第四十五期杂志选文——《窈窕杀手》

小山林卡

Lady Killers

窈窕杀手

BY EMILY ANTHES

文/艾米丽•安特斯

NEW YORKER, MAY 9, 2015

摘自2015年5月9日《纽约客》杂志

Aileen Wuornos, who murdered seven men in 1989 and 1990, is sometimes referred to, mistakenly, as America’s first female serial killer.CREDITPHOTOGRAPH BY ACEY HARPER / THE LIFE IMAGES COLLECTION / GETTY

艾琳•沃尔诺斯，她在1989年至1990年间杀害7位男性，有时会被误认为是美国第一个女性连环杀人犯。摄影/艾希•哈珀《生命图集》/盖蒂

In November, 1988, police arrived at 1426 F Street, in Sacramento, California, to search for a fifty-one-year-old man named Alvaro Montoya. The house, a two-story Victorian, was operating as an unlicensed boarding home; Montoya, who was developmentally disabled and mentally ill, had been living there, but he had recently gone missing and his case worker had grown suspicious. After digging in the yard, the officers discovered Montoya’s remains and those of six other people. Investigators came to believe that the owner and operator of the rooming house had poisoned the elderly and disabled tenants and cashed their government-benefit checks. It seemed to be an obvious case of serial killing, except that the alleged perpetrator, Dorothea Puente, was a woman. When F.B.I. agents discussed the case with Eric Hickey, a criminal psychologist and the author of “Serial Murderers and Their Victims,” a textbook now in its seventh edition, they declined to label Puente a serial killer. (She was eventually convicted in three of the deaths.) “They said, ‘Oh, that’s not serial killing,’ ” Hickey told me. “Of course, it was. They just didn’t recognize it then. Women were not considered to be predators that way.”

1988年11月，警察来到加州首府萨克拉门托F大街1426号寻找一位名叫阿尔瓦罗•蒙托亚的51岁中年男子。这里有一栋维多利亚式的双层建筑，在当时是一个无牌的寄养所。蒙托亚患有发育性残疾及精神疾病，他一直住在这里，可最近失踪了，负责他案件的工作人员对此产生了怀疑。于是他们对院子进行挖掘，结果发现了蒙托亚和另外六个人的残骸。调查人员怀疑该寄养所的运营者兼房东向老弱病残的租户投毒，然后将他们的政府福利支票套现。看上去这显然是一起连环杀人案，只不过犯罪嫌疑人多萝西娅•普恩特是一位女性而已。当联邦探员们与犯罪心理学家兼第七版犯罪心理学课本《连环杀人犯及其受害者们》的作者埃里克•希奇讨论这起案件的时候，他们认为不该将普恩特定性为连环杀人犯。（她最终被宣判犯下杀人案件中的三起。）“他们说：‘哦，这可不是连环杀人案。’”希奇告诉我说，“这明明就是连环杀人案，只是他们那时候没有意识到而已。那时候人们不会把女人当成连环杀人犯。”
Female serial killers are more rare than their male counterparts, but they aren’t nonexistent; about one in six serial murderers is a woman. As a group, they are often overlooked and underestimated. “I think society is in denial that women are capable of such hideousness,” Marissa Harrison, an evolutionary psychologist at Penn State Harrisburg, said. Harrison conducted a study of female serial killers that recently appeared in The Journal of Forensic Psychiatry & Psychology. It is part of a small but growing body of research into the subject, and the data suggests that female serial killers are lethal in their own unique way.
与男性相比，女性连环杀人犯更为罕见，但并非不存在。大约六个连环杀手里有一个是女性。然而作为一个群体，她们却常常被忽略和低估。宾州州立大学哈里斯堡校区的进化心理学家玛丽莎•哈里森说，“我觉得社会并不相信女性可以犯下如此可怕的罪行。”哈里森曾经主持过关于女性连环杀人犯的研究工作，他的研究最近刊登于《法医精神病学和心理学杂志》上。关于女性连环杀人犯的研究是法医精神病学和心理学研究主体的一小部分，但其所占比重正慢慢变大，而且数据显示，女性连环杀人犯具有其独特的致命性。

Harrison, who has previously studied the evolutionary origins of mass murder, began by compiling a list of American female serial killers, which she defined as women who had killed three or more people with at least a week between each death. She and her colleagues started at murderpedia.org, an online encyclopedia of serial killers and mass murderers. They ultimately identified sixty-four female serial killers who were active between 1821 and 2008. The researchers then used reputable news sources to compile a profile of each murderer, noting her age, birthplace, ethnicity, relationship status, religion, and more. From these profiles, the researchers assembled a portrait of the average female serial killer operating in the United States; what stood out was just how ordinary she was.
哈里森过去曾经研究过大规模谋杀的进化起源。在研究女性连环杀人犯的时候，她首先收集了一份女性连环杀人犯的名单。所谓女性连环杀人犯，即杀害过三个及三个以上的人且每次犯罪之间间隔至少一周的女性罪犯。哈里森和她的同事们从一个可以检索连环杀人犯和大规模谋杀杀人犯的在线百科网站——谋杀百科网入手。他们最终辨认出64个活跃在1821年至2008年间的女性连环杀人犯。接着，研究人员从口碑良好的新闻媒体中搜集每一位凶手的个人信息，包括年龄，籍贯，种族，感情状态，宗教信仰等等。根据美国女性连环杀人犯的档案信息和她们的平均特征，研究人员模拟出了一个肖像，结果发现，她毫不起眼，平淡无奇。

“She’s likely to be in her twenties or thirties, middle-class, probably married, probably Christian, probably average intelligence,” Harrison said. “I just described, you know, your next-door neighbor.” (Something similar is true of male serial killers, who tend to possess average intelligence and work blue-collar jobs. Very few are legally insane.) Altogether, the women on the list had killed at least three hundred and thirty-one people, an average of six victims each. More than half had murdered children, and a quarter had targeted the elderly and infirm. Female serial killers also appear to have become more common over the years. Harrison’s team identified thirty-eight who were active in the United States between 1965 and 2014, compared with just fifteen during the preceding fifty years. That’s an increase of more than a hundred and fifty per cent, although, Harrison noted, it’s possible that serial killers are simply more likely to be caught in the modern era.
“她可能二十多岁或者三十多岁，是个中产，可能已婚，可能是个基督徒，可能智力中等，”哈里森说，“你懂的，这样的人太常见了，你的邻居可能就是这样。”（这与男性连环杀人犯很相似，他们大多是智力中等的蓝领，几乎没有人被鉴定为具有精神疾病。）名单上的所有女性杀人犯共计杀害331人，平均每人有6个受害者。她们之中，超过一半以上的人杀害过儿童，四分之一的人将老弱人士作为目标。多年以来，女性连环杀人犯已经变得越来越常见。哈里森的研究团队发现，在1965年之前的50年里美国只有15个被记录下来的女性连环杀人犯，而在1965至2014年间则达到了38个，增长了超过150%。不过哈里森还说，也可能是在现代社会，连环杀人犯更容易被逮捕。

The details of the women’s crimes differed notably from those committed by men. Nearly all of the women in Harrison’s study had killed people whom they knew, often targeting their husbands and children. Male serial killers, in contrast, appear much more likely to kill strangers. Whereas the most common motive for male serial killers is sex, female murderers were most often driven by money; almost half of the women in Harrison’s sample killed for financial gain. And poison was by far their preferred method; male murderers are most likely to shoot, strangle, or stab their victims.
女性犯罪案件的细节与男性犯罪有着明显的区别。几乎所有哈里森研究过的女性罪犯都会选择向自己熟悉的人下手，目标往往是她们的丈夫和孩子。相比之下，男性连环杀人犯则更加倾向于向陌生人下手。男性连环杀人犯最常见的犯罪动机是性，而女性则更多被金钱所驱使。在哈里森的研究案例中几乎一半的女性杀人犯都是因经济原因而犯罪。她们比较倾向于投毒，而男性罪犯则更加倾向于射杀，勒死或刺死他们的受害人。

Harrison also found that many of the killers worked in caregiving roles, as nurses, Sunday-school teachers, babysitters, or stay-at-home moms. But it’s hard to know precisely what to make of this finding, Harrison said. Perhaps the murderers sought occupations that gave them easy access to potential victims. Or perhaps disturbed women with aggressive impulses are more likely to become killers if they find themselves in jobs that give them power over vulnerable people. “What comes first?” Harrison asked. “ ‘I want to kill, so I adopt that profession,’ or ‘I am in that profession, so wow, I see easy access to victims’?”
哈里森还发现这些罪犯中的许多人都从事看护职业，比如护士，主日学校的老师，保姆，或者家庭主妇。但是很难准确从这种发现中推测出什么，哈里森说。也许杀人犯会寻找能够让她们接触到潜在受害者的职业，也许是在发现自己的职业给了自己摆布弱者的能力时，那些具有攻击性的女人更容易成为杀人犯。“到底哪个在前？”哈里森问道，“‘我想杀人，所以我选择这个职业’还是‘我身居此位，所以我发现杀人对我来说更轻易’？”

One reason that female serial killers garner so little attention may be their modus operandi—targeting relatives, the elderly, or the ill, and using relatively inconspicuous weapons. “We call these women ‘the quiet killers,’ ” Hickey, who conducted some of the first studies on female serial killers and is now the dean of the California School of Forensic Studies at Alliant International University, told me.
女性连环杀人犯并不引人注意的原因之一可能是由于她们的犯罪手段——瞄准亲戚中那些年岁已高的，或体弱多病的，而且她们使用的武器也比较不起眼。“我们称这些女人为‘无声杀手。’”希奇告诉我说。他曾经主持过最早关于女性连环杀人犯的研究工作，现在是阿兰特大学加州鉴定及研究学院的院长。

“They’re not detected as easily.” Plus, he said, women are less likely to be seen as capable of serial murder: “Historically, they get away with it for as long as or even longer than the men do, because no one suspects them.” In contrast, Aileen Wuornos, who killed seven men in 1989 and 1990, attracted obsessive media coverage, quite possibly because her crimes—she used a gun and targeted strangers—more closely resembled those of a male killer. (Wuornos is sometimes referred to, mistakenly, as America’s first female serial killer.)
“她们藏得很深。”他还说，人们容易觉得女性完成不了连环谋杀，“根据以往的经验来看，她们和男性杀人犯逍遥法外的时间一样长甚至更长，因为没人怀疑她们。”然而与之相反，曾经在1989年至1990年间杀害七位男性的艾琳•沃尔诺斯在当时受到了媒体过度的关注和报道。这很可能是因为她的犯罪手段更像个男性杀人犯——她用枪，而且目标是陌生人。（沃尔诺斯有时会被误称为是美国的第一个女性连环杀人犯。）

Harrison’s study wasn’t able to explain why, say, a seemingly normal homemaker might become a serial poisoner. Nearly forty per cent of the killers that Harrison identified were reported to have serious mental illnesses, and almost a quarter were said to have a history of drug or alcohol abuse. They also had suffered physical and sexual abuse, as well as severe childhood illness or trauma, at relatively high rates. (Many male murderers have also experienced abuse or trauma.) But plenty of women have similar histories, and few of them become murderers, let alone serial murderers. “We approached this paper with the hope that we could come up with some kind of predictive criteria, but I changed my mind,” Harrison said. “I’m not sure we’re there yet.”
哈里森的研究无法解释为什么一个看上去十分正常的家庭主妇会成为连环杀手。在哈里森辨认出的女性连环杀人犯中，有40%的人患有严重的精神疾病，还有将近四分之一的人据称有药物滥用或酗酒史。她们中绝大多数还曾遭到过虐待，性虐待以及在儿童时代有过严重的疾病或是有过心理创伤的也占了较高的比例。（许多男性杀人犯也曾经历过虐待和心理创伤。）但尽管很多女性都有类似的经历，却只有少数会去杀人，更别说成为连环杀人犯了。“我们当初做这篇论文是抱着希望想要总结出一种可以预测（连环杀人犯）的标准，但是现在我不这么想了，”哈里森说，“我们可能连边都没摸到。”

Harrison plans to continue her line of research; she is currently working on a more detailed comparison of female serial killers with age-matched male murderers. But she admits that it can take a mental toll. “I was telling my friends, I seriously need to go look at flowers and puppies now,” she said. “I’ve been reading this for so long: Somebody who set their kids on fire, poisoned their kids, went to a veterans home—disabled veterans—and killed people. You don’t get used to it. It’s always alarming, on every pass.”
哈里森打算继续她的研究方向，现在她正致力于将女性连环杀人犯和同龄的男性杀人犯进行更细致的对比。不过她承认这是一种可怕的精神煎熬。“我跟我的朋友说，我真的需要去赏赏花溜溜狗了。”她说，“我一直在翻阅这些可怕的案例：有人烧死他们的孩子，毒死他们的孩子，有人去那些老兵的家里，那些残疾的老兵家里，然后杀死他们。你绝不可能对这些习以为常。它们无时无刻不在敲打你的神经，让你不得安宁。”

Emily Anthes is a science writer living in Brooklyn.
艾米丽•安特斯是一位科学作者，居住在纽约市布鲁克林区。

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