Historical Studies of Serial Killers: Gender, Media and the State

(Top Row) Rosemary West and Myra Hindley. (Bottom Row) Fred West, Ian Brady and Peter Sutcliffe

This article will examine the importance of serial killers with respect to gender relations, the role of the media and the state in late twentieth-century Britain, from a feminist interpretation. The cases of Myra Hindley, Rosemary West and Peter Sutcliffe will be investigated, as well as the treatment of their victims by the press and police. Such cases are important as they reveal harsh gender disparities in society, and how the media and the state perpetuated and allowed this difference. The first section of the essay will attempt to explain why such disparities existed and the second will explore reasons why the state and media continued to enable them. I am in no way trying to absolve Hindley or West of their horrific crimes, but there are some interesting differences in how they were viewed in comparison to their male counterparts.

The Moors Murders were committed by Ian Brady and Myra Hindley, who murdered and sexually abused five children from 1963 to 1965. Brady was found guilty of committing three murders, whilst Hindley was convicted of two. Similarly, Fred and Rosemary West were a couple who committed crimes, however, the details of their case differ; Fred West committed more than twelve murders from 1967 to 1987, including his own daughter, whilst Rosemary carried out ten in the same time span, including her stepdaughter. Despite Hindley and Rosemary West conducting lesser atrocities than their male counterparts, they seem to have “borne the burden of the responsibility for the crimes […] their male partners in crime seem to have been largely absolved of their respective roles”.^[1] Female serial killers are held in more contempt than males – in fact they are demonised to the highest degree. To quote the title of Ann Lloyd’s book, they are “doubly deviant, doubly damned”.^[2] This argument is furthered by the acknowledgement that upon Hindley’s death, when she was to be buried, “the serial killer Fred West, who committed suicide while on remand […] caused nothing like such a fuss in burial as Hindley”.^[3] Those in charge of dealing with her remains refused to handle them, however, in comparison, there was less of a stir with Fred West’s remains, despite him having killed more people.

This begs the question as to why Hindley was held in more contempt than a man whose crimes were more numerous? One argument is that societal expectations in the late twentieth-century purported the female function as that of the faithful wife and nurturing mother. Therefore, Hindley’s crimes were deemed further villainous as “essentialist assumptions about women’s […] biological purpose condemned them to differential treatment within law”.^[4] Not only did Hindley break societal laws; she also transgressed the “laws of nature”^[5], especially since her crimes were against children, who women were supposed to have a biological prerequisite to protect. A further argument is that the ‘toxic masculinity’[6] surrounding men enables, and almost justifies, violent tendencies. The nature of male sexuality is “the primitive necessity of pursuit and penetration, [which] does contain an important element of aggressiveness”.^[7] Therefore, when women commit acts of extreme violence akin to male serial killers, there are no obvious explanations for their behaviour. This is partly why Hindley was condemned so harshly in the press; she was an ordinary girl from an ordinary background who committed inexplicably violent crimes for no apparent reason. The same can be said for Rosemary West, apart from the fact that West suffered through sexual abuse as a child.^[8] Considering that Fred West committed suicide in prison, Rosemary was effectively left to bear the entire burden of their mutual atrocities.

The demonisation of serial killers, whether male or female, is a natural occurrence and, arguably, an innate human reaction. However, this does not explain why certain female victims of serial killers were also heavily criticised in society. Most of Rosemary West’s victims were “from children’s homes, lesbians, runaways, fostered or hitchhikers”.^[9] Thus, they went against society’s pre-conceived expectations of femininity and the archetypal ‘woman’, hence, Wests victims carried with them negative connotations. Caroline Roberts, a survivor of the Wests, stated publicly that the police made her feel it was her fault for being in their house in the first place, due to her sexual history.^[10] In the case of Peter Sutcliffe, his crimes brought to light “condemnatory discourses regarding women’s respectability and sexuality, and subsequent victim blaming”.^[11] Sutcliffe, more infamously known as the ‘Yorkshire Ripper’, murdered thirteen women from 1975 to 1980. As most of his victims were prostitutes, they were seen to almost elicit their own downfall due to their occupation. They were found “guilty of sexuality”^[12] in a society where women were meant to present as ‘virginal’ or ‘wifely’. Even Sutcliffe’s wife faced blame for his crimes, as “if men’s natural sexual urges were taken care of by the women whose duty it is to respond in a yielding manner, they would have no problem”.^[13]

Historian Joan Smith believes that the state had a part to play in this victim blaming because of police misogyny in Britain in the late twentieth-century.[14] This is especially prevalent in the case of Sutcliffe; in fact, misogynistic attitudes in the police force were so strong that they effectively hindered police investigations and allowed the Yorkshire Ripper to kill for a further five years. This was despite Sutcliffe having been interviewed nine times over the course of their investigation.^[15] The police believed that the murderer had a hatred of prostitutes, akin to the infamous Jack the Ripper, and thus “genuine Sutcliffe victims were excluded from the list of his crimes because they were the wrong ‘type’ of woman”.^[16] Even worse is the fact that some of his surviving victims gave accurate descriptions of their attacker, which perfectly matched Sutcliffe, and yet they were excluded because the women giving the testimonies were not considered to be “of loose morals”.^[17] To the police, the Yorkshire Ripper only murdered ‘immoral women’, yet their label of an ‘immoral woman’ even included those who went to the pub with friends, who had a boyfriend from a different racial background or those who simply cohabited with a man.[18] If the victim were a prostitute the police condemned them even further, using their misogyny to almost justify Sutcliffe’s actions. One senior detective publicly stated that “many people do”^[19] hate prostitutes, and historian Joan Smith states that “the Ripper’s madness manifested itself only when he turned to ‘innocent girls’”.^[20] It was not until Sutcliffe went against his assumed modus operandi, and murdered a fourteen-year-old school girl, that the police saw him as a mad-man; however, the background of the victim should not matter in cases of murder. The police should not have demonstrated apathy towards these women, but this illustrates the state of gender relations in the late twentieth-century.

Such police inefficiency was also prevalent in the case of Rosemary West. Historian Deborah Cameron believes that “the authorities were covering up, or at least refusing to investigate fully, the true extent of the abuse that went on in the ‘house of horror’”.^[21] Elisabeth Storrs furthers this argument by stating that the authorities were aware of the Wests before they began excavating their patio, and that they had been reluctant to intervene in their relationship.^[22] This could be due to the traditional interpretation of families in Britain at the time; they were ‘supposed’ to include a passive wife, the children she bore and cared for, and a faithful husband. The home was the domestic and private sphere, and life within the home was the business of the family. However, as the police soon discovered that abuse was not the only thing going on in 25 Cromwell Street – the reality was much darker. However, in discussion of their case, “lesbianism, female promiscuity and psychosis take preference over any discussion of the dysfunctional or terminal problems associated with male heterosexual husbandry and fatherhood”.^[23] The state avoided criticising masculine power, and by deflecting the filial issues onto Rosemary they made no attempt to “make problematic men’s violence towards women and children”.^[24]

This theme of the state downplaying male violence was also prevalent in the case of the Yorkshire Ripper. By attempting to paint Sutcliffe to be ‘mad’ instead of ‘bad’, authorities tried to distance him from behavioural patterns of other men, thus failing to acknowledge the “potentially horrific consequences of contemporary masculinity”^[25] and how it endorsed the oppression of women. Sutcliffe did not suffer from schizophrenic delusions; the misogynistic voices inside his head telling him to kill women derived of “hoardings on the streets, of newspaper stands, of porn displays and of films”.^[26] Historian Wendy Holloway believes that “the psychiatric discourse was one means whereby the legal process could avoid asking uncomfortable questions about male violence”.^[27] This is unsurprising due to the fact that legal systems are predominantly male-controlled in nature as they are largely owned and run by men; it is arguably within the best interests of oppressive patriarchal systems for women to be repressed and submissive.

The easiest way for patriarchal systems to project their views of gender relations onto the wider public is through media and the press. Cases of violent women were a rare occurrence in comparison to violent men, and yet “the proportion of stories about violent women was higher than their appearance in the criminal statistics”.^[28] Hindley and Rosemary West were furiously scapegoated by British newspapers; West was referred to by The Sun as being “the most depraved woman on earth”^[29] and Hindley, upon her death, prompted headlines such as “The Devil – At last, Myra is where she belongs…HELL”^[30] and “This monster will surely never make it to Heaven”.^[31] In comparison to this, Sutcliffe’s violence towards women was virtually justified in the press, with an article from The Observer stating “it is not hard to see how this cocktail of frustration, guilt and humiliation could lead to fury”^[32], and another questioned “was this not a classic example of provocation?”.^[33] These stark differences in reporting truly illustrate gender relations in the late-twentieth century; how male violence was often justified and blamed on the woman, and how female violence was sensationally condemned. The role of the media played an extremely important part in this demonisation of women, and the continuation of the view that women primarily belonged in the private sphere. Whether victim or perpetrator, women who breached the private sphere, as mentioned above, were vilified in the press, and there are some interesting arguments as to why this transpired.

Historian Bronwyn Naylor believes that the over-representation and sensational press commentaries on female violence are “suggestive of wider concerns about women and gender, and about the role of the family”^[34] in late-twentieth century Britain. It is acknowledged that the 1960s were the beginning of a more liberal, permissive society, where young women were beginning to work before marriage and live more independently than they ever had before. The pill became available for some from 1962 and for all in 1974 and new acts were introduced to make abortions legal and divorce easier to obtain. These transforming social roles for women were met with accompanying cultural anxieties, which the press used to essentially scare women into staying within the private sphere. Hindley followed contemporaneous trends for women; she was the “treacherous, sexually active, bleach-blonde femme fatale”.^[35] Hindley was “seen by news producers as more deviant, more anxiety-producing, and more transgressive”^[36]; an exemplar of a diminishing age of feminine innocence. In the words of Deborah Cameron, “evil desires must be repressed, not encouraged: the permissive and liberal climate of the sixties allowed sadism to flourish and legitimised perversion”.^[37] Thus, the press demonised Hindley more than Brady because it was the perversion and sexuality of women they wished to discourage. The same can be said for Rosemary West; however, in this case the press attempted to make a spectacle of her bisexuality and use it as an explanation for her deviance. Following West’s conviction to jail, the press “reported her as having engaged in ‘lesbian romps’ with Myra Hindley”^[38], despite them having committed their crimes over a decade apart, thus furthering the argument that it is in fact female sexuality and deviancy that was on trial.

The reason why news reporters would be inclined to exaggerate and villainise female sexuality is similar to that of the state; the male-dominated news industry, and “the maleness of the occupation in terms of its history, ideology and working practices embeds it in patriarchy, where masculine power depends mainly on female passivity, family and marriage”.^[39] The two topics which will ensure a newspaper to sell are sex and violence; especially if the stories involve children and can be duly personalised, as was the circumstance with Rosemary West and Hindley, and any case that breaches expectations of ‘normality’.^[40] Thus, by creating sensational news covers and selling papers, this patriarchal view is spread widely. Naylor states that “news stories of violence also have a powerful role in the construction of gender – in everyday understandings of the roles and capabilities of men and women, and of the meanings of masculinity and femininity”.^[41] If the aims of patriarchal authorities and the media were to get women back ‘in line’, then projecting violence and scare tactics to the public would be the ideal method. In the cases of Hindley and Rosemary West, such headlines were a subtle warning to women that this is where rebellion and leaving home early could lead. Similar warnings are also present when newspapers report on male serial killers; the victims of Sutcliffe were met with apathy for being prostitutes and having ‘loose morals’, and thus women reading the newspaper would subconsciously conform to the patriarchal belief of idealised femininity. Furthermore, through fervent newspaper reports and articles on male violence, in turn, it becomes normalised, and duly oppresses women by suggesting “that all men are potentially violent, and all women are potentially and ‘naturally’ victims of male violence”.^[42] Violence portrayed in the media “confirm for women that the public sphere is unsafe, that they have little control over their lives and can be violated and killed irrespective of the efforts they make to be safe”.^[43] Simply because one serial killer is incarcerated, it does not necessarily mean that all women are now safe; violent acts towards women are the “construction of an aggressive male sexuality and of women as its objects”.^[44]

To conclude, historical studies of serial killers in late twentieth-century Britain reveal that gender relations, the role of the media and state were intrinsically patriarchal and oppressive in myriad ways. It did not matter if you were the perpetrator or the victim of the crime; if you didn’t conform to societal norms of womanhood, you were condemned either way. Socio-cultural attitudes were such that the domestic sphere and typical triptych of femininity – the angel, whore, mother – facilitated a misrepresentation and obscuring of the factual realities of serious crimes committed by the Wests, Hindley, Brady and Sutcliffe. In the words of historian Louise Wattis, “misogyny and victim blaming remain endemic to media and criminal justice representations and continue to shape justice outcomes”.^[45]

Further Reading:

Addley, E., ‘Even Hindley’s body has power to terrify’ Sydney Morning Herald (23 November 2002) <https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/22/1037697876250.html> [accessed 06/05/14]

Cameron, D., ‘Rosemary West: Motives and Meanings’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 4.2 (1999), pp. 68-80

Cameron, D., Frazer, E., The Lust to Kill (Polity Press, 1987)

Hollway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), pp. 33-40

Jewkes, Y., Media & Crime (London: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 133

Lloyd, A., Doubly Deviant, Doubly Damned: Society’s Treatment of Violent Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005)

MacArthur, B., ‘Myra: a Shocking End’, The Sunday Times (22 November 2002) <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/myra-a-shocking-end-rwv5k89fk0w> [accessed 06/05/18]

Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), pp. 180-194

Oral testimony from Caroline Roberts, recorded by ‘Britain’s Infamous Serial Killer Rosemary West’, upload date 26 September 2016 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mij5j9GI2EE&t=1166s>

Smith, J., ‘There’s Only One Yorkshire Ripper’, Misogynies (London: Faber and Faber, 1989), pp. 117-151

Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), pp. 9-28

Wattis, L., ‘Revisiting the Yorkshire Ripper Murders: Interrogating Gender Violence, Sex Work and Justice’, Feminist Criminology, 12.1 (2017), pp. 3-21

Winton, T., ‘About the boys: Tim Winton on how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny’, The Guardian (09 April 2018) <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/about-the-boys-tim-winton-on-how-toxic-masculinity-is-shackling-men-to-misogyny> [accessed 08/05/18]

References:

^[1] Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), p. 9

^[2] Lloyd, A., Doubly Deviant, Doubly Damned: Society’s Treatment of Violent Women (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2005)

^[3] Addley, E., ‘Even Hindley’s body has power to terrify’ Sydney Morning Herald (23 November 2002) <https://www.smh.com.au/articles/2002/11/22/1037697876250.html> [accessed 06/05/14]

^[4] Jewkes, Y., Media & Crime (London: Sage Publications, 2004), p. 133

^[5] Ibid.

[6] Winton, Tim, ‘About the boys: Tim Winton on how toxic masculinity is shackling men to misogyny’ The Guardian (09 April 2018) <https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/about-the-boys-tim-winton-on-how-toxic-masculinity-is-shackling-men-to-misogyny> [accessed 08/05/18]

^[7] Hollway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 35

^[8] Cameron, D., ‘Rosemary West: Motives and Meanings’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 4.2 (1999), p. 70

^[9] Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), p. 17

^[10] Oral testimony from Caroline Roberts, recorded by ‘Britain’s Infamous Serial Killer Rosemary West’, upload date 26 September 2016 < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mij5j9GI2EE&t=1166s>

^[11] Wattis, L., ‘Revisiting the Yorkshire Ripper Murders: Interrogating Gender Violence, Sex Work and Justice’, Feminist Criminology, 12.1 (2017), p. 4

^[12] Hollway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 39

^[13] Hollway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 38

[14] Smith, J., ‘There’s Only One Yorkshire Ripper’, Misogynies (London: Faber and Faber, 1989)

^[15] Ibid., p. 118

^[16] Ibid., p. 123

^[17] Ibid., p. 124

[18] Ibid.

^[19] Ibid., p. 127

^[20] Ibid.

^[21] Cameron, D., ‘Rosemary West: Motives and Meanings’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 4.2 (1999), p. 70

^[22] Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), p. 17

^[23] Ibid.

^[24] Ibid.

^[25] Holloway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 33

^[26] Ibid., p. 39

^[27] Ibid., pp. 35-36

^[28] Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), p. 182

^[29] Cameron, D., ‘Rosemary West: Motives and Meanings’, Journal of Sexual Aggression, 4.2 (1999), p. 69

^[30] MacArthur, B., ‘Myra: a Shocking End’, The Sunday Times (22 November 2002) <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/myra-a-shocking-end-rwv5k89fk0w> [accessed 06/05/18]

^[31] MacArthur, B., ‘Myra: a Shocking End’, The Sunday Times (22 November 2002) <https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/myra-a-shocking-end-rwv5k89fk0w> [accessed 06/05/18]

^[32] Holloway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 37

^[33] Ibid.

^[34] Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), p. 188

^[35] Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), p. 23

^[36] Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), p. 188

^[37] Cameron, D., Frazer, E., The Lust to Kill (Polity Press, 1987), p.142

^[38] Storrs, E., ‘Our Scapegoat: An Exploration of Media Representations of Myra Hindley and Rosemary West’, Theology and Sexuality, 11.1 (2004), p. 24

^[39] Ibid., p. 16

^[40] Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), p. 180

^[41] Naylor, B., ‘Reporting Violence in the British Print Media: Gendered Stories’, The Howard Journal, 40.2 (2001), p. 189

^[42] Ibid., p. 186

^[43] Ibid.

^[44] Holloway, W., ‘I Just Wanted to Kill a Woman. Why? The Ripper and Male Sexuality’, Feminist Review, No.9 (Autumn, 1981), p. 33

^[45] Wattis, L., ‘Revisiting the Yorkshire Ripper Murders: Interrogating Gender Violence, Sex Work and Justice’, Feminist Criminology, 12.1 (2017), p. 16