Book Review: Book describes four women murderers in twentieth century Chile

When Women Kill: Four Crimes Retold by Alia Trabucco Zerán.

We find it remarkably difficult to imagine a woman committing deliberate cold-blooded murder. as author Alia Trabucco Zerán explains in the introduction to When Women Kill. As she told people she was writing about ‘women killers’, they would often hear ‘women who have been killed’.

It is so much easier to imagine a female victim than a female perpetrator, that’s where people’s minds automatically took them.

Much of this book, which describes the cases and circumstances of four women murderers in twentieth century Chile, is spent speculating and exploring why it’s so challenging to accept that yes, women can commit murder. The book is a work of nonfiction - Zerán describes her meticulous research as part of the text - but includes plenty of unapologetically creative and subjective elements.

From a first person reimagining of why live-in servant Teresa Alfaro killed several members of the family she worked for, to imaginary dialogue with Carolina Geel, who never explained why she shot her lover in the face in a busy tearoom, this is a refreshingly different approach to the true crime genre.

And while her exploration of what information remains on the record about these women’s crimes is fascinating, it is the analysis of how society tried to neutralise the fear they cause where the book really shines. Each murderer must be made an anomaly and an aberration - or we’d have to face the truth that a woman can decide to kill children, a lover, or even their husband.

The book presents many meaty elements to chew over, not least that the women’s femininity often acts in their favour in terms of receiving more leniency from the Chilean justice system. A pattern emerges of initial horror as the female perpetrator is discovered, followed by justification, distortion and sidelining of any real motive, resulting in a kind of patronising erasure of the violence.

The four women have very different backgrounds, life experiences and motives, where these are known. There are no easy generalisations or conclusions to be drawn here about why women kill. But Zerán exposes some fascinating conclusions about how society responds when they do.