WASHINGTON - A woman arrested in Pennsylvania for murder claims she has killed more than 20 people in several US states, a newspaper that interviewed her reported on Sunday.
Nineteen-year-old Miranda Barbour told the Daily Item newspaper in Sunbury, Pennsylvania that she fatally stabbed her most recent victim, a 42-year old man, in November.
She said she agreed to sex for $100 with her victim, whom she met through an ad on Craigslist, then killed him with the help of her husband. “I remember everything,” Barbour told the newspaper. “It is like watching a movie.” Barbour and her husband, Elytte Barbour, have been charged with the man’s murder and are being held in separate detention facilities.
But she said it was just the most recent of a string of murders she had committed over the years, from Alaska to Texas.
Asked by the newspaper how many slayings she might have been responsible for, she answered that she “stopped counting” at 22 victims, and that the number could be much higher. The young woman’s statement reportedly have sent law enforcement officials across the United States scrambling to review unsolved murders in their states for potential links.
Barbour said she was introduced to murder at 13, after suffering sexual abuse as a child, by a man who had been a member of a Satanic cult in Alaska. “I would lure these people in,” she said. “I studied them. I learned them and even became their friend. I did this to people who did bad things and didn’t deserve to be here anymore.”
The police chief of Sunbury, Steve Mazzeo said authorities are aware of her claims and are “working with law enforcement from various cities and towns.”