This US case is of particular interest in that all parties are Hungarian immigrants. Thus the Veras case ought to be compared with the serial murder syndicates operating in Hungary up till the early 1930s. (See: Husband-Killing Syndicates)
Some news sources use other spellings “Veras, Vera,” but
“Veras” seems to be the correct spelling.
***
FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 6): Detroit - A mother and her son were held by police today following the death by a fall from a window of a roomer in their home and the subsequent discovery by police that ten men, on most of whom the woman held insurance policies, had died in her rooming house during the past eight years.
The woman, Mrs. Rose Veras, 48, whose rooming house is in this city’s Hungarian colony, is held on a technical charge of homicide. Her son, William, 18, was arrested for investigation.
The death of Steve Mak, 68, a roomer at Mrs. Veras’ home opened the police investigation. Mrs. Veras told police Mak fell from a ladder while repairing an attic window, other witnesses said Mak was not at work on a ladder, and that it appeared he had been pushed from the window.
George M. Stutz, assistant prosecuting attorney, said he had learned there was one valid insurance policy on Mak’s life, for $4,000, of which Mrs. Veras was the beneficiary. He said he had learned Mrs. Veras recently borrowed money to make a payment on the policy.
~ Says It’s Customary ~
Mrs. Veras told police it was customary in the Hungarian colony for a landlady to insure her roomers in her behalf. Police said 75 policies were found in her home. They expressed the belief that several of them had been made out in her favor by most of the ten men whose deaths occurred in her house since 1923.
Detectiva Lieutenant John Whitman said he had learned Mrs. Veras paid the funeral expenses of seven of the men who died at her house.
Police examined their records to determine the cause of the death of the ten, and announced that post mortems had been held on the. Bodies of two who died of alcoholism, and that no evidence of criminal activities had been found.
The ten men who died in Mrs. Veras’ home, they said, were Hungarian.
~ Freedom Delayed ~
Frank M. Kenney, Mrs. Veras’ attorney, presented a writ of habeas corpus for the release of Mrs. Veras and her son, returnable today. Instead of dismissing the writ, as he first announced. Recorders Judge Henry S. Sweeney extended the time to Thursday, saying he desired to give the police “all the time they want in investigating the case.”
Kenney declared the action against Mrs. Veras to be the result of neighborhood gossip. He said the previous deaths had been investigated and showed no criminal activity.
Detectives investigating Mrs. Veras’ activities said she had a record of six previous arrests, but no convictions. One of the arrests, they said, was for embezzlement.
[“Detroit Woman, Son Jailed As Suspects In Insurance Murders Ten Men Meet Death In Rooming House Within 8 Years; Policies Named Accused As Beneficiary, Police Claim.” Syndicated (AP), Sandusky Register (Oh.), Aug. 27, 1931, p. 1]
***
FULL TEXT: (Article 2 of 6): Detroit – Four persons were in custody today as authorities sought to learn whether the deaths of ten men over a period of eight years in Mrs. Rose Veras’ rooming house were from natural causes or violence.
~ Find 75 Policies ~
Mrs. Veras, the 48-year-old Hungarian immigrant who held insurance policies on the ten who died, has been in custody since Tuesday on a technical charge of murder. Other policies, 75 in all, were found by officers in her home and investigators were attempting to learn the fate of the insured.
The list of deaths under investigation had reached 11 today, with discovery that Valet Peterman, 68, a boarder in the Veras home, died shortly after moving to another house.
Sam Dcnycn who, police said, lived in the Veras home until two weeks ago, was arrested in Logan, W. Va., late yesterday and a detective left last night to question him. Mrs. Veras’ 15-year old son, Gaber, was detained for questioning yesterday. Another son, William, I8, has been held for several days.
~ Pushed Out of Window? ~
The investigation was inspired by the death of Steve Mak, a roomer, Tuesday morning from injuries received in a fall. airs. Veras said he fell while working on a ladder.
Neighbors who claimed to have witnessed his fall, told police he appeared to have been pushed from an attic window and drugged at the time.
[“Widow Quizzed in 10 Deaths,” “Probe Rooming House Deaths – Four In Custody As Police Investigate Death of Eleven Men; Hungarian Woman Held Insurance Policies,” syndicated (NEA), Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune (Wi.), Aug. 28, 1931, p. 1]
FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 6): Detroit, Aug. 31 – Duncan C. McRae, assistant prosecutor, announced today that Mrs. Rose Veras, rooming house proprietor, held on a technical charge of homicide following the death during the past eight years of 12 men in her home, had confessed to “a party not connected with the police department,” that she pushed one of the men from an attic window, the fall causing his death.
McCrae said that the woman told the person whose name was not revealed by police that she pushed Stephen Mak, the last of the 12 men to die, from an attic window after attempts to poison him has failed.
~ Had 75 Policies. ~
Harry S. Toy, prosecuting attorney, said he would not reveal how the confession was obtained. He said that for reasons he “did not care to disclose” the person’s identity, which would not be revealed at present.
Seventy-five life insurance policies were found in Mrs. Veras’ home, when she was arrested, on the lives of the men who died in her home. Officials said that Mrs. Veras held at last $6400 insurance on the life of Mak.
~ Denies Others. ~
McCrae said the woman denied any complicity in any of the other deaths in her home, but had admitted she killed Mak to obtain insurance money of which she was the beneficiary. She said she held seven policies on Mak’s life and that she paid the premiums on all of them.
According to McCrae, Mrs. Veras confessed she tried to poison Mak by putting lye in his coffee and liquor that he drank, but when she found he was not “dying fast enough” she lured him up a ladder, placed at the side of her home, urging him to enter an attic window and then pushed him from the window. Mak died the day following the fall from the window.
[“Detroit Woman Admits Killing One of 12 Men To Collect Insurance,” syndicated (AP), Aug. 31, 1931, p. 1]
***
***
FULL
TEXT (Article 4 of 6): Detroit. Sept. 1.—After intermittent grilling of more than 100 hours.
Mrs. Rose Veres. 48, so-called “Witch Widow.” of Medina street where her
unkempt boarding house is located, today broke down and confessed to killing one of the 12 men who
died under what police alleged were incriminating circumstances during the past
eight years. She is charged with murder and faces life imprisonment.
According
to Assistant Prosecutor; Duncan McCrea, in charge of the wierd case, the widow
said:
“I
was hard up and needed the insurance money on the man. I tried to poison him
twice but he didn’t die, so I pushed him out of the attic window.”
Her
victim was Steven Mak, 68-year-old roomer, whose death led to the probe which
disclosed that other men had died “mysteriously” in her boarding house.
[“Detroit
Woman Admits Murder – Mrs. Rose Veres, Alleged ‘Witch-Woman’ Confesses To Death
Push - Sought Insurance Money On Victim, syndicated (International News
Service), Sep. 1, 1931, p. 12]
FULL TEXT: (Article 5 of 6): Detroit, Sept. 2. – Officers investigating the death of Steve Male and eleven other lodgers in Mrs. Rose Veras’ rooming house said tonight a witness had told them he saw Mak pushed from an attic window of the rooming house.
“A pair of arms” shoved Mak from the window, they quoted George Halasz, the witness, as saying, and a moment later Mrs. Veras peered out. Mak died August 28 of injuries suffered in the fall.
Halasz, 49, and a former lodger in the rooming house conducted by the 48-year-old woman, said he had gone to the house to see a man rooming there and was waiting outside when he saw Mak fall to his death. Halasz also was quoted as saying he moved out of the rooming house because Mrs. Veras sought to take out an insurance policy on his life, naming her as beneficiary.
Mrs. Veras had paid premiums on $2,600 of insurance on Mak’s life and on seventy-five other policies, many of them on the lives of lodgers who died in her house or shortly after they moved out, within the past eight years.
[“Witness Says Lodger Pushed From Window,” syndicated (AP), Bluefield Daily Telegraph (W. Va.), Sep. 3, 1931, p. 1]
***
FULL
TEXT (Article 6 of 6): The “Old Gray Witch of Medina Street” sits in her tiny room in the
Michigan House of Correction at Plymouth. Imprisoned fear life, far from her
native hills of Hungary, she talks to no one. All through the past Winter she
was silent, shunned and feared by her fellow-prisoners. Even now seeing from
her window the trees budding and the grass turning green, just as the Magyar
slopes came to life in the Spring in her native town of Sarud, she keeps a
seemingly mystic vigil, her strange eyes fixed upon objects which do not exist.
Perhaps
it is just as well for her that things beyond her window panes do not intrigue
her, for by the terms of her sentence she will never again be nearer them than,
she is now. Twelve men died, tragically in hear house; three were suicides. And
the other nine? In charging the “witch” with murder, the State decided to
concentrate on the case of Stephen Mak, the twelfth man to die.
It
was last August 21st.
In
the front yard of her home on Medina Street in the Hungarian colony of Detroit,
11-year-old Marie Chevalia was playing. All morning she had been making mud
pies.
It
was a warm day, but the air was heavy, and dull smoke from surrounding
factories resisted the sunlight. Against this background of haze; the house
directly across the street from the yard where little Marie was playing looked
somewhat ghostly.
The
reason, perhaps, lay in the legends of Medina Street.
Almost
from her cradle days, little Marie Chevalia had heard people say strange things
about that house and its inmates.
“Behind
those filmy curtains,” Medina Street mothers told their, .children when family
circles were gathered around the hearths, “stalks a bad witch-woman. Her name
is Mrs. Rose Veres. She bewitches factory men, they go to live in her house,
and in the cellar the witch-woman brews potions. She has the Evil Eye. When she
looks at these men, they have to do when she tells them. They want to go away,
but they can’t. She bewitches them. Then they die.
“She
was born with a full set of teeth and a veil, and if she wants she can change
herself into a wolf or a hare.”
In
the Old World, among the Magyrs, in the Hungarian hills whence most of these
people had come, so-called witches were common. Other people didn’t have to
believe in them if they preferred not to, but all the cynical sophistication in
the world couldn’t take the vampires and other evil spirits out of the darkness
which descended upon Sarud and Nagyrev every night.
These
people knew. They had seen the vampires. They had seen the wolf-men and the
wolf-women and beard their blood-curdling cries whenever anyone in the village
died.
So
Mrs. Veres, it was clear, was a “witch,” even though she lived in Detroit, in
the United States of America.
Why,
many times she had been seen growling about the alleys at might, garbed in her
long flowing garments of black flannel, a cape tucked tightly about her stooped
shoulders and her hair covered by a lace boudoir cap.
On
such occasions it was considered unsafe to be abroad in the darkness. And when
the word would go out that “The Witch of Medina Street” was on a nocturnal
prowl, every door in the neighborhood would be locked and double-barreled, and
every shade drawn.
So
little Marie Chevalia, as she fashioned her mud-pies last August 21st,
was glad that she was in her own yard, glad that it was daylight, glad that she
was in her own yard, glad that her Mamma and Papa had warned her against the
bad witch.
Soon,
as Marie watched, Mrs. Veres stopped out from behind the front door. Marie
dropped her mud pies and stared.
Mrs.
Veres, her net boudoir cap on her head, descended the steps and spoke a few
words in low tones to John Walker, a colored man who had been sprinkling the
lawn. Walker was one of Mrs. Veres’s boarders, and occupied an attic room. At
the “witch’s” direction, he dropped the hose and retired to the cellar to shut
off the water and perform some other duties.
As
soon as Walker had disappeared’ behind the house, little Marie saw Mrs. Veres
pick up a long ladder and place it against the side of the house. Then,
clutching her skirt, beneath which she was accustomed to wear five or six
petticoats, the “Old Gray Witch of Medina Street” walked back into her house
and closed the door behind her.
Transfixed,
by vague fears and a very definite curiosity, Marie remained, wide-eyed,
squatting over her mud pies. Probably because she was a member of the mote
curious sex, little Marie’s curiosity was stronger than her fear. That is why
she was later able to recount the entire drama as it unfolded before her young
eyes.
Presently
an old man emerged from the “witch-house.” He was unsteady on his feet. He was
carrying a small box and a hammer. Marie recognized him as Stephen Mak, one of
Mrs. Veres’s boarders. He walked toward the ladder and put a foot on it.
Hesitantly
he climbed, step by step. At the top he paused to lay his hammer and box on the
ledge. Then he opened the window, pulled himself partially through and sat on
the sill. For a full minute he remained in that position – then before the
watchful eyes of little Marie, be suddenly disappeared.
George
Halasz, a short, swarthy man who lived nearby, was strolling along
Medina Street. Up to this point, he had seen nothing unusual. From the sidewalk
he called once or twice for Mike Ludd, a friend who boarded at the Veres house.
Receiving no immediate reply, Halasz leaned against a tree and started rolling
a cigarette.
A
moment later Walker returned from the basement, rear, and began walking toward
the street. He was almost directly below the attic window when a box of nails
dropped in front
of him; then a hammer thudded. He raised his hands above his head and drew
back, then looked up. As he looked, the body of Stephen Mak hurtled through the
attic window head-first, crashed against the side of the house next door and
plunged headlong to the
ground.
Walker
raced to the back door and shouted loudly for Mrs. Veres. George Halasz removed
his newly rolled cigarette from his mouth and looked on in amazement.
Marie
Chevalia screamed and ran into her house.
Marie’s
screams aroused the neighborhood and quickly a crowd gathered around the Veres
home. Its gong clanging, an ambulance swung into Medina Street, and fifty-five
minutes later the ‘Widow Veres” her face noticeably dirty and her head covered
with cobwebs, calmly and inquiringly entered her yard from the alley beyond.
Mak was taken t» the Detroit Receiving Hospital, where he died two days later.
Mak’s
death went into the preliminary official reports as an accident. Mrs. Veres told police that she had asked him to fix the window, and that he had presumably
fallen because of his age and infirm condition. At the time, she explained, she
had been shopping, and her elder son, William, was at a movie. Walker
corroborated this story. Police were not suspicious. Mrs. Veres’s reputation as
a “witch” was not taken seriously beyond Medina Street.
But
rumoxs began, to get around. Mak was the twelfth man to die prematurely after a
residence in the Veres house. The first was Veres himself. The. rest were
boarders. And little Marie Chevalia kept telling her mama that “the witch
killed Mr. Mak. I saw her face in the window.” George Halasz was quite sure of
that, too.
Then
it was discovered that the window Mak went up to fix needed no fixing; that he
wore shoes when he went up and none when he came down, that he had told
neighbors he was afraid of Mrs. Veres and was sure that she was going to kill
him; that there were marks on his head which looked like blows; and something
in his stomach which might not be just liquor.
It
was revealed, too, that on’ the morning of Mak’s death Mrs. Veres had cut a
hole in the attic partition through which & man’s body, might be
$500 to “keep his mouth shut” about his suspicions.
Officials
of insurance companies volunteered the information that Mrs. Veres had a $5,000
policy on Mak’s life, double indemnity in case of accidental death—and that she
was; still trying to make collections on policies issued to her on the lives of
dead former boarders. It was revealed, too, that she owed $1,000 to her
next-door neighbor, Aaron Freed, and had promised to pay him “as soon as I
collect some insurance money.” Police soon found a trunk containing over
seventy-five policies taken out by Mrs. Veres since she moved to Detroit.
William,
her elder son, had testified that he was, at a movie at the time of Mak’s
“fall.” But John Veres, the widow’s younger son, frankly told detectives
another version.
“Bill
told me to say he was at the Grand Theatre,” John told officers. “But he
wasn’t. He was at home with Mother.”
William
Veres was destined to share his mother’s fate. He, too, received a life
sentence, in spite of his youth. Old Mrs. Veres sits motionless in the House of
Correction. ‘Her eyes’ seem fixed upon objects.
[“While
a Little Girl Watched the Old Gray Witch of Medina Street – The Hungarian Widow’s Twelfth Boarder Tumbled to His Death, But Marie of the Mud Pies Saw All, And Told!”
Ogden Standard Examiner (Ut.), Apr. 3, 1932, page number unknown]
***
Rose & William Veras were convicted October 5, 1931.
Both were sentenced to life
October 14, 1931. 13 years later a retrial was granted
resulting in an acquittal on December 10, 1945.
***
Here are two long, well-illustrated articles on the Veras
case:
►“The
Witch of Delray,” The Deceased of
Detroit, Jul. 23, 2010 http://peopleofdetroit.blogspot.com/2010/07/witch-of-delray.html
►“The
Witch of Delray,” Weird Detroit, Sept. 11, 2011 http://weirddetroit.blogspot.com/2011/09/witch-of-delray.html
***
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