Read Online The Serial Killer Files by Harold Schechter - Free Book Online
Authors: Harold Schechter
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exhumations followed, all with the same result.
Arrested in 1950, Marie first confessed, then recanted and hired the best lawyers money could buy. Her legal dream team did its job. She was brought to trial three times: in 1952, 1954, and 1961. The first two
proceedings ended in mistrials, the third with her acquittal. In France, her case is considered to be the
“perfect crime.”
Deadlier Than the Male
“The female of the species is more deadly than the male,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. Anyone who doubts that female psychopaths can be as lethal as any man should consider the following cases: Marie de Brinvilliers (1630–1676)
The spoiled, sexually promiscuous daughter of a prominent Parisian family, Marie murdered her father, two brothers, and as many as fifty other victims with a poison that she secretly tested on unwary patients at a Parisian pauper hospital. In July 1676, she was publicly beheaded for her crimes in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The execution of Marie de Brinvilliers
Anna Zanzwiger (1760–1811)
Born in Nuremburg, Germany, Anna grew to be a profoundly unattractive woman, and was said to resemble a toad. In her forties—after a life of hardship and disappointment, including a miserable marriage to an abusive alcoholic that ended when he drank himself to death—she hired herself out as a housemaid to a succession of well-to-do men, hoping that one would become so dependent on her domestic skills that he would marry her. Unfortunately, each of her prospective mates was either already married or engaged. Zanzwiger attempted to solve this problem by murdering the women with arsenic.
She also killed one of her employers for spite and poisoned the food of at least a dozen other people—including an infant to whom she gave a teething biscuit dipped in arsenic-laced milk. By the time of her arrest in 1811, the act of poisoning had grown to be an uncontrollable passion. She was beheaded in July of the same year. Her body was then lashed to a wagon wheel and displayed in public.
It is perhaps better for the community that I should die, as it would be impossible for me to stop poisoning people.
—Anna Zanzwiger, at her sentencing
Gesina Gottfried (1798–1828)
A native of Bremen, Germany, the beautiful, blond Gesina was a classic psychopath, who experienced supreme ecstasy from watching people die and was, by her own admission, “born without a conscience.”
During a ten-year span, she poisoned sixteen people, including her three husbands, her two young sons, her parents, a brother, an old friend, and the wife and five children of an employer named Rumf.
Arrested in March 1828, after Rumf grew suspicious, she displayed not the slightest trace of remorse.
On the contrary, she boasted of her crimes. “I was born without conscience,” she declared, “which allowed me to live without fear.” Convicted of six counts of murder, she was beheaded in 1828.
Hélène Jegado (c. 1803–1851)
During her thirty-year career as a a domestic servant in villages throughout Brittany, France, Jegado murdered as many as twenty-seven people with no motive other than the sheer pleasure of killing.
Wielding arsenic as her weapon, she poisoned men, women, and children. Arrested after killing off another servant in the household of a university professor, she staunchly maintained her innocence, denying all responsibility for the long string of corpses she had left in her wake. Wherever she went, she tearfully insisted, people just happened to die. The evidence against her, however, was overwhelming.
She was guillotined in 1851.
Mary Ann Cotton (1832–1873)
One of the most prolific serial killers in English history, Mary murdered an estimated twenty-three people in a twelve-year period. Among her victims were her three husbands, ten children, five stepchildren, a sister-in-law, and an unwanted suitor. Most of the deaths were attributed to “gastric fever” until an autopsy on her seven-year-old stepson
Arrested in 1950, Marie first confessed, then recanted and hired the best lawyers money could buy. Her legal dream team did its job. She was brought to trial three times: in 1952, 1954, and 1961. The first two
proceedings ended in mistrials, the third with her acquittal. In France, her case is considered to be the
“perfect crime.”
Deadlier Than the Male
“The female of the species is more deadly than the male,” wrote Rudyard Kipling. Anyone who doubts that female psychopaths can be as lethal as any man should consider the following cases: Marie de Brinvilliers (1630–1676)
The spoiled, sexually promiscuous daughter of a prominent Parisian family, Marie murdered her father, two brothers, and as many as fifty other victims with a poison that she secretly tested on unwary patients at a Parisian pauper hospital. In July 1676, she was publicly beheaded for her crimes in front of Notre Dame Cathedral.
The execution of Marie de Brinvilliers
Anna Zanzwiger (1760–1811)
Born in Nuremburg, Germany, Anna grew to be a profoundly unattractive woman, and was said to resemble a toad. In her forties—after a life of hardship and disappointment, including a miserable marriage to an abusive alcoholic that ended when he drank himself to death—she hired herself out as a housemaid to a succession of well-to-do men, hoping that one would become so dependent on her domestic skills that he would marry her. Unfortunately, each of her prospective mates was either already married or engaged. Zanzwiger attempted to solve this problem by murdering the women with arsenic.
She also killed one of her employers for spite and poisoned the food of at least a dozen other people—including an infant to whom she gave a teething biscuit dipped in arsenic-laced milk. By the time of her arrest in 1811, the act of poisoning had grown to be an uncontrollable passion. She was beheaded in July of the same year. Her body was then lashed to a wagon wheel and displayed in public.
It is perhaps better for the community that I should die, as it would be impossible for me to stop poisoning people.
—Anna Zanzwiger, at her sentencing
Gesina Gottfried (1798–1828)
A native of Bremen, Germany, the beautiful, blond Gesina was a classic psychopath, who experienced supreme ecstasy from watching people die and was, by her own admission, “born without a conscience.”
During a ten-year span, she poisoned sixteen people, including her three husbands, her two young sons, her parents, a brother, an old friend, and the wife and five children of an employer named Rumf.
Arrested in March 1828, after Rumf grew suspicious, she displayed not the slightest trace of remorse.
On the contrary, she boasted of her crimes. “I was born without conscience,” she declared, “which allowed me to live without fear.” Convicted of six counts of murder, she was beheaded in 1828.
Hélène Jegado (c. 1803–1851)
During her thirty-year career as a a domestic servant in villages throughout Brittany, France, Jegado murdered as many as twenty-seven people with no motive other than the sheer pleasure of killing.
Wielding arsenic as her weapon, she poisoned men, women, and children. Arrested after killing off another servant in the household of a university professor, she staunchly maintained her innocence, denying all responsibility for the long string of corpses she had left in her wake. Wherever she went, she tearfully insisted, people just happened to die. The evidence against her, however, was overwhelming.
She was guillotined in 1851.
Mary Ann Cotton (1832–1873)
One of the most prolific serial killers in English history, Mary murdered an estimated twenty-three people in a twelve-year period. Among her victims were her three husbands, ten children, five stepchildren, a sister-in-law, and an unwanted suitor. Most of the deaths were attributed to “gastric fever” until an autopsy on her seven-year-old stepson
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