Do Women Commit Mass Murder?

I was doing some research for a paper I am writing on school violence and came across this a href=”http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18152839/site/newsweek/”Newsweek article /aon the Virginia Tech Shooting. A forensic psychologist from John Jay Criminal College is interviewed:br /br /blockquoteStill, psychologists can say a few things with certainly about who is more likely to commit the most serious of crimes. Over 90 percent of killers are male, and the same holds for mass murderers—“I can’t think of a single case where a woman has done this,” says Schlesinger—partly because men tend to have more access to guns, which are usually the weapons of choice./blockquotebr /br /Perhaps Dr. Schlesinger has a poor memory, because if she thought about it, she would know that the famous song by the a href=”http://www.cyberspace7.btinternet.co.uk/idlm.htm”BoomTown Rats /aentitled, “I Don’t Like Mondays” was written about “non-existent” (at least to some experts) Brenda Spencer. Spencer was a seventeen-year-old high school senior in San Diego who in January of 1979 opened fire into a crowded elementary school across the street from her home. She killed the principal and a janitor and injured a police officer and eight children. Her reason? “I don’t like Mondays. Mondays always get me down.”br /br /In the Lillelid mass murder that I have mentioned here numerous times, a href=”http://www.sixthemovie.com/html/index.html”three of the perpetrators were women,/a but I guess women just don’t do serious crimes like mass murder. Maybe someone should tell that to the victims of a href=”http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/female_mass_murderer/1.html”Jennifer San Marco /awho last year a href=”http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/female_mass_murderer/1.html”killed her neighbor and then six people /aat a mail processing plant. Do women kill less often than men? Of course, but to say that you can’t think of any women who commit mass murder means that you must not be looking too hard.