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. But, after twenty years Marie had grown so bored with living with an unromantic laborer that she could scream. At 53 years old, she knew that the world offered much, much more. Her time, she determined, had come. So she laced Becker's tea with arsenic. In no time flat, she found herself what she thought was romance on two feet and married it in a fling. However, the new husband, Lambert Bayer, proved to be another dud. She poisoned him, too, after a month's span. Wedded bliss now a myth, Marie decided to spend the remainder of her life flinging and sinning and chasing heartthrobs, wherever they could be found. One problem remained. To move in the glamorous world she yearned, to meet the type of man she yearned, would require that she keep in step with the upper social class of Liege. As a widow of two middle-class bureaucrats, she had not inherited the kind of francs required to finance her dreams. The money she had received provided a practical toehold in a practical world, it even allowed her to open a small dress shop in a fashionable town square, but it fell short of fantasy. Marie contrived a solution. Through her store, which offered couture and formal women's wear, she had become acquainted with a number of society's grand dames. Immersing herself in their space, she soon developed a friendship with many of them, often being invited to soirees and teas laid out in palatial courtyards. She convinced quite a few of these women of class to set her up as their sole dressmaker. That was step one. Step two brought in the real money. The method, simple. Once invited over for a private fashion-session, during which tea and pastries would be served, Marie found an opportunity when the other wasn't looking to mix the elder's refreshments with a lethal dose of digitalis. (She carried a small vial of the liquid in her purse wherever she went.) As her host grabbed her banging chest, gasped for air, turned red and died, Marie helped herself to jewelry, cash and anything expensive she could stuff in her pockets. For more than a year from March, 1935 to September, 1936 she killed ten women, among them models of the Liege aristocracy. Marie had one big fault, that is, another big fault apart from the obvious. She talked incessantly and talked and talked. One thoughtless evening in late 1936 she admitted the source of her income to a friend she thought could be considered a confrere. Marie erred. The next morning, the gendarmes came knocking at her door. She accused her acquaintance of spreading lies and almost managed to get away with it, until the police searched her rooms and found more bejeweled trinkets and knick-knacks stuffed in drawers and in trunks than were on display at the Louvre. It was only due to the fact that Belgium rarely executed women that Marie Alexandrina Becker was saved from the gallows. She died serving a life sentence in prison.