Trollheart

What’s Your Poison: Magic, Murder and Mayhem on the Streets of Paris

One of the most high-profile scandals in France, the Affairs of the Poisons uncovered a secret/not-so-secret network of poisoners working in Paris who were selling their services to mostly the upper classes and even the nobility. The ensuing investigation uncovered many high-profile poisoners, some of them working as fortune tellers, and a client list that stretched all the way to the royal palace of Versailles itself. In the process, the scandal brought to light several women who can be described as serial killers. Eventually, the number of high-ranking members of the French aristocracy involved in the ring - including a plot to kill the king himself - forced Louis XIV to close down the investigation and place it under a royal seal, with many of the accused being imprisoned for life without trial.

There were as many as two hundred defendants (though over twice that many were originally suspected and fifty percent more arrested) with the eventual condemnations of just over sixty, the larger part of which were executed, with a smaller amount exiled and a few sentenced to servitude on the galleys (French ships; slaves basically I guess). As ever down through history, those with connections and high breeding (and presumably the money to bribe courts) were dealt with the most leniently, while the ordinary people suffered mostly death. Don’t feel bad for them though: they were all multi-murderers, or accomplices to murder. They deserved what they got. It’s just a pity that the wheels of justice tend to get bumped off their track by gold or the influence of powerful people.

Here we present some of the major players in the scandal. In all cases, these are certainly serial killers. As we are dealing with one particular incident here, I’ve cut out certain criteria, such as “weapon” (they all used poison), “Years active” (as these all plied their trade during the years of the scandal), "Hunting Grounds" as they all operated in Paris and “type” (as they’re all comfort killers, killing for financial gain).

Killer: Marie Bosse
Epithet: La Bosse
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown (but surely a lot)
Survivors: Unknown (but surely none)
Caught by: French police
Fate: Burned at the stake

In vino veritas, it’s said - in wine, truth - but it could also be said in vino culpa (or possibly in vino fuckupa), or even to paraphrase the later saying used in World War II by the Allies, loose lips sink poisoners. Basically Marie Bosse, a successful and in-demand fortune teller got drunk at a party and began mouthing off about how she could soon retire on the proceeds of all the people to whom she had sold poisons. Unfortunately for her, in attendance at the party was a lawyer, and, shocked at this revelation (and obviously not taking it as the ravings of a drunk woman) he reported it to the police. They set up a sting operation in which the wife of one of the officers posed as a client in need of a way to get rid of her husband, and when she came back with what La Bosse had sold her, the police tested it in a way that won’t really be too pleasing to we animal lovers.

They fed it to a dog and monitored its reactions. Luckily the dog did not die (I don’t know if it was a police dog or just some stray) but it did puke a lot, and so they reasoned that what was in the package the wife of the officer had received from La Bosse was arsenic. Arrested, it’s said, in bed with her own children (all full grown) - this may have been embellishment to make the story even more interesting and repulsive, and thus attractive, or not - she began to sing, saying that she was not the one who sold the poisons, but could tell them who was. One of them was the woman known as La Voisin, Catherine Monvoisin. Squealing on a fellow poisoner did not however save her from the fire.

It dawns on me now that far from being a means of extracting information, torture in France seemed to have been part of the punishment, part of the sentence, as it was always or often carried out after the sentence of death had been passed, so there would be no need for it other than as additional torment. La Bosse had to wait her turn to be tortured while her friend, Marie Vigoreaux, went through her own court-ordered punishment, which actually resulted in her death. Whether it was a more merciful one than burning at the stake I don’t know, as the cause of death is only mentioned as being a head wound, and that could have been anything. Still, she was tortured for three days, so maybe not such an escape. La Bosse did survive her torture, at least long enough to go up in flames in the market square.

Killer: Francoise de Dreux
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: 4
Survivors: 2
Caught by: French police
Fate: Exile but not really (see below)

If there was one thing you could be sure of in seventeenth century France, it was that your connections could save you from the fire or the noose if you were of noble enough birth. Francoise de Dreux, originally acquitted of four murders and the attempted murders of two more, including her husband, was basically let off with a slap on the wrist when her guilt was proven after her poison supplier was arrested and spilled the beans. Having fled the country, she was sentenced to exile, though only from Paris, and in the end it seems she was able to return there anyway, providing she lived under the supervision of her husband.

An identical case (not a serial killer though) involving a lower-born woman, Madame Philbert, resulted in her being hanged for the crime, as well as losing her right hand. In a clear case of class distinction and noble privilege, the lenient sentence - if it could even be called that - handed down to Madame de Dreux cast the French courts in a bad light, and showed how the richer and more connected you were, the easier the courts were on you. Or as Londo once put it in Babylon 5: “Just how much justice can you afford?” Indeed.

Killer: Marguerite Joly
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown
Survivors: Unknown (probably none; she was very good at her trade)
Caught by: French police
Fate: Burned at the stake

This was the poisoner who, when caught, dropped Francoise de Dreux right in it, the woman having previously been found not guilty of the murders she had committed. Joly claimed, under torture, to have been involved in black masses and the ritual sacrifice of babies. Having no noble blood however, or powerful friends (or at least, any who would endanger themselves by speaking up for her) she was executed by being burned at the stake, while de Dreux escaped without barely a fine. One rule for them…

Killer: Marie Vigoreaux
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Possibly 3
Survivors: Unknown
Caught by: French police
Fate: Died during torture

As already noted above, Madame Vigoreaux was a close - very close! - associate of Marie Bosse, to the extent that it was claimed she had had sexual congress with Bosse’s entire family. She was arrested as a result of Bosse’s boast at Vigoreaux’s party and taken into custody, where she began naming names. She was sentenced to death but died while being tortured.

Killer: Magdelaine Chapelain
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown
Survivors: Unknown
Caught by: French police
Fate: Sentenced to life imprisonment by a lettre de cachet

Although there is no record of how many people she killed, like many of the accused in the Affair of the Poisons, Chapelain was convicted of assisting Madame de Montespan in the assassination of another of the king’s mistresses, and of participating in and arranging black masses and other occult rites. Imprisoned without trial, it’s believed she died around 1724.

Killer: Francoise Filastre
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown
Survivors: 2 known (King Louis XIV and his then-mistress)
Caught by: French police
Fate: Burned at the stake

Another involved in the plot to kill the king and his mistress, the Duchesse de Fontagnes, and later, when that failed, just the mistress, in which she also failed. She revealed that she had been engaged by our friend Madame de Montespan, and was sentenced to death, but first there was as seems to have been usual in 17th century France, time for a little torture. It seems incredible to me that this woman could die with the deaths of people on her soul, having attended black masses and witnessed the sacrifice of babies, and yet the one thing she could said she could not die with on her conscience was a lie. I mean, can you see it now? Saint Peter: “And this is, hmm, I see. Madame Filastre, you have been a bad girl, haven’t you? Let’s see: murder, poisoning, attempted murder, worshipping Satan… oh well all that is okay I suppose. God forgives every - WHAT? A LIE? Oh no no no! This will NOT stand! Get to Hell immediately!” Christ.

Killer: Marguerite Delaporte
Epithet:
Nationality: French
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown
Survivors: Unknown
Caught by: French police
Fate: Imprisoned perpetually under a lettre de cachet

Her role in the Affair was quite prominent, in that she introduced La Voisin to her lover, the alchemist Denis Poculot, whose release after being kidnapped was the theme of the poisoned petition supposed to be handed to King Louis, but which he was too busy to read and therefore the plot failed. So she was of course directly connected with Mme. de Montespan as well as one of the biggest of the poison ring, Catherine Monvoisin, and it was in fact her daughter, Marguerite, who shopped her to the police as an accomplice of both her mother and the king’s mistress. Because of her high position in society, again, she was not executed but imprisoned permanently under a lettre de cachet so that the king could put the whole affair to bed as quietly as possible.

__________________
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Trollheart

Timeline: 1760 - 1830

Killer: Lewis Hutchinson
Epithet: The Mad Master”, “The Mad Doctor of Edinburgh Castle”
Type: Thrill
Nationality: Jamaican/Scottish
Hunting ground(s): Edinburgh Castle
Years active: c. 1760 - 1773
Weapon(s) used: Gun
Signature (if any): Said to have drunk the blood of his victims (though unsubstantiated) and also known to have lured visitors to his castle and fed them before turning on and killing them.
Victims: Unknown, but believed to be in excess of 40
Survivors: None known
Caught by: Royal Navy
Fate: Hanged

A Scottish immigrant who came to Jamaica to build his own castle and run a plantation, Lewis Hutchinson was known to be a cruel man. He treated his slaves badly (quite possibly murdered some, though given how little thought was given to slaves’ rights in the eighteenth century, impossible to confirm as none would have been reported, or taken seriously by the authorities if they were. A man had a right to beat, maim and even kill slaves if they disobeyed him) and had them dispose of the bodies of his victims. Hutchinson did not fit today’s real criteria for a serial killer, because while he certainly is believed to have killed enough to qualify, he seems to have had no actual “type”. He killed men, women, people of all races and social standings, and he killed purely for sport. He does not seem to have got off on it, and though he kept up to forty-three wristwatches, presumably as trophies, he doesn’t appear to have killed for financial gain, being rich enough anyway.

As his castle, which he called - with a dark nod, no doubt, back to his home country - Edinburgh Castle, was the only real habitation on the road from St. Ann’s Bay, his became a popular spot for travellers to rest, usually in peace, or indeed pieces, as it’s said he dismembered his victims and had them thrown into a hole where animals could feast on them. He is also said to have drank their blood, but this is likely a superstition propagated by the slaves and other Jamaican natives, who surely saw him as some sort of demon. Maybe he did drink blood, but there is no evidence to suggest this. His crimes, and the nature of them, are reported in The Annals of Jamaica, Vol 2 (1828) by the Reverend George Bridges:

"Yet no traveller who attempted that defile, however poor or wretched he might be, ever escaped the confines of their owner’s narrow territory. The needy wanderer would sometimes call for refreshment at the only habitation which for many miles had cheered his weary eye, but it was the last he was destined ever to behold. The wealthy passenger was alike the mark and victim of his unerring aim from a loop-hole under which he was compelled to pass. A thick-set hedge of logwood had also been so prepared by the road-side, at a short distance from the house, that while he could detain in conversation any one who might pass during the time that he was engaed in his cattle-fold hard by, his slaves from behind the fence could leisurely take aim at the devoted victim. …

To enjoy the gory spectacle, he first dissevered the ghastly head from the palpitating body: his most pleasing occupation was to whet his streaming knife; the gloomy temper of his soul was sated only by a copious flow of blood; and when he could no longer gaze upon the decaying countenance, he placed it high in the air, in the hollow trunk of a cotton tree, where vultures might complete the horrid deed. The mangled carcass was thrown down one of those deep and hollow drains which are peculiar to mountainous countries of volcanic origin, and whose mouths, descending perpendicularly, conduct the torrents which periodically fall to the level of the ocean."


His luck finally ran out in 1773 when he shot a soldier who had been sent to arrest him. Suspicion had grown as more and more people disappeared along that road, and his being the only habitation was a two-edged sword, creating a hunting ground for him but also placing him firmly in the frame when the disappearances came to light. Having shot the soldier he went on the run, but the Royal Navy captured him as he tried to flee the island, and he was brought back, tried and executed by hanging. During his trial, evidence of two accomplices came to light, and these were hanged also.

Hutchinson has the dubious honour of being the first serial killer Jamaica ever knew, and also one of the, at that time, few Scottish ones. Oddly enough, or perhaps not, as the testimony of his slaves was both hearsay and, well, they were slaves with presumably an axe to grind, Hutchinson was only tried for the one murder, that of the soldier who tried to apprehend him. In the course of the trial, however, stories were investigated and the castle searched, turning up damning evidence that the “Mad Doctor” had indeed killed more than just one person, many more. It is perhaps slightly gratifying that his last wishes were not granted, as he had left money to have his tombstone inscribed with the epitaph he had chosen for himself, showing defiance even in death: "Their sentence, pride and malice, I defy. Despise their power, and like a Roman, die". Of course, this is all nonsense and bravado: had he really died like a Roman he probably would have been crucified. I suppose you could say hanging was too good for him.

Killer: Dorcas Kelly
Epithet: “Darkey” Kelly
Type: ?
Nationality: Irish
Hunting ground(s): Dublin (maybe)
Years active: 1761
Weapon(s) used: ?
Signature (if any):
Victims: Said to be 6
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Police
Fate: Partially hanged and then burned at the stake (see below)

I have my doubts, I have to be honest. There are conflicting stories about this so-called first Irish serial killer (which is bull, as I’ll note in a moment) but one fact that all accounts agree on is that she was a madam, ran a brothel in Fishamble Street in Dublin called the Maiden Tower (pity it wasn’t called Maiden Ireland huh?) and that she killed, or was accused of killing, a shoemaker, for which heinous crime she received a really gruesome death. Now, some stories maintain that she had become pregnant by the Sheriff of Nottingham sorry Dublin, and that he, unwilling to face the scandal and lose his position in society (and probably is job too) accused her of witchcraft, and of killing her baby (whose body was never located) in a Satanic ritual which led to her burning.

Other accounts refer to the discovery, after her death, of the corpses of five men in her brothel, yet you have to wonder why she would have done such a thing? Surely it would have been bad for business? At any rate, those accounts are substantiated here, debunked there, so I really don’t see that much evidence that she was a serial killer. If anything, she killed one man (if she did) and suffered a horrible death for it. As for being, as many websites claim, Ireland’s first serial killer, well sure haven’t we already come across her, in the shape of Alice Kyteler, way back in the fourteenth century? All right, she was of Flemish descent, but she lived in and perpetrated her crimes in Ireland, which for me makes her the first Irish serial killer. She certainly has more a claim to it than this unfortunate brothel owner, who may not even have killed the man she was accused of, and for whom she burned. The account of her execution is pretty harrowing:

She was placed on a stool something more than two feet high, and, a chain being placed under her arms, the rope around her neck was made fast to two spikes, which, being driven through a post against which she stood, when her devotions were ended, the stool was taken from under her, and she was soon strangled. When she had hung about fifteen minutes, the rope was burnt, and she sunk till the chain supported her, forcing her hands up to a level with her face, and the flame being furious, she was soon consumed. The crowd was so immensely great that it was a long time before the faggots could be placed for the execution.[4]
— Edward Cave ("Sylvanus Urban"), The gentleman’s magazine, and historical chronicle, Volume 43, London, 1773

Can’t really see any man going through such a painful death, can you? Of course, prostitutes were reviled, in Ireland as much as anywhere else, though possibly more in such a devoutly and staunchly Catholic country, and women have been traditionally the scapegoats for everything down through history, most especially the uncontrolled appetites of men.


Killer: Darya Nikolayevna Saltykova
Epithet:
Type: Lust, possibly Power/Control
Nationality: Russian
Hunting ground(s): Moscow (her palace)
[b]Years active:]/b] 1756 - 1762 approx.
Weapon(s) used: Torture
Signature (if any):
Victims: 26 - 138
Survivors: 0
Caught by: A complaint brought against her which resulted in an investigation by the Empress
Fate: Life imprisonment

A sort of Russian contemporary of the infamous Countess Bathory, Saltykova was another one who was able to act out her sadistic urges without fear of reprisal due to her high social status. Marrying into the wealthy and powerful noble family of Saltykov, she lost her husband at age 26 and so under Russian law inherited his estate, making her a wealthy woman. She was also sad though, alone now and without a husband. She met Nikolay Tyutchef and they fell in love, but Darya was betrayed by her new young lover, who had not only his own mistress but had in fact married her in secret. When Darya found out about it she flew into such a blind fury that Nikolay thought it best to be elsewhere and legged it with his new bride. In frustration at not being able to take her revenge on her unfaithful lover, Darya turned to easier, more available targets for her anger.

She immediately began to indulge herself by beating, abusing, torturing and killing her serfs, or servants, who had no voice with which to complain to the authorities. Some did, but this only resulted in either their being ignored and not believed, or in some cases being punished by the law for daring to accuse a member of a noble family. Meanwhile Darya continued to take out her anger on her serfs. She saw each younger woman as a substitute for the one who had stolen away her Nikolay, and the younger they were the more she hated them. There was no age limit for her victims, and many of them were children. She would beat them, kick them out in the freezing snow naked, pour boiling water on them, snap their bones and find other and more devious ways of hurting them. She confined, as you might suspect, using the twisted logic of the killer and allying it to the even more twisted reason of the scorned woman, her attacks to females, though she did kill three men. These are said to have been accidents, though it seems unlikely she cared.

Eventually a case was brought against her and the Empress Catherine II, trying to push new law reforms, decided to allow an investigation into the Countess. This took six years, during which time evidence was gathered, testimony taken and though the case against her looked solid, Darya remained unrepentant. She refused to admit to being mad or sick, and scorned the efforts of the court to convict her, confident in her arrogance that she would be acquitted. Nobody would dare convict a noblewoman, especially on the word of mere serfs! But she had reckoned without the empress’s desperation to ensure justice would be seen to be done on her watch, no matter the standing of the accused, and she was accordingly found guilty in 1768. This, however, presented its own set of problems.

Darya could not be sentenced to death, though she certainly deserved to die, as the death penalty had only been abolished in Russia four years earlier. In addition, Catherine needed the support of the noble families, who would surely not stand for the execution of one of their own. So she had to come to a compromise. In the end, it really wasn’t much, considering Darya’s crimes. The countess was made stand on a platform in public, with a notice hung around her neck declaring her as a torturer and murderer. This punishment lasted for a single day, after which she was shipped off to a convent and imprisoned there, where she died in 1801.

Actually, reading on, it wasn’t so great for her. It’s not as if, as I originally believed, she was just allowed to join the convent but not allowed to leave. She was in fact literally imprisoned there. The convent, the Ivanovsky Cloister, was a well-known “secret prison” for women, especially those of the nobility, who had transgressed against the empire; political activists, inconvenient mistresses, criminals of all stripes who were held by the sisters as basic unofficial gaolers. The women were held in isolation and so was Darya; chained to the wall of a windowless cell and allowed a candle only to enable her to eat when food was brought, the candle being taken away when she was finished eating. An extra punishment, for such a supposedly pious woman, was to be brought within range of the mass but forbidden to actually take part in it. She was under twenty-four hour guard.

After eleven years she was transferred to a cell with a window and shutters, but her personality, never the sweetest, had been further soured by her isolation, and she now spat at and cursed visitors, refusing to see anyone. I also note that the day spent on the platform mentioned above seems to have involved what’s described as a “public beating”, so maybe an appropriate, if totally insufficient punishment. It also seems clear that, in contrast to Bathory, whose crimes it’s alluded may have been either exaggerated or pure fabrication on the part of her noble rivals, given this was a six-year investigation and Catherine was known for her fairness and diligence, it’s unlikely this was the case with Darya Saltykova. Not only that, but whereas Countess Bathory denied her crimes, her counterpart not only admitted to, but gloried in them and was entirely unapologetic, even damning and cursing the priest sent to extract her confession during her trial. A nasty piece of work, indeed. If there is a Hell, I imagine her soul went directly there after her death.



Killer: Yi Seong/Crown Prince Sado
Epithet:
Type: Lust (?)
Nationality: Korean
Hunting ground(s): Palace of Changdeck, Hanseong, Kingdom of Joseon (Korea)
Years active: 1750 - 1762
Weapon(s) used: Various
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown, but believed to be in excess of 100
Survivors: 0
Caught by: The king
Fate: Sealed up in a rice chest and left to die

Not, on the face of it, a man you would consider would grow up to become a serial killer, Yi Seon was absolutely terrified of his father the king, who did everything he could to humiliate and demean the young regent. Nothing Yi Seon could do was good enough for the king, and when his porcupine, sorry concubine fell pregnant, the prince was so shit-scared of what daddy would say that he tried, unsuccessfully, to have the baby aborted. As the treatment from his father intensified, Yi Seon began, somewhat like Darya Saltykova, to take it out on his servants, beating and killing his eunuchs, even beheading at least one. He also raped ladies-in-waiting, secure in the privilege of his position and the certainty that nobody would dare report him or act against him.

Used to getting his way with women by beating them until they gave in to his sexual advances, Yi Seon first assaulted a member of his own family when he beat his second concubine so badly that she died of her wounds, something he took absolutely no notice of. How many slaves, servants, eunuchs and ladies-in-waiting he killed is unknown, but this was the first “real” death, as it were; the first killing of someone who was somewhat on his own social level. When it was rumoured though that he planned to kill his father, the king had a dilemma, something similar to that which faced Catherine II with Darya Saltykova. There was in Korea at the time a thing called communal punishment, where quite literally the sins of the father were visited on his son, in fact, on his whole family. So if Yi Seon was executed, so too would have to be his whole family.

The king got around this by the expedient of ordering his son to climb into a rice chest, which was only four feet square, on a very hot day in summer. After seven days locked in the chest the prince died and was removed. I suppose the idea is then that this was considered either suicide or an “unfortunate accident”.

__________________
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Trollheart

Killer: Luísa de Jesus
Epithet: “The Foundling Wheel Killer”
Type: Unsure; I don't think she derived any profit so why she killed babies is unclear
Nationality: Portuguese
Hunting ground(s): Coimbra, Portugal
Years active: 1760 - 1762
Weapon(s) used: Hands presumably; these were babies after all. Wouldn’t take much to kill them.
Signature (if any):
Victims: 33 - 34
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Accident really; a young mother seeking adoption of her child stumbled over the grave of one of the many babies de Jesus had killed, and an investigation soon revealed over thirty tiny corpses.
Fate: Executed by garotte

While every serial killer has to be considered evil, there are levels and for me, the slaying of innocent children is the worst level you can sink to in this area. But the killing of defenceless babies trumps even that, and if it exists, there is surely a special place in Hell set aside for the people who commit this most heinous type of murder. Worse again when it’s a woman who is to blame, as was the case with Luísa de Jesus, the daughter of poor farmers who took to opening what was known as a foundling wheel in order to support herself. Similar to the idea, perhaps, of mothers leaving unwanted babies on the church steps, a foundling wheel (also called baby box or baby hatch) was a place where mothers who had just had babies they could not care for or feed (or just did not want) could leave their newborns in the hope of someone better suited adopting them. The owner of the wheel would then get a commission for every baby adopted.

The speed and regularity of adoptions made by de Jesus should maybe have tipped the authorities off, but it didn’t. I guess this was the mid-eighteenth century and such events were not given priority. As a result, de Jesus was able to adopt up to 34 babies, all of whom she killed, usually by strangulation, and buried either on her property or on the nearby mountain. It was in fact on this mountain that the grave of one of the babies was discovered by a charity worker, who brought it to the attention of the police. Investigating further, they found that the baby had been adopted by de Jesus. Quickly arrested and interrogated, she broke very quickly and confessed all. The corpses of 33 babies were found on her property or on the mountain, but she refused to divulge the fate of the final baby she had adopted, and its body was never found.

Like most right-thinking people, the courts in Portugal took an especially dim view of those who slew innocent children, and de Jesus’s fate was appropriate to her crimes, if anything could be. Despite her lawyer’s attempts to remove the death penalty from the table on the basis of her being underage (Portugal in the eighteenth century seems to have had a different idea of adulthood, as de Jesus was twenty-five years old, which still qualified her to be tried as a minor) she was tried as an adult. Having been paraded around in disgrace, her hands were cut off and she was burned with hot pokers, before she was finally garotted to death. Her body was burned and the ashes scattered.


Killer: Klaas Annink
Epithet: “Huttenkloas”
Type: Profit/Comfort
Nationality: Dutch
Hunting ground(s): Hengenvelde, Holland
Years active: 1770 - 1774
Weapon(s) used:
Signature (if any):
Victims: Anything up to 6 but only one confirmed
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Relative of one of the victims carrying out his own investigation
Fate: Executed (no details on method)

Keep it in the family might have been a good (or bad) motto for the Anninks, whose head, Klaas, led them in many suspected robberies and murders over a four-year period. His accomplices were his wife, Aarne Spanjer, and their son Jannes. There are a lot of holes in this story, and every other account I can find just parrots verbatim what Wiki says, so here are my problems with it, my unanswered questions. Every account mentions that Annink was held in “a specially-designed chair” for 114 days while he was tried. No account mentions what that special design was. Was it a torture device? Was it made to restrict his movements? Did it have a rat in a cage underneath who slowly ate his arse as the trial went on? No idea: no further information.

The trial is described on Wiki as “controversial”, but it doesn’t explain why they use that term. Was there no evidence? Well, the same article states that the merchant who was investigating him found “convincing evidence” his relative had been murdered by Annink and went to the authorities, who obviously were swayed enough by what he told or showed them to arrest the guy, so I doubt it was for lack of evidence. Did he not get a defence lawyer? Were lies told at the trial? Was it biased? Again, no idea: what we have about him, at least what I can find, is sketchy at best and no other websites or articles shed any further light on the outstanding points. It’s noted that he and his wife were executed (though it doesn’t make clear how - hanging? Beheading? Broken on the wheel?) but makes no mention of their son, Jannes, who were are told was part of the robbery gang. Was he acquitted? Did he sell out his parents? Did he mysteriously die before the trial, or make his escape? Not a clue. Very poor information.

Even his epithet, “Huttenkloas”, is not explained, and I’m about as fluent in Dutch as I am in Klingon. Ka’plah!

Killer: Thug Behram
Epithet: King of the Thugs
Type: Mission
Nationality: Indian
Hunting ground(s): Oudh, Northern India
Years active: 1790 - 1840
Weapon(s) used: A ceremonial sash or bandanna called the rumal
Signature (if any):
Victims: 125 confirmed but believed to be almost a thousand
Survivors: 0
Caught by: East India Company
Fate: Hanged

Believed to be India’s most prolific serial killer (in fact, look at his believed victims! Surely one of the world’s most prolific, although whether or not all those can be attributed to him personally is debatable) Behram was the leader of the Thuggee Cult in eighteenth century India. His gang were loyal followers of the Hindu god Kali, and seem to have believed the murders they carried out were as a tribute to her. Behram was known to use the ceremonial rumal, a yellow scarf or kerchief which had a medallion sewn into its middle. By positioning the rumal correctly he could force the medallion against the victim’s Adam’s apple, thereby crushing it and causing no doubt a painful death.

Religious or not, ceremonial or not, Behram’s group were not above robbing their victims. Thieves by trade, they looted the corpses and then had them thrown down a well. Interestingly it was not the Indian police who caught Behram, because at this time the East India Company was almost an independent government in India, and it was one of their officers who took on the task of bringing the King of the Thugs to swift and brutal justice. Also interestingly, Behram was seventy-five years old when he finally met his maker, which means his reign of terror was probably one of the longest in certainly early serial killer history, spanning a period of over fifty years.

Behram had a bad start in life, his killing beginning when he was at the tender age of ten years old and exacerbated when he met a twenty-five year old Thug, the same one in fact who would make him head of the cult and also eventually betray him to the authorities when he was himself captured, in order to save himself and his family. The Thuggee cult being devoted to Kali, women were never murdered by Behram or his men, as this was against their religion. So if the final total of 931 is to be believed, then perhaps it can be said that Thug Behram also holds the record for the most male victims of a serial killer, at least before 1850.

And yes, from the Thuggee Cult we get the word thug, used today to describe ruffians, villains and general ne’er-do-wells.

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Killer: Micajah Harpe, Wiley Harpe
Epithet: “The Bloody Harpes”
Type: Thrill/profit
Nationality: American
Hunting ground(s): Tennessee, Illinois, Kentucky, Mississippi
Years active: possibly 1776 - 1799
Weapon(s) used: Multiple
Signature (if any): Bodies emasculated
Victims: 39 - 50
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Big Harpe (Posse), Little Harpe (Sheriff)
Fate: Shot and beheaded (Big Harpe); hanged and beheaded (Little Harpe)

Originally of Scottish descent, it’s accepted by many historians that the Harpe brothers may indeed have been America’s first true serial killers. But that’s about as much as they agree on. Some think the name is wrong, an affectation or alias taken by the brothers, who were born Harper. Others contend they were not even brothers, but cousins. Some say they fought in the American War of Independence, on the side of the British Crown, and used the war as cover to indulge in kidnapping, rape and murder. Micajah went by the nickname of “Big Harpe” while his (possible) brother called himself, you guessed it, “Little Harpe”, but none of their crimes were little, and their reputation certainly grew as they became more feared and reviled throughout the southern states.

The war, of course, did not go their way and when they were forced out of North Carolina they hooked up with tribes of Cherokee indians and continued attacking the American Patriots. They later kidnapped the women who would become their wives - what choice the two ladies had in the matter is unknown, but I would doubt it was much of one, if they wished to live. They settled for over a decade in Tennessee, but were driven out when they began stealing cattle. Big Harpe is said to have had no interest in his own infant daughter, whose crying annoyed him to the point where he bashed her head against a tree. She would certainly not be the only victim of the Harpes, nor even the only one of their children, as their wives (as such) both got pregnant twice and the Harpes killed all four babies. They didn’t even stop at killing one of their own; when one of their gang, Moses Doss, expressed concern over the welfare of their recently-kidnapped wives, Big Harpe killed him. I guess nobody opened their mouth after that. Chased out of their homestead, the Harpes seem to have murdered in a mixture of lust, anger and what they would have seen as expediency, sparing nobody who got in their way.

Strangely enough for a time when guns were readily available and there was no need for what you might call “complicated” murders, the Harpes seemed to revel in the more violent side of killing. Whereas most men might shoot you, hang you from a tree, hit you with a rock or stab you with a knife, the two brothers tended most often to cut their victims open (presumably, though not definitely so far as I have read, after they were dead), fill their bodies with rocks to weigh them down and them dump them in rivers. While sinking a corpse would be seen as basic necessary cover for a killer, even then, hiding the body doesn’t seem to have been the Harpes’ prime motivation, but more the pleasure they got out of ripping bodies up. Perhaps early contemporaries of Jack the Ripper, in ways?

Around May 1799 the brothers joined river pirates harrying the boats that plied the Saline River, and after a particularly successful raid wherein only one man survived, the Harpes devised a wicked form of entertainment to dispose of him. They took him to the top of a cliff, stripped him, tied him to the back of a horse, blindfolded the horse and sent it over the cliff. This kind of unnecessary cruelty was too much even for the hardened pirates, and they kicked the Harpes out. They wouldn’t live much longer anyway. Near the end of August they tried to kill a local justice of the peace, but were driven back from his home by his vicious guard dogs, so instead went to the house of Moses Stegal, one of the judge’s friends. Offered a bed for the night by his wife (Moses was away) they later killed not only her but the soldier sharing the bed with them, and Moses’s four-month-old baby.

The attack had its intended effect. Stegal and the judge, Silas McBee, raised a posse and headed off in pursuit of the Harpes, black revenge on their minds. In a rather strange twist of fate, the ammunition which would do for Big Harpe came from a gun he himself had helped load when one of the very few people they encountered without killing, a man called James Tompkins, who had invited them home for dinner, worried that he had no powder left for his own gun. Before leaving, Big Harpe had filled a teacup from his own horn with black gunpowder for Tompkins.

Making a run for it when the posse caught up with them, Big Harpe was shot by John Leiper with Tompkins’ gun, his backbone destroyed, and as he lay dying he confessed his sins, pushing Moses to cut off the outlaw’s head with his own hunting knife. It doesn’t make it clear if he was dead at this point, but I assume he was. At any rate, his head was stuck on a pole by Stangel. Little Harpe escaped, and rejoined the river pirates for several years, taking the assumed name of John Setton. But when he and another pirate murdered the captain and took his head in for the bounty, a flatboatman who had been robbed by them recognised them both, and they were arrested, tried and hanged in 1804. Little Harpe’s head joined that of his brother, though not at the same place, also stuck on a pole as a warning to other outlaws that justice in this town was swift and merciless, just as the two brothers had been to their victims.

The atrocities commited by the Harpes were so bad that later descendants tended to hide their connection to the brothers by subtly changing their name. Some would go by Harp (without the E), some Harper (believed to have been the original family name, but not associated with the rampage of the two killers) and there is even some, to my mind, spurious suggestion that one of the most famous lawmen in the West was a Harpe, but changed his name to avoid connection with America’s first serial killers. But both Wyatt’s father and his father, Nicholas and Walter respectively, were Earps, so this seems extremely unlikely, especially as Walter Earp lived through the same period as the Harpes, so already had that name before the killers were even known in America.

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Killer: Sam Mason
Epithet: “Mason of the Woods”
Type: Profit/Comfort
Nationality: American
Hunting ground(s): Saline River, Tennessee
Years active: 1792 - 1803
Weapon(s) used: Unknown
Signature (if any): Literally signed his name, or nickname anyway, in victims’ blood on trees to be found later.
Victims: 20+
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Originally, Spanish colonial police but later turned on by his own men and killed by them.
Fate: Unsure, but certainly beheaded. May have been shot by Little Harpe.

We’ve come across Mason in the previous entry, when he partnered up with the notorious Harpe Brothers. A river pirate by trade, Mason made a name for himself attacking slow-moving flatboats along the Saline River at Tennessee, mostly from his base in a big depression in the rock called Cave-in-Rock. It was from the top of this bluff that the Harpes threw their naked victim over on a blindfolded horse, an action so savage and unnecessary that Mason demanded they leave. Mason, however, though a vicious thug in later life, had a far better and more noble start than had the Harpes. He was a captain in the Virginia Militia during the War of Independence (fighting for the colonies, in direct opposition to the Harpes, who fought - ostensibly - for the Crown, though really for the rape, murder, burning and looting) and later even served as a justice of the peace in Pennsylvania.

I can’t find any account to explain why he turned to crime (although he had stolen horses in his early teens) but around 1792 he arrived at the Ohio River and took up a new career on the opposite side of the law, becoming a river pirate. In 1797 he moved southwest of the river to Cave-in-Rock, where he continued and expanded his piracy efforts. As noted, the Harpes joined him there but were soon kicked out due to being too bloodthirsty, and in 1799 a group of “exterminators” led by Captain Young forced them out of Kentucky and he moved to Spanish Louisiana (Missouri) where he changed careers slightly and became the feared highwayman “Mason of the Woods”. It was in this guise he would write notes in the blood of his victims to advise who had killed them, coining his own nickname.

In 1803 Mason and his gang were arrested by the Spanish colonial authorities, and when evidence of their being river pirates was confirmed, they were to be extradited back to American territory, as all of their crimes pertaining to river piracy had taken place on American land and against Americans. During the trip though they escaped. Mason eventually fell victim to the disproving of the old adage, “honour among thieves”, when Little Harpe and one of his own men killed him and took his head in for the bounty. As related above, this action backfired on them as they were recognised, arrested, tried and hanged.

Killer: Sophie Ursinus
Epithet:
Type: Comfort
Nationality: German
Hunting ground(s): Berlin
Years active: 1800 - 1803
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 3
Survivors: 1
Caught by: Police, after her servant shopped her
Fate: Sentenced to life “imprisonment” (see below) but only served thirty years, after which she was released.

In general, it does seem that poison is the weapon of choice for female serial killers. Leaving aside Countess Bathory and Darya Saltykova, who could, after all, kill with impunity and had no reason to believe they needed to cover up their crimes, given that women are not often very strong and also not always in a position to obtain or use weapons men could, and also given that they are the ones who would usually prepare and serve up food, poison has always been the way to go for the aspiring murderess. So it was with Sophie Ursinus, who was pushed into an arranged marriage at the tender age of 19, but who took a lover despite - or perhaps with the tacit approval of - her much older (and richer) husband. Both went the way of all flesh, her lover dealt with first as she feared he was to leave her, and then her husband, whom she killed to get her hands on his money.

Having successfully got away with both crimes, she was emboldened to continue her murder spree when her aunt fell victim to her poisonous touch, but she came unstuck when a servant whom she tried to do away with realised what was happening, and took evidence of her poisoned food to the police. Arrested, she was held for trial when the bodies of the three people she had killed were exhumed. Proving that her husband had been poisoned proved problematic, but in the case of her aunt it was easier (doesn’t say why; there were a few years between the deaths so maybe the more recent one showed signs of poison?) and she was convicted of her murder and the attempted murder of her servant.

Sentenced to life imprisonment, she must have bewailed her lot indeed. Incarcerated in a lavish apartment usually reserved for the warden at Glatz, she was allowed servants, fancy furniture and also allowed keep the inheritances she had killed for. She threw lavish parties until she was released in 1833, whereupon she rejoined society, with apparently her crimes all hushed up or forgotten about. She only lived another three years, but it’s a typical example of how the rich and the upper class were treated so very differently than the poor, even when they were convicted as heartless murderers.

Killer: Patty Cannon
Epithet:
Type: Profit
Nationality: American
Hunting ground(s): Delaware
Years active: 1821 - 1829
Weapon(s) used:
Signature (if any):
Victims: 4 - 11 or more
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Authorities after bodies accidentally discovered
Fate: Died in jail while awaiting trial; possibly committed suicide by taking poison

The leader of a gang who operated in the Delaware area during the first half of the nineteenth century, Cannon would capture runaway slaves and sell them back to plantation owners in the south. If she came across free black people, they would do just as well. She had no time for children, especially black ones, beating one severely when the infant cried and then burning it alive in a fire. She also had no morals (if you can attribute such a thing to slavery) when it came to slave owners, happily bashing the head of one in so that she could steal his slaves and sell them. She murdered indiscriminately, without mercy or sometimes reason, leading to the local press to call her, incorrectly, Lucretia Cannon (after Lucretia Borgia, already discussed).

Nobody will be surprised to hear that there was little if any interest in slaves going missing in neighbouring Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, from where Cannon adbucted her victims, the state having the largest population of free black people in the north and no real police force, and she was never prosecuted for or even accused of the crime of kidnapping; it was the murders that did for her. Surprisingly, one of her gang was sentenced though for kidnapping, thanks to the honest efforts of Philadelphia’s mayor, and given a staggering 42 years. He died after five though.

When a tenant farmer accidentally uncovered the bodies of four people at Cannon’s farm, the jig was up. Tried for four murders (though it’s believed she is responsible for at least five times that number) she is said to have taken her own life, or alternatively, died of natural causes while awaiting trial. Given that she was in her seventies by now, quite an old age for that time, the latter cause is certainly possible.

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Written Inn Red: the Murders at the Red Inn

Interestingly, the next major scandal we turn up concerning a serial killer again takes us to France, though now we’re well past the time of Louis XIV and into the reign of Louis Philippe I, and the Second French Revolution, or July Revolution. Pierre and Marie Martin ran L’auberge rouge, or the Red Inn, and for years had been staunch supporters of the royalist King Charles X, helping the aristocracy returning after the First French Revolution to reclaim their lands and hiding priests, but when Charles was deposed and his cousin Louis Philippe put on the throne, their usefulness to the monarchy ended, and they became enemies of the state. Not literal ones: they weren’t wanted by the law or anything, but like I guess a family who had supported the House of York became an enemy of Henry VII and would be out of favour.

When a local man, Jacques Enjolras, went missing, the justice of the peace in the area investigated and found the last port of call for the man had been the Red Inn. His body was found the next morning in a river nearby, head stove in and knee crushed. Pierre and his nephew Andre, along with their servant were arrested, but oddly enough the reason given for the wife not being taken was that the magistrate did not believe a woman capable of murder. Had he not heard of the Affair of the Poisons, two hundred years ago? And what about the women who sat in judgement as part of the Assembly during the French Revolution, famously knitting in Dickens’ A Tale of Two Cities while hundreds or thousands of aristocrats and other “enemies of the Republic” went to the guillotine? Seems a weak excuse to me, but that’s what it says.

June 18 1833 was the date the trial began, and initially it hinged on the testimony of two eye-witnesses, one of whom, a local beggar, said he had been turfed out of his bed and kicked into the street, where he saw the whole thing from hiding. Neither man of course knew the identity of the slain man, but it was pretty obvious it was Enjolras. His murder, however, turned out to be the merest tip of a very dark and bloody iceberg.

More witnesses came forward, testifying to having seen bodies of the dead being cooked and used in pies, hands floating in soup, smelling terrible aromas and seeing foul, pungent smoke coming from the inn’s chimney. Children were said to have been roasted in the ovens and blood was seen on sheets and walls. Allegations of murder, rape and cannibalism were all accepted on face value. In effect, it seems there was no actual concrete evidence against the Martins, and some historians believe they were railroaded in a sort of Salem witch-trials manner. They were hated by their neighbours, and now that they were out of favour at court it is possible that those neighbours decided to take their chance to exact revenge upon the couple. The possibility of Enjolras having died of a heart attack was dismissed by the court without any real notice given to it, the testimony of the beggar, unreliable at best as he was a drunk, was allowed despite the protestations of the defence, and the judge more or less instructed the jury to find the four accused guilty.

Which they did.

Not helping their defence, the lawyer representing the servant accepted that his client was a murderer, but placed all the blame on his employers, claiming he had no choice. Given that the servant did not challenge or take issue with this claim, the obvious conclusion is that he believed and admitted to being a murderer, therefore so were the other three, but they were the masterminds behind it and he just a poor pawn, having to do as he was told. That’s curious enough, because if Rochette had believed his employers not guilty, why put his own head on the block, literally? Such an admission would be unlikely to save him, and if this was all a big misunderstanding and Enroljas had died of natural causes, why support the theory of murder? What would he gain from such a plea?

Not much, in the end. Though the jury acquitted Andre Martin, the other three were sentenced to death and the execution was carried out by guillotine on October 2 1833, in front of their own inn. Many have called the trial a sham, the evidence weak at best, made-up at worst, and consider this one of the biggest miscarriages of French justice in the nineteenth century.

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