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Vera Renczi

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Vera Renczi
NationalityRomanian
Criminal penaltyLife imprisonment
Details
Killed35
WeaponsPoison (arsenic)

Vera Renczi (fl. 1925) was a Romanian serial killer who poisoned 35 individuals including her husbands, lovers, and one son, with arsenic during the 1920s.

Early life

Renczi was born in Bucharest, according to some reports in 1903, but it seems more likely that she was born in the late 19th century. Her mother died when she was 13 and she moved with her father to Yugoslavia where she attended a boarding school. By the age of fifteen, she had become increasingly unmanageable by her parents and had frequently run away from home with numerous boyfriends, many of whom were significantly older than she was. Early childhood friends described Renczi as having an almost pathological desire for constant male companionship and possessing a highly jealous and suspicious nature..

Shortly before the age of twenty, her first marriage was to a wealthy Austrian banker named Karl Schick many years her senior and she bore him a son named Lorenzo. Left at home daily while her older husband worked, she began to suspect that her husband was being unfaithful. One evening, in a jealous rage, Renczi poisoned his dinner wine with arsenic and began to tell family, friends, and neighbors that he had abandoned her and their son. After approximately a year of "mourning", she then declared that she had heard word of her supposedly estranged husband's death in a car accident..

Subsequent murders

Shortly after allegedly hearing the news of her first husband's "automobile accident" Renczi remarried, this time to a man nearer her own age. However, the relationship was a tumultuous one and Renczi was again plagued by the suspicion that her new husband was involved in extramarital affairs. After only months of marriage the man vanished and Renczi then told friends and family that he had abandoned her. After a year had passed, she then claimed to have received a letter from her husband proclaiming his intentions of leaving her forever. This would be her last marriage.

Although Renczi did not remarry, she spent the next several years carrying out a number of affairs, some clandestine with married men, and others openly. The men came from an array of backgrounds and social positions. All would vanish within months, weeks, and in some cases, even days after becoming romantically involved with her. When connected to men she was openly having an affair with, she would invariably concoct stories of them being "unfaithful" and having "abandoned her".

After the wife of one of Renczi's lovers followed him to Renczi's residence one evening and the man subsequently never returned home, the police were called to investigate his disappearance. Upon searching Renczi's wine cellar, they discovered 32 unburied, zinc-lined coffins. Each contained a male corpse in varying stages of decomposition. Renczi was arrested and taken into police custody where she confessed to having poisoned the 32 men with arsenic when she suspected they had been unfaithful to her or when she believed their interest in her was waning. She also confessed to the police that on occasion she liked to sit in her armchair amidst the coffins, surrounded by all of her former suitors..

Renczi also confessed to murdering her two husbands and her son Lorenzo. She told police that one day when her son had come to pay her a visit, he had accidentally discovered the coffins in her wine cellar and threatened to blackmail her and she subsequently poisoned him and disposed of his body. She also feared he would soon leave her to marry someone so she held him in her arms as he lay dying so she would be the last person to hug him..

She was convicted of 35 murders and sentenced to life imprisonment, where she subsequently died. Some have speculated that Renczi' story may have inspired Joseph Kesselring's play Arsenic and Old Lace, yet this is incorrect. It was the Amy Archer-Gilligan case which the playwright used as his model.

In 2005, The Discovery Channel's three-part series Deadly Women recounted the history of Renczi, portrayed through reenactments and commentaries from FBI agents and criminal profiler Candice DeLong and a forensic pathologist. Renczi was featured in the series' first episode titled "Obsession".

References

  1. William R. Cullen: Is Arsenic an Aphrodisiac?: The Sociochemistry of an Element. p. 194. ISBN 978-0-85404-363-7
  2. Michael D. Kelleher, C. L. Kelleher: Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer. p. 67. ISBN 978-0-440-23473-9
  3. The New Yorker, Vol. 74, p. 89
  4. Mary Ellen Snodgrass: Encyclopedia of kitchen history. 549. ISBN 978-1-57958-380-4
  5. ^ "Infamous Historical Poisoners", BBC.
  6. Crime Time (Romanian)
  7. ^ Newton, Michael. The Encylclopedia of Serial Killers. page 198. Checkmark Books. 2000. ISBN 0-8160-3979-8
  8. ^ CrimeLibrary.com
  9. Crime Time (Romanian)
  10. Crime Library: Black Widows: Veiled in Their Own Web of Darkness
  11. Deadly Women: Season 1, Episode 1 Obsession (8 Feb. 2005)

Further reading

  • Newton, Michael. The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers. pgs. 221-222. Facts on File, Incorporated. 2006. ISBN 0-8160-6987-5
  • Jones, Richard Glyn. The Mammoth Book of Women Who Kill. Transition Vendor. 2002. ISBN 0-7867-0953-7
  • Tolischus, O. B., “Woman Held For Killing 35 Persons—Slew Lovers and Preserved Bodies In Cans In Her Cellar”, syndicated (Universal Service), The Bee (Danville, Va.), May 22, 1925, p. 6 (the name is given as "Madame Renici" in this article)
  • Michael D. Kelleher, C. L. Kelleher: Murder Most Rare: The Female Serial Killer. p. 67. Dell. 1999. ISBN 0-440-23473-5
  • “A Real Female Bluebeard—Strange Tragedy of the Jealous Beauty and Her Thirty-five Unlucky Sweethearts”, American Weekly (San Antonio Light Sunday magazine section), Aug. 22, 1925, p. 5

External links

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