She Devils Around the World

by Sylvia Perrini

  The following day, Waltraud taught the nurses how to administer the right amount of morphine for a mercy killing. They saw it as an act of grace and felt no guilt. At first, the nurses killed only occasionally and only the most seriously ill patients, but by 1987, the deaths began to escalate. Now all four nurses were enjoying their new found sense of power.

  The nurses began to meet nightly in the bar and over drinks decide who their next patient to be terminated would be. They would joke about who was to get the next "ticket to God." Their killing had moved from compassion to sadism. To prevent questions about the amounts of morphine being used on the ward, they also used Rohypnol and Insulin. Within the hospital, rumors began to spread that there was a murderer on “Pavilion Five.” Consequently, Waltraud invented a new way of terminating the patients which she named the "water therapy". Many elderly patients suffer from fluid on the lungs and so her new barbaric treatment could not be detected if an autopsy was performed.

  The "water therapy" consisted of one of the nurses holding the selected victim down and holding their nose while Waltraud poured a jug of water down the patient’s throat. This would cause the lungs to fill with water, and the patient would drown in their bed. This was an excruciating, torturous, painful death for the patient but would be undiscoverable as murder.

  The nurses no longer made any pretence among themselves about mercy killings. They now handed out their "Tickets to God" for patients that had soiled their bed or just simply annoyed them. The four nurses distributed their tickets unhindered from 1983 to 1989.

  AFTER WORK

  One evening in early 1989, the four nurses met in the bar as normal and discussed their day’s work. This particular evening as they consumed more drinks, their voices and laughter got louder. A doctor at a nearby table sat in shock as he listened to the four nurses joking and laughing in minute detail about that day’s “ticket winner” who had suffered enormous distress but, in their opinion, had well earned her fate.

  The doctor left the bar greatly distressed and went immediately to inform the police before alerting the hospital administrators. An investigation was immediately launched.

  The head doctor of “Pavilion Five” and the four nurses were suspended. A number of the patients’ bodies who had died on the ward were exhumed for pathological tests. Most of them had water in the lungs, but others had overdoses of morphine, insulin, or Rohypnol. The investigation lasted six weeks. At the end of it, all four nurses were arrested and charged with murder on the 7th of April, 1989.

  The nurses confessed collectively to forty-nine murders during a six year period. Waltraud, at first, accepted responsibility for thirty-nine of the murders but as she spaced the floors of her prison cell awaiting trial she scaled the number down to ten; all, she said, were carried out to put an end to the patient’s suffering.

  Following a month long trial, they were all found guilty on the 28th of March, 1991. Waltraud Wagner was found guilty of fifteen murders, seventeen attempted murders, and two charges of physical assault. She received a life sentence. Ilene Leidolf was found guilty of five of the murders and received a life sentence. Maria Gruber and Stephanija Mayer were found guilty of attempted murder and manslaughter. They both received fifteen year prison sentences.

  Many people believe that the true numbers murdered were in the hundreds.

  The state prosecutor at the end of the trial said:

  Maria Gruber and Stephanija Mayer were released from prison at the end of the 1990s for good behavior. They were issued with new identities.

  Waltraud Wagner and Ilene Leidolf were released from prison on the 7th of August 2008. Prior to their release, they were allowed to leave the prison for day trips to go to the hairdresser or for shopping. The daily outings were part of a prerelease program to help them to adjust to life outside of prison.

  Both Waltraud Wagner and Ilene Leidolf were given new identities by the Austrian government.

  CZECH REPUBLIC

  MARIE FIKACKOVA –SILENT BABIES

  Marie Fikáčková was born to poor German parents on September 9th, 1936 in Sušice, a beautiful, historic city in Czechoslovakia.

  In 1945 when World War II ended, many Germans living in Czechoslovakia suffered from Czech hostilities towards them. Marie’s family was one of them. Her father was a violent alcoholic who hated the Czechs with a passion. Neither was she close to her mother with whom she often quarreled. Her one brother was mentally handicapped. Despite Marie’s dysfunctional home life, she did well at school. In 1955, she successfully passed the Secondary Medical Service School examinations in Klatovy. She then found work as a nurse at the Sušice National Health Centre. In 1957, Marie was transferred to the Obstetrics department. Marie was liked and respected by her colleagues for being amiable and industrious and within a short amount of time was being considered for promotion to Head Nurse. There was, however, one insurmountable problem for Marie: much as she enjoyed her work in the maternity ward, she had an almost complete intolerance to the crying of new born babies. Many women take to babies easily, knowing how to hold the baby in a relaxed manner that soothes the fretful newborn. Marie was not such a woman.

  On February 23rd, 1960, two newborn baby girls died on the maternity ward of the Sušice National Health Centre. During the autopsies of the babies, it was found that both infants had numerous broken bones in their arms along with head trauma, which had caused their deaths.

  The authorities began to interview all of the staff involved in the care and delivery of the babies. On February 28th, 1960, twenty-four-year-old Marie was interviewed. The interview turned into a six hour interrogation as the authorities became uneasy at Marie’s answers to various questions.

  During the interview, she claimed that as a child she was tortured by her mentally ill brother and abused by her father. At midnight, after six hours of questioning, Marie finally admitted to killing the baby girls.

  She said,

  To Marie, it was a solution to child quieting: when using 'pressure point therapy' the baby never cried again. In explanation, she claimed that the crying babies affected her concentration, she hated crying babies, they put her off her work, and she was intent on getting a promotion. She said she would even hit her own child if it cried very often. Luckily, she didn’t have one. She claimed that she only felt this way when she was menstruating. Marie confessed in the interrogation to having murdered ten newborn babies since 1957. The hospital and the authorities kept quiet about Marie’s confessions to the other killings.

  At her trial, she was charged with only two murders as there was no evidence to the other killings she had claimed to have committed. At her trial, a number of people testified to her explosive personality. Neighbor’s testified that she terrorized her mentally handicapped brother regularly and that she possessed a violent streak.

  On October 6th, 1960, Marie Fikáčková was sentenced to death by hanging. Her lawyer appealed the sentence twice but on each occasion, the appeals were denied.

  The execution took place early in the morning of April 13th, 1961 in Pankrác prison.

  Marie Fikáčková’s trial and execution were kept secret in communist-occupied Czechoslovakia, the government not wishing its citizens or foreigners to know that under their regime such crimes occurred.

  Following the collapse of the communist government in 1996, many secret files were uncovered, one of which was Marie Fikáčková’s. TV Nova, the Czech commercial television station, broadcast the story on January 4th, 2007.

  FRANCE

  MARQUISE MARIE BRINVILLIERS

  Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray was born in 1630, the eldest of five children of Antoine Dreux d'Aubray. He was an exceedingly important man in French society, holding many high ranking posts as well as belonging to the legal group of magistracy, which retained much prestige at the time in French society. Marie was reputedly exceedingly charming, highly intelligent, attractive with fashionably white skin, blue eyes, thick chestnut brown hair, and although not tal
l, quite voluptuous. There was talk that she was highly amoral, had her first sexual experience at the age of seven, had initiated her two brothers into sex, and had a chain of lovers before she married in 1651, at the age of twenty.

  It´s assumed that the marriage was most likely arranged between the d'Aubray family and the wealthy family of the Marquis de Brinvilliers. It was not an ideal marriage, and Marie quickly discovered that her new husband Antoine de Brinvilliers, Baron de Nourar, was a gambler and libertine. Soon after her marital life begun, bored by the lack of her husband’s attention, she took a lover by the name of Gaudin de Sainte Croix.

  Sainte Croix, a handsome young army officer, had been in the same regiment in 1659 as the Marquis de Brinvilliers, and they had become close friends. The Marquis de Brinvilliers tolerated the affair between his wife and his friend until it threatened his financial interests. Marie was concerned about her husband’s gambling and luxurious wanton lifestyle that was rapidly diminishing their joint matrimonial finances. She began considering, under Sainte-Croix's advice, to separate her finances from those of her husband’s. A public scandal began to unfold.

  Her family became concerned that the scandal would seriously affect the reputation of all the d'Aubray family negatively. Her brothers and her father, Antoine Dreux d' Aubray, begged her to end the affair with Sainte-Croix. However, despite this pressure from her family, Marie stubbornly refused and continued with the liaison.

  As a legal dignitary, Antoine Dreux d' Aubray, at his wit’s end over his daughter’s behavior, obtained a warrant for the arrest of Sainte-Croix and had him thrown into the Bastille: a fortress like prison in Paris for nearly a year. Little did Marie’s father realize that this was to cost him his life. Neither Sainte-Croix nor Marie could forgive such a public humiliation.

  In jail, Sainte Croix befriended Exili, an expert Italian poisoner. Exili was no ordinary poisoner; he was a consummate artist in poisons. In his hands, murder became an intricate art. He taught Sainte Croix the names of all the powders and liquids he used, some of which worked slowly, so that the victim died after a long and painful sickness, while others had a violent and almost immediate effect. When Sainte-Croix left the Bastille after nearly a year's imprisonment, he too, was a master poisoner.

  On his release, he and Marie plotted to kill her father for revenge and his money. Sainte-Croix taught Marie all he had learned from Exili. Marie learned quickly. To be sure the poison would work successfully, and she would not be found out, Marie decided to test out her poisoning methods. She did this by performing charitable visits to the public hospital, Hotel de Dieu, to check that the poison would not show up in autopsies. Like many ladies of the Parisian nobility who volunteered to visit the ill in the hospital, Marie was allowed to wander around the wards undisturbed. Here Marie bestowed biscuits, sweets, and wine on her hapless patients, to which she had added varying proportion of her poisons. They inevitably died soon afterwards.

  When Marie was satisfied with her skills, she went home in 1666 to stay with her father. He became ill shortly afterwards and was dead within eight months. The autopsy stated that Antoine d'Aubray had died of natural causes. In 1670, she turned her attentions to her two brother’s Antoine and Francois d'Aubray. They too died, and the autopsies stated that they had died of "malignant humor."

  Marie Brinvilliers became an extremely wealthy woman.

  In 1673, Sainte Croix died a mysterious death. When the police were searching through his papers, a series of letters detailing Maria’s poisoning exploits were discovered. In 1675, she fled to Holland and Germany and took refuge in a convent. Unable to resist returning to France, she was arrested in 1676 in Liège, France.

  During her trial, Marie was refused the help of legal counsel and stood alone in her defense. In her defense speech, Marie Brinvilliers proclaimed her innocence. Her trial lasted for nearly three months.

  The Judges found her guilty and bestowed the following sentence:

  In France, at this time, if a defendant was found guilty, they could be tortured before being executed in order to acquire a confession or learn the identities of any accomplices. The French laws, in 1670, stipulated that the convicted felon could be tortured only once, for no more than eighty-five minutes. The prisoner could be subjected to ordinary torture or extraordinary torture. The Paris Court was eager to discover the names of any of her accomplices, from where she had obtained the poisons, and the ingredients in the poisons. It was decided that she would undergo water torture.

  Marie had been sentenced to ordinary torture which consisted of being forced to drink eight pints (3.6 litres) of water while stretched naked over a short stool positioned in the small of the back, while the hands and feet were tied and pulled in opposite directions. In this position, the water was then, by way of a leather funnel with a metal ring at its narrow end, strapped to the mouth, forced into the prisoner, distending the stomach almost to bursting, and nearly drowning the prisoner. For the extraordinary water torture, the prisoner was bent backward over an even higher stool, causing greater distension of the stomach, and forced to drink more water. The water would be fed to the prisoner at intervals and between each pause, the clerk would ask a question before administrating more water.

  The President Lamoignon of the Paris Parliament said,

  It was reported that during the torture Marie cried out, “You are tearing me to pieces!” She cried. “Good Lord have mercy on me!”

  However, Marie Brinvilliers finally confessed to having poisoned her father and her two brothers as well as having attempted to poison her sister-in law and her husband several times, and admitted to having used arsenic, vitriol, sulfuric acid, and venom of toad as poisons. However, she never revealed the name of any accomplices before falling into unconsciousness.

  She was revived in front of a large fire and given eggs and wine before being dressed in a white gown.

  On July 16, 1676, she was taken, barefooted, by tumbrel, an open cart, followed by the executioner, and her confessor to the Notre Dame Cathedral for the amende honorable.

  A dense crowd of people waited in front of the Cathedral screaming abuse. A commentator noted,

  “Never has Paris seen such crowds of people. Never has the city been so aroused, so intent on a spectacle."

  News of the trial reached as far as England and many esteemed people traveled from England to be present at Marie Brinvilliers’ execution. One Englishman wrote a letter to Sir Joseph Williamson, an English civil servant, about the event: "all Paris was to see her pass by, not forgetting our English ladies of the best quality here”.

  Marie, through swollen lips, frail and terrified, uttered her confession. Kneeling at the great doors of Notre Dame Cathedral, a noose about her neck, and a burning torch in her hand, she recited the amende honorable.

  “I admit that wickedly and for vengeance I poisoned my father and my brothers, and attempted to poison my sister-in-law, in order to possess myself of their property. For which I ask pardon of God, of the King and of Justice.”

  Marie was then removed to the Place de Grève, the execution site. Here she had to kneel for forty odd minutes while the crowd hurled insults at her, while she had her luxurious thick hair cut from her, and her eyes bandaged. Because Marie was of noble birth, she was not hanged on the gallows with the peasantry but beheaded with a sword by a black-masked executioner.

  Marie shouted at the crowd,

  Finally, the crowd went silent-and the last noise Marie heard was the horrifying hiss of the executioner’s blade.

  Her body was removed from the Place de Grève and burnt on a pile of wood.

  As Marie was related to some of the most influential people in France, the case caused a sensation. It had almost become the sole topic of conversation in Paris, to the exclusion even of the war France was then raging against the Dutch.

  THE TORTURE OF MARQUISE MARIE BRINVILLIERS

  Following the execution of Marie Brinvilliers, a great deal of interest was aroused in France as t
o the use of poisons.

  Primi Visconti, columnist and historian of life at the court of King Louis XIV, reflected, "Lots of people who knew nothing about poisoning started to learn all about it ...and it's different here in France: elsewhere people use it to take revenge on their enemies. But here they use it against their father or mother ...or to arrange a new marriage for themselves."

  Following Marie Brinvilliers’ trial and execution, all of France was taken with a poisoning frenzy. No one knew whom to suspect: aristocrats, nobility, middle class, lower-class, men, and women were all capable of being a poisoner.

  JEANNE WEBER

  Jeanne Weber was born on the 7th of October in 1874 in France, the daughter of a poor Normandy fisherman. She began her working life in 1889, at the age of fourteen, as a maidservant and worked hard, though she soon realized that domestic service was a tedious task. She gave it up and began living an itinerant life working throughout France.

  In 1893, she arrived in Paris and worked at various menial jobs. Here, she met and married Marcel Webster, with whom she had three children: two girls and a boy. The two of them drank heavily, using alcohol as a buffer against poverty. When both her young daughters died, Jeanne was devastated. She turned to drink even more.

  When two young boys who were in her care died, no one commented as infant mortality among the poor was high. There was more concern shortly, however, when Jeanne was minding the two daughters of Marcel’s brother, Pierre Weber. A neighbor noticed one of them, Georgette, having a fit on Jeanne’s lap. The neighbor questioned Jeanne and was told that everything was fine. She left but an hour later Jeanne reported that the fit had recurred, and the child was dead. The examining doctor ignored bruises on the neck. Nine days later, Jeanne was asked to babysit again for the other child, Suzanne. She too died.