Culture > December 7, 2005
Bad Girls
By Silja J.A. Talvi
From top left to right, women who "snapped": Manuela Garcia, Jeen Han, Mary Thompson, Dora Cisneros, Linda Lou Charbonneau, Donna Yaklich
The typical American female TV criminal is nasty, cutthroat, cunning, duplicitous and sexy to boot. Oxygen, a women-oriented cable channel, hypes its popular “Snapped” series this way: “From millionaire brides with everything to lose, to small-town sweethearts who should simply know better, these shocking but true stories turn common assumptions about crime and criminals upside down.”
The show promises to reveal that there is “something far more sinister to the fairer sex than ‘sugar and spice and everything nice.’” As proof, “Snapped” offers up Carolyn Warmus, the daughter of a self-made millionaire. “To put it simply,” Carolyn, a “young temptress” with “blond hair, a voluptuous figure, and sassy personality, got what Carolyn wanted, including men.”
As temptresses do, Carolyn began an affair with a married man. Then “the sexy nymphet … turned her charms on [a] private dick,” who eventually provided her with a silencer-enabled gun.
One dead wife-of-her-lover later, Carolyn Warmus finds herself on trial, “dressed to kill … arriving every day in very short, very tight miniskirts and designer clothes. With her striking good looks, expensive outfits, and murderous persona, Warmus was the embodiment of the ‘femme fatal’: a sexy, dangerous blond bombshell that seemed to step right out of the hardboiled detective films and pulp novels of the ’40s.”
Words that could have been lifted out those colorful paperbacks—this is what passes as entertainment for women?
Other outlets have also joined the fun. E! Entertainment Television’s series, asks viewers to contemplate: “How does a match made in heaven turn into hell on earth?”
In response, E! offers “True Hollywood Stories: Women Who Kill,” in which audiences are introduced to Margaret Rudin, “a gold digger with a dark side,” and Kristin Rossum, who is presumed to have killed her mate “because she had a handsome lover on the side.”
Deeper motives
Are there cunning, narcissistic women who would kill for thrill or profit? Sure. Why not? Someone’s gender doesn’t ascribe ethical character traits, no matter how much essentialist thinkers would like to think otherwise. But the fact is that cold-hearted women who are simply out for themselves are a tiny minority of women doing time for murder—or any other crime.
When women kill their mates, such acts are usually in self-defense—or as a result of longstanding physical and emotional abuse. According to the U.S. Department of Justice Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), at least half of all women in prison, including those jailed for nonviolent offences, were abused by spouses before their incarceration.
Unfortunately, even strong evidence of being battered doesn’t do much to help tip the scales of justice in women’s favor. According to Harvard University domestic violence researcher Angela Browne, women who kill men in self-defense—and where there is evidence of severe assault prior to the killing—are acquitted only 25 percent of the time.
On top of this, women who are charged with the murder of their partners have the least extensive criminal records of any group of convicted offenders. Yet the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence reports that the average prison sentence of men who kill their female partners ranges from two to six years, while women who kill their partners are sentenced to an average of 15 years. In states ranging from Florida to South Carolina, many are serving life sentences without the possibility of parole.
In 1993 an Ohio-based research team studying the motivations for murder in intimate relationships found that 82 percent of men in custody who killed female partners or wives did so because they were motivated by “possessiveness,” whereas 83 percent of women in custody described their motivation for murder as “self-defense.”
On programs about women in prison, even the act of self-protection is subject to sensationalizing. Here’s how the producers of “Snapped” pretend to confide in their viewers: “Let’s be honest, we’ve all had at least one moment in which we felt as though we could snap. Even if you’re in the ‘perfect relationship,’ chances are, you’ve probably said (or even just fleetingly thought), ‘I’m going to kill my husband!’ So what separates those of us who do, from those who don’t?”
In one case, “Snapped” did bring viewers a case that reflected the most common reason women kill their partners.
As we learn, Kimberley Kondejewski of Brandon, Manitoba, put up with serious abuse for no less than 17 years from a controlling husband with whom she had two children. When her husband, a military instructor, went so far as to demand that she commit suicide so he could collect the insurance money (with the threat of doing the deed himself and taking out the children in the process), “the meek housewife put a quick and final end to his cruelty.”
Kimberely shot her husband, and then turned the gun on herself. But she didn’t die. Charged with murder shortly thereafter, Kimberely told her story to a jury. That jury, in turn, found that she was not guilty of the charge and sent her home to put her life back together with her children.
Ah, justice.
Ah, Canada.
American justice
It’s rare to see this kind of justice in the United States, where women like Flozelle Woodmore still sit in prison.
Woodmore was 13 years old when she began a relationship with a boyfriend who would end up beating, sexually assaulting and stalking her. Impregnated for the first time at 15, Woodmore was an overwhelmed and severely abused minor without the ability to seek a restraining order—or the know-how to extricate herself from the situation. When she was 18, Woodmore killed her boyfriend, her first and only criminal offense. Information about the abuse was never admitted into court testimony. Woodmore thought she was doing the right thing when she pled guilty, and received a 15-to-life indeterminate sentence. While in prison, Woodmore has become a ‘model prisoner,’ staying clear of infractions, becoming president of an Alcoholics Anonymous group, and earning her G.E.D. Although Woodmore is supported in her plea for parole by the victim’s family, the sentencing judge, and every member of the California Legislative Women’s Caucus, her recommended parole has been denied by a California governor no less than four times.
More information about Silja J.A. Talvi
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Also by Silja J.A. Talvi
- Reporting From The Ground Up
The power of street reporting - Seattle Battles the Homeless
- Women Behind Bars
War on drugs leads to explosion of female incarcerations - Tupperware and Tasers
- Suffering Secondary Trauma
Finding Iris Chang: Friendship, Ambition and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind explores the complexity of Chang's psychology as it formed around the demands of her profession and her personal struggles stemming from her writing about The Rape of Nanking - Justice Denied
One man stands between Flozelle Woodmore and the "free" world--California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger
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