Beverey ALLITT, a nurse suffering from the mental illness Munchausen's Syndrome by Proxy (a desire to kill or injure to get attention), was given 13 life sentences at Nottingham crown court in 1993 after being convicted of murdering four children and attacking nine others. [ReadOn]

A typical "Black Widow," Lyda Catherine AMBROSE left a trail of five dead husbands and lovers in her quest for insurance policy payoffs. Born in 1891, nothing is known about her early life until 1917 when she killed her first fiancee in Keytesville, Missouri.[ReadOn]

Patients put at risk by culture of staff secrets A NURSE at the centre of an inquiry into the deaths of two girls and two elderly women in a hospital intensive care unit was arrested at home yesterday. Kathleen Anne Atkinson, 47, was suspended a year ago from her ‡23,000-a-year post and dismissed two months later for alleged "gross misconduct". [ReadOn]

On Oct. 26, 1965, Indianapolis police were called to a rundown house on East New York Street where they found the body of 16-year-old Sylvia Likens on a bare mattress in an upstairs bedroom. [ReadOn]

Born October 23, 1932, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen. [ReadOn]

A sixteenth century Hungarian Countess who enjoyed bathing in blood. This deviant fawn of royalty believed that regular blood baths would halt the aging process. Estimates of the number of girls that were slaughtered in her 10 years of beauty treatments vary from 40 to as much as 600.

[Read on ]

Born in 1877, Marie Alexandrine had always been a beautiful woman; she never had any trouble attracting the men in her hometown of Liege, Belgium. When 33 years old, she wed Charles Becker, who considered himself fortunate to have won such a lovely woman. And for twenty years she was indeed a faithful wife. [ReadOn]

Bleached blonde barmaid Betty Lou Beets seemed to be very unlucky in her choice of husbands. Out of the five, four disappeared without trace and the other (number 3) left her after she planted a bullet in his back after a nasty fight. [ReadOn]

At 11-years-old, Mary bell is the youngest female killer of the Archives. A native of Newcastle, England, Mary was born in 1957. Her mother was an unwed, mentally disturbed woman who once gave the child to a stranger she met outside an abortion clinic. [ReadOn]

Lucy Quirina de Berk insisted she was innocent at her trial in The Hague for the deaths of thirteen people.  The forty-one-year-old nurse was charged with eighteen counts of murder and attempted murder at four different hospitals, and was suspected in as many as thirty cases.  [ReadOn]

Around Loudon, in France, she is remembered as the "Queen of Poisoners ," with thirteen victims charged against her name. She is a legend in the district -- for her crimes, and for the way in which she managed, finally, to cheat the executioner. [ReadOn]

The publicityseeking merry widow Elfriede "Sugar" Blauensteiner had 2 obsessions: Gambling and a vivid interest in pharmacy.
Her last victim, retired and wealthy Alois Pichler (77) answered her personal ad in 1995 - and survived the Black Widow´s care just 5 weeks. [Read on ]

Early in 1977, nurses employed at the public hospital in picturesque Wetteren, Belgium, began comparing notes on curious events in the 38-bed geriatric ward. For openers, the death rate had increased dramatically in recent months, with twenty-one patients lost in the span of a year. [ReadOn]

38 year old Mary Ann Britland suffered at Strangeways, for poisoning Mary Dixon, becoming the first woman to be hanged there. She had also poisoned her husband and daughter as she was having an affair with Mary Dixon's husband - although he was apparently completely unaware of her criminal intentions.

Dubbed "The Black Widow" for preying on her family and leaving a dead husband, boyfriend and son in her trail, Judy Buenoano was executed on Florida's temperamental Old Sparky on March 30, 1998. [ReadOn]

Ada CHARD-WILLIAMS (*1876) was hanged March 08, 1900 in London´s Newgate Prison. Thus she was the last woman to be executed here. After 1900 women were executed in women´s prison Holloway. [ReadOn]

A native of Cyprus, born in 1900, Styllou Christofi was tried, in 1925, on a charge of murdering her mother-in-law by ramming a lighted torch down the old woman's throat. She persuaded a jury of her innocence and was released, but her problems with in-laws were not at an end. In 1953, Christofi went to live with her son and his German wife of fifteen years in Hampstead, England. [ReadOn]

On May 1, 1922, police in Cleveland jailed a local woman on suspicion of poisoning her husband for the sum of $ 11,000 in life insurance. Announcing her arrest the next day, prosecutor Edward Stanton told reporters that the suspect had been married five times, divorcing her first two husbands, after which the next three died in mysterious circumstances. [ReadOn]

Cindy COLLIER und Shirley WOLF were 15 and 14 years old, when they startet prowling condominiums in California in 1983. They knocked at doors of randomly chosen victims, to gain admittance under a pretext. An elderly woman opened and chatted with them unsuspectingly, while the two girls planned to steal the lady´s car.[ReadOn]

Some people collect stamps; others postcards. Bordello Madame Eva Coo collected insurance policies on her friends, colleagues and employees. One employee in particular, Harry Wright, a slow witted handyman had been taken under Eva's wing when his mother died at her request. [ReadOn]

A mother, wife and nursemaid, Mary Anne COTTON had all the credentials for a respectable place in Victorian society. Beneath her caring exterior, however, she was a cold, calculating serial killer.[ReadOn]

Also known as Jimmie Knorr. A mother of five, Theresa/Jimmie was in the habit of killing her daughters once they reached puberty. She first shot her oldest daughter, but the poor girl survived. After a few weeks, Theresa tried to remove the bullet by herself. The amateur surgery left the hapless girl near death. [ReadOn]

The defendant was a 21 year old mother of four, convicted of murdering her first two by drowning them in the bathtub at her home on Rhonda Drive and Riddle Street in Jeffersonville. The drownings were committed at different times, 1 1/2 years apart, when each victim was approximately 14 months old. [ReadOn]

Minnie Dean has the dubious honor of being the only woman to be legally hanged in New Zealand.
Christened Williamina Dean, she was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1847. She married and had two daughters. What happened to her daughters is unknown. In 1868 she emigrated to New Zealand and lived in Southland with an old woman she called Granny Kelly. [ReadOn]

During her trial in 1955, the press tagged 50 year-old Nannie DOSS "The Giggling Granny". Despite her amiable demeanour, DOSS´ crimes were no laughing matter. She was found to have killed four husbands in four states; Alabama, North Carolina, Kansas and Oklahoma - where she was finally convicted for murder.[ReadOn]

A self-styled witch, who made her living through the sale of charms and potions, Enriqueta was arrested by police in Barcelona, during March of 1912, on charges of abducting local children. Her most recent victim , a young girl named Angelita, was rescued alive from the witch's lair, appalling police with a tale of murder and cannibalism . [ReadOn]

A solid family background and religious training did not spare the second wife of Texas rancher J.D. Etheridge from pangs of jealousy. When they were married in the spring of 1912, she thought the wealthy widower admired her for herself. It soon became apparent though, that he was more concerned with finding someone who would cook his meals and clean his Iarge Bosque County home, northwest of Waco. [ReadOn]

Christine Falling was born at Perry, Florida, on March 12, 1963, the second child of a 65-year-old father and his 16-year-old wife. Reared in poverty, obese and dull-witted, she required regular doses of medication to control her epileptic seizures. [ReadOn]

55 year old hanged at Kirkdale prison, Liverpool by Bartholomew Binns, side by side with her sister, Margaret Higgins. Flanagan and Higgins were both convicted of the poisoning of 44 year old Higgin's husband, Thomas, for his life insurance. [ReadOn]

Kristen Gilbert, 33, worked on Ward C of the Veteran's Affairs Medical Center in Northampton, Massachusetts.  When she was there, it seemed that too many patients died from cardiac arrest.  In 1996, three nurses came forward to report their fear that there was a killer among them. [ReadOn]

Amy and James Archer opened Sister Amy's Nursing Home for the Elderly in 1901 in Newington, Connecticut, and quickly earned a reputation as genteel caretakers of New England's wealthy aged. Although neither Amy's or James' qualifications bespoke a background in medicine, their establishment offered the right therapies and tonics to keep its senior patients happy and comfortable. [ReadOn]

These two deadly sisters ran the bordello from hell in Guanajuato, Mexico. They recruited their prostitutes through help wanted adds and killed them when they stopped pleasing the clientele. Sometimes they even killed the johns who showed up to the brothel with big wads of cash.
After too many unexplained disappearances the cops raided the premises where they found the bodies of eleven males, eighty females, and several fetuses - obviously from illegal abortions.

It was in Walker, Michigan in 1987 where a pair of lesbians made death a sexual game.  Gwendolyn Gail Graham, 23, and Catherine May Wood, 24, worked together at the Alpine Manor Nursing Home.  Graham was a nurse's aide and Wood was her immediate superior.  Wood had divorced and gained an enormous amount of weight, so she was hungry for a friend.  When she met Graham, they immediately hit it off and soon became lovers. [ReadOn]

America's first "black widow" of the 20th century was born Brynhild Paulsdatter Storset, on November 11, 1859, in the fishing hamlet of Selbu, on Norway's west coast. The daughter of an unsuccessful merchant, Brynhild immigrated to the United States in 1881; three years later, she settled in Chicago. [ReadOn]

The first woman to die in Ohio's electric chair , Anna Hahn was a German native, born in 1906, who immigrated to Cincinnati at age 21. There, she married a young telephone operator, briefly managing a bakery in Cincinnati's German district before she tired of the hours and set her sights on easy money. [ReadOn]

A native of Anniston, Alabama, Hilley was born in 1933 and seemed to enjoy a normal childhood. Married at 18, she was having marital problems nine years later when her second daughter -- Carol -- was born. Psychiatrists, applying hindsight, feel the birth may have somehow triggered a radical shift in Hilley's personality, resentment of the new child simmering over time, finally surfacing in a series of lethal attacks upon family members. [ReadOn]

Baby killer Waneta Hoyt, 52, died on August 13, 1998, of pancreatic cancer at Bedford Hills Correctional Facility in New York state, where she was serving a sentence of 75 years to life for smothering her five children from 1965 to 1971. [ReadOn]

Healthcare serial killers (now referred to as HCSKs or SHCKs) have become prominent in the media over the past decade, and yet around the world nurses are still killing patients: Vickie Dawn Jackson chapter continues advertisement * In July 2002, Vickie Dawn Jackson, 36, was indicted in Texas for four counts of murder at Nocona General Hospital.  [ReadOn]

Born in Brittany, France, in 1803, Helene once complained, "Wherever I go, people died." Sure they did. Because she enjoyed poisoning them. As a teenager, as she started her career as a domestic, she also started experimenting with poison. Eventually she wiped out the family of seven for whom she was working. [ReadOn]

Monday-morning quarterbacks in Georgia had a field day with the case of Martha Johnson, trying to explain how the murders of four children fell through the cracks of the criminal justice system. Homicide investigators blamed their failure on the suspects change of address, noting ruefully that different jurisdictions often fail to keep in touch. [ReadOn]

In February 1983, a special grand jury convened in San Antonio, Texas, investigating the "suspicious" deaths of 47 children at Bexar County's Medical Center Hospital over the past four years. A similar probe in neighboring Kerr County was focused upon the hospitalization of eight infants who developed respiratory problems during treatment at a local clinic. [ReadOn]

Claudette Kibble tötete 3 ihrer 5 Kinder über einen Zeitraum von 4 Jahren.
Sie behauptete in jedem der Fälle, ihre Kind wäre eines "natürlichen Todes" gestorben. 1995 gestand sie allerdings, 2 der Kinder ertränkt und eines erstickt zu haben.

Claudette Kibble wurde im Alter von 23 Jahren zu lebenslanger Haft verurteilt.

In New Orleans, the ghost tours always stop at a particular mansion in the midst of the French Quarter, on the corner of Royal and Governor Nicholls Streets.  The house had once been owned by socialites, a physician by the name of Lalaurie and his wife, Delphine. [ReadOn]

Born in 1922 at Worms, Germany, young Christa Ambros lost her mother to an asylum while still in her teens. Neglected by her father, she grew up wild and undisciplined, serving a term of probation on conviction for petty theft. [ReadOn]

A Texas native, Diana Lumbrera was seventeen years old when she married Lionel Garza in 1974. Their marriage was troubled almost from the start, but the quarreling Garzas made up frequently enough to produce three children in as many years. Daughter Melissa was born in 1975, Joanna in 1976, and their first son, Jose Lionel. in 1977. [ReadOn]

On July 25, 1998, Christine Malèvre, after attempting to kill herself, confessed to helping about 30 patients to die at François Quesnay Hospital in Mantes-la-Jolie on the outskirts of Paris. Since then nurse Malèvre, 29, has become a symbol for the growing civil movement in France in favour of joining The Netherlands in legalising euthanasia. [ReadOn]

Im Jahr 1909 lernte die damals zwölfjährige Martha Marek unter starker Patronanz ihrer Mutter den damals 62jährigen Pensionisten Moritz F. kennen. Er verfiel prompt den jugendlichen Reizen des anmutigen Mädchens, worauf er vom geschickt agierenden Team Mutter & Tochter wegen Vergewaltigung Minderjähriger erpreßt wurde. [ReadOn]

A 49-year-old waitress in Montgomery, Alabama, Martin confessed during March 1956 to the arsenic murders of her mother , two of her five husbands, and three of her own children. Husband number five had been more fortunate than his predecessors, surviving the dosage that left him paralyzed from the waist down, confined to a hospital in Biloxi, Mississippi. [ReadOn]

Blanche Taylor Moore of Alamance County, North Carolina, could not have fashioned herself as another Nannie Doss any better than if her predecessor came back to life herself. But, while Nannie was basically a congenial sort well, on the surface Blanche leaned towards the moody and grim. [ReadOn]

Nagyrev is a farming village on the River Tisza in Hungary, about sixty miles southeast of Budapest, near another town called Tiszakurt.  For a time, a community of killers flourished in these two places... thanks to the midwives.  [ReadOn]

Some people believed she was the unluckiest mother alive.  Life magazine even did a story on her in 1963 as the most famous bereaved mother in the country.  Marie Noe had one child after another, ten in all, and every single one of them died.  One was stillborn, one died right after birth, but the others had all seemed healthy.  [ReadOn]

A prolific poisoner who undertook her work as much from sympathy as for the minor fees she charged, Madame Popova was an advocate of women's liberation long before the cause was recognized. A native of Samara, Russia, she was so distressed by the travail of peasant wives held "captive" by their brutish husbands that she volunteered an inexpensive, lethal remedy. [ReadOn]

Born in 1959 and raised in an orphanage, Dorothea Puente claimed a total of four marriages, from which police were able to document two divorces. Her only child, a daughter, was put up for adoption at birth finally meeting her mother - whom she described as a woman with "no real personality" - in 1986. [ReadOn]

Awakened by a gunshot in the pre-dawn hours of November 2, 1911, John Miller scrambled out of bed and rushed to the apartment of his landlord, whence the sound had emanated. On arrival at the scene, he found John Quinn, the landlord, Iying in his bed, blood streaming from a fatal bullet wound. [ReadOn]

Annie Walters and Amelia Sach, the "Finchley Baby Farmers" became the first women to be hanged in the new women's prison at Holloway on the 3rd of February 1903 by William Billington and Henry Pierrepoint. Previously female executions in London had been carried out at Newgate prison. [ReadOn]

A hospital nurse accused of attempting to murder four elderly patients was motivated by a drive to free up beds, a court has heard.
Barbara Salisbury overstepped the line between humane nursing and callous dispatch when she tried to hasten their deaths, Chester Crown Court was told. [ReadOn]

A peculiar chapter of Colorado's criminal history was closed on March 9, 1971, with the announcement that Gloria Tannenbaum, suspect in two deaths and one disappearance, had died in the state mental hospital at Pueblo. [ReadOn]

A native of tiny Woodlawn, Illinois, the future death angel of Florida grew up overweight, myopic, and painfully shy. Her seven siblings included four brothers afflicted with muscular dystrophy, two of whom would die from the disease before Bobbie Sue reached her mid-thirties. [ReadOn]

For a devoted mother, Marybeth Tinning seemed to have no luck at all in raising children. In the thirteen years from 1972 to 1985, she lost nine infants in Schenectady, New York, and police would later charge that eight of those were slain deliberately, for motives no one has been able to articulate. [ReadOn]

Born Nora Kelly, in Boston, during 1854, Toppan lost her mother in infancy. Her father, a tailor, soon went insane, and was confined to an asylum after he was found in his shop, trying to stitch his own eyelids together. His four daughters lived briefly with their paternal grandmother, before they were relegated to a local orphanage. [ReadOn]

Megan Turner was eleven weeks old on January 11, 1980, when her mother rushed her to a hospital emergency ward in Christ-church, New Zealand. The child had inexplicably stopped breathing, Lise Turner said, and help arrived too late to save her life. Physicians could not specify a cause of death, and so they blamed the tragedy on SIDS--the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome that strikes certain newborns without warning or apparent cause. [ReadOn]

...

A classic "black widow," Maria Velten spent twenty years killing her loved ones, around Kempten, West Germany, before she was Snally arrested at age 67. Her father was the first to die, in 1963, followed by an elderly aunt in 1970. [ReadOn]

A "black widow" whose activities spanned the turn of the century, Louise Vermilyea came to grief when greed exceeded her discretion and she started reaching out to prey upon acquaintances, instead of relatives. [ReadOn]

Hanged by Tom and Albert Pierrepoint at Birmingham's Winson Green prison. 36 year old "nurse" Waddingham, as she called herself, used morphine to poison one of her elderly patients, 89 year old Mrs. Louisa Baguley and her daughter Ada Baguley, the motive being gain. Hanged 16/04/1936, by Tom and Albert Pierrepoint at Birmingham's Winson Green prison. 36 year old "nurse" Waddingham, as she called herself, used morphine to poison one of her elderly patients, 89 year old Mrs. Louisa Baguley and her daughter Ada Baguley, the motive being gain.

In 1989 Waltraud WAGNER and three auxiliary nurses of Vienna´s Lainz hospital confessed on killing more than 40 elderly patients. WAGNER, of "divine" patience and never weak, invented the method, the accomplices called "mouth care": [ReadOn]

No one in the small town of Gallitzin, Pennsylvania, gave much thought to Stella Williamson in life. Unmarried and reclusive, seldom speaking even to her closest neighbors, it was clear that Stella loved her privacy. [ReadOn]

Born in 1885, by age 40 Martha Wise was an impoverished widow, living alone on a farm near Medina, Ohio. She fell in love with Walter Johns, a man much younger than herself, but members of her family were blunt in their denunciation of the May-October romance, heaping ridicule on Martha for her "cradle-robbing." [ReadOn]

She has been heralded in tabloid headlines and on television talk shows as Americas first female serial killer. In fact, Aileen Wuornos was neither the first nor the worst, although she did display a curiously masculine tendency to prey on strangers of the opposite sex. [ReadOn]

Born Anna Schönleben in Nuremberg, Germany in 1760, Anna ZWANZIGER will live in infamy as Bavaria's premiere poisoner. Described as "ugly, stunted, without attraction of face, figure, speech... this misshapen woman whom some people likened to a toad," Anna's life veered astray after an unfortunate choice for a husband. [ReadOn]