Trollheart

Killer: Luísa de Jesus
Epithet: “The Foundling Wheel Killer”
Type: Unsure; I don't think she derived any profit so why she killed babies is unclear
Nationality: Portuguese
Hunting ground(s): Coimbra, Portugal
Years active: 1760 - 1762
Weapon(s) used: Hands presumably; these were babies after all. Wouldn’t take much to kill them.
Signature (if any):
Victims: 33 - 34
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Accident really; a young mother seeking adoption of her child stumbled over the grave of one of the many babies de Jesus had killed, and an investigation soon revealed over thirty tiny corpses.
Fate: Executed by garotte

While every serial killer has to be considered evil, there are levels and for me, the slaying of innocent children is the worst level you can sink to in this area. But the killing of defenceless babies trumps even that, and if it exists, there is surely a special place in Hell set aside for the people who commit this most heinous type of murder. Worse again when it’s a woman who is to blame, as was the case with Luísa de Jesus, the daughter of poor farmers who took to opening what was known as a foundling wheel in order to support herself. Similar to the idea, perhaps, of mothers leaving unwanted babies on the church steps, a foundling wheel (also called baby box or baby hatch) was a place where mothers who had just had babies they could not care for or feed (or just did not want) could leave their newborns in the hope of someone better suited adopting them. The owner of the wheel would then get a commission for every baby adopted.

The speed and regularity of adoptions made by de Jesus should maybe have tipped the authorities off, but it didn’t. I guess this was the mid-eighteenth century and such events were not given priority. As a result, de Jesus was able to adopt up to 34 babies, all of whom she killed, usually by strangulation, and buried either on her property or on the nearby mountain. It was in fact on this mountain that the grave of one of the babies was discovered by a charity worker, who brought it to the attention of the police. Investigating further, they found that the baby had been adopted by de Jesus. Quickly arrested and interrogated, she broke very quickly and confessed all. The corpses of 33 babies were found on her property or on the mountain, but she refused to divulge the fate of the final baby she had adopted, and its body was never found.

Like most right-thinking people, the courts in Portugal took an especially dim view of those who slew innocent children, and de Jesus’s fate was appropriate to her crimes, if anything could be. Despite her lawyer’s attempts to remove the death penalty from the table on the basis of her being underage (Portugal in the eighteenth century seems to have had a different idea of adulthood, as de Jesus was twenty-five years old, which still qualified her to be tried as a minor) she was tried as an adult. Having been paraded around in disgrace, her hands were cut off and she was burned with hot pokers, before she was finally garotted to death. Her body was burned and the ashes scattered.


Killer: Klaas Annink
Epithet: “Huttenkloas”
Type: Profit/Comfort
Nationality: Dutch
Hunting ground(s): Hengenvelde, Holland
Years active: 1770 - 1774
Weapon(s) used:
Signature (if any):
Victims: Anything up to 6 but only one confirmed
Survivors: 0
Caught by: Relative of one of the victims carrying out his own investigation
Fate: Executed (no details on method)

Keep it in the family might have been a good (or bad) motto for the Anninks, whose head, Klaas, led them in many suspected robberies and murders over a four-year period. His accomplices were his wife, Aarne Spanjer, and their son Jannes. There are a lot of holes in this story, and every other account I can find just parrots verbatim what Wiki says, so here are my problems with it, my unanswered questions. Every account mentions that Annink was held in “a specially-designed chair” for 114 days while he was tried. No account mentions what that special design was. Was it a torture device? Was it made to restrict his movements? Did it have a rat in a cage underneath who slowly ate his arse as the trial went on? No idea: no further information.

The trial is described on Wiki as “controversial”, but it doesn’t explain why they use that term. Was there no evidence? Well, the same article states that the merchant who was investigating him found “convincing evidence” his relative had been murdered by Annink and went to the authorities, who obviously were swayed enough by what he told or showed them to arrest the guy, so I doubt it was for lack of evidence. Did he not get a defence lawyer? Were lies told at the trial? Was it biased? Again, no idea: what we have about him, at least what I can find, is sketchy at best and no other websites or articles shed any further light on the outstanding points. It’s noted that he and his wife were executed (though it doesn’t make clear how - hanging? Beheading? Broken on the wheel?) but makes no mention of their son, Jannes, who were are told was part of the robbery gang. Was he acquitted? Did he sell out his parents? Did he mysteriously die before the trial, or make his escape? Not a clue. Very poor information.

Even his epithet, “Huttenkloas”, is not explained, and I’m about as fluent in Dutch as I am in Klingon. Ka’plah!

Killer: Thug Behram
Epithet: King of the Thugs
Type: Mission
Nationality: Indian
Hunting ground(s): Oudh, Northern India
Years active: 1790 - 1840
Weapon(s) used: A ceremonial sash or bandanna called the rumal
Signature (if any):
Victims: 125 confirmed but believed to be almost a thousand
Survivors: 0
Caught by: East India Company
Fate: Hanged

Believed to be India’s most prolific serial killer (in fact, look at his believed victims! Surely one of the world’s most prolific, although whether or not all those can be attributed to him personally is debatable) Behram was the leader of the Thuggee Cult in eighteenth century India. His gang were loyal followers of the Hindu god Kali, and seem to have believed the murders they carried out were as a tribute to her. Behram was known to use the ceremonial rumal, a yellow scarf or kerchief which had a medallion sewn into its middle. By positioning the rumal correctly he could force the medallion against the victim’s Adam’s apple, thereby crushing it and causing no doubt a painful death.

Religious or not, ceremonial or not, Behram’s group were not above robbing their victims. Thieves by trade, they looted the corpses and then had them thrown down a well. Interestingly it was not the Indian police who caught Behram, because at this time the East India Company was almost an independent government in India, and it was one of their officers who took on the task of bringing the King of the Thugs to swift and brutal justice. Also interestingly, Behram was seventy-five years old when he finally met his maker, which means his reign of terror was probably one of the longest in certainly early serial killer history, spanning a period of over fifty years.

Behram had a bad start in life, his killing beginning when he was at the tender age of ten years old and exacerbated when he met a twenty-five year old Thug, the same one in fact who would make him head of the cult and also eventually betray him to the authorities when he was himself captured, in order to save himself and his family. The Thuggee cult being devoted to Kali, women were never murdered by Behram or his men, as this was against their religion. So if the final total of 931 is to be believed, then perhaps it can be said that Thug Behram also holds the record for the most male victims of a serial killer, at least before 1850.

And yes, from the Thuggee Cult we get the word thug, used today to describe ruffians, villains and general ne’er-do-wells.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018