Black Widows

From Yoni Bashan of the Daily Telegraph:

They're known as the "black widows" - the women behind bars for some of the State's most unspeakable killings.

The victims were their husbands or their partners and, in a surprising number of cases, the bodies were mutilated after death.

According to the most recent inmate census undertaken by the NSW Department of Corrective Services, 38 women in prisons around the State are serving sentences for murder.

NSW Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research figures, compiled for The Sunday Telegraph, suggest that as many as one third of those women were responsible for killing their husbands, boyfriends or former partners.

Robyn Cotterell-Jones, executive director of victim support group Vocal, said all human beings regardless of gender were capable of carrying out extreme violence.

"Human beings in general are capable of violence - including some women," she said.