Women make up a small percentage of all killers - in the United States only around two percent of the death row population is female. Traditionally, women who murder choose lovers or family members, but this is not always the case.

On the 23rd of March 1935, a tragic love triangle in South England resulted in the death of an elderly man, and the conviction of his young wife's lover. Architect Francis Rattenbury was found in a pool of blood in his house - the 'Villa Madeira'. Police arrived to find Mr Rattenbury's young wife, Alma, drunk and hysterical. The very next day she was charged with attempted murder, along with her seventeen year old chauffeur George Stoner. Alma and Stoner soon became lovers after he was employed by her husband. Young Stoner fell deeply in love, and couldn't bear to share Alma with her elderly husband. The trial began on the 27th of May at the Old Bailey in London. The jury found Stoner guilty and sentenced him to death, but Alma was found innocent. She was distraught by the verdict, and a month later she plunged a knife into her breast five times before throwing herself into the river Avon.

In the late 1960s a radical left wing terrorist group came to prominence in Germany by bombing, killing and maiming. They called themselves the Red Army Faction, but the press dubbed them 'The Baader Meinhof Gang', after the leaders Andreas Baader and journalist Ulrike Meinhof. They hoped for a People's Revolution, but soon became addicted to the glory and power of the terrorist lifestyle.

In June 1972 Ulrike Meinhof was captured in a dilapidated flat in Hanover. Her trial began in May 1975, and she was sentenced to eight years imprisonment for 'criminal association'. On Mothers Day 1976 Ulrike Meinhof was found hanged in her cell. Isolated, lonely and estranged from her children, Meinhof had committed suicide.