Mahin Qadiri has been called “Iran’s first female serial
killer.” Such a claim is not justified. It is only recently that law
enforcement records in the West, let alone the East, would reflect the category
“serial killer.” In the past – anywhere in the world – such cases would often
not be distinguished in conviction records since many serial killers are tried
for only one murder, usually the most recent one. In the East, old records and
newspapers that might mention cases that today we would classify as “serial
killers,” have most certainly not been sifted through in search of reports of
serial killers. The difficulty in locating such records of crimes (prosecuted
as well as non-prosecuted) is compounded in countries where isolated ethnic
groups in remote regions exist.
***
Between February and May, 2009, Mahin Qadiri, 32-years-old,
of Qazvin, north-west of
Tehran, murdered five women and one man by rendering them unconscious
and strangling them. In her confession the murderess revealed that she gotten
ideas from novels by Agatha Christie to help her avoid detection.
"It is
likely that the murderer took revenge on women who resembled her mother and
were of the same age because of her intense hatred of her own mother," the
police chief, Akbar Hedayati said. “Many of
Christie's books describe killers using drugs. The novels, some of which depict
unsolved murders, are popular among Iranians. The writer, who died in 1976, visited
Iran several times and used it as the setting for one of her stories, The
House At Shiraz.”
It was one woman who had been
marked by Mahin for murder but who escaped that gave police the break that led
to discovering the murderess. The victim had been given a ride by Mahin, became
suspicious, and got out of the car. After checking cars matching the description the woman
gave them, their attention was drawn to Mahin by records showing she had been
fined after a recent road accident.
She was found guilty and on December 20, 2010 she was
hanged.
***
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