After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in

The hunt at the moment in the United States for more than 45 suspected victims of the latest serial killer, Robert Charles Browne, is a case in point.

By comparison, female serial killers and what motivates them remain a mystery. Now a new psychological study of a female serial killer sheds new light on the issue.

The study, just published in the international journal Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health by a team of British and Swiss psychiatrists, is on a 33-year-old European woman identified only as “PK”. She killed two random victims and came close to killing a third.

Unlike most female serial killers, such as “black widows” who kill husbands or partners for their money, PK did not know her victims. They were all other women and chosen at random.

She first killed in 1991, after stalking women in a town near where she lived. After threatening two women with a stiletto knife, she followed a third woman returning to her car and stabbed her to death.

In 1992 she was arrested for setting fire to a shopping centre and spent four years in and out of detention, receiving psychiatric treatment for her arson (the first killing had remained unsolved).

After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in a

The study, just published in the international journal Criminal Behaviour and Mental Health by a team of British and Swiss psychiatrists, is on a 33-year-old European woman identified only as “PK”. She killed two random victims and came close to killing a third.

Unlike most female serial killers, such as “black widows” who kill husbands or partners for their money, PK did not know her victims. They were all other women and chosen at random.

She first killed in 1991, after stalking women in a town near where she lived. After threatening two women with a stiletto knife, she followed a third woman returning to her car and stabbed her to death.

In 1992 she was arrested for setting fire to a shopping centre and spent four years in and out of detention, receiving psychiatric treatment for her arson (the first killing had remained unsolved).

After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in

Unlike most female serial killers, such as “black widows” who kill husbands or partners for their money, PK did not know her victims. They were all other women and chosen at random.

She first killed in 1991, after stalking women in a town near where she lived. After threatening two women with a stiletto knife, she followed a third woman returning to her car and stabbed her to death.

In 1992 she was arrested for setting fire to a shopping centre and spent four years in and out of detention, receiving psychiatric treatment for her arson (the first killing had remained unsolved).

After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in

In 1992 she was arrested for setting fire to a shopping centre and spent four years in and out of detention, receiving psychiatric treatment for her arson (the first killing had remained unsolved).

After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in

After her release she killed again in 1997. Her victim was a 61-year-old woman in a park. PK stabbed her about 30 times and hit her with a large rock.

In 1998 she went to a bookshop and slashed the throat of the elderly store owner. Against expectations the victim lived.

PK was not a suspect in any of the attacks. After the third attack PK admitted to her therapist that she wanted to commit arson again and was committed to a mental hospital. It was there, when she began talking about stalking and killing women, that she became a suspect. She eventually confessed to all three attacks.

PK had a relatively normal upbringing. Unlike many serial killers, she did not kill animals as a child, but did admit to torturing insects. She was not abused by a parents, although said she hated them for being weak and abusing drugs. At school she was bullied.

She was a loner, enjoying lone bicycle rides, and at one point wanted to be a police officer. She had a relationship with a police officer 20 years her senior, but later developed a hatred of men in uniforms.

At one point she had a relationship with a man who was fascinated by Nazis and the Taliban. The man introduced her to the use of weapons and the martial art of Aikido. She had no history of alcohol or illicit drug misuse.

“In relation to the killings, she said she saw women as easy victims, and felt ‘excited’, ‘like a savage in face of his hunting prey’ when she saw them,” the study says. “Concerning the attempted murder, she expressed surprise and disappointment that the victim had survived, since she, PK, was ‘a perfectio