Little Murderesses: In Their Own Words

These 28 cases dating from 1867 to 2014 are organized by age of perpetrator, staring from the youngest.

This research is intended to help students and scholars in the process of recovering from indoctrination in political correctness and its cult mythology, its falsified historical narratives and its anti-scientific “theories” (“social justice,” “critical theory,” “critical pedagogy,” “Cultural Marxism,” etc.). In particular it will help shed light on the fallacies found in the bogus claims of “social justice” charlatans who picture themselves of social engineering aristocrats ready to rule over the masses such as Carol Gilligan, William S. Pollack, and Michael Kimmel and Gloria Watkins (“bell hooks”).

The post “Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder – The Forgotten Lizzie Bordens” is a checklist including more than 125 cases of little murderesses, with links to many which are posted online. It should be noted that many of the most important cases of little murderesses, including serial killer girls such as Mary Maher (age 11, 1906, Dunkitt, County Kilkenny, Ireland) do not provide quotations and thus are not included in the present “in their own words” collection.

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► 4 YEARS OLD

• 1885 – Lizzie Lewis – Port Jefferson (Long Island), New York, USA; age 4.

Four-year-old Lizzie had told her mama before that she hated her six-month-old baby sister and that she thought the infant “should be cut up.” One day, when the adults were not around, Lizzie said to her six-year old brother Henry, in her toddle lisp: “Lets till baby, will we?” [sic]. The toddler picked up her papa’s fish-gutting knife and, laughing, clucked to little Henry: “Watch me.” The terror-stricken boy warned his sister, “Don’t hurt her, Lizzie, or she’ll cry.” Then Lizzie plunged the knife into her infant sister’s eye. Henry ran out to get help. Lizzie continued to torture the child, slashing up its face. When the horrified mother arrived the four-year old, proud of her handiwork, announced, “Oh, mamma, dust see baby, all tut up.” [sic]

►6 YEARS OLD

• 1892 – Bottoms Girl – Atoka, Kentucky, USA; age 6.

“I've killed the baby, come and get it.” This is what the six-year old daughter had to say for herself after beating her baby sibling’s brains out with a club. It was ten days earlier that she had first attacked the child, “when she mashed the poor little innocent’s finger and toe-nails off with a hatchet.” Following the crime the diminutive killer expressed no regret for her act, but rather was quite open about her homicidal obsession, announcing that she “always intended to kill the baby, and would have done so long ago had she not been watched so closely that she could not.” The witnesses, a fifteen-year-old girl, who discovered the horrible carnage described the girl’s demeanor immediately following the murder as gleeful.

►7 YEARS OLD

• 1925 – Alsa Thompson – Los Angeles, California, USA; age 7. She claimed to have murdered her twin baby sisters (with ground glass) and a caretaker (with poison), later retracting these claims. The caretaker’s remains had been cremated and the twin’s bodies were not disinterred. Symptoms preceding the deaths were consistent with the supposed murder method as well as with the death certificate presumptions noted as probable cause of death. Alsa confessed also to several poisonings and other attacks that were corroborated by witnesses.

Long text of Alsa Thompson’s February 4, 1925 confession:

“I poisoned my baby sisters by feeding them ground glass in some breakfast food. They died in a few days after I gave them in the glass. I put ant paste in food that was to be given Miss Nettie Steele of 276 South Avenue Fifty-two because I wanted to see her die. She lived about two weeks. I put acid in the food at the Platts home because I wanted to kill them. I don’t know I did it. I might do it again, some time.”

This is what the little child told the tree questioning men at the psychopathic ward and then she repeated her story later to Chief Dept. Dist.-Atty. Buron Fitts yesterday afternoon. She has told the same story since her arrest by Policewoman Feeley from the Hollywood Police Station two days ago.

Going to the details of the various poisonings which she declares she planned, Alsa told Judge Gates and the doctors that she was unable to state when she first thought of poisoning her little twin sisters, 2 years of age.

“I was while papa was living with mama and we were all in Canada,” Alsa said. “I had two sisters then and they were 2 years old. They were twins. One was named Mildred and the other Muriel. They were pretty little girls and I used to play with them.

“One morning before breakfast I took a little glass jar from the kitchen and smashed it upon the sidewalk in the front of the house. I picked up the little pieces and put them in some corn flakes and milk that mama had fixed for the twins. I watched them eat it and then went out to play.”

“Why didn’t you stay in the house,” asked Judge Gates.

“Well, you see I was afraid that mother find the glass and scold me about it.”

“My sisters died a few days after they were sick, but I could hear them crying. They had a lot of doctors around the house. When they died I cried, too, and everybody else cried. I felt sorry after they were dead.”

“If you felt sorry after your little sisters were dead why did you let them eat the glass?” This question was put by one of the doctors.

“I was sorry after they were dead, but I wasn’t sorry while they were sick. I used to hear them crying and I wasn’t sorry then.

“After we came to Los Angeles I went to live with Mrs. Steele. I didn’t like her daughter because the little next door kept stealing my toys and then Mrs. Steele would scold me. I made up my mind to poison her and so put some ant paste in her food. She got pretty sick and after a while she died. It was after that that they moved me over to Mrs. Platt’s house on on McCadden Place.

“Mrs. Platt has a little girl, Lorraine, and my little Maxine went over there with me. A friend of Mrs. Platts put a radio in the house and he told me never to touch the battery because it was poison. My mother told me once never to play with glass and never to put it in my mouth because if I swallowed any of it I would die. Mrs. Steele told me not to play with the ant paste, because it was poison. That’s how I knew that if I made my sisters eat the glass they would die and that’s why, I put the ant paste in Mrs. Steele’s food.

“Well, I got up late one night and dipped some of the acid out of the battery with a little toy spoon. I put the poison in the can and the next day put some of it in their coffee. I didn’t drink any of the coffee, but everybody else did and they all got sick. I left some of it in the can and the next day put some of it in the coffee. I didn’t drink any of the coffee, but everybody else did and they all got sick. I left some of it in the can and hid it and after a while I fed some of it to Maxine with a spoon. She got pretty sick.

“A couple of nights after the first time I took the acid out of the battery, I got some more and put it on the lamb chops. Everybody got sick again but me, because I didn’t take any of the stuff. After a while I thought that I would cut my little sister’s wrists with a butcher-knife that Mrs. Platts had sharpened, but after I got Maxine into the bathroom and had taken the knife from the drawer, I heard Mrs. Platts coming, so I ran away.

“After I had used the acid for a while I thought of the ant paste and took some of that form a kitchen shelf and spread it around on the food. Everybody got sick again and called a doctor. At last, Mrs. Platts asked me about it, and I told her and then they had me arrested.”

Alsa told her story without much prompting from the judge or the doctors. A few questions by Judge Gates regarding each attempt to poison some one was enough to start the child telling the details of her various plans. She seemed to be clear in all of her details of her various plans. She seemed to be clear in all of her details and even remembered how the victims acted.

“I guess I liked to see them suffer.”

This was about the only explanation for her actions yesterday.

The remarkable part of the child’s grewsome account was the care which she told of taking to hide her operations and then naïve statement that she told Mrs. Platts “because she asked me about it.

Pressed for a reason for her actions Alsa could give none for the poisoning of her twin sisters except that she “liked to see them suffer.” Miss Steele died, she stated, because she “was cross with me.” The attempted poisoning of the Platts family was not explained. “Mrs. Platts was always good to me,” the child said.

[Excerpted from: “Alsa Calm In Confession – Shows No Fear or Remorse in Monstrous Tale of Death Plot Against Twin Sisters,” The Los Angeles Times (Ca.), Feb. 5, 1925, p. 5]

►8 YEARS OLD

• 1867 – Martin Girl – Cassville, Barry County, South Carolina, USA; age 8.

She said she killed her brother “because he pulled her flowers and declared “if the other children pulled any more of them, she would shoot them too.”

►9 YEARS OLD

• 1884 – Annie Bebles – Tarheel, North Carolina – age 9.

“A 9-year-old girl named Annie Bebies murdered her 5-year-old sister at Tarheel, in Bladen County, to-night. After beating her victim to death with a stick, the young murderer threw the body into a creek near the scene of the crime. The reason for committing the fiendish act was that the murdered girl ate the food given to her. The girl said she had to work for her living and her sister ought to do the same.”

►11 YEARS OLD

• 1887 – Axey Cherry – Allendale, South Carolina – age 11.

11-year old Azey Cherry was employed by the Williams family of Barnwell, South Carolina, to help with house work, but “poked around the house and attended to her duties in so negligent a manner that she had to be constantly scolded. After a scolding one day she was overheard muttering to herself that she was not going to bother with that baby much more. A few days after this, concentrated lye was used in scouring the floor, and when Mrs. Williams left the room for a few minutes she told Axey that the lye was poisonous and that she must not touch it. On her return, Mrs. Williams was horrified to find her baby’s mouth full of concentrated lye. Axey ran out of the house saying as she left:

‘I don’t reckon I’ll have to nurse that baby much longer now.’”

The baby died.

• 1968 – Mary Bell – Scotswood, England; age 11.

Mary Bell committed two strangling murders, seriously injured another chiold by pushing him off an elevation and was interrupted multiple times in the midst of strangling other children.

“I like hurting people.”

“Brian Howe had no mother, so he won’t be missed.”

“If I was a judge and I had an eleven-year-old who’d done this, I’d give her eighteen months. Murder isn’t that bad, we all die sometime anyway.”

Norma, Mary's 13-year-old best friend, who took part in the second murder, stated that Mary told her: “I squeezed his neck and pushed up his lungs that’s how you kill them. Keep your nose dry and don’t tell anybody.”

“Oh, I know he’s dead, I wanted to see him in his coffin,” Mary said to the mother of the child she murdered.

►12 YEARS OLD

 • 1886 – “Marie Schneider” – Berlin, Germany – age 12; robbed 4-year-old girl of earrings and threw her out of a fourth story window, killing her. (Jul. 9)

EXCERPT FROM CONFESSION: “I left little Margarete on the stairs, and there I found her again. From the yard I saw that the second-floor window was half open. I went with her up the stairs to the second floor to take away the ear-rings, and then to throw her out of the window. I wanted to kill her, because I was afraid that she would betray me. She could not talk very well, but she could point to me; and if it came out, my mother would have beaten me. I went with her to the window, opened it wide, and set her on the ledge. Then I heard some one coming down. I quickly put the child on the ground and shut the window. The man went by without noticing us. Then I opened the window and put the child on the ledge, with her feet hanging out, and her face turned away from me. I did that because I did not want to look in her face, and because I could push her easier. I pulled the ear-rings out. Grete began to cry because I hurt her. When I threatened to throw her out of the window she became quiet. I took the ear-rings and put them in my pocket. Then I gave the child a shove, and heard her strike the lamp and then the pavement. Then I quickly ran downstairs to go on the errand my mother had sent me. I knew that I should kill the child. I did not reflect that little Grete’s parents would be sorry. It did not hurt me; I was not sorry; I was not sorry all the time I was in prison; I am not sorry now.”

• 1956 – Patricia Corcoran – Oakland, California – age 12; murdered aunt with an axe and butcher knife. (Oct. 4)

The girl, Patricia Corcoran, told police she also intended to kill her uncle but added:

“When I saw him I just couldn’t do it.”

In confessing the murder of her aunt, Mrs. Lavern Bruce, 44, Patricia said:

“I murdered her. I must be crazy.”

[“12-Year-Old Tells Police How She Killed Aunt,” Corsicana Daily Sun (Tx.), Oct. 5, 1956, p. 1] 

• 1992 – Sharon Carr – Camberley, Surrey, England – age 12.

“If only I could kill you again, I promise I’d make you suffer more this time. . . . Your terrified screams turn me on.” (Jun. 7)

• 2006 – Jasmine Richardson – Medicine Hat, Alberta, Canada – age 12; with boyfriend, stabbed to death parents and brother (8). (Apr. 23)

“I have this plan. It begins with me killing them and ends with me living with you.”

“[I]t was Richardson, who, after hearing her eight year old brother plead, “I’m scared. I’m too young to die,” plunged a knife into his chest. The boyfriend followed that by cutting the boy’s throat. The couple murdered her parents in another room of the house. [Paul Elam, “MurderessJasmine Richardson attends Mount Royal University,” A Voice for Men, Sep. 14, 2011]

• 2014 – Morgan Geyser & Anissa Weir Waukesha,Wisconsin – each aged 12 – stabbed girl (12) 19 times with a 5 inch blade, “1 millimeter from certain death,” survived; “The Slender Man Stabbing.” (May 31)

Morgan Geyser (12): “People that trust you are very gullible.” “It was weird that I didn’t feel remorse.”

Anissa Weir (12): “The bad part of me wanted her to die; the good part of me wanted her to live.”

►13 YEARS OLD

• 1881 – Margaret Messenger – Cumberland, England – age 13 at time of first murder, 14 when arrested.

14-year-old Margaret Messenger laid an infant face downward in a boggy place, placed a stone upon its head, and so suffocated it.  She even confessed later on that she had herself killed the baby alone and unaided. At the time of committing the crime she was only 13, and had but just attained her 14th year when brought to trial. She also confessed that she had murdered another child of the same family – the little boy who was drowned in the well a short time before – having purposely thrown him in, The idea occurred to her, to quote her own words, as she was chopping sticks in the yard and she took him to the well and drowned him. [edited from linked source]

“The idea occurred to her,” to quote her own words, “as she was chopping sticks in the yard and she took him to the well and drowned him.”

• 1903 – Nellie Kinsley – Corning, New York, USA; age 13.

Nellie was adopted by the Kinsleys of Corning, New York at the age of two. When she was thirteen the child cooked up a scheme to get rich quick. But she had a big mouth and got caught.

“Do you know how to get money and houses and everything you want?” she asked her playmates while her parents were ill. “When your father and mother are dead all they own will belong to you. I found that out a little while ago, and I took some of the rat poison papa got to kill the rats with and put it in the supper I cooked. I did not eat the supper, but papa and mamma did and then they got sick, if they die I will have money.”

Both victims survived the murder attempt, but the step-mother was injured by the poisoning so badly that she was thought to have been probably crippled for life.

• 1905 – Josephine Carr – Toronto, Canada – age 13.

Josephine Carr was in the habit of stealing baby carriages. One day she ran off with one containing a baby. Not sure what to do about it she deciding that murdering the infant would solve everything. She got caught. She told one story about throwing the child off a bridge.

“Then I got frightened,” she said. “I was afraid papa would be mad, so I threw it over the embankment.”

But the autopsy showed that it was probable than Nellie took the child and pushed its face into the mud drowning it in shallow water.

• 1919 – Frances Sulinski – Brooklyn, New York, New York, USA; 13.

“I waited my chance. Thursday afternoon Mrs Kramer went out into the yard to fix some clothes. A moment before she had been in the kitchen, where the nurse and I were, and had told us she was going to the market with some eggs. I thought she had gone. I went upstairs. The child. Solomon – oh, yes; I loved him – was asleep. I waked him up. I took down the bottle of lysol. I said to the little fellow. “Here! Take some cough medicine.’ Then I poured it in his mouth. When he screamed I became frightened am! knew I had done wrong. I ran out of the room. But as I ran out I met Mrs. Kramer who had heard the child cry. She ran in and returned a moment later declaring the child had been poisoned. It was my idea that it would appear that the boy got the poison by mistake Then the nurse would have been blamed. When I saw that this might not work I poured some of the lysol in the teapot. You know they have a habit in thjat house of making tea and letting it stand and then adding hot water to the strong tea.”

►14 YEARS OLD

• 1870 – Catharine Hummel – Douglass Township, Pennsylvania – age 14.

After murdering baby Frances, only a few months old, Catherine Hummell, the nurse girl charged wity caring for the infant, ran out of the house to where her victims’ parents were working and announced that “Francis has the knife in his hand, he cut himself and will die.”

What was sone to the baby: “Dr. Rhoads made a post mortem examination of the body and found the throat cut from ear to ear. The wind pipe was divided completely, the right carotid artery and jugular veins were also cut, and death must have occurred almost immediately from hemorrhage. The knife used was a common butcher knife with a thick blade and extremely dull, so that the girl must have used considerable force in accomplishing the monstrous crime.”

• 1892 – Ella Holdridge – Tonawanda, New York, USA; age 14.

Ella Holdrige observed, concerning a poackage of rat poison she was considering put to use that: “If it killed rats and mice it would kill children.” Ella seems to have succeeded in only one of the several murders she attempted. Her motive was a bit unusual. For, you see, little Ella got her kicks from the pomp and drama of funerals. She was, one might say, addicted to them.

“The frightful death of Louisa Stormer, and the severe illness of five or six other children of Tonawanda, has brought to light the fact that 14-year-old Ella Holdridge is a murderess. Her frightful crime is the result of a morbid desire to see death scenes enacted. She was attended every funeral that has occurred in the neighborhood for several years past. Funerals have been infrequent hereabouts lately. Ella, it seems, took upon herself the duty of supplying subjects. She administered rat poison to several pupils of Father Baker’s institution at Limestone Hill. They suffered frightfully while she stood by and coolly awaited the coming of death. The helpless little ones ran shrieking from her presence. Medical aid was summoned and her lives were saved.”

Of Louisa Stormer, the girl she did succeed in murdering with rat poison, Ella Holdridge said, “made the prettiest corpse ever put under New York soil.” “Yes, she’s dead. Poor Louisa! But she looked awful pretty, and her funeral was awful nice.”

• 1894 – “Novgorod Teenage Serial Killer Nurse” – Novgorod, Russia; age 14.

She confessed to murdering 17 babies “because they bothered her, and she disliked the trouble of attending to them.”

A newspaper report: “A terrible confession has been made by a 14-year-old nurse girl at Novgorod, in Russia, one revealing quite a phenomenal and cold-blooded development of a passion to murder on the part of a mere child. The girl was arrested on suspicion of having caused the death of a baby she was nursing, and confessed to the police that she had killed seventeen children, “because they bothered her, and she disliked the trouble of attending to them.” The murders were carried out with great cunning, the girl not exciting the least suspicion, until the death occurred for which she was arrested, although her path from house to house was marked by the hand of death, and infant after infant placed in her charged sickened and died.”

• 1906 – Jennie Ruth Burch – Carmel, New York – age 14; nurse girl; poisoned 3-y-o boy, killing him. (Sep. 21)

Jennie Ruth Burch, 14-year-old,  poisoned 3-year-old Wilbur Winship, killing him.

Excerpt from Jennie’s confession:

Then I carried out my plan. I poured some strychnine from the bottle upon the cotton. The bottle I threw on the ground, covering it with some grass and dead leaves. With the cotton in my hand I started for the house. On the way there Wilbur ran out to meet me. He pointed to the big red peach in my hand, and walked with me to the house, trying with his little hand to pry the peach out of my strong one. We went into the house I found Mrs. Winship sitting at a table, reading. She looked at me coldly and dropped her eyes upon her book without a word.

“Wilbur wants some of the peach. May I give him some of it?” I asked

“Yes,” she said, “if it is ripe.”

My chance had come. Wilbur followed me to the table, and I went and sat down directly opposite his mother peeled the peach in plain sight of Mrs Winship. She didn’t notice us. I stopped for a minute after I had peeled the peach and looked at her. I quickly lifted up the tablecloth. The cotton was damp and dark with the iodine. I was afraid Mrs. Winship should smell it, but she bent her head over her book. Holding the tablecloth up a little, so that Mrs Winship could not see if she turned round suddenly, I rubbed the iodine and strychnine sprinkled cotton on the peach. I handed Wilbur a piece of it and ate the rest myself.

I watched him eat every morsel of it. Then I put him into his little rocking chair and left the room. Going to the kitchen stove I threw the cotton into it and watched it out. I hurried out on the porch and threw the peach pit into the high grass in the yard.

Almost as soon as I went back the baby was then sick. He twisted his poor little body and cried as though he was in terrible pain. I almost cried, too, but at that Winship telephoned for the doctor and put us both to bed. I lay there and waited and waited. I wanted to hear that the baby had gone. In a little while I heard his screams and I twisted the bedclothes and cried because he was in agony. The screams stopped, and the doctor, coming to my door, said. “Wilber is dead.”

►15 YEARS OLD

• 1874 – Henrietta Weibel – New York, N. Y., USA – age 15 (13?) at time of apprehension. (1 death & 1 attempt)

Fifteen-year-old Henrietta Weibel murdered one baby by burning it to death and attempted to repeat the scenario with another infant victim. She stated she had a mania for setting fires and burning babies.

An interview with a newspaper reporter resulted in the following revelations:

“Henrietta,” queried the writer, “is it true that you tried to burn a baby at West Farms?”

“Yes, sir,” was the prompt and apparently ingenious reply.

“What could have prompted you to attempt such a wicked deed?”

“I don’t know, sir; something told me to do it.”

“Would you not have been sorry had you succeeded in killing the child?”

“No, sir, I don’t know that I would.”

“Then you don’t seem to like babies?”

“No, sir.”

“Was that the first time you ever tried to burn a child?”

“No, sir. When I was living with Mrs. Kinney, at Tarrytown, I had a mind to set fire to the baby, but I didn’t do it.”

• 1906 – Lillian B. Thornman – York, Pennsylvania, USA; age 15.

A news report: “Lillian B. Thorman, a thirteen-year-old girl, today fatally burned the three-year-old child of Robert Dorsey of this city.

“The girl, who was employed to do light work around the house literally fried the child was writhing and screaming in its agony an aunt entered the room and rescued it, but the child had been roasted from head to foot and cannot live.

“The servant girl in jail tonight confessed that she had fatally burned three other children in a similar manner, giving their parents the impression that they had fallen on the stove accidentally while climbing to reach something.

“With a mania for burning children when they are bad, because, as she says, “I am a devil and will burn them,” Lillian Thornman, a 13-year-old colored girl, knocked upon a red hot stove a two-year-old daughter of Robert Dorsey, also colored, and for several seconds calmly watched her struggle to get off the stove and away from the boiler of hot water, which was poured over her body as she alighted on the stove. Another girl then ran in from the yard and saved the child from further injury. This was the Thornman girl’s third victim. A year ago she set Esther Louise Harris, aged three years, on a red hot stove and hold her fast until she made the statement that she was a devil.”

With a mania for burning children when they are bad, because, as she says, “I am a devil and will burn them.” “I did it because I have the devil in me.”

• 1954 – Juliet Marion Hulme &Pauline Yvonne Parker – Christschurch, New Zealand; ages 15, 16.

Diary entries:

Entry 20/6 was: — “Afterward we discussed our plans for murdering mother and made them clear, but peculiarly enough I have no qualms of conscience — or is it peculiar.”

The last entry, dated 21/6 was: — “Deborah rang and we discussed a brick in a stocking, instead of a sandbag. Mother has fallen in with the plans beautifully. Feel quite keyed up.”

Entry 22/6 (date of alleged murder) was: — “I felt very excited last night and sort of nightbeforeChristmassy, but I did not have pleasant dreams.”

• 2009 – Alyssa Bustamante – Cole County, Missouri – age 15; murdered neighbor girl (9), by stabbing, slashing throat and wrists and strangling. (Oct. 21)

‘I just f***ing killed someone. I strangled them and slit their throat and stabbed them now they’re dead. I don’t know how to feel atm [at the moment]. It was ahmazing. As soon as you get over the "ohmygawd I can’t do this" feeling, it’s pretty enjoyable. I’m kinda nervous and shaky though right now. Kay, I gotta go to church now...lol.’

• 2014 – “Sasebo Dissection Girl” – Sasebo, Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan – age 15; murdered and dismembered girl classmate (Jul. 26)

“I wanted to kill someone. I bought tools by myself.”

“I told her [the victim] that I wanted to see her and asked her to come. I came home with her so I could kill her.”

• 2014 – Lisa Borch – Kvissel, Denmark – age 15; inspired by Islamist terrorism, she stabbed mother 20 times with kitchen knife, killing her (Oct. 8)

“I heard my mother scream and I looked out the window and saw a white man running away. Please come here, there is blood everywhere.” (the murderess’s report to the police).

►16 YEARS OLD

• 1890 – Mary Metzdorf – Baltimore, Maryland, USA; age 16.

“Mary Metzdorf confessed this morning to having poisoned Miss Louise Broadwaters, her little brother James, and her mother, Catharine. She said she put arsenic in the coffee ‘just for fun.’ Though not quite 17 years old, she bears herself like a hardened criminal. Miss Broadwaters died almost immediately after drinking the coffee, and James, her 6-year-old brother, expired last night. Mrs. Broadwaters, the third victim, is still in a critical condition. It is now probable that she will also died.”

►17 YEARS OLD

• 1867 – Elizabeth Wheeldon – Shirland Delves, near Alfreton, Derby, England – age 17.

Elizabeth Wheeldon poisoned two children of her at employer on different occasions so that she would have less work to do.

The Coroner then reviewed the evidence at some length, remarking that there was no doubt the servant girl knew where the poison was kept, and they would have to consider her conduct throughout both illnesses, and also the fact that when she was asked if she was not sorry the children were dead, she said “No; I shall have less work to do.”

• 1928 – Erna Janoschek – Oakland, California, USA; age 17.

“I strangled the baby because I felt her mother wasn’t supporting me in managing her other child, and because I felt they were working me too hard — At this point the girl interrupted her explanation to laugh. “I have to laugh when the impulse comes over me,” she said. “When things like this happen I have to laugh.” 

►18 YEARS OLD

• 1911 – Clementine Barnabet (Bernebet) – Lafayette, Louisiana, USA; age 18.

Clementine was an 18-year-old priestess in a voodoo-derived human sacrifice cult. She lad her group on a months long campaign of axe-murders. With her own hands she murdered seventeen persons, but she oversaw many more gruesome murders in which the victims were ritually dismembered. Her cult targeted families in their homes, never individuals.

In court she boasted: “I killed them all, men, women and babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.”

“We weren’t afraid of being arrested because I carried a ‘voodoo,’ which protected us from all punishment.”

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