1873 –
Sarah Earhardt – Germantown, Ohio, USA
Minor crimes, such its the poisoning of juvenile animals and
the burning of numerous houses, are also said to be among the number of her
achievements.
Henrietta Weibel, aged 15, was
arrested, on a charge of attempted murder and incendiarism, she having on
Wednesday night, attempted to burn the infant child of Mrs. Franck, a boarder
at the Leopold Palace Hotel, and afterwards made two endeavours to set fire to
the house. The baby was lying asleep when the girl set fire to the bed clothes.
Another servant extinguished the flames, but the little child was nearly
suffocated.
1875 –
Sofie Johannesdotter – Fredrikshald (Halden), Norway, USA
“Sofie Johannesdotter was arrested
following the burning down of the Stang house where Sofie was employed as a
house servant.”
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.
The evidence disclosed a strong
circumstantial case that Mrs. Stevens first poisoned the deceased, and then
after robbing him set fire to his house.
During the night of the 17th she set fire to her lodging,
after having first murdered the children committed to her charge.
Then this inhuman woman went and stood in the yard of the
house among the excited crowd and quietly waited to see what would happen. As
the house was only built of wood, she evidently hoped it would be completely
destroyed. But one of the inmates of the house suddenly remembered the woman in
the garret and her charges, and called out to the firemen to save the children.
Then Skubliuski was for the first time soon standing in the
yard, and when she was asked if the children were already saved, she answered
that they were no longer with her. In the meanwhile, the firemen had so far
succeeded in subduing the fire that one of them penetrated into Skublinski’s
lodging, and, not knowing what she had said, immediately began to search for
the children. He soon found one little corpse, and then two more.
1893 –
Lizzie Halliday – Burlingham, New York, USA
Mar. 17, 1888 – convicted of arson, Philadelphia, Pa. under
the name “Maggie Hopkins.”
May-Jun. 1893 – John Halliday, crippled step-son, burned to
death in the “old mill” residence of Mrs & Mrs. Halliday & John, arson
fire set by Lizzie. She was arrested and sent to insane asylum at
Middletown.(date source: Schechter)
It is alleged that Mrs. Shann poisoned her victims with a
solution of bichloride of mercury, that she at the life of her daughter in the
same manner, and that she burned three houses in Princeton. The motive for her
arts was the recovery of insurance money.
It was an irresistible propensity which impelled her to kill
her best friends, and to commit the four crimes of arson to which she also
confessed.
1904 – Rachel Galtie – Auch, France
She
had a friend in the wife, of a navy Captain, a Mme. Larrieu. This woman was
preparing to leave her house on a visit, and the amiable Mme. Galtie offered to
help her pack up. The service was politely declined, but Mme. Galtié was not to
be put off so easily, and was at her friend’s house when the trunks were about
to be closed. At that moment an alarm of fire was raised, and the basement of
the Larjie home was found to be in flames. The discovery of a straw
mattress staked in petroleum and of a box of matches close by proved that the
fire must have been the deliberate work of a criminal, Mme. Galtié, in a state
bordering on hysterics, explained that she had seen a strange man enter the
house, and then rush away a moment after the fire had declared itself.
In every case the murderess managed to escape unnoticed and
her crimes remained mysteries for many months, until she was finally caught in
the act when she strangled Mrs. Marie Wurish, a 70-year-old widow, and applied
the torch to the house of the old woman to cover up the murder.
1929 –
Lisa Karl – Rheims, France
Mlle. Karl, characterized as “the most loathsome woman in
France, was the leader of a band of fierce brigands. She beat the inn keeper to
death with a wine bottle, and Clarisse
later aided her in burning the body with
gasoline.
1929 – Sarah Elizabeth Powers – Macon, Georgia, USA
1949 –
Clarice Spurlock – Evansville, Indiana; Memphis,
Tenn., USA
Clarice Spurlock was suspected of murdering her parents in
two separate poisonings. She was formally charged with arson for setting fire
to their garage. She was also suspected of slow-poisoning her husband.
The Lanning Murder
& Supsequent Arson: Nannie murdered her third husband, Arlie J. Lanning
in 1950, after two and a half years of marriage. Lanning's house was willed to
his sister and within two months the house burned down before the dead man’s
sister could take possession. The now homeless Nannie moved in temporarily with
her mother-in law, saying until she received the fire insurance check. Before she left, however, her mother-in-law
died in her sleep. Nannie then stayed with her sister Dovie, who was dying of
cancer and soon, she too perished. [RSE, adapted from: Charles Montaldo Nannie Doss “One of the most prolific female serial killers in
U.S. history.” About.com]
1963 – Virginia Hill – Falmouth, Kentucky, USA
“At 26, Mrs. Virginia Hill has lost six of her seven
children. Two died of natural causes. She admitted killing one other and
setting a fire in which three more died, officials said.”
1965 –
Hazel Dulcie Bodsworth – Hopetwn, Victortia, Australia
1967 –
Janie Lou Gibbs –
Cordele, Georgia, USA
Gibbs’ husband of 18 years, Charles Clayton Gibbs, 39, died January 21, 1966.
Her youngest son, Marvin Ronald Gibbs, 13, died August 29, 1966, followed by
her middle son, Melvin Watess Gibbs, 16, on January 23, 1967. She inherited
$31,000 from their deaths and tithed 10 percent to her church. The Gibbs’ home
at Arabi burned after her
husband’s
death and she moved to her present home in Cordele.
As examples, the FBI agent noted two arson fires at the
Hilley house, one when Frank Hilley was still alive, the second when Carol and
her grandmother were in the house alone. Urine tests to detect any arsenic were
also ordered for people known to have visited the Hilley residence, including
police who investigated the fires. “One time some investigators went to that
house and afterwards they became sick,” the agent said. “It’s possible they had
been given some type of poison. “There was a family that lived next to her for
years,” he added. “The children were sick all the time, but doctors could never
find out why. ... ‘This family eventually moves and the kids get well in no
time at all.” Investigators say they’ve determined the victims were given small
doses of arsenic over an extended period.
On September 11, 1982, a Youth Development Center employee,
Ken Dooley’s home was shot at four times. The following day, fellow employee
Linda Adair’s home was firebombed with a Molotov cocktail. Phone calls were
made to the victims following the attacks by a female who claimed to have been
sexually abused at the Youth Development Center, but neither victim could
identify the caller’s voice.
She was convicted of multiple counts of grand theft (for
insurance fraud), and is thought to have committed multiple acts of arson
(again, for purposes of insurance fraud).
On January 23, 1985. a mysterious
fire broke out at her Burlington home. Blanche blamed a pervert for the blaze,
and firemen confirmed arson as the cause, accepting her tale of a nameless man
seen loitering around the property. Blanche collected a little fire insurance,
investing the cash in a new mobile home. When fire razed the trailer a month
later, she blamed that pervert again and collected another insurance check.
Someone better finally entered Blanches life on Easter Sunday, 1985. A handsome
divorcée at age fifty-one, Rev. Dwight Moore was the pastor of the Carolina
United Church of Christ.
Set fire to her house killing two of her children. When one
escaped, she tried to avoid saving her. She had poisoned her husband who became
disabled from the effects. She blamed her murdered son for the fire and the
poisoning of his father.
After the third attack PK admitted to her therapist that she
wanted to commit arson again and was committed to a mental hospital. It was
there, when she began talking about stalking and killing women, that she became
a suspect. She eventually confessed to all three attacks.
As a young woman, Credonia was obsessed by fire. She had
torched the possessions of a man who had failed to acquiesce to her romantic
desires. . In another instance, she led her followers to the banana plantation
of a relative who refused to join the cult.
Sister Credonia Mwerinde, leader of Ugandan Marianist cult
of the Movement for the Restoration of the Ten Comandments located in Kunungu
murdered hundreds of her followers on March 17, 2000 by locking them in a
worship facility called the ark that was pyrotechnically rigged. All door and
windows were secured so that none could escape and then the building was set
afire. The official death toll was set at 738. The fire was so intense that the
many of the victims’ skulls exploded. Their corpses, many of them children, were
buried in several mass graves. Sister Credonia disappeared and has not as of
this date been apprehended.
2003 –
Janet Smith – Largo, Florida & Mountain Home, Arkansas, USA
2003 – Dana Stodolova – Kutna Hora,
Czech Republic
November 16, 2001, staying with Dana’s mother in Slavošov, they robbed a
neighbor Jaroslava Šanda (75). The retrieved 40,000 crowns but the victim
managed to pull the nylon stocking from Jaroslav face. Jaroslav
strangled him to death so he would not be identified. They put the body in bed
and surrounded it with lighted candles as a way of burning the house in a
delayed manner. The autopsy was faulty and missed signs of strangulation.
2004 –
Kusuma Nain – Uttar Pradesh and Madhya Pradesh, India
2006 – Sheila LaBarre – Epping, New Hampshire, USA
One of her victims, named “Countie, 24, met LaBarre through a personal
ad in February 2006. He moved in with her soon after and was last seen
alive that March, being pushed by LaBarre in a wheelchair at Wal-Mart,
his face and hands covered with cuts. A few days later, when police went
to LaBarre's home to check on him, they found her tending a burning
pile of trash containing what later was identified as Countie's bones.”
2007 –
Shirley Winters – Syracuse, New York
, USA
Winters had been indicted previously in the death of Ron
Winters after authorities exhumed the baby's remains. His death originally had
been blamed on Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. But Judge Joseph Fahey dismissed
that earlier indictment in June after concluding the grand jury presentation
was tainted because the county medical examiner also testified about her belief
that the deaths of two of Winters' other children in a 1979 Jefferson County
house fire were also homicides.
Once drawn into her web of “love,” she victim would be
murdered either through overdose of drugs, or by suffocating him using a
plastic bag – in order to simulate a natural death. Another victim was burned
to death in his own home. In one case, the murder duo arranged a fake robbery
in order to created a cover story for a murder.
Keizo Ando, 80,
an invalid, died May 2009, house fire.
***
►Burning
Child Alive
1912 – Mme. Couturier – Le May-Sur-Èvre, France
“She fastened her two year-old
daughter to a post, and then having laid a fire set the child’s clothes ablaze.
The helpless infant was burnt to death after having suffered terrible agony.
The unnatural mother watched the whole affair. … Two other children of the
prisoner died [the previous] year in suspicious circumstances.”
***
►Pyromania & Serial Killers
[I]t’s more than sheer malice that underlies the incendiary
crimes of serial killers. According to specialists in the psychology of
perversion, there is always an erotic motive at the root of pyromania. “There
is but one instinct which generates the impulse to incendiarism,” writes William
Stekel in his classic work on aberrant behavior. “That is the sexual instinct,
and arson clearly shows its connecting points with sex.” True, there are often
“secondary motives” behind a pyromaniac’s acts – anger, frustration, revenge.
But above all (as Stekel writes). “the incendiary is sexually excited by the
flames; he likes to watch them burn.” In short, serial murderers who enjoy
starting fires do so for the same reason that they love to torture and kill.
It turns them on.
[Harold Schechter, Fatal: The Poisonous Life of a Serial
Killer, Pocket Books, 2006, 127]
SEE MORE:
Female Serial Killer Collections
***
[1811-2/25/21; 2424-12/29/22]
***
