Giovanna Bonanno

Giovanna Bonanno (c. 1700s(decade)-d.1789), was an alleged Italian witch and professional poisoner.

Giovanna Bonanno’s early life is not much known. She is believed to have been the same woman called Anna Panto, mentioned in 1744 as the wife of Vincenzo Bonanno. She was a beggar in Palermo in Sicily in the reign of Viceroy Caracciolo. During her trial, she confessed to being a poisoner, and that she sold poison to women who wanted to murder their husbands. The typical client was a woman with a lover; she bought the first dose to give her husband stomach pains, the second to get him to the hospital, and the third to kill him. The doctor was in these cases unable to tell the cause of the deaths. In the Ziza quarter in Palermo, several suspicious cases had occurred. The wife of a baker, a nobleman who had wasted his family’s fortune, and another baker’s wife (who was thought to have had an affair with a gardener) had all became ill.

One day, a friend of Bonanno, Maria Pitarra, was delivering a poison when she realized that the victim was to be the son of a friend, and decided to warn the mother. The mother made an order for the poison herself, and when Bonanno arrived, she was arrested. The trial opened in October 1788. Bonanno was accused of sorcery. Some of the apothecaries who were selling her potions were called to testify. She was executed by hanging in 1789.

References

* Salvatore Salomone Marino. Leggende popolari siciliane in poesia. ed. Palermo, 1880.
* Luigi Natoli. La vecchia dell'aceto. ISBN 88-7804-401-6