Black Widows
I saw an airbrushed painting of a Black Widow the other day and I couldn’t stop staring at it. The way her red hour-glass body balanced on those white-ghostly webs was mesmerizing. For a brief moment, I psychically felt the fear, which the fly in the painting would have felt, as her eight eyes stared down at her prey.
A female Black Widow sometimes eats her mate after copulation. Although most serial killers are male, female serial killers who kill their husbands or boyfriends are known as Black Widows.
Belle Gunness is considered to be the most prolific female serial killer to date. Gunness had at least 42 confirmed victims in the early 1900’s. Some experts estimate Gunness had as much as a fifty or more unconfirmed victims. She killed many of her victims for insurance money.
Gunness was never sentenced for the murders she committed and her death is a mystery. But in all likelihood, Gunness died in 1931 while awaiting trial for a poisoning under the assumed name Esther Carlson. This goes to prove that sometimes a Black Widow’s poison can come back to bite them.