These women weren't afraid to get their hands dirty. Welcome to WatchMojo, and today weโre counting down our picks for the most infamous cases where a woman was alleged to have killed either one or multiple romantic partners.
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00:00Shurn Minchao covered the original trial back in 2004 and shows us why this made national headlines.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo and today we're counting down our picks for the most infamous cases
00:12where a woman was alleged to have killed either one or multiple romantic partners.
00:16Then police do a little digging and to their surprise they find that David
00:22Castor leaves everything to his wife Stacy Castor and her two daughters.
00:27Judy Buenoano
00:30Sometimes it's not so great to be a trailblazer.
00:38Judy Buenoano possesses the infamous distinction of being Florida's first
00:42female victim of the electric chair. This death sentence was handed out in connection
00:47to the death of Buenoano's husband, James Goodyear. The list of Buenoano's casualties
00:52doesn't stop there, however, since she was also convicted of murdering her son Michael.
00:56She was found guilty on all counts. She was sentenced to life without parole.
01:01This serial killer was also linked to the deaths of at least two other boyfriends,
01:05with the methodology routinely being that of arsenic poisoning. Buenoano's home life as a
01:10child was allegedly one that involved routine abuse to the point where she was imprisoned
01:14as a teenager for attacking her father and stepfamily.
01:18She ends up serving 60 days in a jail facility for this attack on her parents.
01:25Belle Gunness
01:26There is a long list of victims that have been attributed, or at least connected,
01:30to the murder spree of Belle Gunness. Speculations from investigators and
01:33researchers place the number between 14 and 40. Insurance payouts seem to have played a big part
01:39in many of Gunness' insidious plans, with multiple husbands and even children suffering fatal
01:45accidents while living on her property. It wasn't until after Gunness' own demise in a house fire
01:50that authorities uncovered bags containing human remains, buried in the ground.
01:56We should actually say supposed demise, since the corpse investigators claimed to be Gunness
02:01was headless and differed in physical details. This has led some to surmise that she escaped
02:07from the burning house to kill again. Catherine Knight
02:10The trial and subsequent conviction of Catherine Knight in 2001 resulted in her being the first
02:15woman in Australian history to be sentenced to life imprisonment without parole.
02:20She'd shown no remorse. She had not acknowledged that she had any problem at all.
02:29Such a person, if released, is not unlikely to do the same again.
02:35This was in connection to Knight's gruesome killing of her partner,
02:38John Charles Thomas Price, the year prior. Knight allegedly intended to put her skills
02:42as an abattoir worker to use, serving Price's remains to his children for dinner.
02:48There's a meal on the table, for God's sake. There's vegetables, there's gravy,
02:53there's his meat, which he's cooked in the oven.
02:56This, thankfully, never came to pass, but Knight's history of violence actually dated
03:00back to previous romantic partners, including the alleged attempted strangling of her first husband.
03:06Meanwhile, Knight also intentionally killed a dog belonging to boyfriend David Saunders,
03:11and attacked the latter with a pair of scissors, stabbing him in the stomach.
03:16She didn't care when she crossed the line. That was the whole thing. She was completely
03:20without remorse when she would do these terrible things.
03:23Chisako Kakehi. The idea that female murderers primarily utilize poison
03:28is something of a misconception when it comes to the hard data and facts.
03:33She has the face of a grandmother, but police say the mind of a killer.
03:37Chisako Kakehi, a 67-year-old Japanese millionaire with a long list of dead lovers.
03:43However, that doesn't mean that there isn't at least some truth to this stereotype,
03:47as evidenced from Japan's Chisako Kakehi.
03:50Authorities in that country claim that Kakehi is responsible for deaths of at least
03:55seven romantic partners.
03:56Here in Japan, the media is calling Kakehi the Black Widow, with dead lovers ranging from 54 to 75.
04:03Motives in these cases were historically seen as financial,
04:06specifically insurance money windfalls. Kakehi's methodology seemed to be cyanide poisoning,
04:12with no less than three of her lovers succumbing to the effects of the drug
04:16after becoming involved with Japan's septuagenarian Black Widow.
04:20Since then, police say she's gotten rich collecting insurance money and
04:24inheritances from her late lovers, men who, according to authorities,
04:28fell in love and paid the ultimate price.
04:31Evelyn Dick. The body of Evelyn Dick's former husband John was in atrocious shape
04:35back when it was uncovered by a group of Canadian children back in the early 1940s.
04:40The Dicks' marriage was a short one, and notable for Evelyn's romantic liaison with another man,
04:45Bill Bohosik, only days after tying the knot.
04:48Meanwhile, John's dismembered remains were whittled down to a torso,
04:52and Evelyn's trial was a sensationalized and salacious media frenzy.
04:57This resulted in a conviction, which was overturned, with an acquittal coming from a retrial.
05:01A second trial for the mummified fetal corpse found on her property
05:06resulted in an 11-year prison stay.
05:08Susan Wright. The trial of Susan Lucille Wright was one that vacillated between two stories,
05:14one of self-defense and the other cold-blooded murder.
05:17Prosecutors said the unhappy wife had lured her husband,
05:21Jeffrey Wright, to his deathbed with the promise of romance.
05:25Wright's lawyer stated that her marriage to Jeffrey Wright was one under which
05:29Susan suffered physical violence. Thus, the admitted stabbing of this husband that took
05:33place, while the latter was bound to his marital bed, was committed out of fear.
05:38She buried her husband in their Northwest Terrace County backyard,
05:42in a hole he had dug for a home improvement project.
05:45The prosecution, meanwhile, painted Wright as someone who intentionally murdered her husband,
05:49although it should be said that the former did voluntarily turn herself in to the authorities
05:54after meeting with her counsel.
05:56The jury eventually convicted Susan Wright to 25 years,
05:59a sentence that was reduced to 20, and from which Wright emerged on parole in 2020.
06:04A 44-year-old was released on parole this morning,
06:07after serving more than 16 of her 20-year sentence for murder.
06:10Stacey Castor
06:12We can't imagine that it's a very pleasant method of death, being fed antifreeze. Yet,
06:16that's allegedly what Stacey Castor did to not one, but two of her husbands.
06:20I knew at that point we had a double homicide, and Stacey Castor probably killed both her husbands.
06:26Toxicology reports for both Michael Wallace and David Castor reported positive for antifreeze
06:31poisoning. The case of the latter is particularly troubling, however,
06:34since it was alleged that Stacey Castor forcibly locked her husband in a room
06:38and force-fed him the poison, when he became too weak from malnourishment to resist.
06:43One of the things that jumped out at us was the turkey baster.
06:47They send the turkey baster for testing, and lo and behold...
06:51It turns out that there was antifreeze inside that turkey baster.
06:55One of the other puzzling things was David's DNA was on the tip of that turkey baster.
07:00It was initially surmised that David Castor's death was self-inflicted,
07:04but the truth came out during the trial, and Stacey Castor was sentenced to 51 years to life.
07:09The severity of this sentence was also impacted by the alleged poisoning of her daughter, Ashley.
07:14Unlike many defendants who pass through my courtroom, you're not just a danger to the
07:18general public, you're a danger to the people who love you and are closest to you.
07:23And I believe that the sentence I'm about to impose will remove that danger once and for all.
07:27Nanny Dos
07:28A 1954 mugshot of Nancy Hazel, aka Nanny Dos,
07:33is all it really takes to underline this serial killer's reputation as the Giggling Granny.
07:38The slightly sinister smirk on Dos' face belies the fact that she was allegedly
07:42responsible for at least 11 murders. Four separate husbands died while being married
07:47to Nanny Dos, while the latter also confessed to killing her mother, sister, mother-in-law,
07:52and grandson. A recurring theme of insurance money returns here,
07:56the seeming motive for the death of Nanny's final husband, Samuel Dos,
08:00from arsenic poisoning during his brief fatal marriage. Insurance also was related to others
08:06of the deaths. Betty Lou Beetz
08:08The woman born Betty Lou Dunavant was married five times, twice to the same man,
08:13prior to tying the knot with Jimmy Don Beetz in 1982. That aforementioned double marriage to Bill
08:18York Lane resulted in Betty shooting her husband, although he did survive the attack.
08:23This wasn't the case with Doyle Wayne Barker, Beetz's fourth spouse,
08:27whose remains were found on her property, alongside the body of Jimmy Don Beetz.
08:31Both bodies had similar-looking gunshot wounds. Beetz was found guilty and sentenced to death in
08:361985, but the long appeals process meant that the method of lethal injection wasn't carried
08:41out until 15 years later, on February 24, 2000. Before we continue, be sure to subscribe to our
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08:58your settings and switch on notifications. Amy Archer Gilligan
09:03It is true that Amy Archer Gilligan, nรฉe Duggan, was convicted of poisoning her husband Michael.
09:09However, dozens of other reported individuals died while residents of a nursing home
09:14under Archer Gilligan's care. Traces of arsenic and strychnine were found
09:28by forensic officials that examined several deaths at the Archer home for the elderly and
09:33infirm. Stranger still was how some of these victims were convinced, while presumably lucid
09:38enough, to sign over their life insurance policies to Archer Gilligan. Her initial
09:43conviction was overturned on a retrial and insanity defense, with Archer Gilligan being
09:48sent to a mental hospital until the end of her days, leading Archer to face two rounds of murder
09:53trials and ultimately being sentenced to life in prison. Is the term Black Widow still relevant in
09:59the modern day, or is its gender specificity reductive by current societal standards?
10:04Let us know your thoughts in the comments.