Trollheart

What makes someone kill? I’ll be damned if I know, and in this journal this is something we will not be investigating. I’m no psychiatrist, or psychologist, or anything else beginning with psy, and I have really no actual interest in finding out what makes these monsters tick. This will be the history of serial killers, from the earliest I can track down right up to, sadly, today. Given that we’re dealing with real people here, who may still have relatives who remember either the victims or the murderers, or we could also be talking about people who survived serial killers, it’s important, I feel, to take this a lot more seriously than I tend to with my other journals. So in respect and deference to the dead - and even the incarcerated, to some degree - I’ll be reining in my usual off-colour humour and making few if any jokes. Well, maybe. We'll see. Sometimes a bit of light among the darkness is what's needed. We'll take it on a case by case basis, almost literally.

What I will be doing will be cataloguing the whole history of men and women who have, down through the decades and even the centuries, found it permissible to kill, and to kill again, and again. I’ll be running a timeline as usual, looking into not only the killers but their victims, the investigation into their crimes, and the men and women who finally brought them to justice, if brought to justice they were. As the logo says, beware if you are squeamish, as there will be no holds barred here, either graphically or in words: to understand the often horrifying nature of some of the killers here it will be necessary to describe in detail mutilations, abuses, tortures and so on, and I won’t be shying from those, and while I won’t be gratuitously putting up gory pictures for the purposes of titillation, where deemed necessary or appropriate I will use crime scene photos and other material available to me.

It should be clear - but I’ll make the point anyway - that I am in no way intending to glamourise or afford celebrity to these people, though in terms of the latter most of them will have attained that anyway during their murder spree, their trial or their execution. I can’t quite approach this with a totally dispassionate eye though either, but will do my best to avoid commenting on or moralising upon any of the crimes. I can’t promise to stick to that - some of them will be very harrowing, I have no doubt, and I may have to speak about them, editorialise as it were, but I will try to keep it brief. (Yeah, some chance, I know...)

Why have I suddenly become interested in serial killers? Blame Karen. She’s always been fascinated by forensics and I've lost count of the amount of times I have had to read her accounts of this murder or that murder, and eventually I just thought it might be an interesting subject to research in depth. I’m not the first to do it here, I know - there's a thread elsewhere here about the subject - but I believe I’m the first to catalogue the whole history in journal form. Probably the first, only, who would attempt such an undertaking but hey, that’s me, and I’m hardly likely to change now.

Robert Ressler (1937-2013)

Before we get into the timeline however, and start plumbing the darkness, let’s look at some of the pioneers who ensured serial killers would be easier to catch, or at least that they could be identified as same.

This is FBI agent Robert Ressler, who is generally credited with the coining of the term serial killer, although he called it serial homicide in a lecture given in 1974 at the Police Academy in Hampshire, UK. Now, I should make it clear that there is disagreement on whether he was the first to use the phrase, and we will be looking at the other candidates shortly. But whether he is responsible or not, he certainly developed and honed the idea of a criminal profiler, so prevalent today in real life and also in crime fiction. Already as a child he was interested in serial killers, and when posted with the US Army to Aschaffenburg in Germany from 1957 to 1962 he solved many crimes as head of a Military Police (MP) unit.

In 1970 he joined the FBI's Behavioural Sciences Unit, which became the model for the department in the TV crime series Criminal Minds, with a slight change of name. He helped set up Vi-CAP, the Violent Criminal Apprehension Program, which is a database of unsolved homicides cross-referenced with the m.o (Modus Operandi, or method of oepration) of known serial killers, to allow police to identify possible serial killers striking in new territories where their crimes may not be known. Having interviewed thirty-six serial killers himself, Ressler was pretty familiar with their methods, and had worked on the cases of famous (or infamous) murderers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy and Richard Chase, known as the Vampire of Sacramento.

Ressler retired from the FBI in 1990, though he continued to consult and help in the cases of serial killers in the UK and South Africa, wrote books on the subject and also lectured at police academies, affording the new recruits his considerable expertise in their continuing fight against crime. He died in 2013 at the age of 76.


Pierce Brooks (1923-1998)

A legendary figure in the LAPD, Brooks set up the NCAVC - The National Centre for the Analysis of Violent Crime - and was instrumental in developing Vi-CAP. He worked on the “Onion Field” case, the kidnapping of two police officers in Hollywood in 1963, and the subsequent killing of one, and was described by his partner, Dan Bowser, as the “closest thing I ever saw to Sherlock Holmes.” Brooks joined the LAPD in 1948 and after serving with vice, narcotics and homicide he petitioned the department in 1958 to buy a computer to help him in his identification of the crimes of serial killers, having inherited the interest from his father, who had scoured the newspapers looking for similar crimes as the ones he had read about, believing “there’s no way this guy only did this once”. Reflecting both the shoestring budget of the LAPD at the time and the cost of computers in the late 1950s, his request was turned down because “they cost half as much as city hall and are half as big”.

By the time computers had become more affordable (and didn’t take up a whole room) he had already retired from the LAPD, but he testified at Congress as to how computers could be used to track and identify crimes and bring serial killers to justice. Like Ressler, he too became a consultant after retiring, offering vital insight and assistance in high-profile cases such as the Green River Killings and the Atlanta child murders.

Others who were instrumental in the creation of the processes by which serial killers could be detected and caught, or who originally used and may have coined the term include


Ernst Gennat (1880-1939)

Director of the Berlin Criminal Police, Gennat was exposed to criminality from an early age, when he lived with his parents in the staff housing of a correctional facility in Berlin. It doesn’t make it clear, but I’m going to assume that this was because his father worked at the facility. Gennat served for thirty years and was acknowledged as one of the most gifted and successful criminologists in Germany. Entering the police service in 1905 he was quickly promoted, and I mean quickly! Two months later he had progressed from detective assistant to criminal detective. Unfortunately, his criticism of the department - which lacked even a basic homicide division - kept him from further advancement until the reorganisation of the force in 1925 , whereupon he established the much-needed homicide division and was promoted to lieutenant inspector.

Under his leadership the new department thrived, and was soon solving almost 95% of crimes. Gennat took on the cases of two of Germany’s most infamous serial killers - coincidentally perhaps, both being identified in their code names as vampires - Peter Kürten, the “Vampire of Dusseldorf” and Fritz Haarman, the “Vampire of Hanover”. It was while writing about the former in his book Die Düsseldorfer Sexualverbrechen that he is said to have coined the term Serienmörder or serial killer. Gennat also developed the science of profiling to an art. He worked under Hitler but remained aloof from the Nazi Party, dying a mere two weeks before the onset of World War II.


We also have Robert Eisler (1882-1949), a polymath and connoisseur of mythology, who wrote a book in 1948 (one year before his death) entitled Man into Wolf: An Anthropological Interpretation of Sadism, Masochism and Lycanthropy, in which he used the term “serial killing”. He was a man who would know about such things, having spent two years in German concentration camps during the war.


Or how about John Brophy, (1899-1965), an Irish writer who used the term in his book The Meaning of Murder 1966.

Whoever coined the phrase originally, it’s generally accepted that it only came into popular use during the Atlanta Child Murders in 1981 when it was used in an article in the New York Times. By the end of the following decade it was a familiar and frightening term in use all across America, and known all over the world.

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Trollheart

What is a serial killer?

Opinions seem to vary on what exactly constitutes a serial killer, as opposed to a mass murderer or what is known as spree killer, with some versions claiming a serial killer can only be identified as such if he or she has killed three or more people, while others maintain some sort of “cooling-off period” (which is a phrase that has never been satisfactorily defined) must be included. However I’m going to go with the definition given by the FBI, which states that it must be “a series of two or more murders, committed as separate events, usually, but not always, by one offender acting alone”. They also came up with a second, accepted definition which was worked out at a symposium of law enforcement, this of serial murder: “The unlawful killing of two or more victims by the same offender(s) in separate events.”

This would seem to accurately describe most serial killers, however we do have issues, as we’ll see a lot later, with the likes of Ian Huntley, who “only” killed two girls, and both of them at the same time. So does that make him a serial killer? By any definition, no it does not. But I feel I may need to include him anyway, if only due to my own vivid recollections of the investigation and the reports of the crime. I may make a special section for famous killers who are not necessarily serial killers. Hey, what do you care? It’s my journal. My own personal criterion for a serial killer would be that they have to have killed with their own hands, otherwise how do you not include megalomaniacs such as Hitler, Pol Pot and Stalin? But then you run up against Manson, and who could not describe him as a serial killer? Yet he was very clever not to get any literal blood on his hands, having his acolytes carry out the killings. So it’s not a good road to go down for me, and anyway what do I know?

All I will say is that government or state-sanctioned murder can surely not be viewed through the lens of a serial killer, nor can killings that take place at a time of war. I’m not saying bad things aren’t done in wartime, but overall, generally, they’re not described or prosecuted as murder, otherwise every soldier in any army would be a killer, and tried as such. Yes, they are killers, but like Sir Francis Drake identifying as a privateer when really he was a pirate, but with the blessing of the Queen, once your country has supported and even ordered the killings, legally you’re more or less in the clear. Vietnam? Now that’s a whole different quagmire in which I do not intend to place my size sevens!

Of course, no matter how much or little we’re interested in murder and serial killings, through sheer weight of news coverage and the march of history we all know the main ones - Jack the Ripper, The Boston Strangler, The Night Stalker, Son of Sam, The Yorkshire Ripper, Dhamer, Nilsen and of course Manson, but did you know there are reports of serial killers from the time before Christ? Ancient Rome, ancient China, even an Irish one in the fourteenth century, and of course our old friend Countess Bathory, all figure in the annals of crime and murder of much more than just two people down through history. Naturally, they weren’t called serial killers as the term had yet to be invented, but they fulfill the criteria. Speaking of which…

Building the Perfect Beast: Characteristics of a Serial Killer

You’d think the definitions we just read about would be enough to classify a killer as a serial one, wouldn’t you? But no: there are a whole lot of different aspects to serial killers. Not all of them satisfy all the criteria of course, but these are the general expected signs that mark a man or a woman as being one who will kill, kill and kill again until they’re caught or killed.

They don’t have to be crazy, but it helps!

(All right, sorry: I said I wouldn’t be flippant. But I couldn’t resist it…)

Nobody will be surprised to hear that a major factor in many - though not all - serial killers is an unbalanced mind. They may suffer from mental problems, hear voices, have an inability to deal with the world around them, feel paranoid, crave attention and control, engage in predatory behaviour such as stalking or hunting their victims, and experience no sense of guilt, and few emotions. They may not stand out in a crowd, may be quite debonair and charming.

There’s often a history of some sort of abuse, usually by a family member or trusted friend, they may have an unhealthy obsession with body parts, symbolic items that serve as substitutes for body parts, and though not by any means typical, behaviour such as cannibalism, blood-drinking and necrophilia can be part of their makeup. They can be slow developers, both mentally and emotionally as well as sexually, and were often bullied when younger. Some start off their careers by torturing animals, or in somewhat rarer cases, other children. They tend to have low esteem, brought about either by abuse or neglect by one or both parents, may come from broken families, or from families where violence was a factor.

They may have been involved in petty crime when younger, have suffered rejection by one or more lovers (or in some cases merely imagined it when a love interest whom they have not had the courage to approach meets someone else, or perhaps moves away), have been known to be late-age bedwetters, and find it hard to hold down a steady job, leading to many of them becoming drifters or even vagrants. This often assists their attempts to kill, as they can move from state to state or country to country, picking up low-paying, menial jobs as they go and quitting them when it’s time to move on. There is some argument about their perceived intelligence, but generally it seems to be agreed that they tend to have lower than average IQ.

This is of course not always true: as with just about everything to do with serial killers, many break the mould and confound the theories, being settled, respected family men holding down good jobs and able to kill with impunity due to these very characteristics. They are unsuspected because they may be, to use a very overused phrase, pillars of the community, and apart from this lifting them above suspicion, it can also allow them to flourish under the protection (intentional or not) of people in power, who will vouch for them, refuse to suspect them or entertain any doubts that they know the person well enough to know they could not possibly be a killer, and also, of course, seek to protect themselves and their reputations. It can naturally be social and/or business suicide to have stood shoulder-to-shoulder with, and taken the part of someone who is then proven or admits to being a serial killer. I don’t know if it happens in real life (though I guess we’ll find out) but I wouldn’t be too surprised if there were people of “high social standing” who have shielded killers in the full knowledge of what they are, in order to maintain their own reputation.

Signature of a Serial Killer

You hear this all the time in the cop shows - the guy has a signature, and quite often it does seem to be the case. It can help lead to the capture of the killer, or at least to identify his commission of the crime when he sticks to known trademarks. Note: I say he because though there have been female serial killers, they are far less numerous than and comprise a much smaller percentage of the breed than male ones. The way cuts are made, items removed from the body, trophies (discussed further on), type of victim (gender/hair colour/ethnicity/working background etc), type of weapon used, location and so on. Not all exhibit such signs of course, but when a serial killer considers himself a true artist, he may deliberately stick to these tropes, either to goad the authorities, showing them it’s him and there’s nothing they can do about it, or to brag to other killers, essentially showing off his handiwork and autographing it. A horrible thought, but it seems to be the way some do think.

Signatures of course build into a profile, and help investigators to come up with a reasonably accurate idea of who this person is, how he grew up, and most importantly, where he can be expected to strike next, or who his next victim might be. We’ve already discussed profiling in the piece about Robert Ressler and Ernst Gennat, the latter of whom is credited with almost inventing, or at least refining the science, and it’s fair to say that, certainly in the USA, where it seems serial killers proliferate most, any attempt to catch a serial killer begins with, or at least is unlikely to succeed without a proper profile. This tells the detectives, FBI agents or cops what sort of person they’re looking for, gives them a glimpse into the killer’s mindset, and allows them to put that information out on the television networks in the hope that someone may have seen the killer, or at worst, that should they know of or see such a person that they can take the necessary precautions.

Signatures can be dodgy to rely on alone, though, as there are many “copycat killers” who, either out of respect for the killer and wishing to emulate him or in order to throw off the cops will duplicate his signature, though if the serial killer himself is still at large this could I suppose backfire badly, as often they might take offence at someone copying them. Whether all of this happens in real life or just on TV is something I don’t know, and again as I say we’ll find that out as we go along.

Types

There are distinct types of serial killer, distinguished by the way they approach their victims - their motive, in other words.

Visionary

While this word has a far different and more normal meaning among those who are not serial killers, here it means that the killer believes, or pretends as a defence to have believed, that he was told to kill. The old “voices in the head” or “God told me to” defence.

Mission-oriented

A serial killer with a clear aim. This could be to, for instance, rid a certain area of a certain type, be it Jews, prostitutes, gays, women etc. In their twisted minds, they can see what they do as a service to society, winnowing out the undesirables.

Hedonistic

Hedonism, in case you don’t know, is the idea of surrendering yourself up to pleasure, often without a care for the consequences. But when you’re a serial killer, that pleasure can take some very dark forms indeed. Hedonistic killers are sub-divided into three distinct classes:

Lust

Speaks for itself really. A killer who gets off sexually on murder. They are the ones most likely to indulge in torture and domination, keeping their victims alive as long as possible in order to gratify their sexual urges. They’re also the types who are most likely to ejaculate over the corpses, or maybe while the victim is alive. Gross. They would also be the ones least able to control their killing, as the desire for sexual release grows, pushing them to further murders. Because of the closeness needed to their victims in order to get their rocks off, lust killers tend to use weapons that require a close and personal touch, such as knives, garrottes or even hands. They’re unlikely to kill from a distance, which is impersonal and thus does not get them where they want to go.

Thrill

A thrill killer could also be described perhaps as a hunter killer (nothing to do with Terminator, now!) though not all of them hunt. But they do enjoy the thrill either of the chase, or just in the pain and terror they cause. Unlike lust killers though, they are not too interested in long, slow deaths or torture, preferring to perfect their skill rather than prolong the death of the victim. They tend to select total strangers, though they may have stalked them for some time before launching their attack, and seldom if ever indulge in sex with them.

Comfort or Profit

Simply put, they kill for gain, usually financial. These are the insurance murderers, the ones who tend to use poison and keep to their own family and friends as their victim circle. They often run up debts and need to make a big score in order to pay them off, but sometimes the murder has been well planned in advance. A lot of female killers tend to be comfort killers, as it requires the least exposure, danger and knowledge of weaponry, plus women in general are more trusted for things like ministering to the sick and feeding relatives.

Power or Control

Not too hard to understand. These killers have a need to have power over their victims. They were often abused and in return may abuse their victims, including sexually, though in this case the sex is humiliation and payback for what happened to them - with the victims often playing the role of the abuser or one who knew about it and did nothing to stop it - rather than being motivated by lust. The Power/Control serial killer gets no joy or release from sex, merely using it as a tool to punish and redress what he sees as wrongs perpetrated upon him when younger.

Idolisers/Sensation Seekers

There are also serial killers who, well, kill to be famous. These people love the spotlight, and while they of course don’t want their identity to be known, they enjoy watching and reading about their crimes on the news or in the papers, and laughing at the efforts of the police to catch them. They may also admire, even idolise and try to emulate other killers, and other media figures. They may also enjoy spreading fear through the reports of their exploits.

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Trollheart

Timeline: 331 BC - 1440 AD

Given many factors, including class divisions, law enforcement, lack of popular press and unsympathetic authorities, you’re not going to find too many reports of serial killers in the time before Christ, although there probably were many more than we now know about. I suppose in some ways, what we would term murder today might not have seemed such a crime back then - slaves could be whipped or beaten to death completely within the law, wives could be abused, even killed, commoners could fall victims to high-class gentlemen looking for sport, and so on. So surely it went on, but was not reported. But some were, at least after the fact.

In every case we will be prefacing the account with the salient details, most of which are self-explanatory, but some may need clarification, so: “Type” refers back to the discussion on what drives killers, and how they are classified - lust/hunter/mission/visionary etc - while “Hunting ground(s)” tells where the killer operated, where he or she killed or stalked their victims. “Caught by” rather obviously refers to either the law enforcement authority or individual(s) who tracked them down and arrested them, or perhaps those who reported them and alerted the relevant authorities. In some cases this may not be a person but an organisation, though given the timeline we're dealing with here there may indeed have been mob justice involved, and in rare cases it may be that the killer turned themselves in.

Epithet is the name the killer either was known by or by which they wished to be known - Jack the Ripper, for instance, was known only as "The Whitechapel Murderer" until the receipt of the letter to Abberline which forever enshrined him as "Jack the Ripper". Some of these, of course, will have no epithets, popular nickname or media nickname, as the advertising and marketing infrastructure was not around so early to create such, and media was something completely unknown, to say nothing of the amount of people who could not even read. But where we have one, or even where one was later assigned by historians, they'll be noted here.






Killer: Unnamed, but part of what was known as The Poison Ring
Epithet: n/a
Type: Comfort (?)
Nationality: Roman
Hunting ground(s): Rome, Italy
Years active: 331 BC
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any): n/a
Victims: Believed to be about 90
Survivors: Unsure
Caught by: The intervention of a serving woman
Fate: Died at their own hand

A weird one, this. Seems there were two patrician (noble family) women going around poisoning men. No idea why, but their deaths - about ninety of them before the women were stopped - were apparently believed to be the results of a plague. When the women were challenged that the potion they said was medicinal was poison, then both - both! - seem to have said “Look! We’ll show you it’s harmless!” and drank the bloody thing. Whereupon they died instantly. Can’t figure that one out. If they knew the potion was deadly, why drink it, especially since they weren’t forced or coerced to do so? In the wake of the discovery a whole cabal of poisoners was uncovered, who became known collectively as the “Poison Ring”. They were judged to be mad, which, given what the other two did, would seem a safe diagnosis.

As far as I can see, this Poison Ring is the earliest example of serial killing, and oddly enough, involved a whole lot of people. Serial killers are usually loners, trusting few people and eager to get their own hands dirty with the blood of their victims, so they seldom hand off the killings to anyone else. There have been instances of pairs of serial killers, but they are rare. A whole group? Almost unique.

Perhaps as unique as the next one we’re going to look at.


Killer: Emperor Gaius Caesar Augustus Germanicus “Caligula”
Epithet: n/a
Type: Lust
Nationality: Roman, duh!
Hunting ground(s): Rome, Italy
Years active: 37 - 41 AD
Weapon(s) used: Everything and anything
Signature (if any): He’s said to have enjoyed gagging his victims so that they were denied their last breath to cry out
Victims: Impossible to tell
Survivors: Same
Caught by: Praetorian Guard
Fate: Assassinated

Here we run up against one of my own personal criteria and see how it fails. You may remember in the introduction I stated that figures like Hitler, Pol Pot etc would not, for me, qualify as serial killers as they operated under state-sponsored murder. However, it must be said that this wasn’t necessarily murder at the behest of, or with the agreement of the state. This was murder ordered by, authorised by and indeed carried out by one man, the emperor, who believed himself a living god, and nobody could deny him. It was, in effect, tantamount to having a serial killer in charge of not only a country but an empire (although Caligula did confine his madness to the capital).

At any rate, Peter Vronsky in his excellent Sons of Cain: A History of Serial Killers From the Stone Age to the Present, includes him as one of the first ever examples of a serial killer, almost a thousand years before the term was coined, and who am I to argue?

So, let the madness begin!

Who doesn’t know about Caligula? One of the most feared, hated and quite simply mad emperors of ancient Rome, Caligula came to power and initially seemed to be a good ruler, but then in around 37 AD he fell ill, and when he recovered he was never the same. One of the first things he did was to go to the senate, having heard that the senators had prayed to the gods to take them in his place, and demand they kept their promise now that he had been spared. So one by one, they all had to commit suicide. Whether you can count that as part of his victim tally or not I don’t know, but I imagine a serial killer who impels his victims to take their own lives can be blamed for their deaths, so I’d say yes. After all, if they had refused to do as the emperor asked, they surely would have been slain anyway, so they probably just took the easiest and essentially most honourable way out.

When he reinstated the treason trials so hated of his predecessor, Caligula went further, ordering the executioner to keep the condemned alive as long as possible, torturing them and also inviting, read, ordering, their family and friends to come and watch their suffering. He was said to have often quoted the phrase “I can do anything to anybody” and was also to have said at a banquet, laughing evilly, “I have only to give the word and all of your throats would be cut.”

We should keep in mind, as pretty much any historian has noted, that the only accounts we have of Caligula’s life - and therefore his depravities and his many murders - come from second-hand sources who lived a long time after his death. Many of these might be eager, or at least quick to paint him in the worst light possible, yet it seems likely that most of what has been reported is grounded in some sort of truth. I’ve been able to confirm that the story about him making his horse a consul is not true - some sources say it was a stab at another senator (I might as well make my horse a consul you’re so bad etc) and others say he thought about it, might have been going to do it, but inconveniently for him got killed before he could.

Anyway, with all that in mind, we have this account from Seneca the Younger (4 BC - 65 AD) in his essay De Ira (“On Anger”):

Only recently Gaius Caesar slashed with the scourge and tortured . . . both Roman senators and knights, all in one day, and not to extract information but for amusement. He was so impatient of postponing his pleasure—a pleasure so great that his cruelty demanded it without delay—that he decapitated some of his victims by lamplight, as he was strolling with some ladies and senators on the terrace of his mother’s gardens . . . What was ever so unheard of as an execution by night? Though robberies are generally concealed by darkness, the more public punishments are, the more they offer as an admonition and warning. But here also I shall hear the answer, “That which surprises you so much is the daily habit of that beast; for this he lives, for this he loses sleep, for this he burns the midnight oil.” But surely you will find no other man who has commanded that the mouths of all those who were to be executed by his orders should be gagged by inserting a sponge, in order that they might not even have the power to utter a cry. What doomed man was ever before deprived of the breath with which to moan? . . . If no sponges were to be found, he ordered the garments of the poor wretches to be torn up, and their mouths to be stuffed with the strips. What cruelty is this?

What indeed? There are also reports that he slept with his own sister, Julia Drusilla, got her pregnant but then feared the child would overthrow him and so disembowelled her afterwards. Nice. He was certainly famous for his cruelty, and status was no bar to his perversions. Considering himself a living god, there was nobody who could stand against him, but he got his in the end when a party of Praetorian guards murdered him, Julius Caesar-like.

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Killer: Liu Pengli
Epithet: n/a
Type: Hunter/Thrill
Nationality: Chinese
Hunting ground(s): Jidong, China (about where Shandong is now)
Years active: Second century BC
Weapon(s) used: Unknown
Signature (if any): Other than robbery, unknown if any
Victims: 100 plus
Survivors: Unknown
Caught by: Testimony from the son of a victim to the emperor
Fate: Banished and made a commoner; commuted from death sentence

Surely then one of the earliest, if not the first Thrill Serial Killer, Prince Liu Pengli tended to go out with slaves and known criminals in his gang and attack, rob and murder people, for no other reason than that he enjoyed it. His reign of terror was finally brought to a halt when, as described briefly above, the son of one of the victims went to the emperor and accused him. What evidence was produced is not known, nor how a noble could be accused, but for whatever reason the emperor believed the accuser, or the crime was proven or admitted to, and the court demanded that Liu be executed. But as he was a nephew of the ruler, he instead had his royal titles taken from him and was kicked out of the kingdom. To some extent, maybe, this could have been a fate worse than death, which might have allowed Liu some semblance of honour; but being busted down to a commoner must have been the ultimate humiliation for him.

Killer: Anula of Anuradhapura
Epithet: n/a
Type: Comfort
Nationality: Sri Lankan
Hunting ground(s): The royal palace
Years active: 47 - 42 BC
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 4 known
Survivors: None known
Caught by: King Kutakanna Thisa
Fate: Burned alive

Seems this lady was one of those machiavellian women who preferred being on the throne to being the power behind it. She poisoned her husband of twelve years, King Coranga, repeated the process with his successor and continued like this for about four months before she was deposed, caught and executed for her crimes. No motive is given for her killings, but since she seized power it can be assumed that was the object; this, and the use of poison as her weapon of choice, basically leads me to identify her as a comfort killer.

Killer: Locusta
Epithet: n/a
Type: Contract?
Nationality: Roman
Hunting ground(s): Rome
Years active:
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: At least 5, possibly 7 or more
Survivors: Unknown
Caught by: Emperor Glaba
Fate: Executed

The best known and most accomplished poisoner in the empire at the time of Nero, I have my doubts about this one to be honest. It’s in the list, but from what I read Locusta did not kill for any gain other than financial or as ordered by the emperor. She seems to have been a sort of “house poisoner” or official poisoner in Nero’s court, and was ordered by the emperor’s mother, Agrippina, to poison her uncle Claudius, so that her son could ascend the throne. While in the service of Nero she was called upon to get rid of Claudius’s son, Britannicus. When the poison didn’t work quickly enough, Nero took her into a dungeon and whipped her personally until she made it work.

Someone who works like this, under essentially the orders of another, and does not choose their victims, should not, I feel, be categorised as a serial killer, but more of a contact killer, even an executioner operating under the sanction of state, in this case. I would be very dubious about including her. Nevertheless, just in case, there she is.

Killer: Dhu Shanatir
Epithet: n/a
Type: Lust
Nationality: Yemenite
Hunting ground(s): Palace
Years active: 478 - 490
Weapon(s) used: Hands
Signature (if any): Victims were sodomised and thrown out of a window
Victims: 100
Survivors: One known
Caught by: One of his victims, Zara’h
Fate: Stabbed in the arse () and decapitated

Ah, the privileges of power, the power of privilege! Dhu Shanatir ruled Yemen from 478 to 490 and had a propensity for inviting young boys up to the palace for a bit of grub, which turned out to be more a bit of grab, as he poked them and then like toys he was finished with threw them out the window of his palace. No accounts exist as to what happened to the corpses, but you have to imagine the scene, don’t you? “Servant! Another one for the pile! Clean up on aisle six!” and off the slave goes with a wheelbarrow or whatever. Seriously though: this dude is known to have killed at least a hundred young boys before one turned the tables on him, stabbed him in the backside and then lopped off his head, and nicked his kingdom. Fair enough, I say. Oh yeah: Zara’h (who became known as Dhu Nawas) held on to the head, keeping it in the window of what was now his palace. Whether it faced out or not I don’t know, but if it did, it would have been fitting that he spent eternity with his eyes fixed on the spot where he had dumped so many of the pride of the nation’s youth.

Killer: Dame Alice Kyteler
Epithet: n/a
Type: Comfort
Nationality: Irish
Hunting ground(s): Kilkenny
Years active: 1302- - 1324
Weapon(s) used: Poison (maybe)
Signature (if any):
Victims: 3 - 4
Survivors: n/a
Caught by: Kind of hard to say really. There was a trial (she was accused by the children of her last husband - so, her own children basically) and the trial was conducted by the Bishop of Ossory, Richard de Ledrede
Fate: Legged it to England; fate after that unknown.

The interesting thing about this, apart from it being I guess the first recorded instance of an Irish serial killer, is that Kyteler (of Flemish descent, hence the odd and hardly Irish name, but she was born in Kilkenny) was not so much tried for murder as for witchcraft. As the paranoia about witches grew across Europe, and the Inquisition tightened its grip on its adherents, Ireland was no safe haven for the ungodly. Far from it: from the earliest times, once the Celts had been defeated, the druids banished or killed, Ireland was one of the most Christian countries on Earth, and almost exclusively Catholic. Occupied by the English, Protestantism never caught hold, except in the north, in Ulster, so strong was the Catholic faith. So when the Church said root out witches, that’s just what their footsoldiers did.

Richard de Ledrede, the Bishop of Ossory and known as a “scourge of heresy and witchcraft”, having heard that Kyteler was accused of killing her previous husbands, decided to use her as a basis for a trial for witchcraft, and she was arrested. Some of the antagonism towards her may have been due to the fact that she was quite rich, being a moneylender, and by that token very unpopular; possibly, too, some people hoped to duck out of their debts. After all, if she was found guilty (and we all know the only penalty for a woman “proven” to be or “confessing” to be a witch) then their slate would be wiped clean.

The charges LeDrede brought against Alice Kyteler were:

denying the faith of Christ and the Church
cutting up animals to sacrifice to demons at crossroads
holding secret nocturnal meetings in churches to perform black magic and undermine/overpower the church
using sorcery and potions to control Christians
possession of a familiar, Robin Artison, a lesser demon of Satan
murder of husband

However when he tried to have her arrested, the Bishop found out that Alice had powerful friends, among them the Lord Chancellor of Ireland, and he ended up in prison himself! On his release, he was no less determined to prosecute Alice, and renewed his efforts, this time securing her arrest. This time the charges were slightly different:

Committing heresy
Sacrificing to demons
Communing with demons
Magically excommunicating/usurping the church
Making love and hate potions to corrupt Christians
Murdering her past husbands
Engaging in a sexual affair with a demon

He managed to get a confession out of one of Alice’s servants, Petronella de Meath, after torturing her, and she was paraded through the town and then burned at the stake. Alice however escaped from prison and fled to England, and that’s the last that was ever heard of her.

One footnote though, is the “confession” wrung out of Petronella de Meath. You have to imagine most of this was suggested or dictated to her, and she merely confirmed it, either by signing (if she could write) or in some other way. It’s fantastic nonsense, of course, but it got her turned into a living cinder.

On one of these occasions, by the crossroads outside the city, she had made an offering of three cocks to a certain demon whom she called Robert, son of Art (Robertum filium Artis), from the depths of the underworld. She had poured out the cocks' blood, cut the animals into pieces and mixed the intestines with spiders and other black worms like scorpions, with a herb called milfoil as well as with other herbs and horrible worms. She had boiled this mixture in a pot with the brains and clothes of a boy who had died without baptism and with the head of a robber who had been decapitated ... Petronella said she had several times at Alice's instigation and once in her presence, consulted demons and received answers. She had consented to a pact whereby she would be the medium between Alice and the said Robert, her friend. In public, she said that with her own eyes she had seen the aforesaid demon as three shapes (praedictus daemon tertius), in the form of three black men (aethiopum) each carrying an iron rod in the hand. This apparition happened by daylight (de die) before the said Dame Alice, and, while Petronella herself was watching, the apparition had intercourse with Alice. After this disgraceful act, with her own hand she (Alice?) wiped clean the disgusting place with sheets (kanevacio) from her own bed.

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Killer: Gilles de Rais
Epithet: n/a
Type: Lust
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Champtocé-sur-Loire and Machecoul, France
Years active: 1432 - 1440
Weapon(s) used: Various
Signature (if any):
Victims: Believed to be anything from 100 to 200 (one estimate claims 600)
Survivors:
Caught by: The Bishop of Nantes
Fate: Hanged and burned

In terms, then, of actual sexual serial killers who killed for their own pleasure, it seems we have a candidate for the first, not counting Caligula, who I still think is something of a special case. It was said that Gilles de Rais, a baron in medieval France, consorted with - or tried to consort with - demons and dabbled in the occult, but none of his spells came to anything. Frustrated, he turned to luring children to his castle, where they would be fed and clothed and made a fuss of before being sodomised (yes, this again unfortunately) and then, well. Some were torn open and their intestines ripped out, some were beheaded, some were burned, some were drowned - and, oh dear: it seems some were, ah, interfered with after their deaths.

Although there have been efforts to exonerate him and paint him as a victim of the Catholic Inquisition, I tend to the belief that the stories are, mostly, true. His accomplices, after all, both corroborated them and so far as I can read, they weren’t tortured. They must have known that pleading guilty to aiding this sadistic madman would earn them a spot on the gallows right beside him, as it did, so if there was no truth in it why confess? So let’s just assume then that he was guilty. If he was, then he certainly seems to have amassed the biggest body count up to that point, at least of the killers known. Like I say above, the true number has never been ascertained, and though one estimate does claim he murdered up to 600 children, this seems unlikely, even given his protected status as a noble. So the slightly more conservative figure of 100 - 200 seems more likely. Either way, it’s a damning total.

The man’s sadism seems to have been boundless. Accounts speak of him sitting on the stomachs of children who were dying by his hand or at his command, and laughing as they died; of picking up severed heads and admiring them, and, as mentioned above, of doing things to their dead bodies. He’s also known to have hung up his victims alive and masturbated over them. Nice guy. And these are kids, remember: his victims are said to have ranged in age from six years old to eighteen, mostly boys but not all.

His undoing seems to have come when he captured a cleric in May 1440 and attracted the attention of the Bishop of Nantes, his crimes soon coming to light after his arrest, and within a month he had confessed. He was charged on counts of heresy, sodomy and murder, found guilty - along with his accomplices - and hanged and then burned on October 26. The shame was so great that afterwards his family changed their name. Twice.

Timeline: 1564 - 1682


Killer: Peter Stumpp
Epithet: “The Werewolf of Bedburg”
Type: ?
Nationality: German
Hunting ground(s): Bedburg, Cologne
Years active: 1564 - 1589
Weapon(s) used: Hands and teeth
Signature (if any):
Victims: 14
Survivors: None
Caught by:?
Fate: Broken on the wheel, beheaded and burned

A supposed real-life werewolf, Peter Stumpp (many other spellings and aliases, but let’s go with this one) confessed to having dabbled in the black arts, having had congress with demons and as a result having received a magic belt which allowed him to shape-shift into the form of a werewolf. In this form he carried out fourteen of the most atrocious murders, mostly children, entailing tearing them apart and eating them. This included two fetuses which were said to have been torn from the bodies of two pregnant women and consumed while their hearts were “hot and raw”. He was said to have killed and eaten his own son, whose brain he consumed, and also confessed to having incest with his own daughter.

Because this was in the sixteenth century, and therefore claims of witchcraft and lycanthropy were readily accepted, we will never know for sure how he killed his victims, but it seems likely he simply tore them apart. As most were children this may not have been too difficult particularly if he was in the grip of a murderous psychosis at the time.

After his trial he was (unsurprisingly) sentenced to death, which included being broken on the wheel - a system that allowed the flesh to be torn from his body while he was yet living - his arms and legs were chopped off to prevent him returning from the grave, then his head was severed and his body burned, his head placed on a pole on top of a monument to warn others against consorting with dark powers.

Killer: Peter Niers
Epithet: n/a
Type: Comfort ?
Nationality: German
Hunting ground(s): France, Germany, Netherlands
Years active: 1566 - 1581
Weapon(s) used: Various
Signature (if any):
Victims: 544 confessed to (under torture)
Survivors: None
Caught by: Townsfolk of Neumarkt
Fate: Broken on the wheel and quartered while still alive

More superstition and acts of magic abound in the oft-told story of Peter Niers, leading member of a band of thieves and robbers who roamed the German countryside, ranging as far as France and the Netherlands. Niers was said to be a powerful magician, and used the fetuses of pregnant women he slew to perform dark arts, which were supposed to confer on him certain powers, including that of invisibility and shape-shifting. Again we’re dealing with the sixteenth century here, where such claims would be taken very seriously, though there are accounts of his using various disguises, which is probably more likely.

As part of a robber band, Niers ranged far and wide but it was in his native Germany he was caught. The story is that he left his literal “bag of tricks” behind him in the tavern, so he hadn’t the magical artifacts needed to allow him to shape-shift, or whatever he did. When he was recognised at the local baths it wasn’t long before he was arrested. Thereafter he was tortured over three days, which is why you kind of have to take his confession with a pinch of salt. But when he did confess he was given a pretty gruesome death: broken on the wheel like our friend the Werewolf of Bedbugs, sorry Bedburg, and then quartered - while still alive!


Killer: Christman Genippertheinga
Epithet: None
Type: Comfort
Nationality: German
Hunting ground(s): Fraßberg, Germany
Years active: 1569 - 1581
Weapon(s) used: Unsure - hands?
Signature (if any):
Victims: 964
Survivors: None; technically, one
Caught by: Betrayed by the woman he had sexually enslaved
Fate: Broken on the wheel

Another feared robber, but one who stayed in the one lair, a cave high up in the hills, which afforded him a good view of the roads leading into the town, Christman Genippertheinga would attack French and German travellers, even killing his own partners if it suited him. He met a young woman shortly after he arrived in the area and menaced her into being his slave, and swearing never to betray him. By him she had six children, all of whom Christman killed, and then hung up from the roof of the cave. It was said that as the wind moved the bodies to and fro he would sing “Dance, der little children, dance; Genippertheinga your father is making the dance for you.”

When the girl finally persuaded him to let her go visit relatives in the town, she, held fast to her oath (which were sacred things in those days; they believed you could go to Hell for breaking one) cried at a stone, and villagers brought her to the mayor, who assured her that her immortal soul would not suffer if she told them what was wrong. When Christman was arrested her howled at her for betraying him, but he admitted to the murders, actually upset that he had not reached his goal of one thousand. It took him nine days to die on the wheel, as the executioner deliberately kept him alive by giving him strong drink, so that he might suffer as much as possible and last as long as they could stretch his agony out for.

There is uncorroborated evidence that Christman may have also been a cannibal, eating his victims (including the hearts of his children) and even force-feeding his slave human flesh, but the story changes on down through the decades and it’s hard to be sure. All we can be sure of is that he was definitely a killer, a serial killer, and a monster.

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Killer: Gilles Garnier
Epithet: “The Werewolf of Dole”, also “The Hermit of St. Bonnot”
Type: Lust
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Dole, Franche-Comté province
Years active: 1572 - 1574
Weapon(s) used: Hands, teeth
Signature (if any):
Victims: 6 (though the account says he confessed to 4, I count 6 in all)
Survivors: None
Caught by: Villagers
Fate: Burned at the stake

A hermit living in the town of Dole in France, Garnier (sorry, I have to say it: you’re worth it!) got married and found that it was more difficult to procure food for two than one. He said that he met a spirit in a wood one night who gave him the power to change into a werewolf. After this he attacked, ate and killed up to six children from the ages of 9 to 12. He would also tear off flesh or body parts to bring home to his wife. Whether she was aware of where the meat came from, or indeed whether she ate it, is not recorded, nor are even the most minimal details about her.

Some villagers saw him with a child’s body in his arms as they made their way home from the fields one evening, and Garnier was arrested. Again, no details as to whether he was tortured, confessed or made any plea, but he was burned at the stake for the crime of lycanthropy. Whether that included, overrode or ignored murder and cannibalism I don’t know.


Killer: Countess Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed
Epithet: “The Blood Countess” and “Countess Dracula”
Type: Lust
Nationality: Hungarian
Hunting ground(s): Castle of Csejte
Years active: 1585 - 1610
Weapon(s) used: Various
Signature (if any): Torture, mutilation etc
Victims: Anything from 80 to 650
Survivors: About 300
Caught by: Thurzó, Palatine of Hungary
Fate: Imprisoned in her castle until her death in 1614

Having been born into wealth and power, Countess Bathory’s many alleged torture and killings don’t appear to have a cause, other than she was rich and powerful. It may have been her upbringing, but of course there would have to have been an innate sense of sadism there for such a predilection to have grown. While abductions have been mentioned, it’s assumed these were carried out by her servants, and it seems Bathory pretty much stayed in her castle and stalked her victims there - mostly servants, and it seems all female - or had them brought to her, from the surrounding villages. Lurid accounts of her debauchery have passed into popular myth now, and it’s hard to know what’s fact and what is fiction, but she’s accused of beating, burning, freezing and in other ways torturing the young women and girls who worked for her, of bathing in their blood (in an effort to remain young) and of cannibalism.

Much of this, it’s said, could have been a political conspiracy to bring down a powerful woman who had much property, but either way it’s not been conclusively proved on either side. Her servants were quickly executed after having given their evidence, but Bathory was allowed to live, as the scandal of her execution would have been too much for her powerful family to survive. She was imprisoned in her castle, under house arrest, and died there at the age of 54.

Werewolf or Killer?

Before I go on, a brief interlude. It became quite common in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries (and even on into the seventeenth) for people to be accused of being, or believe they had been transformed into werewolves. This presents something of a problem to me. If a man is believed, and believes himself to be, a creature such as this, is he then eligible to be counted as a serial killer? If we do that, should we not then start recounting all the lives lost to real wolf attacks (and maybe bears and who knows what else)? Can a supposed werewolf be accused of serial murder?

I debated including such stories as I read them, particularly this one, but as I read it I came across a ruling the court made in this case, which serves to slightly clear up the distinction. Again it’s from Peter Vronsky’s Sons of Cain, and is in fact part of the story of the subject of our next serial killer. He notes: The court essentially ruled that werewolves are not people literally transformed into wolves but people possessed by the Devil to behave as if they were transformed into werewolves. It was the best explanation we had for serial killers back then.

Killer: Jean Grenier
Epithet:
Type: ?
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Coutras, near Bordeaux
Years active: 1603
Weapon(s) used: Hands and teeth
Signature (if any):
Victims: Unknown; by his own testimony at least 4
Survivors: One known of
Caught by: Parents of Marguerite Poirier, an intended victim (and the survivor spoken of above)
Fate: Originally sentenced to death, but due to his age and remorse, and a new, more enlightened understanding of the causes of lycanthropy, commuted to life servitude in a monastery.

Surely the youngest known serial killer we’ve come across so far, Jean Grenier was only thirteen years old when his father kicked him out of the house. The story goes that he vomited up a load of body parts, including human ones, and his stepmother ran away in disgust and would not come back until he had been banished from the house. Wandering alone, filthy and hungry, the boy accosted young girls and told them he was a werewolf, and that he had tasted of human flesh, but that of girls was tastier. He of course frightened them off, but when he attempted to attack one later, in the guise of a werewolf (according to the girl, the abovementioned Marguerite Poirier anyway) she beat him off with a stick, and when she told her parents about the attack the graphic nature of her description, along with the curious deaths and mutilations of children at that time in the area, led the authorities to investigate, and Grenier was arrested.

Far from concealing his crimes, he confessed, telling the court that he had met a dark man in a forest when younger; this man had provided him with the ability to turn into a wolf. He claimed that some of his victims he shared with another wolf, but the court in 1603 no doubt said “Zut alors! This is not ze Dark Ages! This is ze seventeenth century, mon Dieu! We are enlightened people and do not believe in ze werewolf! Sacre bleu!” or something.

And they set out to prove he was not a werewolf.

A sentence of death had been handed down, death by hanging, with the body then to be burned afterwards, but given the age of the child and his unfortunate circumstances, and his confession, rather strenuous lengths seem to have been gone to in order to save his life. They prepared a defence of insanity, showing that the boy could not have been engaged in witchcraft (which was the crime he had been charged with, not murder) as he had been able to take the dress off one of his victims rather than ripping it off her as an animal would do. This proved, according to them, that Grenier merely thought he was a werewolf, was lost in what we would call today a deep psychosis, and therefore, having not actually transformed into an animal could not be accused of witchcraft.

This, by the way, despite Marguerite’s testimony that she had been attacked by a wolf, not a boy. No mention is made of this as contradictory evidence against him. It’s hard to see how the decision was arrived at, but at any rate this was their statement at the end of the trial:

The court, in the end, takes note of the age and the imbecility of this young boy, who is so stupid and so mentally impaired, that children of seven or eight normally show more reasoning than he does. This boy is so malnourished and so undersized that one would not think him ten years old. . . . Here is a young boy abandoned and driven out by his father, who had a stepmother for a mother, who roamed the fields, without a guide and without anyone in the world to look after him, begging for his food, who had no instruction whatsoever in the fear of God, whose nature was corrupted by evil seduction, daily necessities, and despair, all conditions that the Evil Spirit exploited. The court does not want to contribute further to the misery of this young boy, whom the Devil had armed against other children. The court rules after due consideration of all matters, including the inconsistencies of his testimony and other aspects of the trial, to save his soul for God rather than judge it to be lost. Moreover, according to the report of the good monks who began to instruct and encourage him, he is already showing that he abhorred and detested his crimes, as witnessed by his tears and his repentance. The court dismissed and dismisses the appeals and, for the verdict resulting from the trial, condemned and condemns Jean Grenier to be locked up for the remainder of his life in one of the city’s monasteries. He is to serve this monastery for the rest of his life. He is prohibited from ever leaving there under the penalty of hanging or strangling.

Interviewed seven years later, Grenier confessed that he still had an appetite for human flesh, particularly that of little girls, and though he regretted and again confessed to his actions, he still believed that not only was he a werewolf, but that his father had been one too, which sort of makes the story of the man in the forest harder to credit, unless we’re supposed to believe that the stranger was in fact his father. Or had met the same man when he was younger. Grenier was withdrawn and sullen, stupid and slow when interviewed, but he seemed to gain animation when asked about his crimes, and described them in detail. He seemed to believe, however, that he was no longer a werewolf.

It should probably be noted, in the interests of clarity, that the boy spoken of above has nothing to do with the French philosopher of the same name, who lived from 1898-1971.

(Not a werewolf. Or a serial killer.)

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Killer: Björn Pétursson
Epithet: Axlar-Björn (Shoulder-Bear)
Type: Comfort?
Nationality: Icelandic
Hunting ground(s):
Years active: 1570 - 1596
Weapon(s) used: Possibly an axe
Signature (if any):
Victims: 9 - 18
Survivors: None
Caught by: Unknown
Fate: Hanged, broken on the wheel, body dismembered after death

In all of Iceland’s history it seems there was only ever one serial killer. That’s pretty good odds for not getting murdered if you go there I guess, although what the weather would have to say about that might be another matter. Inheriting the farm of his friend, Björn Pétursson is known to have murdered anything from 9 to 18 people, though the method is not known - possibly with an axe, possibly by drowning them. It can’t be confirmed, but he seems to have carried out the murders for gain, as he always took the possessions of his victims.

When arrested, Pétursson’s farm yielded more bodies than the nine he confessed to. He tried to bluff his way through this (why? If you’re going to be - literally - hung for nine, why not eighteen? What difference does it make?) by saying he had found the remains on his farm and had reinterred them, but his attempts came to nothing and he convinced nobody. He was hanged and then broken on the wheel, after which his body was dismembered and each piece put on a stake.

Interestingly, there seems to have been a kind of thread of evil running through the family. His wife, suspected as an accomplice and also sentenced to death, escaped by virtue (presumably) of being pregnant, but the fruit of her womb was rotten, and her son was hanged for rape. As if that wasn’t enough, his son was also executed as a criminal. Bad seeds, all.

Killer: Geordie Bourne
Epithet: None
Type: ?
Nationality: Scottish
Hunting ground(s): English East Marches
Years active: Unknown, died in 1597
Weapon(s) used: Unknown
Signature (if any):
Victims: 7 confessed to
Survivors: None known
Caught by: Robert Carey, Earl of Monmouth
Fate: Executed (no idea by what method, given that he was a thief and given the time, probably hanging)

Not a lot much to add really. Bourne was a thief and raider who ranged along the English East Marches where they bordered Scotland. He was an inveterate womaniser (“I lay with over 40 men’s wives”, he boasted, though whether this was consensual or not is unknown) and though he was a friend of the Scottish Middle March Warden Robert Ker, no plea for clemency or appeal was launched on his behalf. He had been captured in a raid by the Earl of Monmouth and beaten into submission, then brought to trial.

Killer: Catalina de los Rios Lisperguer
Epithet: La Quintrala (Mistletoe)
Type: Power/Control
Nationality: Chilean
Hunting ground(s): Santiago, Chile
Years active: (very approximately) 1624 - 1660
Weapon(s) used: Unknown, but probably poison
Signature (if any): n/a
Victims: 40
Survivors: 2
Caught by: n/a
Fate: Died of natural causes; never convicted for her crimes

The daughter of Chilean plantation owners and descended from Inca nobility, Catalina was nicknamed not for her murders, as such, but for the red colour of her hair, which was said to be like the quintral plant, a parasitic form of mistletoe native to Chile. However it was also postulated that the epithet derived from her practice of using the branches of this same plant to whip her slaves. She was a true Spanish beauty, daughter of a conquistador and so used to using people and getting her own way, and uninterested in the feelings of others. Murderous intent must have run in the family, as her mother and her aunt had been accused - though it was never proved - of poisoning the governor of Chile, Alonso de Ribera, out of spite, it says here, though I can’t uncover any historic enmity between the two families. La Quintrala though certainly took after her mother, accused of poisoning her own father when she served him dinner as he lay ill in bed. She did not stand trial for the crime though, even when her aunt reported it to the authorities, possibly due to the social standing of the family and the reluctance to create a scandal.

Her grandmother thought the best way to tame this twenty-two year old was to get her married off, and so Catalina married Colonel Alfonso Campofrio de Carvajal y Riberos, a man almost twice her age. She bore him a son, the only child she would ever have, but he did not survive, dying at age eight or ten. Two years after her marriage, and one year after the birth of her ill-fated son, her sister died and Catalina became even richer, inheriting her sister’s vast plantations. It was soon after coming into this inheritance that she is said to have begun to kill in earnest. Her first victim (not including her father when she was eighteen years old) was a servant or vassal whom it is said she invited to her home (though this is disputed by historians as Catalina is supposed to have written a love letter to him, and it was known that she was unable to write, and could barely read at all) and then stabbed, blaming his death on a servant who was then executed. The big mouth of Enrique Enriquez (no, really) de Guzman got him a knife in the back too, as he bragged about how he had been able to trifle with her affections, calling her a loose woman.

Things began to heat up when she moved to one of her properties, a plantation in the mountains of the suburbs of Santiago, and having killed a slave for no apparent reason (did a slaveowner need one?) she instructed that he not be buried for two weeks, and as her cruelty reached new extremes her slaves decided to head for the hills, rebelling - or, really, just running away: that’s not a rebellion - but were brought back and executed. She kept the local judges and lawyers in her pocket, as rich people do, and also relied on her family connections to protect her from any reprisals or accusations. However this could not last forever; people will turn a blind eye for so long, but eventually they will look to their own survival, and as complaints against the cruel mistress of the plantations and ranches mounted up, she was eventually taken into custody.

But while the wheels of justice could not be stopped, they could be slowed, and influence, threats and bribes, coupled with the general lack of appetite among the court (all of whom were picked from the noble classes, of course) to prosecute led to the very slow progress of the trial and her eventual acquittal. Well, really: who was going to advocate for slaves against a wealthy and powerful noblewoman? And who would benefit from her conviction? It wasn’t as if reparations would be paid to the families of the slaves, now was it? I think the prevailing attitude was, they’re dead, **** them, let’s move on. And where’s my big bag of cash, senora?

In 1654 her husband died (nothing is said about whether she was responsible, but it’s unlikely as she seemed to at least hold him in high regard even if she did not love him) and a new trial was opened in 1662, but she was by now quite ill and getting worse, and died in 1665 at the age of 61, never having atoned for, nor even been brought to justice for her crimes. As a sort of attempt to maybe buy history (and God) off, she left money in her will for masses to be said for the souls of her loved ones - including “those who had lived under her charge”, which perhaps might have been a tacit admission of her crimes, though far too late for her to be punished by any earthly power - and the establishment of chaplaincies. Despite this, she threw a dark and threatening figure across history and her assets were auctioned off after her death, her properties abandoned as nobody wanted anything to do with her. She remains a figure of hatred and anger in Chile, the symbol of the abusive woman and of the oppression of Spain on the country.

Killer: Giulia Tofana
Epithet:
Type: Profit
Nationality: Italian (at the time, The Papal States)
Hunting ground(s): Naples, Rome
Years active: 1633 - 1651
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any): n/a
Victims: + 600 (admitted during torture)
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Papal authorities
Fate: Executed

Another case, it would seem, of like mother like daughter, Tofana’s mother was executed for having killed, possibly poisoned her husband, Giulia’s father, who it is also said was abusive to her, his daughter. She was also something of a dark entrepreneur, perfecting a poison herself (or the formula may have been passed down to her by her mother) and selling it to women who wished to escape abusive marriages. Divorce was not allowed, nor even envisioned, at this time, and any women who married - often against her will, at the wishes of her father - an abusive man had no option and no legal recourse but to stay with him. Therefore a large percentage of women took the only way out left to them, and began poisoning their husbands to escape from their marriage.

The poison was slow-acting, so as not to raise suspicions, and acting of another kind was something else she tutored her clients in: how to cry and grieve the loss, how to demand a coroner’s examination, so as to remove the possibility in the authorities’ minds that they might have been responsible. As Chambers’ Journal noted, in 1890, “To save her fair fame, the wife would demand a post-mortem examination. Result, nothing — except that the woman was able to pose as a slandered innocent, and then it would be remembered that her husband died without either pain, inflammation, fever, or spasms. If, after this, the woman within a year or two formed a new connection, nobody could blame her.”

Tofana disguised it as a cosmetic product, or a devotional healing oil, so that it could be hidden in plain sight without arousing any concerns. It was potent, only four drops needed to begin the process of death, tasteless, colourless and odourless, and over a course of days or weeks the victim would slowly pass away, in considerable discomfort and pain. The first dose caused weakness, exhaustion but was nothing compared to what the victim could expect on intake of the second: stomach pains, terrible thirst, vomiting and even dysentery.

For fifty years she plied her deadly trade, never suspected, and it was in fact one of her many customers whose betrayal led to her eventual arrest. The woman, who had bought her concoction, Aqua Tofana, a mixture of lead, arsenic and belladonna to poison her husband had second thoughts, and having already used the stuff in his soup had to warn him not to eat it. He of course became suspicious - perhaps due to the large amount of husbands dying before their wives at the time, or maybe he just really wanted that soup - and questioned her, probably using one of nature’s best-known and trusted inquisitors, the fist and the open hand, until she admitted she had poisoned his food.

He then turned her over to the authorities, who wrung from her - possibly under torture - the name of her supplier. A warrant was issued then for Tofana’s arrest, but she was so popular that she was warned in advance and legged it to a church, where she claimed sanctuary, as in this most holy of cities, it was uniquely qualified to do. Nobody would think ordinarily of breaching the sanctity of a church, even in pursuit of an accused murderer, as it was recognised as a place of sanctuary, a place apart from all others where those seeking the church’s protection could hide in safety.

This did not last long, however, as a rumour she had poisoned the town’s water supply led to her arrest, and under torture she confessed to over 600 murders in Rome. There may have been more, or less, as torture is always an unreliable way to get to the truth. But nevertheless she was certainly guilty of multiple murders and was executed, along with her daughter, and later some accomplices and customers in 1659. As a final insult, her body was thrown over the wall of the church that had provided her sanctuary.

Killer: Jasper Hanebuth
Epithet:
Type: Hunter
Nationality: German
Hunting ground(s): The Eilenriede Forest, Hannover
Years active: - 1652
Weapon(s) used: Gun, possibly rifle/musket
Signature (if any):
Victims: 19
Survivors: 0
Caught by: German police
Fate: Broken on the wheel

A highwayman who didn’t particularly care whether you stood and delivered or not, Hanebuth had been a mercenary in the Thirty Years War, and though a German had fought for Sweden. During his service it is said he performed many robberies and murders - to be fair, the war was so vicious and went on for so long that it seems everyone was doing the same thing - and when he was discharged at the end of his service, he teamed up with other ex-soldiers to prey upon, well, anyone they could really. Hanebuth, of low birth (his father had been a peasant in Hannover) was known to have a violent temper and would kill people for no reason, though if there was cash or valuables to be had, he’d have them too, danke schon!

It was his change of occupation that did for him in the end. He became a horse dealer, and acquired his stock through what would be called in the Old West two hundred years later rustling, i.e., he stole them from others. When he was reported by one horse owner for having stolen his livestock, he was taken into custody and tortured. But here’s where I feel it gets a little weird. He confessed, not only to the theft of the horse(s), but to nineteen murders also. Now, certainly, under torture a man or woman will say anything to stop the pain, but usually this is in response to questions from the torturer. I’m not certain Hanebuth was suspected of any murders (maybe he was, it doesn’t make it clear) but if not, why then venture information which was sure to get him executed? I don’t know what the penalty for horse theft was back in the seventeenth century, but I doubt it was death. Maybe it was; they executed people back then for crimes we would today consider quite trivial. Either way, by confessing to the murders he had signed his own death warrant, and there seemed no need. Though if he was suspected, of course, the interrogators may have demanded he confess.

Thinking about it, maybe it was this way: he was suspected of the murders but there was no proof (possibly due to his modus operandi of often shooting his victims from a distance, therefore being able to sod off before the law arrived, or any witnesses turned up?) and the cops had been waiting to catch him. When the horse rustling charge was made against him, perhaps they saw their opportunity to force him to admit to the killings, and so used the torture session as a means to gain a confession and so make him pay for all those murders. Oh wait: now I read he wasn’t tortured, just threatened with it, and confessed. Pussy.

All speculation, but in any event he was thrown in jail for a year (why, I don’t know; I doubt such things as appeal procedures existed back then, and if they did, a common soldier would surely have little recourse to them) after which he was taken out and broken on the wheel. They didn’t hang around (no pun intended) in those days. Notwithstanding the year in prison, he was sentenced on February 3-4 1653 and executed on February 4. Swift justice. Sort of.

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Killer: Catherine Monvoisin
Epithet: La Voisin
Type: Comfort
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Paris
Years active: 1650 -1659
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 1,000 - 2,500
Survivors: 0
Caught by: French police
Fate: Burned at the stake

While it might be said that many female serial killers could be described as witches, this actually was one, or an aspirant anyway. Originally a fortune teller, she took to midwifery - and through this, the provision of illegal abortions - when her husband’s business went belly-up. She began expanding her business, making and selling supposedly magical artifacts, arranging black masses and eventually selling both aphrodisiacs and poison to her clientele. She was very successful, and could count the great and good of France among her customers - nobility and the aristocracy, the rich and the powerful - as her fame spread. Married with four children, she took lovers and, in a chilling foreshadowing of her eventual destiny, one of them was an executioner.

If you consider abortion to be murder, then she certainly murdered a whole ton of unborn fetuses, as she provided abortion services, again to the rich and powerful, but as the king himself, Louis XIV, ordered the investigation into her abortion business to be dropped (he had surely availed of it more than once himself, or had powerful friends who had, and evidently did not wish to kick off a scandal in which he might be implicated - more on that later) the figure is lost to history, known only to Catherine herself, if she even kept count, which is doubtful. It was probably just a job to her, and whether she considered the fetuses as living beings or not really matters little, as we will never know how many she terminated.

Using a mixture of superstition and religious belief, she purported to help her clients achieve their dreams - usually that their husband or wife would die so that they could marry, or that someone would fall in love with them - by selling alleged magical artifacts, love potions and arranging black masses, where the supplicant could pray to Satan for their wish to come true. It’s said the blood of babies was used in her ceremonies, but it’s not made clear whether the baby was killed during the black mass or whether it was already dead; perhaps a mixture of both. One of her most high-profile clients was Madame de Montespan, the king’s official mistress. This lady’s obsession with Louis XIV would lead to her convincing Catherine to poison the king himself, which in turn would lead to her own downfall.

Having lost the affection of the fickle monarch, de Montespan arranged for La Voisin to poison a petition which was to be given to the king, but this attempt failed due to his workload, and she returned the next day to try again. However the subsequent arrest of several fortune tellers who had also been identified as being in a network of poisoners led to her own arrest and she was taken into custody on March 12 1679. Though not tortured (probably for fear of the noble names she might let slip in an attempt to put an end to her suffering) she was allowed drink copiously. Being a known alcoholic, this served to loosen her tongue perhaps more easily than would pain, and she named several names, including many at court. Given that she did this, it seems odd then that torture was not used, since the same feared results were achieved. Anyway, that’s what happened.

She kept enough of her wits about her not to disclose her relationship with Mme. de Montespan, and especially her role in the attempted murder of the king, but did admit that there was a network of poisoners working in Paris (though she claimed not to belong to any, and tried to blame her contemporaries, such as Marie Bosse) - she was probably aware that Louis had issued an edict just after Christmas which instructed the entire poisoners ring be “exterminated by all methods regardless of the age, sex or rank” and knew she would receive no mercy if she was proven to belong to the cabal. In February she went on trial for witchcraft, and though some reports say she was tortured, others deny it, but in any event she was sentenced to burn at the stake. Oddly, if the torture did take place, it’s said to have done so after the verdict, which seems at best a little overkill and at worst pointless: they had secured a conviction, she was to burn, so what was the point of torture? Which conundrum makes it even less likely that it happened.

She remained defiant to the last, pushing away the priest who tried to attend her as she was dragged to the stake on February 22, and trying to kick away the straw piled up around it. Five months after her death her daughter revealed the link between her and Madame de Montespan, and the king, evidently realising the case was about to hit too close to home, sealed all testimony under a letter de cachet, which allowed him to close all proceedings and permanently imprison the remaining suspects.


Killer: Marie-Madeline d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers
Epithet:
Type: Comfort
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Paris
Years active: after 1670(ish)
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 3 known, probably up to 33 or even more
Survivors: 4 known
Caught by: Extradited under police warrant
Fate: Beheaded

Another French aristocrat, Marie-Madeleine became angry at her father when he had her lover, Godin de Sainte-Croix arrested and thrown in the Bastille. Her father had been scandalised at his daughter’s behaviour, worried that it would reflect on his social standing, but may have sealed his own doom by having Sainte-Croix imprisoned, as it appears to have been due to this time in the famous French prison that he gained his knowledge of poisons from a famous Italian master of the art known as Exiii. He then, on his release, set up an alchemy business in order to be able to purchase and use the poisons ostensibly required for his work. Marie then learned from him how to make and use poison, and began plotting her revenge. The fact that Sainte-Croix married another woman when he was let out of prison probably didn’t go down too well with the Marquise either, and he went onto her list of enemies.

Having learned the basics of how to make and administer the poison, it’s said (though not corroborated, and impossible for it to be) that she visited hospitals and tested out the poisons on sick patients, killing at least 30 of them without ever being caught. Her own servants also became living petri dishes for her foul experiments, but soon she was ready to forget about the dry runs and go for the real thing, and in, appropriately enough, 1666 she started poisoning her own father. It should perhaps be pointed out that, though the Marquise claimed later that she had been abused as a child, she never accused her father and he was believed to have been a loving parent, if strict. It seems like her poisoning him was nothing more than getting him back for humiliating her and her lover. It was not a quick death - poisonings seldom are, the point of using them being to simulate death by natural causes, as indeed was attributed to her father after his autopsy - and though she entrusted a servant in her father’s house to administer the poison originally, when she was invited by her father to visit and stay with him, she took charge of it herself, and was with him when he finally passed away.

On his death, she inherited some of his fortune, but this was not enough and so she decided to do away with both her brothers too, and claim their share of her father’s estate. Again she employed a servant - whom she engaged for the household - to do the deed, and though one of the brothers was suspicious he nevertheless succumbed, with his sibling, to his sister’s poisoning and died in 1670, his brother shortly afterwards. There were, however, suspicions about the deaths: how close together they had been, how soon after their father’s death had occurred, and probably also the monetary gain the only remaining member of the d’Aubray family now stood to achieve, but no real objections were raised and no accusation was made. The deaths were ruled as being from natural causes, and Marie raked in the cash.

Re-enter the story Godin de Sainte-Croix, who was feeling rather ill, possibly due to getting a snootful of his own poisons, possibly not, but in any rate he popped his clogs and left behind some pretty incriminating evidence; letters between him and the Marquise detailing their poisonings, promises from her to him of money he needed for debts, rather coincidentally made at the time her father first began to feel a little peaky and, oh yes: poisons. Suspicion began to grow again, particularly when the servant who had poisoned the brothers, hearing that the Commissary Picard (make it so!) had the box of effects in his possession hied him there to demand money he was owed by Sainte-Croix. Shown the incriminating letters he then hied himself the fuck out of there, but was quickly captured, question, tortured - during which time he implicated the Marquise in the plot - and was summarily executed for his part in the crimes. Although her whereabouts at this time were unknown, the Marquise was sentenced in absentia and a warrant issued for her arrest.

Said Marquise then went on the lam, heading to England where she evaded the authorities for several years, moving from place to place and living off money sent to her by her sister. I’m assuming that at this point there would not have been much if anything in the way of co-operation between whatever served as the English police and the French, and both countries being almost continually at war, there would have been little appetite for the one to ask for help for the other, and for the other to afford that help. Basically, I imagine the French would have been left to sort it out for themselves, and how that worked, jurisdiction-wise, I have no idea. Anyway, once her sister died the money ran out, and she had to keep moving to different countries to stay ahead of the pursuit, but was finally caught in Antwerp. Oh. It says here the Belgian authorities turned her in and she was extradited. So much for what I know then. But the Belgians were probably more friendly towards the French than the English were, being all Europeans together I guess. I’d still reckon they got little cooperation out of les Anglaise.

Oddly enough, and in a classic case of bad planning, she had in her possession a letter entitled “My Confessions”, which detailed her crimes, her affairs and the illegitimacy of three of her children, one of whom she had unsuccessfully attempted to poison, along with her sister (the same one who sent her money? I don’t know, but if so, Jesus!) and her husband. On the way back to France she tried to do away with herself, but these attempts were thwarted and she arrived back in her home country to face trial, where she tried somewhat lamely to utilise an early version of the fifth amendment, refusing to answer any questions and pretending she knew nothing about her crimes. Later she changed her tactics and blamed everything on Sainte-Croix (so much easier to blame the dead) but was tripped up when one of her other former lovers testified that she had admitted to him of the poisonings, and that further, she and Sainte-Croix had attempted to poison him. She was, to nobody’s surprise, found guilty, beheaded and her body burned.

The conviction and execution of the Marquise de Brinvillier was the catalyst that kicked off a massive investigation with culminated in what became known as the Affair of the Poisons, in which many other poisoners were caught, tortured and executed, and many nobles and even members of the royal house were implicated, lending the king finally to seal the case rather than have the dam gates burst and drown his court.

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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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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: Signature-free since April 2018