IN THE MIND OF A FEMALE SERIAL KILLER

Four women convicted of murder in the late 19th and 20th centuries come under the forensic scrutiny of former lawyer Stephen Jakobi, who looks at newly discovered evidence surrounding their trials and asks whether each of them could be a serial killer linked with other unsolved murders. Agnes Norman was a nursery maid sentenced to 10 years' imprisonment for the attempted murder of 10-year-old Charles Parfitt, but she was acquitted of the death of Jesse Jane Beer, even though her trial brought to light startling new evidence from other employers. The deaths of four infants in her care between 1869 - 1871 is compellingly circumstantial, but although experts demonstrated that Jesse had been suffocated, it was impossible to prove that the death was not accidental. Agnes's residence with these employers also saw the deaths of three dogs, three cats, 19 pet birds and numerous goldfish. Louie Calvert in West Yorkshire had a career as a petty criminal before she murdered her employer William Frobisher, followed four years later by the murder of her housemate Lily Waterhouse. Jakobi makes a strong case for Calvert as also being the murderer of Florence Hargreaves, an unsolved case. Kate Webster started in petty crime and in 1879 went as a cook to Mrs Thomas of Richmond. Soon afterwards Webster was seen dressed in her employer's clothes and asked an acquaintance to help her with carrying a heavy bag, which subsequently turned out to contain body parts. The author speculates that Kate, who had numerous aliases, may have been the unidentified Thames Torso murderer of a few years earlier. Finally "Mrs Willis" had numerous identities but her murders as a baby farmer in 1907 led to her execution later that year. 147pp, paperback, photos.