There's a new menace in town: A seven-woman gang is on the prowl. They've already claimed one victim, and there's no telling what these ferocious females will do next. I know this sounds like a trailer for a new movie - you can imagine a booming male voice saying "This summer, terror has a new face. And the face sometimes wears lipstick." - but it's all true.

A headline report on March 8 states that this gang "terrorised" a female executive in the Dayabumi KL car park. They even kept giggling while pushing the woman from one to the other. The robbers pulled her into a nearby women's room before relieving her of some valuables and threatening her.

These deviant femmes have yet to be caught. Dang Wangi OCPD ACP Mohamed Bakri Zinin said, "They are daring and some of them seemed to be high on something. So they can be dangerous if provoked." He claimed this is the first reported Malaysian case involving an all-woman gang.

The gang had used a knife to threaten the executive but no one got hurt. I don't doubt that the experience was an extremely traumatic one for the victim, but as far as crimes go, there are worse ones committed everyday, and some of them not even by Rahim Noor. Why are those other criminals not dubbed "daring" and "dangerous"?

It must be because the perpetrators are women. If the gender roles were reversed, the news article would not be splashed all over the front page of The Malay Mail . I may sound like I'm complaining, but I'm not. Female criminals have always inspired a freakish fascination among the sort of people who live purely for cheap thrills, and you will be shocked to learn that I am a member of this tribe.

The Bad Girl archetype has always been one of my favourite in world literature. I spent a good-sized chunk of my formative years picking my jaw off the floor after reading about their exploits.

One of the earliest Bad Girls in world literature is Medea, immortalised in the play by Euripedes almost 500 years before the birth of Christ. (You can read the full translated text here)

This action-packed Greek tragedy tells the story of how Medea can't accept the fact that her husband Jason dumped her for another woman, especially since Medea had gone to so much trouble (including murdering her brother) to prove her love for him. Don't you just hate it whenever that happens?

The opening monologue has her nurse fretting that some harm will come to Medea's children as a result of their mother's foul mood. I won't spoil it for you, but suffice to say that by the time you finish the play, you will know that Medea is not the sort of person you would ever want to encounter on a clean, well-lit street. She makes Mona Fandey look like the Mona Lisa.

Medea is a fictional character, but there was a real-life Hungarian countess, Erzbeth Bathory (1560-1614) who never won any humanitarian awards either. She one day slapped a maid so hard that blood spurted onto her hand. She was intrigued to find that the skin that came into contact with the blood then seemed so much more youthful and lovely.

The countess came up with the bright idea of slaughtering hundreds of young girls, bleeding them dry and then bathing in their blood. This went on for years. Never underestimate the harshness of life before the advent of modern cosmetics. She was only found out when, one frosty day, wolves failed to come out to devour the discarded corpses in her backyard. Her story undoubtedly helped shape the vampire myth in Gothic literature.

By the time the 19th century came around Bad Girls took the form of Sad Girls, these tragic adulteresses who either had to chuck themselves under a train (Anna Karenina) or gulp down poison (Emma Bovary) to end all the torment. This particular model was presented more as victim than vampire, and is still good currency today: witness all those wailing Diana tributes.

It's interesting that the two competing strains of the Bad Girl archetype (the scary and the pitiful) are still with us. Are they really two different beings or flip-sides of the same coin? I ask; I do not know.

But just to be on the safe side, be wary of any giggle girls you might encounter; they could conceivably not just be recounting jokes from the new Adam Sandler video. If you want to ignore this public warning, go ahead. Just don't come running to me when you're splashed all over the tabloids, or someone's backyard.