Why Women Fall In Love With Famous Killers

Luigi Mangione may be the suspect of the hour, but his case is far from unique.

Photo by Benjamin Balázs on Unsplash

Luigi Mangione, the suspect in the slaying of UnitedHealthCare CEO Brian Thompson, has become somewhat of an Internet heartthrob — with many sharing photos of a shirtless Mangione or other memes portraying him as a hunk.

On first glance, this seems bizarre. Why do people across the country have the hots for someone who stands accused of cold-blooded murder? We can go to ideological explanations, if we want. Some progressives are resentful of the wealthy and powerful and feel a sort of satisfaction in what Mangione did. But why would they find themselves attracted to him?

To understand that, we might have to go deeper than an ideological explanation.

I checked out journalist Sheila Isenberg’s book Women Who Love Women Who Kill: 35 True Stories of Prison Passion (which is now available in its second edition at Amazon and Barnes and Noble) to find out.

Isenberg interviewed dozens of women who found themselves in love with murderers and other people behind bars. The first edition of the book, published in 1990, was reported before the Internet era. The second edition, which was more recently released, takes into account the impact of technology on the creation of murderer fandoms.

She wrote the book because she had the same question as the rest of us: Why in the world would someone fall in love with a killer?

Serial killers have even developed fandoms that function not too differently from those of other celebrities. But as the phenomenon of serial killing has declined, new forms of killers have filled their niche.

“We used to have serial killers, now we have mass murderers,” Isenberg told me in an interview.

Reflecting on Mangione’s case, Isenberg predicted that like many famous prisoners he will develop a specific love interest behind bars.

“A year from now, one woman will be singled out from the crowd and she will be his woman — girlfriend, whatever you want to call her,” she said.

If that happens, the woman will then gain the same fame that Mangione has.

“So then the question is why does she want to be notorious? Well, you can just change that to, why does she want to be famous? Why does she want to be well-known,” she explained.

Isenberg’s theory, after interviewing dozens of women who fell in love with notorious killers, is that the women saw these killers’ fame as a way to develop fame of their own.

I asked her why women might be attracted to famous killers rather than any other celebrity.

“If you write a letter to Luigi, or send him an e-mail, if you get on a prison pen pal website, he might answer you. But if you write a letter to Brad Pitt or Taylor Swift or somebody, they’re not going to answer you,” she explained.

But was it really all about notoriety? Many people wouldn’t want to be associated with someone who’s committed a grave crime, whether it makes them famous or not.

When I drilled down further with Isenberg, she said that she had a feminist explanation for the phenomena.

“Men in prison represent safety to these women. Because basically all of the women [she had interviewed] had been damaged and hurt in their past lives by men- — in relationships with abusive men or they’ve been sexually abused by their fathers, their uncles, their grandfathers, their next door neighbors. And even though it’s hard to conceive, a relationship with a man in prison for life is a safe relationship.”

She described these relationships as ones that gave these women autonomy.

“You’re also in control because you’re out, he’s in. You can get in your car and drive away, and he can’t,” she said. “So you really have control for the first time in your life.”

Thumbing through the pages of her book, you could see why Isenberg came away with that conclusion.

One woman, who she refers to as Ann, fell in love with a man referred to as Manuel. Manuel was locked up in the notorious Angola maximum security prison in Louisiana. They met through a popular website called writeaprisoner.com.

Emma lived 8,700 miles away from Angola, so she communicated with Manuel through e-mail. She explained to Isenberg why she felt connected to him:

The way he explained his life, there was a recurring theme throughout that made me feel like I really related to him. We were both abandoned as kids, though I wasn’t abandoned the same way he was. His was physical. With me, I wasn’t understood.

As Isenberg notes, she also had an abusive father and a fiancé who cheated on her. Manuel, on the other hand, gave her an opportunity to be in control.

Another woman who Isenberg profiles, who she calls Vicki, became engaged to a man who was convicted of premeditated murder. Vicki’s father was an alcoholic who was constantly in and out of prison himself.

The message of Isenberg’s book is that it would be all too easy to just write these women off as crazy.

It would be more accurate to see them as hurting.

“Everybody wants to be loved. And everybody wants to fall in love. And nobody really knows why anybody falls in love,” Isenberg reflected.

“When I wrote the first edition, I was shocked to find out about these women. I had no idea. I pretty much thought they were all crazy when I went into the project,” she told me. “I couldn’t understand it. And then when I got into their lives, deeply into each woman’s life, I realized. There’s some theories out there, oh they’re trying to save the men. No, they’re not trying to save the men,. They’re trying to save themselves.”