Luiza de Jesus, born in 1750, was a Portuguese “baby
farmer.” She would take abandoned babies from the municipal foundling institution
and receive a fee 600 reis plus clothes for the child and afterwards would
murder them so that she could keep the expense money for herself. She operated in
Coimbra (200 km north of Lisbon). Caught in her crimes, she was arrested and
confessed to killing 28 of the 34 children she had taken in. She was executed
on July 3, 1772, at the age of 22 years. She was sentenced to death and carried
through the streets of Lisbon, whipped, hanged and then publicly burnt. Luiza de
Jesus was, reputedly, the last woman to be executed was in Portugal.
Luiza, the evidence suggests, was a recovela, that is, a
carrier of parcels from the city to Gavinhos, a village of millers and farmers,
or to the entire parish of Figueira do Lorvão.
After Luiza picked up a baby from the Real Casa dos Expostos
(Royal Foundling Home) in Coimbra she would walk a few meters, strangle it and
bury the child at the top of Monte-Arroio. Sometime she would take the infant
to her hovel, where she would dismember it, put the pieces in a pot and place
the vessel beneath straw or in holes in the ground.
~ Foundling Home ~
The foundling home made use of an anonymous baby-depositing mechanism,
the roda (“baby hatch,” “foundling wheel”). It was a cylindrical wooden device,
divided in half and rotating, placed on the wall of a public building, where
babies were placed. When an infant was deposited a bell was sounded by the
person placing the child to warn whoever was on the other side. This device was
first used in Italy in the 1300s and was later employed in Portugal with the intention
of preventing infanticide. The first roda was installed in Lisbon in the 17th
century, on the wall of the Hospital de Todos os Santos, located in Rossio
(today in the Praça da Figueira area), until it was destroyed by the 1755
earthquake. It was in charge of the Friars of the Misericórdia and the municipal
Chamber.
For each foundling Luiza De Jesus took from the Coimbra Misericórdia’s
Casa da Roda, she pocketed 600 réis, a crib and a cubit of baeta, that is, 66
centimeters of shaggy woolen cloth. In total, she collected about 20,000
thousand réis, the equivalent of six months' wages of a cook or one year for a
kitchen girl at Hospital Real das Caldas. The proceeds from the theft of
"public benefits" may, however, have been shared with an accomplice.
~ Discovery of the Crimes ~
Luiza was a known intermediary for the woman who runs the
casa da roda and the official nurse. No one suspected her of wrongdoing. She
had already taken 32 children before that day when she made her unusual
request.
One day Luiza asked the staff at the Casa da Roda to give
her two babies instead of one. She told them she would take them to third
parties who would take care of them. Here request was granted. After all, more than
200 boys and girls are left there every year, half died in a short time in the
institution, and few of the rest would benefit from the affection of a family. Luiza
was arrested and accomplices Margarida Joaquina and Leocádia Maria da Conceição
were arrested five days later. The charge against them was equivalent to today’s
“criminal negligence,” since the belief was that Liza has given infants who was
going to pick them up on behalf of others, without a Roda staffer monitoring
the children's fate, as required.
It was on the morning of April 1, 1772 that Luiza’s wicked racket
began to unravel. Angélica Maria, perhaps a member of the Roda staff, discovered
among the olive trees at Monte-Arroio, near the Roda, the corpse of a child still
with the strip of cloth used to strangling it around its neck. The dead child
was recognized as one Luiza de Jesus had taken the child, whose body had just
been discovered. The judge in charge of the investigation sent for her. Luiza
confessed to having killed the two children she had recently received. The
second body was unearthed. The investigators then contacted all people known to
care after foundlings. The names, many of them, Luiza had given were discovered
to be invented. The records clerk, Pascoal Luís Ferreira da Silva, had issued 34
certificates falsely attesting the veracity of the data provided. He was
arrested.
Under the olive trees on Monte-Arroio, 13 more
"innocents" are discovered who, like the first two, "had been
violently killed and garroted." On April 18, Luiza confessed to killing
nine children. Altogether, in this “idyllic place,” the “Belezas de Coimbra”, 15
bodies were dug up, four of which the murderer did not consider “hers.” With
this evidence at hand, the judge ordered a search of Luiza's house. In it,
several pieces of decaying corpses were found in a clay pot and stinking, the
only way to ascertain the number of victims was the presence of three skulls inside.
Under a bit of straw, four skulls were found with the flesh eaten away – and a
complete, yet decaying, baby’s body.
Luisa was again questioned again – on May 12, Luísa admitted
to six more killings, “executed with the same violence." Days later, the
investigators found buried in the hovel, whose ground is as usual, "ten
skulls of innocent heads without the slightest trace of any other bone.” In
all, Luiza confessed to asphyxiating 28 children, but investigators found 33
bodies of the 34 that records showed were missing.
~ Prosecution and Punishment ~
Although Luiza de Jesus was 23 years old, the sentencing
document gave her age as 22. This is because her lawyer had tried to manipulated
her purported age in order to annul the confession, since a woman under 25 was
under law still a minor. The stratagem failed. The judges of the Casa da
Suplicação ruled “that she was of competent age to be punished, according to
the gravity of her crimes.” Luiza was found guilty on July 1, and was sentenced
to a punishment that was to match the barbarity of her crimes. The judge stated,
as extant records show, he intended to “impose penalties on the Defendant that
had some proportion to the cruelty of such atrocious crimes (of which no special
Law has so far considered) and the scandal that resulted from them.”
One the sentence was confirmed on July 3, as Portuguese law,
required Luisa was ordered to pay 50,000 réis for court costs. The young woman
was condemned to walk the streets bound with rope time while her crimes were proclaimed
to the public, during which she was struck with red-hot tongs. “Then she taken
to the place of the gallows, where her hands are cut off. She died from loss of
blood. Following, her body was burned and reduced to ashes. The sentencing order
said this was done “so that there will never be a memory of such a Monster
again.”
[This text is based on: Anabela Natário, “Luiza de Jesus
confessed to murdering 28 children. Perhaps it is the only Portuguese “serial
killer” (Luísa de Jesus confessou ter assassinado 28 crianças. Talvez seja a
única “serial killer” portuguesa), Expresso (Lisbon), Sep. 19, 2016]
***
CHRONOLOGY
Dec. 10, 1748 – Luiza Rodrigues; born to “Manoel Roiz and
his wife Mariana Roiz, from Gavinhos (…) ”; Roiz is the abbreviation for
Rodrigues. She later to the name de Jesus.
April 1, 1772 – Angélica Maria, discovers
among the olive trees, the corpse of a child still with the strangling cloth
around its neck.
Apr. 1772 – Luiza
brought to court for questioning. confesses
to 2 killings.
Apr. 1772 – Second corpse discovered.
Apr. 1772 – However, under the olive trees, at the top of
Monte-Arroio, 13 more "innocents" are discovered who, like the first
two, "showed to have been violently killed and garroted.” Belezas de Coimbra.
Apr. 18, 1772 – Luiza confessed to killing 9 children. Confesses
in increments to 28 murders.
May 12, 1772 – Luiza admitted to six more killings.
Jul. 1, 1772 – Luiza de Jesus condemned to death, Figueira
de Lorvão, Coimbra, Portugal.
Jul. 3, 1772 – sentence confirmed. Luiza de Jesus executed, Figueira
de Lorvão, Coimbra, Portugal.
Oct. 7, 1772 – Margarida Joaquina and Leocádia Maria da
Conceição released.
***
SOURCES
[Anabela Natário, “Luísa de Jesus confessed to murdering 28
children. Perhaps it is the only Portuguese “serial killer” (Luísa de Jesus
confessou ter assassinado 28 crianças. Talvez seja a única “serial killer”
portuguesa), Expresso (Lisbon), Sep. 19, 2016]
[António Braz de, Oliveira, (presentation and notes
from), Capital executions in Portugal in a curious 1844 manuscript,
Reprint of the Revista da Biblioteca Nacional, nº1, 1982, p. 116.]
[Violenza Donne, Centro documentazione]
[Diccionario Bibliographico Portuguez, Estudos De Innocencio
Da Silva, Applicaves A Portugal E Ao Brasil, Volumes 7, 1862, Lisbon, p. 237]
[Johnann Peter Frank, A Complete System of Medical Police,
Johns Hopkins UP, 1976, p. 120 (footnote citing Meissner)]
[Sentenca Proferida Na Casa Da Supplicao Contra Are Luiza De
Jesus. Lisboa. Na Officina de Antonio Rodrigues Galhardo. 1772.]
[Rita Peixeiro Lopes Esteves, Crime no feminine Caso de
Luiza de Jesus, dissertation, Universidade de Lisboa, 2018.]
***
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LUISA DE JESUS' CASE HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH MISANDRY, LOOKS LIKE SOMEONE NEEDS A BRAIN HERE. AND NOWHERE IT IS MENTIONED THAT SHE KILLED ONLY BABY BOYS WHICH INDEED WOULD HAVE CONNECTED HER TO THE SUBJECT OF THIS BLOG. NO, SHE WAS JUST A CHILD/BABY KILLER, THATS ALL.... MISANDRY, YEAH, RITE....HYPOCRISY WITHOUT BOUNDARIES....
ReplyDeleteMisandric history and misandric social science are the issues here. The reason the list of female serial killers is being compiled is that there are myths about female non-violence being promulgated in the universities and in popular culture. It is still widely believed that female serial killers are rare in comparison to male serial killers. The fact is that criminologists have always paid less attention to female criminals., even before cultural marxism initiated political correctness (Marxist feminism and misandric theories) through selective hiring, withholding of research funding, biased and distorted research reports, blacklisting of scholars and academic censorship. The UHoM collection of female serial killer cases includes over 600, most of which are completely unknown to the leading criminologists, even those specializing in crimes by women and serial killing.
DeleteThe above is a reply to a comment which is given her (without the original full caps format): “Luisa De Jesus' case has nothing to do with misandry, looks like someone needs a brain here. and nowhere it is mentioned that she killed only baby boys which indeed would have connected her to the subject of this blog. no, she was just a child/baby killer, thats all.... misandry, yeah, rite....hypocrisy without boundaries....”
Someone needs to calm down. This is a blog.
Delete