Deadly Australian Women

Do women kill? Yes they do, but often for very different reasons to men…

Meet the women who have murdered – they’ve killed children, husbands, lovers, relatives and friends. They include the desperate, the poor, the abused, the sexually betrayed, and the downright callous. In some cases they were motivated by fear of society’s disapproval, in others they acted to save themselves from violence. Among their number were early backyard abortionists like Madame Olga and Madame Harper, poisoners like Maria Marek and Yvonne Fletcher, women who committed infanticide like Keli Lane, women who formed lovers pacts to murder their husbands and women whose troubled lives on the margins like transgendered Eugenia Falleni/Harry Crawford led them almost inevitably to crime.

In her first, best-selling book, Notorious Australian Women, author Kay Saunders profiled some of the country’s most scandalous women. Here she turns her eye to those who have broken one of society’s most cherished taboos and become both notorious and deadly....