WHOLESALE MURDER.

Auckland Star, Volume LXII, Issue 150, 27 June 1931, Page 3 (Supplement)

WHOLESALE MURDER.

WOMEN POISONERS OF HUNGARY.

nEM ON MIDWIFE'S FEARFUL INFLUENCE — COLLUSION AND rULLIBILITY IN VILLAGE LIFE—TRAIL OF DEATH THROUGH MANY C FAMILIES—WAR-BLIND SOLDIER'S; AGONISING END. ; The most remarkable epoch in the history of crime is probably that of ♦he wholesale poisonings in Hungary by women who put to death husbands, ♦others, mothers and children in order to satisfy their desires for material nain or the insensate pangs of Jealousy. A cable message last week, Sivlna a vivid acoount of the grim scenes at the execution of two of the Smmen condemned to death for callous murder, reoalls the extraordinary nature of the crimes.

; : ~ ] y 40 persons were tried in the disI • t court of Szolnok, Hungary, for the rder by poisoning of 42 others, the vic- ;; j/ nearly every case being husbands i ' brothers, fathers or mothers of the : j f f n dants. AH but three of the accused \ e women, all the crimes took place in 9 ]r! tffo nearby villages of Nagyrev and Ti«akurt, the poison used wj,s invariably : i^ Ml j c and its source in at least 20 cases 1 s the village midwife, Susie Olah, locally ' as "Aunt Susie." This almost 8 demoniac figure, who helped her fellow I jiwerswith equal readiness into time and I r , er nity, not only supplied the means of I Lfder,' but furthered its sale by inciteI pent and advice. I nt it was not only her sinister and ; personality that made 1 Si of Theiss Valley one I t\Z strangest instances in the history I ° ; r ;' e Most remarkable of all was that I dries' of such unsuspected poisonings I lid occur in two small villages, not sixty I fles from Budapest, over a period of 20 I ZL that nearly all the victims should I iuTmen the motive for the murders so 1 apparent, and the beneficiaries invariably I in plan and execution . itirely the work of women-surely Bg "monstrous regiment of women" 2n Knox must have had in mind. The n&ifgad utter callousness with which £ carried on their criminal activities 11 to have been equalled only by the I Sty of the .men who were their vic--2 he husbands and fathers who saw i Sd after friend die in the. same sudden ! Ss without ever divining a secret I S seems to have been known or susI Sby nearly every woman m the two 'Sb Five women escaped trial by S tlieir own lives, among them the £ter "Aunt Susie" herself. " Aunt Susie's " Rival. •Aunt Susie was not an unlettered farm woman. She had "studied" at least .the Stents of her profession in the big SL. She had keen powers of observation 'sharp understanding, and seems to Save been a monster of energy and Scrupulousness. A fat smiling, Buddhaike figure, she knew all the cares and troubles of the villagers, and was liked W most of them. For one reason or another she exerciseed influence amounting to actual power over these simple-minded oeople. She was no fewer than nine .lines accused of illegal operations, but discharged. Finally the earlier midwife of the village, Aunt Susie's rival, disappeared without trace. Her son, suspecting foul play on Aunt Susie's part, fired several shots at her but missed, and was sent to prison for two years. From this time on the villagers believed that Aunt Susie had a charmed defence against all dangers and all judgments. Not wishing to risk another trial, Aunt Susie apparently, decided to supplement her earnings in a new fashion. She began a series of child poisonings. There would be a discreet dosing, a little funeral, a tiny grave—arid a mouth less to" feed. Aunt Susie decided to enlarge her sphere. She found wives who had grown tired of their husbands/children who coveted the property of their elders, mothers with ailing sons. Aunt Susie would whisper that she knew a way. The Business of Poisoning.

And then for twenty long years death strode month after month through the Tillage streets, unnoticed by the law. A husband would be seized after he had eaten his midday lunch in the fields, a son on Lis birthday, an old mother after she had spent a day at her daughter's house. The Messalmas of Nagyrev were able to change husbands and lovers at will. Aunt Susie charged the equivalent of £4 to £16 for each lethal dose, according to the circumstances of the purchaser. The business grew, rivals even appeared who manufactured the poison and sold it at lower prices. In 1924 a body taken from the river was found to be that of the 70-year-old mother of a Mrs. Bukenovenski. She had disappeared mysteriously eight months before. An autopsy showed that she had been poisoned, not drowned. It was established that the poison had been administered by her daughter, who then, as an additional precaution, had wheeled her mother's body to the river in a wheelbarrow and thrown it in. This added safeguard proved her ruin. She was sentenced to death, but her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment. An Anonymous Letter. This discovery apparently excited, the suspicions of the authorities, and aroused the alarm of the men of the village. There •Were tentative investigations, but nothing could, be proved, and meanwhile the poisonings ceased. Then in July, 1929, the Calvinist cantor of Tiszakurt charged Mrs. Ladtslaus Szabo with serving him poisoned wine. He had been saved by a doctor s efforts with a stomach pump. Almost at the same time a war invalid accused Mrs. Bzabo of a similar attempt. Other such charges had been made, which came to nothing. But State Prosecutor Kronberg received an anonymous letter which spurred him on to unusual lengths. "The authorities are doing nothing," it read, ''and the poisoners are carrying on their work undisturbed: This is my last attempt. If this also fails then there is no justice." The Tiszakurt police were told to investigate. A few weeks later, on SS. Peter and Paul's Day, the first day of the harvest, the streets of Tiszakurt were resounding with song and gipsy music when suddenly a rumour was. born which took wings and flew through the village. "The Szabos have been arrested," ran the report. "It's already known that they poisoned Mrs. Szabo's father and uncle." The music stopped, the singers grew silent. Women whispered to each other and avoided the eyes of their menfolk. The gendarmes visited house after house and the number of arrested quickly mounted. Aunt Susie was among them. The interrogations began in the open air. The accused denied their guilt indignantly for a time. Then, under pressure, Ludwig Szabo gave way. "Yes," he admitted, "we killed my father-in-law four years ago and last autumn my wife s uncle. All on account of land. My wife incited me to do it." A Trap Set. Aunt Susie stubbornly maintained her innocence. She had had nothing to do with the murders, and knew nothing about them. But five other women confessed, and on the following day were taken by boat down the Theiss to Szolnok and imprisoned. There they repeated their admissions. Aunt Susie, however, still maintained her denials. The State Prosecutor had an idea. He let her go free, but told the police to follow her carefully. . The fat old woman, her Buddha-hke. face unsmiling now, but still impassive, took boat to Nagyrev. Arriving elie waddled hastily- from house to house, witn the gendarmes unnoticed at her heels. Those she warned were promptly arrested and taken to prison. At last Aunt Susie noticed that she was under observation, and her judgment, acute as ever, told her tnat all was lost, bne went straight to W own home, and wb*» the bayonets ot

the pursuing gendarmes glittered over the garden hedge ehe drew a flask of poison from under her apron and emptied it. An hour later she was dead. Now the dark history began to unroll itself. Investigations, confessions, exhumations and autopsies followed each other in rapid succession. Some of the women withdrew their confessions, and in the cemeteries unknown hands tore out crosses, defaced names and inscriptions on the tombstones. But it availed little. Grave after grave was opened, villagers were examined by hundreds, and still the number of arrests grew. The strain began to toll on innocent and guilty alike. Four other women followed Aunt Susie's example, and among them 0113 who was to all appearances innocent. Mrs. Marie Zsabai had been arrested, but released. Her husband's body was the first of SO corpses examined which contained no traces of arsenic. Dr. Kovacs, Mrs. Zsabai's lawyer, hastened to Nagyrev to tell her the welcome news. He arrived just (\a her body was being taken in turn to the cemetery. She had hanged herself out of fear of death. Confessions of Guiit.

The scandal stirred the conscience of all Hungary. Since the Theiss Valley is a Calvinistie neighbourhood it has alarmed the Calvinist episcopate. Bishop Desiderius Balthazar himself travelled through the whole district, suspended his clergymen and teachers and named proved men in their stead. The trials of 34 of the peasant Borgias began. Many of them have confessed their guilt in the preliminary examination but repudiated the confessions when they came to trial. The strangest part was the view they took, as shown in their stereo-* typed explanations. "We are not murderesses," they said. "We neither stabbed nor drowned our husbands. They have simply died from poison. It was an easy death for them and no murder." Murder seemed to them to involve bloodshed, and they had shed no blood. Their confessions, they alleged, had been extracted by third degree methods. According to the evidence ot a gendarme the method was even 'more subtle. This witness hid under a bed in the police station and heard the 70-year-old Rosalie Sebestyen advise Rosa Holyba to confess their common crime, advice which Rosa Holyba refused. The gendarme caught Mrs. Holyba by the ankle and emerged amid shrieks of fear. Both women were terrified and admitted their guilt. They were sentenced to life imprisonment. The trials were held at intervals of two or three weeks and two or three prisoners were taken at a time. At the second trial Mrs. Julius Csabal was found guilty of murdering her husband but let off with a fifteen-year sentence, his drunkenness and brutality to her being accepted as extenuating circumstances. The third trial was the high point. The women who had previously appeared had seemed to be poor and stupid peasants. Maria Kardos, accused of the murder of her own son and husband and the attempted murder of the husband of a friend, was obviously of a different type. She had more intelligent features, more correct accents and fashionable garb, though these did not serve to moderate the crudity of the crimes of which she was accused. Victim's Song of Death. This woman in her youth had been the belle of Tiszakurt. As portrayed by the State Prosecutor and his witnesses at her trial, she was an unrestrained creature who combined a taste for city refinements with a peasant coarseness in the indulgence of her desires. After marrying and divorcing two husbands she found 'herself at the age of forty with a 23-year-old son, whose bad health made him a burden. Moreover, she had just taken a young lover and did not wish to have this constant reminder of her own age. She consulted Aunt Susie. The first dose of arsenic only made the boy ill. One fine autumn day she had his bed moved outside in the courtyard. "I gave him some more poison in his medicine," she told the police. And then, suddenly, I remembered how beautifully mv boy used to sing in church and I thought I would like to hear him once more. So I said: 'Sing my boy. . Sum me my favourite song.' He sang it in his lovely, clear voice." The song ended in agony. The poison had done its work. This Borgia figure then married once more But she could not be faithful and her new husband threatened her with divorce. Again the arsenic. Aunt Susie charged nothing for this dose. Mrs. Kardos' Lsband had once been her own lover and she had never forgiven his defection. Maria Kardos was sentenced to death. On her second day in court her composure gavel way and she repeated the confession she had made to the police. ' Hungary's first soldier blinded m the war once a handsome and popular young armer was one of the victims. He had from a imhtar Y » m nlstered the second with practiced hand He died that night in agony.