent to complain that bottles were short. To keep [them] satisfied, she paid [them] $200.... She also sent someone up to the apartment to cop two bottles to see if in fact they were short. They were, so she went home and got her gun... [But b]ecause the apartment was locked from the outside and only the bigger dealer had the key, she could not get in and the woman inside could not get out. They argued [through the door].... "You don't have none of my money?"

The woman responded, "I don't have nothing. I smoked it. I bought dope. I bought works. I bought cigarettes."

[Respondent was enraged, particularly because as] she left the woman asked her if she would bring back a pack of cigarettes... She went to a liquor store and came back with a few dollar bottles of Bacardi. [Throwing them inside the candle-lit apartment, she remarked "Smoke that, bitch" and walked away as the woman burned to death.]

Do murders by females differ markedly from those by males? Judging from the foregoing example one might say not. And, compare the murders committed in the famous case of Marie Hilley. She poisoned various members of her family in order to receive fairly minimal (five figure) insurance proceeds.

Again the Hilley pattern is not markedly dissimilar to that of male murderers. But these cases are misleading. For the fact is that generally murders commited by females do differ markedly from murders committed by males. The single most defining characteristic in criminal homicide is that murderers are far more likely to be male than female. And the murders are likely to differ. Men murder for all kinds of reasons and in many differing situations. Most female homicide is of a defensive, rather than offensive, nature: "when women kill, their victims are ... most typically men who have assaulted them." [quoting M. Daly & M. Wilson, HOMICIDE (N.Y., Aldine: 1988) at p. 278. See generally E. Benedek, "Women and Homicide" in Bruce Danto, et al., THE HUMAN SIDE OF HOMICIDE (N.Y., Columbia, 1982), Straus, "Domestic Violence and Homicide Antecedents", 62 BULL. N.Y. ACAD. MED. 446 (1986) and sources there cited, and D. Lunde, MURDER AND MADNESS (San Francisco, 1976) 10 (in 85% of cases of decedent-precipitated inter-spousal homicides the wife is the killer and the husband precipitated his own death by abusing her).]

This does not appear to be a culture-bound phenomenon. Rather, in all cultures that have been studied, murders by females are mostly defensive in nature while murders by males are committed for a multitude of reasons and in a multitude of circumstances.

This is not to deny that some women do murder in circumstances closely resembling male murders. The Brownstein study of 215 drug situation murders by females found that "most had been involved with drugs before the homicide event", using one or more of the following: marijuana (76%), cocaine (54%), crack (29%) and heroin (27%). 39% had been involved in drug sales or distribution. 65% had a pre-homicide history of robbery or other violent attacks and 64% of them had seriously injured a victim or used a deadly weapon in such attacks. 66% of their homicides were involved with drugs in some respect: the crime was committed in connection with drug distribution or for the purpose of financing a drug purchase or the murderess or her victim was on drugs when it was committed. In 30% of the murders the motive was at least partly economic, including robberies (whether or not drug-related) or to retaliate on a victim who had somehow interfered with expected gain from a drug transaction.