The New Predator: Women Who Kill

About the Book

Most books about serial killers focus on men. Dr. Deborah Schurman-Kauflin's research takes a different path — and what she found is disturbing, fascinating, and long overdue. This is the first study of female multiple murderers built on direct, face-to-face interviews with the women themselves, making it a genuinely unique contribution to criminal psychology and forensic science.

Schurman-Kauflin doesn't just present crime scene profiles. She digs into how these women think, what their childhoods looked like, and how the urge to kill developed over time. Her "Tornado Effect" framework traces the path from early trauma and instability through growing rage and dark fantasy, all the way to the act of murder. She identifies behavioral warning signs — cruelty to animals, sleep dysfunction, specific adolescent behaviors — that appear repeatedly across cases and could help parents, teachers, and law enforcement spot danger early.

The book also tackles the hard question of how female killers differ from male ones. Where men tend toward disorganized, explosive violence, women often kill through control, manipulation, and methodical planning. The sadistic female offender, as Schurman-Kauflin profiles her, is a particularly chilling subject. One woman convicted of five murders told the author, "I never understood my capacity for compassion until I started killing."

Beyond the psychological profiles, there's a practical dimension here. The book includes guidance for investigators handling equivocal death cases and offers interview strategies specifically for female offenders — tools that are rarely discussed in standard criminology literature. Serious true crime readers, law enforcement professionals, and students of criminal behavior will all find this essential.