Jeanne Raies, Swiss Serial Killer Nurse - 1881

QUOTE: At Geneva in 1880, a sick-nurse, Jeanne Raies, was convicted of having poisoned twelve persons. Why? The sole motivation that the indictment was able to invoke was that funeral parlors offered a small payment to those who carried to them the first news of a death.

[Translation from : P. Bouardel, Les Intoxications: Arsenic, Phosphore, Cuivre, Mercure et Plomb, Paris, J. B. Ballierre et Fils, 1904, p. 8]

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EXCERPT : Economic competition between morticians in Geneva, Switzerland, inspired the serial murders committed by nurse Jean Raies. In 1880, after one undertaker tried to “scoop” the competition with a financial bounty on reports of local deaths, Nurse Raies saw an opportunity to line her pocket. Before year’s end, she poisoned twelve of her patients, “selling” each in turn to the free-spending mortician. Arrested after the twelfth killing, she was convicted of multiple murder and spent the rest of her life in a Swiss prison.

[Michael Newton, Bad Girls Do It : An Encyclopedia of Female Murderers, Loompanics, Port Townsend, Wa., 1993, p. 147]

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EXCERPT: C’est, à Genève, il y a sept ou huit ans, Jeanne Raies la garde-malade, qui fait douze victimes. Et pourquoi? Pourquoi? Pour toucher la prime misérable que le pompes funèbres attributent à ceux qui leaur apportaient la première nouvelle d’un décès!

[Gaston Lèbre, Revue des grands procès contemporains, Tome VIII – Annee 1890. Paris. Chevalier-Maresq et Cie. P. 10]

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For more cases, see Sicko Nurses

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