This collection contains interesting and little-known
historical photos and illustrations of female serial killers are made available
for writers and scholars to be made use of in their own work. The most recent
case included in this collection dates from 1960.
***
1896 – Queen Ashantehemaa Yaa Akyaa – Kumanni, Ashanti Kingdom (Ghana)
Queen Ashantehemaa Yaa Akyaa “had had 50 husbands, all of whom had been put to death by her orders except Prempeh’s father,” it was reported in an 1896 news article.
***
***
There are 278 cases, each with an image and a description.
We should keep in mind that there are from the same period covered here, still
hundreds of cases, many of them important and sensational, for which no image is available,
and thus are not included here.
The large majority of the pre-1960 female serial killer cases have been completely overlooked by the criminology experts and by psychologists
writing on homicide.
34 nations are represented in this selection: Austria,
Ashanti Kingdom (Ghana), Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Chile, China, Denmark,
England, Egypt, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, India, Italy, Japan, Mexico,
Morocco, Netherlands, New
Zealand, Norway, Philippines, Romania, Russia, Yugoslavia (Serbia), South
Africa, Kingdom of Sicily, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Syria, Ukraine, USA.
***
Each of the 49 cases that are “known” (are on the Vronsky list of known cases) is marked with (*). Thus, as you browse the 200, look to see if there is a (*) on the first line and you can see whether the case is among the three-quarter share that is a “forgotten” (ignored by experts) case.
***
FALSE MYTHS:
As
we look over these cases we out to
keep in mind the false myths about the subject of serial killers that
are still being perpetuated. Here are a few, but not all, of these
myths:
►
Regarding sex of perpetrator and sex of
victim.
Published in: Gavin, Helen
(2013) “Evil or insane? The female serial killer and her doubly deviant
femininity.” in: Fifth Global Conference on Evil, Women and the Feminine,
18th-20th May 2013, Prague, Czech Republic.
• False myth: “the
majority of
female serial killers are in subservient partnerships.” (p.4)
• • Fact: The majority
of female serial killers are not in subservient partnerships. Many are dominant predators,
controlling seductresses, leaders of male criminals, leaders of cults with male
followers or political leaders with male followers.
• False myth: “serial
killer victims are predominantly female” (p. 3)
• • Fact: Serial killer
victims are not predominantly adults, nor among adults are they predominantly
women, rather, they are predominantly children of either sex (including a very
high proportion of babies). There is no reliable data based on comprehensive study
to support the idea that victims of serial killers (of both sexes combined) are
predominantly female.
• False myth: why
are serial killers predominately male? (p. 3)
• • Fact: The new research suggests parity between the sexes in incidence
of female serial killers, or at least approximate parity. Whatever the
situation it is clear that the experts base their calculations on obsolete
data. There are 6 times as many female serial killers listed in Index: Female Serial Killers than appear in the longest published list of female serial
killer cases, that of Peter Vronsky, which includes only 140.
►
Regarding race.
Published in Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, 1997, Viking.
Published in Patricia Pearson, When She Was Bad: Violent Women and the Myth of Innocence, 1997, Viking.
• “The overwhelming majority of serial
killers, both male and female are white. … a white woman is more likely to
commit murder than a black, Asian or Hispanic man by a factor of a hundred to
one …” (p. 163)
• • Fact: The 100: ratio
is false (It is based on lack of research combined with naive assumptions on
quality of available data). In the US, black female serial killers are
well-represented. Internationally all races produce female serial killers. See:
Black, Asian, Hispanic cases in the new research.
►Regarding
history.
Published in Ronald M. Holmes & Stephen T. Holmes, Contemporary Perspectives on Serial Murder, 1998, Sage.
Published in Ronald M. Holmes & Stephen T. Holmes, Contemporary Perspectives on Serial Murder, 1998, Sage.
• False myth: “Serial
murder is relatively new in the United States, and the study of the serial
killer is even newer.”
• • Fact: The serial killers phenomenon has been widely recognized in the US since the 19th century, using different labels than we use today.
Published in: Scott A. Bonn PhD, "Why Some Women Kill Again and Again. Female killers are rarely driven by sexual sadism like men.” Psychology Today, Jan. 12, 2015.
Published in: Scott A. Bonn PhD, "Why Some Women Kill Again and Again. Female killers are rarely driven by sexual sadism like men.” Psychology Today, Jan. 12, 2015.
• False myth: “Until Wuornos [1974], the mass
media almost always depicted a serial perpetrator as a deranged man due to the
erroneous and paternalistic societal notion that women could not commit such
crimes.”
• • Fact: Serial perpetrators who were women were frequently and prominently discussed in the mass media from the earliest times. The erroneous claim is not based on study of the past but rather is merely a reiteration of a politicized claim based on ideology rather than facts.
***
• • Fact: Serial perpetrators who were women were frequently and prominently discussed in the mass media from the earliest times. The erroneous claim is not based on study of the past but rather is merely a reiteration of a politicized claim based on ideology rather than facts.
***
Each of the 49 cases that are “known” (are on the Vronsky list of known cases) is marked with (*). Thus, as you browse the 200, look to see if there is a (*) on the first line and you can see whether the case is among the three-quarter share that is a “forgotten” (ignored by experts) case.
[Updated: July 26, 2022; First published: Aug. 1, 2015]
***
1966 – Piedad Martínez del Águila – Murcia, Spain – age 12 at time of apprehension – 4 murders
In the household of a Spanish working-class family with ten
children, the daytime head of household was 12-year-old Piedad Martínez del
Águila. In July 1965, her mother became pregnant with an eleventh child. By
December young Piedad had become frustrated at having to run the household and
work on the family’s cottage industry: polishing chrome metal parts, while her
mother attended to tasks of cooking for twelve. The girl missed being able to
play and see her friends. She decided to kill the youngest children, the ones
who required the most attention from her. So, she poisoned them, starting with
the youngest in series by increasing age. Little Piedad used chlorine tablets
used for cleaning chrome combined with potassium cyanide rat poison, which she
dissolved in milk.
***
With accomplices Gizella Young, a fortune teller, and Mary
Chalfa, Anna Allas murdered relatives to collect insurance money. From a newspaper account:
Gizella Young did a tarot card fortune-telling reading for
Anna Allas who had poisoned her stepson, Andrew.
Gizelle Young: “There’s an ill person in your house”
Anna Allas: “Will he die?”
Young: “He won’t live three days.”
Allas: “Thank God!”
“If they take him out of the ground twenty different times, American doctors cannot discover that.” [referring to the poison she used to murder her victim, Andrew Allas, 16-years-old.]
“Why don’t you get a doctor?” George Allas Jr. demanded of his stepmother.
“If they take him out of the ground twenty different times, American doctors cannot discover that.” [referring to the poison she used to murder her victim, Andrew Allas, 16-years-old.]
“Why don’t you get a doctor?” George Allas Jr. demanded of his stepmother.
“We don’t need a doctor. The undertaker will take care of
things”, was the response.
***
1920 – Raya
& Sakina Aly Hammam – Alexandria, Egypt
Sisters Raya and Sakina were convicted, along with their mates and two other accomplices, on May 16, 1921 of 17 murders of women in the Labban quarter of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. The sisters were operators of four underground “houses of depravity.” Their victims were visitors some of whom were prostitutes, others married women using the facilities for trysts.
Their killing career began in November 1919. The public became aware of the serial murders of women only in November of the following year when Al-Ahram newspaper displayed the shocking headline: “Women slaughtered in Labban: 12 corpses unearthed.” The murderers’ confessions revealed that they would drug the victims by offering them a drink, then strangle them, working as a team, each with a specific task: “one of the killers would clamp his hands over the victim’s mouth, another would grab hold of her throat, a third would hold her hands behind her back and the fourth would pin down her feet until she stopped breathing. Abdel-Aal was in charge of holding the feet.”
Sisters Raya and Sakina were convicted, along with their mates and two other accomplices, on May 16, 1921 of 17 murders of women in the Labban quarter of the Egyptian port city of Alexandria. The sisters were operators of four underground “houses of depravity.” Their victims were visitors some of whom were prostitutes, others married women using the facilities for trysts.
Their killing career began in November 1919. The public became aware of the serial murders of women only in November of the following year when Al-Ahram newspaper displayed the shocking headline: “Women slaughtered in Labban: 12 corpses unearthed.” The murderers’ confessions revealed that they would drug the victims by offering them a drink, then strangle them, working as a team, each with a specific task: “one of the killers would clamp his hands over the victim’s mouth, another would grab hold of her throat, a third would hold her hands behind her back and the fourth would pin down her feet until she stopped breathing. Abdel-Aal was in charge of holding the feet.”
***
1861 – Ane
Cathrine Andersdatter – Rødovre Mark, Denmark
“On Saturday, December 21, 1861 at 8 in the morning Ane Cathrine Andersdatter was beheaded at Rødovre Mark, north of Damhuskroen, Denmark. She had deliberately and in cold blood murdered three of her four children.” The killings occurred in 1853, 1855 and 1861.
“On Saturday, December 21, 1861 at 8 in the morning Ane Cathrine Andersdatter was beheaded at Rødovre Mark, north of Damhuskroen, Denmark. She had deliberately and in cold blood murdered three of her four children.” The killings occurred in 1853, 1855 and 1861.
***
***
1916 – Amy
Archer-Gilligan – Windsor, Connecticut, USA (*)
This is the case that inspired “Arsenic and Old Lace.” Yet
Amy was not a lovable crazy old lady. She was a systematic thief, a
coldblooded killer and, according to some commentators, a sex-addict who took
men on, used them up, and discarded them “with extreme prejudice” (as they say
in the military). Her victims included three husbands and two boarders at her
convalescent home, Archer House for Elderly People. There may well have been many
more murders at Amy’s place, since, as a boarding house for the elderly, deaths
were frequent, numbering 43 over the years.
***
1896 – Queen Ashantehemaa Yaa Akyaa – Kumanni, Ashanti Kingdom (Ghana)
Queen Ashantehemaa Yaa Akyaa “had had 50 husbands, all of whom had been put to death by her orders except Prempeh’s father,” it was reported in an 1896 news article.
***
1904 – Elizabeth
Ashmead – Philadelphia, Pa., Melville, NJ, Wilmington, De., USA
In
her long career, Elizabeth Ashmead, who worked under
several aliases, murdered hundreds of babies. Witnesses stated they had
seen
her on multiple occasions throw babies, while still alive, into a
furnace. Ashmead served time for minor offenses related to her gruesome
business but prosecutors could never nail her on a homicide charge. She
became wealthy from the business of killing unwanted infants.
***
1958 – Putli
Bai – Chati, India
Putli Bai was a woman bandit leader whose gang has
terrorized large areas of Central India before she was killed at the age of 32
on Jan. 23, 1958, along with nine of her followers in a running gunfight with
police. For three years she operated in an inaccessible jungle and ravine
country south of Agra. She was wanted for a number of murders, lootings and
kidnappings. Her most notorious crime was a massacre of 11 villagers (along
with wounding 5 others and kidnapping 7) in Datia. Putli had suspected them of
having informed on her to the police.
***
1899 – Henrietta Bamberger – St. Louis, Missouri, USA
From a newspaper report after Mrs. Bamberger was charged: “If the charges against Midwife [Henrietta] Bamberger are true, she is one of the greatest criminals in the history of the world. Sworn statements accuse her of killing no less than 300 women and infants during her career in St. Louis.”
***
1911 – Clementine
Barnabet (Bernebet) – Lafayette, Louisiana, USA
A cult leader at the age of 17, Clementine was convicted of 17 murders, victims were “horribly mutilated.” It is said 300 persons have been slain by the “sacrifice sect” within the last six years. During the trial she shouted from her prisoner’s stand, “I am the axe woman of the sacrifice sect, I killed them all, men, women and babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.”
A cult leader at the age of 17, Clementine was convicted of 17 murders, victims were “horribly mutilated.” It is said 300 persons have been slain by the “sacrifice sect” within the last six years. During the trial she shouted from her prisoner’s stand, “I am the axe woman of the sacrifice sect, I killed them all, men, women and babies, and I hugged the babies to my breast. But I am not guilty of murder.”
1955 – Flora Maxine Barnett – Peru, Indiana, USA
Flora Barnett, a young unwed mother, confessed to strangling her three newborn infant sons fathered by her uncle and then disposing of their bodies by burning them. She was sentenced to life imprisonment.
***
1905 – Rose Barron – Detroit, Michigan, USA
Mrs. Rose Barron was accused of administering “arsenic to the members of ten families in Detroit, many of whom narrowly escaped death” and of “having put arsenic in food used in the dining-room of the Alhambra apartments, where fourteen persons were poisoned.” “Several members of her own family died under suspicious circumstances, and it is believed she murdered them for the insurance they carried.”
***
1808 – Mary
Bateman – Leeds, England
Mary Bateman, the "Yorkshire Witch," was a hoaxer and murderess who was executed for her crimes. She is thought to have poisoned seven victims, two of whom survived. After execution her corpse was skinned, and pouches were made from the leather. Her skeleton was placed on public display, where it can still be seen in the Thackray Museum in Leeds.
Mary Bateman, the "Yorkshire Witch," was a hoaxer and murderess who was executed for her crimes. She is thought to have poisoned seven victims, two of whom survived. After execution her corpse was skinned, and pouches were made from the leather. Her skeleton was placed on public display, where it can still be seen in the Thackray Museum in Leeds.
***
1610 – Elizabeth
Báthory – Catchtice Castle, Hungary (*)
Until Uganda’s Sister Credonia Mwerinde arrived on the scene
in the 1990s the Blood Countess was, hands down, the worst serial killer in
history. Now it’s a toss-up: Bathory for unparalleled sadism, or, Mwerinde for
scale and cultic fanaticism; take your pick.
***
***
1904 – Annie Batten – Perth, Australia
Annie Batten was a midwife/abortionist who was accused by an
employee of ordering her to burn babies.
***
1949 – Martha
Beck – Grand Rapids, Michigan, USA (*)
Martha Beck and her lover Raymond Fernandez came, after their apprehension, to be known as “The Lonely Hearts Killers.” They preyed upon lonely women using personal ads. Although some accounts of the case make reference to suspicion that they murdered 20 or more, this speculation was based on notes found that showed correspondence with targeted women. Investigation did not show that the list contained murder victims, though the women were certainly targets for scamming (and possible murder). Yet the murders that the very-much-in-love-with-Raymond Martha did definitely commit were shocking in their heartless brutality. In a fittingly romantic denouement of the story the predatory lovebirds were, on March 8, 1951, electrocuted on the same day.
Martha Beck and her lover Raymond Fernandez came, after their apprehension, to be known as “The Lonely Hearts Killers.” They preyed upon lonely women using personal ads. Although some accounts of the case make reference to suspicion that they murdered 20 or more, this speculation was based on notes found that showed correspondence with targeted women. Investigation did not show that the list contained murder victims, though the women were certainly targets for scamming (and possible murder). Yet the murders that the very-much-in-love-with-Raymond Martha did definitely commit were shocking in their heartless brutality. In a fittingly romantic denouement of the story the predatory lovebirds were, on March 8, 1951, electrocuted on the same day.
***
1938 – Marie
Becker – Liege, Belgium (*)
“Marie Pettijean Becker, 58, went on trial on charges of poisoning to death 11 persons with whom she struck up acquaintance on park benches. Ten of the victims were wealthy widows, the eleventh her aged sweetheart – murdered for their money.” “Marie Becker was known to attend the funerals of her victims and to gesticulate wildly her grief over their passing. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.”
***“Marie Pettijean Becker, 58, went on trial on charges of poisoning to death 11 persons with whom she struck up acquaintance on park benches. Ten of the victims were wealthy widows, the eleventh her aged sweetheart – murdered for their money.” “Marie Becker was known to attend the funerals of her victims and to gesticulate wildly her grief over their passing. She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.”
1908 – Grete
Beier – Brand, Saxony, Germany
News report: “The face of an angel and the heart of a fiend,” they say of Grete Beyer, pretty flaxen haired daughter of the mayor of Brande, soon to be put on trial for the murder of her lover. In addition to this crime, it is alleged she murdered three illegitimate children born to her. Hers is one of the most remarkable cases on record. Although of good family and refined education, she is a virtual demon. …
One day she left home and went to Chemnitz, where [her lover] Pressler lived. She went straight to his apartments and found him there. “I have a great surprise for you,” she said, ‘‘but you must shut your eyes and open your month.” Suspecting nothing more than some girlish prank, Pressler obeyed without hesitation. Then the girl thrust a pistol in Pressler’s open mouth, and blew out his brains at a single shot. He fell dead at her feet. No one heard the shot, and she proceeded with cool determination to complete her plans. Seated at his desk she wrote with deliberation and perfect clearness, a will which left the whole of his property and fortune to herself. She previously had informed herself regarding the necessary legal language for such a document. Then she forged his signature.” – Grete was convicted of murder and executed.
***News report: “The face of an angel and the heart of a fiend,” they say of Grete Beyer, pretty flaxen haired daughter of the mayor of Brande, soon to be put on trial for the murder of her lover. In addition to this crime, it is alleged she murdered three illegitimate children born to her. Hers is one of the most remarkable cases on record. Although of good family and refined education, she is a virtual demon. …
One day she left home and went to Chemnitz, where [her lover] Pressler lived. She went straight to his apartments and found him there. “I have a great surprise for you,” she said, ‘‘but you must shut your eyes and open your month.” Suspecting nothing more than some girlish prank, Pressler obeyed without hesitation. Then the girl thrust a pistol in Pressler’s open mouth, and blew out his brains at a single shot. He fell dead at her feet. No one heard the shot, and she proceeded with cool determination to complete her plans. Seated at his desk she wrote with deliberation and perfect clearness, a will which left the whole of his property and fortune to herself. She previously had informed herself regarding the necessary legal language for such a document. Then she forged his signature.” – Grete was convicted of murder and executed.
1892 – Guadalupe
Martinez de Bejarano – Mexico City, Mexico
“La Bejarano” tortured, sexually mutilated three orphaned teenage girls. Wikipedia states: “She attracted her victims, young and poor girls, offering employment as a servant in her household. Only after the victim had been installed in the domicile were the true intentions of the mistress revealed. The girl would be enslaved and subjected to sexual torture with a markedly sexual nature. Guadalupe especially enjoyed forcing the girls to sit naked on a burning brazier (roman chair); she would strip them and hang them from the ceiling by the wrists and flog them with a cattle whip. Finally the victims would be starved to death.”
Other tortures mentioned in newspaper accounts: “Among these may be cited the dragging of the child across the floor, the application of burning matches to the exposed parts of her body and her confinement for hours at a time under the flooring of the room, there to fight for her life with mice and vermin and breathe the fetid air of her damp surroundings.”
***
“La Bejarano” tortured, sexually mutilated three orphaned teenage girls. Wikipedia states: “She attracted her victims, young and poor girls, offering employment as a servant in her household. Only after the victim had been installed in the domicile were the true intentions of the mistress revealed. The girl would be enslaved and subjected to sexual torture with a markedly sexual nature. Guadalupe especially enjoyed forcing the girls to sit naked on a burning brazier (roman chair); she would strip them and hang them from the ceiling by the wrists and flog them with a cattle whip. Finally the victims would be starved to death.”
Other tortures mentioned in newspaper accounts: “Among these may be cited the dragging of the child across the floor, the application of burning matches to the exposed parts of her body and her confinement for hours at a time under the flooring of the room, there to fight for her life with mice and vermin and breathe the fetid air of her damp surroundings.”
***
1904 – Mary
Bellears – Euora, Australia
***
1873 – Elvira
& Katie Bender – Cherry Vale, Kansas, USA (*)
Katie (or, Kate) Bender was a member of the Kansas crime family known as “The Bloody Benders.” Their crimes were considered some of the more gruesome perpetrated on Kansas soil. John Bender, his wife Elvira, son John Jr., and daughter Katie operated an inn outside of Parsons from 1871 to 1873 where they would lure men and kill them for their money and possessions. “While seated on the bench near the temporary wall their heads made perfect outline in the canvas. From behind they were struck with a sledge hammer. When in 1873 suspicions were aroused the Benders fled. Eleven bodies were found, with crushed skulls, in the Bender garden. Katie was a public figure who performed on stage as Prof. Miss Katie Bender as a spiritualist healer.
***
Katie (or, Kate) Bender was a member of the Kansas crime family known as “The Bloody Benders.” Their crimes were considered some of the more gruesome perpetrated on Kansas soil. John Bender, his wife Elvira, son John Jr., and daughter Katie operated an inn outside of Parsons from 1871 to 1873 where they would lure men and kill them for their money and possessions. “While seated on the bench near the temporary wall their heads made perfect outline in the canvas. From behind they were struck with a sledge hammer. When in 1873 suspicions were aroused the Benders fled. Eleven bodies were found, with crushed skulls, in the Bender garden. Katie was a public figure who performed on stage as Prof. Miss Katie Bender as a spiritualist healer.
***
1887 – Elizabeth
Berry – Oldham, England
Elizabeth Berry was found guilty of murdering her daughter
and executed for the crime. She was also suspected of murdering her mother.
Recent scholarship adds three other possible victims to the list: two children
and Elizabeth’s father.
***
1949 – Marie
Besnard – Loudon, France (*)
They called her “Queen of Poisoners,” and she is alleged to have poisoned 13 relatives for their money. Marie Besnard was charged with murder in 1949, but due to an endless series of evidentiary problems, she was not tried until 1952 and that trial was continued over and over again until 1961 when she was finally acquitted.
They called her “Queen of Poisoners,” and she is alleged to have poisoned 13 relatives for their money. Marie Besnard was charged with murder in 1949, but due to an endless series of evidentiary problems, she was not tried until 1952 and that trial was continued over and over again until 1961 when she was finally acquitted.
***
1920 – Marie-Louise Victorine Bessarabo – Paris, France
Marie-Louise Victorine Bessarabo was a novelist, and spiritualist charlatan, who was known by her pen name, Hera Mirtel. Her trial for the murder of her husband whose corpse was found stuffed in a travel trunk was a sensation in its day. Before this one confirmed murder this globe-trotting vamp ended up in the presence of male corpses from time to time. She explained away the shooting deaths of two men in Mexico as suicide in one case and home-invading bandits in another.
***
1920 – Marie-Louise Victorine Bessarabo – Paris, France
Marie-Louise Victorine Bessarabo was a novelist, and spiritualist charlatan, who was known by her pen name, Hera Mirtel. Her trial for the murder of her husband whose corpse was found stuffed in a travel trunk was a sensation in its day. Before this one confirmed murder this globe-trotting vamp ended up in the presence of male corpses from time to time. She explained away the shooting deaths of two men in Mexico as suicide in one case and home-invading bandits in another.
***
1918 – Taytu
Betul – Addis Abbaba, Abyssinia (Ethiopia)
The rise of Dowager Empress Taitu of Abyssinia “from a slave girl to one of the most powerful barbaric queens in the history of the world is a chronicle red with the blood of murdered husbands and thousands of fighting men who have fallen because of her insatiable greed for power and wealth.”
The rise of Dowager Empress Taitu of Abyssinia “from a slave girl to one of the most powerful barbaric queens in the history of the world is a chronicle red with the blood of murdered husbands and thousands of fighting men who have fallen because of her insatiable greed for power and wealth.”
***
1948 – Ada Bilbrey – Fort Worth, Texas, USA
Mrs. Ada Bilbrey charged with the death of her husband. G. C. Bilbrey; her daughter, Dorothea Duke, and her son-in-law, Richard Duke. Because of insufficient evidence, the charges were dropped. Nevertheless, many continued to regard her a guilty.
***
1835 – Fanny
Billing & Catherine Frary – Burnham Market, Norfolk, England
From a contemporary account: “The town of Burnham Market, in Norfolk, and the vicinity for some miles around have for the last week been in the most dreadful state of excitement caused by the discovery of three diabolical murders, which have already been committed, and a plan laid for taking away the lives of several other people.” Died: Mrs. Taylor; Robert Frary; a child kept by the Frarys; the sister of Mrs. Frary’s husband. Survived: Mr. Billing; several other persons marked as victims. The pair was executed.
***From a contemporary account: “The town of Burnham Market, in Norfolk, and the vicinity for some miles around have for the last week been in the most dreadful state of excitement caused by the discovery of three diabolical murders, which have already been committed, and a plan laid for taking away the lives of several other people.” Died: Mrs. Taylor; Robert Frary; a child kept by the Frarys; the sister of Mrs. Frary’s husband. Survived: Mr. Billing; several other persons marked as victims. The pair was executed.
1911 – Edith Agnes Bingham – Lancaster, England
Edith Bingham was suspected of murdering her father (73) and two sisters (48, 37) over a period of eight months.
***
***
1808 – Catherine Bouhours – Paris, France
Young Parisienne Catherine Bouhours got jilted. She developed a hatred of men and, disguised as a man (“Auguste Manette”), lured and murdered several members of the despised sex, employing a small hammer as her weapon. She also murdered some women, a total of “eighteen or twenty killings” were attributed to her. An elaborate effort was made by the police to trap her, and, following her conviction, she was guillotined at the age of 25.
***
***
***
***
1676 – Brinvilliers, Marquise de – Paris, France (*)
Peter Vronsky writes: “In France between 1664 and 1672, the aristocratic Marie de Brinvilliers was reported to have poisoned fifty or more victims. Prior to murdering her father, who opposed her marriage, and then her two brothers to seize an inheritance, Marie experimented with poisons concocted by her lover in hospital charity wards, where she began volunteering to care for patients. She carefully observed the effects of her poison on the patients, adjusting the doses accordingly. Marie was discovered and became a fugitive until she was captured in 1676 and beheaded in Paris.” [Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, 2007, Berkley Books]
***
***
***
***
***
1847 – Sarah Chesham – Clavering, near Chelmsford, England (*)
“Sally Arsenic” was tried twice. In the first trial, for three murders, there was no evidence proving that the arsenic was administered to her to the three boys including two of her own sons, thus Mrs. Chesham was acquitted. After her husband died and an autopsy showed that rice he had eaten was saturated with arsenic. Chesham was arrested for this new crime, tried, found guilty and executed.
***
1763 – Anne & Alte Christophersdatter – Oyestad, Norway
1788 – Giovanna
Bonnano – Palermo, Sicily
Giovanna Bonnano was known as the “La vecchia dell’ aceto” (“The Old Vinegar Woman”). “During her trial, she confessed to being a poisoner, and that she sold poison to women who wanted to murder their husbands. The typical client was a woman with a lover; she bought the first dose to give her husband stomach pains, the second to get him to hospital, and the third to kill him. The doctor was, in these cases, unable to ascertain the cause of the deaths.” She was executed by hanging on July 30, 1789.
Giovanna Bonnano was known as the “La vecchia dell’ aceto” (“The Old Vinegar Woman”). “During her trial, she confessed to being a poisoner, and that she sold poison to women who wanted to murder their husbands. The typical client was a woman with a lover; she bought the first dose to give her husband stomach pains, the second to get him to hospital, and the third to kill him. The doctor was, in these cases, unable to ascertain the cause of the deaths.” She was executed by hanging on July 30, 1789.
***
1720 – Anne
Bonny – Caribbean
Anne Bonny was a pirate, partnered with Mary Read. By 18, Anne Cormac (latter Bonny) was
already a fierce-tempered, hard-drinking gal, who had a bad reputation for
being rebellious. “she knifed her maid to death . . . on her father’s
Charleston, S.C. plantation. She had a reputation for “beating suitors nearly
to death, shooting peoples’ ears off, and humiliating her fencing teacher by
publicly stripping him naked with her own sword.” In her pirate years Bonny and
her lover Mary
Read were fierce fighters and during a battle in which the women fought off
attackers for two hours they were so disgusted by their fellows’ cowardice they
began to slay them too.
***
1808 – Catherine Bouhours – Paris, France
Young Parisienne Catherine Bouhours got jilted. She developed a hatred of men and, disguised as a man (“Auguste Manette”), lured and murdered several members of the despised sex, employing a small hammer as her weapon. She also murdered some women, a total of “eighteen or twenty killings” were attributed to her. An elaborate effort was made by the police to trap her, and, following her conviction, she was guillotined at the age of 25.
***
1740 – Elizabeth
& Mary Branch – Taunton, Somerset, England, England
“Elizabeth, aged 67, and her daughter Mary, 24, were both charged with the cruel murder of their maid, Jane Butterworth. A transcript of their trial, which took place at Taunton, Somerset, in March 1740, reported that: It was obvious, judging by the suspicions of their neighbours, that both the accused had also committed other murders in the past. Mrs Branch’s husband died under circumstances that led others who lived nearby to believe she had poisoned him and they were convinced that she had hanged her mother, after murdering her, to avoid an investigation into the cause of the death. Human bones were also discovered in a well near her [Elizabeth’s] farm, which were believed to be those of one of her servant girls who disappeared and was never heard from again.”
“Elizabeth, aged 67, and her daughter Mary, 24, were both charged with the cruel murder of their maid, Jane Butterworth. A transcript of their trial, which took place at Taunton, Somerset, in March 1740, reported that: It was obvious, judging by the suspicions of their neighbours, that both the accused had also committed other murders in the past. Mrs Branch’s husband died under circumstances that led others who lived nearby to believe she had poisoned him and they were convinced that she had hanged her mother, after murdering her, to avoid an investigation into the cause of the death. Human bones were also discovered in a well near her [Elizabeth’s] farm, which were believed to be those of one of her servant girls who disappeared and was never heard from again.”
***
1945 – Hermine
Braunsteiner – Ravensbruck, Germany
Hermine
Braunsteiner was a guard at Ravensbruück concentration camp run by National
Socialist German government officials. The captured citizens she bossed about
and brutalized her called her “The Stomping Mare.” According to witness
testimony she whipped several women to death and in other instances killed
women by stomping on them with her steel-studded jackboots, earning her the nickname
“The Stomping Mare.” Braunsteiner was not “just following orders,” rather she
was acting to serve her personal sadistic pleasure.
***
Although her name
may be lost to posterity (unless some Brazilian researcher can find it in the
archives of that country), the history of this “Brazilian Black Widow” is one
of the more striking in the long and unpleasant history of the Black Widow
husband-killers of the world. The accounts of her excessively sadistic and very
creative torture-murders of her mates are amazing.
***
1949 – Inez
Brennan – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Mrs. Gertrude Inez Brennan and two of her sons, Raymond, 23, and Robert, 16, killed two men she met through “lonely hearts club” letters. The men were shot in the head buried in a pigpen on the Brennan farm; later the bodies were dug up, burned and scattered on the city dump. Another man, 67-years-old died near the Brennan residence. His death was ruled suicide yet it is likely he was also a victim of the Brennan clan. The family had planned to murder another man, Thomas Stretch, 63, of Canton, New Jersey, a plan that was interrupted when they were arrested.
Mrs. Gertrude Inez Brennan and two of her sons, Raymond, 23, and Robert, 16, killed two men she met through “lonely hearts club” letters. The men were shot in the head buried in a pigpen on the Brennan farm; later the bodies were dug up, burned and scattered on the city dump. Another man, 67-years-old died near the Brennan residence. His death was ruled suicide yet it is likely he was also a victim of the Brennan clan. The family had planned to murder another man, Thomas Stretch, 63, of Canton, New Jersey, a plan that was interrupted when they were arrested.
***
1953 – Eunice
Brillhart – Eritrea (USA citizen)
Mrs. Brillhart, wife of a US solder stationed overseas, was convicted by a military court of killing three of her children by dropping them on their heads.” Yet she was set free after the US Supreme Court ruled that military courts have no jurisdiction over civilian cases.
***Mrs. Brillhart, wife of a US solder stationed overseas, was convicted by a military court of killing three of her children by dropping them on their heads.” Yet she was set free after the US Supreme Court ruled that military courts have no jurisdiction over civilian cases.
1676 – Brinvilliers, Marquise de – Paris, France (*)
Peter Vronsky writes: “In France between 1664 and 1672, the aristocratic Marie de Brinvilliers was reported to have poisoned fifty or more victims. Prior to murdering her father, who opposed her marriage, and then her two brothers to seize an inheritance, Marie experimented with poisons concocted by her lover in hospital charity wards, where she began volunteering to care for patients. She carefully observed the effects of her poison on the patients, adjusting the doses accordingly. Marie was discovered and became a fugitive until she was captured in 1676 and beheaded in Paris.” [Vronsky, Female Serial Killers: How and Why Women Become Monsters, 2007, Berkley Books]
***
1886 – Mary
Ann Britland – Ashton-under-Lyne, Lancashire, England
Excerpt: “Mary Ann Britland was apprehended on suspicion of having caused the death of a young married woman, named Mary Dixon, by poisoning her with vermin-killer. The prisoner's husband died about three weeks ago, after a brief illness, and she then went to live with Mrs. Dixon, who had just died after only seven hours’ illness. It is alleged that the prisoner purchased the poison at a chemist’s shop. She was brought before the magistrates on Wednesday, when the Chief constable stated that she was suspected of having caused the death of two other persons – her husband and her daughter – both of whom died suddenly recently.”
Excerpt: “Mary Ann Britland was apprehended on suspicion of having caused the death of a young married woman, named Mary Dixon, by poisoning her with vermin-killer. The prisoner's husband died about three weeks ago, after a brief illness, and she then went to live with Mrs. Dixon, who had just died after only seven hours’ illness. It is alleged that the prisoner purchased the poison at a chemist’s shop. She was brought before the magistrates on Wednesday, when the Chief constable stated that she was suspected of having caused the death of two other persons – her husband and her daughter – both of whom died suddenly recently.”
***
1927
– Juliette Brucy (Thoreau) – Ailnay-sous-Bois, Seine-Sainte-Denis, Ile-de-France, France
Juliette
Brucy was convicted of murdering her fourth husband. Two previous
husbands died mysteriously. One husband became insane and was sent to an
asylum; he had complained that his wife was trying to undermine his
health beforehand. Her first husband was a wealthy widower whose five
children (heirs to his estate) all died mysteriously over a period of
six months, following his own mysterious death.
***
1913 – Cynthia
Buffom – Little Valley, New York, USA
Cynthia Buffom murdered her husband, two children and left another crippled for life. She was motivated, she said, by her love for her paramour whom she accused of having put her up to the murders.
Cynthia Buffom murdered her husband, two children and left another crippled for life. She was motivated, she said, by her love for her paramour whom she accused of having put her up to the murders.
***
1926 – Rennette
Cure Bussey – New Orleans, Louisiana, USA
From a newspaper account of the trial:
“Though there is but the one charge against her, police accuse her of causing
the deaths of her husband and two other children. Lawrence Bussey, the father and husband, a
city fireman, died April 3, 1925. Clarence, 3, died on Dec. 5, 1925, at 3 years of age. Esther, a baby [of] 16 months, died Jan. 1,
1926. Verdia, 5 years old, died
Feb. 21, 1926. Physicians
attributed the deaths at the time to various maladies – peritonitis, acute
indigestion, liver and kidney maladies. The three bodies were exhumed by order of court after Mrs. Bussey’s
arrest on the charge of giving poison to
Verdia. Chemists declare traces of mercurial poison were found in badly
decomposed organs of all three.
Verdia told court attaches just before her death: ‘Mamma gave me something to eat on a piece of bread and told me to eat it. In a little while I was spitting up blood. She said she’d whip me if I told anybody.’”
Verdia told court attaches just before her death: ‘Mamma gave me something to eat on a piece of bread and told me to eat it. In a little while I was spitting up blood. She said she’d whip me if I told anybody.’”
***
1892 – Dorothee Buntrock – Osnabrück, Germany
In 1890, Fritz Erbe and his lover Dorothee Buntrock placed
job advertisements of the same name appeared in several newspapers in the
Westphalian and North German regions. They sought young women, preferably from
a good family, who wanted to serve in an unnamed aristocrat’s household.
Several women replied to the ad. Two of the respondents, in May and August of
1890, disappeared. Nobody knew what happened to Emma Kasten (30) Dora Klages
(17). More than a year later the two women’s dismembered corpses were
discovered in remote forest areas.
***
1829 – Martha
"Patty" Cannon – Johnson's Corners, Maryland, USA (*)
Martha
“Patty” Cannon (circa 1760 – May 11, 1829) was
the leader of a gang in the early 19th century that kidnapped slaves and free
blacks. Cannon’s homestead was on the southern Maryland/Delaware line served as
a base from which her gang kidnapped,
and transported and sold blacks to plantation owners located further
south. She never was charged for these kidnappings but instead was arrested in
1829 for the murder of four people, including a slave trader. She died May 11,
1829, in her cell in Georgetown prison.
***
***
***
1906 – Bridget
Carey – Centralia, Pennsylvania, USA
Bridget Carey was acquitted of having committed the murders she had been charged with, yet no plausible alternative explanation was ever offered of how the children and other persons came to ingest arsenic while living with her. She was suspected of eight murders and one poisoning from which the victim survived.
Bridget Carey was acquitted of having committed the murders she had been charged with, yet no plausible alternative explanation was ever offered of how the children and other persons came to ingest arsenic while living with her. She was suspected of eight murders and one poisoning from which the victim survived.
***
1939 – Rose
Carina – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
“The elusive “kiss of death” woman, Mrs. Rose Carina, known to have had at least five husbands, three of whom died under mysterious circumstances, was arrested [May 18, 1939] today by federal agents in connection with the Philadelphia investigation into a mass murder syndicate.” Mrs. Carina was sometimes known as the “rose of death.”
“The elusive “kiss of death” woman, Mrs. Rose Carina, known to have had at least five husbands, three of whom died under mysterious circumstances, was arrested [May 18, 1939] today by federal agents in connection with the Philadelphia investigation into a mass murder syndicate.” Mrs. Carina was sometimes known as the “rose of death.”
***
1921 – Clara
Carl – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Clara Carl Murdered two husbands and a father-in-law. Convicted in 1922 and sentenced to life in prison, she escaped in 1925, but was finally captured and returned. Newspaper headlines reporting her escape described her as the “most daring on of women criminals.”
Clara Carl Murdered two husbands and a father-in-law. Convicted in 1922 and sentenced to life in prison, she escaped in 1925, but was finally captured and returned. Newspaper headlines reporting her escape described her as the “most daring on of women criminals.”
***
1931 – Anna Carlson – Los Angeles, California, USA
Under investigation for murdering three men, the most recent to die having been a man that Esther was accused of murdering in tandem with accomplice Anna Erickson. Anna was herself, apparently poisoned by Esther just after the investigation began. Esther Carlson was not long to live and died before she could be prosecuted.
***Under investigation for murdering three men, the most recent to die having been a man that Esther was accused of murdering in tandem with accomplice Anna Erickson. Anna was herself, apparently poisoned by Esther just after the investigation began. Esther Carlson was not long to live and died before she could be prosecuted.
1613 – Donna
Catherina – Ceylon
She poisoned her husband, Mahatissa, surnamed The Robber [Cora-Niiga, or Niiga the rebel, or robber], and ascended the
throne. In the course of five years she married and killed five husbands
and was finally put to death by her step-son. Donna Catherina is not
acknowledged as a queen by the Sinhalese chroniclers.
***
1900 – Ada
Chard-Williams – London, England
Ada Chard Williams was a baby farmer who was convicted of strangling to death 21-month-old girl in London in September 1899. Ada, operating under an alias, had disappeared and the child’s mother made an official complaint. It was only when the victim’s body washed up on the Thames that a homicide case could be made. She was suspected of killing other children although no proceedings were brought. She had her own “signature” way of tying up bodies she wished to dispose of, using a knot called a Fisherman’s knot (or bend). This fact became a crucial piece of evidence at her trial. She was hanged, at the age of 24.
Ada Chard Williams was a baby farmer who was convicted of strangling to death 21-month-old girl in London in September 1899. Ada, operating under an alias, had disappeared and the child’s mother made an official complaint. It was only when the victim’s body washed up on the Thames that a homicide case could be made. She was suspected of killing other children although no proceedings were brought. She had her own “signature” way of tying up bodies she wished to dispose of, using a knot called a Fisherman’s knot (or bend). This fact became a crucial piece of evidence at her trial. She was hanged, at the age of 24.
***
1847 – Sarah Chesham – Clavering, near Chelmsford, England (*)
“Sally Arsenic” was tried twice. In the first trial, for three murders, there was no evidence proving that the arsenic was administered to her to the three boys including two of her own sons, thus Mrs. Chesham was acquitted. After her husband died and an autopsy showed that rice he had eaten was saturated with arsenic. Chesham was arrested for this new crime, tried, found guilty and executed.
***
1763 – Anne & Alte Christophersdatter – Oyestad, Norway
The Christophersdatter sisters were convicted of three poison murders. An additional murder was suspected. They were executed by beheading.
***
***
***
***
1693 – Mary Compton, Mary Compton the Younger, Ann David – Poplar, London, England
Mary Compton, was a “baby farmer,” a child care provider who took advance payments for the care of children then murdered them and took in additional victims. She was tried for murdering four children, found guilty and executed.
***
***
1941 – Leonarda
Cianciulli – Reggio Emilia, Italy
Newspaper account: “Leonarda
Cianciulli, who is awaiting trial on charges of murdering three women friends, is
reported to have written an account of her life and alleged crimes, entitled
‘Confessions of an Embittered Soul,’ in which she describes how she used an axe
to murder one friend. The book is alleged to slate: ‘While my victim was drinking an
elixir I had prepared. I got an axe, placed myself behind my victim and,
summoning my strength, struck the back of her neck – a rattle, nothing else.” It
was a master stroke that almost beheaded her. Cianciulli is alleged to have
cut up the bodies of her victims and converted
them into soap.”
***
1908 –
Dowager
Empress Cixi (Tsi Si) – China
“She was wont to select her favourites from among the crowds of students who flocked to Pekin from all corners of the vast Empire to pass the four examinations which should throw open to them the portals of fortune and favour, but which for these chosen ones opened only the gates of death. She treated all these temporary husbands as Bluebeard dealt with his wives. As soon as she was tired of one, he passed from the presence of his Imperial mistress into the hands of the executioner, and was at once succeeded by another. Love with her was but ‘a sighing of hearts and filling up of graves.’” “Cixi ordered executions. The decree that all foreign prisoners be decapitated was issued by her. Numerous Chinese and foreigners were killed in this manner.”
“She was wont to select her favourites from among the crowds of students who flocked to Pekin from all corners of the vast Empire to pass the four examinations which should throw open to them the portals of fortune and favour, but which for these chosen ones opened only the gates of death. She treated all these temporary husbands as Bluebeard dealt with his wives. As soon as she was tired of one, he passed from the presence of his Imperial mistress into the hands of the executioner, and was at once succeeded by another. Love with her was but ‘a sighing of hearts and filling up of graves.’” “Cixi ordered executions. The decree that all foreign prisoners be decapitated was issued by her. Numerous Chinese and foreigners were killed in this manner.”
“A torturous method of murder was called ‘slicing.’ The
victim was slightly cut repeatedly, scores or hundreds of times, until death
resulted from shock or loss of blood. Poisoning was another means of murder
used by Cixi’s subordinates and associates. It is believed that she poisoned
her nephew. Her co-dowager and cousin Ci’an (or Niuhuru) died after an
unpleasant encounter with Cixi, with poisoning suspected. … When Cixi and her
entourage were fleeing the Imperial Palace during the Boxer Rebellion, she was
stopped by her son’s favorite concubine, known as Pearl Concubine. The girl
begged Cixi to stay and defend Beijing. Cixi ordered that she be tossed into a
well in the Forbidden City.”
***
***
1884 – Marie “Mary” Clement (“Klemen”) – Dubuque, Iowa
In June 1885, Marie “Mary” Clement, 22, was arrested in
Evanston, Illinois for poisoning her sister Catherine Freres and brother-in-law. They survived. Mary confessed to having posioned four
family members while living in Dubuque, Iowa: father, mother, sister (6), and
sister (13). She also wrote a letter that contained the confession. She later
recanted and claimed to have no memory of confessing. She was convicted for the
attempted murder of the Freres. News reports appeared with numerous erroneous
spellings: Kleman, Klemann, Klaman, Clayman, Clemens.
***
1921 – Erminia (Big Emma) Colavito – Cleveland, Ohio,
USA
As the “Poison Queen” of her community, Big Emma, a Sicilian
immigrant, was reputed to have supplied the poison used in a number of murders.
Members of the Italian community in Sandusky were tight-lipped when her
activities were investigated. “Omerta,” it is called in Sicily.
***
***
Mrs. Marjorie Coleman, 42,
was charged with having administered poison to two men and a woman
with intent to murder them.
The charges followed the secret
exhumation of the body of Robert Walker Reynolds, 48, at the Northern Suburbs
Cemetery, almost two years after its burial, and a subsequent autopsy performed
the day following its removal. She was never convicted.
***
1888 – Louisa
Collins – Botany, Australia
Louisa Collins was suspected of poisoning two husbands and a child. She was found guilty of murdering her second husband and executed. “The Chief Justice characterised the murder as one of peculiar atrocity, as the prisoner had been day by day giving poison to her husband, and watching his slow torture and painful death apparently without a moment’s remorse.”
Louisa Collins was suspected of poisoning two husbands and a child. She was found guilty of murdering her second husband and executed. “The Chief Justice characterised the murder as one of peculiar atrocity, as the prisoner had been day by day giving poison to her husband, and watching his slow torture and painful death apparently without a moment’s remorse.”
***
1693 – Mary Compton, Mary Compton the Younger, Ann David – Poplar, London, England
Mary Compton, was a “baby farmer,” a child care provider who took advance payments for the care of children then murdered them and took in additional victims. She was tried for murdering four children, found guilty and executed.
***
1922 – Martha
Cooper – Newlands, New Zealand
Daniel Cooper was an abortion provider. Together with his wife, he offered an adoption placement service for unwed mothers. This service was a fraud. The couple collected money the from mother and then starved the baby to death. The Coopers were charged with murdering three babies following the discovery of as body of a newborn at Lyall Bay. Daniel Cooper was found guilty of the murders and hanged at the Terrace Gaol on June 16, 1923. Martha Cooper pleaded that she had only taken part in the atrocities because her husband had forced her to, although it was reportedly she who had been the person who had deliberately starved the babies to death. She was acquitted of the charges and left the country soon after.
Daniel Cooper was an abortion provider. Together with his wife, he offered an adoption placement service for unwed mothers. This service was a fraud. The couple collected money the from mother and then starved the baby to death. The Coopers were charged with murdering three babies following the discovery of as body of a newborn at Lyall Bay. Daniel Cooper was found guilty of the murders and hanged at the Terrace Gaol on June 16, 1923. Martha Cooper pleaded that she had only taken part in the atrocities because her husband had forced her to, although it was reportedly she who had been the person who had deliberately starved the babies to death. She was acquitted of the charges and left the country soon after.
***
1860 – "Copenhagen Baby Farm Couple" – Copenhagen, Denmark
The title of a ballad about the case: "New ballad about the gruesome murderess, there exterminated 23
orphans with her husband as accomplice, with a report on the crimes and remarks about
about the woman’s secret execution in the penitentiary."
***
***
***
***
***
1873 – Mary
Ann Cotton – West Auckland, England (*)
Mary Ann Cotton was not Britain’s first serial killer, as some have claimed. Yet she was a particularly nasty one. She is suspected of having murdered 21 persons, including three husbands. Mrs. Cotton was convicted and hanged.
Mary Ann Cotton was not Britain’s first serial killer, as some have claimed. Yet she was a particularly nasty one. She is suspected of having murdered 21 persons, including three husbands. Mrs. Cotton was convicted and hanged.
***
1894 – Mary
Cowan – Dixmont, Maine, USA
“There never was any reasonable doubt that Mary Cowan poisoned her stepson, and many believe that she hastened the departure from this life of at least five other persons, all for the sake of a little money. She was a remarkably clever woman in many ways.”
***
“There never was any reasonable doubt that Mary Cowan poisoned her stepson, and many believe that she hastened the departure from this life of at least five other persons, all for the sake of a little money. She was a remarkably clever woman in many ways.”
***
1899 – Ivy Crabtree – Carmi, Illinois, USA (aged 16)
In the Ivy Crabtree case, here are three separate attempted murder
events, the final of which involved the poisoning of four persons, resulting in
one death. 1) She is reputed to have attempted to murder her baby boy (4 mo.),
after which the child was removed from her custody. 2) “It is reported that the girl attempted to poison her mother-in-law once
while living at the home of her husband,” George Crabtree. 3) Poisoned
four while living at the home of her parents, the Warthens – stepmother,
father, brother, a visiting neighbor (old man) – all survived but her brother.
***
1911 – Annie
Crawford – Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Annie Crawford was a morphine addict who killed two sisters and her parents by secretly giving them doses of the drug.
Annie Crawford was a morphine addict who killed two sisters and her parents by secretly giving them doses of the drug.
***
1923 – Mary
Frances Creighton – Newark, New Jersey, USA
Frances
Mary Creighton was suspected of four persons and the concerted attempt to
murder another. She was tried along with her lover for the murder of the man’s
wife – who was the murderess’s “best friend” – and both were convicted and
executed for that crime.
***
1929 – Krisztina Balint Borzik Csordas – Tiszazug, Hungary
Krisztina Bálint Borzik Csordás was charged as accomplice in
two murders and the incitement of a third. She was convicted and executed by
hanging on June 17, 1931.
Anna Cunningham murdered her husband, three teenage
children, and attempted to murder another, who survived but was partially
crippled. In her own words: “Something told me to draw in my head and told me I
had to get rid of them. I thought that I was going to die and wanted to take
them with me. I only poisoned the ones I loved best and I poisoned the ones I
like best in turn because I wanted them with me.” She was intending suicide,
she claimed.
1897 – Lidia Czordus (Czordas)
– Hodmezovassarhely, Hungary
Lidia
Czordas poisoned her sister and niece, in addition to forming a central part in
a poisonoing syndicate which took the lives of more than 100 persons headed by
midwife Azalai Marie Jager. “The victims were in most cases married men who
were killed by their wives, the motive for the crimes being generally a desire
to obtain insurance money.”
***
1946 – Marguerite
D’Andurian – France, Syria
NOTE: Further research suggests that some, or all, of the stories of Marguerite's exploits are apocryphal or, at least, embellished.
The Countess Marguerite D’Andurian was “held by French national police at Nice for questioning in the poisoned candy death of her cousin in 1945.” “Eight cryptic words, scrawled on the back of a Paris subway ticket by a dying man, led last month to the arrest of one of the most fabulous beauties of the Middle East. The words – “Candy which Marga gave me had a strange taste” – were written in November 1945 by 26-year-old Raymond Clarisse. The beauty, 51-year-old Countess Marga d’Andurain, was arrested for poisoning Raymond, her nephew.” “The countess, whose international career of romance left a trail of poisoned husbands and suitors, once escaped being stoned to death only by intervention of King Ibn Saud of Arabia.”
NOTE: Further research suggests that some, or all, of the stories of Marguerite's exploits are apocryphal or, at least, embellished.
The Countess Marguerite D’Andurian was “held by French national police at Nice for questioning in the poisoned candy death of her cousin in 1945.” “Eight cryptic words, scrawled on the back of a Paris subway ticket by a dying man, led last month to the arrest of one of the most fabulous beauties of the Middle East. The words – “Candy which Marga gave me had a strange taste” – were written in November 1945 by 26-year-old Raymond Clarisse. The beauty, 51-year-old Countess Marga d’Andurain, was arrested for poisoning Raymond, her nephew.” “The countess, whose international career of romance left a trail of poisoned husbands and suitors, once escaped being stoned to death only by intervention of King Ibn Saud of Arabia.”
***
1843 – Sarah
Dazley – Bedford, England (*)
Sarah Dazley was suspected of murdering three persons: two husbands and a son. She was tried for the murder of her second husband, convicted and executed.
Sarah Dazley was suspected of murdering three persons: two husbands and a son. She was tried for the murder of her second husband, convicted and executed.
***
1895 – Minnie
Dean – Invercargill, New Zealand (*)
In 1895, Dean was observed boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox, but observed leaving the same train without the baby and only the hatbox. The missing baby was never located. Investigators dug up her garden and three bodies (two of babies, and one of a boy estimated to be three years old) were uncovered. An inquest found that one child (Eva) had died of suffocation and one, later identified as one year-old Dorothy Edith Carter, had died from an overdose of laudanum (used on children to sedate them). The cause of death for the third child was not determined. Dean was charged with their murder, convicted and executed.
In 1895, Dean was observed boarding a train carrying a young baby and a hatbox, but observed leaving the same train without the baby and only the hatbox. The missing baby was never located. Investigators dug up her garden and three bodies (two of babies, and one of a boy estimated to be three years old) were uncovered. An inquest found that one child (Eva) had died of suffocation and one, later identified as one year-old Dorothy Edith Carter, had died from an overdose of laudanum (used on children to sedate them). The cause of death for the third child was not determined. Dean was charged with their murder, convicted and executed.
***
1932 – Daisy
de Melker – Johannesburg, South Africa (*)
“Charged with murdering her two former husbands and her twenty-year-old son to collect their insurance, Mrs. Daisy Louisa de Melker, wife of a noted South African rugby player, was found guilty of killing her son and was sentenced to death. The evidence of strychnine poisoning inconclusive in the case of her former husbands, William Cowle and Robert Sproat, however. The trial lasted a month.”
“Charged with murdering her two former husbands and her twenty-year-old son to collect their insurance, Mrs. Daisy Louisa de Melker, wife of a noted South African rugby player, was found guilty of killing her son and was sentenced to death. The evidence of strychnine poisoning inconclusive in the case of her former husbands, William Cowle and Robert Sproat, however. The trial lasted a month.”
***
1921 – Mary
Demmer – Schiller Park, Illinois, USA
“Mrs. Elizabeth Harwood, of Bensonville, mother of Mrs. Kolze, told the Coroner, it is said, that Mrs. Demmer had intimated, after her daughter’s death, that ‘something was wrong.’ Shortly before Kolze died Mrs. Demmer is alleged to have told Mrs. Harwood that ‘he would not live long unless he mended his ways.’” Mrs. Mary Demmer was held for questioning in connection of three arsenic deaths was released from custody after two weeks in jail. The state had no evidence against her even though arsenic had been found in the exhumed bodies of Mrs. Demmer’s husband and Mrs. Fred Kolze. The two families made their homes together.
“Mrs. Elizabeth Harwood, of Bensonville, mother of Mrs. Kolze, told the Coroner, it is said, that Mrs. Demmer had intimated, after her daughter’s death, that ‘something was wrong.’ Shortly before Kolze died Mrs. Demmer is alleged to have told Mrs. Harwood that ‘he would not live long unless he mended his ways.’” Mrs. Mary Demmer was held for questioning in connection of three arsenic deaths was released from custody after two weeks in jail. The state had no evidence against her even though arsenic had been found in the exhumed bodies of Mrs. Demmer’s husband and Mrs. Fred Kolze. The two families made their homes together.
1679 – Catherine
Deshayes – Paris, France (*)
“Catherine Monvoisin, or Montvoisin, née Deshayes, known as "La Voisin" (English: The Neighbor) (c. 1640 – February 22, 1680), was a French fortune teller, poisoner and an alleged sorceress, one of the chief personages in the affaire des poisons, during the reign of Louis XIV. Her cult (Affair of the Poisons) was suspected to have killed anywhere between 1000-2500 people in Black Masses.” [Wikipedia]
“Catherine Monvoisin, or Montvoisin, née Deshayes, known as "La Voisin" (English: The Neighbor) (c. 1640 – February 22, 1680), was a French fortune teller, poisoner and an alleged sorceress, one of the chief personages in the affaire des poisons, during the reign of Louis XIV. Her cult (Affair of the Poisons) was suspected to have killed anywhere between 1000-2500 people in Black Masses.” [Wikipedia]
“La Voisin herself was executed at
an early stage of the proceedings, on the 20th of February 1680, after a
perfunctory application of torture. The authorities had every reason to avoid
further revelations. Thirty-five other prisoners were executed; five were sent
to the galleys and twenty-three were banished. Their crimes had furnished one
of the most extraordinary trials known to history.” [Encyclopaedia Britannica]
***
1891 – Jane
Dorsey – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Jane (or “Hanna”) Dorsey was suspected of poisoning six or
eight persons, including four husbands “Her first husband was Dan Sanley, who
died of sunstroke two years after his marriage, she says. The second was John
Temple, who, after living six years with her, went from bronchitis to
consumption and died. Her third, Albert Conklin, died in Illinois of congestion
of the brain, she says, after living three years with her. Her fourth was
Joseph Stenett, who died in the spring of 1890. Mrs. Dorsey was married to her
present husband last February. Coroner Manker says: ‘Clippings from papers at
the time show that Conklin worked where he was employed the day before his
death, and, instead of dying from congestion of the brain, died of a violent
stomach trouble.’”
1954 – Daisie
“Nanny” Doss – Tulsa, Oklahoma, USA (*)
Nannie Doss, “The Giggling Granny,” as news reporters dubbed her, was not only a champion black widow husband-killer (with four spousal kills to her credit) but also further serial murders dating back to the 1920s – her own children, her sisters, her mother, a nephew, a grandson – giving her a total kill number of eleven.
Nannie Doss, “The Giggling Granny,” as news reporters dubbed her, was not only a champion black widow husband-killer (with four spousal kills to her credit) but also further serial murders dating back to the 1920s – her own children, her sisters, her mother, a nephew, a grandson – giving her a total kill number of eleven.
***
1933 – Florica
Duma – Villagos, Arad, Romania
“Florica Duma was arrested on suspicion of selling poison to
dozens of local; villagers to be used
for murder. ‘The medicine was only a love potion,’ pleaded the old woman. ‘Then
give some to your cat,’ ordered the police chief. The old woman did so and the
white cat writhed in agony and died. It was found that the old woman distilled
arsenic from fly-papers and concocted a poison draught. The women who assisted
her to distribute the medicine to unhappy wives or husbands seeking release
received only a few pence for each mission. The old sorceress was content to
get a few shillings for accomplishing a murder.”
***
1862 – Marianne
Dumollard – Montiuel, Rhone-Alpes, France
Marie and Martin Dumollard were a serial killer couple who “lured young women to their house in Lyon with the promise of work. Once the victims were inside their home they were strangled and their bodies buried around the killers’ cottage. The couple’s murderous campaign came to an end when a victim escaped and went to police. Martin was beheaded and Marie sent to the galleys.”
***
Marie and Martin Dumollard were a serial killer couple who “lured young women to their house in Lyon with the promise of work. Once the victims were inside their home they were strangled and their bodies buried around the killers’ cottage. The couple’s murderous campaign came to an end when a victim escaped and went to police. Martin was beheaded and Marie sent to the galleys.”
***
1925
– Anna Dvoracek –
Trebic (Trebitsch), Moldavia (Czech)
Anna,
her husband, and seven other men charged with having murdered and robbed Polish
refugees from the ravages of World War I. The Dvoraceks confessed to eight
murders in all. Bodies were dismembers, put in sacks and thrown into the river.
The Dvoracek couple and one other defendant we convicted and sentenced to
death. The sentences were later commuted to life in prison and hard labor.
***
1896 – Amelia Dyer – Caversham, England (*)
Because there was a great deal of press preceding the discovery of the person responsible for murdering babies whose corpses were found with a tell-tale strip of cloth around the neck dumped in the river, and because she was executed for her crimes, who estimated number was enormous, Amelia Dyer is still the most well-known of homicidal “baby farmers,” Yet there have been a great many of these “baby farmers” who were every bit as sadistic, every bit as murderous and just as prolific as she, yet who have been largely – or completely – ignored by historians of crime and forensic psychologists.
***
1870 – Julia
von Ebergenyi – Munich, Germany; Vienna, Austria
This is a case that requires further research. Julia von Ebergenyi, an infamous high-life Vamp,
was convicted of one murder and, according to one English language report,
confessed to an additional two murders.
***
1928 – Nora Edwards – Poplar Bluff, Missouri, USA
Mrs. Nora Edwards was suspected of murdering 15-year-old step-son, her 12-year-old daughter and two husbands. When she was arrested, at the age of 38, for attempting to murder her third husband she was under a two-year prison sentence for burglarizing the home of a neighbor. She was convicted of attempting to kill her third husband, J. W. Edwards, 60, by administering poison to him. Her punishment for that crime was fixed at five years imprisonment.
***
1952 – Roberta Elder – Atlanta, Georgia, USA
Roberta Elder, arrested at the age of 43, was jailed for the poison death of her husband and a step-child. Her suspected victims of include 3 husbands (including “common law husband”), four of her children, three step-children, her mother, her grandchild, a cousin, and the former wife of a husband.
***
1650 – Catalina de Erauso – Spain & New Spain
Catalina de Erauso joined the army, became a second lieutenant, and served under her
older brother Michael in New Spain, fighting the Indians. But Catalina had a
hair-trigger temper and a real talent with pistols, daggers, and swords. Not
counting battlefield slayings, she murdered eight men, only one of whom she was
sorry about – the “mistaken identity” killing of her own sibling in a nighttime
duel.
***
1635 – Elizabeth Evans – London, England
***
1851 – Nancy Farrer – Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Nancy Farrer was suspected of murdering over 20 persons; confirmed poisonings include 5 deaths, and 2 persons who recovered from poisoning. Her case was a major landmark in the development of the insanity defense in US law. Her lawyer, the young Rutherford B. Hayes, made his name on this litigation. His successful career culminated in being elected president of the United States.
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1635 – Elizabeth Evans – London, England
Thomas Sherwood and Elizabeth Evans, known as “Country Tom”
and “ Canterbury Bess,” were London murderers. They “rolled drunks.” Bess would
locate a tipsy man in a public place and then entice him to a remote location
where her partner would rob and murder him. At least five men were butchered by
Tom and Bess. They were caught, however, and executed on the Newgate gallows on
April 17, 1635.
1851 – Nancy Farrer – Cincinnati, Ohio, USA
Nancy Farrer was suspected of murdering over 20 persons; confirmed poisonings include 5 deaths, and 2 persons who recovered from poisoning. Her case was a major landmark in the development of the insanity defense in US law. Her lawyer, the young Rutherford B. Hayes, made his name on this litigation. His successful career culminated in being elected president of the United States.
***
1939 – Carina
Favato – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Carina Favato was a central figure of the Philadelphia
poisoning gang that newspapers dubbed “Arsenic Incorporated.” She murdered her
lover with “miracle water,” a product which was actually an arsenic solution,
which was so successful at “solving problems,” that Carina go a reputation and
a following – of customers who wanted her wares. “Business became so lucrative
for Mrs. Favato that she set up Polselli in the undertaking profession. That
provided additional income for burial of the murder victims. Now both are
serving life terms.”
***
1929 – Szuszanna Fazekas (Olah) – Nagyrev, Hungary
Fazakas was one of the main ringleaders of a large murder-for-hire syndicate centered located in Hungary’s Tisza Valley. She was a midwife who lived in Nagayrev a village whose population, when combined with the neighboring hamlet of Tiszakurt was about 1,400. Fazakas sold poison, almost exclusively to women, who wished to get rid of a husband, or a relative, or a lover, or a rival. The series of poisonings associated with the syndicate began in 1914 and continued with great frequency for fifteen years, when the scheme came to a screeching halt. When police raided her cottage she was ready for them, drinking a cup of her own arsenic concoction in their presence and dying just a few hours later. Her victims are estimated to have been over a hundred.
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka]
***Fazakas was one of the main ringleaders of a large murder-for-hire syndicate centered located in Hungary’s Tisza Valley. She was a midwife who lived in Nagayrev a village whose population, when combined with the neighboring hamlet of Tiszakurt was about 1,400. Fazakas sold poison, almost exclusively to women, who wished to get rid of a husband, or a relative, or a lover, or a rival. The series of poisonings associated with the syndicate began in 1914 and continued with great frequency for fifteen years, when the scheme came to a screeching halt. When police raided her cottage she was ready for them, drinking a cup of her own arsenic concoction in their presence and dying just a few hours later. Her victims are estimated to have been over a hundred.
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka]
1937 – Bernice Felton – Rockford, Illinois, USA
With her 23-year-old ex-con boyfriend,
Lester Brockelhurst, 18-year-old Bernice Felton robbed and murdered at least
three men. After the couple’s arrest, Lester confessed to three murders. They
were tried separately. Lester was found guilty, with sentence undetermined. The
day after Lester’s conviction, Berniece was tried. The jury of 11 farmers and a
merchant acquitted her. Two months later, Lester was sentenced to death. His
last words, after being strapped to the electric chair, were: “The only thing
that brought me down to this was a slight love affair with a girl. I don't want
her to get the chair, but she is just as guilty as I.”
***
1960 – Marie Fikackova – Susice, Czechoslovakia
Marie Fikáčková (24), a maternity ward nurse at the Sušice
District Hospital brutally murdered newborn baby Autopsies proved that a serious brain
injury was the cause of death in both cases. One of them even has
broken arms. Marie confessed: “When I was pressing little Prosserová’s head, I
could feel my fingers sinking into it. I did not feel any skull cracking at
that time. I was just pressing the little head and my fingers got deeper and
deeper. My anger faded away after a while and I could continue working.” Marie was suspected of murdering others.
***
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1952 – Yvonne Fletcher – Newton, Australia
Yvone Fletcher was the first Australian to use Thallium as a murder weapon. With it, she murdered two husbands and poisoned two women, resulkting in the premanent blinding of one of them.
***
1845 – Sarah Freeman – Bridgewater, England
Sarah was believed to have murdered her mother, husband, brother and son in order to collect insurance money. She was tried and convicted on the strongest case, the murder of Charles Dimond, her brother. Sarah Freeman was hanged on the 23rd of April, 1845.
***
Winona shot to death her mother-in-law and father-in-law in 1924 and had plotted to kill her husband. After serving time she went on to murder two more men, in 1946 and 1953. Winnie was what you might call a really cheeky type of sociopath. Listen to what she had to say for herself in 1924: “Who ever heard of a woman being electrocuted or hanged in Arkansas?” she demands whenever the death penalty is mentioned to her. Furthermore she is not remorseful. “I’m not sorry for my deeds, she repeats again and again. “I planned both murders, thinking them all out thoroughly in advance. Now that I have admitted everything, I am willing to meet whatever fate awaits me.” Winnie served some time, escaped, was recaptured, got released, and went on to murder: again and again. She was nicknamed “Cat Woman” menagerie of over twenty cats.
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1893 – Lizzie Halliday – Burlingham, New York, USA
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1926 – Mae Hamilton – Okmulgee, Oklahoma, USA
Mae Hamilton was formally charged with three murders and an additional three suspicious deaths investigated. Her trial for murder ended with a hung jury – 7 to 5 for conviction – after 43-and-a-half hours’ deliberation, on May 3, 1927. Although a retrial was intended no newspaper reports of a second trial have been yet located.
***
1947 – Ruedell Harrison – Rock Island, Missouri, USA
Mysterious Rudell Harrison claimed to be a serial killer, yet no evidence came to light.
***
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1911 – Linda Burfield Hazzard – Olalla, Washington, USA
Dr. Hazzard was suspected of wrongfully causing the deaths of at least 18 persons. “She created a ‘sanitarium’, Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington, where in-patients fasted for days, weeks or months, with a diet of small amounts of tomato and asparagus soup and little else. While some patients survived and publicly sang her praises, more than 40 patients died under her care, most from starvation. Local residents knew the place as ‘Starvation Heights.’ In 1912 she was convicted of manslaughter for the death of Claire Williamson, a wealthy British woman of 33 years, who weighed less than 50 pounds at the time of her death.” [Murderpedia.com]
In 1938 Dr. Hazzard died while attempting a fasting cure on herself.
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1917 – Leopoldine Kasparek – Vienna, Austria
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1887 – Kate & Kit Kelly (Kelly Family) – No Man’s Land, Kansas, USA
The Kellys were one of three nineteenth century serial murder clans operating in Kansas (the others being the Benders and the Stafflebacks). They operated in a region called No Man’s Land. The youngest of the serial murderers was daughter “Kit,” only 18 years old. When the family realized they were suspected they tried to high-tail it to Mexico but were run down by a posse. Papa Kelly, just before he was strung up confesses, saying that “he and all the members of his family were equally guilty. He said they had killed and robbed nine men and two women.” All the Kellys met the same fate.
***
1889 – Jessie King – Stockbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland
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1903 – Marie Knauer – San Francisco, California, USA (Chicago; Germany)
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1912 – Louise Lindloff – Chicago, Illinois, USA
Louise Lindloff was a clairvoyant who serially poisoned her whole family for insurance money and after her arrest claimed their spirits were visiting her to protect her from false charges. She claimed her crystal ball contained a tear of Cleopatra. Despite her seances she was convicted of murder. Her lawyer was a flamboyant character, the man who is thought to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald's model for Gatsby.
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1903 – Mary McKnight – Kalkaska, Michigan, USA
“Mrs. Mary McKnight, who has been called a modern Borgia because of her confession to the murder of her brother, his wife and baby, and who is suspected of having caused the deaths of eight other persons by the stealthy administration of strychnine during the past fifteen years, has lived in Kalkaska, Mich., all her life, respected and supposedly sane. But for a filing of a mortgage with the figures raised, alleged to have given her by her brother, the crimes might never have been discovered. She first confessed to one murder, then at other times to two others, and it is thought she will tell of the killing of some of the other persons, including two of her former husbands.”
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1906 – Martha Petromany – Knees (Satchinez), Temesvar, Romania ("Hungary")
***
1928 – Anujade Poshtonja (Anna Pistova, Baba Anujka) – Vladimirovac, Yugoslavia (Serbia)
Anujka de Poshtonja was called “The Witch of Vladimirovac.” Born into a prosperous family, Anujka became rich from selling poison (which she told police was “love potion”) the wives of wealthy farmers poison. She was over 90 when she was finally prosecuted and sentenced to prison. When Anujka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the young police sergeant who came to her, he reported. “I work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying day. Don’t play with the forces of evil.”
1884 – Catherine Flannigan & Margaret
Higgins (Flannagan) – Liverpool, England (*)
Serial killer sisters Catherine
Flannagan and Margaret Higgins were suspected of a long series of
murders including Margaret’s husband Thomas Higgins, an 18-year-old female
lodger, Higgins’ 10-year-old, step-daughter, and Catherin’s 22-year-old son,
John Flannagan. “Police inquiries that continued
after the double execution suggested that the sisters might have poisoned
several other family members, friends and lodgers, for the small insurance
payouts.”
Mr. Jennings, former lodger testified during the trial that:
“During my daughter’s illness Mrs. Flannigan frequently administered medicine
to her, which she said she obtained from the “sixpenny doctor’s” in Walton
road.” “When she was absent her sister (the wife of the deceased man, Thomas
Higgins) gave the medicine. After that I was afraid to live in Mrs Flannigan’s
house any longer, and took fresh lodgings.”
***
1952 – Yvonne Fletcher – Newton, Australia
Yvone Fletcher was the first Australian to use Thallium as a murder weapon. With it, she murdered two husbands and poisoned two women, resulkting in the premanent blinding of one of them.
***
1929 – Juliana
Foeldvary – Nagyrev, Hungary
“Mrs. Foeldvary, widow of a wealthy farmer, was charged with poisoning her husband, mother and her lover Ladislas Toth.” “After partaking of soup which Mme. Foldvari had sent him when he was at work in the fields, Toth died in great agony. His exhumation also revealed the presence of arsenic.”
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
***“Mrs. Foeldvary, widow of a wealthy farmer, was charged with poisoning her husband, mother and her lover Ladislas Toth.” “After partaking of soup which Mme. Foldvari had sent him when he was at work in the fields, Toth died in great agony. His exhumation also revealed the presence of arsenic.”
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
1845 – Sarah Freeman – Bridgewater, England
Sarah was believed to have murdered her mother, husband, brother and son in order to collect insurance money. She was tried and convicted on the strongest case, the murder of Charles Dimond, her brother. Sarah Freeman was hanged on the 23rd of April, 1845.
***
1954 – Winnie
Ola Freeman (Winola Green) – Little Rock, Arkansas, USA
Winona shot to death her mother-in-law and father-in-law in 1924 and had plotted to kill her husband. After serving time she went on to murder two more men, in 1946 and 1953. Winnie was what you might call a really cheeky type of sociopath. Listen to what she had to say for herself in 1924: “Who ever heard of a woman being electrocuted or hanged in Arkansas?” she demands whenever the death penalty is mentioned to her. Furthermore she is not remorseful. “I’m not sorry for my deeds, she repeats again and again. “I planned both murders, thinking them all out thoroughly in advance. Now that I have admitted everything, I am willing to meet whatever fate awaits me.” Winnie served some time, escaped, was recaptured, got released, and went on to murder: again and again. She was nicknamed “Cat Woman” menagerie of over twenty cats.
***
1935 – Dora
Bullock Frost – Houston,
Texas, USA
***
Mrs. Dora Bullock Frost, 46, and husband George Washington
Frost, 40, were suspected of murdering Mrs. Frost’s 17-year-old son; the boy’s
father, her former husband, her 10-month-old baby boy; her 10-year-old
daughter. Mr. Frost was an insurance salesman, recently fired from his job.
All the dead family members had been insured, the policies totaling $4,515.
Three of the suspected murder victims had traces of poison in their viscera.
The Frosts were never successfully convicted.
1904 – Rachel
Galtie – Auch, France
“In the trial of Rachel Galtie, accused of poisoning her husband, brother, and grandmother, it was shown by the testimony of physicians that all of the deceased had come to their death by the administration of arsenic in small regular doses. … Testimony of neighbors and relatives showed that the prisoner was apparently very fond of the victims, and that during their life she had seemingly shown them every consideration. Mme. Galtie listened unmoved to all the damaging evidence produced against her.” “Prisoner was eventually adjudged guilty, and sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude. She took her sentence with the utmost coolness.” (from newspaper reports)
“In the trial of Rachel Galtie, accused of poisoning her husband, brother, and grandmother, it was shown by the testimony of physicians that all of the deceased had come to their death by the administration of arsenic in small regular doses. … Testimony of neighbors and relatives showed that the prisoner was apparently very fond of the victims, and that during their life she had seemingly shown them every consideration. Mme. Galtie listened unmoved to all the damaging evidence produced against her.” “Prisoner was eventually adjudged guilty, and sentenced to twenty years’ penal servitude. She took her sentence with the utmost coolness.” (from newspaper reports)
***
1925 – Helen
Geisen-Volk – New York, New York, USA
***
She is New York City’s worst serial killer.
Helen Geisen-Volk was a child care provider and child
trafficker who abused, battered and murdered scores of children, mostly babies.
In her own words: “Babies and animals should be disciplined all the same. When
they become unruly, I hold them under water or push them in closets or bang
them. I’ve trained children for 20 years that way.” An exchange at her trial:
“Didn’t fifty-three infants die in your place?” asked District Attorney Pecora.
“No,” was Mrs. Geisen-Volk’s reply. “There were only twelve or fourteen
deaths.”
A neighbor, Mrs. Josephine Kass, of the murderess saw such
“harrowing sights” that she suffered a nervous breakdown and moved away to
California. Another woman, the mother of one of the baby farmer’s victims,
little William Angerer, suffered a nervous breakdown as well.
***
1922 – Jozefina Gendek (Pasnik) (Józefina Paśnik) – Pruskow, Poland
Józefina Paśnik (40), nee Gendek, was accused of complicity in the murder of least seven women with her
serial killer husband 37-year-old Szczepan Paśnik in Warsaw area in the early
1922. They were convicted of only one murder and both executed by firing squad
on the slope of the Citadel of Warsaw on April 7th, 1922.
***
1928 – Bertha
Gifford – Catawissa, Missouri, USA
From a news report: “The ‘good samaritan,’ Mrs. Bertha Gifford, who was always ready to “sit up” with the sick and who watched eighteen persons die in paroxysms of pain caused, the state believes, by the poison she administered, must spend the rest of her life in an insane asylum. A jury … found the ‘poison woman’ not guilty of the murder of Ed Brinley ‘on the sole ground that she was insane at the time of the commission of the offense and has not recovered from such insanity.’ The verdict was reached after three hours and twenty-five minutes deliberation over the testimony that showed that she had calmly poisoned one man and two small children.”
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From a news report: “The ‘good samaritan,’ Mrs. Bertha Gifford, who was always ready to “sit up” with the sick and who watched eighteen persons die in paroxysms of pain caused, the state believes, by the poison she administered, must spend the rest of her life in an insane asylum. A jury … found the ‘poison woman’ not guilty of the murder of Ed Brinley ‘on the sole ground that she was insane at the time of the commission of the offense and has not recovered from such insanity.’ The verdict was reached after three hours and twenty-five minutes deliberation over the testimony that showed that she had calmly poisoned one man and two small children.”
***
1908 – Jeanne
Gilbert – St.-Amand-Montrand, France
Jeanne
Gilbert, the wife of a farmer living near Bourges (France), was recently
sentenced to penal servitude for life for having murdered four relatives and
tried to murder four other persons by poisoning them with arsenic. The
deliberations with which the crimes were committed, and the callous attitude of
the murderess, caused intense public interest in the case, and Bourges was
thronged with spectators during the trial. Jeanne Gilbert was discontented with
her life in the country, and she deliberately poisoned her mother, her
mother-in-law, her father-in-law, and a cousin, in order to obtain small amounts
of property in each case, with the ultimate intention of leaving the district.
1929 – Okal
Gorham & Ethel Lewis – St. Joseph, Michigan, USA
“A confession signed by Mrs. Okal Gorham, 25, said the babies were poisoned or strangled to death by herself and her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 57. She could give no reason for the acts but said she and her mother frequently quarreled over family matters.” “Mrs. Gorham, in one confession said seven babies had been killed but later changed her story saying only five were murdered. Three of those were her own and the other two her mother’s she said. One of her babies she wheeled 12 miles to Eau Claire, Wis., in a baby carriage to commit the murder, the confession said. “The murders were revealed when the coroner became suspicious over the death of the last infant.”
“A confession signed by Mrs. Okal Gorham, 25, said the babies were poisoned or strangled to death by herself and her mother, Mrs. Ethel Lewis, 57. She could give no reason for the acts but said she and her mother frequently quarreled over family matters.” “Mrs. Gorham, in one confession said seven babies had been killed but later changed her story saying only five were murdered. Three of those were her own and the other two her mother’s she said. One of her babies she wheeled 12 miles to Eau Claire, Wis., in a baby carriage to commit the murder, the confession said. “The murders were revealed when the coroner became suspicious over the death of the last infant.”
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1907 – Marie
Vere Goold – Marseilles, France
Mrs. Goold seems to have been a serial killer. She had been
married three times. Crime historian Jay Robert Nash notes that her earlier
life had been one of an “adventuress” and that “her first two husbands died
mysteriously,” adding that “there may have been more husbands who met the same
fate.”
***
1831 – Gesche
Gottfried – Bremen, Germany (*)
From a contemporary report: Gesche Gottried’s “case presents the most unprecedented riddle on record. Though the offender stands accused with the poisoning of both her parents, three children, one brother, two husbands, one suitor, two pregnant women, friends male and female, helpless children, and domestic companions; though accused of adultery, false-witnessing, perjury, theft, calumny, and swindling, she seems endued with a singular mildness of temper, appears to possess a decided inclination to kind and benevolent acts, and betrays outward susceptibility for what is noble and generous.”
From a contemporary report: Gesche Gottried’s “case presents the most unprecedented riddle on record. Though the offender stands accused with the poisoning of both her parents, three children, one brother, two husbands, one suitor, two pregnant women, friends male and female, helpless children, and domestic companions; though accused of adultery, false-witnessing, perjury, theft, calumny, and swindling, she seems endued with a singular mildness of temper, appears to possess a decided inclination to kind and benevolent acts, and betrays outward susceptibility for what is noble and generous.”
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1953 – Caroline
Grills – Gladesville (Sydney), Australia
Caroline Grills, known as “Aunt Thally” (a play on words derived from the murder method: thallium poisoning) murdered four family members, and attempted to kill three others, with thallium placed in tea. She was convicted on October 15, 1953 and sentenced death, but her sentence was later changed to life in prison.
Caroline Grills, known as “Aunt Thally” (a play on words derived from the murder method: thallium poisoning) murdered four family members, and attempted to kill three others, with thallium placed in tea. She was convicted on October 15, 1953 and sentenced death, but her sentence was later changed to life in prison.
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1865 – Martha
Grinder – Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, USA
“There was not the slightest motive of gain or animosity in any of [Martha Grinder’s] murders. She killed them, and admitted so at the last, simply for the love of taking life, and of seeing suffering. She was an expert in administering the poison, her skill no doubt being gained by her long practice, and she graduated her doses so as to cause her helpless victims the greatest and most protracted suffering. Their deaths were always, it is said by persons who remember, of a most horrible character, enough to move a heart of stone. …
Her confession was a remarkable revelation of human depravity. She had become obsessed with the liking for scenes of moral agony, and her mania went even farther, making her revel in coming into contact with dead bodies, which she loved to handle and prepare for burial.
In the early stages of this monomania she tried to satisfy her cravings of bereavement, and by assisting in bathing and dressing the remains. These natural deaths came too infrequently to satisfy her, however, so she desperately started out to manufacture funerals by supplying the dead bodies.”
“There was not the slightest motive of gain or animosity in any of [Martha Grinder’s] murders. She killed them, and admitted so at the last, simply for the love of taking life, and of seeing suffering. She was an expert in administering the poison, her skill no doubt being gained by her long practice, and she graduated her doses so as to cause her helpless victims the greatest and most protracted suffering. Their deaths were always, it is said by persons who remember, of a most horrible character, enough to move a heart of stone. …
Her confession was a remarkable revelation of human depravity. She had become obsessed with the liking for scenes of moral agony, and her mania went even farther, making her revel in coming into contact with dead bodies, which she loved to handle and prepare for burial.
In the early stages of this monomania she tried to satisfy her cravings of bereavement, and by assisting in bathing and dressing the remains. These natural deaths came too infrequently to satisfy her, however, so she desperately started out to manufacture funerals by supplying the dead bodies.”
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1902
– Jennie O. Guild –
Sheldonville, Massachusetts, USA
In
1902 Jennie Guild, 44, of Massachusetts married elderly man who died six weeks
following marriage. She confessed to forging her late husband’s signature on a
legal instrument. The death of 72-year old Benjamin Guild prompted inquiry of
the mysterious deaths of her previous husband, a Mr. Wilbur, and their two
children.
***
1908 – Belle
Gunness – LaPorte, Indiana, USA (*)
The case of Belle Gunness (“The Female Bluebeard,” “Hell’s Belle”) is at the same time one of the most horrible criminal cases in US history as well as one of the nation’s greatest crime mysteries. It is still unresolved whether she died in the fire of April 28, 1908 or made an escape. She had been investigated as a probable murderess by private detectives hired by families of missing men for some time preceding the fire that drew attention to what was soon called her “murder farm.” She lured prospective husbands with personal ads in newspapers. Her death toll is often estimated to be more than 40. In earlier years been a baby farmer and it is quite likely that she, like so many other baby farmers, committed a large number of murders of children while conducting that enterprise.
The case of Belle Gunness (“The Female Bluebeard,” “Hell’s Belle”) is at the same time one of the most horrible criminal cases in US history as well as one of the nation’s greatest crime mysteries. It is still unresolved whether she died in the fire of April 28, 1908 or made an escape. She had been investigated as a probable murderess by private detectives hired by families of missing men for some time preceding the fire that drew attention to what was soon called her “murder farm.” She lured prospective husbands with personal ads in newspapers. Her death toll is often estimated to be more than 40. In earlier years been a baby farmer and it is quite likely that she, like so many other baby farmers, committed a large number of murders of children while conducting that enterprise.
***
1938 – Anna
Marie Hahn – Cincinnati, Ohio, USA (*)
Anna Marie Hahn was a live-in nursing attendant who preyed upon elderly men. She would manipulate five men into allowing her to seize their money and property before murdering them. She was unique among serial killers in that use used a different poison for each of the five murders. Hahn was sentenced to death and was the first woman to die in the electric chair.
Anna Marie Hahn was a live-in nursing attendant who preyed upon elderly men. She would manipulate five men into allowing her to seize their money and property before murdering them. She was unique among serial killers in that use used a different poison for each of the five murders. Hahn was sentenced to death and was the first woman to die in the electric chair.
***
1893 – Lizzie Halliday – Burlingham, New York, USA
Lizzie Halliday, known in New York state in her day as “the
worst woman on earth, murdered at least
six persons, attempted to murder two others and is suspected of having murdered
others. Among her victims were two husbands – one of whom survived a poisoning
attempt – a retarded step-son, two neighbor women and two attendants in the
insane asylum where she was sent in lieu of execution for three 1893 murders.
One of the female attendants survived a strangling in 1895, the other Lizzie
stabbed with scissors more than 200 times.
1926 – Mae Hamilton – Okmulgee, Oklahoma, USA
Mae Hamilton was formally charged with three murders and an additional three suspicious deaths investigated. Her trial for murder ended with a hung jury – 7 to 5 for conviction – after 43-and-a-half hours’ deliberation, on May 3, 1927. Although a retrial was intended no newspaper reports of a second trial have been yet located.
***
1947 – Ruedell Harrison – Rock Island, Missouri, USA
Mysterious Rudell Harrison claimed to be a serial killer, yet no evidence came to light.
***
1930 – Mary
E. Hartman – Long Beach, California, USA
Mrs. Mary Hartman, whose husband, son and daughter died under circumstances which police described as mysterious, was held in technical custody pending an investigation. Mrs. Hartman’s detention followed discovery by autopsy surgeons yesterday of a poison in vital organs of Ruth Hartman, 14, who died April 14, 1930. Mrs. Hartman, was beneficiary of insurance policies held by all three recently family members. Alienists who have observed the woman expressed the belief she was unbalanced mentally. To all questions she made no reply except: “I love them; how could I have killed them?” No news reports of a trial have yet been located.
Mrs. Mary Hartman, whose husband, son and daughter died under circumstances which police described as mysterious, was held in technical custody pending an investigation. Mrs. Hartman’s detention followed discovery by autopsy surgeons yesterday of a poison in vital organs of Ruth Hartman, 14, who died April 14, 1930. Mrs. Hartman, was beneficiary of insurance policies held by all three recently family members. Alienists who have observed the woman expressed the belief she was unbalanced mentally. To all questions she made no reply except: “I love them; how could I have killed them?” No news reports of a trial have yet been located.
***
1938 – Moulay
Hassen – Fez, Morocco
Hassen, once a famous dancer became a madame for
prostitutes, kidnapped, tortured and serially murdered many young women (as well
as boys). She was discovered to be a serial killer following the discovery of
dismembered body parts of one of her victims. She fed human flesh to her cats.
She was convicted and sentenced to death, but due to her powerful political
connections she was freed to continue her criminal career. Convicted of new
crimes she was sentenced to only 15 years in prison.
***
Jane Hattersley was a young servant who had been committing adultery with her master for a
number of years. On a number of occasions she had became pregnant and murdered
the newborn child. After the third infanticide she was reported to authorities, she was convicted of murder and executed.
***
1924 – Annie
Hauptrief – San Marcos, Texas, USA
Annie Hauptrief poisoned four step-children, who died, and
husband, who survived. Murdered previous husband. The first murder involved a
suicide pact with a husband. The husband drank the poison draught – and died –
Annie did not. She committed suicide in jail while awaiting trial.
***
1911 – Linda Burfield Hazzard – Olalla, Washington, USA
Dr. Hazzard was suspected of wrongfully causing the deaths of at least 18 persons. “She created a ‘sanitarium’, Wilderness Heights, in Olalla, Washington, where in-patients fasted for days, weeks or months, with a diet of small amounts of tomato and asparagus soup and little else. While some patients survived and publicly sang her praises, more than 40 patients died under her care, most from starvation. Local residents knew the place as ‘Starvation Heights.’ In 1912 she was convicted of manslaughter for the death of Claire Williamson, a wealthy British woman of 33 years, who weighed less than 50 pounds at the time of her death.” [Murderpedia.com]
In 1938 Dr. Hazzard died while attempting a fasting cure on herself.
1940 – Emma
Heppermann – Wentzville, Missouri, USA
Emma Heppermann, whom we might fairly dub “The Potato Soup
Killer,” was suspected of murdering up to six husbands, a mother-in-law,
possibly a daughter, and to have poisoned a step-daughter, who survived due to
diagnosis following her father’s death. At the trial for the murder of Tony
Heppermann Alphonse Schneider, brother of husband number six: “She told me three times she wanted to kill
me,” he testified. “One day, in the midst of a quarrel, she said she wanted to
cook me some soup.” Schneider leaned close to the jury and said, “I sure am
glad I didn’t eat any of that soup.”
In a deposition read at an inquest, Dr. J. L. Neubeiser, who
treated Mr. Heppermann at a hospital here, said the farmer made “a ‘dying
declaration’ that he believed his wife had poisoned him.” She was convicted of
the murder of her last husband, Tony Heppermann. The jury took three ballots
before sentencing her to live on account of two jurors who on first ballot
held out for the death penalty.
***
1890 – Julia
Higbee – Meade County, Kentucky, USA
The oddest thing about this case is that despite overwhelming evidence, the father of the four dead children (and the one who survived), still maintained his wife’s innocence of the charges against her, and declared that she was “any thing but an insane woman.”
The oddest thing about this case is that despite overwhelming evidence, the father of the four dead children (and the one who survived), still maintained his wife’s innocence of the charges against her, and declared that she was “any thing but an insane woman.”
***
1946 – Bertha
Gossett Hill – Rome, Georgia, USA
Bertha Gossett Hill murdered her father first and four
months later her mother. Her husband was next. She poisoned him on Valentine’s
Day 1946. She collected life insurance on all three. She was indicted for all
three murders. First she was tried for her husband’s murder and found guilty.
She was granted a retrial on appeal. While still in county jail, Bertha, 26,
she married her 20-year-old boyfriend. She was again convicted. The pending
charges for the murder of her parents were dropped in 1952, allowing her to
seek parole, but parole was denied. She was again awarded a retrial in 1957.
Because prosecutors could no longer provide the witnesses Bertha was ordered to
be released in 1960.
***
1960 – Erzabet Papp Holhos – Moldles, Hungary
Erzsébet Papp, Mrs. János Holhós, the
"nicotine killer,” who was executed for her crimes: four murders. She was
married twice and had four daughters. A child by her second husband died at the
age of three months during the period of her murders, and might itself have
been murdered.
***
***
1895 – Charlotte
Howell – Tioga, Pennsylvania, USA
Charlotte Howell was tried for the poison murder of a
19-year-old who had been lodging with her. The evidence presented which placed
the blame elsewhere was bizarre to say the least. The jury did not convict her.
Mrs. Howell was also suspected of two earlier poison murders – of her
husbnand’s first with and daughter.
***
1948 – Miyuki Ishikawa –
Tokyo, Japan
With her husband, Takeshi Ishikawa, Mrs. Miyuki Ishikawa operated the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital in Shinjuku. Estimates of the number of children murdered by the couple range from 85 to 169. An early news report of the case: “Police said today they may have uncovered a baby "murder mill" in which 40 or more infants died. They arrested an undertaker and a man and wife who operated a nursery. The undertaker, when seized, had a basket attached to his bicycle and inside was the body of an infant. Police said questioning of the undertaker led them to the nursery, where they found four more infant bodies stuffed into orange crates. Neighbors told police the nursery operators advertised they believed the undertaker had a working agreement with the man and wife to dispose of the bodies.”
Miyuki Isikawa was convicted and sentenced originally to eight years in prison, later commuted to four years. The husband and other accomplices received shorter sentences.
With her husband, Takeshi Ishikawa, Mrs. Miyuki Ishikawa operated the Kotobuki Maternity Hospital in Shinjuku. Estimates of the number of children murdered by the couple range from 85 to 169. An early news report of the case: “Police said today they may have uncovered a baby "murder mill" in which 40 or more infants died. They arrested an undertaker and a man and wife who operated a nursery. The undertaker, when seized, had a basket attached to his bicycle and inside was the body of an infant. Police said questioning of the undertaker led them to the nursery, where they found four more infant bodies stuffed into orange crates. Neighbors told police the nursery operators advertised they believed the undertaker had a working agreement with the man and wife to dispose of the bodies.”
Miyuki Isikawa was convicted and sentenced originally to eight years in prison, later commuted to four years. The husband and other accomplices received shorter sentences.
1925 – Pearl
Jackson – Birmingham, Alabama, USA
Pearl and Odell Jackson, a black couple living in
Birmingham, Alabama, were convicted of an axe-murder. “The killing was one of
Birmingham’s long series of axe crimes which covered a period of three years
and claimed 26 lives in addition to the serious wounding of 21 other persons,
both white and negroes.” The state’s star witness, testified that the couple
had confided in her that they “planned to go out and rob some white man for
money. They took an axe, she said, and declared they were going ‘skulling.’”
They had both confessed, yet their statements, and thus their actual guilt, was challenged since they had been given scopolamine (“truth serum”) before the confessions had been made. Yet the confessions of the five were consistent with one another and with statements made about details that were made when not drugged. They were convicted and sentenced to death. On three occasions, they were given a reprieve for the death sentence just before they were to be hanged.
The guilt of those convicted of the particular murder they were tried for is still an open question.
They had both confessed, yet their statements, and thus their actual guilt, was challenged since they had been given scopolamine (“truth serum”) before the confessions had been made. Yet the confessions of the five were consistent with one another and with statements made about details that were made when not drugged. They were convicted and sentenced to death. On three occasions, they were given a reprieve for the death sentence just before they were to be hanged.
The guilt of those convicted of the particular murder they were tried for is still an open question.
***
1835 – Margarete
Jäger (Jaeger, Joyer) – Mentz, Swabia (Germany)
“Margaret Jaeyer, a widow,
and servant to S. K. Rentner, also a widow, both about thirty-eight years of
age, are accused; the first of having killed by poison eight persons, all of
whom, except one, were her near
relations: the latter, of having
poisoned her husband at the instigation
of her servant.” They were tried, found guilty, and executed.
1895 – Maria
Jager – Hodmezovassarhely, Hungary
Maria Jager is unusual in having made a living as a serial killer in two separate enterprises in her village in Hungary. She started off as a midwife and “baby farmer” (archaic term for child care provider) who murdered babies for a fee. Later in life she switched to selling poison to those who wished to murder family members. She formed a small gang to help her in the business. In 1897 she was sentenced to life in prison for having participated in murdering a hundred men and women. A contemporary journalist noted that it “was her chiefest joy – to see the poison gripping at the vitals of the condemned. She watched their fight for life, and a fierce and horrible jubilation possessed her.”
Maria Jager is unusual in having made a living as a serial killer in two separate enterprises in her village in Hungary. She started off as a midwife and “baby farmer” (archaic term for child care provider) who murdered babies for a fee. Later in life she switched to selling poison to those who wished to murder family members. She formed a small gang to help her in the business. In 1897 she was sentenced to life in prison for having participated in murdering a hundred men and women. A contemporary journalist noted that it “was her chiefest joy – to see the poison gripping at the vitals of the condemned. She watched their fight for life, and a fierce and horrible jubilation possessed her.”
***
1880s – Sultana
Pangyan Inchi Jamela – Philippines
Excerpt of an account written originally in 1898 describing Sultana Pangyan Inchi Jamela: “The Sultana was not, perhaps, so commonplace a woman as some others. We were told that she had become the wife of the previous Sultan, after having killed two husbands; that she was not his first wife, but that the present Sultan was her son; that she had put him in succession to the throne by the simple process of poisoning his elder brother and sister, who were not her children, and their mother; and that she had then poisoned her husband, which made her son the Sultan.”
***Excerpt of an account written originally in 1898 describing Sultana Pangyan Inchi Jamela: “The Sultana was not, perhaps, so commonplace a woman as some others. We were told that she had become the wife of the previous Sultan, after having killed two husbands; that she was not his first wife, but that the present Sultan was her son; that she had put him in succession to the throne by the simple process of poisoning his elder brother and sister, who were not her children, and their mother; and that she had then poisoned her husband, which made her son the Sultan.”
1956 – Virginia
B. Jaspers – New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Virginia B. Jaspers, a 200 pound pediatric nurse, admitted: causing the death in 1948 of the 7 week old son of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Hubbard of Guilford, Conn.; causing the death of the infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Willard Malkin is a concert soprano whose stage name is Joan Bainerd; inflicting a head injury on the 8 week old son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Seidel of New Haven; breaking the leg of the 3 month old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Schaffer of Woodbridge, Conn., in 1955.
“It was all uncontrollable,” Virginia B. Jaspers, 33, told Coroner James J. Corrigan. “I didn’t know why I did it. Children sometimes get on my nerves.” Police said she had “admitted shaking to death three infants because they got on her nerves or refused to take their formulas.”
Virginia B. Jaspers, a 200 pound pediatric nurse, admitted: causing the death in 1948 of the 7 week old son of Mr. and Mrs. Allen Hubbard of Guilford, Conn.; causing the death of the infant son of Mr. and Mrs. Willard Malkin is a concert soprano whose stage name is Joan Bainerd; inflicting a head injury on the 8 week old son of Mr. and Mrs. Harry Seidel of New Haven; breaking the leg of the 3 month old daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Marvin Schaffer of Woodbridge, Conn., in 1955.
“It was all uncontrollable,” Virginia B. Jaspers, 33, told Coroner James J. Corrigan. “I didn’t know why I did it. Children sometimes get on my nerves.” Police said she had “admitted shaking to death three infants because they got on her nerves or refused to take their formulas.”
***
1868 – Marie
Jeanneret – Geneva, Switzerland (*)
Marie Jeanneret was a nurse who murdered patients, employing atropine, the active ingredient in belladonna. She was convicted of having murdered five persons, but her toll of murders was much higher. “She was a clever woman with a highly nervous and excitable organization, and she seems to have no other motive for her crimes than a morbid love of the excitement of murder and a grim delight in witnessing the sufferings of her victims.”
Marie Jeanneret was a nurse who murdered patients, employing atropine, the active ingredient in belladonna. She was convicted of having murdered five persons, but her toll of murders was much higher. “She was a clever woman with a highly nervous and excitable organization, and she seems to have no other motive for her crimes than a morbid love of the excitement of murder and a grim delight in witnessing the sufferings of her victims.”
***
1851 – Hélène
Jégado – Rennes, France (*)
Between 1846 and 1850
Helene Jegao, a maid servant murdered 43 persons, poisoning them with arsenic.
“The victims were either her masters or mistresses, or fellow-servants, who had
incurred her hatred. The prisoner appeared to have been actuated by a thirst
for destruction, and to have taken pleasure in witnessing the agonies of her
victims.” She was tried for seven murders, found guilty, and executed.
***
1875 – Sofie
Johannesdotter – Fredrikshald (Halden), Norway
Between 1869 and 1875 Sofie Johannesdotter, a housemaid, murdered at least three persons (and suspected of three others) and poisoned another causing the victim to be partially paralyzed. She also burned down the house of her employer, site of her murders.
Between 1869 and 1875 Sofie Johannesdotter, a housemaid, murdered at least three persons (and suspected of three others) and poisoned another causing the victim to be partially paralyzed. She also burned down the house of her employer, site of her murders.
***
1899 – Lulu
Johnson – Enid, Oklahoma Territory, USA
“Mrs. Lulu Johnson is … being tried in the Oklahama territory, America, for systematically poisoning her husbands. Of these she had six, and all are suspected of having met their end by means of arsenic, administered by their wife. … Lulu had run off with an an acting company and the wife of the actor with whom she was having an affair “openly accused Mrs. Johnson of having murdered her former husbands, partly out of deliberate sin and sometimes for gain. The accusation being made in public, someone got the authorities to exhume a few of the deceased husbands, and to have their remains examined. As arsenic was found in every one of them Mrs. Johnson was arrested, and is now being tried for murder.”
“Mrs. Lulu Johnson is … being tried in the Oklahama territory, America, for systematically poisoning her husbands. Of these she had six, and all are suspected of having met their end by means of arsenic, administered by their wife. … Lulu had run off with an an acting company and the wife of the actor with whom she was having an affair “openly accused Mrs. Johnson of having murdered her former husbands, partly out of deliberate sin and sometimes for gain. The accusation being made in public, someone got the authorities to exhume a few of the deceased husbands, and to have their remains examined. As arsenic was found in every one of them Mrs. Johnson was arrested, and is now being tried for murder.”
***
1895 – Marie
Therese Joniaux-Ablay –
Antwerp, Belgium
Marie Therese Joniaux, a 52-year-old Antwerp socialite, wife of Belgium’s Chief state engineer of roads and bridges in the province of Antwerp, murdered three persons – her sister, brother and uncle – to obtain insurance money.
***
Marie Therese Joniaux, a 52-year-old Antwerp socialite, wife of Belgium’s Chief state engineer of roads and bridges in the province of Antwerp, murdered three persons – her sister, brother and uncle – to obtain insurance money.
***
1929 – Maria
Kardos – Nagyrev, Hungary
Maria Kardos was accused of the murder of her own son and husband and the attempted murder of the husband of a friend. She was found guilty and hanged at the Budapest Central Prison on January 13, 1931.
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
***Maria Kardos was accused of the murder of her own son and husband and the attempted murder of the husband of a friend. She was found guilty and hanged at the Budapest Central Prison on January 13, 1931.
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
1929 – Lisa
Karl – Rhiems, France
The prosecutor described Lisa Karl, 42, as “the most cowardly, cruel and abject woman” he had ever seen, heard or read of.” With her paramour, Albert Clarisse, was convicted of one murder and suspected of two others. She beat an elderly woman, an inn keeper, to death with a wine bottle, later the killer couple burned the body with gasoline. They were both sentenced to death. Lisa was not executed; Albert was.
The prosecutor described Lisa Karl, 42, as “the most cowardly, cruel and abject woman” he had ever seen, heard or read of.” With her paramour, Albert Clarisse, was convicted of one murder and suspected of two others. She beat an elderly woman, an inn keeper, to death with a wine bottle, later the killer couple burned the body with gasoline. They were both sentenced to death. Lisa was not executed; Albert was.
***
1917 – Leopoldine Kasparek – Vienna, Austria
Leopoldine
Kasparek “attempted at least 14 murders and robberies, and in four or five
cases she was successful. All of her victims were wealthy elderly women whose
confidence she won in some way. Her method was simple enough. After gaining
admittance to the apartments of the old ladies she strangled them into
insensibility and then ransacked the houses. Ten of her victims recovered, but
three were found dead and one died in a hospital.” … “One of her victims, a
woman named Marie Wurisch, who was half-blind, was not only half-strangled, but
was burned to death by Kasparek, who saturated her clothing with paraffin and
set fire to it, the house in which the woman dwelt being burned to the ground.”
***
1907
– Margarete Keil –
Vienna, Austria
Margarete Keil had five children; she murdered three
of them. “When the last child died again after the birth, an autopsy of the
corpse was made at once, and Hiebei revealed that the child had died from
poisoning with strychnine. The child murderer was arrested and, after a long
denial, confessed she had poisoned her three former children by giving
phosporous from matches in chamomile tea to the children to drink.
Characteristic of Keil is the following: When the news of the death of the last
child was delivered to her, she was just on the dance floor and said to the
messenger of death: ‘One time I'll dance before I go home.’”
***
1887 – Kate & Kit Kelly (Kelly Family) – No Man’s Land, Kansas, USA
The Kellys were one of three nineteenth century serial murder clans operating in Kansas (the others being the Benders and the Stafflebacks). They operated in a region called No Man’s Land. The youngest of the serial murderers was daughter “Kit,” only 18 years old. When the family realized they were suspected they tried to high-tail it to Mexico but were run down by a posse. Papa Kelly, just before he was strung up confesses, saying that “he and all the members of his family were equally guilty. He said they had killed and robbed nine men and two women.” All the Kellys met the same fate.
***
1889 – Jessie King – Stockbridge, Edinburgh, Scotland
***
1840 – Hanna
Hanson Kinney – Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Hanna Hanson
Kinney was acquitted in 1840 of murdering her third husband and the end of a
celebrated trial in Boston, yet she was not only likely to have murdered him
but also her second husband in 1835 and that husband’s father earlier thae same
year.
***
1922 – Tillie
Klimek – Chicago, Illinois, USA (*)
Ottilie “Tillie” Klimek (or Tillie Gburek), a Polish immigrant to Chicago, was a serial killer whose suspected victims numbered, in some estimates, twenty, all of whom were relatives or lovers, including three husbands. She pretended to have precognitive dreams, accurately predicting the dates of death of her victims. The crime for which she was eventually tried was the murder of Frank Kupczyk, her third husband. In June 1923 she was sentenced to life in prison, the harshest sentence that had ever been leveled against a woman in Cook County. Her fourth husband, whom she was in the process of slow-poisoning at the time of her arrest, survived.
Ottilie “Tillie” Klimek (or Tillie Gburek), a Polish immigrant to Chicago, was a serial killer whose suspected victims numbered, in some estimates, twenty, all of whom were relatives or lovers, including three husbands. She pretended to have precognitive dreams, accurately predicting the dates of death of her victims. The crime for which she was eventually tried was the murder of Frank Kupczyk, her third husband. In June 1923 she was sentenced to life in prison, the harshest sentence that had ever been leveled against a woman in Cook County. Her fourth husband, whom she was in the process of slow-poisoning at the time of her arrest, survived.
***
1903 – Marie Knauer – San Francisco, California, USA (Chicago; Germany)
“She deserted her husband and while living in Chicago
induced the lieutenant whom she had married, and a son that they had adopted,
to insure their lives in her favor. Both husband and son died of mysterious
ailments, supposed to be due to poison. While the son was being buried Marie
eloped with the undertaker and fled again for Germany. Her undertaker died
suddenly. She then returned to America and came to San Francisco, setting up
business as a massage artist. While here she became employed as a nurse to Mr.
Knauer, aged 73 . . . Knauer was induced
to marry her. A surgeon informed Knauer that an operation was necessary and to
please his wife attached a codocil to his will bequeathing her all his estate.
Knauer died, not surviving the operation.”
***
1893 – Frances
Knorr (Minnie Thwaites) – Brunswick, Australia (*)
After a new tenant of Frances Knorr’s former residence dug
up the corpse of a baby girl the police were notified. Further digging turned up
another infant corpse. The former tenant, who turned out to be a baby farmer
(child care provider), was tracked down and arrested. Frances Knorr, alias
Minnie Thwaites, was tried, convicted and sentenced to death. The hangman, of
chivalrous character, said he would rather die than hang a woman. He committed
suicide by cutting his throat. Knorr was executed on Jan. 15, 1894. After the
hanging mothers came forward to report the deaths of their own children while
in Knorr’s case. It was estimated by police, based on calculations of reports
and the length of time Knorr had been in business, that the total number of
murders may have been around thirteen.
***
1901 – Emma Knowles – Birmingham, England
The Birmingham police paid a night visit at the
end of May to premises in Newtown-row occupied by a widow named Mrs. Emma
Knowles. In a cellar they came upon seventeen soap boxes containing bodies of
twenty-nine newly born children. Mrs. Knowles took money from midwives to bury the babies they murdered.
***
1923 – Sofia Komarova – Moscow, Russia
***
1922 – Nellie
Sturmer Koulik – Chicago, Illinois, USA
Tillie Klimek’s cousin and accomplice, Nellie Sturmer Koulik, was never prosecuted, although the list of her probable victims was very impressive. : 1 – Wojcik Stermer, Nellie’s first husband, died in 1918. Body, exhumed, disclosed arsenic. 2 and 3 – Sophie and Benjamin Stermer, Nellie’s 7-month-old twins, who died within a month of each other in 1917. 4 – Dorothy Spera, 2 year old granddaughter, who died in 1921, after her grandmother insisted that she be brought to her home for a simple cold. 5 – John Stermer, 22, Nellie’s son, who became ill in 1918 when his father died, but recovered. He declared he thought his mother had poisoned him.
***
Tillie Klimek’s cousin and accomplice, Nellie Sturmer Koulik, was never prosecuted, although the list of her probable victims was very impressive. : 1 – Wojcik Stermer, Nellie’s first husband, died in 1918. Body, exhumed, disclosed arsenic. 2 and 3 – Sophie and Benjamin Stermer, Nellie’s 7-month-old twins, who died within a month of each other in 1917. 4 – Dorothy Spera, 2 year old granddaughter, who died in 1921, after her grandmother insisted that she be brought to her home for a simple cold. 5 – John Stermer, 22, Nellie’s son, who became ill in 1918 when his father died, but recovered. He declared he thought his mother had poisoned him.
***
1904 – Rae
Anderman Krauss – Blackford City, Indiana, USA
Rae Anderman
Krauss eventually confessed to the murder of Chrystal, her step-daughter, and
was sentenced to life in prison. The other mysterious deaths which she was
suspected of causing – of her parents and a former lover – were apparently
never fully investigated.
***
1954 – Piroska Jancsó Ladányi – Törökszentmiklós,
Hungary
Along with her mother, Prioska strangled five girls to death, an
11-year old, three 13-yesar-olds and a 17-year old. Her mother wanted the
victims clothing to sell and Prioska wanted to engage in sexual activities with
the corpses. She was hanged as the age of 20. [Piroska Jancso Ladanyi]
***
1935
– Madame Laou –
Lugos, Romania
“'My
name is Lydia Savu,' she said, 'I’m thirteen and I wanted to die so as not to be
killed by my mother. Because, having removed my father and my two brothers, I
felt that my turn had come.'”
***
1893 – Belinda
Laphame – San Francisco, California, USA
Belinda Laphame (alias Mrs. Dr. Godfrey, alias Belinda Rozet, alias Dr. Goodman, alias Dr. Mary Goodwin, alias “Gypsy Queen.”), a midwife, was tried for three separate murders and acquitted each time. Two of the trials followed the deaths of abortion clients. One of them was for the murder of a two-day-old baby. At one of the court hearings: “Lottie Watson, the young woman whose infant daughter Mrs. Belinda Laphame, the Geary street midwife, is accused of murdering, gave sensational evidence at the preliminary examination this afternoon. She said Mrs. Laphame kept in the house three small babies, which had been killed by her. Their little bodies were preserved in alcohol and the jars were kept in her room.”
Belinda Laphame (alias Mrs. Dr. Godfrey, alias Belinda Rozet, alias Dr. Goodman, alias Dr. Mary Goodwin, alias “Gypsy Queen.”), a midwife, was tried for three separate murders and acquitted each time. Two of the trials followed the deaths of abortion clients. One of them was for the murder of a two-day-old baby. At one of the court hearings: “Lottie Watson, the young woman whose infant daughter Mrs. Belinda Laphame, the Geary street midwife, is accused of murdering, gave sensational evidence at the preliminary examination this afternoon. She said Mrs. Laphame kept in the house three small babies, which had been killed by her. Their little bodies were preserved in alcohol and the jars were kept in her room.”
***
1912 – Olivia
Charlotta Larsson – Malmo, Sweden
The Larssens were foster “parents” who took in babies and neglected them to such a horrible degree it is dificult to comprehend. Two children near death were rescued after another died through wilful neglect. The photograph of one survivor – given the name Carl Eric after the rescue – is a dramatic testament.
***
1913 – Ida Leckwold – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Mrs. Ida Leckwold was found not guilty of murdering her nine year old daughter, Viola. Mrs. Leckwold was declared to have been insane at the time of the murder and at the time of her confession. Mrs. Leckwold, was arrested September 30, 1913, soon after the death of her daughter and subsequently made a confession of the crime. She blamed her husband’s alleged cruelty for her acts. She is also believed to have murdered her 11-year-old son, Walter and five babies, as well attempting to murder her husband and two other children, each of whom all testified at Mrs.Leckwold’s trial.
***
The Larssens were foster “parents” who took in babies and neglected them to such a horrible degree it is dificult to comprehend. Two children near death were rescued after another died through wilful neglect. The photograph of one survivor – given the name Carl Eric after the rescue – is a dramatic testament.
***
1913 – Ida Leckwold – Minneapolis, Minnesota, USA
Mrs. Ida Leckwold was found not guilty of murdering her nine year old daughter, Viola. Mrs. Leckwold was declared to have been insane at the time of the murder and at the time of her confession. Mrs. Leckwold, was arrested September 30, 1913, soon after the death of her daughter and subsequently made a confession of the crime. She blamed her husband’s alleged cruelty for her acts. She is also believed to have murdered her 11-year-old son, Walter and five babies, as well attempting to murder her husband and two other children, each of whom all testified at Mrs.Leckwold’s trial.
***
1914 – Octavie Lecompte – Cary, France
Farmer’s
wife Octavie Lecompte (85) was convicted of murdering two close
relatives and attempting to murder a third through poisoning. After
poisoning her father and brother with cyanide, she also tried to get her
sister-in-law out of the way. The incident was prematurely discovered
by chance. She was sentenced to death.
***
1937 – Agnes
Joan Ledford – St. Helens, Oregon, USA
Ruth Ledford poisoned her two teenage step-daughters and was suspected of murdering her first husband five years earlier. She was prosecuted for the murder of the younger of the girls and convicted. The jury recommended life imprisonment.
Ruth Ledford poisoned her two teenage step-daughters and was suspected of murdering her first husband five years earlier. She was prosecuted for the murder of the younger of the girls and convicted. The jury recommended life imprisonment.
***
Emma LeDoux, born in 1871, tall and beautiful, was a Vamp –
a sexual predator. She married five men during her matrimonial career. Four of
them died (according to one source). She was convicted of murdering no. 3
(while being bigamously married to no. 4). Sentenced to hang, she managed to
get a commutation. Paroled after 14 years, she married again and, it seems,
murdered no. 5.
***
1939 – Victoria
Lefebvre – Fitchberg,
Massachusetts, USA
Mrs.
Victoria Lefebvre, 53, arrested on March 30, 1939 for the alleged poison
slaying of her husband as police investigated the deaths of her two former
husbands, one in Montreal. She later pleaded guilty to one murder.
***
1954 – Christa
Lehmann – Mainz, Germany (*)
From a news report: “Cold-eyed Christa Lehmann today confessed taking a toll of three lives with poison as she added her late husband to a list which included a woman friend and her father-in-law. She has been questioned almost constantly since her friend, Annie Hamann, 30, died eight days ago, minutes after she had bitten into a bon-bon filled with a deadly insecticide.”
***From a news report: “Cold-eyed Christa Lehmann today confessed taking a toll of three lives with poison as she added her late husband to a list which included a woman friend and her father-in-law. She has been questioned almost constantly since her friend, Annie Hamann, 30, died eight days ago, minutes after she had bitten into a bon-bon filled with a deadly insecticide.”
The publicity surrounding the case, describing the new insecticide
product, named E605, set off a string of suicides in which the poison was used.
1912 – Louise Lindloff – Chicago, Illinois, USA
Louise Lindloff was a clairvoyant who serially poisoned her whole family for insurance money and after her arrest claimed their spirits were visiting her to protect her from false charges. She claimed her crystal ball contained a tear of Cleopatra. Despite her seances she was convicted of murder. Her lawyer was a flamboyant character, the man who is thought to have been F. Scott Fitzgerald's model for Gatsby.
***
1929 – Julianne
Lipka – Nagyrev, Hungary (*)
“Mrs. Lipka had murdered her entire family – seven persons –
to obtain real estate, and, by the time she was one of the richest women in the
district. All she thought of was her land, even after she was found guilty and
sentenced to death. “When can I go home?” she absentmindedly asked her lawyer.
“They will auction off my property while I am here.”
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
[1929 Tisza Valley, Hungary cases featured in this post: Fazekas, Foeldvary, Kardos, Lipka, Olah, Palinka]
***
***
***
***
1660 – Catalina de los Ríos y Lisperguer – Chile
Catalina de los Ríos
y Lisperguer was nicknamed La Quintrala for her
flaming red hair. She was of noble decent, a great beauty and an incorrigible
sadist. Heiress to the most productive farm in the Kingdom of Chile. She was
suspected of over 40 murders, her first being the poisoning of her father in
1623 with a meal of chicken. She was suspected of ordering the assassination of a priest, of
attempting to stab another who had visited her to redeem her soul, and the
torture-murder of a lover. “One of her favorite
pastimes was to slash and whip her inquilinos (serfs). Sometimes the
pleasure of inflicting pain went so far that she tortured her victims to
death.” After years of
cover-ups Catalina’s crimes were finally brought to court and she was charged
with multiple murders. La Quintrala died while awaiting trial.
1946 – Lottie
Lockman – Dupont, Indiana, USA
Mrs. Lockman who was a home-based caretaker for the elderly,
was suspected in a total of five deaths, was arrested three times, a body was
disinterred, but never convicted.
***
1912 – Mary
Lucas – Lansing, Michigan, USA
Suspected of
having murdered a husband who died mysteriously and a boarder who disappeared,
Mary Lucas was convicted of a single murder, that of a woman, motivated by
jealousy.
***
1958 – Anjette
Donovan Lyles – Macon, Georgia, USA
From a news report: “At Anjette’s trial, the prosecution was
permitted to prove not only that Anjette had killed her daughter by poisoning
in 1958, but that she had done the same thing to her first husband in 1952, her
second husband in 1955, and her mother-in-law in 1957. The deaths of all four
victims were shown to be logically connected in at least ten ways: (1) each of
the victims occupied a close relationship to Anjette; (2) each of the victims
died of a unique cause--arsenic poisoning; (3) each victim died as a result of
multiple doses built up to a lethal level; (4) Anjette was the only person in
close personal attendance to all four victims; (5) Anjette showed little or no
grief over each death; (6) Anjette collected a substantial amount of money as a
result of each death; (7) each of the victims was lavishly buried by Anjette;
(8) all the victims were carried to the same hospital, at which they were
attended by Anjette; (9) Anjette expressed intense dislike for each of the
victims either before or after his or her death; and (10) Anjette predicted the
death of each of victims, except her first husband.
Although circumstantial, the evidence that Anjette had
killed all four victims was, viewed in its totality, compelling. There was
overwhelming evidence that the victims died of arsenic poisoning given in doses
over a period of time, and ant poison containing arsenic was found in Anjette’s
bedroom.”
***
1911 – Rachel
Lynn – Atlanta, Georgia, USA
From news reports: “Suspicion that criminal operations and infant murders had taken place there led to a police raid upon the home of Mrs. “Doctor” Rachel Lynn, spiritualist and midwife, in a fashionable section of Atlanta, and the arrest of Mrs. Lynn and two of her negro servants. Chief of Detectives Lanford said the charges against Mrs. Lynn were based upon information furnished him by the two women held as witnesses, whose names are withheld. One of them told him, he said, of a conversation she had while in the house with a negro maid in which the latter said that ‘every grate in the house had contained the ashes of a dead baby.’” “Chief of Detectives Lanford charges that Mrs. Lynn used fiendish cunning in killing the babes by strangling them to death with cords, by piercing their heads with sharp iron instruments and burning them alive in red hot stoves and grates.”
***From news reports: “Suspicion that criminal operations and infant murders had taken place there led to a police raid upon the home of Mrs. “Doctor” Rachel Lynn, spiritualist and midwife, in a fashionable section of Atlanta, and the arrest of Mrs. Lynn and two of her negro servants. Chief of Detectives Lanford said the charges against Mrs. Lynn were based upon information furnished him by the two women held as witnesses, whose names are withheld. One of them told him, he said, of a conversation she had while in the house with a negro maid in which the latter said that ‘every grate in the house had contained the ashes of a dead baby.’” “Chief of Detectives Lanford charges that Mrs. Lynn used fiendish cunning in killing the babes by strangling them to death with cords, by piercing their heads with sharp iron instruments and burning them alive in red hot stoves and grates.”
1673 – Louise Mabre – France
***
***
***
1892 – Sarah
Jane Makin – Sydney, Australia (*)
Sarah Makin
murdered babies using knitting needles, piercing them in the heart. She and her
husband were baby farmers. The estimated number of murders is “more than twelve.” They were both convicted and sentenced to death.
The man was hanged; the woman (Sarah) was spared.
1926 – Elsie
Bible Malinsky – Flora, Illinois, USA
Elsie Bible Malinsky was a “wife in the way” killer. She murdered her female friend so she could marry the woman's husband, Mr. Bible. Then she murdered him. Next she targeted another married man for the same routine, murdering the wife and marrying him. Mr. Malinsky had no knowledge of the scheming of the murderess wife number two. In passing sentence of life imprisonment, Circuit Judge Thomas M. Jett unleashed a scathing denunciation of the woman and her crime, telling the murderess: “If you were a man I would hang you. The fact that you are a woman is all that saves you.”
Elsie Bible Malinsky was a “wife in the way” killer. She murdered her female friend so she could marry the woman's husband, Mr. Bible. Then she murdered him. Next she targeted another married man for the same routine, murdering the wife and marrying him. Mr. Malinsky had no knowledge of the scheming of the murderess wife number two. In passing sentence of life imprisonment, Circuit Judge Thomas M. Jett unleashed a scathing denunciation of the woman and her crime, telling the murderess: “If you were a man I would hang you. The fact that you are a woman is all that saves you.”
***
1943 – Antonina Makarova – Lokot Autonomy (Russia)
Antonina Makarova, "Machine-Gun Tonka," was a Soviet war criminal and executioner who collaborated with Nazi Germany during World War II. From 1942 to 1943 she executed some 1,500 Soviet partisans and their family members by machine gun. Makarova was caught by the Soviet KGB in 1976 and executed three years later. Antonia's self-defense: “It seemed to me that the war would write off everything. I was just doing my job for which I was paid. It was necessary to shoot not only partisans, but also members of their families, women, teenagers. I tried not to remember this. Although I remember the circumstances of one execution - before the execution, a guy sentenced to death shouted to me: ‘We will not see you again, goodbye, sister!’"
***
“Within a short space of time a farmer and two
farmhands, who had relations with the widow [Marie] Manin, died on a farm in
Chante Perdrix. Five witnesses, who had spoken in open conversation about the
guilt of the peasant woman in the death of her husband and the two servants,
themselves mysteriously perished, found dead as apparent victims of accidents.
The case against Ms. Manin was set to be closed for lack of evidence. Now, the
eleven-year-old son of the widow counts that he saw his mother and a servant
slaying his father. The widow was arrested, she admitted the murders of her
husband and servants after a long denial; but probably she will also have the
mysterious end of the five witnesses on her conscience.” [“A
Mass-murderess.”
Salzburger Volksblatt (Austria), 5. März 1937. p. 3]
***
1938 – Martha
Marek – Vienna, Austria (*)
Martha Lowenstein Marek was guillotined in Vienna on the December 6, 1938, for murdering her husband, their baby daughter, an elderly relative, whose money and house she inherited, and finally a lodger in her house. The lodger’s relatives informed the police who ordered the exhumation of all four bodies resulting in the finding of thallium. Martha was motivated by the desire to live in luxury.
Martha Lowenstein Marek was guillotined in Vienna on the December 6, 1938, for murdering her husband, their baby daughter, an elderly relative, whose money and house she inherited, and finally a lodger in her house. The lodger’s relatives informed the police who ordered the exhumation of all four bodies resulting in the finding of thallium. Martha was motivated by the desire to live in luxury.
***
1912 – Enriqueta
Martí – Barcelona, Spain (*)
Enriqueta Martí was an occult cannibal pedophile
child-trafficker and serial killer. She once forced a little girl to eat
portions of the body of a child the woman had slain. Enriqueta would rent out
the children she had abducted to pedophiles and also supplied these customers
with "magic potions" she made from the boiled down remains of the
children she murdered.
***
1956 – Rhonda
Belle Martin – Montgomery, Alabama, USA (*)
Rhonda Bell Thomley Martin was the only known female serial killer to have donated her body to science – a decision she made in preparation for being executed. She confessed to murdering her mother, two husbands, and three of her children, but denied murdering two other other deceased children.
Rhonda Bell Thomley Martin was the only known female serial killer to have donated her body to science – a decision she made in preparation for being executed. She confessed to murdering her mother, two husbands, and three of her children, but denied murdering two other other deceased children.
***
1931 – Alice
Mason – Pekin, Illinois, USA
Mrs. Alice and Mason, a 50 years old widow, was arrested November 18, 1931 a charge of murdering her 12 years old daughter, Mildred, with poison. On February 8, 1932 she pleaded guilty to murdering Mildred. She was also suspected of poisoning a 15-year-oldson, who survived and making plans to murder another son, 22. “She was sentenced to spend the remainder of her life in the woman’s reformatory at Dwight. No attempt was made to prosecute her on a charge of killing her husband, who died several years ago.”
Mrs. Alice and Mason, a 50 years old widow, was arrested November 18, 1931 a charge of murdering her 12 years old daughter, Mildred, with poison. On February 8, 1932 she pleaded guilty to murdering Mildred. She was also suspected of poisoning a 15-year-oldson, who survived and making plans to murder another son, 22. “She was sentenced to spend the remainder of her life in the woman’s reformatory at Dwight. No attempt was made to prosecute her on a charge of killing her husband, who died several years ago.”
***
1944 – Carmen
Matamoros de Tejeda – Panzacola, Tehuantepec Dist, Oaxaca, Mexico
Locals called her “Madame Werewolf.” From a newspaper report: “When police of Mexico City swooped on an eerie house and garden in the quiet town of Panzacola to free a nude, half-crazed, 18-years-old girl, whose chained body bore savage imprints of teeth, strange welts, and hideous scars, they uncovered a cesspool seething with the paraphernalia of witchcraft and black magic. But more petrifying was the subsequent discovery of the bones and bodies of two tiny babies …”
Locals called her “Madame Werewolf.” From a newspaper report: “When police of Mexico City swooped on an eerie house and garden in the quiet town of Panzacola to free a nude, half-crazed, 18-years-old girl, whose chained body bore savage imprints of teeth, strange welts, and hideous scars, they uncovered a cesspool seething with the paraphernalia of witchcraft and black magic. But more petrifying was the subsequent discovery of the bones and bodies of two tiny babies …”
1903 – Mary McKnight – Kalkaska, Michigan, USA
“Mrs. Mary McKnight, who has been called a modern Borgia because of her confession to the murder of her brother, his wife and baby, and who is suspected of having caused the deaths of eight other persons by the stealthy administration of strychnine during the past fifteen years, has lived in Kalkaska, Mich., all her life, respected and supposedly sane. But for a filing of a mortgage with the figures raised, alleged to have given her by her brother, the crimes might never have been discovered. She first confessed to one murder, then at other times to two others, and it is thought she will tell of the killing of some of the other persons, including two of her former husbands.”
***
1893 – Mary
Meyer – South Bend, Indiana, USA
In Chicago Mary Dresser murdered her wealthy father in concert with Dr. Henry Meyer, a seasoned insurance scam serial killer, for his insurance money. She then became Dr. Meyer’s third wife. They traveled about pursuing their racket, murdering an estimated nine other victims following the Dresser murder. They were located by insurance company detectives and the husband was extradited to New York City, the site of their latest murder. The wife was pregnant and allowed to give birth before being extradited. Dr. Meyer was convicted of murdering the pair’s final victim, Ludwig Brandt, but Mary was never prosecuted.
In Chicago Mary Dresser murdered her wealthy father in concert with Dr. Henry Meyer, a seasoned insurance scam serial killer, for his insurance money. She then became Dr. Meyer’s third wife. They traveled about pursuing their racket, murdering an estimated nine other victims following the Dresser murder. They were located by insurance company detectives and the husband was extradited to New York City, the site of their latest murder. The wife was pregnant and allowed to give birth before being extradited. Dr. Meyer was convicted of murdering the pair’s final victim, Ludwig Brandt, but Mary was never prosecuted.
***
1907 – Alice Mitchell – Perth, Australia
Baby farmer, Alice Mitchell, was found guilty of
manslaughter of an infant. She was suspected of up to 36 other infant killings.
***
1924 – Euphemia
Mondich – Detroit, Michigan, USA
Euphemia Mondich married nine times. Her second and fourth husbands once met to congratulate each other on being alive. Mrs. Mondich’s first husband died mysteriously. The skeleton of her lover, John Urdovich, was dug up by police under a house she once owned. She admitted shooting Urdovich. The body of her third husband, Joe Sokolsky, never was found. She said she and Urdovich had buried it where a building now stands.
“Mrs. Mondich, under grilling, confessed she had killed a man named "John" with his own revolver, a week after she had seen him club her eighth husband, John Sokoloski, to death in an automobile.” She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Euphemia Mondich married nine times. Her second and fourth husbands once met to congratulate each other on being alive. Mrs. Mondich’s first husband died mysteriously. The skeleton of her lover, John Urdovich, was dug up by police under a house she once owned. She admitted shooting Urdovich. The body of her third husband, Joe Sokolsky, never was found. She said she and Urdovich had buried it where a building now stands.
“Mrs. Mondich, under grilling, confessed she had killed a man named "John" with his own revolver, a week after she had seen him club her eighth husband, John Sokoloski, to death in an automobile.” She was convicted of murder and sentenced to life in prison.
Her
second and fourth husbands one met to congratulate each other for being alive.
***
Newspaper
sources are still inaccessible. The scant sources presently online state that
Mouton had murdered 7 persons by poisoning and that 4 others survived attempted
murder. At the moment we presume this vwas a series of murders rather than a
single mass poisoning event. She was sentenced to death on 15 novembre 1947 and
executed by guillotinr at Sidi-Bel-Abbes, Algeria on April 10, 1948.
***
1935 – Julianna
Nagy – Debreczen, Hungary
Julianna Nagy, arrested at the age of 72, was known by villagers as the “magic medicine woman.” The newspapers called her the “poison witch.” And an “angel maker.” The men were poisoned “by slow degrees, by their wives who administered the deadly stuff in food in small regular quantities.” “Julianna was not only a self-made widow but had first made “angels” of her husband’s previous wife and all his five children.” Over a period of decades she supplied poison to women who wished to make themselves widows. It is believed that Nagy’s victims throughout the surrounding region numbered in the hundreds, but she was tried for only twenty-two murders. Nagy was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
Julianna Nagy, arrested at the age of 72, was known by villagers as the “magic medicine woman.” The newspapers called her the “poison witch.” And an “angel maker.” The men were poisoned “by slow degrees, by their wives who administered the deadly stuff in food in small regular quantities.” “Julianna was not only a self-made widow but had first made “angels” of her husband’s previous wife and all his five children.” Over a period of decades she supplied poison to women who wished to make themselves widows. It is believed that Nagy’s victims throughout the surrounding region numbered in the hundreds, but she was tried for only twenty-two murders. Nagy was convicted of murder and sentenced to death.
***
1947 – Roza Nagy (“Aunt Rosa,” Nagy AndrásnéAngyal Tóth Rózái) – Szoreg, Hungary
***
1894 – Martha Needle – Richmond, Australia
From a newspaper report: “None of those who are thrown into contact with Martha Needle can fathom her character. The condemned woman’s mask of impenetrable reserve has confessedly baffled the governor of the gaol. Dr Shields, the Government medical officer, and both her spiritual advisers … Even to these experienced eyes the extraordinary woman is as inscrutable as the Sphinx.” It is a bizarre fact that Martha Needle spent most of the insurance money she gained from murdering her family on an elaborate grave for her family, which she visited almost every day.
***
From a news report: “The death of Mrs. Isabella Newman formed the subject of an inquiry by the coroner to-day. The deceased swallowed a quantity of strychnine at her farm at Mordialloc on 5th December while she was under arrest on a charge laid under the Infant Life Protection Act. The cause of the deaths of two infants, whose bodies were found buried at the farm, and of an infant whose body was found on the beach at Carrara, was also inquired into.”
***
***
***
***
1894 – Martha Needle – Richmond, Australia
Martha Needle murdered five
persons, her husband, three of her own small daughters and that man whom she
expected to be her future brother-in-law. Each one died an excruciatingly painful
death. It was for the latter man’s murder that she was convicted and hanged on
October 22, 1894.
From a newspaper report: “None of those who are thrown into contact with Martha Needle can fathom her character. The condemned woman’s mask of impenetrable reserve has confessedly baffled the governor of the gaol. Dr Shields, the Government medical officer, and both her spiritual advisers … Even to these experienced eyes the extraordinary woman is as inscrutable as the Sphinx.” It is a bizarre fact that Martha Needle spent most of the insurance money she gained from murdering her family on an elaborate grave for her family, which she visited almost every day.
***
1812 – Hester Rebecca Nepping – Nieumarkt, Amsterdam,
Netherlands
Hester Rebecca Nepping (1774-1812),
a Dutch poisoner, murdered her father, her husband and a boarder. She and her two
accomplices were guillotined in Amsterdam 1812. It was the only time that a
death sentence was executed in Amsterdam in this way.
***
1913 – Isabella
Newman – Melbourne, Australia
From a news report: “The death of Mrs. Isabella Newman formed the subject of an inquiry by the coroner to-day. The deceased swallowed a quantity of strychnine at her farm at Mordialloc on 5th December while she was under arrest on a charge laid under the Infant Life Protection Act. The cause of the deaths of two infants, whose bodies were found buried at the farm, and of an infant whose body was found on the beach at Carrara, was also inquired into.”
***
1917 – Hilda
Nilsson – Helsingborg,
Sweden
“Hilda Nilsson was a
Swedish serial killer from Helsingborg who became known as “the angel maker on
Bruksgatan Street.” In 1917 she was imprisoned for murdering eight children.”
***
***
1905 – Alva
Nordberg – Stockholm, Sweden
In 1905 Alva Nordberg, 29, a child
care provider (baby farmer) residing in Rådmansö parish, Stockholm, Sweden, was
convicted of killing three babies – through either neglect or assault. She was
not prosecuted for the death of a fourth child who perished after being removed
from her care. Nordberg was sentenced to only four years in prison.
***
1895 – Queen
Mother Nyirauhi V Kanjogera – Tutsi Tribe, Rwanda
Mother of Tutsi King
Msinga, whose chief claim to fame is the fact that she poisoned six of her
relatives in order to insure the safe reign of her son Msinga.
***
1663 – Queen Nzinga – Ndongo (Angola)
***
1938 – Maria
Gomes de Oliveira, “Maria Bonita” – Pernambuco State, Brazil.
Maria Gomes de Oliveira, known as Maria Bonita ( Glória,
Bahia, Brazil, 8 of March of 1911 - Poço Redondo, Sergipe, 28 of July of 1938 )
was the first woman to participate in a cangaceiros group and was the companion
of the most notorious cangaceiros leader, Lampião. Shejoined Lampião in 1930
and lived with cangaceiro for 8 years, until the day of his death in Angico,
Porto da Folha (28 of July of 1938), when the band was caught in a camp and
Maria Bonita was beheaded. During those eight years, Maria Bonita’s won the
nickname of Reina del Cangaço ("Queen of the Cangaços"). . . . For the cangaceiros murder was
not only casual, they took pride in their efficiency in killing. They were
excellent shots and were skilled in the use of long, narrow knives (nicknamed peixeiras
- “fish-filleters”) which could be used to dispatch a man quickly. [Wikipedia]
***
1865 – Maria
Oliviero – Cattanzaro, Italy
“At the age of twenty, Maria Oliviero murdered her sister, hacking her 48 times with an axe for slander and joined her husband’s gang. She was arrested in 1864 and went on trial in February, was charged with 32 crimes: kidnapping, violent robberies and thefts, fires, and murders. She confessed to the murder of his sister, but for the rest she claimed she was coerced into participating.”
“At the age of twenty, Maria Oliviero murdered her sister, hacking her 48 times with an axe for slander and joined her husband’s gang. She was arrested in 1864 and went on trial in February, was charged with 32 crimes: kidnapping, violent robberies and thefts, fires, and murders. She confessed to the murder of his sister, but for the rest she claimed she was coerced into participating.”
***
1911 – Agnes
Orner – El Paso, Texas, USA
Agnes Orner was arrested in 1908 for poisoning children, but as there was no prosecutable evidence she was released. The following year her husband died and she was arrested on a charge of “lunacy,” since there was insufficient evidence for a homicide charge. She was acquitted. At the funeral of her 11-year-old daughter in 1911 she was arrested on suspicion of murdering the child. It took six trials (due to either mistrial on a technicality after conviction, or hung juries) to finally successfully convict her and for the verdict to be upheld on appeal.
Agnes Orner was arrested in 1908 for poisoning children, but as there was no prosecutable evidence she was released. The following year her husband died and she was arrested on a charge of “lunacy,” since there was insufficient evidence for a homicide charge. She was acquitted. At the funeral of her 11-year-old daughter in 1911 she was arrested on suspicion of murdering the child. It took six trials (due to either mistrial on a technicality after conviction, or hung juries) to finally successfully convict her and for the verdict to be upheld on appeal.
***
1920 – Dagmar
Overbye – Copenhagen, Denmark
Madame Overby, child care provider, murdered babies for profit – having paid in advance for their care she could kill them soon after taking them in and pocket the difference. One scholar states that “Dagmar Overbye committed the first murder of a child for adoption in 1916.” She kept the scam going until she was caught in 1920. The corpses were stored in her attic, burned in a stove or hidden elsewhere. One she tossed into a garbage heap. One news report states that “complaints were filed with the authorities covering her operations during eleven years, in which the records show the mysterious disappearance of 180 infants entrusted to them.”
***Madame Overby, child care provider, murdered babies for profit – having paid in advance for their care she could kill them soon after taking them in and pocket the difference. One scholar states that “Dagmar Overbye committed the first murder of a child for adoption in 1916.” She kept the scam going until she was caught in 1920. The corpses were stored in her attic, burned in a stove or hidden elsewhere. One she tossed into a garbage heap. One news report states that “complaints were filed with the authorities covering her operations during eleven years, in which the records show the mysterious disappearance of 180 infants entrusted to them.”
1936 – Velma Patterson – Commerce, Texas, USA
Velma Patterson’s third husband and two daughters, aged 11
and 13, from her first marriage died between September 1935 and February 1936.
The children’s bodies were disinterred and their remains contained identical
signs of poisoning. Mrs. Patterson was scheduled for separate trials for the
children’s murders. In the first trial the prosecutor asked for the death
penalty. The just which on first ballot was 5 for guilty, 7 for acquittal,
ended up rendering a acquittal verdict. The second trial was postponed the deay
it was to begin due to the illness of the central witness and, apparently, the
prosecution later decided to withdraw. The husband’s body was, it seems, never
exhumed.
***
1935
– Milka Pavlovic –
Pavljani, Belovar, Croatia (Yugoslavia)
Milka
Pavlovich poisoned sixteen relatives in order to inherit their property. Six of
the victims, including her husband, had died, ten others surviving to testify
at Milka’s murder trial. She “also wanted to remove a
two-year-old child who was considered an heir through a poisonous loaf and was
only prevented from doing so by the intervention of the child's mother.” She was convicted on May 18, 1935
she was promptly sentenced to hang.
***
1944 – Louise
Peete – Pacific Palisades, California, USA
Louise Peete was a coast-to-coast (Boston, Texas, California) predator upon wealthy men and an incorrigible recidivist female serial killer. In 1921 she was sentenced to life in prison for murdereing a man and paroled after eighteen years. She was back to her murderous ways until finally in 1945 she was conviocted of murder once again and sentenced to death. She expired in the San Quentin, California gas chamber on April 11, 1947.
***
Louise Peete was a coast-to-coast (Boston, Texas, California) predator upon wealthy men and an incorrigible recidivist female serial killer. In 1921 she was sentenced to life in prison for murdereing a man and paroled after eighteen years. She was back to her murderous ways until finally in 1945 she was conviocted of murder once again and sentenced to death. She expired in the San Quentin, California gas chamber on April 11, 1947.
***
1957 – Mary
Perkins – Selma, Alabama, USA
Mary Perkins murdered her preacher husband, a 10-month-old child
of a neighbor and an elderly woman. But there may have been more victims. She
held life insurance policies on, it would seem, pretty much everybody she knew –
about 150 policies.
***
1911 – Maria
Persson – Malmo, Sweden
The Perssons were a couple who murdered babies. Mrs. Persson was a midwife, her husband was a factory foreman with access to a furnace in which he burned corpses of infants. 73 children in their charge were found to have gone “missing.”
The Perssons were a couple who murdered babies. Mrs. Persson was a midwife, her husband was a factory foreman with access to a furnace in which he burned corpses of infants. 73 children in their charge were found to have gone “missing.”
***
1906 – Martha Petromany – Knees (Satchinez), Temesvar, Romania ("Hungary")
Martha
Petromany of Kneez (Satchinez), Romania, was a wholesale poisoner who provided
arsenic to be used by her customers who wished to commit a murder – or several
murders. “Within a year, it is estimated, one hundred persons have died of
poison in this village of 1,000 inhabitants. … Husbands poisoned their wives,
wives poisoned their husband, parents poisoned their children, children
poisoned their parents. No relation, not even that of lovers, was a bar to
murderous designs.”
1896 – Alice
Platt – Kansas City, Missouri, USA
Alice Platt, 28, was charged with poisoning three members of
the household where she was employed with strychnine. Three died, a woman of 60
and two children, aged 10 and 4. She was tried and, much to the consternation
of some, but to the delight of others, was acquitted.
***
***
1909
– Katharina Popova
(Popowa) – Samara, Ukraine (Russian Empire)
“A
woman named Popova has been arrested at Samara on a charge of murder and the
atrocities say they have unearthed a series of crimes unequaled in the the
history of the world. It is declared that the prisoner has killed at least 300
men. The crimes cover a period of about 30 years. The motive in each case was
mercenary and the murder was done for hire. The Popova woman made a specialty
of killing husbands for wives who wished to be rid of their spouses. For a
small fee she would put any undesirable man out of the way and would do it in
such a manner that the wife would not be suspected.”
***
1928 – Anujade Poshtonja (Anna Pistova, Baba Anujka) – Vladimirovac, Yugoslavia (Serbia)
Anujka de Poshtonja was called “The Witch of Vladimirovac.” Born into a prosperous family, Anujka became rich from selling poison (which she told police was “love potion”) the wives of wealthy farmers poison. She was over 90 when she was finally prosecuted and sentenced to prison. When Anujka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the young police sergeant who came to her, he reported. “I work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying day. Don’t play with the forces of evil.”
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
***
1902 – Amelia Sach & Annie Walters – Finchley, England
“The Finchley Baby Farmers,” Amelia Sach & Annie Walters, for a handsome fee, would collect the baby after it was born, and then dispose of it with poison — chlorodyne (a medicine containing morphine) and dispose of the tiny in the Thames or buried or in a garbage dump. Police had been alerted to their operation and started shadowing the women. On November 18, 1902, “Walters was followed to Kensington Station where she was discovered in the ladies’ lavatory with a dead infant boy in her arms, his hands clenched, his tongue swollen and lips purple and black. The victim was the four-day-old son of Ada Charlotte Galley, a servant who had recently given birth at Claymore House. The cause of death was said to be asphyxia and Sach and Walters were arrested for murder.”
“Two weeks later, nine starving children were found in a house not far away in Wood Green, including two babies lying in the lid of an old rush basket.” Their execution on February 3, 1903 was the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times. One newspaper reported that, following the arrest of Sach and Walters there had been a precipitous decrease in the number of dead babies found around London.
***
***
***
***
***
1925 – Antoinette Sierri ("Scierri") – Nimes, France (*)
The only motive which the French police now hold in the mysterious poisoning of six persons by Antoinette Scierri, a nurse, is that she liked to see her victims’ death struggles. Although small sums of money were taken in several instances, it is believed that this was not the basic death motive. The nurse made wreaths for the graves of her victims and showed tender care during their last moments.
***
***
1849 – Rebecca Smith – Westbury, Wiltshire, England
Rebecca Smith was executed for killing one of her children and after conviction confessed to having murdered others. “She was about forty-four years of age—had been married eighteen years, and had eleven children—the eldest only, a daughter, is now alive. The second, a boy, died of a bowel complaint, at the age of fourteen weeks. All the rest, with the exception of the last but one, the unhappy woman acknowledged that she poisoned a day or two after their birth.”
***
***
1925 – Alsa Thompson – Hollywood, California, USA
***
***
***
***
1803 – Sophie Ursinus – Berlin, Germany
1923 – Eliza
Potigian (Potegian) – Fresno, California, USA
Eliza Potegian, an Armenian immigrant living in central California, was accused of murdering her husband, two stepchildren. Mrs. Potegian under arrest, accused her mother, Mrs. Maria Torosian. When the police went to arrest the woman they found her body dangling from a rafter in her home. She had hanged herself. On the same day Mrs. Potegian tried to kill herself in her jail cell, slashing her wrists. During the investigation it was learned that while living in Armenia, Mrs. Torosian had been married six times, each husband meeting his death under mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Potegian was tried for the murder of her step-daughter, with her surviving son, Gordon, as the principal prosecution witness, and was found guilty.
Eliza Potegian, an Armenian immigrant living in central California, was accused of murdering her husband, two stepchildren. Mrs. Potegian under arrest, accused her mother, Mrs. Maria Torosian. When the police went to arrest the woman they found her body dangling from a rafter in her home. She had hanged herself. On the same day Mrs. Potegian tried to kill herself in her jail cell, slashing her wrists. During the investigation it was learned that while living in Armenia, Mrs. Torosian had been married six times, each husband meeting his death under mysterious circumstances. Mrs. Potegian was tried for the murder of her step-daughter, with her surviving son, Gordon, as the principal prosecution witness, and was found guilty.
***
1929 – Sarah Elizabeth Powers – Macon, Georgia, USA
Sara Powers (71) was convicted of a murder-for-hire of a boarding
house tenant whose life she had insured. Investigation turned up evidence of a
decades-long career of insurance fraud include property destruction arson, attempted
murders, planned murder schemes and a number of deaths of men she had insured.
***
1957 – Pilar Prades – Valencia, Spain
***
1911 – Jane
Taylor Quinn – Chicago, Illinois, USA
Jane
Taylor Quinn's first husband died of alcoholism it was claimed. Her
second husband was shot
dead and she accused a burglar. Charles E. Thorpe, her step-son,
testified that
she was alone with Thorpe when he was killed, a few hours before he was
to have
transferred his property to his son. Her third husband was shot in his
Chicago
home Nov. 2. She accused a burglar of the deed on this occasion as well.
Later, a revolver was found in her bathroom. Two of the deceased
husbands had been insured in her favor.” She was tried for murder of
husband number three but not convicted.
***
1952 – Marie
Emilie Raymond – Galan, Hautes-Pyrénées, France
Marie Emilie Raymond was a nurse who murdered patients. “I love looking
at dying people. The last smile on a dying face gives me a great thrill,” she
said. Police say that when Marie was arrested she had £100 in Francs pinned inside her bodice and bottles of
mole and moose poison in her room. She also had a rake because,
‘I love raking freshly filled graves.’” “Witnesses from the old folks’ home
have testified that Marie would stop passing nurses and murmur: ‘The dying,
they’re so inspiring.’ Sister Therese,
head of the home, first reported Marie to the police, after noting that the old
spinster was uncannily accurate in forecasting death.”
1720 – Mary
Read – Caribbean
1935
– Cora Werntz Rendall – South Bend, Indiana
Cora
Werntz Rendall was convicted of murdering her fourth husband with strychnine.
In the previous few years her third husband and two male relatives died under
suspicious circumstances; another survived convulsions after being rushed to a
hospital.
***
1909 – Martha
Rendell – Perth, Australia (*)
“Rendell brutally abused Morris’ children, once beating Annie so brutally that she could not walk. Arresting officer Inspector Harry Mann said ‘she delighted in seeing her victims writhe in agony, and from it derived sexual satisfaction.’” [Wikipedia]
***
“Rendell brutally abused Morris’ children, once beating Annie so brutally that she could not walk. Arresting officer Inspector Harry Mann said ‘she delighted in seeing her victims writhe in agony, and from it derived sexual satisfaction.’” [Wikipedia]
***
1897 – Marie
Ret – Paris, France
“Queen of Stranglers” Marie Ret led a gang of brutal stranglers who preyed upon primarily working class men and women. “The modus operandi was for Marie to decoy the intended victim into the thick bushes surrounding the fortifications. Once inside he was seized from behind by two accomplices and garroted. To make assurance doubly sure the woman leader herself plunged a dagger into the victim’s heart. After the body had been stripped and the clothing rifled the corpse was cast into the stagnant water of the moat.”
“Queen of Stranglers” Marie Ret led a gang of brutal stranglers who preyed upon primarily working class men and women. “The modus operandi was for Marie to decoy the intended victim into the thick bushes surrounding the fortifications. Once inside he was seized from behind by two accomplices and garroted. To make assurance doubly sure the woman leader herself plunged a dagger into the victim’s heart. After the body had been stripped and the clothing rifled the corpse was cast into the stagnant water of the moat.”
***
1912 – Maria
Reyes – Mexico City, Mexico
Serial killer Maria Reyes was arrested in Mexico City in 1912. For many years she had been kidnapping children – babies and toddlers – whom she would torture and/or murder by strangling. Newspapers dubbed the murderess “The Pescuecera” (definition: knot used to tie the neck to livestock. It has the quality of preventing movement, thus preventing the hanging which could cause accidental animal struggle to free itself). The woman was unkempt, always seen dressed in rags, with matted hair, no teeth, and a growth of fuzz on her upper lip. Her feet were dirty, deformed and overgrown nails. She had previously been jailed on several occasions.
Serial killer Maria Reyes was arrested in Mexico City in 1912. For many years she had been kidnapping children – babies and toddlers – whom she would torture and/or murder by strangling. Newspapers dubbed the murderess “The Pescuecera” (definition: knot used to tie the neck to livestock. It has the quality of preventing movement, thus preventing the hanging which could cause accidental animal struggle to free itself). The woman was unkempt, always seen dressed in rags, with matted hair, no teeth, and a growth of fuzz on her upper lip. Her feet were dirty, deformed and overgrown nails. She had previously been jailed on several occasions.
***
1933 – Viktoria
Foedi Rieger – Szeged, Hungary
Victoria Foedi Rieger, known to many as "Smoking Peter," passed as a man and hated the male sex. She devised a clever murder method, in which she would instruct the wife to set up the husband in a faked suicide-by-hanging scenario. Rieger charged only a token payment for the services she offered to women with an eye on instant widowhood.
Victoria Foedi Rieger, known to many as "Smoking Peter," passed as a man and hated the male sex. She devised a clever murder method, in which she would instruct the wife to set up the husband in a faked suicide-by-hanging scenario. Rieger charged only a token payment for the services she offered to women with an eye on instant widowhood.
***
1886 – Sarah
Jane Robinson – Summerville, Massachusetts, USA
“In the early part of 1888, Mrs. Sarah Robinson was
convicted of murder in the first degree in Boston, Mass. The particular crime
for which she was convicted was the poisoning of her son. This woman was a
regular borgia, and there were no less than seven counts in the indictment
under which she was tried. She was also accused of poisoning Wm. J. Robinson
and six other parties at different times. The chief incentive, as far as known,
was securing various sums of money with which the lives of her victims were
insured.”
***
1847 – Mary
Runkle – Whitesboro, Oneida County, New York, USA
Mary Runkle was suspected of five murders, including three
of her own children and her husband. One child was, however spared. “She
obliged her daughter, (a girl of but 11 years of age.), to become either the
unwilling accessory or the affrighted witness of the affray. It is generally
supposed that the girl was told by her mother to hold him on the floor, and
that the girl held his legs down, while the wife’s hand was grasped on her
husband’s throat with a violence that deprived him of life.” Mrs. Runkle was
executed by hanging.
***
1902 – Amelia Sach & Annie Walters – Finchley, England
“The Finchley Baby Farmers,” Amelia Sach & Annie Walters, for a handsome fee, would collect the baby after it was born, and then dispose of it with poison — chlorodyne (a medicine containing morphine) and dispose of the tiny in the Thames or buried or in a garbage dump. Police had been alerted to their operation and started shadowing the women. On November 18, 1902, “Walters was followed to Kensington Station where she was discovered in the ladies’ lavatory with a dead infant boy in her arms, his hands clenched, his tongue swollen and lips purple and black. The victim was the four-day-old son of Ada Charlotte Galley, a servant who had recently given birth at Claymore House. The cause of death was said to be asphyxia and Sach and Walters were arrested for murder.”
“Two weeks later, nine starving children were found in a house not far away in Wood Green, including two babies lying in the lid of an old rush basket.” Their execution on February 3, 1903 was the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times. One newspaper reported that, following the arrest of Sach and Walters there had been a precipitous decrease in the number of dead babies found around London.
***
1762 – Darya
Nikolayevna Saltykova – Moscow, Russia
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova was an aristocrat in Moscow who was arrested in 1762, following years of complaints to the Royal Court of Castherine II which could no longer be conveniently ignored. Saltykova was held for six years (until 1768), while the authorities conducted a painstaking investigation. “The investigating official counted as many as 138 suspicious deaths, of which the vast majority were attributed to Saltykova. She was found guilty of having killed 38 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death.
Reports stated that the noblewoman had beat her victims with rods and rolling pins and mutilated their genitals. In 1768, Saltykova was pilloried, displayed for a duration of one hour in chains in Moscow’s public square with a sign around her neck reading: “This woman has tortured and murdered.” Following this display, Darya Saltykova was imprisoned for life in the basement of Moscow’s Ivanovsky Convent.
Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova was an aristocrat in Moscow who was arrested in 1762, following years of complaints to the Royal Court of Castherine II which could no longer be conveniently ignored. Saltykova was held for six years (until 1768), while the authorities conducted a painstaking investigation. “The investigating official counted as many as 138 suspicious deaths, of which the vast majority were attributed to Saltykova. She was found guilty of having killed 38 female serfs by beating and torturing them to death.
Reports stated that the noblewoman had beat her victims with rods and rolling pins and mutilated their genitals. In 1768, Saltykova was pilloried, displayed for a duration of one hour in chains in Moscow’s public square with a sign around her neck reading: “This woman has tortured and murdered.” Following this display, Darya Saltykova was imprisoned for life in the basement of Moscow’s Ivanovsky Convent.
***
1941 – Felícitas
Sánchez Aguillón (or Sánchez
Neyra) – Mexico City, Mexico
Felícitas Sánchez
Aguillón or Sánchez Neyra (1890 - June 16, 1941) was a Mexican nurse, midwife,
baby farmer and serial killer, active during the 1930s in Mexico City, who
killed babies in her care. It is estimated that Felícitas murdered children in
numbers ranging from between 40 and neatly a hundred. Her victims were aged
from newborn to three years old. Typically she would poison or strangle the
children, according to some reports sometimes she would dismember a child while
still living. Felícitas was given various sobriquets by the Mexican press, such
as “The Ogress of Colonia Roma,”
“The Female Ripper of Colonia Roma,”
and “The Human Crusher of little
angels.”
***
***
1891 – Rosalie Schneider –
Vienna, Austria
Mr.
& Mrs. Franz and Roalie Schneider raped and murdered a number of servant
girls. The husband would go to the room occupied by the girl last employed by
his wife, and despite her prayers and entreaties would assault her. Rosalie
would grasp the hands of the victim while Schneider clutched the poor girl by
the throat and choked her to death. After the girls were dead the couple would
convey the bodies to a wood close to their home, where they would strip their
victims of their clothing, which, together with the contents of the girls’
luggage, they would afterwards sell.
***
1907
– Ida
Schnell – Munich, Germany
Thirteen-year-old
live in babysitter Ida Schnell confessed that she had taken the
lives of six babies by plunging a hairpin into the lower part of the back of
their heads till they ceased to cry. Asked as to her motive, the girl said that
the crying of the infants roused in her unconquerable revulsion, and excited
her to such a degree that she lost all control over herself, and would do
anything to make them quiet.
***
1893 – Mattie
C.
Shann – Princeton, New Jersey, USA
Mattie Shann was believed to have murdered her husband and son and to have poisoned her daughter-in-law, who imbibed only a small quantity of poison before noticing the substance at the bottom of a glass of lemonade. She was also suspected of being a serial arsonist, burning three houses in Princeton. She was tried for the murder of her son, but the jury found her “not guilty.”
Mattie Shann was believed to have murdered her husband and son and to have poisoned her daughter-in-law, who imbibed only a small quantity of poison before noticing the substance at the bottom of a glass of lemonade. She was also suspected of being a serial arsonist, burning three houses in Princeton. She was tried for the murder of her son, but the jury found her “not guilty.”
1925 – Julia
Shepherd – Chicago, Illinois, USA
From a 1925 news report : “Chicago police, on the recommendation of a coroner’s jury, arrested Mrs. Julia Shepherd, who was characterized by Mr. Justice Olsen as the Lady Macbeth of a series of alleged murders designed to secure for herself and her husband a fortune of £500,000.”
From a 1925 news report : “Chicago police, on the recommendation of a coroner’s jury, arrested Mrs. Julia Shepherd, who was characterized by Mr. Justice Olsen as the Lady Macbeth of a series of alleged murders designed to secure for herself and her husband a fortune of £500,000.”
1871 – Lydia
Sherman – New Brunswick, New Jersey, USA (*)
Lydia Sherman murdered three husbands and three children,
poisoning them with arsenic. Though she was the most prolific female serial
killer of the period she was not – as were Martha Grinder and Sarah Whiteling –
executed for her crimes.
***
1897 – Ching Shih – China
The Cantonese bandit Ching Shih was one of the most powerful
pirates in history. She commanded 1800 ships and more than 18,000 pirates – men,
women and children.
***
1925 – Antoinette Sierri ("Scierri") – Nimes, France (*)
The only motive which the French police now hold in the mysterious poisoning of six persons by Antoinette Scierri, a nurse, is that she liked to see her victims’ death struggles. Although small sums of money were taken in several instances, it is believed that this was not the basic death motive. The nurse made wreaths for the graves of her victims and showed tender care during their last moments.
***
1930s – Grace
Sims – Brickel Ridge,
Tennessee, USA
“In the early 20th century, Grace Sims was known for her exploits. She had several children by married men, sent for mail-order husbands who mysteriously disappeared once she had their money and hired vagabonds who were never seen again after working on her hog farm, according to legend. She never served time for her suspected serial killings, but she was imprisoned for mail fraud over the mail-order husbands.” [“Meigs gets Grace Sims’ prison quilt,” Chatanooga Times Free Press (Tn.), Mar. 12, 2009
“In the early 20th century, Grace Sims was known for her exploits. She had several children by married men, sent for mail-order husbands who mysteriously disappeared once she had their money and hired vagabonds who were never seen again after working on her hog farm, according to legend. She never served time for her suspected serial killings, but she was imprisoned for mail fraud over the mail-order husbands.” [“Meigs gets Grace Sims’ prison quilt,” Chatanooga Times Free Press (Tn.), Mar. 12, 2009
***
1890 – Marianne
Skoublinska – Warsaw, Poland
A professional baby-murderer who charged to get rid of unwanted children who fed scores of children to her pigs and bragged about having the fattest pigs in the region. She was apprehended after she torched her own home – with five children inside – to collect insurance money.
A professional baby-murderer who charged to get rid of unwanted children who fed scores of children to her pigs and bragged about having the fattest pigs in the region. She was apprehended after she torched her own home – with five children inside – to collect insurance money.
***
1938 – Mary
Eleanor Smith – Pocatello, Idaho, USA
Nicknamed “Shoe Box Annie,” for her bootlegging activites, Mary Eleanor Smith was a single mom who raised a son to be a murderer – just like her. The mom-son murder pair was suspected of murdering four people. They were known for using sophisticated methods for disposing of all taces of their victims: dismembering (it was thought) corpses in a bathtub and dissolving the body parts with acid. They were also known for their use of one of the rarest weapons in the annals of crime: the shortlived product called the “gas gun.” After a protracted legal process, Mary’s son, DeCastro Earl Mayer, became despondent at the thought of being convicted and executed and so he committed suicide. This prompted the grieving mother to finally issue a confession of her crime.
***Nicknamed “Shoe Box Annie,” for her bootlegging activites, Mary Eleanor Smith was a single mom who raised a son to be a murderer – just like her. The mom-son murder pair was suspected of murdering four people. They were known for using sophisticated methods for disposing of all taces of their victims: dismembering (it was thought) corpses in a bathtub and dissolving the body parts with acid. They were also known for their use of one of the rarest weapons in the annals of crime: the shortlived product called the “gas gun.” After a protracted legal process, Mary’s son, DeCastro Earl Mayer, became despondent at the thought of being convicted and executed and so he committed suicide. This prompted the grieving mother to finally issue a confession of her crime.
1849 – Rebecca Smith – Westbury, Wiltshire, England
Rebecca Smith was executed for killing one of her children and after conviction confessed to having murdered others. “She was about forty-four years of age—had been married eighteen years, and had eleven children—the eldest only, a daughter, is now alive. The second, a boy, died of a bowel complaint, at the age of fourteen weeks. All the rest, with the exception of the last but one, the unhappy woman acknowledged that she poisoned a day or two after their birth.”
***
1925 – Della
Sorenson – Dannenborg, Nebraska, USA (*)
Della Sorenson murdered eight relatives and neighbors, including three of her own children. In her own words:
Della Sorenson murdered eight relatives and neighbors, including three of her own children. In her own words:
– “They bothered me, so I decided to kill them.”
“Every time I gave poison to one of Mrs. Cooper’s children, I
said to myself, “Now I’m going to get even with you (Mrs. Cooper) for what you
have said about me,” the confession said.
– “After the death of my little daughter, Minnie, I had a
feeling of elation and happiness. Then, after I got to thinking about what I had
done, I was afraid and tried to hide it. I had the same feeling after the death
of every one of those I poisoned.”
– “I had feelings which would steal over me at times forcing
me to destroy and kill. I felt funny and happy. I like to attend funerals.”
1950 – Miriam
Soulakiotis – Keratera, Greece (*)
From a news report: “The Calendarists first hit the news columns back in 1950 when their convent’s mother superior, Miriam Soulakiotis (a former factory worker), was arrested on 23 charges that included murder, fraud, embezzlement, abduction and assault. As a result of the shocking revelations made by Prosecting Attorney Andreas Papakaris during the three trials needed to cover all the charges, Miss Soulakiotis became known as “The Woman Rasputin.” Sentenced to 16 years, she died in prison in 1954 at the age of 71.”
***
From a news report: “The Calendarists first hit the news columns back in 1950 when their convent’s mother superior, Miriam Soulakiotis (a former factory worker), was arrested on 23 charges that included murder, fraud, embezzlement, abduction and assault. As a result of the shocking revelations made by Prosecting Attorney Andreas Papakaris during the three trials needed to cover all the charges, Miss Soulakiotis became known as “The Woman Rasputin.” Sentenced to 16 years, she died in prison in 1954 at the age of 71.”
***
1921 – Lyda Trueblood Southard – Twin Falls, Idaho, USA (*)
Between 1915 and
1920 Lyda Trueblood Southard committed, it is suspected, a total of six murders
(4 husbands, a brother-in-law, and her own child). In each case she
pretended that the deceased had contracted either typhoid, influenza or had
died of ptomaine poisoning. In reality they all died from arsenic poisoning.
On November 4, 1921, in Twin Falls, Idaho, Lyda was convicted of the murder of her fourth husband on and was sentenced to 10 years in prison (Boise, Idaho). On May 4, 1931, she escaped and was not captured until July 31, 1932 and by then she had tied the knot with husband No. 5; later they divorced. Lyda was pardoned in 1942 and quickly married again. She died Feb. 5, 1948. It is not known what became of her 1942 catch.
On November 4, 1921, in Twin Falls, Idaho, Lyda was convicted of the murder of her fourth husband on and was sentenced to 10 years in prison (Boise, Idaho). On May 4, 1931, she escaped and was not captured until July 31, 1932 and by then she had tied the knot with husband No. 5; later they divorced. Lyda was pardoned in 1942 and quickly married again. She died Feb. 5, 1948. It is not known what became of her 1942 catch.
***
***
1933 – Hazel Howe Spicer – Kiowa, Colorado, USA
***
***
1897 – Nancy Staffleback – Galena, Kansas, USA
Nancy Staffleback was matriarch of a large family that engaged in many crimes, murder among them. The list of suspected murder victims includes at least six persons. A newspaper description of her: “Nancy Staffleback has led a most remarkable career of crime and has trained her progeny to follow in her footsteps. Of her thirteen children not one has led an upright life, and not one has a trait of character to redeem, even in part, the general coarseness and criminality of their natures.” She was convicted of murder in 1897 at the age of 65 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where she died on March 10, 1909.
***
1911 – Carrie
Bodie Sparling – Ubly, Michigan, USA
There were three suspects in the serial murder for insurance of five of Carrie Bodie Sparling’s family members. At first only the physician and the nurse were arrested. In the end, Mrs. Sparling went free. But Dr. Robert A. McGregor was convicted of murdering Cyril Sparling. Mrs. Sparling had received insurance payments after the deaths of her husband and two older sons.
One theory is that, since the trusted doctor was the one who convinced Carrie to take out insurance policies on her family members the real motive for murder was explainable as a design in which the poisonings were Dr. McGregor’s roundabout way of putting money into his customer’s hand so that his continuing feed could be paid to him. In 1914, after charges were dropped against her for playing a role in the murder of Cyril, Carrie Sparling submitted a claim for an insurance payment on a policy she had taken out on is life. The case is still talked about in the locale where it took place and still remains a mystery.
There were three suspects in the serial murder for insurance of five of Carrie Bodie Sparling’s family members. At first only the physician and the nurse were arrested. In the end, Mrs. Sparling went free. But Dr. Robert A. McGregor was convicted of murdering Cyril Sparling. Mrs. Sparling had received insurance payments after the deaths of her husband and two older sons.
One theory is that, since the trusted doctor was the one who convinced Carrie to take out insurance policies on her family members the real motive for murder was explainable as a design in which the poisonings were Dr. McGregor’s roundabout way of putting money into his customer’s hand so that his continuing feed could be paid to him. In 1914, after charges were dropped against her for playing a role in the murder of Cyril, Carrie Sparling submitted a claim for an insurance payment on a policy she had taken out on is life. The case is still talked about in the locale where it took place and still remains a mystery.
***
1933 – Hazel Howe Spicer – Kiowa, Colorado, USA
Mrs.
Hazel Howe Spicer,
48-year-old farm wife, Sunday night confessed that she killed her
13-month-old daughter, Doris, by smothering. She also confessed that she
slashed the throat
of another child, four-year-old George Spicer, with a piece of glass.
The boy
was not injured seriously. "I did it, but I only wanted to hurt him enough so that
my husband would take us to town to a doctor so we wouldn't have to come
back." Mrs. Spicer said she smothered the
baby for fear her husband would drive her away from home and she would never be
able to see the child again. She
declared she had been driven to the act because she could “never be able to go
on living with her children taken from her” as she asserted two children by a
former marriage had been. "But now I'm
glad she is dead because nobody else will ever get her." During the same confession, Spicer related that she knew more
of the death of her 21-months-old son who was drowned in a well near Boulder,
Colo., than she had told.
1949 – Clarice Spurlock –
Evansville, Indiana; Memphis, Tenn., USA
Clarice Spurlock was arrested on suspicion of murdering her mother. Investigation turned up additional suspicions, the murder of her father, the attempted murder of her husband who, at the time of her arrest, had been ill for months and a bit of arson. There was not sufficient evidence to convict her of murder. The husband, at least, survived.
Clarice Spurlock was arrested on suspicion of murdering her mother. Investigation turned up additional suspicions, the murder of her father, the attempted murder of her husband who, at the time of her arrest, had been ill for months and a bit of arson. There was not sufficient evidence to convict her of murder. The husband, at least, survived.
***
1897 – Nancy Staffleback – Galena, Kansas, USA
Nancy Staffleback was matriarch of a large family that engaged in many crimes, murder among them. The list of suspected murder victims includes at least six persons. A newspaper description of her: “Nancy Staffleback has led a most remarkable career of crime and has trained her progeny to follow in her footsteps. Of her thirteen children not one has led an upright life, and not one has a trait of character to redeem, even in part, the general coarseness and criminality of their natures.” She was convicted of murder in 1897 at the age of 65 and sentenced to 25 years in prison, where she died on March 10, 1909.
***
1895 – Gaetana Stimoli ("Stomoli") – Aderno, Catania, Sicily
"Gaetana Stomoli was arrested
for the wholesale poisoning of children with phosphorus. She administered the
poison by mixing it with wine and prevailing upon the children to drink the
mixture. Her victims already number 23. It is stated that they all died in
fearful agony. The
woman has confessed to having committed the deed, and offered as an explanation
that she wanted revenge for the death of two of her own children, who had been
bewitched. A crowd of people attempted to lynch the unnatural wretch, and were
prevented with great difficulty."
***
***
***
***
1948 – Irmgard Swinka (aka: Kuschinsky) – Hamm (Berlin), Germany
***
1929 – Hattie
Stone – Belair, Maryland, USA
Hattie Stone was convicted of murdering her 15-year-old son and suspected of murdering four others as well: another son, her husband and her parents-in-law. Hattie took the insurance proceeds and spent them on her boyfriends who she took to Atlantic City for amusement.
Hattie Stone was convicted of murdering her 15-year-old son and suspected of murdering four others as well: another son, her husband and her parents-in-law. Hattie took the insurance proceeds and spent them on her boyfriends who she took to Atlantic City for amusement.
***
1925 – Birdie
Strome – Springfield, Ohio, USA
Esta Strome, Birdie’s 14-year-old step-daughter, “died under mysterious circumstances after predicting that she would succumb at a certain date and on a specific hour.” An autopsy showed evidence of strychnine poisoning. Birdie was arrested and tried for murder. At the trial witnesses testified that Esta was in perfect health a few hours before her death. Mrs. Strome gave her tea, which, the prosecutor, contained strychnine. The prosecutor asserted that Mrs. Strome poisoned Esta, because, of an intense hatred for the girl and because the child lavished a wealth of affection upon her father. Other testimony revealed that Mrs. Strome’s first husband, George Frock, died under similar of strichnine poisoning 1922, and a sister in law of his died the same manner. Birdie was convicted of murdering Esta and sentenced to life in prison.
Esta Strome, Birdie’s 14-year-old step-daughter, “died under mysterious circumstances after predicting that she would succumb at a certain date and on a specific hour.” An autopsy showed evidence of strychnine poisoning. Birdie was arrested and tried for murder. At the trial witnesses testified that Esta was in perfect health a few hours before her death. Mrs. Strome gave her tea, which, the prosecutor, contained strychnine. The prosecutor asserted that Mrs. Strome poisoned Esta, because, of an intense hatred for the girl and because the child lavished a wealth of affection upon her father. Other testimony revealed that Mrs. Strome’s first husband, George Frock, died under similar of strichnine poisoning 1922, and a sister in law of his died the same manner. Birdie was convicted of murdering Esta and sentenced to life in prison.
***
1939 – Anna
Louise Sullivan – Milwaukee, Wisconsin
She murdered her second husband, attempted to murder her third husband and his
two sons and daughter, leaving one son dead, the husband crippled and the
daughter very ill.
Mrs. Sullivan explained: “I didn’t like them, so I put paris
green [poison] in their soup.” Departing for the women's state prison, Mrs.
Sullivan, remarked that she thought the life term imposed for the paris green
murder of her stepson, James Sullivan, 18, was “too long.”
***
1931 – Margaret
Summers – Chicago, Illinois, USA
Five persons died in the home of Margaret Summers in the
three years leading up to he arrest on suspicion of murdering her orphaned 17-year-old
nephew, Thomas Meyer. Investigators discovered a list of nineteen deaths in
Margaret’s “family Bible” which they set out to investrigate. The list
reportedly included five dead husbands. Eleven on the list seem to have been likely
to have been murdered. Five other victims were to come, based on the fact that
Mrs. Summers had taken out insurance on their lives. Mrs. Summers was convicted
of the mrder of Thomas Meyer and sentenced to 14 years in prison.
***
1883 – Maria
Swanenburg (Van der Linden) – Leiden, Netherlands
“Maria Catherina Swanenburg was affectionately given the nickname of “Goeie Mie” ( Dutch for “Good Me”), which she got for taking care of children and ill people in the poor neighborhood of Leiden in which she lived. After “Goeie Mie” was caught poisoning a family by the name of Groothuizen the murderess was arrested December 15, 1883. The investigation of her crimes looked into more than 90 suspicious deaths and lasted more than eighteen years. Maria’s first victims were her own parents whom she murdered in 1883. The majority of her poisoning victims survived. Twenty-seven died; forty-five survived. But many of them were crippled for life. For decades Goeie Mie’s poisoning victims could be seen navigating about Leiden on crutches.” [Wikipedia]
“Maria Catherina Swanenburg was affectionately given the nickname of “Goeie Mie” ( Dutch for “Good Me”), which she got for taking care of children and ill people in the poor neighborhood of Leiden in which she lived. After “Goeie Mie” was caught poisoning a family by the name of Groothuizen the murderess was arrested December 15, 1883. The investigation of her crimes looked into more than 90 suspicious deaths and lasted more than eighteen years. Maria’s first victims were her own parents whom she murdered in 1883. The majority of her poisoning victims survived. Twenty-seven died; forty-five survived. But many of them were crippled for life. For decades Goeie Mie’s poisoning victims could be seen navigating about Leiden on crutches.” [Wikipedia]
***
1948 – Irmgard Swinka (aka: Kuschinsky) – Hamm (Berlin), Germany
“Former Berlin waitress Irmgard
Swinka (37), was sentenced to death for poisoning 5 women. She offered poisoned cigarettes and drugs to elderly spinsters
and robbed them. She was said to have been twice
divorced and to have a third bieamous husband.” [A brief English-language news
report]
***
1929 – Esther Szabo – Nagyrev, Hungary
***
1950 – Georgia Tann – Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Georgia Tann may well be the most prolific serial killer in US history. During Tann’s tenure as head of the organization she founded, Tennessee Children’s Home Society, in Memphis, the region had the highest infant mortality rate in the nation. Her practice was to rid herself of those babies put in her charge she deemed unsaleable by leaving them unattended out in the sun until they broiled to death. She and her lover and male sexual deviants she employed would beat and torture children for the perverse sexual thrill of it.
***
***
1950 – Georgia Tann – Memphis, Tennessee, USA
Georgia Tann may well be the most prolific serial killer in US history. During Tann’s tenure as head of the organization she founded, Tennessee Children’s Home Society, in Memphis, the region had the highest infant mortality rate in the nation. Her practice was to rid herself of those babies put in her charge she deemed unsaleable by leaving them unattended out in the sun until they broiled to death. She and her lover and male sexual deviants she employed would beat and torture children for the perverse sexual thrill of it.
According to one surviving victim, Georgia and her companion
would hit the children “on the scalp so no one could see the bruises.” Favored
forms of child torture at the Home included tying a rope around a child’s
wrists and hang it up on a coat rack and dangling a child from a rope down the
laundry chute.
***
1927 – Alma (McClavey) Theede – Memphis, Tennessee,
USA
“Vance Avenue Alma” was a prostitute. She had seven husbands. Some she divorced, one died in a car wreck and she murdered the others, three of them. In 1919 she murdered No. 2, No. 4 in 1927, and no. 6 in 1946. Even numbers were obviously unlucky.
“Vance Avenue Alma” was a prostitute. She had seven husbands. Some she divorced, one died in a car wreck and she murdered the others, three of them. In 1919 she murdered No. 2, No. 4 in 1927, and no. 6 in 1946. Even numbers were obviously unlucky.
***
1925 – Alsa Thompson – Hollywood, California, USA
Alsa Thompson was 7-years-old at time she was apprehended.
She had been caught poisoning family members, and wielding a razor blade
against the children (including her toddler sister), at the Hollywood,
California home in which her separated parents had temporarily placed her. Alsa
confessed and added that she murdered her 2-year old twin sisters when her
family lived in Canada.
There are other cases of very young girls who were serial killers, yet this is the only case for which there is a photograph. These serial killer girls (with the exception of Mary Bell, England, 1968), which date from the 19th to just a few years ago (Brazil, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, Russia) are completely ignored (with the exception of Mary Bell) in the professional literature (criminology, sociology, psychology).
There are other cases of very young girls who were serial killers, yet this is the only case for which there is a photograph. These serial killer girls (with the exception of Mary Bell, England, 1968), which date from the 19th to just a few years ago (Brazil, England, France, Germany, Ireland, Nigeria, Russia) are completely ignored (with the exception of Mary Bell) in the professional literature (criminology, sociology, psychology).
***
Clémence
Thoulier, a 34-year old widow murdered four of her newborns and buried them.
Their bodies were recovered by police. Her paramour, the infants’ father, was
also charged with murder.
***
1877 – Sophia
Martha Todd – Liverpool, England
Sophia Martha Todd was a baby farmer who would accept fees for the care of babies and then murder her tiny charges, pocketing the food-and-necessities money for herself. She is known to have killed six and the corpse of the child whose death led to her prosecution was found with a crushed skull.
Sophia Martha Todd was a baby farmer who would accept fees for the care of babies and then murder her tiny charges, pocketing the food-and-necessities money for herself. She is known to have killed six and the corpse of the child whose death led to her prosecution was found with a crushed skull.
***
1920 – Anna
Tomaskiewicz – Northhampton, Massachusetts, USA
“Mrs. Anna Tomaskiewiez, the strange woman ‘Bluebeard’ of South Hartley, was preparing for her sixth husband when her fifth spouse died. Mike Djurizzko, a boarder, was to be her next husband, according to testimony in the case. Mrs. Tomaskiewiez had already tried to obtain insurance made out in her name for Mike. The Polish insurance agent refused to accept the application and it was this fact that led to the unearthing of her tangled career.”
“Mrs. Anna Tomaskiewiez, the strange woman ‘Bluebeard’ of South Hartley, was preparing for her sixth husband when her fifth spouse died. Mike Djurizzko, a boarder, was to be her next husband, according to testimony in the case. Mrs. Tomaskiewiez had already tried to obtain insurance made out in her name for Mike. The Polish insurance agent refused to accept the application and it was this fact that led to the unearthing of her tangled career.”
The press said she she was running a “murder factory.” The
prosecutor charged “that the woman caused the death of two husbands, one in
Connecticut and one in New York, and that suspicious circumstances attended the
deaths of the other two.” The jury found her not guilty by reason of insanity.
“Mrs. Tomaskiewicz, was seen to smile when the verdict was given by the jury
foreman. Mrs. Tomaskiewicz was committed to the Northampton State Hospital for
the Insane for life.”
***
***
1901 – Jane
Toppan – Boston, Massachusetts, USA (*)
Nurse Jane Toppan loved to murder. Her toll was at least 31.
“No one could have guessed that during her tenure at a
Massachusetts hospital the amiable ‘Jolly Jane; was morbidly obsessed with
autopsies, or that she conducted her own after-hours experiments on patients,
deriving sexual satisfaction in their slow, agonizing deaths from poison.”
(Harold Schechter, Fatal)
***
“Known as the Ogress of Saint Sauveur, Camille Tournie has been sentenced to imprisonment for two years for having murdered
at birth since 1923 her seven children. The bodies were concealed on a farm
owned by the children’s reputed father, her brother in-law, who was sentenced
to imprisonment for seven years.”
***
1912 – Frieda
Trost – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Frieda Trost was convicted
of murdering her second husband and sentenced to life in prison. After the
arrest Christian Hartmann, the brother of her first husband, Frederick
Hartmann, came forward stating that there was strong circumstantial evidence
that she had murdered husband number one and his three children.
“We lived in Philadelphia,” Christian Hartmann explained, “up to a few years ago Mrs. Trost used to come and talk about spirits to us. One day she came to me and said that she could do nothing with Fred’s physical self. ‘I want his soul,' she said.”
“We lived in Philadelphia,” Christian Hartmann explained, “up to a few years ago Mrs. Trost used to come and talk about spirits to us. One day she came to me and said that she could do nothing with Fred’s physical self. ‘I want his soul,' she said.”
***
1909 – Maud Turner – Toronto, Canada
From a news report: “The discovery of a baby lying dead beside the railway yesterday near Niagara halls with the word “Authors” on a ticket pasted on its back, led to the arrest of Mrs. Maud Turner, to whom had been given $100 to adopt the child a few days ago. This arrest and the publicity attached to it brought a score of letters to the detective department from people [whose] children she adopted but who fear theirs may also have been killed. When Mrs. Turner was arrested she had another child with her. The police obtained information pointing to the belief that this woman has adopted scores of babies for a consideration and, having strangled them, thrown their bodies into Lake Ontario or some other obscure place.”
From a news report: “The discovery of a baby lying dead beside the railway yesterday near Niagara halls with the word “Authors” on a ticket pasted on its back, led to the arrest of Mrs. Maud Turner, to whom had been given $100 to adopt the child a few days ago. This arrest and the publicity attached to it brought a score of letters to the detective department from people [whose] children she adopted but who fear theirs may also have been killed. When Mrs. Turner was arrested she had another child with her. The police obtained information pointing to the belief that this woman has adopted scores of babies for a consideration and, having strangled them, thrown their bodies into Lake Ontario or some other obscure place.”
***
1803 – Sophie Ursinus – Berlin, Germany
Sophie Charlotte Elisabeth Ursinus (born Weingarten) is believed to have been responsible for poisoning her husband, aunt and lover, and of attempting to poison her servant. Her trial led to a method of identifying arsenic poisoning.
***
***
***
1893 – Annie Wagner – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Five members of the household in which recently-arrived German immigrant Annie Wagner worked died mysteriously. The bodies were exhumed and arsenic was found in each. Annie Wagner was acquitted. The impression made by this result in light of the evidence was that “not guilty” was a nullification verdict due to juror’s sympathy for Annie’s claim of self-sacrifice in her capacity as a caregiver to motherless children. The evidence nevertheless supports the charges that she was a serial killer.
***
1852 – Margaret Waldgrave – Buffalo, New York, USA & Havana, Cuba
(Veracity of case in question)
1902 – Amelia Sach & Annie Walters – Finchley, England
“The Finchley Baby Farmers,” Amelia Sach & Annie Walters, for a handsome fee, would collect the baby after it was born, and then dispose of it with poison — chlorodyne (a medicine containing morphine) and dispose of the tiny in the Thames or buried or in a garbage dump. Police had been alerted to their operation and started shadowing the women. On November 18, 1902, “Walters was followed to Kensington Station where she was discovered in the ladies’ lavatory with a dead infant boy in her arms, his hands clenched, his tongue swollen and lips purple and black. The victim was the four-day-old son of Ada Charlotte Galley, a servant who had recently given birth at Claymore House. The cause of death was said to be asphyxia and Sach and Walters were arrested for murder.” “Two weeks later, nine starving children were found in a house not far away in Wood Green, including two babies lying in the lid of an old rush basket.” Their execution on February 3, 1903 was the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times. One newspaper reported that, following the arrest of Sach and Walters there had been a precipitous decrease in the number of dead babies found around London.
***
***
***
***
***
[124,160-2/26/22]
***
1890 – Carrie Vandergrift – Burlington, New Jersey, USA
Carrie Vandergrift was convicted of poisoning a son whose
illness raised suspicions and resulted in intervention which apparently saved
his life. Circumstantial evidence pointed to the previous suspicions
surrounding the deaths of two husbands which were at the time thought to be
caused by the same poisonous agent which she was known to have purchased in
large quantities.
***
1931 – Rose
Veres – Detroit, Michigan, USA
She was known to children in a Michigan Hungarian immigrant community as the “Witch of Delray.” Delray was a village near Detroit which became incorportated into the city as it grew. A little girl witnessed the death of a tenant of Rose Veres’ who she observed was pushed from inside an attic window as he was perched on the ladder from which he fell. Mr. Mack’s death netted the landlady a tidy $4,000 life insurance award. Rose and her son were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life in prison. The investigation turned up eleven other suspicious deaths of men in the Veres “house of death,” as neighbors called it, which had occurred between 1924 and 1931. Each had produced insurance awards for the landlady following the death. Police found 75 insurance policies in her home.
In 1945 Rose Veres and her son were awarded a retrial on a technicality: the presiding judge was absent from the courtroom when the verdict was returned. They were set free after serving 13 years in prison. The Veres story has been kept alive – “the Witch of Delray is going to get you” – told by mothers to keep their children in line.
She was known to children in a Michigan Hungarian immigrant community as the “Witch of Delray.” Delray was a village near Detroit which became incorportated into the city as it grew. A little girl witnessed the death of a tenant of Rose Veres’ who she observed was pushed from inside an attic window as he was perched on the ladder from which he fell. Mr. Mack’s death netted the landlady a tidy $4,000 life insurance award. Rose and her son were convicted of his murder and sentenced to life in prison. The investigation turned up eleven other suspicious deaths of men in the Veres “house of death,” as neighbors called it, which had occurred between 1924 and 1931. Each had produced insurance awards for the landlady following the death. Police found 75 insurance policies in her home.
In 1945 Rose Veres and her son were awarded a retrial on a technicality: the presiding judge was absent from the courtroom when the verdict was returned. They were set free after serving 13 years in prison. The Veres story has been kept alive – “the Witch of Delray is going to get you” – told by mothers to keep their children in line.
1911 – Louise
Vermilya ("Vermilyea") – Chicago, Illinois, USA (*)
Louise Vermilya was arrested on suspicion on murdering a tenant, police officer Arthur F. Bisonette. Investigation reveled eight other suspicious deaths. Police held Mrs. Vermilya under home arrest where she tricked an attendant to provide her with arsenic contained in a box marked as “pepper.” She survived but was seriously impaired. The murder charge was dropped over evidence problems. In the courtroom Louise was, at the announcement of the verdict that formally released her, was immediately arrested on suspicion of murdering yet another boarder, Richard T. Smith, whose suspicious death was the most recent apart from that of the policeman.
Louise Vermilya was arrested on suspicion on murdering a tenant, police officer Arthur F. Bisonette. Investigation reveled eight other suspicious deaths. Police held Mrs. Vermilya under home arrest where she tricked an attendant to provide her with arsenic contained in a box marked as “pepper.” She survived but was seriously impaired. The murder charge was dropped over evidence problems. In the courtroom Louise was, at the announcement of the verdict that formally released her, was immediately arrested on suspicion of murdering yet another boarder, Richard T. Smith, whose suspicious death was the most recent apart from that of the policeman.
At her trial for that murder Mr. Vermilya was wheeled into
the courtroom in a wheelchair. The jury verdict was mixed resulting in
mistrial. Vermilya remained seriously ill from the self-administering of
arsenic and was never convicted.
***
1893 – Annie Wagner – Indianapolis, Indiana, USA
Five members of the household in which recently-arrived German immigrant Annie Wagner worked died mysteriously. The bodies were exhumed and arsenic was found in each. Annie Wagner was acquitted. The impression made by this result in light of the evidence was that “not guilty” was a nullification verdict due to juror’s sympathy for Annie’s claim of self-sacrifice in her capacity as a caregiver to motherless children. The evidence nevertheless supports the charges that she was a serial killer.
***
1852 – Margaret Waldgrave – Buffalo, New York, USA & Havana, Cuba
(Veracity of case in question)
From the advertisement for a book telling her life story:
“Her first step in the center of crime was the murder of a little child; and
then to bide that she murdered the witness of the deed, by administering
strychnine in liquor to him. She then flew to Canada, where she joined fortunes
with a notorious gambler and swindler, who took her to Philadelphia, where she
left him and flew to New Orleans with that notorious villain, LeHocq,
perpetrating many dark and memorable deeds. From New Orleans she flew to
Havana, where she finally murdered the members of ‘The Alumni.’”
***
***
1902 – Amelia Sach & Annie Walters – Finchley, England
“The Finchley Baby Farmers,” Amelia Sach & Annie Walters, for a handsome fee, would collect the baby after it was born, and then dispose of it with poison — chlorodyne (a medicine containing morphine) and dispose of the tiny in the Thames or buried or in a garbage dump. Police had been alerted to their operation and started shadowing the women. On November 18, 1902, “Walters was followed to Kensington Station where she was discovered in the ladies’ lavatory with a dead infant boy in her arms, his hands clenched, his tongue swollen and lips purple and black. The victim was the four-day-old son of Ada Charlotte Galley, a servant who had recently given birth at Claymore House. The cause of death was said to be asphyxia and Sach and Walters were arrested for murder.” “Two weeks later, nine starving children were found in a house not far away in Wood Green, including two babies lying in the lid of an old rush basket.” Their execution on February 3, 1903 was the only double hanging of women to be carried out in modern times. One newspaper reported that, following the arrest of Sach and Walters there had been a precipitous decrease in the number of dead babies found around London.
***
“Crippled
from the hips down and hobbling into Prosecutor Russell B. Lyons’ office on crutches,
Charles Hughes told the story of his cousins’ deaths, poisoned by their mother
and of his own narrow escape from death at the hand of his aunt. This “led to a
painstaking investigation, a secret night-time exhumation of the bodies of his
cousins, and discovery by a chemist that each contained poison enough to have caused death.” Mrs. Wardrop
spent time in an insane asylum and was released when “sane” two years following
her arrest. She was never tried for the murders or the attempted murder of her
nephew.
***
1870 – Margaret
Waters – London, England (*)
“Waters drugged and starved the infants in her care and is believed to have killed at least 19 children. Charged with five counts of wilful murder as well as neglect and conspiracy, Waters was convicted of murdering an infant named John Walter Cowen.” [Wikipedia] From a news report: “The child Cowen, such a fine, healthy child three weeks before, had scarcely a bit of flesh on its bones, could not cry, could hardly be wakened when it was asleep, and looked more like a shriveled-up monkey than a human being.” She was executed Oct. 11, 1870.
“Waters drugged and starved the infants in her care and is believed to have killed at least 19 children. Charged with five counts of wilful murder as well as neglect and conspiracy, Waters was convicted of murdering an infant named John Walter Cowen.” [Wikipedia] From a news report: “The child Cowen, such a fine, healthy child three weeks before, had scarcely a bit of flesh on its bones, could not cry, could hardly be wakened when it was asleep, and looked more like a shriveled-up monkey than a human being.” She was executed Oct. 11, 1870.
***
1908 – Jeanne
Weber – Paris, France (*)
Jeanne Weber got her kicks from strangling children, including her own. She was defended by France's greatest “experts” and acquitted of murder twice, allowing her to continue her passion for strangling children to death. She murdered ten children and two were rescued from her attempts.
Jeanne Weber got her kicks from strangling children, including her own. She was defended by France's greatest “experts” and acquitted of murder twice, allowing her to continue her passion for strangling children to death. She murdered ten children and two were rescued from her attempts.
***
1907
– Mrs. Fred West
(Clara West) – Des Moines, Iowa, USA
Child care provider Mrs. Fred West (Clara) and her
head nurse were accused of murdering “Baby Jim.” It was also said that
prostitutes would purchase babies to use as “pets.” Her former nurse, Miss Flora
Goble, came forth and disclosed the murder of babies at the West “baby farm.”
In court Miss Goble testified: “Mrs. West asked me to give the laudanum to the
baby and brought me poison bottle. I refused. Mrs. West told me not to be
foolish – that it was always the babies gave any trouble they them out
of misery as fast as possible.” At the end of a sensational trial, the charges
were dismissed after the jury failed to find agreement.
***
1871 – Elizabeth
Wharton – Baltimore, Maryland, USA
Elizabeth Wharton was a member of “first circles of society” in Baltimore. Following the poisoning of a house guest, who survived the deaths of family members and another house guest, an Army General, were investigated. In all, there were four murders suspected and another attempted murder. The case was a sensation. Mrs. Wharton was tried for the murder of General Ketchum but to the circumstantial nature of the evidence she was acquitted. The trial involved an acrimonious battle of expert witnesses. A second trial was held for the attempted murder of Van Ness.
Here is how it ended, as reported by one newspaper: “The prosecution of Mrs. Wharton is at length abandoned and the mystery of General Ketchum’s death and Mr. Van Ness’s illness will probably remain forever unsolved. Public opinion in the State of Maryland from the beginning held Mrs. Wharton guilty, and the blunders of those entrusted by the law with enquiring into her guilt were so manifest that the issue of the trial has not materially shaken the general conclusion arrived at by the public.”
Elizabeth Wharton was a member of “first circles of society” in Baltimore. Following the poisoning of a house guest, who survived the deaths of family members and another house guest, an Army General, were investigated. In all, there were four murders suspected and another attempted murder. The case was a sensation. Mrs. Wharton was tried for the murder of General Ketchum but to the circumstantial nature of the evidence she was acquitted. The trial involved an acrimonious battle of expert witnesses. A second trial was held for the attempted murder of Van Ness.
Here is how it ended, as reported by one newspaper: “The prosecution of Mrs. Wharton is at length abandoned and the mystery of General Ketchum’s death and Mr. Van Ness’s illness will probably remain forever unsolved. Public opinion in the State of Maryland from the beginning held Mrs. Wharton guilty, and the blunders of those entrusted by the law with enquiring into her guilt were so manifest that the issue of the trial has not materially shaken the general conclusion arrived at by the public.”
1888 – Sarah
Whiteling – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Sarah Jane Whiteling murdered her husband and two children –
a daughter of 9 and a son under the age of 3 – spacing the murders one month
apart. She also poisoned several other children, not members the family, all of
whom survived, was suspected of other attempts. She was hanged for the crimes.
***
1902 – Hattie
Whitten – Dexter, Maine, USA
Hattie Whitten was arrested for murdering her 9-year-old
daughter. She was apprehended as she returned from the girl’s funeral. She was also
suspected of murdering her 11-year-old daughter a month earlier and her husband
several years before that. While in custody of the sheriff she committed
suicide by hanging.
***
1903 – Elisabeth
Wiese – St. Pauli (Hamburg), Germany
Elisabeth Wiese was a “baby farmer” and abortionist. Deeply
superstitious, she performed magic rites and believed she was in communication
with spirits. She murdered babies, and was accused of burning them alive. Some
of the females she allowed to live and she raised them to become prostitutes
who would bring her additional revenue.
***
1862 – Catherine
Wilson – London, England
***
1957 – Mary
Elizabeth Wilson – Jarrow-on-Tyne, England (*)
Mary Elizabeth Wilson was “arrested after police exhumed the
bodies of four men who died in her home within 26 months. The woman had been
married to three of them in succession: the fourth was a lodger. The woman’s
first husband lived with her 41 years before he expired in August, 1955, but
the other two survived the ceremony only two weeks. The fourth man was a lodger
who came between husbands No. 1 and No. 2.” Her sardonic humor was her doom.
“One of her gruesome jests which led ultimately to police
inquiries was voiced at a reception following her marriage last October to
76-year-old Ernest Wilson. A friend asked what she was going to do with a large
number of cakes and sandwiches left over. ‘Keep them for the funeral,’ she
replied. Wilson laughed with the rest – and lived just 15 days more. Then it
was recalled the widow of Windy Nook made another of her jokes at the
registrar’s office, where she had been married and had then returned to record
her husbands’ deaths. ‘There should be a discount for me,’ she quipped.”
***
1865 – Charlotte
Winsor – Torquay, England
The newspapers
called it “a complete system of child murder.” Charlotte Winsor ran an
illicit business providing what she termed a “service”: murdering babies. She
charged a fee of £3 to £5 to ‘put away’ a child. After leaving the corpse of a
naked boy wrapped in sewn-up newspaper at the side of a road where it was
found, she was tracked down and arrested. “She even explained her method of murder —
by placing her finger on the jugular vein of the victim.” She was convicted of
one murder and sentenced to death, but the sentence was later commuted.
***
1946 – Lillie
Winter – Fairfield, Illinois, USA
In 1946, at the
age of 76, Lillie Winter was charged with the murder of her 3-year-old
grandson. Other suspicious deaths dating back to 1921 were investigated. Three
bodies were exhumed: her husband, brother and sister. The siblings’
corpses contained arsenic. She was tried for murdering the child but was
acquitted. 7 months later she was again arrested after her 46-year-old daughter
and 16-year old step-daughter became ill. Arsenic was found in the container of
the milk they had consumed. She was tried and acquitted, once again.
***
1925 – Martha
Wise – Valley City, Ohio, USA (*)
From a 1926 newspaper: “Mrs. Martha Wise, whose “funeral
complex” resulted in the poisoning of seventeen persons, three of whom died,
made a supplemental confession today. Under the questioning of Joseph Seymour,
county prosecutor, the Hardscrabble widow, admitted setting fire to ten houses
and barns in the neighborhood of her home in the last few months. The
confession clears up a series of arson plots on which authorities have been
working. Mrs. Wise also said that she had stolen numerous pieces of jewelry
from neighbors and relatives.
In each case she wept bitterly and gave the same explanation offered for the poisonings: “The devil made me do it – he told me so.” Mrs. Wise will probably be sent to the Lima hospital for the criminally insane. She said the lure of funerals and suffering caused her to poison her relatives.” … “I liked their funerals. I could get dressed up and see folks and talk to them. I didn’t miss a funeral in twenty years. The only fun I ever had was after I kilt people.”
In each case she wept bitterly and gave the same explanation offered for the poisonings: “The devil made me do it – he told me so.” Mrs. Wise will probably be sent to the Lima hospital for the criminally insane. She said the lure of funerals and suffering caused her to poison her relatives.” … “I liked their funerals. I could get dressed up and see folks and talk to them. I didn’t miss a funeral in twenty years. The only fun I ever had was after I kilt people.”
***
1901 – Belle
Witwer – Dayton, Ohio, USA
Mrs. Witwer was arrested for the murder of her sister, Mrs.
Pugh, but the grand jury, because of lack of evidence, did not indict her. Her
list of suspected victims included eighteen persons. A number of husbands were
included in the list: “Mrs. Witwer’s marital history certainly is unique. Frank
D. Witwer was the last of her husbands who died suddenly. She was married to
him last March, and on July 4 he died. Like all her husbands, he had stomach
trouble a short time before his death. He was taken violently ill some time
after eating a luncheon which, according to the sleuths, his wife sent to him.
Mrs. Witwer’s first husband was Frederick Sweinger, who died near Nashville, Tenn., in 1877, supposedly from smallpox. The second husband was Frank Brown, of Middletown, O., with whom she lived for several years. Soon after his death she married William Stowe, in Middletown, and his death was strange and startling. Mrs. Witwer admits that he died from morphine poisoning, but says a clergyman administered the fatal dose.”
Mrs. Witwer’s first husband was Frederick Sweinger, who died near Nashville, Tenn., in 1877, supposedly from smallpox. The second husband was Frank Brown, of Middletown, O., with whom she lived for several years. Soon after his death she married William Stowe, in Middletown, and his death was strange and startling. Mrs. Witwer admits that he died from morphine poisoning, but says a clergyman administered the fatal dose.”
***
1939 – Bertie
Wrather – Nashville, Tennessee, USA
Mrs. Bertie Wrather, was arrested for murdering with her
son, a brother-in-law and a father-in-law. Several other suspicious deaths in
the family were also investigated. She was tried for the murder of her son. The
were two hung juries and a conviction in June 1941 at the third trial, getting
her a 99-year sentence. In June 1943 an appeal reversed the guilty charge and
set her free. The appellate court ruled that it was improper for the
prosecution to have allowed mention the two earlier deaths in testimony during
the trial.
***
1932 – Gizella
Young – Munhall, Pennsylvania, USA
Gizella Young was a fortune teller who solicited her clients
to join her in murderous insurance scams. She murdered numerous children for
insurance money, attempted to murder child relative using a blackjack who
survived the attack, leading to the investigation which uncovered serial
killings involving accomplices Anna Allas and Mary Chalfa. She served no time
for her many crimes because she turned state’s evidence and testified against
Allas and Chalfa.
***
1936 – Lila
Gladys Young – Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada (*)
With her husband, Lila Young
operated a large and highly profitable maternity home. The sold illegitimate
babies for substantial fees while also profiting from the mother. Unsalable
children were murdered. They buried a large number of children in wooden butter
boxes in a graveyard on the institution grounds. Some were thrown into the
furnace or discarded in the sea. Today the adults who survived the Youngs are
called “Butter Box Babies.” One estimate of the number of murdered babies is
“between four hundred and six hundred.”
***
1921 – Rosalia Zemliachka (Rozalia Samuilovna Zalkind) – Soviet Russia
Rosalia Zemliachka, or Rozalia Samuilovna Zalkind (Russian: Залкинд Розалия Самуиловна), (20 March 1876 – 21 January 1947) was nicknamed “The Demon” and “Fury of the Communist Terror” for her personal participation in mass murders of prisoners following the Civil War.
“After Rosalia Zemlyachka’s arrival in the Crimea the Black Sea coast was red with blood. The first night in Simferopol shot 1800 people. In Feodosia; 420, in Kerch; 1300 and so on,” wrote the historian Sergei Mel’gunov, a superior. Rosalia not only gave the ordered for the massacres, but she eagerly participated in them. She was commissar, in leather jacket, revolver at her side, going from town to town, from village to village, killing and killing.” (loosely translated excerpt from Аргументы и Факты, Nov. 21, 2012)
Rosalia Zemliachka, or Rozalia Samuilovna Zalkind (Russian: Залкинд Розалия Самуиловна), (20 March 1876 – 21 January 1947) was nicknamed “The Demon” and “Fury of the Communist Terror” for her personal participation in mass murders of prisoners following the Civil War.
“After Rosalia Zemlyachka’s arrival in the Crimea the Black Sea coast was red with blood. The first night in Simferopol shot 1800 people. In Feodosia; 420, in Kerch; 1300 and so on,” wrote the historian Sergei Mel’gunov, a superior. Rosalia not only gave the ordered for the massacres, but she eagerly participated in them. She was commissar, in leather jacket, revolver at her side, going from town to town, from village to village, killing and killing.” (loosely translated excerpt from Аргументы и Факты, Nov. 21, 2012)
*** END OF COLLECTION ***
NOTE:
49 of the above 197 are included in Peter Vronsky’s list of 140:
Archer-Gilligan, Bathory, Beck, Becker, Bender, Besnard, Brinvilliers, Cannon,
Chesham, Cotton, Cunningham, Dazely, Dean, Deshayes, Doss, Dyer, Fazakas,
Flannagan, Freeman, Gottfried, Grills, Gunness, Hahn, Higgins, Jeanneret,
Jegado, Klimek (Gburek), Lehmann, Lipka, Makin, Marek, Marti, Martin, De
Melker, Olah, Rendell, Robinson, Sherman, Sierri, Sorenson, Soulakiotis,
Toppan, Southard (Trueblood), Vermilyea, Waters, Wilson, Wise, L. Young,
Zwanziger.
***
[124,160-2/26/22]
***
