Lady Killers
Page 28
235The more marginalized a community: Bodó, Tiszazug, 179.
237Alcoholic beast: Ibid., 209.
237You do not have to torture yourself: Bodó, Béla, “The Poisoning Women of Tiszazug,” Journal of Family History 27, no. 1 (January 2002): 49.
238Sing, my boy: New York Times, “Murder by Wholesale.”
238Had to be dragged to the city hall: From novelist Zsigmond Móricz’s colorful coverage of the trial. Móricz, Zsigmond, Riportok, 1930–1935 (Budapest: Szépirodalmi Könyvkiadó, 1958). Reprinted in the appendices of Bodó, Tiszazug.
239They killed me, they sent me into my grave, they whom I loved most: Bodó, Tiszazug, 16, citing one of the dramatic editorials about the poisonings published in Hungarian newspapers.
239My husband was a very bad man: Bodó, Tiszazug, 211.
240There are many: Ibid., 235.
240Frenzy: Bodó, “The Poisoning Women,” 40.
241Slight greenish coloration: Bodó, Tiszazug, 90.
242Fatuous Eastern deity: Parascandola, King of Poisons, 39.
243Hurled insults: Kis Újság, August 9, 1929.
244With medieval methods: Bodó, Tiszazug, 13.
244Rural mystery: Ibid., 86.
244We are not murderesses: New York Times, “Murder by Wholesale.”
245Almost one-third of all peasant children in Hungary died: Bodó, Tiszazug, 193.
245Strange combination of causes: from Pesti Napló, a widely read “liberal-Jewish” paper, December 14, 1929.
245Strength and persistence of their passions: New York Times, “Murder by Wholesale.”
247Fairy tales: Bodó, Tiszazug, 118–9.
247Above her station: Ibid., 101.
247We, the women of Nagyrév: Ibid., 115.
246Rope: Ibid.
246Jaj, Jaj, Istenem, Istenem: Ibid., 123.
247They caused the greatest disappointment: Szolnoki Újság, December 15, 1929.
Chapter 14: Queen of Poisoners
251Queen of Poisoners: The Terrible Book of Poisons, Or the Life and Plots of the Marchioness of Brinvilliers (London: C. Elliot, 1860).
252They are monsters: Questions sur les empoisonneurs, BA, MS 2664, fol. 45 trans. in Mollenauer, Lynn Wood, Strange Revelations: Magic, Poison, and Sacrilege in Louis XIV’s France (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2007), 63, 159.
252Iced champagne: Stokes, Hugh, Madame De Brinvilliers and Her Times 1630–1676 (London: Bodley Head, 1912), 71.
252Not tall, but exceedingly well formed: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 65.
252Remarkable—bold, firm: Funck-Brentano, Frantz, and George Charles Maidment, Princes and Poisoners: Studies of the Court of Louis XIV (London: Duckworth and Co., 1901).
253Utter heartlessness: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, VI.
253That was simply unthinkable: Mollenauer, Strange Revelations, 12.
254Possessed superabundant vitality: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 66.
254Wax eloquent on anything: Ibid., 75.
254Demon who brought about the storm: Ibid., 76.
254Raged with the blind fury: Ibid., 80.
255One should never annoy anybody: Saint-Germain, Jacques, Madame De Brinvilliers: La Marquise Aux Poisons (Paris: Hachette, 1971), 123, 78.
255The surest and most common aid: Somerset, Anne, The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2004), 10.
255The skull of a man: Ibid., 12.
256Experimenting with poisons: Ibid., 40–41.
256Who would have dreamt: Funck-Brentano, Princes and Poisoners, 12–13.
257In such extreme peril: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 139.
257Gout: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 46.
258Poisonous waters: L’Estrange, Roger, “A Narrative of the Process Against Madam Brinvilliers; and of Her Condemnation and Execution, for Having Poisoned Her Father and Two Brothers, Translated Out of French,” London: Printed for Jonathan Edwyn at the Sign of the Three Roses in Ludgate-Street, July 17, 1676.
258Stinking and infected: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 47.
258Violent Passions: L’Estrange, “A Narrative of the Process.”
259[Marie] wished to marry Sainte-Croix: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 148.
259She’d bought from him at such a high price: Funck-Brentano, Princes and Poisoners, 22.
260Marie was trying to poison the girl: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 224.
260Ah, villain: Funck-Brentano, Princes and Poisoners, 30–31.
261My Confession: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 50.
261Mysterious vials and powders: Memoire Du Proces Extraordinaire Contre Madame D Brinvilliers . . . (Amsterdam: Boom, 1676).
261All that it contains: Stokes, Madame De Brinvilliers, 166.
261Sundry Curious Secrets: Dumas, Alexandre, Celebrated Crimes (New York: P. F. Collier and Son, 1910), vol. 8.
262Very eager and extraordinary manner of demanding it: L’Estrange, “A Narrative of the Process.”
262Selection of animals: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 52.
262Conjectures and strong presumptions: François Ravaission, Archives de la Bastille, VI, 396.
263Turkish fashion: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 24.
264I accuse myself: The confession appears in full in Saint-Germain, La Marquise Aux Poisons, 131–2.
264Childhood abuse: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 57.
265Full of inheritances: Ibid., 25.
265Ways to make away with people that displeased her: L’Estrange, “A Narrative of the Process.”
265I warned you many a time: Funck-Brentano, Princes and Poisoners, 68–69.
265Remorselessly dissected: Ibid., 74.
265Kept her head proudly erect: Pirot, Edme, and G. Roullier, La Marquise De Brinvilliers: Récit De Ses Derniers Moments (Paris: A. Lemerre, 1883).
266Could have burned her alive: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 62–63.
267O God, you tear me to pieces: Dumas, Celebrated Crimes.
268Her face contracted: Pirot, Récit De Ses Derniers Moments.
268I confess that, wickedly and for revenge: Dumas, Celebrated Crimes.
268Some people say that she hesitated: Pirot, Récit De Ses Derniers Moments.
267The affair of Mme de Brinvilliers is frightful: Bussy, Roger De Rabutin, and Ludovic Lalanne, Correspondance De Roger De Rabutin, Comte Bussy Avec Sa Famille Et Ses Amis (1666–1693) (Westmead, Farnborough, Hants., England: Gregg International, 1972).
268Well, it’s all over and done with: Somerset, The Affair of the Poisons, 32.
Conclusion
270Locating evil within selected individuals: Zimbardo, Philip G., “A Situationist Perspective on the Psychology of Evil,” in Miller, Arthur G., ed., The Social Psychology of Good and Evil (New York: Guilford Press, 2004).
270If only there were evil people: Solženicyn, Aleksandr, and Thomas P. Whitney, The Gulag Archipelago (New York: Harper and Row, 1975).
270To examine the mind of the serial killer: Oates, Joyce Carol, “I Had No Other Thrill or Happiness,” New York Review of Books, March 24, 1994.
271One in 90 million: Mallicoat, Stacy L. and Ireland, Connie Estrada, Women and Crime: The Essentials (Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2013), 236.
271Unlike the 1970s and 80s: Beam, Christopher, “Blood Loss: The Decline of the Serial Killer,” Slate, January 5, 2011, accessed February 6, 2017, slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/crime/2011/01/blood_loss.html.
271Are white: For example, see the stats gathered from the ongoing Radford University/FGCU Serial Killer Database.
P.S. Insights, Interviews & More . . .*
About the Author
* * *
First Person
About the Book
* * *
Q&A
Incomplete Data Set
A Playlist
Further Reading
* * *
More About These Women
Of General Interest
About the Author
TORI TELFER is a full-time freelance writer and editor whose work has appeared in Salon, Vice, Jezebel, The Awl, The Hairpin, Good magazine, and elsewhere. She has worked as a children’s magazine editor, an academic proofreader, a corporate semi-ghostwriter, a creative writing instructor, and a pro bono copywriter; she has also carried appetizers around and around the room at plenty of glittery catered affairs. Lady Killers is her first book.
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First Person
In 2011, here’s how I described my “reasons for writing” to a graduate school admissions committee:
“I can’t sleep in front of a dark television because I’m pretty sure the girl from The Ring will come crawling out of it with her wet black hair covering her face. Like Borges and Poe, I am terrified of seeing my face in a dark mirror. When I was twelve, my little sister crept into bed with me and I woke in the middle of the night with a quiet body beside me and I absolutely knew—for about forty seconds—that there was a murderer in my bed, holding a knife to his chest and waiting.”
This paragraph reveals someone both terrified of and obsessed with, well, being terrified, so I guess it’s not that surprising that I eventually ended up writing about murderesses. However, if you asked me my honest opinion, I would tell you that the root of this book was planted much further back than the year 2011. It was planted during the year in high school when I was obsessed with Nero—you know, the worst Roman emperor ever. I’ve always had a morbid sense of humor (which is ironic because I am a cowardly milksop who cannot bear horror movies), and in those days I was overflowing with Nero-related anecdotes that no one would listen to. For example, once he was so bored at a gladiator match that he tried to “spice things up” by throwing a brick at another audience member’s head and killing the poor man. He also apparently roamed the streets of Rome at night with a squadron of guards, looking for people to randomly kill and toss into the sewers. Anyway, one day I had to read an essay on Nero aloud to a small group of fellow students, and I started laughing so hard that I cried. No one else in the room moved a muscle. It was horribly awkward, and I felt, of course, like some sort of teenage pyschopath. But I really did enjoy writing that essay.
About the Book
Q&A
This is your first book. Did anything surprise you while you were working on it?
I was surprised by how much each chapter felt like a short story. Narrative arc, character development, cliff-hangers—it felt just like writing fiction, except I didn’t have to decide how each story ended. Which was nice. I was also surprised by how emotional I felt about a lot of these women. Many of them were real underdogs who had it terribly rough, and while that doesn’t excuse their crimes, it certainly adds pathos to their stories. And finally, I was surprised by how intimidating writing a nonfiction book can be. Dealing with thousands of little facts, trying not to get anything wrong while still telling a good story, hoping that your sources are reliable, wondering if there’s some major primary-source document sitting around on an ancient scroll that you could have discovered if you had just looked a little harder—there’s a whole new level of authorial anxiety there that you simply don’t encounter when building fictional worlds.
Why did you decide to approach such a serious topic in a humorous way?
Well, part of that is just my personality, for better or for worse. It’s hard for me to remain super-serious for long stretches of time. Plus, I have a fairly morbid sense of humor (see: Emperor Nero anecdote). But really, so many of the characters in this book are just that: characters. They are wild, unpredictable, grandiose, un-self-aware, and as such, they lend themselves to the occasional flash of humor or sarcasm. I think the bishop Ledrede is hilariously melodramatic. I think it’s pretty funny that Nannie killed her most boring husband by poisoning his boiled prunes. I mean: prunes! I like imagining the grandiose self-mythologizing that Marie and Sainte-Croix were doing in his laboratory: tapping their fingers together, rhapsodizing about how they were the greatest poisoners of all time, and so on. There’s an element of the ridiculous there.
I also believe that a bit of humor helps us understand things. Certain things. We’re trained to believe that, to be intellectual, we must use a very somber, very proper tone of voice while sitting around and discussing important Man-Things. But in my limited experience, being intellectually rigid is a surefire way to only see 50 percent of the picture. Of course, it’s important to be appropriate and not disrespectful; sometimes extreme seriousness is the only answer. But I think it’s easier to get inside the mind of these women if we aren’t clutching our pearls so hard that we strangle ourselves.
What was your favorite part of the process?
There is just nothing better than coming across a fact or a bit of cultural ephemera that’s better than anything you could invent in fiction. Like the fact that Russian serfs in Darya’s day were called “souls,” paired with the fact that Darya was hyper-religious? So poignant. It gives me this wonderful feeling of narrative completeness.
Who do you find scariest?
Probably Darya. She was the bloodiest, the most deranged, and unlike her sister-in-crime-and-wealth Erzsébet, there is a lot of rigorous documentation that indicates just how guilty she was. She was accused of killing 138 people! She was the dictator of her own blood-drenched plot of land, utterly powerful (for a while), utterly untouchable. Her story is just an unbelievable study of the consequences (and lack thereof) of the abuse of power.
Who do you find most confounding?
Mary Ann Cotton. What was her end goal? It’s endlessly unclear. Her actions were so repetitive that she flirts with madness. She’s the embodiment of the quote about how insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
Which lady killer would you most like to meet?
Well, Alice Kyteler definitely wouldn’t have killed me! Her eyes were firmly set on her next rich husband. She’d have no interest in murdering a female writer, unless said writer crossed her (which I would never do—I mean, I’ve read the paperwork, she was a dangerous one). So I’d love to go over to her Irish mansion, have some tea and soda bread, and talk about gender, politics, and the search for love. And then I’d toss in a casual, “So . . . you’re on your fourth marriage, and your husband’s nails are falling off. What’s the deal?”
Which chapter was the easiest to write? Which was the most difficult?
The chapter on Raya and Sakina was by far the most difficult. At first, I simply couldn’t find much about them, especially not in English. And what I found was full of facts, but contained very little about who the sisters were as people. I plugged the facts dutifully into a chapter format but still, the sisters felt completely unknowable. Thankfully, someone put me in touch with the scholar Nefertiti Takla who was completing her UCLA dissertation on the sisters, and she generously let me read the dissertation once it was finished. Some of the quotes she uncovered—like Sakina’s defiant final monologue—acted as these little sparks, so to speak, that made the sisters come alive. The endless frustration as a mostly monolingual writer is that you always feel like there’s some document in the primary-source language that you just can’t find, or some cultural nuance that you just don’t get. You really have to fling yourself on the expertise of others in that case, and make testy peace with the fact that you are perhaps never going to get the story perfectly right.
Lizzie Halliday’s chapter may have been the “easiest” because I had the opposite problem—gobs and gobs and gobs of information. The first draft of her chapter was twice as long as every other chapter in the book! There was just so much going on with her, since each one of her crimes was so different (a rarity in this book full of repetitious arsenic use!). And she was such a colorful (though tragic) character that it was hard to eliminate anecdotes about her. You know the Jac
k the Ripper rumor? Her jailer was partially responsible for that—he would gossip to the press like, Yeah, last night Lizzie basically admitted she was the Ripper! How weird is that? So irresponsible! But people were always trying to jump on the lady killer fame bandwagon.
If you could watch a movie about any one of these women, who would you choose, and who would you cast in the adaptation?
I think a movie about Marie, the Marquise de Brinvilliers, could be wonderfully positioned as an anti-Marie Antoinette piece: flouncing about Paris, bringing death in her wake. Marion Cotillard would be incredible in that role. But I would also love to watch a movie about Kate Bender. There’s so much narrative sex appeal in her story, what with themes of the West, and myth, and the American Dream. Could we cast Bonnie and Clyde–era Faye Dunaway?
About the Book
Incomplete Data Set
Various rumors, characters, and images pop up again and again in these chapters. And I’m not just talking about arsenic in a cup of hot tea! Here, some totally unscientific data I’ve compiled on these fourteen women. Use to fuel your conspiracy theories.
Number of times their crimes were connected to witchcraft: six. (Alice, Elizabeth, Erzsébet, Kate, Zsuzsanna from the Angel Makers, Tillie.)
Number of sympathetic pastoral figures: three. (Erzsébet’s pastor who worried about all the dead servant girls, Elizabeth’s pastor John Newton, and Marie’s confessor Edme Pirot.)
Number of defense lawyers who had a lot of feelings: two. (Lizzie’s lawyer George H. Carpenter wept when she was sentenced. Anna’s lawyer Joseph Hoodin said his job was one that nobody could handle.)