Beverly Gail Allitt (born 4 October 1968) is an English serial killer who was convicted of murdering four children, attempting to murder three other children, and causing grievous bodily harm to a further six children. The crimes were committed over a period of 59 days between February and April 1991 in the children's ward at Grantham and Kesteven Hospital, Lincolnshire, where Allitt was employed as a State Enrolled Nurse. She administered large doses of insulin to at least two victims and a large air bubble was found in the body of another, but police were unable to establish how all the attacks were carried out. In May 1993, at Nottingham Crown Court, she received 13 life sentences for the crimes. Mr. Justice Latham, sentencing, told Allitt that she was "a serious danger" to others and was unlikely ever to be considered safe enough to be released. She is currently detained at Rampton Secure Hospital in Nottinghamshire.

Mary Ann Cotton (1832-1873) was a County Durham woman who was tried and convicted for the murder of her own children and hanged in 1873. Few people have heard of the so-called ‘Black Widow’ killer who posed as a wife, widow, mother, friend and nurse to murder perhaps as many as 21 victims,  living off her husbands before eventually claiming their estates. Two decades before Jack the Ripper would terrorise the streets of Whitechapel in London, Mary Ann Cotton had already become a killing machine, perhaps murdering as many as eight of her own children, seven stepchildren, her mother, three husbands, a lover and an inconvenient friend. The murders were mainly committed by arsenic poisoning. 

Nannie Doss was an American serial killer who earned the nicknames "The Giggling Nanny" and "The Jolly Black Widow". She murdered eleven people between 1920 and 1954, including four husbands, two children, her two sisters, her mother, a grandson and a nephew. She finally confessed to the murders in October 1954, after her fifth husband Samuel had died in a small hospital in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Despite being an horrific murderess, Doss enjoyed the limelight of her arrest and often joked about her dead husbands and the method she used to kill them. She was sentenced to life for the murder of Samuel Doss. She died of leukemia in 1963 in the Oklahoma State Penitentiary.

Leona Mindy Roberts Helmsley (1920 – 2007) was an American businesswoman who was known for her flamboyant personality and had a reputation for tyrannical behavior that earned her the nickname Queen of Mean. She was promoted by the Beber Silverstein Group and its co-founder Joyce Beber who persuaded her to call herself Queen of the Palace Hotel.

Following allegations by unpaid contractors that work done on her home had been charged to her company, she was investigated and convicted of federal income tax evasion and other crimes in 1989. Although having initially received a sentence of 16 years, Helmsley was required to serve only 19 months in prison and two months under house arrest. During the trial, a former housekeeper testified that she had heard Helmsley say: "We don't pay taxes. Only the little people pay taxes", a saying that became notorious and was identified with her for the rest of her life. [Read more . . .]

Belle Sorenson Gunness (1859 -1908) was a Norwegian-American serial killer. Standing six feet tall and weighing over 200 pounds, she was a physically strong woman who murdered most of her suitors and boyfriends and her two daughters, Myrtle and Lucy. She may also have killed both of her husbands and all her other children, as well as several witnesses. Her apparent motives involved collecting life insurance, cash and other valuables. Reports estimate that she killed between 25 and 40 people over several decades.