New Books Network: Joanna Bourke on "Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker" (Reaktion, 2026)
Date: March 1, 2026
Host: Dr. Miranda Melcher
Guest: Professor Joanna Bourke
Episode Overview
This episode of the New Books Network features Dr. Miranda Melcher in conversation with Professor Joanna Bourke about her new book, Five Evil Women: Hindley, West, Wuornos, Homolka, Tucker. The book examines five infamous women labeled "evil" by society, exploring their crimes as well as the cultural, psychological, and historical meanings of "evil" femininity. Bourke unpacks why these particular women continue to command such fear and fascination, how narratives about them overlay broader societal anxieties, and what this says about justice, rehabilitation, and gender.
Main Topics and Insights
Why Write About "Evil Women"? (02:30)
- Bourke’s Motivation:
- Having studied violence from a predominantly male perspective, Bourke wanted to interrogate how history and society conceptualize women who perpetrate serious violence.
- She highlights the societal anxieties about female violence:
"There's high levels of anxieties about female violence and they have been increasing, I think, in the last few decades. And although, you know, it did strike me that these anxieties are largely baseless, but ... they do reflect very real fears in our society about the role of women in modernity..." (04:07)
- Dissatisfaction with shallow media portrayals ("mad, bad, sad"); seeks to explore if "evil" is understood differently when the perpetrator is a woman.
- Defines evil "as a human ascription, a doing, not a being." (05:40)
Case Study Selection and Approach (06:13)
- Criteria for Inclusion:
- The selected women—Myra Hindley, Rosemary West, Aileen Wuornos, Karla Homolka, and Karla Tucker—are all white, working or lower-middle class, often labeled "evil" for decades after their crimes.
- Bourke notes the tendency for media and public to focus on female offenders over male accomplices:
“…the center of attention gets kind of fixated on the women themselves..." (07:25)
- Methodological Challenges:
- Navigating the risk of unintentionally glamorizing or contributing to the mythos of these women, or over-aestheticizing violence (10:00).
- Avoiding the extremes of monstrous demonization or "domesticating" their crimes.
- Grappling with the "toughest challenge": offering moral empathy without excusing monstrous acts:
“Empathy for violent women is not incompatible with an absolute revulsion for the crimes they committed.” (13:58)
Myra Hindley: Creating the Archetype (16:29)
- Why Hindley Remains Iconic:
- Hindley's "normality" made her appear more menacing compared to her already-deranged male co-offender.
- Societal fears of the 1960s—the sexual revolution, feminism, the rise of pornography—intersected with anxieties about deviant femininity.
- The iconic police mugshot became a long-lasting symbol of evil, continually reproduced in art and media—e.g., Marcus Harvey’s 1997 painting "Myra":
“For British people, Hindley was, as someone said ... as much part of the 60s as the Beatles and the Pill.” (17:35)
- Hindley was incarcerated for over three times longer than comparable male offenders due to lingering public outrage (22:34).
Rosemary West: Motherhood and New Anxieties (24:20)
- Building on Hindley’s Template:
- Rose West's apparently "ordinary" status mixed with extreme sexual aggression, incest, and, most shockingly, violence toward her own children.
- Motherhood itself made her crimes more incomprehensible to the public:
“She was a mother… People just couldn't comprehend that motherhood as such should have precluded her actions.” (27:20)
- In the 1980s and ‘90s, additional fears—serial killers, sexual sadism, and female pedophilia—added new layers to the discourse (28:45).
Aileen Wuornos: Feminism, Victimhood, and Serial Killing (33:15)
- The only American in the book, Wuornos killed seven men in a context of sex work. Her case provoked an unusual wave of feminist defense, framing her as an agent retaliating against patriarchal oppression.
- Some radical feminists viewed Wuornos as a “soldier who killed the enemy” (patriarchal johns).
- Her status as “America’s first female serial killer” reveals how female-perpetrated violence is perceived as more disruptive, and the “template” continues to morph around such figures.
- Wuornos’s traumatic background—abuse, homelessness, sex work—was seen paradoxically as both explanation and a mark of greater danger (40:35).
The Role of Psychology in Understanding Evil Women (39:41)
- Courtrooms and media increasingly turned to psychological explanations—battered woman syndrome, cycles of abuse, attachment disorders, compliant victim/seducer narratives—as frameworks to explain how “sane” women could commit extreme violence.
“Diagnoses such as borderline personality disorder, antisocial personality disorder, are really the secular equivalent of just calling someone evil.” (41:37)
- These frameworks, meant to generate empathy or explanation, sometimes instead reinforced the idea of women as deeply dangerous, manipulative, or irredeemable.
Remorse, Repentance, and Restitution (47:16)
- Showing remorse does not always mitigate public or judicial condemnation:
- Rose West's lack of remorse exacerbates her perceived monstrosity.
- Myra Hindley's expressions of remorse and rehabilitation were discounted by the media and public, seen as manipulative or insincere—even when widely acknowledged by professionals:
"Any evidence to the contrary is interpreted as manipulative, duplicitous..." (48:50)
- Women, more than men, face entrenched assumptions that make any signs of remorse doubly suspect.
Justice, Rehabilitation, and Abolitionist Thought (52:31)
- Bourke identifies as an anti-carceral feminist and calls for transformative justice, noting:
- While prison did remove these women from violent environments and may have led to rehabilitation for some, most were not repeat offenders or "habitually violent."
- Current systems focus on punishment over meaningful reparation or transformation.
- Advocates for more radical, structural solutions:
“Abolition is not merely the absence of cops and prisons, it's the presence of anything we need to secure that absence.” —Citing Ruth Wilson Gilmore (56:55)
- Stresses the importance of addressing societal wounds—poverty, abuse, neglect—that foster cycles of violence.
Notable Quotes & Moments
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On the Difficulty of Writing About "Evil" Women:
“These women themselves craved immortality. ... Was I going to contribute to that?” (10:20)
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On the Nexus of Normality and Monstrosity:
“She just seemed so normal. ... it's the absence of an easily available explanatory framework to make sense of someone's actions that made her seem particularly dangerous.” (18:45)
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On Public Memory & The Power of Images:
“The iconic police mugshot came to represent everything that was morally ugly about the modern world.” (21:10)
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On Empathy and Accountability:
“Empathy for violent women is not incompatible with an absolute revulsion for the crimes they committed.” (13:58)
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On Gendered Remorse:
“If women cry, they're accused of shedding crocodile tears. If they act stoical, they are heartless.” (50:20)
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On Abolition:
"Abolition is not merely the absence of cops and prisons, it's the presence of anything we need to secure that absence." — Ruth Wilson Gilmore, cited by Bourke (56:55)
Key Timestamps
- 02:30: Bourke introduces herself, her research focus, and reasoning for this work
- 06:13: Criteria and reasoning for choosing the five case studies
- 10:00: Methodological concerns, risk of mythologizing or glamourizing
- 16:29: Deep dive into Myra Hindley’s cultural resonance
- 24:20: Transition to Rosemary West, evolving templates of evil
- 33:15: Aileen Wuornos, radical feminism, and the American context
- 39:41: The psychological diagnosis and courtroom/media narratives
- 47:16: The role of remorse in both public opinion and justice
- 52:31: Final chapter themes: abolition, transformative justice, and societal change
- 59:07: Bourke’s upcoming, lighter book project
Conclusion
This episode delves into Five Evil Women as a layered critique of how society constructs "evil" femininity, both indicting and seeking to move beyond simplistic narratives. Bourke challenges listeners to reckon with the instability of evil as a concept, the gendered scripts of monstrosity, and the limitations of punitive justice systems. Ultimately, she advocates for a broader, more transformative vision of justice that attends to root causes and structural inequalities—inviting us, through history, to rethink the present and the possible.