Thursday, November 28, 2013

Pennsylvania Husband-Beater Mrs. Meyers & Her “Human Target” - 1932


FULL TEXT: “Evidently she didn’t like you very well,” Judge Sylvester J. Snee remarked yesterday after John A. Meyers, 34, of Munhall [Pennsylvania], had described how his wife, Mary, hit him on the head with a bottle, threw books and other things at him, threatened to shoot him on several occasions and called him uncomplimentary names.

Meyers said, “She loved me like snakes.”

Judge Snee, agreeing, granted him a divorce.

[“Divorce Granted ‘Human Target’ After Testimony,” Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (Pa.), Jul. 12, 1932, p. 12]

[478-3/17/22]
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Tuesday, November 26, 2013

“The Witch of Vladimirovac,” Anujka de Poshtonja (Anna Pistova), Professional Husband-Poisoner – 1928


NOTE: Anujka de Poshtonja, “The Witch of Vladimirovac” is known, in English languages sources, under various names: Anna Pistova, Anyuka Dee, as well as the nicknames “Banat Witch,” “Little Mother Anjuschka.” Her crimes took place in Panchova, Banat (Banyat, Banci) district, present-day Serbia, then, Jugoslavia.

In the following articles there is a great deal of redundancy, yet each offers important information not highlighter in the others. As is typical for such English language sources, there is great variation in the spelling of names and places, due both either transliteration, multiple languages in use in the region in question or by simple error.

A second post taken from Austrian sources with additional images: The World's Oldest Serial Killer.

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NAME VARIANTS: 

Ana Draksin (1844-1938) – maiden name.

Ana Dee – married name (“Anyuka Dee’).

Baba Anujka (Granny Annie) – nickname.

Ljubina Milanov – Baba Anukja’s "agent."

Anujka de Poshtonja – name used in many news reports.

Anna Pistova – name used in many news reports.

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FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 8): A 92-year-old woman called the "Witch of Vladimirovac," near Belgrade, Jugo-Slavia – her name is Anna Pistova – is accused of having made a practice during many years of supplying deadly love potions and intentional poison draughts to a large number of unhappy Serbian wives. Her trial was at Pancevo, and six rich farmers' widows were tried with her.

The police regarded Anna, known throughout the country as "Little Mother Anjuschka," as a harmless herbalist. The mysterious death of Burgomaster Carina of Novoselo last year created an unusual sensation, however, and resulted in the arrest of the wise woman and Mme. Carina. A strong force of police fetched Anna from her miserable cottage at midnight, because she is venerated by the peasants, who would have defended her.

—Neglected Wives.—

Carina's widow, a 29-year-old woman, educated in Switzerland, is remarkably pretty. Her husband was 20 years older, and their married life was wretched. The bodies of Carina and 12 other husbands have been exhumed and an analysis made at Belgrade University has shown in all cases evidence of vegetable poison. Anna's defence is that she gave the love potions to neglected wives, and it was their fault if they overdosed their husbands. Carina's widow and the five other accused with her insist that they only tried to revitalise their husbands' love without intending to kill them.

[“Fatal Love Potion. – Overdosed Husbands. – Six Widows And A Witch On Trial.” The Kadina & Wallaroo Times (Kadina, Australia), Jun. 18, 1930, p. 1]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 8): Anna Pistova [Anujka de Poshtonja], aged 92, the so-called witch of Vladimirovac, near Belgrade (the capital city of Jugo-Slavia, formerly Serbia), will be tried on murder charges, together with the widows of six rich farmers, as the result of an accusation that she supplied deadly love potions to unhappy Serbian wives. The police regarded her as a harmless herbalist until the mysterious death of the Burgomaster Carina, of Novoselo, last year. It caused a sensation in the district, and led to the arrest of Pistova and Carina’s widow. A strong police force brought Pistova from her squalid cottage, at midnight, to avoid a rescue by the peasants, who venerate her. Madame Carina, a pretty woman, of 29, led a cat and dog life with her husband, who was 49. The bodies of Carina and 12 other husbands were exhumed, and the autopsies disclosed vegetable poisoning. Pistova says it was the wives’ fault if they overdosed their husbands. The widows declare that they merely tried to revitalise their husband’s love, and did not intend to kill them.

[“Witch And Wholesale Poisoner,” The Worker (Brisbaine, Australia), Jun. 26, 1929, p. 19]

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FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 8): Vienna.— Anna Pistova, age ninety-two or ninety-three, is to go on trial shortly in Pancevo, Yugo-Slavia, on the charge of furnishing poison to wives who wished to get rid of their husbands. Six wives who tried her “love potions” on their husbands and became widows are to be tried with Anna, or after her case is settled. Some say she has led to the deaths of 60 husbands, and of many wives, for men also patronized her.

While Anna is called the “Witch of Vladimirovac,” a place not far from Belgrade, and is an exceedingly aged person, it appears that she is by no means a peasant crone. Her story as now told is one for a novelist, but it is difficult to say how much truth it contains. The United States is not the only country in which a woman on trial for murder is provided with a romantic past.

~ The Village Enters. ~

The story is that Anna was the daughter of a rich cattleman of Rumania, who moved to Vladimirovac 80 years ago, and that she received an excellent education. The villain, goes the story, entered her life when she was twenty-one. As is always the case with more than ordinarily heartless female killers, she had to be more than ordinarily beautiful.

The villain was a young officer, who finally cast Anna aside and left her a pessimist and misanthropist.

Anna sought seclusion after the affair of the heart, and with her knowledge of five languages gave herself up to medical and chemical studies. She came out of her grief sufficiently to marry a landowner named Pistova, by whom she had 11 children. Only one survives, a prosperous merchant.

Her husband’s death sent Anna back to the test tubes and beakers.

She built a laboratory onto her house and evolved from herbs many real or supposed remedies for diseases, but she is charged with having plenty of arsenic around. She dispensed many of her remedies to wives who were not inconsolably distressed when their husbands tried the remedies and left the wives with property and prospects of other husbands. As has been said, it is charged that not a few husbands who bought remedies of Anna were careless about leaving them around where their wives could sample them with disastrous consequences for the samplers.

That is the defense. Anna’s counsel assert that she was not responsible if wives or husbands took overdoses of her medicines. Some of the fatal medicines are said to have contained vegetable poisons which were exceedingly difficult to detect, but some of them appear to have contained arsenic.

~ Called ‘Em Tonics. ~

Arsenic is used as a tonic and some people became arsenic addicts. The husband of Mrs. Florence Maybrick was an arsenic addict, which fact made Mrs. Maybriek’s conviction of poisoning him to death with arsenic extremely doubtful as to the charge having been proved. Anna’s defense is somewhat along the same lines. She says that the death dealing medicines containing arsenic which she dispensed were first rate tonics for the purchasers, if used properly.

Anna herself is said to be a walking advertisement for her own tonics, if she takes them. She is described as looking not more than fifty-five years of age, instead of ninety-two or ninety-three; has her hair curled dally and uses cosmetics.

[“Aged Poisoner May Have Killed 60 – Claims ‘Love Potions’ Were Given as Tonics.” The Pawling Chronicle (N.Y.),  (Date unknown (circa June 26, 1929), page number unknown]

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FULL TEXT (Article 4 of 8): A record murder trial has just begun at Panchora, Jugoslavia, where ninety-three-year-old Anyuka Dee is charged with having murdered more than fifty men.

She is known throughout the district as the “Banat Witch.”

Legends throw a veil of mystery around her lonely life, and as the wives of wealthy farmers liked to go to her for help in case of illness and also to consult her on other difficulties, she drew a large income, which enabled her to lead a life of comfort. Recently it was charged that Anyuka Dee, in addition to saving lives with herbs, also destroyed them with arsenic if she were paid to do so.

Post-mortem examinations in this farming district being of a careless nature, murderers have little to fear from official inquiries. Anyuka Dee was accused by the gossip of a client who complained to another woman that her husband would not die, although she had given him arsenic for nearly a year. More than fifty men and women, who are alleged to have administered poison furnished by the “witch,” also will be arraigned.

The trial of Anyuka Dee will last at least a month. She is firmly convinced that she will not be executed on account of her age. She even hopes that she will outlive her prison term, if she is sentenced. The old woman is vain. She uses lipstick and powder and waves her hair every day. Having plenty of money, she frequently orders new dresses and has developed a large appetite.

She persuaded the prison authorities to allow a dentist to make her another set of teeth because, she said, with the old ones could not eat enough to keep herself in trim.

[“Jugoslav ‘Witch’ On Trial at 93 As Slayer of 50 – Adviser of Farmers’ Wives Accused of Poison to Many Men for Pay,” New York Herald Tribune (N.Y.), Jun. 23, 1929, section II, p. 1]

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FULL TEXT (Article 5 of 8): Vienna, July 6 – Anyuka Dee, a woman 93 years old, charged with having more than fifty men, was sentenced today to fifteen years in jail. She was convicted specifically of supplying poison to fifteen women who wished to get rid of their husbands.

The trial took place at Panchova, Jugo-Slavia. For a score of years and more the old woman had been known throughout the district in which she lived as the “Banyat witch.” For a consideration she would supply arsenic in the wives of the wealthy farmers of the countryside with instructions how to administer it.

[Accused of 50 Murders, Woman, 93, Gets 15 Years – ‘Banyat Witch’ Supplied Poison to Wives Who Tired Of Their Husbands,” The Sun (Baltimore, Md.), Jul. 7, 1929, p. 2]

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FULL TEXT (Article 6 of 8): Vladimirorvac, Jugoslavia, July 10 – The arrest her of Anujka de Poshtonja, a 90-year-old Rumania [sic] woman who is charged with selling slow-acting poisonous mixtures during the last 50 years to married peasant women who wished to rid themselves of their husbands, has revealed a story of witchcraft and murder which recalls the dark days of the Middle Ages.

Anukka, who stoutly denies the charges, has been renounced and feared for half a century as a “witch” by the superstitious peasants in this district. She will soon be brought to trial with a number of other peasants alleged to be involved in the crimes.

The police charge that about 20 wealthy husbands have been mysteriously done away with in this district. The investigation in progress is declared by authorities to involve many prominent persons in this and nearby towns.

One of the most recent cases to attract attention was that of Gaja Marinkov, rich and wealthy proprietor of Banci, who was suddenly taken ill and died within a few days. Relatives who lived with him, and who benefited by his will were accused by the police of poisoning him, but no trace of poison could be found.

Fearing foul play and suspecting Anujka, Gaja Marinkov’s eldest son told the police that he went to Anujka’s house and inquired discreetly whether she could supply a poison to kill off an old relative of his. Anujka, he said, asked how old he was and many similar questions, and finally said that for a great price she could supply something. The young man then pretended to doubt its efficiency to kill a healthy man and the old woman is declared have replied:

“If it was good enough to kill Gaja Marinkov it will do for anyone.”

Soon afterwards Lazar Ludushki, a wealthy peasant, died under similar circumstances a week later Mrs. Ludushki married another peasant from the same village. Within a few months a rich uncle of her second husband died under astonishingly similar circumstances and his lands were added to Stana Ludushka’s wealth. But this led to Mrs. Ludushka’s detention and an investigation by the authorities, and information she gave the police is alleged to have involved Anjuka.

When Anjuka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the young police sergeant who came to her, he reported.

“I work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying days. “Don’t play with the forces of evil.”

When accused of having sold poisons she protested that she had only supplied “magic water,” and claimed to have cured many people of ills by its use.

Investigations show that several of the richer peasants of Ilanci have died suddenly and mysteriously in the last few years.

[“Say Rumanian Woman Sold Poison To Kill Undesired Husbands – Police Claim Over 50 Wealthy Men Succumbed to Concoctions of ‘Witch.’” syndicated (AP), The Niagara Falls Gazette (N.Y.), Jul. 10, 1928, p. 7]

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FULL TEXT (Article 7 of 8): Vladimirovac, Jugoslavia – The arrest here of Anujka de Poshonja, a 90-year-old Rumania [sic] woman, who is charged with selling slow-acting poisonous mixtures during the last 50 years to married peasant women who wished to rid themselves to their husbands, has revealed a story of witchcraft and murder which recalls the dark ages of the Middle Ages.

Anujka, who stoutly denies the charges, has been renounced and feared for half a century as a “witch” by the surreptitious peasants in the district. She will soon be brought to trial with a number of other peasants, alleged to have to be involved in the crimes.

The police charge that about 20 wealthy husbands have been mysteriously done away with in this district. The investigation now in progress is declared by authorities to involve many prominent persons in this and nearby towns.

One of the most recent, cases to attract attention was that of Gaja Marinkov, rich and healthy peasant proprietor of Banci, who was suddenly taken ill and died within a few days. Relatives who lived with him, and who benefited by his will were accused by the police of poisoning him, but no trace of poison could be found.

Fearing foul play and suspecting old Anujka, Gaja Marinkov's eldest son told the police that he went to Anujka's house and inquired discreetly whether she could supply a poison to kill off an old relative of his. Anujka, he said, asked how old he was and many similar questions, and finally said that for a great price she could supply something. The young man then pretended to doubt its efficiency to kill a healthy man and the old woman is declared to have replied:

“If it was good enough to kill Gaja Marinkov it will do for anyone.”

Soon afterwards Lazar Ludushki, a wealthy peasant, died under similar circumstances and a week later Mrs. Ludushki married another peasant from the same village. Within a few months a rich uncle of her second husband died under astonishingly similar circumstances and husbands added to Stana Ludushka's wealth. But this led. To Mrs. Ludushka's detention and an investigation by the authorities, and, information he gave the police is alleged to have involved Anujka.

When Anujka was arrested she tried at first to frighten the young police sergeant who came to her, he reported.

“I work with the devil, young man,” she said. “If you imprison me you’ll remember it to your dying day. Don’t play with the forces of evil.”

When accused of having sold poisons she protested that she had sold only “magic water,” and claimed to have cured many people of ills by its use.

Investigations show that several of the richer peasants of Ilanci have died suddenly and mysteriously in the last few years.

Folk of the district are agog over the forthcoming trial.

[“Sold Poison To Rich To Kill Husbands - Women Who Wealthy Husbands To Die Are Made Victims,” syndicated (AP), Carbondale Free Press (Il.), Jul. 12, 1928, p. 4]

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FULL TEXT (Article 8 of 8): A murder trial has begun at Panchova, Jugo-Slavia, where 93-year-old Anyuka Dee is charged with having murdered more than fifty men. She is known throughout the district as the “Banat Witch.” Legends throw a veil of mystery around her lonely life, and as the wives of wealthy farmers liked to go to her for help in cases of illness and also to consult her on other difficulties, she drew a large income, which enabled her to lead a life of comfort. Recently it was said that Anyuka Dee, in addition to saving lives with herbs, also destroyed them with arsenic if she were paid to do so.

Post-mortem examinations to the district being of a careless nature, murderers have little to fear from official enquiries. Anyuka Dee was accused by the gossip of a client who complained to another woman that her husband would not die, although she had given him arsenic for nearly a year. More than fifty men and women, who ore alleged to have administered poison furnished by the “witch,” also will be arraigned. The trial of Anyuka Dee was expected to last at least a month. She is firmly convinced that she will not be executed on account of her age. She even hopes that she will outlive her prison term, if she is sentenced. The old woman is vain. She uses lipstick and powder, and waves her hair every day. Having plenty of money, she frequently orders new dresses and has developed a large appetite.

[“A Jugo-Slavian ‘Witch’ - Faces Murder Trial,” The Advertiser (Adelaide, Australia), Aug. 12, 1929, p. 17]

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Pančevo (Serbian Cyrillic: Панчево),is a city located in the southern part of Autonomous Province of Vojvodina, in Republic of Serbia. Pančevo is located on the banks of the Danube and Tamiš, in the southern part of Banat, and it's the administrative headquarters of the city of Pančevo and the South Banat District. Pančevo is the fourth largest city in Vojvodina by population. According to preliminary results of the census of 2011, in Pančevo live 76,203 people. According to the official results of the year 2011, in the city of Pančevo live 123,414 inhabitants. [Wikipedia]

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[Sources of photos: 1) cropped head: “Exposing the Evil Eye in America,” Long Island Daily Press (N.Y.), Aug. 19, 1929, p. ?; 2), half figure: ‘Science’s New Rests of the Evil Eye Legend,” Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Jul. 31, 1932, magazine section, p. 4]

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http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2017/04/husband-killing-syndicates.html

For more than two dozen similar cases, dating from 1658 to 2011, see the summary list with links see: The Husband-Killing Syndicates

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http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2016/08/elderly-female-serial-killers.html

MORE: Elderly Female Serial Killers

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[4395-1/13/21]
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Sunday, November 24, 2013

Florica Duma & Ilona Kovacs, Romanian Professional Serial Killers - 1933


FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 3): Twenty exhumations – possibly more – will have to be made in the Rumanian village of Vilagos before the police can discover the full ramifications of an amazing wholesale poison plot.

Dozens of people have died mysteriously in recent months, and there is a growing belief that all were murdered, not for large sums of money, but in some cases for a few shillings.

Suspicion rests on a woman named Florica Duma, the village “quack,” who eked out a living selling love potions and philters.

She is detained by the police, but the number of murder charges to be brought against her will only be determined when the bodies have been exhumed.

A village girl who was carrying a letter to a villager, and who gave it to his wife by mistake, led the police on the trail of the murders.

The wife opened the letter found in it the full details of the plot between her husband and another woman to get rid of her.

~ Arrest And Confession. ~

The husband admitted it. “I was sorry after I had promised to murder her,” he declared. “She is a very good cook and the other woman is not.”

While the police were investigating the source of the poison another villager died. The police received an anonymous letter saying this was a murder.

The widow was arrested and confessed. She had got poison from a friend who in turn had obtained it from the village “quack.”

“The medicine was only a love potion,” pleaded the old woman.

“Then give some to your cat,” ordered the police chief.

The old woman did so and the white cat writhed in agony and died.

It was found that the old woman distilled arsenic from fly-papers and concocted a poison draught. The women who assisted her to distribute the medicine to unhappy wives or husbands seeking release received only a few pence for each mission. The old sorceress was content to get a few shillings for accomplishing a murder.

[“Score Killed By Love Potions. Woman Who Murdered For Few Shillings.” The Straits Times, Jun. 26, 1933, p. 6]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 3): Budapest – Aunt Florica Duma, of the village of Arad [Arad is the region; village is Siria; “Vilagos” in Hungarian], in Roumania is one of those benevolent, big-bosomed old creatures whose very smile seems to spread sunshine in one’s path.

Appearances, however, are apt to be deceptive. For the police have discovered, to their stupefaction, that Aunt Florica sold poison to at least one woman with which to murder her husband. And if the authorities are successful in their investigation, they hope to bring home to Auntie a number of other similar crimes.

First intimation that all was not well in the village came when Mrs. Vendel Czoliner, a farmer’s wife, rushed into the police station with the news that her husband’s widowed sister-in-law, Anna Czoliner, 19, was planning to poison her so as to marry the farmer.

As intercepted letter from the would-be killer to her intended bride-groom gave the show away. Czoliner, interrogated, admitted his share in the plot. But from whom, it was asked, had Anna bought the arsenic? The solution seemed to be in identifying any person who had recently purchased a large quantity of fly-papers, the base of which is arsenic.

The two days before the Czoliner case “broke” in the news, a 60-year-old farmer, one Paul Todorov, well-to-do, had died suddenly. Now came an anonymous letter to George Todorov, the dead man’s nephew, declaring that his uncle had been poisoned and denouncing a woman named Ilona Kovacs as the poison-seller. The Widow Todorov, arrested, confessed. She had bought the white crystals from Kovacs, who in turn had received them from Katica Borbely, a gypsy.

Thus with many twistings and turnings the sinister trail led relentlessly back to Aunt Flora, a concocter of love-filters and other potions.

Another anonymous letter, thrown in at the window of police headquarters, laid six murders in all at the door of genial Aunt Florice. Smilingly, Florica confessed her part in the removal of Todorov.

Aunt Flora’s pet white cat played a vital, not to say a deathly, part in the drama of the revelation of her wickedness. The woman was given fly papers, told to prepare them for Mrs. Todorov. Then they let the cat drink the liquid. She died in agony.

But still Auntie smiles her beaming, benevolent smile.

[“The Part a Pet Cat Played in a Poison Mystery,” The Spokesman-Review (Wa.), Aug. 12, 1933, p. 8?]

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FULL TEXT (Article 3 of 3): Bucharest, April 13. – Husband poisoning on the same grand scale as that which occurred in Hungary two years ago is being investigated in the Vilagos district near Arad.

Twenty-three men and women whose wives had grown tired of them are alleged to have fallen victims to an old woman named Duma Fluroca. She has already confessed carrying on the grim business, supplying poison or administering it for thew last ten years. She said she cannot remember the total number of her victims.

Mrs. Fluroca’s husband testified that he knew the nature of her activities, but feared her so much that he was not only afraid to reveal them, but would not eat food himself until she tasted it first. As a result of Mrs. Fluroca’s confession a number of widows have been arrested and interrogated by a commission which is preparing the case.

[“Rumania Probes Queer Poisoning Of 23 Husbands,” Chicago Tribune (Il.), Apr. 14, 1933, p. 5]

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Șiria (German: Hellburg; Hungarian: Világos) is a commune in Arad County, Romania. According to the 2002 census it had 8,140 inhabitants.The administrative territory of the commune is 12,106 hectares (29,910 acres) and it lies in the contact zone of the Arad Plateau and Zărandului Mountains. It is composed of three villages: Galșa (Galsa), Mâsca (Muszka) and Șiria (situated at 28 kilometres (17 mi) from Arad).

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http://unknownmisandry.blogspot.com/2017/04/husband-killing-syndicates.html

For more than two dozen similar cases, dating from 1658 to 2011, see the summary list with links see: The Husband-Killing Syndicates

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[1648-1/10/21]
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Murder by Wholesale: Female Serial Killer Syndicate: Nagyrev, Hungary: 1930


FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Budapest – Thirty-four persons are being tried in the district court of Szolnok, Hungary, for the murder by poisoning of forty-two others, the victims in nearly every case being husbands or brothers, fathers or mothers of the defendants. All but three of the accused are woman, all the crimes took place in the two nearby villages of Nagyrev and Tiszakürt, the poison used was invariably and its source in at least twenty cases was the village midwife, Suzie Olah, locally known as “aunt Susie.”

This almost demoniac figure, who helped her fellow villagers with equal readiness into time and eternity, not only supplied the means of murder, but furthered its sale by indictment and advice. She seems from all accounts to have been a figure eminently fit to flit around the bubbling cauldron in “Macbeth,” or to discharge the duties of an African witch doctor.

But it was not only her sinister and super-dimensional personality that made the mass poisonings of Theiss valley one of the strangest instances in the world of crime. Most remarkable of all was that a series of such unsuspected poisonings could occur in two small villages, not sixty miles from Budapest, over a period of twenty years, that nearly all the victims should be men, the motive for the murders so apparent, and the beneficiaries invariably women.

The three men to be tried are accused only of complicity. The poisonings, in plan and execution, were entirely the work of women – surely the “monstrous regiment of women” John Knox must have had in mind. The boldness and utter callousness with which they carried on their criminal activities seems to have be equaled only by the stupidity of the men who were their victims, the husbands and fathers who saw friend after friend in the same sudden agonies without ever divining a secret which seems to have been known or suspected by nearly every woman in the two villages.

~ The Reckoning. ~

Of the thirty-four accused nine have already been tried, thee sentenced to death, four to life imprisonment, one to fifteen years and two freed for lack of sufficient evidence. Five women escaped trial by taking their own lives, among them the sinister “Aunt Susie” herself.

Nagyrev-Tissakürt lies in an angle formed by the bendings of the River Theiss, therefore in a little valley about fourteen miles square. It  boasts some 1,400 inhabitants and looks a quaint. Old World village where it sprawls by the river side, its low, white cottages encircled by gardens. It is twenty-five miles from the nearest railway station.

Budapest, which is puzzled and shamed by the discovery of this plague spot in the midst of a smiling countryside not sixty miles from its own doors, has sent many newspapers men and other investigators to discover the conditions which produced it. They found two villages inhabited by poor farmers, dependent for existence on farms and vineyards already small and ever newly divided as sons succeeded fathers; the whole ringed round as by an iron girdle with huge estates. Growth has been impossible, young people have been denied both land and opportunity, and by the same vicious process children have been transformed from a blessing into a curse.

One of the principal occupations of the villages is the growing of grapes and the manufacture of wine, and the men to have drunk deeply of their own products. The drunkenness and brutality as husbands have been advanced by many of the accused women as an excuse for getting rid of them.

~ The Main Motive. ~

If the men were brutish, the women seem to have been remarkable of the strength and persistence of their passions. The average age of their passions. The average age of those so far tried is over 55, yet lust played an even greater part than greed in their crimes. They killed husbands and lovers as they grew tired of them and took others. Shut off in Winter from the world around them, kept indoors during the Spring and Fall by the knee-deep mud of the streets, they had few opportunities for improvement. The village had neither doctor nor adequately trained teachers. Not only paucity of of land but unequal distribution of the gains of culture was at fault.

Nagyrev-Tissakürt was about as well supplied with the refinements, facilities and opportunities of civilization as an African krall. But this field which culture had allowed to lie fallow proved fruitful for Suzie Olah, who six years after her advent had become not only doctor and mid-wife to the village, but its evil genius. It is forty years since Aunt Suzie came to Nagyrev-Tissakürt. And though she is dead now, her unseemly ghost still wanders in and out at the trials in Szolnok.

Aunt Suzie was not unlettered farm woman. She had “studied” at least the rudiments of her profession in the big cities. She had keen powers of observation, sharp understanding and seems to have been a monster of energy of unscrupulousness. A fat, smiling, Buddha-like figure, she knew all the cares and troubles of the villagers and was liked by most of them. For one reason or other she exercised influence amounting to actual power over these simple-minded people. She was no fewer than nine times accused of abortion, but discharged. Finally the earlier midwife of the village, Aunt Suzie’s rival, disappeared without trace. Her son, suspecting foul play on Aunt Suzie’s part, fired several shots at her but missed and was sent to prison for two years. From this moment on the villagers believed that Aunt Susie had a charmed existence against all dangers and all judgments.

Not wishing to risk another trial, Aunt Suzie apparently decided to supplement her earnings in a new fashion. She began a series of child poisonings. There would be a discreet dosing, a little funeral, a tiny grave – and a mouth less to feed. Aunt Suzie worked exclusively with arsenic extracted from flypaper. It seemed effective. She decided to enlarge her sphere. She found wives who had grown tired of their husbands, children who coveted the property of their elders, mothers with ailing sons. Aunt Suzie would whisper that she knew a way.

~ The Business of Poisoning. ~

And then for twenty years long death strode month after month through the village streets, unnoticed by the law. A husband would be seized after he had eaten his mid-day lunch in the fields, a son on his birthday, an old mother after she had spent a day in her daughter’s house. The Messalinas of Nagyrev were able to change husbands and lovers at will. Aunt Suzie charged the equivalent of $25 to $80 for each lethal dose, according to the circumstances of the purchase. The business grew; rivals appeared who manufactured the poison and sold it at lower prices.

How did the murders go so long unpunished? Though the women of the village must have had at least some inkling of the dreadful dream being played before their eyes, they kept silent. Many of them were bound together by the dark threads of guilty knowledge; others, perhaps, by the reflection that the day might come when they, too, would be glad to avail themselves at the same means.

As for the outside world, there not only were no doctors, but the “halottkem,” or official whose duty it was to issue death certificates, was a bell-ringer and son-in-law of Aunt Suzie. His procedure, so he told the gendarmes, was to hold a feather before the mouth of the body to see whether life was extinct, then issue a certificate of death from pneumonia, heart disease or senile decay, which ever seemed most likely. These certificates were duly filed and served to appease early suspicions.

In 1924, however, a body taken from the river was found to be that of the 79-year-old mother of a Mrs. Bukenovenski. She had disappeared mysteriously eight months before. An autopsy showed that she had been poisoned, not drowned. It was established that the poison had been administered by her daughter, who had then, as an additional precaution, had wheeled her mother’s body to the river in a wheelbarrow and thrown it in. this added safeguard proved her ruin. She was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

~ An Anonymous Letter. ~

This discovery apparently excited the suspicions of the authorities and aroused the alarm of the men of the village. There were tentative investigations, but nothing could be proved, and meanwhile the poisonings ceased. Then in July of last year the Calvinist cantor of Tiszakürt charged Mrs. Ladislaus Szabo with serving him poisoned wine. He had been saved by a doctor’s efforts with a stomach pump. Almost at the same time a war invalid accused Mrs. Szabo of a similar attempt. Other such charges had been made, which came to nothing. But State Prosecutor Kronberg received an anonymous letter which spurred him on to unusual lengths. “The authorities are doing nothing,” it read, “and the poisoners are carrying on their work undisturbed. This is my last attempt. If this also fails then there is no justice.” The Tiszakürt police were told to investigate.

A few weeks later, on SS. Peter and Paul’s day, the first day of the harvest, the streets of Tiszakürt were resounding with song and gypsy music when suddenly a rumor was born which took wings and flew through the village. “The Szabos have been arrested,” ran the report. “It’s already known that they poisoned Mrs. Szabo’s father and uncle.” the music stopped, the singers grew silent. Women whispered to each other and avoided the eyes of their menfolk. The gendarmes visited house after house and the number of arrested quickly mounted. Aunt Suzie was among them.

The interrogations began in the open air. The accused denied their guilt indignantly for a time. Then, under pressure, Ludwig Szabo gave way. “Yes,” he admitted, “we killed my father-in-law four years ago and last Autumn my wife’s uncle. All on account of land. My wife incited me to do it.”

Aunt Suzie stubbornly maintained her innocence. She had had nothing to do with the murders and knew nothing about them. But five other women confessed, and on the following day were taken by boat down the Theiss to Skolnok and imprisoned. There they repeated their admissions. Aunt Suzie, however, still maintained her denials. The State Prosecutor had an idea. He let her go free, but told the police to follow her carefully.

The fat old woman, her Buddha-like face unsmiling now but still impassive, took boat to Nagyrev. Arrived, she waddled hastily from house to house with the gendarmes unnoticed at her heels. Those she warned were promptly arrested and taken to prison. At last Aunt Suzie noticed that she was under observation, and her judgment, acute as ever, told her that all was lost. She went straight to her own home, and when the bayonets of the pursuing gendarmes glittered over the garden hedge she drew a flask of poison from under her apron and emptied it. An hour later she was dead.

Now the dark history began to unroll itself. Investigations, confessions, exhumations and autopsies followed each other in rapid successions. Some of the women withdrew their confessions, and in the cemeteries unknown hands tore out crosses, defaced names and inscriptions on the tombstones. But it availed little. Grave after grave was opened, villagers were examined by hundreds, ands still the number of arrests grew.

The strain began to tell on innocent and guilty alike. Four other women followed Aunt Suzie’s example, among them one who was to all appearances innocent. Mrs. Marie Zsabai had been arrested but released. Her husband’s body was the first of thirty corpses examined which contained no traces of arsenic. Dr. Kovacs, Mrs. Zsabai’s lawyer, hastened to Nagyrev to tell her the welcome news. He arrived just as her body was being taken in turn to the cemetery. She had hanged herself out of fear of death.

Now that its crime has been laid bare to the astonished gaze of the world Nagyrev and Tiszakürt have lost even their appearance of rustic innocence. There are some streets every house in which has an occupant in prison. Some of the houses have long been bolted and left bare. There is a strange stillness in the streets. The villagers go about furtively, the innocent ashamed of the reputation their villages have acquitted, the guilty fearing each newcomer. For a time in the cemetery fifty graves lay open.

~ A Self-Questioning in Hungary. ~

The scandal stirred the conscience of all Hungary. Since the Theiss Valley is a Calvinistic neighborhood it has alarmed the Calvinist episcopate. Bishop Desiderius Balthhazar himself traveled through the whole district, suspended his clergymen and teachers and named proved men in their stead.

The trials of the thirty-four peasant Borgias began in December. Many of them had confessed their guilt in the preliminary examination but repudiated the confessions when they came to trial. The strangest part was the view they took, as shown in their stereotyped explanations. “We are not murderesses,” they said. “We neither stabbed nor drowned our husbands. They have simply died from poison. It was an easy death for them and no murder.” Murder seemed to them to involve bloodshed and they had shed no blood.

Their confessions, they alleged, had been extracted by third degree methods. According to the evidence of a gendarme the method was even more subtle. The witness hid under a bed in the police station and heard the 70-year-old Rosalie Sebastyen advise Rosa Holyba to confess their common crime, advice which Rosa Holyba refused. The gendarmes caught Mrs. Holyba by the ankle and emerged amid shrieks of fear. Both women were terrified and admitted their guilt. They were sentenced to life imprisonment.

The trials are held at intervals of two or three weeks and two or three prisoners are taken at a time. At the second trial Mrs. Julius Csaba was found guilty of murdering her husband but let off with a fifteen-year sentence, his drunkenness and brutality to her being accepted as extenuating circumstances.

The third trial was the high point. The woman who had previously appeared had seemed to be poor and stupid peasants. Maria Kardos, accused of the murder of her own son and husband and the attempted murder of the husband of a friend, was obviously of a different type. She had more intelligent features, more correct accents and fasionable garb, though these did not serve to moderate the crudity of the crimes of which she was accused.

~ Song Asked of a Victim. ~

This woman in her youth had been the belle of Tiszakürt. As portrayed by the State Prosecutor and his witnesses at her trial, she was an unrestrained creature who combined a taste for city refinements with a peasant coarseness in the indulgence of her desires. After marrying and divorcing two husbands she found herself at the age of forty with a 23-year-old son, whose health had made him a burden. Moreover, she had fast taken a young lover and did not wish to have this constant reminder of her own age. She consulted Aunt Suzie. The first dose of arsenic only made the boy ill. One fine Autumn day she had his bed moved outside in the courtyard.

“I gave him some more poison in his medicine,” she told the police. “And then, suddenly, I remembered how beautifully my boy used to sing in church and I thought I would like to hear him once more. So I said: ‘Sing, my boy. Sing me my favorite song.’ He sang it in his lovely, clear voice.”

The song ended in agony. The poison had done its work.

This Borgia figure then married once more. But she could not be faithful and her new husband threatened her with divorce. Again the arsenic. Aunt Suzie charged nothing for this dose. Mrs. Kardos’s husband had once been her own lover and she had never forgiven his defection.

Maria Kardos was sentenced to death. On her second day in court her composure gave way and she repeated the confession she had made to the police.

Hungary’s first soldier blinded in the war, once a handsome and popular young farmer, was one of the victims. He had been discharged from a military hospital for “home nursing.” His wife, furious at finding a blind man on her hands consulted Aunt Suzie. When the first self administered the second with practiced hand. He died that night in agony.

New trials bring new revelations. The names of the towns have spread through the whole world. The notoriety was made all Hungary uncomfortable. It has been bad propaganda abroad. It has been a shock at home to find, within sixty miles of the capital, a neighborhood which might better belong to the heart of Africa or back in the darkest period of the Middle Ages.  It makes a strange tale in 1930.

[John MacCormac, “Murder By Wholesale: A Tale From Hungary,” New York Times (N.Y.), Mar 16, 1930, p. XX3]

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An article dealing with an earlier stage of the investigation:

FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): Budapest, Friday, Sept. 13 – The wholesale poisoning of their husbands by women of Nagyrev District, in connection with which thirty widows are already charged with poisoning thirty-eight husbands, took a sensational turn yesterday.

Information reached the public prosecutor which caused an ardor for the exhumation of the bodies of the two children, Justin and Stephen Cher, in Nagyrev. An examination revealed that both bodies contained enormous quantities of arsenic.

One of the babies was born in 1916, the other in 1923. Each lived just three days. It was established that the mother, who was the wife of Ludwig Cher, gave Justin Stephen goats’ milk heavily doped with arsenic. Like the widow of Nagyrev, the woman obtained the arsenic from the famous wholesale poisoner, Mme. Fazekas, a midwife.

A fresh chapter of horrors is likely to be opened up by this discovery. The State Attorney is convinced that the murderess made a general practice of relieving mothers of unwanted children, as well as wives of unwanted husbands, and ordered a general exhumation of all infants who died within the last twenty years, where there was the slightest suspicion as to the cause of death.

In the whole country of Szolnok it is impossible to find any witnesses not directly or indirectly involved in the mass slaughter or superfluous relatives. Every one has some relatives. Every one has some relation who is connected with the affair.

Three more bodies of husbands were exhumed and examined yesterday, and in each case large quantities of arsenic were detected. Fifty more adult bodies are awaiting exhumation.

[“Two Nagyrev Babies Poisoned By Arsenic – Exhumation Gives New Turn to Series of Murders in Hungarian District.” New York Times (N.Y.), Sep. 13, 1929, p. 22]

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• Posts on INDIVIDUAL SERIAL KILLERS in the 1929 Tisza Valley (Nagyrev) case •


Christine Chordas (3 murders) executed
Julia Dari (3 murders)
Julia Fazekas (scores of murders) suicide
Juliana Foeldvary (3 murders)
Maria Kardos (Aszendi; Szendi; Kardos-Szendi) (3 murders) executed
Julianne Lipka (scores of murders)
Suzi Olah (scores of murders) suicide
Mrs. Louis Oser (3 murders)
Frau Palinka (7 murders)
Julia Sijj (7 murders)
Esther Szabo (multiple murders, including 2 family members)
Maria Varga (3 murders)

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For more than two dozen similar cases, dating from 1658 to 2011, see the summary list with links see: The Husband-Killing Syndicates

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