Rosana Hoffman, Child Torturer (for Amusement) – 1891, New York

FULL TEXT: A gentleman, who refused to give his name, called at the office of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children early yesterday morning and told Assistant Superintendent Stocking that he knew of a case which, if not immediately attended to, would result in the death of two small children, 8 and 5 years respectively. He said he was walking through East Twelfth street on Wednesday afternoon when his attention was attracted by two children playing was attracted by two children playing in front of 641. One of the youngsters, a little girl, was covered with bruises, and both eyes were bloodshot. The other child, a boy, also showed evidence of bad treatment. The gentleman said that when he asked the boy who had beaten by her mother, but neither of the children seemed to be able to tell just why they had been whipped.

Mrs. Stocking sent Agent Becker to investigate. When Becker reached the house, which is a tenement, he found that he was expected. The family he was after live on the third floor, but the door to their apartments was locked. He knocked repeatedly, but there was no response, and, concluding that the rooms were empty, he left. Mr. Stocking on Wednesday evening sent Agent Schultes to the house. Instead of going direct to the apartments of the family, Schultes made inquiries among the neighbors and learned that everything about the children reported at the society’s office was true.

He was told that the woman’s name was Mrs. Rosana Hoffman, and that the two children were Rosana and Arthur.

The woman is the wife of a longshoreman who left her about four months ago. Since then the woman’s apartments have become a resort for bad characters. The neighbors also said that she was continually beating them, and that the sound of the little ones’ cries for mercy could be heard all times of the night.

After getting the history of the case, Schultes climbed the stairs and knocked on the door of Mrs. Hoffman’s room. There was no answer, but Schultes know that some one was inside, for he could hear a woman’s voice, cursing and laughing in turn. He could also hear two men singing. The door was locked. Schultes went down stairs, got into the rear yard, climbed up the stairs, got into the rear yard, climbed up the fire escape, and effected an entrance to the room through an open window. His sudden appearance somewhat startled the three roughs and the woman, who were drinking at a table. The two children were playing on the floor. Taking the little girl in his arms and the boy by the hand he left the den, amid the curses of the mother and her companions.

After placing the children in the care of a neighbor Schultes got two policemen and went back to arrest Mrs. Hoffman. The men in the mean time had gone away and the woman was alone.She refused to go with the officers and fought like a demon. It took the three to get her down stairs, and it was only after an hour’s hard work that she was eventually locked up in the station house.

Yesterday morning both the children and the mother were in the Essex Market Police Court. The latter was sullen and absolutely refused to talk. Both the children are naturally pretty, although one would hardly think so to look at their bruised and scarred faces.

They were happy and contented in court, and chatted joyfully together. Their old clothes had been taken from them, and they were attired in clean and new suits furnished by the society. The little girl had quite a store of dimes and nickels, presents from the court officers, which she and her brother took great delight in counting. Little Arthur is an unusually bright child, and speaks German and English equally well. Half concealed by his soft yellow hair is an ugly scar across the forehead, which with the numberless other marks on his body, show the treatment he has been subjected to.

Rosana, however, is the one on whom the mother’s work seems to have fallen the hardest. Her head and body are indescribable. There is hardly a spot of unbruised flesh on her whole body. Everywhere are long stripes, cuts and bruises, old scars, and black and blue marks. Both of her eyes are bloodshot and the flesh around them swollen. A close examination of her head shows old cuts innumerable under the hair. The society consider it one of the worst cases they have had for a long time.

Mrs. Hoffman is only 27 years old, and, despite the marks of dissipation on her face, is still a good-looking woman. Justice Tyan held her in $500 bond for her treatment of the boy. The children were taken to the society’s headquarters, where they were seen later in the day by a Sun reporter.

“Who beat you?” was asked of the little girl.

“Mamma,” was the reply. “She beat me with a great big stick, and she used to hit me with the stove hook too.”

“What did she hit you for?”

“I don’t know,” said the little one. “She just hit me. She only did it when the bad men came, and they used to laugh. She laughed, too, but I didn’t. I cried ‘cause it hurt.”

“Well, who hit Arthur?”

“Mamma hit him, too, but only when she was tired of hitting me. She didn’t hit him with the fire hook. She took kindling wood and dug at his head with it. He cried awful, but mamma and the men only laughed more.”

Little Arthur corroborated his sister’s story, but could not tell why they were whipped. He said that his father was not a bad man, but said he went away because his mother had too many other men to see her.

[“’Mother Just Hit Us.’ – The Pathetic Story of Two Scarred and Bruised Little Children. – Their Drunken Mother Tortured Them Continually For the Amusement of Herself and Her Low Companions.” The Sun (New York, N. Y.), Mar. 27, 1891, p. 8]

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[981-10/19/21]

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Cora Lichtenfels, Child Torturer – 1909, Pennsylvania

FULL TEXT: Oil City, Sept. 24 – Thursday afternoon Mrs. Cora Lichtenfels, the woman who is alleged to have subjected her stepdaughter, Minnie Lichtenfels, to horrible torture last week, was given a hearing before Alderman McCready. At the conclusion of the testimony Mrs. Lichtenfels was held to the November term of quarter sessions court, bail being fixed at $500, which was furnished by the woman’s husband.

Mrs. Lichtenfels was represented by Attorney John C. McGill argued that the court could not legally hear the case, Mrs. Lichtenfels having been tried before an alderman last Friday and fined $10 and costs on a charge of cruelty arising out of the same offense. District Attorney Goodwin argued that inasmuch as the woman was not tried before a jury on Friday she could be tried again, the charge at yesterday’s hearing being aggravated assault and battery with intent to maim and disfigure.

Minnie Lichtenfels appeared and testified that Tuesday of last week her stepmother took her to the attic of their home and there the elder woman threw the girl to the floor and then sitting on the child’s head gouged great patches of skin and flesh from her chest and back using a pair of pinchers [sic]. The girl swore that last winter her stepmother struck her over the head with a brass curtain rod and on another occasion had struck her over the back and head with a broomstick. Mrs. W. B. Jayne, the lady in whose home the girl has been staying since the inception of the case, testified that last Friday morning her maid had found the child sitting on the porch of the Jayne home. She swore that it took a physician an hour and a half to soak the child’s shirt from the wounds made on her back and chest by the pincers [sic] in the hands of Mrs. Lichtenfels.

Mrs. Lichtenfels entered no testimony in defense.

After the woman had been held to court, Attorney McGill stated that he believed that Mrs. Lichtenfels was unsound mentally. She has, been in poor health for a long time, having undergone three surgical operations in recent years. The girl was given into the care of Humane Officer Hiram Brown, who will provide her with a home.

[“Inhuman Stepmother Was Held For Court – Attorney Hints That Woman is Insane,” Warren Mirror (Pa.), Sep. 24, 1909, p. 1]

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[746-1/31/19]
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Juana Rodriguez and Rafaela Fragoso, Eccentric Child Abusers – Mexico, 1911

A bizarre event occurred in Santa Maria la Ribera, in Mexico City in the months following the beginning of The Mexican Revolution in 1911. The two children were playing Alameda Maria Ortiz and Dionisio Silva. Two women came by, Juana Rodriguez and Rafaela Fragoso. They approached the children and, without warning, began to bite the children on their cheeks.

The children howled and screamed and hearing the commotion a policeman came to their aid. He arrested the two women arrested and them, along with their little victims, faces dripping with blood, to the police station. When questioned about the assault the ladies explained that when they spotted the little ones they found them delectable (antojaron) and thus bit into them. The event became known in the press as “The Case of the Apple Children” (“El Caso de los Niños Manzanas”). The strange attacker were jailed but the children were permanently scarred by the bites.

[Based on : “Juana Rodríguez y  Rafaela Fragoso: ‘El Caso de los Niños Manzanas,’” Escrito con Sangre, Apr. 2004]

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Other sources :

Augustín Sánchez González, Un Dulce Sabor A Muerte : De La Bejarano a la Miss México un siglio de mujeres criminales, Editorial: Planeta, 2009

Augustín Sánchez González, Terribilísima : Historias de Crímenes y Horrores : en la Ciudad de México en el siglo XIX, Ediciones B México, 2006
James Alex Garza, El Lado Oscuro Del Porfiriato: Sexo, crímenes y vicios en la Ciudad de México, Aguilar, 2009

El libro rojo, Continuacion, V. I: 1868-1928, Gerardo Villadelángel Viñas, 2008

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Mrs. R. B. Bell, Child Torturer – Canada, 1896

Other texts give a fuller name: “R. B. Bell.”

FULL TEXT (Article 1 of 2): Ottawa, Ont., Apr. 18. – Mrs Bell, for cruelty to her grandchildren, was to-day sentenced to life imprisonment.

She punished a boy of 15 and a girl of 16 with the most fiendish torture that ingenuity could concieve. Stripping them to their thinnest clothing, she would soak them in water and compel them to sit before open windows when the temperature was several degrees below zero, till they were nearly frozen stiff. On one occasion the boy was kept at work in the cold, improperly clad, until his toes were frozen and dropped off. The children were fed victuals mixed with noxious fluids like kerosene, turpentine and worse.

[“A Female Fiend – Given a Life Sentence for Torturing Her Grandchildren.” The Salt Lake Tribune (Ut.), Apr. 19, 1896, p. 17]

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FULL TEXT (Article 2 of 2): The telegraphic columns of The Tribune on Saturday contained the announcement that Mrs. Bell, of Ottawa city, has been sentenced to imprisonment for life for the cruel treatment of her grandchildren. Without some knowledge of the crimes proved against this woman, one might believe that Judge Robertson was unduly severe in his punishment of the prisoner. But the evidence against her was overwhelmingly strong, and the accusations proved of so revolting a character as to suggest that the accused was more a fiend than woman. Charged with the care of her two grandchildren – a boy aged less than 14, and a girl of 10 – not outrage short of murder seems to have been regarded by this misguided woman as too cruel to mete out to these children.

I was proved that Percy Short, the grandson, was hung from the ceiling by corsets while he was in a nude condition. His grandmother made him pull hair out that grew under his arms, and she singed him with a candle. Not contented with that punishment, on a cold day in January last she took him to the the garret, compelled him to strip naked, then put on him a wet shirt, and tying him hand and foot to a chair, left him for an hour in an open window. From the exposure ulcers grew on his legs, and his feet were so badly frozen that his toes had to be amputated. On the revelations made by the boy after he was taken to the hospital, criminal proceedings were taken against the torturer.

Nor was the granddaughter Oneita treated with less cruelty. When the child appeared in court, she exhibited to the jury a bald spot on her heard from which her grandmother had torn the hair. As a punishment for a slight offence, the woman put turpentine in the girl’s eyes; but the most revolting crime of all was the tying up of the girl’s tongue for a whole night, causing her intense agony. Mrs. Brousseau, who was a servant in the family at the time, swore that she heard Mrs. Bell tell the girl to go into the other room and lick Percy’s sores. The girl began to cry, whereupon the prisoner took the child away, and when she came back she could not answer a question because her tongue was tied. Mrs. Bell said she had tied the tongue because Oneita had tasted Percy’s soup and had swallowed some milk that was left in a glass. Mrs. Brousseau saw the tongue two days afterwards. It was black, ulcerated, and so swollen that it filled the mouth. Mrs. Brousseau said she burst out crying at the sight. At that time, Mrs. Bell said the child had poisoned her tongue by by putting some of the salve from Percy’s foot on it.

It was further proved that the woman was in the habit of sending the children down into the cellar in the dark, keeping them prisoners there. By making strange noises she pretended that evil spirits were after them. In the coldest days, they were made to run around the house with their feet bare, and when Mrs. Bell was remonstrated with she said that children had warmer blood than grown people, and would not catch cold. Perhaps this was her excuse for making the boy sleep in a cold garret and his sister on the floor downstairs, with only a thin covering, though there were several beds in the house. During all the time they were in Ottawa under the charge of their grandmother, the children told the court they had never been allowed to play with other children. They were often unmercifully beaten with a stick. Mrs. Bell told a servant that she had authority from their mother to beat the children as much as she liked, but not to kill them, though they were not worth hanging.

The prisoner seems to have been afraid that she would get into trouble through her cruelties, as she compelled the boy to write a series of “confessions” at her dictation, exonerating from all blame for his injuries, and claiming that he believed the Almighty had caused the ulcers to break out on his legs because of his disobedience and of his attempts to injure his grandparents. Bot the boy and the girl swore that the “confessions” were first written on a slate by the woman, and subsequently copied out by the boy, who was afraid to refuse.

It is almost impossible to conceive that a woman presumably intelligent, well-educated, and making some pretense to religious convictions could be guilty of such atrocities as, according to the verdict of the jury, after several days of earnest investigation, were brought home to Mrs. Bell. The life sentence meted out to her must not be regarded as vindictive punishment. Rather ought it to serve as a warning to all persons placed in charge of children that society will not tolerate the cruel treatment of the defenceless.

The prisoner is only 51 years of age. She said that she was the daughter of a retired British lieutenant-colonel.

[“The Torture of Children. – particulars of the Ottawa Case for Which Mrs. Bell Was Sentenced to Life Imprisonment. – The Accused More a Fiend Than a Woman – Her Cruelties. – A Little Girls Tongue Tied Up for a Whole Night – Boy Hung From the Ceiling.” The Winnipeg Daily Tribune (Canada), Apr. 24, 1896, p. 5]

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Beatrice Horney – Sadistic Australian Child Torturer – 1932

FULL TEXT: A dreadful story of the cruelty of a woman towards the little mite of a baby girl that she had adopted was related to a bushed court in Launceston the other day.

The woman, who should have been expected to love and cherish the little mite, was sentenced to three month’s imprisonment for a cruel beating which she gave the little toddler — in the circumstances a remarkably lenient sentence.

Pathetic figure in the court was the a sweet little girl baby — not yet recovered from the fear of her awful experience, at this picture shows. She clung to the kindly policeman who handed her about the court, however, probably realising for the first time in her tiny life that there is greatness and gentleness in the human heart.

It was revealed that the infant — aged two years ind seven months — was covered with severe bruise from eyes to ankles. Little shoulders, arms, body, face, neck, thighs and leg all bore marks of the dreadful weals of the strap.

It was altogether a distressing spectacle, and there was a murmur of revulsion when the little one was seen in court, or, though fully clothed, the exposed portion of her face and limbs were sufficient indication of her general condition.

“I have never seen a child in such a dreadful condition,” declared Inspector Beresford, who prosecuted. He said that the woman charged, Beatrice Horney, aged 35, had adopted the child when it was five weeks old.

Concerning the bruising of the child, she had stated that one day the previous week it had been unclean in its habits and caused her much inconvenience. She had thereupon given it a beating with a small strap, without a buckle, which the later burnt.

She admitted that she was in a bad temper at the time. Concerning the bruises on her head, however, the said the child had received then when she had fallen out of her cot one day.

Horney, who pleaded guilty, declined to make any statement in explanation of her actions when invited to do so by the Bench.

Mr. E. L.Hall, in announcing the Bench’s sentence, said that Horney had pleaded guilty and offered no ex cuse for her actiona. “You say that the child did something that caused you annoyance,” the P.M. remarked, but the child’s act obviously did not justify such cruelty. Being a woman, and after having had the child in your custody for a time, one would think that you. would have cared for the child a little more.

“It is a wicked thing for any woman to do to a child,” added the magistrate.

Mr. Hall then gave instructions that the infant be handed over to the care of the Children of the State Department, and that efforts be made to have an order to this effect put into execution.

[“Woman’s Appalling Cruelty - To Little Child,” Truth (Sydney, Australia), May 15, 1932, p. 13]

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[1039-10/13/21]

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Annie Margaret Montagu, Sadistic Serial Child Torturer & Child-Killer – Ireland, 1892

FULL TEXT: Mrs. Annie Margaret Montagu, of County Londonderry, Ireland, seems to be as perfect a lady and she is a tender and devoted mother. According to the evidence brought out at trial, she is in the habit of half killing her children whenever they are troublesome and disobedient. Her favorite discipline is tying up the little tots in painful and torturing positions and then rounding off their sufferings with a night in a dark and empty room.

A former governess, Miss Wallace, testified that Walter Montagu, a son, four years old, had upon one occasion been tied to a tree in the park and left there from early morning until sundown. At another time Miss Wallace missed the child for a period of eight days. When he finally reappeared the backs of his hands were puffed up as though the blood were stagnated. There were bruised on his neck and arms, and a general suggestion of his having passed through some terrible suffering. A Mrs. James, who had once been a nurse in the family, deposed that she had once seen Mrs. Montagu dragging another son, Austin, along a corridor by the heels, his head trailing and bumping on the floor. And nearly inmate of the house in a position to have heard such things testified to awful sounds of beating and the moaning of little children at night. A housemaid had seen Gilbert stripped naked and scourged until he was covered with blood. He was then thrown into a dark closet, where he lay wailing in agony all night long.

It appears that Mrs. Montagu is a person of severe and Spartan virtue. She announces, with something like honest pride, that these are the methods of punishment she has adopted, and that they give her satisfaction. She is trying, she says, to save her children’s souls, and she adds the totally unnecessary declaration that she does not care what becomes of their bodies. It no doubt consoles her to reflect that the soul of the little girl whom she killed in pursuit of her theory of reformation is now quite safe, and that thought perhaps sustains her under the persecution to which she is at present subjected by a cold and callous law. We are not at all surprised, however that Coleraine is wrought up to a perilous condition of excitement, and that the judge before whom Mrs. Montagu is being tried for manslaughter has found it necessary to exclude the public from the courtroom. Mrs. Montagu’s ideas are, to say the least, conspicuously advanced, and it may be that narrow-minded masses of that part of Ireland are not yet ready to accept the mangling and killing of babies as a praiseworthy feature of parental discipline.

[“Mrs. Montagu’s Philosophy.” The Washington Post (D. C.), Feb. 27, 1892, p. 4]

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FULL TEXT: It is difficult to consider women as criminals, and the average man shrinks from the contemplation of a condition which would rob life of nearly all its tenderness and romance. It is therefore more suitable to regard the women whose unnatural deeds occasionally cause nations to shudder in the light of monstrosities. Indeed, when a woman tortures her own children she is apt to be branded by the world at large as little less than a fiend. All newspaper readers are familiar with the circumstances surrounding the horrible death of the three-year-old daughter of Mrs. Montagu, of Cromore House, Portstewart, Londonderry, Ireland.

Her wealth, rearing and surroundings should have inspired her with a superabundance or tenderness, but, instead, she seems even to have been deficient in the maternal instinct usually accredited to dumb beasts. Many a mother has wept as with her own offspring in her arms she has read how Mrs. Montagu after scolding her child for her tardiness in dressing, tied its arms with a stocking. Attached to the stocking was a string, and the string was tied to a ring in the wall. For hours the culprit was left bound, and at 5 the mother, who had a time for everything, went to visit the cell on her domestic round. The child was strangled. The stocking was around her throat instead of around her arms, and the body was bent forward and actually hanging from the ring in the wall.

The mother could only suppose that the stocking had slipped, and that the child, being in a helpless condition, was unable to release herself.

Were this Mrs. Montagu's only offense, the occurrence might be passed by as an accident arising from a mistaken idea of the severity of  the punishment which ought to be meted out to a child three years of age. There are, however, three other children, boys, and in addition to the charge of causing the death of the little girl, for which she was sentenced to one year's imprisonment at hard labor, she was also accused of habitual cruelty to her sons. Some of Mrs. Montagu's acts would seem to indicate a mind, which, if not entirely unbalanced, is'nt least seriously affected. For instance, Walter had once been tied for hours to a tree in the garden, and on another occasion he was locked up for days in the black hole and his hands were swollen as if they had been tightly bound; Gilbert, five years old, had been locked up in the black hole all night and the servants could not sleep because of his moaning. His hands too, were swollen and his fingers and toes were cut.

When the servant who saw all this remonstrated, Mrs. Montagu said it was done to save the children's souls; about their bodies she did not mind. For that reason, perhaps, she had not scrupled, as one servant alleged, to drag the infant Austin, by the heels along a corridor with his head on the ground Mrs. Montagu was not prosecuted on these charges, but it is possible that the knowledge that she can be rearrested and punished at any time may have the effect of preventing any further cruelty on her part after she has finished her term of imprisonment.

[“An Unnatural Mother. - Mrs. Montagu, the Woman Who Caused the Death of Her Child.” The Waterloo Courier (Io.), May 18, 1892, p. 9]

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[1131-3/5/21]

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Svetlana Batukova – Sadistic Husband-Killer – 2016, Spain

On April 1, 2016, Svetlana Batukova, a 46-year-old Russian-born newlywed living in Sant Llorenç, Majorca, Spain slowly butchered her German husband, Horst Hans Henkels, 66, with a butcher knife – feeding strips of his flesh to their dog until he took his last breath. Henkels could not shout for help because he was recovering from surgery on his trachea, rendering him speechless. He bled to death after being repeatedly stabbed and after pieces from his arms had been carved off to be fed to Svetlana’s American Staffordshire bull terrier.

It is Alleged that the murderess had previously approached a man in a bar to murder her husband for about $57,000.

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[Alejandro Sepulveda, “Russian murder suspect being held on remand,” Majorca Daily Bulletin (Spain), Apr. 4, 2016]

[Sophia Rosenbaum, “Woman fed husband to her dog piece by piece until he died: cops,” New York Post (N. Y.), Apr. 6, 2016]

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[928-10/13/21]

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