The Thing She Loves: Why Women Kill

When a women kills it is usually a person close to her and it is more likely that she'll receive a harsher sentence than her male counterpart.Do women kill differently? Why do they kill? Are they revenging mothers or evil witches? Do the preconceptions of the jury and press help them or harm them? To answer these questions, the editor has considered many cases, historical and modern. From Francis Knorr, the notorious baby farmer and killer who was hung in the late 1880s, to the 1920s ballroom drama of Audray Jacob who killer her fiance while dancing with him; from Jean Lee, the last woman hanged in Victoria, to the remarkable case of Erica Kontinnen who, despite years of beatings, only killed her husband when he threatened to kill another woman.