Kathleen Oka Simmon, 13-Year-Old Murderess – Canada, 1913

FULL TEXT: Washington, June 15. – Details of an almost unprecedented attempt at double murder by two young girls, the oldest only eighteen, the second hardly in her teens, has been received from Fredericksburg. The victims were Mr. W. E. Waller, Mary and Jennie Green, sisters, were the assailants.

The Wallers lived on a farm twenty-five miles Fredericksburg, New Market, somewhat remote from neighbors. The two Green girls had been reared by the Waller family. Last Friday Mr. Waller received quite a sum of money, which he kept in his room and the girls were aware of the feet. About 11 o’clock that night, they beat both of the old people with clubs, until they supposed they were dead. Then they secured about $350 in money and fled. Waller was restored to consciousness and though in a very precarious condition, he was able to receive the occurrence. Mrs. Waller cannot recover.

[“Clubs! – Used By Bloodthirsty Girls, - To Beat to Death their Aged Benefactors for the Sole Purpose of Robbery. – … - Ungrateful Girls. – They Murder For Money People Who Reared Them.” The Fort Wayne Sentinel (In.), Jun. 15, 1886, p. 1]

***

More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder

***

[356-1/23/21]

***

Mary Metzdorf, 16-Year-Old Multiple Murderess – Maryland, 1890

FULL TEXT: Baltimore, August 10. – Mary Metzdorf confessed this morning to having poisoned Miss Louise Broadwaters, her little brother James, and her mother, Catharine. She said she put arsenic in the coffee “just for fun.” Though not quite 17 years old, she bears herself like a hardened criminal. Miss Broadwaters died almost immediately after drinking the coffee, and James, her 6-year-old brother, expired last night. Mrs. Broadwaters, the third victim, is still in a critical condition. It is now probable that she will also die.

The coroner’s jury this morning came to the conclusion that the girl was guilty, though according to Maryland law her confession cannot be accepted as evidence. Aside from this, however, the evidence against her is conclusive and conviction almost certain.

[“Confessed To Poisoning – Mary Metzdorf Put Arsenic in the Coffee ‘Just for Fun.’” Harrisburg Telegraph (Pa.), Aug. 11, 1890, p. 1]

***

FULL TEXT: Washington, Oct. 20. – Mary Metzdorf, aged 17, who killed her brother James, and Louis Broad waters, by putting poison in the breakfast coffee, was arraigned in court to-day. While the clerk read the indictment the prisoner sat sobbing with her head resting in the palms of her hands. When he finished reading the clerk asked if she was guilty or not guilty, and to the surprise of all she said:

“I am guilty.”

For a time silence reigned, broken only by the sobs of the girl. “Do you know,” said Judge Stewart, looking up somewhat amazed, “the enormity of the crime with which you are charged, and do you realize the punishment attached?”

“No,” she replied. “I do not.” “Then you had better withdraw your plea of guilty and enter one of not guilty.

But Mary would not withdraw it, saying that she would be telling a lie if she said otherwise. Her sobbing increased, and all efforts to get her to withdraw the plea were fruitless. Judge Stewart held a consultation with Deputy State’s Attorney Campbell, and then said he would accept the plea of guilty and suspend sentence. When Mary was arrested and told what she had done she laughed heartily and said she had done it for fun. There was no cause ever developed for the offense. Her stepmother, Mrs. Metzdorf, who had partaken of the poisoned coffee but recovered, had always, so far as could be learned, been kind to the girl. Mary had been rather wayward, and had at one time been sent to the House of the Good Shepherd. At the time the poisoning was done she was employed in a wholesale drug store, where she obtained the poison.

[“Poisoned Them For Fun - Why Wayward Mary Metzdorf Caused the Death of Her Brother and His Friend. - Mary Metzdorf’s Crime.” The Daily Inter-Ocean (Chicago, Il.), Oct. 21, 1890, p. 9]

***

FULL TEXT: Baltimore, April 17. – Mary Metzdorf, the youthful murderess who a few days ago was convicted of murder in the second degree for poisoning her little brother and Miss Louise Bradwaters, was sentenced by Judge Wright to fourteen years imprisonment.

In passing sentence the judge said he could not be influenced by the jury’s recommendation for money, certain disclosures since the trial having caused him to believe the girl should have received the extreme penalty for murder.

[“Mary Metzdorf Sentenced. – The Youthful Murderesses Get Fourteen Years Imprisonment.” The Plain Speaker (Hazleton, Pa.), Apr. 18, 1891, p. 1]

***

***

***

***

More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder

***

[455-8/23/21]

***

The Martin Girl: 8-Year-Old Murderess – South Carolina, 1867

FULL TEXT: A little daughter of a Mr. Martin, of Cassville, Parry county Mo., only eight years old, deliberately shot and killed a brother of four years on the 4^th of July. She said she killed her brother “because he pulled her flowers and declared “if the other children pulled any more of them, she would shoot them too.” Her father found the infant murderess besmeared with blood, dragging her mangled and bleeding brother from the room into the yard, when she let go her victim, and turned and glared with a savageness said to be truly frightful. A physician intimates that the girl was insane.

[Untitled, The Evening Star (Washington, D. C.), Jul. 29, 1867, p. 4]

***

***

More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder

***

[811-1/23/21]

***

Sadistic 13-Year-Old Murderess, Carrie Sampson – Florida, 1899

FULL TEXT: Tallahassee, Fla. August 16 – A most shocking case of childish depravity and cruelty was brought to light here today, by the arrest and confession of Carrie Sampson a negro girl thirteen years of are whose home is in Moccasin Gap, a couple of miles south of the line bounding this (Leon) county from Thomas county, Georgia. Carrie is charged with the murder of a negro infant, Tom Bently, whose mother, an aunt of the girl, had employed Carrie to nurse it while she and other members of the family were at work in the field. During this time there was no one at the house except the girl and the baby.

It seems that several weeks ago the mother returned from work to find her child mutilated as it cut by some blunt instrument such as a dull blade. One of its ears was hacked off, the hands were lacerated and an attempt had been roads to cut off another member. The girl Carrie was accused of these enormities but seems to have satisfied the latter, her own aunt, of her innocence by the explanation that while the baby was sleeping she had gone into the yard to chop some wood as was her custom and during her absence two puppies had bitten the child inflicting the injuries mentioned. The puppies were at once killed and the girl continued to tend the baby.

Last Saturday however Carrie Sampson seems to have been seized with another fit of almost incredible cruelty to wards the baby and took its life in the following manner. She built a fire in the open fireplace and allowed it to burn until only the coals and hot ashes remained. Into these she threw the baby and heaped the hot ashes and coals over it, almost completely covering it. Carrie then walked to the door and turned to watch the baby roast to death laughing as it screamed and writhed in pain. When the infant ceased to move, Carrie ran to where its mother was at work and told her that a big boy was at the house burning up the baby. The mother rushed to save her child but found it burned into a crisp utterly unrecognizable mass and, of course, dead.

The neighborhood in which this horrible affair occurred is very secluded, being miles away from any settlement. The negroes at the Gap are extremely ignorant and live in almost a primitive state and for these reasons more than any other it was only yesterday that the infanticide was reported to Sheriff Pearce in Tallahassee. He has arrested the fiendish girl murderess, Carrie Sampson, and although she at first stuck to the story of the boy burning the baby, the suspicious circumstances of the recent acts of mayhem furnished too close a corroboration of her guilt of the murder and when the seriousness of her position began to dawn upon her, she broke down and confessed telling the story recited above. She will of course be prosecuted for murder.

[“Horrible Case of Cruelty To Child – Nurse of Thirteen Kills an Infant She Had the Care Of. - First Cut Off Its Ear - Denied the Deed, Saying Dog Chewed the Member Off.  Mother Of Child Believed The Story - Few Days Afterwards Nurse Heaped Hot Ashes Over Child and Roasted It.” Atlanta Constitution (Ga.), Aug. 17, 1899, p. 2]

***

 

 

More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder 

 

***

[1019-1/23/21]

***

Kaethe Hagedorn, 18-year-old Who Murdered a 6-year-old girl and a 9-year-old Boy in a Fit of Homicidal Mania - Germany, 1927

FULL TEXT: Berlin, Jan. 30. – Germany’s most prominent psychiatrists, Prof. Raecke, Dr. Gunderlack and also the famous Prof. Hirshfield have been called into consultation on a murder case to be tried next month at Disberg, which is declared by both criminologists and psychiatrists to be unique in the history of crime. It is strongly reminiscent of the Leopold-Loeb case [because of the element of homosexuality] and is even more remarkable because the defendant. Kaethe Hagedorn, is an 18-year-old girl of a good middle-class family, quiet, pretty and modest, against whom no single witness has anything ill to say, but who has confessed to the brutal murder of two children, 6-year-old Katie Gelsleighter and 9-year-old Freidrich Schaefer.

The murder, which occurred in the woods behind the Duisberg Cemetery, appears to have been committed in an irresponsible frenzy, and the girl herself was unable to recall the details until, during her imprisonment, she cut her own finger, and at the sight of a drop of blood made a full confession. The story reminiscent of the Salome of Oscar Wilde, for Kaethe Hagedorn seems to have been a naive child, driven by fearful unconscious impulses.

Kaethe worked in her father’s grocery store, and was described by the neighbors as modest, exceptionally sensitive to music, and with a passion for Chopin. She seems to have been awakened to a craze for sensation through a woman circus acrobat, much older than herself, with whom she some time ago began a friendship which is believed to have been her undoing.

Her flapper enthusiasm was not taken seriously, however, by her parents or friends. Children adored her, particularly the two unfortunate little ones, who belonged to neighbors.

Although the murder was committed at noon, Kaethe lived calmly and was not suspected during twenty-four hours of lamentations. However, the next day she fled from the city, and this led to her pursuit and capture.

The girl is declared to be the first woman known to have committed murder from sheer urge of the sensation. [Note: This claim is not accurate, of course. Numerous other earlier cases were known and documented, yet overlooked. - RStE] The case is awakening interest among all the students of abnormal psychology, as no other motive can be discovered.

[“Killer Baffles Criminologists – Famed Professors to Study Young Murderess – Berlin Produces Parallel to Leopold-Loeb Case – Girl Soon to Be Tried for Children’s Death,” The Los Angeles Times (Ca.), Jan. 31, 1927, part I, p. 7]

***

More cases: Youthful Borgias: Girls Who Commit Murder

***

[551-1/23/21]

***

Collectivist Authoritarianism: Beyond the Fallacious Left-vs-Right Model (“Hitlerite Riot”)

This famous brief text should always be handy, so I’ve posted it here. It is useful when arguing against those who use the simpleminded, and utterly often confusing, left-right model and who have no awareness that the founders of the early-20th century political parties called “right” (Mussolini’s Fascists, Hitler’s National Socialist Workers Party) were in reality merely factions of socialism who competed with other factions of socialism and won. Yet the roots remained the roots.

***

HITLERITE RIOT IN BERLIN

Beer Glasses Fly When Speaker Compares Hitler and Lenin

New York Times, November 28, 1925, p. 4.

BERLIN. Nov. 27. – The National Socialist-Labor Party, of which Adolf Hitler is patron and father, persists in believing Lenin and Hitler can be compared or contrasted in a party meeting. Two weeks ago an attempted discussion of this subject led to one death, sixty injuries and $5,000 damages to beer glasses, tables, chairs, windows and chandeliers in Chemnitz. Last night, Dr. Göbells tried the experiment in Berlin and only police intervention prevented a repetition of the Chemnitz affair.

On the speaker’s assertion that Lenin was the greatest man, second only to Hitler, and that the difference between communism and the Hitler faith was very slight, a faction war opened with whizzing beer glasses. When this sort of ammunition was exhausted a free fight in which fists and knives played important roles was indulged in.  Later a gang marched to the offices of the socialist paper Vorwärts and smashed plate-glass windows. Police made nineteen arrests.

***

German socialists were not keen on what they saw as a threat from Bolshevism that culminated in the Holodomar, which many blamed on those Cheka leaders (such as the sociopath serial killer Cheka leader as Rozalia Zemliachka) who were ethnically Askenazy and who were fierce persecutors of Christian Russians and Ukranians. Germans wanted a “better” collectivist state, a “better” version of authoritarian socialism, one that that was their own. And they got one, with a different scapegoat class, and with a national socialist “Holocaust” instead of an international socialist “Holodomor.”

***

***

[745-4/21]

***

Mrs. Newton’s Family Annihilation Episode – Australia, 1874

See commentary on Family Annihilation and list of cases: Family Annihilation (Female Perpetrated)

***

FULL TEXT: A sad case of homicidal mania occurred on April 4 at Hoxton, resulting in the murder of her daughter, a little girl, the wounding of her husband, and an attempt of the murderess to commit suicide. The woman’s name is Newton, one is forty-two years of age, the wife of a respectable shoemaker, carrying on business at 43, Brunswick-place, and the mother of a large family. Her mind appears to have been affected by grief with tho loss of her children, of whom the fifth, an infant, died about a year since.

Her condition appears to have been well known to the medical man who has been in the habit of attending her, but he did not think it a case calling for physical restraint. So lately as Good Friday evening there was nothing unusual in the woman’s manner, and after a walk with her husband the pair partook of supper and retired to bed about eight o’clock on Saturday morning she rose according to custom, and went down to the ground floor to light a fire and prepare breakfast for the family.

Her son, a boy of eleven, had risen, and was taking down the shutters of the shop, when his mother reproached him for not having done so before, and threatened to murder him. Her wildness of manner excited the boy’s apprehension, and when she shortly after rushed through the shop at him with a carving-knife in her hand, and her intention plainly indicated in her distorted features, he fled for his life, she did not pursue him far, but rushed upstairs to a room occupied by her brother, whom, with menacing gestures, she threatened to murder. A brief struggle ensued between them; but her strength was so great that he was unable to secure her, and, breaking away, she ran into another room, where two of her daughters had been sleeping. The elder girl had risen and gone downstairs, an act which no doubt saved her life but a younger child Jane, four and a half years of age, was left still asleep.

The unhappy woman immediately cut the poor little creature’s throat, almost severing the head from the body. Going again downstairs she was followed by her husband, who had become alarmed by the noise of the struggle between the woman and her brother, and by her frantic rushing about. Directly the murderess saw her husband she flew at him, wounding him in the arm. Only then realising his wife’s condition he closed with her, and tried to obtain possession of the knife.

A struggle ensued, but he found himself unable to cope with the unhappy woman, who, after inflicting several of other wounds on his hands and arms, broke away, and, her paroxysm taking a fresh direction, she cut her own throat, and fell to the ground insensible. The cries of “Murder” while this horrible scene was being enacted reached the ears of Police-constable Perritt, 312 N, who was on duty near, and be ran to the house, but too late to prevent mischief. He at once sent for Inspector Ramsay, of his division, who, seeing the condition of the wretched woman, sent her off at once to St Bartholomew’s.

The woman has hitherto borne the character [of] a kind and affectionate mother, but out of a family of eight children, she lost five within a comparatively brief period, and her grief is known to have affected her mind, though no one of her friends ever anticipated it would show itself in so terrible a form. Brunswick-place, where the occurrence took place, is the scene of unusual excitement.

Crowds of persons assemble in front of the house, and strange rumours are current as to the cause of the affair. That the unhappy woman had been in a desponding condition for some time is asserted by the husband and we understand that the subject of her removal from the house, was seriously discussed on Friday night among the members of the family. On her arrival at St Bartholomew’s Hospital she was in a very excited state, and it has been found necessary to place her under restraint ever since.

Mr Jepson, the house surgeon, stated last night that the wounds inflicted on herself were merely superficial, none of the important arteries having been severed and, although in a very desponding state, it was thought that, two of three day of quietness might lead to a great improvement. She has not alluded to the melancholy affair — all that can be elicited, from her, in reply to questions put, being simply “Yea” and “No.” The injury to the husband, who was removed, to the same institution as his wife to have his wounds dressed, was very slight.

[“Shocking Tragedy.” The Mount Alexander Mail (Clatlemaine, Vic., Australia), Jun. 2, 1874, p. 4]

***