The Angel Makers of Nagyrév

"The Angel Makers of Nagyrév" were a group of women living in the village of Nagyrév, Hungary who between 1914 and 1929 poisoned to death an estimated 300 people (however, Béla Bodó puts the number of victims at 45 - 50). They were supplied arsenic and encouraged to use it for the purpose by a midwife or "wise woman" named Julia Fazekas and her accomplice Susi Olah (Zsuzsanna Olah).

Crimes

Fazekas was a middle-aged midwife who arrived in Nagyrév in 1911, with her husband already inexplicably missing. Between 1911 and 1921 she was imprisoned 10 times for performing illegal abortions, but was consistently acquitted by judges supporting abortion.

In Hungarian society at that time, the future husband of a teenage bride was selected by her family and she was forced to accept her parents' choice. Divorce was not allowed socially, even if the husband was an alcoholic and/or abusive. During World War I, when able-bodied men were sent to fight for the Austro-Hungarian empire, rural Nagyrév was an ideal location for holding Allied prisoners of war. With the limited freedom of POWs about the village, the women living there often had one or more foreign lovers while their husbands were away. When the men returned, many of them rejected their wives' affairs and wished to return to their previous way of life, creating a volatile situation. At this time Fazekas began secretly persuading women who wished to escape this situation to poison their husbands using arsenic made by boiling flypaper and skimming off the lethal residue.

The first victim was Peter Hegedus in 1914; Other husbands, children, and family members soon followed. The poisoning became a fad, and by the mid 1920's Nagyrév earned the nickname "the murder district." There were an estimated 300 victims over the 15 years that Fazekas sold the arsenic used in these crimes. She was the closest thing to a doctor the village had and her cousin was the clerk who filed all the death certificates, allowing the murders to go undetected.

Capture

There are two conflicting accounts of how the Angel Makers were eventually detected. In one, László Szabó, one of the Angel Makers, was caught in the act by two visitors who survived her poisoning attempts. She fingered a Mrs. Bukenoveski, who named Fazekas. In another account, a medical student in a neighboring town found high arsenic levels in a body that washed up on the riverbank, leading to an investigation. In either case, eventually police made their way to the home of Fazekas and found her dead, having committed suicide by her own poison.

Afterwards, 26 of the Angel Makers were tried, among them Susi Olah. Eight were executed, seven imprisoned for life, and the rest imprisoned for a duration.

References

* Gregson, Jessica. "The Angel Makers". PaperBooks Ltd. 2007. ISBN 0-9551094-6-9.
* Newton, Michael. "The Encyclopedia of Serial Killers". 2nd edition. Checkmark Books. 2006. ISBN 0-8160-6196-3. pp.1–2.
* Bodó, Béla. "Tiszazug: A Social History of a Murder Epidemic". Columbia University Press East European Monographs, 2003. ISBN 0880334878.
* Bodó, Béla. "The poisoning women of Tiszazug". Journal of Family History, 27:1, 2002, p. 40-59.

External links

* [http://www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/angels/female_nurses/5.html Crime Library]
* [http://laurajames.typepad.com/clews/2005/04/nagyrev_a_murde.html CLEWS The Historic True Crime Blog]