Are there female spree killers?

Source: Art by K. Ramsland

In Canada they call Sabrina Kauldhar one serial killerbut if convicted, she could more accurately be called a spree killer. The murders appear to involve a series of incidents caused by an initiating factor that continued to influence the perpetrator throughout the attack. At least three died in at least two locations. Although the FBI no longer uses “spree” as a category of multicide, it is still useful for the study of motivation in criminologyespecially for such a rare case.

Kauldhar, 30, is accused of committing three murders in three different cities in Ontario, Canada, between October 1 and 3 this year. She knew one victim and stabbed the other two randomly in different locations. The first victim was Kauldhar’s roommate in Toronto. A day later, Kauldhar stabbed a man in a Niagara Falls park. She then took public transportation to Hamilton, where she approached a 77-year-old man in a parking lot and stabbed him. Neither man had provoked her. Neither of them knew her. These were random attacks. A mental health assessment has been ordered to determine whether Kauldhar is fit to face legal proceedings.

My colleague, former FBI profiler Mark Safarik, and I have been researching the motivations of spree killers, and based on this work we can anticipate what likely motivated Kauldhar. According to news reports, court records show she was convicted in 2018 of several violent crimes, including burglary, assault with a weapon and assaulting an officer.

Still, her landlord of two years described her as a quiet, responsible person who always paid the rent on time. She had invited an older woman, Trinh Thi Vu, to live with her to help with the costs. The landlord had heard complaints from both about the cleanliness and noise, but he had witnessed no aggression or hostility. When a delivery arrived for Kauldhar on October 1, the landlord entered the apartment and discovered Vu bleeding on the floor. Police determined she had been murdered.

Kauldhar is a white, female loner who used a knife for three days. We don’t know why yet, but we can reasonably surmise a likely motivation. In 2019, Safarik and I collected a database of 358 cases of massacres involving 418 people from 43 countries. We have grouped these perpetrators into five main categories (anger-revengemission, desperation, mental illness, and theft thrill) and four secondary categories, which may overlap the primary (movement in tight locations, mixed multicides, intended eruption, and unique circumstances). Different categories generated subcategories. Some incidents involved a lone perpetrator, others involved teams.

Among the spree incidents, we find few women who operate on their own. They are often found in teams, such as Caril Ann Fugate with Charles Starkweather, but never as the brains or leader. There was no all-female team. Some female participants can be considered compliant accomplices, except in tension-based outbursts. Overall, about 5 percent of spree killers are women, while only five (now six) operate alone. They appear in everything except the despair category.

The weapon of choice for 75 percent of spree killers is a firearm, usually a pistol. Those who used a gun plus other weapons, such as a knife, came next, at 12 percent. ‘Knives’ included knives, machetes and axes (8.3 percent). Only about 2 percent beat their victims down (usually with hammers) and 1 percent strangled or suffocated them. The last 2 percent involved various methods, such as bombs, mace or pesticides.

Most sprees in our study (40 percent) lasted one to three days, followed by 18 percent that lasted less than two hours. Kauldhar’s would be typical.

Rage-revenge attacks were most common, followed by theft-thrill. Significant losses appear to be a primary motivator (relationship, money, work) at almost 30 percent, followed by motives related to a mission or hatred (15 percent) and mental illness (12 percent). Previous crimes were an influence among the robberies. About 1.4 percent sought fame. From the behavior described in the Kauldhar case, it seems likely that an issue with her roommate caused the deadly violence and that she then simply moved on, angry or having a mental health crisis (or both).

Thirty percent of killers in the rage-revenge category initially killed someone they knew, then attacked strangers. We have mentioned this subcategory focused And random-opportunistic (vs. normal focused or plain random-opportunistic). Kauldhar’s behavior seems to fit. A similar example is Jennifer San Marco, who went on a furious rampage in California in 2006. First she killed a neighbor. She then went to a former workplace to shoot and kill seven more. Although she was mentally ill (paranoid schizophrenia), she also harbored a long-standing grudge.

We’ll have to wait and see what the outcome of the procedure in Kauldhar will be, but anger or illness probably played a significant role. As a rare female murderer (if convicted as such), she should be studied.