The Trophy-Collecting Female Serial Killer: Axenia Varlan

Serial killers – some of them, at least – are known to collect what criminologists call “trophies,” memorabilia of their victims. Sometimes they snatch a victim’s possession, sometimes their souvenir is a body part, cut from the victim’s corpse.

What about female serial killers?

We now know, due to research undertaken in the past five years, that female serial killers are far more common than the standard criminology literature claims. Yet the new data does reinforce a number of generalized distinctions between the sex-specific behavior of male and female serial killers. Most female serial killers  are at least partially motivated by financial gain. Most kill people they know, the exception being bandits – who seldom operate solo.

Trophy collecting is – despite the fact that it applies only to a small minority of cases – well-known attribute of male serial killers. Famous instances include  Ted Bundy who collected heads; Jerome Brudos, feet; Charles Albright, eyes; and Jeffrey Dahmer, genitals. Other serial killers have collected clothing or other inanimate objects connected to their victims.

From the Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime.

“A trophy is in essence a souvenir. In the context of violent behavior or murder, keeping a part of the victim as a trophy represents power over that individual. When the offender keeps this kind of souvenir, it serves as a way to preserve the memory of the victim and the experience of his or her death. The most common trophies for violent offenders are body parts but also include photographs of the crime scene and jewelry or clothing from the victim. Offenders use the trophies as memorabilia, but also to reenact their fantasies. They often masturbate or use the trophies as props in sexual acts. Their exaggerated fear of rejection is quelled in front of inanimate trophies.”

Until now, not a single female serial killer whose m. o. includes trophy-collecting has been identified. The exception, just found in the 1928 case of Axenia Varlan of Romanian Fundul Moldovei in the Bucovina region.

It was a severed hand found in a farm compost pile by a young maid-servant that began the series of events that led to the arrest of 45-year-old widowed farmwoman, Axenia Varlan. The girl reported her discovery to her mistress, who promptly threatened her and forbade her to repeat her story. After Varlan learned the maid had been talking about her mistress in the village she attacked the girl with a blow to the head with a hoe. But she survived. Another farmhand took her to the hospital where she related the story of the mysterious hand. Investigation followed.

It was found that Axenia Varlan murdered at least nine persons. She murdered family members and farm employees for financial gain, both substantial and trivial in amount.

When police searched her premises human ears and other human remains were found. She confessed to have cut them off the corpses of her victims, to keep them as "memories." Over a period of  four years she murdered and then cut into pieces her four children, her mother, her father, her mother-in-law, her brother-in-law and a sister of the latter. At her trial psychiatrists declared her a classic sadist.

In the indictment prosecutors charged that  “Varlan strangled her four children, aged between one and five years old, burned the bodies, and cut off their toes, ears, noses, and fingers, and kept those body parts in spirit as a keepsake.”

The trial took place in the picturesque little town of Kimpolung in front of the County Council, which had never before seen so many strangers within its walls. The building of the District Tribunal had to be cordoned off by the military. The trial is attended by fifty witnesses and a number of medical and psychiatric experts and covered by forty journalists. Hundreds of peasants poured into the town to enjoy the weird spectacle.

At trial Varan was asked by the judge why she committed the murders. She replied:

“I loved the smell of burnt flesh among the scent of fir trees!”

Axenia Varlan was examined by psychiatrists and found morally responsible. Convicted, she was sentenced to forced labor for life. A docile, unassuming inmate, she occupied herself weaving carpets and sewing clothes for her fellow-prisoners.

Axenia Varlan, "The Ogress of Bukovina," like hundreds of other female serial killers, has never appeared in any published list of serial killers. Now, 90 years following her conviction, she becomes part the corpus of a new history of crime – which sometimes alters what we thought was the settled facts, the “settled science.”

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NOTES

Name variants: Xenia Varlan, Maria Varlane.

Three cases of female serial killers who collected trophies appear to be hoaxes: Vera Renczi (1925) and an un-named Indonesian woman (2012), Natalia Baksheeva (2017, a couple who committed a single murder).

Contemporary sources:

“Une odieuse «femme Landru» en Roumanie - Elle gardait comme souvenir les oreilles et les doigts de ses victimes “ Paris-Midi (France), 4 Août 1928, p. 3

“Die Frau, die ihre ganze Familie ausgerottet hat.- Die Massenmörderin von Fundul vor den Gefchmornen. - Ein Sensationsprozetz inder Bukowina.” Das Kleine Blatt (Vienna, Austria), 27. Oktober 1929, pp. 4-5

Emmanuel Bourcier, “Le Bagne Des Carpathes - L'ogresse Maria Varlane,” Paris-soir (France), 18 Febrier 1932, p. 2

On trophies:

Hickey, E. W. (2010). Serial Murderers and Their Victims (Fifth Edition). Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks/Cole.

Hickey, E. W. (Ed.). (2003). Encyclopedia of Murder and Violent Crime. London: Sage Publications.

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