As the “Witch of the Super-Rich,” Catherine Monvoisin—also known as “La Voisin”—made her mark on 17th-century French criminal history. She exploited the intrigues and desires that prevailed at the court of the Sun King, Louis XIV, in Paris. This allowed Catherine to rise into...
Marie Besnard went down in French criminal history as the “Poisoner of Loudon,” accused of poisoning 12 people with arsenic. The murder trial, which lasted nearly 10 years, is considered one of the most gripping in the history of the French justice system. Marie,...
The sadistic serial killer Werner Kniesek went down in criminal history as one of Austria’s most dangerous criminals. Werner went off the rails at a young age, stealing, skipping school, and repeatedly running away from home. For these reasons, on June 5, 1962, his...
Sometimes life writes the craziest scripts, which seem so unbelievable that they defy rational explanation. This was also the case with the following crime story. On 16 September 1990, a man rang the police in the Danish port city of Randers, claiming to have...
Sometimes love turns to hate, or worse still, murder. This became a reality in the case of 22-year-old Franz Stockreiter. He simply could not come to terms with the break-up from his great love, Leopoldine R. For weeks after the split, he had been...
The Italian Countess Pia Bellentani caused a scandal in Italian high society. On 15 September 1948, at the legendary luxury hotel Villa d’Este on the western shore of Lake Como, she shot her lover, the Milanese industrial magnate Carlo Sacchi. But how could such...
