Killer for Hire: Female Assassins in Panama.

A 20-year-old woman was arrested by the National Police in the Los Andes sector of Amelia Denis de Icaza. There was an arrest warrant out for her issued by the Homicide and Femicide Prosecutor’s Office of San Miguelito. She was accused of a crime that occurred on February 10, 2026: the murder of 28-year-old taxi driver Gabriel Peña, in broad daylight, near the San Miguelito Municipality. Witnesses saw a woman get out of the vehicle and flee. 

The case, on its own, is a news story. But when cross-referenced with statistics from the National Integrated Criminal Statistics System (SIEC), it takes on another dimension. Panama registered 486 intentional homicides up to October 25, 2026.

San Miguelito accounts for 89 cases, making it one of the hardest-hit districts in the country. And within this landscape of violence, women are not always the victims. Sometimes, they are the perpetrators. Traditional criminology has been slow to recognize that women can also kill for hire.

For decades, contract killing was analyzed as an exclusively male phenomenon. Gender studies in Latin America, however, have begun to document a different pattern: many women who enter the world of contract killing
do so not out of a criminal vocation, but for survival or due to coercion. Regional research indicates that a significant number of them report having been victims of physical abuse, sexual abuse, or abandonment before becoming involved in organized crime. 

In Panama, prisons hold approximately 900 women detained for crimes such as homicide, robbery, gang affiliation, aggravated theft, and kidnapping. The figure does not specify how many are incarcerated for contract killings, but it confirms that female participation in violent crimes is not a statistical anomaly. 

The case of the 20-year-old woman in San Miguelito fits the profile that criminology has yet to fully define. It is still unknown whether she acted alone or under orders, whether she was recruited, or whether the crime stemmed from a personal vendetta. What is known is that the Prosecutor’s Office had been searching for her since February, and her arrest in November confirms that the system had tracked her for nine months.