Murder Most Rare [Mass Market Paperback]

Michael D. Kelleher (Author), C. L. Kelleher (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: January 12, 1999

Marie Besnard, the "Queen of Poisoners". Nanny Hazel Doss, killer of four husbands, three children, two sisters, and her mother--all to turn a profit. These are just two of the dozens of deadly and determined women who have been overlooked in the popular annals of serial crime--until now. More difficult to apprehend and motivated by more complex issues, female serial killers may be even more lethal and cunning than their male counterparts.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

If you're haunted by the image of the manacled, wild-haired Aileen Wuornos facing the television cameras in her prison orange, don't be fooled. According to coauthors Michael and C.L. Kelleher, Wuornos is no freak of nature. Murder Most Rare, an earnest history, profiles nearly 100 fatal females that have knocked around since 1900, more than half of whom were, or are, Americans. And, contend the Kellehers, these deadly dames were "far more lethal-- and often far more successful in their determination to kill--than their male counterparts." The lone female serial killer is rarely motivated by sex, chooses a method difficult to detect (poison, simulated accident, suffocation), and selects victims with whom she has a relationship. To add to the charm, "she is often overlooked as a suspect because of her maturity or position of trusted responsibility."

What drives this husband-and-wife team to pursue the whys and wherefores of female serial killers? Partly vindication--the Kellehers condemn the entertainment and news industries for romanticizing and sensationalizing violent crime. Also, their text intends to set the record straight. Fact: serial killing is not confined to the Ted Bundy phenomenon; rather, it has a long historical reach that includes "the infamous exploits of the gunslinger of the old West, ... the unspeakable crimes of the Nazi leadership, ... the contemporary Mafia hit man." To this noxious blend must be added the women in this book.

Black widows, angels of death, sexual predators, and team killers are, among others, some types of murderers, and each chapter describes the behaviors and methods unique to each. Marie Besnard, for example, the queen of poisoners (active in France from 1927 to 1949), was fully acquitted of all charges after three trials that spanned a period of more than 20 years. As the title suggests, Murder Most Rare offers up ripping yarns. Who wouldn't want to read about Nanny Hazel Doss, one of the more infamous black widows, christened by the press the Giggling Grandmother? Her successful "projects" included the deletion of four husbands, three children, two sisters, and her mother--and all to turn a profit.

Written for the lay reader interested in a "forbidden" subject more often sensationalized than not, does Murder Most Rare leave us the wiser as to why women kill? Unfortunately, the case histories read more like bland recitations. The Kellehers venture no analyses or theories about how circumstances might have contributed to the shaping of the criminal mind. The sketches leave the reader with the impression that these female criminals sprung, like Athena, fully formed from the head of Zeus. For the tenacious tracking of creepy psychological insight and in-your-face investigation, stick with true- crime queen Ann Rule. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Michael Kelleher has explored violence and murder in several works including Profiling the Lethal Employee (1997) and New Arenas for Violence (1996), which alerted corporate America to the growing threat of potentially disturbed workers. With his wife and coauthor C.L. Kelleher, he now offers a rare, mostly clinical overview of the female mass murderer. The book profiles nearly 100 deadly women. Dividing them into eight categories, including Black Widows, Angels of Death and Team Killers, the Kellehers bring to light information they claim is often "overlooked by researchers." They report, for example, that female serial killers are rarely involved in sexual homicides and tend not to attack strangers, yet they often exhibit a greater ability to succeed in murder than do their male counterparts and they have greater success in eluding suspicion. Caretakers turned lethal, such as Madame Popova in Russia and Lila Gladys Young in Nova Scotia, are estimated to have killed in the hundreds over many years before being investigated and arrested. The grim succession of murder accounts here, from lone sexual predator Aileen Wuornos dispatching victims with her .22 rifle to the cold, detached elimination of family members by the arsenic-wielding Black Widows, cuts an often shocking swath of feminine terror. With morbidity on almost every page, this work, scholarly despite its lurid subject, should appeal mainly to serial-killer buffs and the law enforcement community.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Mass Market Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Dell (January 12, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0440234735
• ISBN-13: 978-0440234739
• Product Dimensions: 4.2 x 0.8 x 6.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #222,071 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #8 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Travel > Africa
  • #22 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Crime & Criminals > Criminology
  • #44 in Books > 4-for-3 Books > Nonfiction > Women's Studies > General

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Michael & C.L. Kelleher Need To Do More Research, April 5, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Murder Most Rare (Mass Market Paperback)

Having made a study of criminology for many years now, I was very dissapointed in "Murder Most Rare". While the authors have listed many resources, I find it hard to believe that they ever actually read or studied any of them. As my arguments against the author's statements are many, I will limit myself to three:

1. Ethnic Cleansing (Genocide) is NOT serial murder. (p. 2 & 3 the authors claim that the Holocaust was a case of serial murder).

2. Sexual Homicide (whether serial or not) is committed for the sole purpose of sexual gratification. To claim that a killer who murders for profit is a sexual predator merely because she made her living as a prostitute is sadly erroneous. (see Aileen Wuornos pp. 108 -120).

3. Steven Parent (a victim of the Manson clan) was NOT a guest of Sharon Tate (as claimed on p.224), but rather a guest of the young man (caretaker) who lived in the guesthouse behind the main house.

Frankly, this book fails as a creditable study of serial murder, and should be given a wide berth by serious readers.

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Error-ridden book, February 13, 1999

By 

Joan E. Wood, M.D. - See all my reviews

This review is from: Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer (Hardcover)

This book could have been an excellent resouce for those interested in serial female killers, a subject that has been poorly covered prior to this time. However, I have personal experience as a forensic pathologist in two of the cases in the book. In one case involving a nurse murderer, the authors erroneously described her murders as occurring in a hospital, when, in fact, the deaths occurred in a nursing home.They also incorrectly documented the time line of events. Further, they wrongly listed the number of deaths she was charged with, and to which she pleaded guilty, as being one when it was in fact four! They ignored the count of attempted murder to which she also pleaded guilty. In the Aileen Wuornos case, they had locations wrong, listing the wrong interstate more than once in indicating where she had encountered her victims.

This type of poor research, leaving the reader with wrong answers, is a disservice to the attempt to correctly document these types of crimes. Finally I am very disappointed as, when I find a book where I know there are mistakes in cases with which I was intimately involved, I have to wonder just how many others with which I am not familiar have suffered the same fate. A book like this should be very carefully written and documented. Sadly, this one was not!

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars A complete waste of my time., October 12, 2000

By 

J. M. Yarbrough (Hesperia, CA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Murder Most Rare (Mass Market Paperback)

The book reads like a badly-written term paper. The cases are presented in a summarized format, lacking the definite details to merit the "shocking facts" and "grisly details" hype on the back of the book. Although I applaud the writer(s) for doing research in a little known area about female killers, I felt the book over-romanticized their images to the extent that it was unnecessarily dramatic and repetitive. This is one small description of the "Angel of Death" from page 89:

"Like Azrael, she has the outward appearance of a caring benefactor, however, like that messenger from God, she carries a weapon of lethal destruction at her side and is willing to preside over the question of life or death for even the most innocent of charges."

The overwhelming majority of their notes from each chapter are derived from the Internet and the same CD-ROM. There is no evidence of first or second hand experience which significantly lowers their credibility because it seems like one big term paper based on resources from the internet and a few other books that can be found in the true crime section.

Think of it as "Real TV" or "Cops" with cheesy, over-the-top narration and you get the idea.