Saturday, August 29, 2015

Chivalry Justice Quotes from Judges, Prosecutors, Legislators & Lawyers: 1912 - 1922


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Isaac Lipson – New York City lawyer – 1912

“The life of my client [Minor Cortalyou] is in danger,” attorney Isaac Lipson declared. “His wife’s mind has become inflamed as a result of the wholesale freeing of wives charged with murdering their husbands.”

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John E. W. Wayman – Prosecuting attorney of Cook county (Chicago). – 1912

“The ordinary man such as a juror finds it difficult to differentiate between an exceptional and abnormal woman, as most murderesses are, and the everyday woman he has known since he was a boy. When a woman appears for trial before him, straightway in his own mind he manufactures some extenuating circumstances, some excuse to account for her of the murder.”
He feels sure that this woman who looks so much like the women of his own family must have been abused and hounded and driven insane by the cruelty of the man she killed. So in almost all cases the juror, unsophisticated in the subtle psychology of the woman criminal, has made up his mind long before he retires to the jury room that the woman on trial committed her crime during some violent brain storm that rendered her irresponsible.”

“A woman’s crime as a rule exhibits a far greater degree of moral turpitude than a man’s. Few murders by women are the result of impulse. They are marked by premeditation, cunning, cruelty and cold blooded diablerie. For the most part the crimes of women have these characteristics in common.”
Women usually take their victim unawares. Many of their victims are killed while asleep. The saving clause for the woman in most cases is that the murder is committed without eye witnesses. Usually the woman and her victim are alone when the murder occurs. This invariably is the result of the woman’s cunning plan. It enables her in court to tell whatever story she chooses and there is no one to contradict her. The charge of murder stands on purely circumstantial grounds.”


John E. W. Wayman – Prosecuting attorney of Cook county (Chicago). – 1912

“It appears absolutely impossible to find 12 men in this country who will convict a woman of murder. This mistaken idea of chivalry has resulted in numerous miscarriages of justice and a reckless abandon, on the part of women who are criminally inclined. All that is necessary for a woman  is to retreat behind the protecting wall of her sex, and an avalanche of tears, and make no other defense.”


Maclay Hoyne – Illinois State’s Attorney of Cook County – 1914

“The manner in which women who have committed murder in this county have escaped punishment has become a scandal. The blame in the first instance must fall upon the jurors who seem willing to bring in a verdict of acquittal whenever a woman charged with murder is fairly good looking and is able to turn on the flood gates of her tears, or exhibit a capacity for fainting.”

Source: “Decries Freeing Woman Slayers – State’s Attorney Hoyne Raps Juries Which Are Moved by Tears of Pretty Defendants. – Action of Police Flayed – Prosecutor of Cook County Dismisses Charges of Murder Against Mrs. Augusta Dietz, Who is Accused of Slaying Her Husband.” Warsaw Daily Union (In.), Mar. 17, 1914, p. 16
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Agnes McHugh – Chicago attorney – 1916

“A man jury will not convict a woman murderer in this county, if the prosecutor is a man. I think this leniency may be traced to the chivalry latent in every man. The jurors see two or three big strong men sitting at the prosecutors’ table, and subconsciously feel that these fierce prosecutors are attacking the frail, pretty woman in the prisoner’s chair. Their instinct is to defend her. Perhaps their pity would not be stirred so profoundly if a woman was in the prosecutor’s chair. I believe the leniency of juries with feminine slayers is responsible for the wave of ‘affinity crimes’ sweeping Chicago. The woman criminal will receive justice only when there’s a woman in court to prosecute her. We demand justice for women — not maudlin sympathy or leniency.”

Source: “Women Say Only Woman Can Stop Women Killing Off Their Husbands - With 20 Chicago Women Acquitted of Slaying Husbands or Lovers, Feminine Lawyers Ask for “Justice Instead of Sympathy” of Men.” Sep. 26, 1916, p. 5
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Judge Frank E. Johnston Jr. – Chicago – 1920

“When women judge members of their own sex, it is a sure thing that no more sentimentality will effect the prisoner’s release. Women jurors will vote to convict a guilty woman every time, and we intend to make Chicago safe for husbands.”

Source: “Make Chicago Safe For Husbands, Task For Women Jurors – Sterner Verdicts Expected By Officials When The Lady Voters Get Busy.” Syndicated, The San Antonio Express (Tx.), Aug. 23, 1920, p. 2
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Sheriff David H. Knott – New York – 1921

“It is necessary to have women jurors to convict women accused of some crimes, he asserts, and continues: I could cite many examples where women accused of crime are allowed to go free because the attorney for the defendant will play on the sympathy of the men jurors. A year and a half ago in the criminal branch a woman was accused of certain crime before Judge Weeks. We were all absolutely positive that she should have been found guilt and sent up for five years. She was tried twice before a men’s jury, the first time ending in a disagreement and the second time pronounced not guilty. A women’s jury would probably have found her guilty. Woman to-day can commit murder and it almost impossible for the District Attorney to convict her because her sex.”


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Judge Rhea M Whitehead – Presiding member of the Superior Court of Seattle – 1921

“A husband is going to get a square deal in my court. Too many men are convicted on sobby tales of wives!”

Source: “The Woman Judge Who Gives Husbands A Square Deal – She Is Introducing a Novel Procedure In Seattle Where Tears and Sentiment Carry No Weight and Women Are Not Regarded Today as ‘Helpless and Dependent Children,’” syndicated, Fort Wayne Journal-Gazette (In.), Jun. 26, 1921, sec. 4, p. 1

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Lloyd Heth – Assistant State’s Attorney, Illinois

“I will demand a woman jury in this case,” Mr. Heth said. “It is impossible to get conviction of affinity slayers by men juries. In the last ten years fourteen women who killed men have been freed. The only two convicted were a woman seventy-two years old and a negress. It would be interesting to see what a woman jury would do.”


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Alice Robertson – U.S. House of Representatives (Oklahoma) - 1921

“Women who murder get off too easy. They’re not judged according to the same standards as men who murder, but you don’t hear the suffragists demanding equal rights for the men, do you? No the suffragists want equal rights for women with special privileges.”


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Judge Florence E. Allen – First Criminal Court Judge, in 1922 Elected to Ohio Supreme Court – 1922

“Men have always sat on juries and men instinctively shrink from holding women strictly accountable for their misdeeds. Now that women sit on juries I expect the percentage of convictions in cases of women to be greater. Women are more clever than men in arousing sympathy. I had one woman, a hardened criminal, stage a terrific fainting spell in my courtroom after the jury found her guilty. It took four men to carry her to jail. She continued having these spells, so long that I had to defer pronouncing sentence. Finally I sent her word that the longer she acted so, the longer she would be in jail. Within a few moments she sent up word that, she would be good and received her sentence meekly, with no trace of feeling”


Thomas Lee Woolwine – Los Angeles District Attorney - 1922

“The reason it is well night impossible to punish women for crimes of violence in particular is simple: It is because they are women, and because sex plays a vital part in every such trial. Men are innately loath to punish women. Women naturally arouse a feeling of false chivalry in men which allays and tempers their judgment upon the evidence. It is more difficult for a prosecutor to overcome this powerful factor than it is to convince a jury upon the state of facts presented.”

Monday, August 24, 2015

Anna Bergmann, Champion Black Widow – Berlin, 1905


Suspected of five husband-murders.

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FULL TEXT: Berlin, Nov. 18. – While the United States has produced a number of gentlemen with many wives we have gone one step further in this city and have given to the world a female Bluebeard in the person of Frau Anna Bergmann of Berlin, whose latest deceased husband was Johann Bergmann.

A woman of extreme beauty, she married when she was eighteen years of age, but her husband died after three years of unhappy married life. Her second husband died suddenly and her third shot himself. Suspicious circumstances point to the fact that a revolver had been placed in his hand after death.

In Paris she had three or four more matrimonial experiences, all ending disastrously to her husbands, and now the body of the last husband has been and poison has been found and the trial is to begin.

[“Is A Female Bluebeard – Woman of Extreme Beauty Suspected of Great Crimes,” The Wichita Beacon (Ks.), Nov. 18, 1905, p. 7]

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For links to other cases of woman who murdered 2 or more husbands (or paramours), see Black Widow Serial Killers.

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[486-1/12/21]
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Brittany Pilkington, Ohio Serial Killer Mom with a “Gender” Concern - 2015


Bellefontaine, Ohio – The day of her arrest, Brittany Pilkington, 23-year-old mother of four children (three deceased) confessed to murdering – over a period of several years – her three sons by placing blankets over their heads to suffocate them.

Her explanation of motive was unusual. She claimed her husband Joseph Pilkington (43), a worker in the Marysville Honda factory, paid more attention to the boys than he did to their daughter.

According to Logan County prosecutor William Goslee, “in her mind, she was protecting her daughter from being not as loved as the boys were by their father,” as the Columbus Dispatch reported.

On August 11, 2015, the mother had called 911 to report that 3-month-old Noah had stopped breathing about 3 a.m. He was rushed at the hospital Mary Rutan Hospital in Bellefontaine where he was pronounced “dead on arrival.” Baby Noah and his four-year old sister Hailey had been in protective custody only a week before the murder – pending investigation of the  deaths of the child’s two brothers. After a Logan County coroner recently determined that neither Gavin nor his brother, Niall, had died of suspicious causes and the causes of their deaths couldn’t be determined, a judge ordered the children returned home.

In the earlier instances the father’s grief was normal while the mother demonsteated an emotionless response. At 4-year-old Gavin’s funeral in April 2015, the mother was smiled while posing for a family photo, as Joseph Pilkington's brother, Jim, told a Columbus Dispatch reporter. He thought “It was kind of odd.”

A neighbor James Breaston, 78, said he was home when the 4-year-old died on April 6. The father, observed Breaston, “was crying, the tears were rolling, and she was just cold.” The mother “just stared like nothing happened.”

After consulting with a lawyer Mrs. Pilkington retracted her confession and returned to her previous “accidental death” narrative.

On Aug. 20, 2015, Judge Ann E. Beck, at the Bellefontaine Municipal Court, set bond at $1 million and set a preliminary hearing for 5 p.m. Aug. 25.

Their daughter, Hailey, was to celebrate her fourth birthday in August 2015, just weeks following her mother’s arrest . Hailey has once again taken into custody by Logan County Children Services.

Pilkington’s trial is scheduled for late February 2017. If she is found guilty, she may face the death penalty. 

[Robert St. Estephe; based on facts reported in: Rachelle Blidner, “Ohio mom confesses to killing 3 sons over 13 months so daughter would get more attention from dad,”  New York Daily News, Aug. 19, 2015; Dean Narciso & Jim Woods, “Bellefontaine mom says she killed 3 sons because husband ignored their daughter,” The Columbus Dispatch (Oh.), Aug. 19, 2015]

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“Prosecutor Bill Goslee said Brittany confessed to the murders, and said she was motivated by jealousy that her husband, 43-year-old Joseph Pilkington, paid more attention to their sons than he did to their surviving 3-year-old daughter, Hailey.” [“Prosecutor: Brittany Pilkington Worried Boys Would Grow Up to Be Abusive,” ABC 22/Fox 45, Aug. 19, 2015]

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3 Murders (all suffocated):

July 22, 2014 – Niall Pilkington, 3-month-old.
April  6, 2015 – Gavin Pilkington, 4-year-old.
Aug. 11, 2015 – Noah Pilkington, 3-month-old.

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Here is another case of interest: Mom Hates Little Boys, She Says, So She Murders Her Son: Georgette Brucks - 1949


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For more cases of this type, see Serial Baby-Killer Moms.

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[5404-1/9/20]
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Wednesday, August 19, 2015

Carmen Matamoros de Tejeda, Sadistic Mexican Occult Murderess - 1944


NOTE: If the two babies were confirmed to have been murdered by the suspect (with others suspected), it would seem reasonable, based on the likely intent to murder the Soledad Garcia at some point as well, to classify Carmen Matamoros de Tejeda as a serial killer. Two different spellings – “Matamoros” and “Matamoras” – appear in English language news reports.


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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Apizaco, Mexico, May 20. – Excavation of the flower-covered yard of a home near here proceeded today under the direction of state authorities investigating the reported disappearance of 16 children.

Half-hidden among roses, daisies and bougailvillea vines in the yard is the opened grave where police earlier this week found the bodies of two children.

In jail at Tiaxcala, the state capital, a few miles away, the occupants of the home, middle-aged Carmen Matamoros de Tejeda and her husband, Angel Tejeda, factory worker, continued under guard to prevent any lynching attempts during investigation of the case.

The two were arrested after a 16-year-old girl, Soledad Perez Garcia, told police she had been imprisoned nude in the house and mistreated. She directed police to the grave. Police later disclosed they had reports of 16 missing children.

[“Police Excavate for 16 Missing Children” Lubbock Avalanche-Journal (Tx.), May 21, 1944, p. 11]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): New York, Saturday. — When police of Mexico City swooped on an eerie house and garden in the quiet town of Panzacola to free a nude, half-crazed, 18-years-old girl, whose chained body bore savage imprints of teeth, strange welts, and hideous scars, they uncovered a cesspool seething with the paraphernalia of witchcraft and black magic. But more petrifying was the subsequent discovery of the bones and bodies of two tiny babies, and from the surrounding countryside swelled the enraged roar of “Burn the witch” as Senora Carmen Matamoras de Tejeda, owner of the house of weird cults, was held fast in the local gaol to await her trial.

FLASHY Senora Matamoras, arrogant, and with lingering traces of a once handsome appearance, has been held on a charge of detaining in slavery the nude victim, Soledad Perez Garcia, and of frequently whipping and torturing her.

Tempestuously she has defied the police, denied having committed any crime, and remained impassive while a search goes on for more tiny bodies, because on her a clamoring populace has now fixed the blame for the disappearance of 16 babies in recent years.

She has been labelled “Madame Werewolf” [presumably "Mujer Lobo" in Spanish]. Her 18-years-old victim has told of having been bitten by the woman until blood flowed and she fainted from pain. The villagers speak with horror of the long, pointed teeth and vulpine mouth of the Witch of Panzacela.


In the walled patio of the House of Horrors was found an altar, on which was enshrined the skeleton of a jackal or dog. The skeleton was flower-bedecked and candles burned at its feet. Beneath the altar was found the body of the first infant.

Nearby the bones of the second child were unearthed and experts were called in to investigate a case which had moved from plain, sadistic cruelty to the realms of necromancy and diablerie.

Slender Soledad Garcia looked younger than her 16 years when she disappeared from her home in the large neighboring town of Apizacb two years ago. Recently her father was told anonymously that the girl was held captive in a house at Panzacola and had been seen emaciated and terrified at Mass one morning under the relentless guard of Senora Matamoras.

When she had been rescued from her diabolic imprisonment, doctors and nurses said they believed that some of her scars had been caused by repeated attacks by a dog, but close examination revealed the marks to be those of human teeth. Then the girl told, of her nightmare with Madame Werewolf.

Sometimes, she said, she was taken to the altar in the patio. There her jailer, with blood chilling ritual, would light the candles before the skeleton of the jackal, then sink her great teeth into the girl until she collapsed from the pain.

The girl told her father: “I was forced to go naked around the house and the patio. Only when it was so cold that I might die did she give me something to cover myself. She would smile and say that she didn’t want me to die of the cold, that she was planning the pleasure of killing me soon in a different way.”

A few days before her rescue, the girl was forced to dig her own grave by the altar, while Madame Werewolf cracked a whip. Followed the visit to church, be cause, Senora Matamoras explained, Soledad was to die next day.

From time to time, the girl was rented or sold to men. Once she was raffled, 300 participants each paying 12s for a ticket. With the winner, she was locked in a room, her arms bound. Next day, relentless Madame Matamoras appeared to reclaim her slave.

Soledad was also subjected to the revolting caprices of two of her captive’s nephews, and was once sold to a lawyer. He returned her next day, and the Senora whipped and starved her because she had not pleased the elderly satyr.


The martyrdom of Soledad Garcia became a secondary issue when she divulged strange rites, meaning of which she had no conception, that occurred in the moonlight, before the altar bearing the animal’s skeleton. In the course of one ghastly ceremony, she said, a tiny child had been slain.

Advice from experts on the criminology of witchcraft has been sought by the police. They find analogies in the case of Senora Matamoras and other similar horrors, perpetrated before altars enshrining the bones of dogs, hyenas and wolves.

Authors of these crimes, they say, immersed in sorcery, believed themselves to be transformed at times into the form of gross beasts.

“The circumstances of the Matamoras case,” says one authority, “contain so many parallels with past and present practice of the foulest forms of witchcraft that it has all the earmarks of that hideous category known as necromancy.”

Necromancy, this authority adds, is applied to that sorcery which employs corpses, bones and parts of the bodies of animals and humans and ritually murdered babies.

Case of notorious diabolist Gilles de Retz [sic: “Rais”], who once served as field-marshal for Joan of Arc, has been quoted by the experts. After sacrificing infants before an altar, he went about on all fours, foaming and gnashing his teeth, under the hallucination that Satan had transformed him into a wolf.

Children found in his dungeons bore teeth marks similar to those which scarred Soledad Garcia.

Resurrected have been descriptions of the orgies of Madame de Montespan, famous royal courtesan in the time of Louis XIV., who immolated kidnapped babies before a dog-devil altar during a Black Mass. The analogy is that she always attended the Cathedral of Notre Dame be fore engaging in the satanic ceremony.


Hungarian court records contain the case of Countess Elizabeth Bathori, convicted for witchcraft. It was proved [not accurate; it was an apparently apocryphal legend] that she habitually bathed in the blood of young girls and infants, believing that by so doing she could transform herself into an enormous cat with power to pass through walls and locked doors to attack her enemies. [Bathory, The Blood Countess's actual crimes were not, apparently so much occult as sadistic sexual serial torture/murder, with a bit of non-religious cannibalism.]

Like Senora Matamoras, the Countess always kept one girl alive and chained. Her victim was continually whipped, beaten and tortured. This girl was the witness against the Countess just as Soledad will point chief accusatory finger at Madame Werewolf, unless new and more potent witnesses are found.

In Paris, in 1933, the police arrested an alleged sorceress, Yvette Rostaud, against whom the original charge was simply cruelty to animals.

In a panther skin, and to the accompaniment of tom toms, she tore live rabbits and puppies with teeth and fingernails. She had many degenerate audiences. But the body of a human child was later unearthed in the cellar of a country villa she once occupied. She was sent to an asylum for the criminally insane for life.

In a separate cell to his wife is Angel Matamoras, a textile worker. He sullenly repeats that he knows nothing of the charges against her, and never saw her abuse Soledad. About his wife’s witchcraft and the apparently murdered babies he maintains a grim silence.

[“’Burn The Witch’ - Werewolf Woman Kept Nude Girl Slave Chained Whipped, Tortured Blood-Chilling Ritual,” The Truth (Sydney, Australia), Nov. 5, 1944, p. 11]

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For more cases, see: Women Who Like to Torture

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For more cases of this type, see: Occult Female Serial Killers

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http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2014/07/sadism-female-serial-killers.html

 
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[2945-1/14/21]
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Wednesday, August 12, 2015

Free Speech & John Jay Chapman


John Jay Chapman, Commencement Address to the Graduating Class of Hobart College, Geneva, New York, June 20, 1900.

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FULL TEXT: When I was asked to make this address I wondered what I had to say to you boys who are graduating. And I think I have one thing to say. If you wish to be useful, never take a course that will silence you.

Refuse to learn anything that implies collusion, whether it be a clerkship or a curacy, a legal fee or a post in a university. Retain the power of speech no matter what other power you may lose. If you can take this course, and in so far as you take it, you will bless this country.

In so far as you depart from this course, you become dampers, mutes, and hooded executioners. As a practical matter, a mere failure to speak out upon occasions where no statement is asked or expect from you, and when the utterance of an uncalled for suspicion is odious, will often hold you to a concurrence in palpable iniquity.

Try to raise a voice that will be heard from here to Albany and watch what comes forward to shut off the sound.

It is not a German sergeant, nor a Russian officer of the precinct.

It is a note from a friend of your father’s, offering you a place at his office. This is your warning from the secret police.

Why, if you any of young gentleman have a mind to make himself heard a mile off, you must make a bonfire of your reputations, and a close enemy of most men who would wish you well.

I have seen ten years of young men who rush out into the world with their messages, and when they find how deaf the world is, they think they must save their strength and wait.

They believe that after a while they will be able to get up on some little eminence from which they can make themselves heard.

“In a few years,” reasons one of them, “I shall have gained a standing, and then I shall use my powers for good.”

Next year comes and with it a strange discovery. The man has lost his horizon of thought, his ambition has evaporated; he has nothing to say.

I give you this one rule of conduct. Do what you will, but speak out always.

Be shunned, be hated, be ridiculed, be scared, be in doubt, but don’t be gagged.

The time of trial is always. Now is the appointed time.

["The Unity of Human Nature," address delivered before the Hobart Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, Hobart College, Geneva, New York, on commencement day (June 20, 1900); republished in Chapman, Learning and Other Essays (1910, reprinted 1968), p. 185.]

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The above text dating from 1900 is one of the most eloquent of all defenses of free speech ever published.

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The concept called “social justice” is an idea based on the philosophy of “class struggle”  that promotes group rights and regards individual rights as unimportant at best, and more properly as a concept that counter-revolutionary, or non-”progressive.” It requires a scapegoat – in the past: Kulaks (highly skilled farmers; Bolshevik Socialist Russia), people with “gifted” IQ (Communist Khmer Rouge Cambodia), Jews (National Socialist Germany).

In today’s globalist “social justice” movement it is the “white male heterosexual” who is the scapegoat.

The target is chosen in accordance Antonio Gramsci’s recommendation of identifying a class of people as a “hegemony” that must be attacked. Thus, inventors, innovators, original thinkers and artists of the highest achievement can, if properly undermined, allow the proliferation of a culture of non-innovation, a culture of mediocrity and enforced sameness (called, deceptively, “equality”) which would, it goes without saying, be controlled at the top by an elite politically adept class.

The natural family (and all freely chosen association not heavily supervised by the “community” (the corporate / state system) is however, the real target. Eliminate the father, then resistance to top-down “change” (totalitarian control of the masses) becomes possible (see noted on Ferdinand Mount’s important 1982 book, “The Subversive Family”).

Social justice requires “politically correct” speech that must be enforced by the believers in the orthodox dogmas of  “social justice” collectivist ideology.

Individual freedom, rule by the people (republicanism), free speech, due process, private property are counter to the collectivist ideal.

Most people born after about 1970 in the US and much of the West have been brought up with constant “operative conditioning” a technique of indoctrinating that from an early age limits the development of independent thought. It is common for people who are afraid of peer pressure and rejection to misunderstand their affect (their fear of not conforming with accepted group opinion), assuming that their emotional defense of their "opinion" is the same as conviction for an earned opinion independently held, when, in reality, the person who is feeling such strong emotion never actually has taken the opportunity to examine facts objectively – a prerequisite to developing an informed and personally earned and held, opinion. 

The cure for this condition is open-mined, intellectually curious, broad self-education.

Free speech is despised by tyrants, dictators, slave-drivers, corrupt officials, socialist party commissars (Bolshevik, Nazi, etc.), established religions. Powerful global corporations frequently embrace the authoritarian ideas of their putative “anti-capitalist” opponents for good reason – the tactics of censorship and “politically correct” speech and restrictions on freedom of individuals benefits the high-level managers of all top-down systems, regardless of their publicly claimed philosophy.

Justice and “social justice” are two very different concepts.

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[724-4/12/21]
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Frau Kadletz, Czech Serial Baby Killer - 1906


FULL TEXT: Prague, Feb. 8 – Frau Kadletz, in Smichow, has confessed to some fifty child murders – more she cannot remember. This wholesale murderess was somewhat of a mechanic and constructed for her business a stove wherein little babies might be burned without giving out suspicious odors. She advertised her baby farm extensively, and sometimes killed the children because the parents paid her for the deed, at other times because she would enjoy the income for board without service on her part.

[“Killed Children By Wholesale,” Courier Journal (St. Louis, Mo.), Feb. 18, 1906, p. A1]

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Smíchov (German: Smichow) is (since 1909) a district of Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, and is part of Prague 5. It is located on the west bank of the Vltava (Moldau) river.

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For more cases of “Baby Farmers,” professional child care providers who murdered children see The Forgotten Serial Killers.

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[532-1/12/21]
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Francoise Trenque, “The Arsenic Saint” – Serial Killer – France, 1829


CHRONOLOGY

Jun. 1, 1828 – began slow poisonings of brothers, father; wine.
Circa Jan. – continued poisonings; Bernard, sister, ill.
Feb. 27, 1829 – poisoned corn-cake.
Mar. 11, 1829 – Joseph, brother, dies.
Mar. 12, 1829 – brother Francoise dies; father dies.
Mar. 14, 1829 – poisoned mother, coughs blood (dies?).
Jul. 9, 1829 – court hearing.
Sep. 16, 1829 – executed, guillotine.

It is unclear from the following article exactly how many murders there were. It would seem that there were six: father, mother, 2 brothers, 2 sisters.

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FULL TEXT (Article from 1882): During the first quarter of the present century there lived in the commune of Arronede, Department of Mirande [currently Gers Dept.], France, a carpenter named Trenque. His family consisted of his wife, two sons and two daughters. The younger of these latter was named Francoise. She was from her earliest childhood of a devotional character, modest and retiring, and gave her people no rest until they permitted her to enter the Convent of the Ursulines at Auch. There she served in a domestic capacity, the nuns imparting what instructions they could to her in her leisure hours.

For three years the girl remained at the nunnery, her life marked excessive and fervent devotion. It was noted at the time that her piety was of a somewhat hysterical order. She was often in the habit of roaming about the somber nooks and corners of the rambling pile, murmuring prayers and mouthing strange and incomprehensible words, more like the ravings of a madwoman than the utterances of a sane person.

The nuns became frightened at her eccentric manners at last, and when some fruit was stolen from the convent store-rooms made the suspicion of her having stolen it the excuse for sending her away. She went back to her father’s house, and remained there till she was twenty-four years old. When she left the house was empty, and her hands were dark with the blood of her family. This pious and devout girl within a year swept from the face of the earth by poison [sic] those who should have been nearest and dearest to her.

The commencement of Francoise Trenque’s crimes dated from June 1, 1828 [error in orig. “1882”]. On that day Trenque, with his eldest son Joseph and a workman, went to the Mayor’s house at Arronede to perform some work. They spent three days there. Each day Francoise brought them from their own house the meals which she had prepared for them, and each day they experienced such intolerable pains in the bowels that they finally had to abandon work and go home, leaving it unfinished.

Some weeks passed before old Trenque was well enough to resume work. He took both his sons with him this time, and Francoise carried them their meals as before. The old programme repeated itself, and they had again to leave their labor unperformed.

Six months passed. During this time the Trenque family, with the exception of Francois, alternated between sickness and convalescence. With the diabolical deliberation of a fiend, the fanatic daughter was slowly poisoning her father and brothers by mixing arsenic with their wine.

One day the other daughter, Bernarde, drank some of the wine destined for the men folks. She was at once seized with convulsions and horrible pains. The rural doctor summoned to her aid neither suspected nor detected her actual malady. He ascribed her condition to cramps, and prescribed friction of the legs and body with oil. Francois undertook the task. She used brandy instead of oil, until her wretched victim was blistered and almost flayed alive. The torture saved Bernardo’s life, however. She never quite recovered from its effect, but she escaped poisoning again, as will be seen.

At the commencement of the year, the father, sons and eldest daughters of the Trenques, impregnated with poison, broken in constitution and devoured by constant fevers, were hurrying toward the grave. The villagers, unable to explain their condition, said that a curse had fallen on the house, and shunned its inmates as if they had been smitten by a plague.

Up to this time Mother Trenque had been spared by the demon to whom she had given birth. Now, however, her time had come.

On February 27, 1829, Francoise baked a big corn-cake, the choicest portion of which she pressed upon her mother. The remainder was eaten by her family, herself and her sister. That night witnessed a scene of horror in the Trenque house.

Convulsions shook the rooms, and cries of anguish echoed among the rafters. To her victims, who could not leave their beds. Francoise administered medicines in which she never failed to mingle some of the poison, whose effects they were intended to ameliorate. Among all the crimes which touch on the incredible, none was ever imagined like that of this demon devotee murmuring prayers as she poisoned the medicines of her parents and her brothers.

On March 11th Joseph Trenque, the eldest son died in shocking agonies.

Next day his brother Francoise [sic] went the same road. In his last agonies Francoise cried out that he was burning up with thirst. His sister give him an apple to suck the juice from. This apple she had pricked with a needle and filled full of arsenic.

Now a horrible suspicion dawned on old Trenque – a suspicion which he seems not to have cherished before. But it was too late to save him. He was dying, and knew it. He might have accused Francoise, but he was a proud man, unwilling to make public a doubt that would put shame on is family, especially as it could not benefit him. He simply sent for a notary and had his will made, disinheriting the daughter whom be knew to be is murderess in favor of her sister. He dictated his will in the intervals of blood-curdling convulsions. The parricide stood calmly by and heard it to its end. As he sank back exhausted and cried out for drink, she put one of her poisoned potions to his lips. At the contact, old Trenque gave utterance to a terrible cry.

“Ah!” he screamed, “it is to hell that you send me living and dead!”

And beating the air with his hands he fell back again, writhing and twisting for a few moments, and then stiffening into the rigidity of death, with his face distorted out of all semblance of itself.

His daughter sank upon her knees beside the corpse and prayed.

There still remained one living creature in the house of death beside the fiend who had destroyed the other members. That was the mother. During the terrible tableau which ended in the death of her husband and son Madame Trenque was confined to her bed in the next room. The utterances of their agonies mingled with her own moans of pain.

The daughter now turned her attention to her.

It was on March 12th that Trenque and his younger son had found a termination of their torments. On March 14th Francoise administered to her mother a dose of poison so potent that it caused her to vomit a torrent of blood. The crimson shower spattered the parricide kneeling and praying at the bedside of the parent she bad destroyed.

The notary who had drawn the old man’s will had, meanwhile, communicated with the authorities his suspicion that all was not right in the Trenque house, and on the evening of her last murder Francoise was arrested. There was poison, poison everywhere in her pockets, her trunks, the drawers, wine-bottles, medicine vials, flour barrel, sugar sack, even in her bosom, where a packet of arsenic nestled beside her scapulary.

In spite of these damnatory discoveries, she denied her guilt, and swore it was a plot on the part of godless people to injure her.

She was brought to trial at the Gers assizes July 9th, 1829. She defended herself, calmly and coldly. With mathematical stolidity she developed a theory tending to show that one of the neighbors, who was on bad terms with her family, was guilty of her crime, supporting it with all manner of cunningly devised imaginary details. But it availed her nothing. After a three days’ trial the jury found her guilty and sentenced her to death.

A fierce dispute broke out among the newspapers with regard to her sanity. But the law considered her sane enough to kill, and killed her on September 16, 1829. On the morning of the execution she sent for the Prosecuting Attorney, and said to him:

“I alone am guilty of the crimes of which I have been condemned. The old woman whom I accused is innocent. I wanted to save my head and lied.”

“And why did you kill them ?” she was asked.

“For money,” was the cold-blooded reply. “I love money I adore it. I used to steal from the nuns in the convent, and they never suspected it, When I returned home I wanted our house and garden for myself. Why,” she added, her eyes with cupidity, “they are worth at least 4,000 francs. Now let me pray.”

And she did.

She went to the guillotine with a firm tread, holding in her hand a crucifix, which was confined to her neck by a gold chain. At the scaffold she said:

“Lend me a pin, some one. You know I can not wear this around my neck when my head is off.”

The pin being given, she fastened the crucifix to her breast and said:

“All is well. Let us go on.”

A couple of minutes later she had gone on, following the victim for whose lives her own paid the insufficient penalty.

Francoise Trenque is to this day known as “the arsenic saint” in the district in which her crimes are one of chose house-hold legends which time can not destroy.

[“‘The Arsenic Saint.’” - A Parricide Who Poisoned and Prayed Together – Carpenter Trenque’s Demon Daughter – ‘I Killed them for Money!. I Love Money. I Adore It!’” The Cincinnati Enquirer (Oh.), Oct. 28, 1892, p. 11]

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FULL TEXT: Auch, September 16. - The Gazette des Tribunaux made known, on July 20, the details of this appalling affair; it has since reported the rejection of the cassation appeal brought by Françoise Trenque, convicted of a double parricide, and of the poisoning of her brothers and sisters. This unhappy woman awaited calmly, in the Aucli prison, the outcome of this appeal, when in the morning of Wednesday the 10th of this month, her confessor came to find her in the dungeon where she was locked up alone, and announced to her, without many detours, that he had no more hopes. "I should have suspected this morning," said Trenque, to my defender's elongated face. The poor man didn’t dare to tell me; ask him to come and take my confession. "

M. Allen Rousseau, who had lent the condemned, before the Court of Assizes, the support of his ministry, went in fact to her. "It's very nice of you," said the Trenque woman, "to have hidden my fate from me; you certainly knew this morning what the abbot told me! Besides, you are very good; you thought it would hurt me, you were wrong. I have prayed my rosary twenty times to ask God to maintain my judgment, I am happy: besides, you know, it is just that I die. When I am cut to pieces, I won’t suffer enough for justice; I would not experience the sufferings that I made my poor parents endure; may God have mercy on their souls; they deserve to go to heaven because they are martyrs. I am the sole perpetrator of this crime, she added. And what I wanted to you yourself to believe about my having been advised by an accomplice, were as many falsehoods as I could imagine to save my head. "

In the course of this conversation Françoise Trenque admitted that it was a miserable greed that had brought her to this series of murders; a few arpens [“French acres”]  of land and a meager house had not seemed too dearly bought to her, at the cost of the existence of the authors of her days and of the beings who held her closest by blood ties.

Then she asked that the confessor come back to her. "All dreams are lies, said the unhappy woman, I dreamed last night that I was happy at home in the middle of my family. What a difference! ... What time should I get on the scaffold? "

This question was only answered by saying that we were going to celebrate a mass for her. Taken to the chapel, she prayed fervently, as she has not stopped doing since her detention. Even saw a few tears were seen rolling in her eyes. These were the first tears she had shed since her crime.

After the divine service, the prayers of the agonists were recited for her, charitable people from the city came to see her and offered her grapes, but she ate only a small bunch of them. She repeated her confession in front of everyone, and exonerated the person she had so cautiously accused. As she was exhorted to take courage, "fear nothing," she said, "I will be able to carry on the scaffold the forces which have served me to commit such great crimes." At this moment she cast her eyes on a little crucifix that she had around her neck and that she had never left. "What to do with this crucifix," she said with horrible composure, "it is around my neck, you understand very well that it cannot remain there ..." She immediately conceived the plan to sew it to her shirt; they gave her thread and a needle, and she fixed the divine image on the left side of her chest.

When the executor and his assistants arrived, she said without any emotion at all: “I want to do my own preparation.” She cut her hair and tied the parricides shirt herself, the last piece of clothing she had to wear. wear instead of torture. She observed that her face, according to the terms of the judgment, should be covered with a black veil, "It is perfectly just," she said: "I am not worthy to see the light of day." They covered her face, and told her that the fatal hour had struck. The dismal procession, preceded and followed by an immense crowd, was said to be on the march.

While Françoise Trenque was tied on the tilting board, the clerk read out to the public the judgment which condemned this girl to have her right hand and her head severed. She heard this terrible reading with the greatest calm. Immediately, an aide to the executor detached her right arm, and put her hand on the chopping block, which was severed in the blink of an eye; two seconds later the torture was complete.

This is how the forfeit of this unhappy woman was expiated, whose apparent candor, exemplary manners and devotion were so generally known in the land she would still live in, had not the proofs which arose against it would not have been fortified by her confession. You would never have thought she was a criminal.
[“Execution Of Françoise Trenque, Condemned To The Torture Of The Parricides, For Having Poisoned Her Father, Her Mother, Her Brothers And Sisters.” (“Exécution De Françoise Trenque, Condamnee Au Supplice Des Parricides, Pour Avoir  Empoisonne Son Pere, Sa Meme, Ses Freres Et Soeurs”), Gazette Des Tribunaux (Paris, France), Sep. 23, 1829, p. 1102 (p. 2)]

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FULL TEXT: Auch,16 septembre. – La Gazette des Tribunaux a fait connaître, le 20 juillet, les détails de cette épouvantable affaire; elle a rapporté, depuis, le rejet du pourvoi en cassation formé par Françoise Trenque, convaincue d’un double parricide, et de l’empoisonnement de ses frères et de ses sÅ“urs. Cette malheureuse attendait avec calme, dans les prisons d’Aucli, l’issue de ce recours, lorsque dans la matinée du mercredi 10 de ce moi, son confesseur vint la trouver dans le cachot où elle était enfermée seule, et lui annonça, sans beaucoup de détours, qu’il ne lui restait plus d’espérances. « J’aurais dû m’en douter ce matin, dit a fille Trenque, à la mine allongée de mon défenseur. Le pauvre homme n’a pas osé me il dire; qu’on le prie de venir lui en faire mes reproches. »

Me Allen Rousseau, qui avait prèté le condamnée, devant la Cour d’assises, l’appui de son ministère, se rendit en effet auprès d’elle. « C’est bien joli de votre part, dit la fille Trenque, de m’avoir caché mon sort; vous saviez certainement ce matin ce que vient de me conter M. l’abbé! Au reste, vous êtes bien bon; vous avez cru que cela me ferait du mal, vous vous êtes trompé. J’ai repassé mon chapelet vingt fois pour demander à Dieu le maintien de mon jugement, me voilà contente: d’ailleurs, vous le savez, il ést juste que je meure. Quand on me couperait en morceaux, je ne souffrais jamais assez pour la justice; je n’éprouverais pas les souffrances que j’ai fait endurer à mes pauvres parens; que Dieu ait pitié de leur âme; ils ont bien mérité d’aaler au ciel, car ce sont des martyrs. Je suis seul auteur de ce crime, a-t-elle ajouté. Et ce que j’ai voulu vous croire à vous-mème sur les conseils et la complicité voisine, était autant de faussetés que j’ai imaginées de sauver ma tête.»

Dans le courant de cette conversation Françoise Trenque avoua que c’était une misérable cupidité qui l’avait portée à cette série d’assassinats; quelques arpens de terre et une chétive maison ne lui avaient point paru trop chèrement achetés, au prix de l’existence des auteurs de ses jours et des êtres qui lui tenaient le plus près par les liens du sang.

Elle a ensuite demandé que le confesseur revint au d’elle. « Tous les songes sont mensonges dit  malheureuse, je rêvais ianuit dernière que j’étais heureuse chez moi et au milieu de ma famille. Quelle différence! … A quelle heure dois-je monter sur l’échafaud? » 


On ne répondit à cette question qu’en disant qu’on allait célébrer une messe pour elle, conduite à la chapell, elle a prié avec ferveur, comme elle n’a pas cessé de le faire depuis sa détention; on a même vu quelques larmes rouler dans ses yeux: c’étaient lès premiers pleurs q’elle eût répandus depuis son crime.

Après l’office divin, on furent récitées pour elle les prières des agonisans, des personnes charitables delà  ville vinrent ia voir et lui offrirent du raisin, mais elle en mangea seulement une petite grappe. Elle répéta ses  aveux devant tout le monde, et disculpa la personne qu’elle avait si caîomnieusement accusée. Comme on l’exhortait à prendre du courage, « ne craignez rien, dit-elle, je saurai porter sur l’échafaud les forces qui m’ont servi à commettre de si grands crimes.» En ce moment elle jeta les yeux sur un petit crucifix qu’elle avait à son cou et qu elle n’avait jamais quitté. « Que faire de ce crucifix, dit-elle avec un horrible sang-froid, il est à mon cou vous comprenez bien qu’il ne peut rester là... Elle conçut aussitôt le projet de le coudre à sa chemise; on lui donna du fil et une aiguille, et elle fixa la divine image an côté  gauche de sa poitrine.

Quand l’exécuteur et ses aides arrivèrent, elle dit sans aucunement s’émouvoir: « Je veux faire moi-même ma toilette. » Elle se coupa les cheveux et nassa elle-même la chemise des parricides, le dernier vêtement qu’elle dût porter au lieu du supplice. Elle fit l’observation que sa figure, d’après les termes de l’arrêt, devait être couverte d’un voile noir, « C’est bien juste, dit-elle: je ne suis pas digne de voir le jour. » On lui couvrit la figure, et on lui annonça que l’heure fatale avait sonné. Le lugubre cortège, précédé et suivi d’une foule immense, serait en marche.

Pendant que Françoise Trenque était attachée sur la bascule, le greffier donna lecture au public de l’arrêt qui condamnait cette fille à avoir le poing droit coupé et la tète tranchée. Elle entendit cette terrible lecture avec le plus grand calme. Aussitôt, un aide de l’exécuteur détacha son bras droit, et mit sur le billot sa main, qui fut tranchée en un clin d’Å“il; deux secondes après le supplice, était consommé.

C’est ainsi qu’a été expié le forfait de cette malheureuse, don’t l’apparente candeur, les mÅ“urs exemplaires  et la dévotion étaient si généralement connues dans la contrée qu’elle habitait, que, si les preuves qui s’élevaient contre elle n’eussent été encore fortifiées par ses aveus. On n’aurait jamais pu la croire criminelle.

[“Exécution De Françoise Trenque, Condamnee Au Supplice Des Parricides, Pour Avoir  Empoisonne Son Pere, Sa Mre, Ses Freres Et Soeurs.” Gazette Des Tribunaux (Paris, France), Sep. 23, 1829, p. 1102 (p. 2)]

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Other sources:
Jean Baptiste Joseph Champagnac, Chronique du crime et de l'innocence. Vol. 8, Paris, Ménard, 1833, pp. 344-361.
Morgenblatt für gebildete Leser, Vol. 23, 1829, Stuttgart & Zübingen, p. 1024.
J.-B. Champagnac, Causes célèbres anciennes et nouvelles, Vol. 8, 1833, Menard, Paris, pp. 354-61.
Recueil critique de jurisprudence et de législation, 1829, p. 334.
Le Messager des chambres (newspapers): Jul. 20, 1829, p. 3.
Dalloz & ‎Tournemine (Victor Alexis Désiré Dalloz, ‎Tournemine, ‎Armand Dalloz),  Jurisprudence générale du Royaume en matière civile, commerciale, ... 1829, p. 334

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