While men get a lot of the credit for being evil, they’re not the only ones out there being mischievous, crazy, and frankly, inhumane. Today we’re going through the Top 10 Most Evil Women In History – and though they might not be Hitler-level crazy, they sure come close.
Top 10 Most Evil Women in History
10. Griselda Blanco
Griselda Blanco is probably the most well-known woman from the Colombian era of cocaine fame. She was born in 1943 and became a drug queen pin in her youth. She’s said to have been the mentor of the much more infamous Pablo Escobar, though they later became enemies.
Her nicknames included The Godmother and The Black Widow. Though we’re not sure exactly how many people she killed directly, if any, we do know that she indirectly led others to commit hundreds of murders. At the time of her death, she was reported to be worth $2 billion.
On September 3rd, 2012, while sitting at the Cardoso butcher shop in Medellin, Colombia, a gunman climbed off the back of a motorbike outside the shop, entered, pulled out a gun, and shot Blanco two times before calmly walking back to his bike and disappearing into the city.
9. Belle Gunness
A woman who can physically take just about any man should probably be on this list, right? At least, that’s what many think. Belle stood just 6 feet tall and weighed 200 pounds, or about 1.82 meters and 90.7 kilograms, but she’s known for being one of America’s scariest and most prolific serial killers.
While the details of how many people she killed are unknown, she’s likely to have killed both her husbands and all her children separately, as well as her suitors and boyfriends.
Why? Life insurance policies. She lived entirely off of other people dying and giving her money, essentially. She probably killed over 20 people, over the course of decades, and some even think the number is over 100 victims.
The worst part? She was never caught. A popular belief is that she died in a fire in 1908, but many believed that she faked her own death and skipped town.
8. Beverley Allitt
This British woman is also known as the Angel of Death, and was convicted of murdering four children. That’s just the ones she was able to kill though – she tried to murder more! In fact, she was also charged with causing grievous bodily harm to another six kids. She didn’t do this over a long period like other women on this list, though.
She committed the crimes in a period of 59 days in 1991 at a hospital in Lincolnshire where she worked as a nurse. She’d insert large doses of insulin into children or even air bubbles.
She’s currently in prison for life, but no one could figure out just why she committed the murders in the first place.
7. Ma Barker
An American woman of the most evil natures. She was the leader of the Barker Gang during the “public enemy era” of the 1930s, in which she led them through robberies, murders, and even kidnapping.
Then in 1935, she was found and killed in her hideout in Florida, in what the FBI marked as the longest shootout in history. Her son, Fred, opened fire on the FBI while they surrounded their house; both he and his mother, Ma Barker, were killed by federal agents after an intense, hours-long shootout.
Allegedly, many local people came to watch the events unfolding, even holding picnics during the gunfire.
6. Mary Tudor
Daughter of Henry VIII and Catherine of Aragon, she was the only child to live to adulthood. She was then the first queen of England from 1553 until 1558. Not long, right? You’d think she wouldn’t have done too much damage.
Nevertheless, she’s known as the worst queen to date. Bloodthirsty and evil, Bloody Mary would persecute Protestants, even executing hundreds of them. She’d stop at no one, even having her very own cousin, Lady Jane Grey, beheaded after it was made clear that she would possibly take her throne.
5. Ilse Koch
An early 19th Century woman, part of the Nazi Party, Ilse Koch came to be known as the Witch of Buchenwald. She was married to a man named Karl-Otto Koch and was one of the first Nazis tried by the US military.
Her husband became powerful during the Nazi regime and the power went straight to her head, making her perhaps a much more evil person than she might have been otherwise.
She oversaw a prison in the 1940s and would take tattoos from murdered prisoners and use them as book covers and lampshades.
On June 30th, 1945, she was arrested by American authorities and put on trial for a “violation of the laws and customs of war”.
She received a life sentence at the age of 40, then spent 20 years in prison before taking her own life. Her husband was found guilty and was executed by a firing squad on April 5th, 1945, in the very camp he once commanded.
4. Miyuki Ishikawa
Miyuki was a midwife from Japan by day and a serial killer, well, also by day. She and her husband killed, brace for it, babies. It wasn’t just a couple babies, either.
Her numbers have been cited anywhere between 85 and 169 babies. She didn’t murder them violently, but rather neglected them, which is probably just as torturous.
She’d later claim the parents had abandoned the infants, causing their deaths. She was sentenced to eight years in prison, later appealed, and successfully got her sentence reduced to only 4 years!
3. Rosemary West
Rosemary began life as a victim herself. Her father was a paranoid schizophrenic that sexually abused her regularly. In her adult life, she became an abuser and took it even further.
Rosemary and her husband Fred West tortured and killed young women and girls after kidnapping them together and holding them for days.
Then they hid the bodies under the house. What’s worse is that one of these young women was their own daughter they had together, and one of Fred’s daughters from a previous marriage.
In total, they murdered about ten women – though it’s possible there may be more we don’t even know about. After being found and charged, Fred committed suicide awaiting trial, and Rosemary was sentenced to life in prison, the second British woman to receive this sentence in modern times.
2. Elizabeth Bathory
Throwing it way back to the late 1500s, this Countess was from a noble Hungarian family. That alone wasn’t going to get her fame though, was it? She is also the most prolific female serial killer in history!
She became well-known as the “Blood Countess”, by killing up to 650 peasant girls by beating, burning, mutilating, and even biting their faces off. As corruption goes, with her status she couldn’t be tried for her murders so she was ordered to remain on house arrest.
They called her the “Blood Countess” not only because of her cold-blooded murders but because she allegedly bathed in the blood of her victims to stay young.
1. Catherine de Medici
If you ever took a history class you might have heard of the Medicis, an Italian noble family known to commission art from some of the greatest artists of all time.
Catherine Queen of France for about 20 years was one of the most powerful and violent female rulers of Medieval Europe, and that’s quite the accomplishment.
She was also known as the Black Widow and is credited for the Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, a mob against the Huguenots Protestants in 1572. Up to 30,000 Huguenots died in the organized massacre, led by Catholics.
If you enjoyed this Most Evil Women In History article, help us out by giving it a suggestion in the comment section, let us know who you think the most evil woman in history is!
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