ABSTRACT
The two cases which are considered in this chapter travel the final step on the journey this book charts from the relatively contained safety of the victimized female killer to the incomprehension and fear evoked by the female sadist. The cases of Karla Homolka and Valmae Beck differ from those cases previously discussed in several aspects. The most overt of these differences is that these women killed in partnership with their male lovers. The most important is that these female killers were subject to extreme vilification and denials of agency on the part of mainstream legal and media discourses and to profound silence on that of feminist legal and media discourses. They offer the least possibility for recuperation in any of these discourses, as cases such as theirs exceed the bounds of ‘common’ villainy.1
