Killer: Catherine Monvoisin
Epithet: La Voisin
Type: Comfort
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Paris
Years active: 1650 -1659
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 1,000 - 2,500
Survivors: 0
Caught by: French police
Fate: Burned at the stake
While it might be said that many female serial killers could be described as witches, this actually was one, or an aspirant anyway. Originally a fortune teller, she took to midwifery - and through this, the provision of illegal abortions - when her husband’s business went belly-up. She began expanding her business, making and selling supposedly magical artifacts, arranging black masses and eventually selling both aphrodisiacs and poison to her clientele. She was very successful, and could count the great and good of France among her customers - nobility and the aristocracy, the rich and the powerful - as her fame spread. Married with four children, she took lovers and, in a chilling foreshadowing of her eventual destiny, one of them was an executioner.
If you consider abortion to be murder, then she certainly murdered a whole ton of unborn fetuses, as she provided abortion services, again to the rich and powerful, but as the king himself, Louis XIV, ordered the investigation into her abortion business to be dropped (he had surely availed of it more than once himself, or had powerful friends who had, and evidently did not wish to kick off a scandal in which he might be implicated - more on that later) the figure is lost to history, known only to Catherine herself, if she even kept count, which is doubtful. It was probably just a job to her, and whether she considered the fetuses as living beings or not really matters little, as we will never know how many she terminated.
Using a mixture of superstition and religious belief, she purported to help her clients achieve their dreams - usually that their husband or wife would die so that they could marry, or that someone would fall in love with them - by selling alleged magical artifacts, love potions and arranging black masses, where the supplicant could pray to Satan for their wish to come true. It’s said the blood of babies was used in her ceremonies, but it’s not made clear whether the baby was killed during the black mass or whether it was already dead; perhaps a mixture of both. One of her most high-profile clients was Madame de Montespan, the king’s official mistress. This lady’s obsession with Louis XIV would lead to her convincing Catherine to poison the king himself, which in turn would lead to her own downfall.
Having lost the affection of the fickle monarch, de Montespan arranged for La Voisin to poison a petition which was to be given to the king, but this attempt failed due to his workload, and she returned the next day to try again. However the subsequent arrest of several fortune tellers who had also been identified as being in a network of poisoners led to her own arrest and she was taken into custody on March 12 1679. Though not tortured (probably for fear of the noble names she might let slip in an attempt to put an end to her suffering) she was allowed drink copiously. Being a known alcoholic, this served to loosen her tongue perhaps more easily than would pain, and she named several names, including many at court. Given that she did this, it seems odd then that torture was not used, since the same feared results were achieved. Anyway, that’s what happened.
She kept enough of her wits about her not to disclose her relationship with Mme. de Montespan, and especially her role in the attempted murder of the king, but did admit that there was a network of poisoners working in Paris (though she claimed not to belong to any, and tried to blame her contemporaries, such as Marie Bosse) - she was probably aware that Louis had issued an edict just after Christmas which instructed the entire poisoners ring be “exterminated by all methods regardless of the age, sex or rank” and knew she would receive no mercy if she was proven to belong to the cabal. In February she went on trial for witchcraft, and though some reports say she was tortured, others deny it, but in any event she was sentenced to burn at the stake. Oddly, if the torture did take place, it’s said to have done so after the verdict, which seems at best a little overkill and at worst pointless: they had secured a conviction, she was to burn, so what was the point of torture? Which conundrum makes it even less likely that it happened.
She remained defiant to the last, pushing away the priest who tried to attend her as she was dragged to the stake on February 22, and trying to kick away the straw piled up around it. Five months after her death her daughter revealed the link between her and Madame de Montespan, and the king, evidently realising the case was about to hit too close to home, sealed all testimony under a letter de cachet, which allowed him to close all proceedings and permanently imprison the remaining suspects.
Killer: Marie-Madeline d’Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers
Epithet:
Type: Comfort
Nationality: French
Hunting ground(s): Paris
Years active: after 1670(ish)
Weapon(s) used: Poison
Signature (if any):
Victims: 3 known, probably up to 33 or even more
Survivors: 4 known
Caught by: Extradited under police warrant
Fate: Beheaded
Another French aristocrat, Marie-Madeleine became angry at her father when he had her lover, Godin de Sainte-Croix arrested and thrown in the Bastille. Her father had been scandalised at his daughter’s behaviour, worried that it would reflect on his social standing, but may have sealed his own doom by having Sainte-Croix imprisoned, as it appears to have been due to this time in the famous French prison that he gained his knowledge of poisons from a famous Italian master of the art known as Exiii. He then, on his release, set up an alchemy business in order to be able to purchase and use the poisons ostensibly required for his work. Marie then learned from him how to make and use poison, and began plotting her revenge. The fact that Sainte-Croix married another woman when he was let out of prison probably didn’t go down too well with the Marquise either, and he went onto her list of enemies.
Having learned the basics of how to make and administer the poison, it’s said (though not corroborated, and impossible for it to be) that she visited hospitals and tested out the poisons on sick patients, killing at least 30 of them without ever being caught. Her own servants also became living petri dishes for her foul experiments, but soon she was ready to forget about the dry runs and go for the real thing, and in, appropriately enough, 1666 she started poisoning her own father. It should perhaps be pointed out that, though the Marquise claimed later that she had been abused as a child, she never accused her father and he was believed to have been a loving parent, if strict. It seems like her poisoning him was nothing more than getting him back for humiliating her and her lover. It was not a quick death - poisonings seldom are, the point of using them being to simulate death by natural causes, as indeed was attributed to her father after his autopsy - and though she entrusted a servant in her father’s house to administer the poison originally, when she was invited by her father to visit and stay with him, she took charge of it herself, and was with him when he finally passed away.
On his death, she inherited some of his fortune, but this was not enough and so she decided to do away with both her brothers too, and claim their share of her father’s estate. Again she employed a servant - whom she engaged for the household - to do the deed, and though one of the brothers was suspicious he nevertheless succumbed, with his sibling, to his sister’s poisoning and died in 1670, his brother shortly afterwards. There were, however, suspicions about the deaths: how close together they had been, how soon after their father’s death had occurred, and probably also the monetary gain the only remaining member of the d’Aubray family now stood to achieve, but no real objections were raised and no accusation was made. The deaths were ruled as being from natural causes, and Marie raked in the cash.
Re-enter the story Godin de Sainte-Croix, who was feeling rather ill, possibly due to getting a snootful of his own poisons, possibly not, but in any rate he popped his clogs and left behind some pretty incriminating evidence; letters between him and the Marquise detailing their poisonings, promises from her to him of money he needed for debts, rather coincidentally made at the time her father first began to feel a little peaky and, oh yes: poisons. Suspicion began to grow again, particularly when the servant who had poisoned the brothers, hearing that the Commissary Picard (make it so!) had the box of effects in his possession hied him there to demand money he was owed by Sainte-Croix. Shown the incriminating letters he then hied himself the f
uck out of there, but was quickly captured, question, tortured - during which time he implicated the Marquise in the plot - and was summarily executed for his part in the crimes. Although her whereabouts at this time were unknown, the Marquise was sentenced
in absentia and a warrant issued for her arrest.
Said Marquise then went on the lam, heading to England where she evaded the authorities for several years, moving from place to place and living off money sent to her by her sister. I’m assuming that at this point there would not have been much if anything in the way of co-operation between whatever served as the English police and the French, and both countries being almost continually at war, there would have been little appetite for the one to ask for help for the other, and for the other to afford that help. Basically, I imagine the French would have been left to sort it out for themselves, and how that worked, jurisdiction-wise, I have no idea. Anyway, once her sister died the money ran out, and she had to keep moving to different countries to stay ahead of the pursuit, but was finally caught in Antwerp. Oh. It says here the Belgian authorities turned her in and she was extradited. So much for what I know then. But the Belgians were probably more friendly towards the French than the English were, being all Europeans together I guess. I’d still reckon they got little cooperation out of
les Anglaise.
Oddly enough, and in a classic case of bad planning, she had in her possession a letter entitled “My Confessions”, which detailed her crimes, her affairs and the illegitimacy of three of her children, one of whom she had unsuccessfully attempted to poison, along with her sister (the same one who sent her money? I don’t know, but if so, Jesus!) and her husband. On the way back to France she tried to do away with herself, but these attempts were thwarted and she arrived back in her home country to face trial, where she tried somewhat lamely to utilise an early version of the fifth amendment, refusing to answer any questions and pretending she knew nothing about her crimes. Later she changed her tactics and blamed everything on Sainte-Croix (so much easier to blame the dead) but was tripped up when one of her other former lovers testified that she had admitted to him of the poisonings, and that further, she and Sainte-Croix had attempted to poison him. She was, to nobody’s surprise, found guilty, beheaded and her body burned.
The conviction and execution of the Marquise de Brinvillier was the catalyst that kicked off a massive investigation with culminated in what became known as the
Affair of the Poisons, in which many other poisoners were caught, tortured and executed, and many nobles and even members of the royal house were implicated, lending the king finally to seal the case rather than have the dam gates burst and drown his court.