Female Serial Killers

The Lucy Letby baby murders were shocking on so many levels, babies killed or injured by a Nurse meant to care for them, and one was the fact that she was such an unlikely serial killer which is how she managed to get away with it to continue her killing for so long.   
Dr Marissa Harrison is a professor of psychology and admits that female serial killers are rare but using examples gathered from 64 Female Serial Killers, in 40% of female serial killers are nurses, nurses aides or other healthcare workers but there is generally a forensic profile for them based on previous serial killers although they say it is by no means a predictor of future crimes.
They are also likely to have been married, white, religious, educated, average looking or attractive, in their 20s or 30s and have suffered some form of mental illness and the victims are usually vulnerable people such as infants and the sick and and their most common method of killing was poisoning.
The description applies to many nurses we know and almost every nurse or medical professional who has ever lived would never harm anyone and the psychologists are at pains to point out that the profile is a starting point for whom and what to look for when serial murder is suspected.
Concerns were raised by colleagues and doctors at the Countess of Chester hospital but these were dismissed mainly, Dr Harrison believes, due to Letby not fitting into the idea of a killer, she was a female and a nurse, so nobody was able to process that she was a killer and brushed off as not possible which has happened in previous hospital and care home based cases.
We must be prepared, says the Dr, to look beyond our preconceived notions of who a murderer might be and consider that sometimes, the monster is a female nurse and an an otherwise ordinary, unremarkable woman.