Flashcards: Poisoners

Vera Renczi (dubbed the Black Widow or Chatelaine of Berkerekul), of Romania or Hungary, reportedly confessed to poisoning 35 individuals—including her two husbands, multiple lovers, and her son—with arsenic during the 1920s.

Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite d'Aubray, Marquise de Brinvilliers (22 July 1630 – 17 July 1676) was a French aristocrat accused of three murders.

Judias "Judy" Buenoano (born Judias Welty, also known as Judias Goodyear, also known as Judias Morris) (April 4, 1943 – March 30, 1998), was a convicted murderer who was executed for the 1971 murder of her husband James Goodyear.

Pope Alexander VI, born Roderic Borgia (Valencian: Roderic Llançol i de Borja (Valencian pronunciation: [roðeˈɾiɡ ʎanˈsɔɫ i ðe ˈβɔɾdʒa], Spanish: Rodrigo Lanzol y de Borja [roˈðɾiɣo lanˈθol i ðe ˈβorxa]); 1 January 1431 – 18 August 1503), was Pope from 11 August 1492 until his death.

Margie Velma Barfield (née Margie Velma Bullard) (October 29, 1932 – November 2, 1984) was an American serial killer, convicted of one murder, but she eventually confessed to six murders.

Marie Besnard (15 August 1896 – 14 February 1980), also known as 'The Good Lady of Loudun', was an accused serial poisoner in the mid-20th century.

Jane Toppan aka (Jolly Jane) (1857–1938), born Honora Kelley, was an American serial killer.

Rhonda Bell Thomley Martin (1907 – October 11, 1957) was an American serial killer.

George Chapman (14 December 1865 – 7 April 1903) was a Polish serial killer known as the Borough Poisoner.

Masumi Hayashi (林 眞須美 Hayashi Masumi, born July 22, 1961) is a Japanese woman convicted of putting poison in a pot of curry being served at a 1998 summer festival in the Sonobe district of Wakayama, Wakayama, Japan.

Dr. Thomas Neill Cream (27 May 1850 – 15 November 1892), also known as the Lambeth Poisoner, was a Scottish-Canadian serial killer, who claimed his first proven victims in the United States and the rest in England, and possibly others in Canada and Scotland.

Maria Catherina Swanenburg (9 September 1839 in Leiden – 11 April 1915 in Gorinchem) was a Dutch serial killer, who murdered at least 27, and was suspected of killing more than 90 people.

Janie Lou Gibbs (December 25, 1932 – February 7, 2010) was an American serial killer from Cordele, Georgia, who killed her three sons, a grandson, and her husband, by poisoning them with rat poison in 1966 and 1967.

Graham Frederick Young (7 September 1947 – 1 August 1990) was an English serial killer who used poison to kill his victims.

Herbert Rowse Armstrong TD.

Anna Marie Hahn (born Filser; July 7, 1906 – December 7, 1938) was a German-born American serial killer.

Elfriede Blauensteiner (22 January 1931 – 18 November 2003), dubbed the "Black Widow", was an Austrian serial killer who murdered at least three victims by poison.

Harold Frederick Shipman (14 January 1946 – 13 January 2004) was a British GP and one of the most prolific serial killers in recorded history.

"Sister" Amy Duggan Archer-Gilligan (October 1868 – April 23, 1962) was a Windsor, Connecticut, nursing home proprietor and serial killer.

Edward William Pritchard (6 December 1825 – 28 July 1865) was an English doctor who was convicted of murdering his wife and mother-in-law by poisoning them.

William Palmer (6 August 1824 – 14 June 1856), also known as the Rugeley Poisoner or the Prince of Poisoners, was an English doctor found guilty of murder in one of the most notorious cases of the 19th century.

Kimberly Clark Saenz (born November 11, 1973) also known as Kimberly Clark Fowler, is a convicted serial killer.

Hélène Jégado (1803 – 26 February 1852) was a French domestic servant and serial killer.

Lyda Southard (also known as Lyda Anna Mae Trueblood) was born on October 16, 1892, and died on February 5, 1958, of a heart attack.

Lynn Turner (July 13, 1968 – August 30, 2010), born Julia Lynn Womack, was an American convicted murderer.

Lydia Sherman (Burlington, New Jersey, United States, December 24, 1824 – May 16, 1878), also known as The Derby Poisoner, was an American serial killer and addicted to murder.

Melissa Ann Shepard (née Russell; born May 16, 1935), also known as Melissa Ann Weeks, Melissa Ann Friedrich, Melissa Ann Shephard and Melissa Ann Stewart, sometimes given the sobriquet of Internet Black Widow, is a Canadian woman and habitual offender.

Caroline Grills, born Caroline Mickelson (1890 – October 1960), was an Australian serial killer.

Edme Castaing (1796 – 6 December 1823) was a French physician and is thought to have been the first person to use morphine to commit murder.

Audrey Marie Hilley (June 4, 1933 – February 26, 1987) was an American murderer.

Magdelaine de La Grange (c. 1641—1679) was a French fortune-teller involved in the Affair of the Poisons.

Johannes Franciscus Alphonsus Marinus (John) Opdam was a Dutch murderer.

John Tawell (1784–1845) was a British murderer.

Sophie Charlotte Elisabeth Ursinus (née Weingarten; 5 May 1760 – 4 April 1836) was a German serial killer believed to have been responsible for poisoning her husband, aunt, and lover, and of attempting to poison her servant.

Catherine Flannagan (1829 – 3 March 1884) and Margaret Higgins (1843 – 3 March 1884) were Irish sisters who were convicted of poisoning and murdering one person in Liverpool, Lancashire, England and suspected of more deaths.

Blanche Kiser Taylor Moore (born February 17, 1933) is an American convicted murderer from Alamance County, North Carolina.

Elizabeth Van Valkenburgh (July 1799 – January 24, 1846) was an early American murderer who was hanged for poisoning her husband.

Elizabeth Woolcock (20 April 1848 – 30 December 1873) was born Elizabeth Lillian Oliver in Burra Burra and was hanged in Adelaide Gaol for the murder of her husband Thomas Woolcock by mercury poisoning.

Emeline Lucy Meaker (sometimes reported as Lucy Emeline Meaker) (June 1838 – March 30, 1883) was the first woman who was legally executed by Vermont.

Kristin Margrethe Rossum (born October 25, 1976) is an American former toxicologist convicted of the November 6, 2000 murder of her husband Greg deVillers, who died from a lethal dose of fentanyl Rossum stole from the medical examiner's office where she worked.

Gesche Margarethe Gottfried, born Gesche Margarethe Timm (6 March 1785 - 21 April 1831), was a serial killer who murdered 15 people by arsenic poisoning in Bremen and Hanover, Germany, between 1813 and 1827.

Ma Anand Sheela (Gujarati: માં આનંદ શિલા; born 28 December 1949 as Sheela Ambalal Patel in India), In 1985, Sheela pleaded guilty to attempted murder and assault for her role in the 1984 Rajneeshee bioterror attack.

Ann Bilansky (born Mary Ann Evards Wright) (c. 1820 – March 23, 1860) was an American housewife convicted in 1859 of poisoning her husband with arsenic.

Mrs Anne Turner (5 January 1576 – 15 November 1615), aka Mistress Anne Turner or Mrs.

Frederick Mors (2 October 1889 – after 1916) was an Austrian serial killer who, while employed in a nursing home in New York City, killed eight elderly patients by poisoning.

Frederick Henry Seddon (sometimes called Sedden) (21 January 1872 – 18 April 1912) was a British poisoner who was hanged in 1912 for murdering Eliza Mary Barrow.

George Henry Lamson (8 September 1852 – 28 April 1882) was an American doctor and murderer.

Orville Lynn Majors (born April 24, 1961) is a former licensed practical nurse, and serial killer from Clinton, Indiana who was convicted of murdering his patients.

Stella Nickell (born August 7, 1943) is an American woman who was sentenced to 90 years in prison for product tampering after she poisoned Excedrin capsules with lethal cyanide, resulting in the deaths of her husband Bruce Nickell and Susan Snow.

Thomas Griffiths Wainewright (October 1794 – 17 August 1847) was an English artist, author and journalist who is widely believed to have been a serial killer and multiple poisoner.

Yoarashi Okinu (夜嵐 おきぬ, ca.1845 - March 28, 1872) is the moniker of Harada Kinu (原田 きぬ), who was a Japanese female poisoner and geisha and lived from the end of the Edo era to the beginning of the Meiji era.

Steven David Catlin (born 1944) is a convicted American serial killer.

Antoine François Desrues (1744–1777) was a French poisoner.

Anna Margaretha Zwanziger (7 August 1760 – 17 September 1811) was a Bavarian serial killer.

Richard Roose (or Rouse; died 1531) was a cook to John Fisher, bishop of Rochester, who was executed for attempting to poison Fisher.

Romani (floruit 1714) was a French adventurer involved in the Affair of the Poisons.

Ronald Clark O'Bryan (October 19, 1944 – March 31, 1984), nicknamed The Candy Man and The Man Who Killed Halloween, was an American former optician from Deer Park, Texas convicted of killing his eight-year-old son Timothy on Halloween 1974 with potassium cyanide-laced Pixy Stix in order to claim life insurance money to ease his own financial troubles, being over $100,000 in debt at the time.

Florence Elizabeth Maybrick (3 September 1862 – 23 October 1941) was an American woman convicted in Great Britain of murdering her husband, James Maybrick.

Mary Ann Cotton (born Mary Ann Robson; 31 October 1832 – 24 March 1873) was an English murderer, convicted and hanged for killing three of her four husbands, apparently in order to collect on their insurance policies.

Joseph Michael Swango (born October 21, 1954) is an American serial killer and a licensed physician.

Lowell Edwin Amos (born January 4, 1943 in Anderson, Indiana) is a former Detroit businessman whose mother and three wives all died under suspicious circumstances.

Daisy Louisa C. De Melker (née Hancorn-Smith; 1 June 1886 – 30 December 1932) simply known as Daisy de Melker, was a trained nurse who poisoned two husbands with strychnine for their life insurance while living in Germiston in the central Transvaal (now Gauteng), and then poisoned her only son with arsenic for reasons which are still unclear.

Martha Needle was an Australian woman known for poisoning her husband, three children and future brother-in-law.

Martha Rendell (10 August 1871 – 6 October 1909) was the only woman to be hanged (legally) in Western Australia.

Mary Ann Britland (1847 – 9 August 1886) was an English serial killer.

Mary Blandy (1720 – April 6, 1752) was a female murderer in 18th century England.

Debora Green (née Jones; February 28, 1951) is an American physician who pleaded no contest to setting a 1995 fire which burned down her family's home and killed two of her children, and to poisoning her husband with ricin with the intention of causing his death.

Nannie Doss (born Nancy Hazel, November 4, 1905 – June 2, 1965) was an American serial killer responsible for the deaths of 11 people between the 1920s and 1954.

Hippolyte Visart de Bocarmé (Weltevreden, Java 14 June 1818 – Mons, Belgium 19 July 1851) was a Belgian noble man and convicted murderer.