Wilhelmina Waltmann, German Serial Killer - 1873

NOTE: Some sources give the name as “Waltmann,” others “Woltman.”

FULL TEXT: Wilhelmina Waltmann, known as the “Borgia of the Stade,” a little city on the banks of the Elbe, recently surrendered her life on the scaffold to atone for its iniquity. Her career had been marked by continuous, premeditated cruelty. While at school she knocked out the eye of a companion. Being a woman of great beauty she became governess to the children of a wealthy man who had made her his mistress. Her lover’s wife having learned of the affair the young tigress poisoned her.

At Hamburg, soon after, her beautiful face attracted many admirers, but becoming reckless the police expelled her from the city, and she went to Brunswick, where an officer of the Ducal army fell in love with and married her. She poisoned him soon after, and then turned up in Hanover, where she married a merchant named Wachter, and avenged herself upon his parents, who opposed the match, by poisoning them. Wachter soon deserted her, and she married a widower named Waltmann, with two children. These latter became the victims of their murderous stepmother, and this last crime exposed her. Her antecedents were examined, her other victims exhumed, and the evidence came in copious enough to fix a dozen death penalties to her had it been possible.

Throughout her confinement prior to her death the wild beast in her underwent no subjugation and though chained to the wall she undertook to attack a clergyman who visited her with spiritual consolation. Her beautiful hair was cut off before taking her to the scaffold, and she was arrayed in a low black muslin dress, which left the neck exposed. She was then forced to kneel in front of the block before a crowd of witnessed; her bead was strapped to it, and with one blow of the executioner’s axe it rolled into the basket.

[“The End of a ‘Borgia,’” The Coshocton Democrat (Oh.), Feb. 4, 1873, p. 1]

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For more examples, see Step-Mothers from Hell.

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