In movies and books, the poor, defenseless old woman is an oft-used plot device used to represent another character as evil. This transformation is accomplished via the act of murder, where said character slays the PDOW for no good reason.

The reason this works so well is that, generally speaking, people think murder is wrong. Expanding upon that, a PDOW is a great victim because (a) she has in no way provoked her slaughter and (b) we instantly sympathize with her plight; we are saddened that all her hopes and dreams vanish in the blink of an eye.

In meatspace, the killing of a PDOW will quite likely give people the same, negative opinion of you.