Female mass murder is so rare that it borders on statistical anomaly. Out of 1,715 mass killings recorded worldwide between 1900 and 2019, just 105—about 6 percent—involved women, according to a 2024 study.
That scarcity is why cases like Erin Patterson’s mushroom poisonings in Australia become global obsessions.
Patterson’s story broke in 2023, after she invited her former in-laws to her home in Leongatha, Victoria, for a family lunch. The beef Wellington she served contained death cap mushrooms, a fungus so toxic that even small amounts can kill. Three people lost their lives, and another was left fighting for theirs. She was eventually charged with three murders and one attempted murder, a case that stunned Australia and drew worldwide attention.
Researchers have documented how women who kill on this scale often differ from their male counterparts. While age and background differ, the circumstances, methods, and outcomes show clear patterns.
1. Family is the most common target
Roughly three-quarters of mass killings by women involve family members. Male perpetrators target relatives in less than half of cases. Domestic spaces are where most female-driven massacres unfold.
2. Firearms are rarely used
Guns dominate male mass killings, but women tend to use poison, asphyxiation, drowning, or drugs. Caroline Grills, convicted in 1953 for poisoning relatives with thallium, remains one of Australia’s most infamous examples.
3. Mental illness is often present
Female mass killers display higher rates of psychosis and other psychiatric conditions. A quarter show psychotic symptoms, and nearly a third have other documented psychiatric or neurological diagnoses, both significantly higher than among men.
4. Suicide frequently follows
More than half of the women who commit mass murder attempt or complete suicide afterward, suggesting an act tied closely to despair.
5. Motives link strongly to abuse
When women kill intimate partners, research shows domestic violence is almost always part of the story. In an Australian Institute of Criminology review, more than half the women who killed their partners were documented victims of long-term abuse.
These patterns don’t mean every case follows the same script. Erin Patterson’s crime unsettled researchers precisely because it didn’t match—no abuse, no spontaneous trigger, no apparent motive. That unpredictability is why female mass killers become cultural obsessions. Their crimes resist tidy explanation, even as the statistics reveal how unusual they are.
Because these cases happen so seldom, they capture attention far beyond the crime scene. A woman carrying out mass murder forces us to question what we think we know about violence, and that shock remains etched in collective memory.
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