Richard Kuklinski, the’Iceman’, is a convicted hitman, both free-lance and for the mob, with over one hundred kills. Has there ever been a hitWOMAN, with a similar background? ie. number of kills, or close to it?
Okay, have you ever heard of a hitwoman?
(cheap bump)
I’ve looked at this a little bit over time. Female assassins, outside of myth, are fairly rare for a variety of reasons. There’s a bit of theatrical and literary myth of Chinese and Siamese contract killers, but generally women are not contract killers due to reasons of their historical societal position, low incidence of murder (relative to men), and the turgid phallocentricism of organized crime in general. Even the (kinda) gynocentric cult of Kali never employed women as stranglers/assassins to the best of my knowledge.
Googling finds a “Madame Popova” who reputedly killed husbands of women for money, and IIRC in my “Extraordinary Delusions and the Madness of Crowds” (now in public domain, see the “Slow Poisoners” chapter) there were a few notirious poisoners, such as Heironyma Spara, who would give poison to and help poison husbands/lovers/rivals of women. Don’t know if that counts…
I would think that women would make good assasins because of many misconceptions about them. In theory, a woman could get closer to a mark than a man could, through seduction and whatnot.
It was said that Nunekin, female ninja, often employed these tactics. They were often disguised as prostitutes and such to assasinate or spy on enemies.
maybe there are women assassins; they are just so good that they have never been caught or identified.