The story of Marie Margarethe Beier—known simply as Grete—could easily have come straight out of a penny dreadful. She was a woman just 5 feet tall and extremely cunning, whose love for a petty criminal proved to be her undoing. Grete was the daughter...
The youngest people in Irish history to be convicted of murder were two 14-year-old boys. They had brutally killed a young girl in what appeared to be a satanic ritual. Their victim was 14-year-old Anatasia Kriégel, known as Ana. Ana was born on February...
An intriguing criminal case, which had to be pieced together like a puzzle, unfolded on May 11, 2006. That night, a hemp plantation ready for harvest in Venray, north of the Dutch city of Venlo, was raided. A few hours later, the police discovered...
A criminal case as tricky as a puzzle took place in 1998. On November 23, around 9 a.m., a cyclist discovered the body of a young woman near the Dutch city of Venlo; she was covered in leaves from the local trees. The deceased...
One of the most notorious murder cases in Spanish criminal history involves the so-called Alcásser girls. These were three girls—Miriam García Iborra, Antonia Gómez Rodríguez, and Desirée Hernández Folch—from the Spanish village of Alcásser. These 14- to 15-year-old girls were abducted, brutally raped, tortured...
The worst female poisoner of all time, who is even listed in the Guinness Book of World Records, was Maria Catharina Swanenberg, better known as “Goeie Mie,” which means “Good Mia” in English. Good Mia is said to have been responsible for more than...
