‘Serial killer’ stopped counting at 22 victims

A woman arrested in Pennsylvania for murder claims she has killed more than 20 people in several US states.

Miranda Barbour, 19, told the Daily Item in Sunbury, Pennsylvania, that she fatally stabbed her most recent victim, Troy LaFerrara, 42, in November.

She said she agreed to sex for $100 (€72) with her victim, whom she met online, then killed him with the help of her husband.

“I remember everything,” Barbour said. “It is like watching a movie.”

Barbour and her husband Elytte have been charged with murder and are being held in separate facilities.

She said it was just one of a string of murders she had committed over the years, from Alaska to Texas.

Asked how many deaths she may have been responsible for, she answered that she “stopped counting” at 22 victims, and the number could be much higher.

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.

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”.

Prosecutors say the husband hid under a blanket in the back of the car when his wife picked up LaFerrara near Harrisburg, about 80km south of Sunbury.

Barbour said she would have let LaFerrara go but after telling him she was just 16, he wanted to proceed with the arrangement.

“If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go,” she told the newspaper.

On her signal, her husband of just three weeks strangled LaFerrara while his wife stabbed him about 20 times, police say.