► 1) To Fulfull a Prophecy
1816 – Susannah Holroyd – Ashton-Under-Line, England
She told her that she had had her fortune read, and that in
the course of one week, and within the period of the ensuing six weeks, three
funerals would go from her door. She did not delay her destined purpose,
however, until the six weeks of the fortune-teller had expired; for in about a
month afterwards she went to the shop of a chymist, and purchased an ounce and
a half of arsenic, to fulfil the prophecy. [archaic spelling in orig.]
1903 – Anna (Caroline) Przygodda – Allenstein, East Prussia
(Germany)
The motives of the murderess remain a mystery, but it is
stated that a fortune-teller once informed her that she was destined to have
six husbands before attaining happiness with the seventh. It is suggested that
the woman shared the superstition common in East Prussia, and got rid of her
husbands to fulfil the prophecy.
►2) Premonitions of Deaths
Early 1600s – La Toffania & Hieronyma Spara – Italy
In 1659, it was observed, at Rome, that many young married
women were left widows, and that many husbands died when they became
disagreeable to their wives. It was at length discovered that the mischief
proceeded from a society of young married women, whose president, a little old
woman, pretended to foretell future events, and who had often predicted, very
exactly, many deaths to persons who had cause to wish for them. The old lady’s
name was Hieronyina Spara. She was a Sicilian, and
had acquired the art from Toffania, at Palermo. She, her assistant and three
other women were hung.
1680 – Catherine Deshayes – Paris, France
Wikipedia: During her work as a fortune teller, she noticed
the similarities between her customers wishes about their future: almost all
wanted to have some one fall in love with them, that some one would die so that
they might inherit, or that their spouses would die, so that they might marry
some one else. Initially, she told her clients that their will would be true if
it was also the will of God. Then, she started to recommend to her clients some
action that would make their dreams come true. These actions were initially to
visit the church of some particular saint; eventually, she started to sell
amulets and recommend magical practices of various kinds. The bones of toads,
teeth of moles, Spanish flies, iron filings, human blood and mummy, or
the dust of human remains, were among the alleged ingredients of the love
powders concocted by La Voisin.
Finally, she started to sell aphrodisiacs to those who
wished for people to fall in love with them, and poison to those who wished for
some one to die. Her knowledge of poisons was not apparently so thorough as
that of less well-known sorcerers, or it would be difficult to account for Louise
de La Vallière's immunity. The art of poisoning had become a regular science at
the time, having been perfected, in part, by Giulia Tofana, a professional
female poisoner in Italy, only a few decades before La Voisin.
She arranged black masses, where the clients could pray to
the Devil to make their wishes come true. During at least some of these masses,
a woman performed as an altar, upon which a bowl was placed: a baby was held
above the bowl, and the blood from it was poured into the bowl. She had a large
network of colleagues and assistants, among them Adam Lesage, who performed
allegedly magical tasks; the priests Étienne Guibourg and abbé Mariotte, who
officiated at the black masses; and poisoners like Catherine Trianon.
1831 – Gesche Gottfried – Bremen, Germany
In the meantime, Gottfried’s proposals were not forthcoming;
and, believing him to be withheld by the objections
her parents made to the match, on the one hand, and by
the consideration of her having a family of children on the other, she thought
it was time to remove these obstacles out of his way. She said that her
resolution, with respect to her parents, had been fortified by the pious and frequently-expressed wishes of the old people, that
neither might long survive the other. She also consulted several other
fortune-tellers, who all predicted the mortality that was to ensue amongst her
connexions. She made no secret of this prophecy, but, on the contrary,
frequently lamented that she knew she was doomed to lose her children and all her relations. She always concluded these
communications by pious ejaculations, expressing a most perfect resignation to the will of Providence. "God's will be
done! The ways of the Lord are inscrutable, and we must bow to His decrees," &c. [Catherine
Crowe, Light and Darkness: or, The Mysteries of Life, Part I - The Poisoners
(pp. 23-136), 1850,
London: Henry Colburn, Publisher]
1883 – Maria Swanenburg (Van der Linden) – Leiden,
Netherlands
She [Van der Linden, or, Swanenberg] went the length of
marking down her victims beforehand. “It will be your turn in a month,” she
openly told one man, who had been bemoaning the sudden death of a relative. The
month passed, and this man was carried to his grave.
1886 – Sarah Jane Robinson – Boston, Massachusetts, USA
“Testimony showed that Annie Freeman was stricken with
pneumonia in her home in South Boston. She was gradually improving, but took a
turn for the worse after Mrs. Robinson fired her nurse and took sole charge of
her sister’s health. Mrs. Robinson had a premonition that her sister would
never recover, and, sure enough, Annie died soon after. She convinced Prince
Freeman to move his family to her home in Cambridge and few weeks later,
one-year-old Elisabeth Freeman died. Mrs. Robinson had another premonition; her
dead husband appeared and told her that Prince would soon die. This premonition
came true as well.” [“The Massachusetts Borgia,” Murder by Gaslight, online,
Mar. 2, 2013]
1900 – Nikola Bettuz – Kissoda, Romania
The fact is that the men were murdered by their own wives or
sweet hearts. The instigator of all these heinous crimes is Nikola Bettuz, the
seer of the town, who sold the subtle poison with which the murders were
committed.
1906 – Rosa Vrzal – Chicago, Illinois, USA
1912 – Louise Lindloff – Chicago, Illinois, USA
1906 – Rosa Vrzal – Chicago, Illinois, USA
1912 – Louise Lindloff – Chicago, Illinois, USA
While chemical experts
are testing bodies of her dead family to prove that they were poisoned with
arsenic, Mrs. Lindloff sits serenely studying the events which, she says, the
crystal reveals to her. "I can see my family arising to defend me against
this cruel charge." She said yesterday. "From the spirit world they
come in filmy forms to stand beside me and protect me from my enemies."
The original theory of the police in arresting Mrs. Lindloff
was that she committed the murders in order to collect insurance on the
victims’ lives. Captain Baer, as the result of the disclosures he says were
made yesterday, modifies this by the declaration that vanity contributed to
urge the woman to her crimes. He asserts that she deliberately planned her
poisonings so as to fit in with her predictions as a seeress and that she
killed her victims on a schedule which she made up at her clarvoyant séances.
“The precious material in the ball makes it so valuable,” she tells the police. “I wouldn’t willingly part with it for many times the $500 it cost me. It contains a love teardrop shed by Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen. That one drop permits me to read the past and the future. When I gaze into the ball the teardrop expands, and before me I see what will happen in future years. With it I could read and avoid the machinations of my enemies. I place my hope on safety in it, and must have it.”
Since the exhumations of the revelations attending them, persons have come forward with the the statement that several of the Lindloffs died on the dates predicted for their deaths by Mrs. Lindloff as a seeress, and this has led to the theory that she committed the murders to uphold her reputation in her “profession.”
1912 – Frieda Trost – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Summoned to Philadelphia, the bother-in-law told his story. He told of the time when Frieda’s second baby was born, Frieda had said that the spirits had told her that the baby would not live a week. And the next day the baby died.
“The precious material in the ball makes it so valuable,” she tells the police. “I wouldn’t willingly part with it for many times the $500 it cost me. It contains a love teardrop shed by Cleopatra, the Egyptian Queen. That one drop permits me to read the past and the future. When I gaze into the ball the teardrop expands, and before me I see what will happen in future years. With it I could read and avoid the machinations of my enemies. I place my hope on safety in it, and must have it.”
Since the exhumations of the revelations attending them, persons have come forward with the the statement that several of the Lindloffs died on the dates predicted for their deaths by Mrs. Lindloff as a seeress, and this has led to the theory that she committed the murders to uphold her reputation in her “profession.”
1912 – Frieda Trost – Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Summoned to Philadelphia, the bother-in-law told his story. He told of the time when Frieda’s second baby was born, Frieda had said that the spirits had told her that the baby would not live a week. And the next day the baby died.
1922 – Tillie Klimek – Chicago, Illinois, USA
"Tillie Klimek (or Tillie Gburek) (born 1876-1936) was
an American serial killer. She poisoned in turn her husbands John Mitkiewicz,
John Ruskowski, Frank Kupszcyk, Joseph Guszkowski, and Anton Klimek, as well as
three neighborhood children and others. She became known as a fortune-teller,
for predicting their deaths in advance. She also had sex with all of them
before she killed them." Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tillie_Klimek
1932 – Anna Allas, Mary Chalfa & Gizella Young Allas
– Munhall, Pennsylvania, USA
Mary, he said, visited his home so frequently at one time
that he protested to his wife. She answered, Young said:
“Oh, that’s all right. I just told her fortune,”
“What was it?” Young said he then asked and his wife
replied:
“Well, she’s having a lot of trouble with her husband, so I
told her to insure him and he would die in three months.”
Trial of the two women lasted two weeks and was featured by
the testimony of Mrs. Gizella Young, an alleged fortune teller, that the women
came to her for “card readings” as to when the two boys would die. The
defendants built their case around a claim that anything they had done was done
while under Mrs. Young’s “spell.”
The women claimed
they went to a fortune teller, Mrs. Gazella Young, who immediately put a magic
spell on them. They said she would lay out her magic cards, brought from
Czecho-slovakia, and predict death for members of their families. Then, they
said, she would advise them to take out large insurance policies on their
husbands, children and cousins and even go so far as to send insurance men to
their homes.
1958 – Anjette Donovan Lyles – Macon, Georgia, USA
“Jackson also remembered Anjette’s prediction that Martha
would die within a day or two of entering the hospital.” [Michael Newton, Bad Girls Do It! 1993]
1989 – Maria Aldrete – Matamoros, Mexico
►3) Victim who predicted her own murder
1925 – Birdie Strome – New Carlisle, Ohio, USA
The girl died Saturday under mysterious circumstances. It
was said she had twice predicted she would die soon, once three weeks ago and
the second time the day before her death.
►4) Premonition Of Fires
1886 – Harriet Nason – Rutland, Vermont, USA – “predicted” two fires
Neighbors of Mrs. Nason ascribe to her remarkable powers in
the way of prophesying fires. Her house on Grove street, it is said, was burned
in accordance with her prediction about three years age. Subsequently she had
another fiery vision. This alarmed another family in the same block and a
watchman was employed. But the second fire occurred on scheduled time, though
not until Mrs. Nason had been notified by the owners of the property to vacate.
The popular impression is that Mrs. Nason is afflicted with a most dangerous
and insidious form of insanity and that all the results of her secret work are
not yet known.
►5) Fortune-tellers (without
premonitions of victims’ deaths)
1679 – Marie Bosse – Paris, France
Fortune
teller and poisoner; burned at the stake May 8, 1679.
1808 – Mary Bateman – Leeds, Yorkshire, England
1868 – Fanny Lambert (Joye) – Marseilles, France
During the 1780s, Marty Bateman became a minor thief and con
artist who often convinced many of her victims she possessed supernatural
powers. They called her the “Yorkshire Witch.” By the end of the century, she
had become a prominent fortuneteller in Leeds who prescribed potions which she
claimed would ward off evil spirits as well as acting as medicine. [Wikipedia]
1868 – Fanny Lambert (Joye) – Marseilles, France
EXCERPT: The fortune-teller, Fanny Lambert, had aided the
wives in procuring the poison, and was even charged by the woman Ville with having
first instigated her to the crime. The man Joye added the profession of
fortune-teller to his trade of herb-seller, and two witnesses who had consulted
him as such declared that he had first suggested to them that they were unhappy
in their married life, and then offered his services to rid them of their
husbands. His method was first to propose supernatural means, and then
gradually accustom them to the idea of employing poison. One woman he had
instructed to procure a nail from a coffin in a certain cemetery, and to plant
it in the ground while pronouncing the name of her husband; he then added,
“After that come to me and I will give you something that will do the rest.”
The substance which he usually employed was arsenic, of which a large quantity was
found concealed in his shop.
1873 – Kate
& Katie Bender – Cherry Vale, Kansas, USA
“Kate was the most outgoing of the Benders, and advertised
herself as a fortune teller and healer. It was rumored that she and her mother
practiced witchcraft. Kate was attractive, and her psychic abilities drew extra
customers to the inn, when she wasn't traveling to give lectures on
Spiritualism and holding healing services.” [Miss Centania, “The Bloody
Benders, America's First Serial Killers, Mantal Floss, Nov. 14, 2013]
1882 – Sophia Ivanovitch & Anna Minity – Melencse, Hungary
It is stated that no fewer than 80 women of the Servo-Magyar
village of Melencie are accused of having poisoned their husbands and other
near relatives, and that they procured the deleterious stuff from two
professional fortune-tellers, Sophia Ivanovitch and Anna Minity, who drove a
regular trade in noxious drugs, and earned considerable sums of money thereby.
1924 – Anastasia Permiakova – Perm, Russia
She settled down as a clairvoyant at Perm. She had a huge
clientele of women, many of whom mysteriously disappeared. The crimes were
undetected till Permiakova called at a solicitor's house and told his beautiful
daughter her future. She ordered the girl to bare her neck to see if she had a
lucky mark and then murdered her with a hatchet. The police found in the
woman's flat ten bloodstained hatchets. Thirteen other accomplices received
long sentences.
1941 – Leonarda Cianciulli – Correggio, Reggio Emilia, Italy
Mrs. Cianciulli claimed the power to foretell the future, to hypnotise people, and police believe that her three known victims were so influenced by her as a clairvoyant that she was able to lure them to her neatly kept house, where she murdered them and cut each of their bodies into nine separate sections.
Mrs. Cianciulli claimed the power to foretell the future, to hypnotise people, and police believe that her three known victims were so influenced by her as a clairvoyant that she was able to lure them to her neatly kept house, where she murdered them and cut each of their bodies into nine separate sections.
[677-10/18/21]
***
No comments:
Post a Comment