The majority of the most notorious serial killers are men. That is pretty sad. Women have to put up with so much exclusion already, and now they are receiving no appreciation for the crimes they have committed. There is so much time, preparation and planning that goes into being a serial killer and women are yet again overlooked and ignored.

One of the most famous female serial killers in history was Elizabeth Bathory, more commonly known as Countess Dracula, because she believed when she bathed in the blood of virgins it would retain her beauty and youth. Countess Bathory lived from 1560-1614 in Hungary and ruled with an iron fist. She got married to Count Nadady at the young age of 15, and to please his young wife, he built her a torture chamber to her exact specifications. The phrase ‘love makes you crazy’ is the epitome of this young couple’s marriage. Bathory had one of the highest number of victims the court had ever witnessed, with 650 murders. She could only be convicted of 80 of them because of her high status in society and a lack of proof. She was suspected of murdering, eating, beating, burning, mutilating and even biting the flesh off her victims. One of Bathory’s most common methods of torture was to cover the young girls in honey then place live ants on their bodies. She was caught at the age of 50 and sentenced to live in a room with no windows and a small slit for food to be passed through. Elizabeth Bathory died at the age of 54, but whispers of Countess Dracula lives on.

Vera Renczi of Romania lived a double life. Get yourself a woman who can play the grieving widow while also poisoning her lovers on the side. Renczi was more commonly known as the Black Widow and reportedly killed close to 35 people. Her main motive was jealousy. She was constantly paranoid her lover was being unfaithful. To Renczi, she was just ‘simply looking for love’ when killing off her lovers one by one with her weapon of choice: arsenic. Most female killers use arsenic because it is harder to trace back to the source, and the victims never knew what hit them until they dropped dead. The Black Widow would invite her lovers into her web of lies about being lonely and slip arsenic in their tea or food and put the dead body in a coffin in her basement. She reportedly would sit in an armchair surrounded by her dead lovers. Like all serial killers, she was captured and admitted to killing two of her husbands, her son and 32 other people. Renczi was sentenced to life in prison for her crimes and was never seen again.

So how about you think the next time an old lady invites you into her house for cookies or a teacher asks you to come in after school for test corrections, are you going to be their next victim?