The Chris Voss Show - The Chris Voss Show Podcast – The Angel Makers: Arsenic, a Midwife, and Modern History’s Most Astonishing Murder Ring by Patti McCracken

Episode Date: March 17, 2023

The Angel Makers: Arsenic, a Midwife, and Modern History's Most Astonishing Murder Ring by Patti McCracken The Angel Makers is a true-crime story like no other—a 1920s midwife who may have been the century’s most prolific killer leading a murder ring of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. The horror occurred in a rustic farming enclave in modern-day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses—village wives, mothers, and daughters—was to come to the shocking realization that this could have happened anywhere, and to anyone. At the center of it all was a sharp-minded village midwife, a “smiling Buddha” known as Auntie Suzy, who distilled arsenic from flypaper and distributed it to the women of Nagyrév. “Why are you bothering with him?” Auntie Suzy would ask, as she produced an arsenic-filled vial from her apron pocket. In the beginning, a great many used the deadly solution to finally be free of cruel and abusive spouses. But as the number of dead bodies grew without consequence, the killers grew bolder. With each vial of poison emptied, a new reason surfaced to drain yet another. Some women disposed of sickly relatives. Some used arsenic as “inheritance powder” to secure land and houses. For more than fifteen years, the unlikely murderers aided death unfettered and tended to it as if it were simply another chore—spooning doses of arsenic into soup and wine, stirring it into coffee and brandy. By the time their crimes were discovered, hundreds were feared dead. Anonymous notes brought the crimes to light in 1929. As a skillful prosecutor hungry for justice ran the investigation, newsmen from around the world—including the New York Times—poured in to cover the dramatic events as they unfolded. The Angel Makers captures in expertly researched detail the entirety of this harrowing story, from the early murders to the final hanging—the story of one of the most sensational and astonishing murder rings in all of modern history.

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We just put the latest billionaire interview out on the LinkedIn newsletter. You really should subscribe to this or the Chris Foss Show podcast newsletter. You can subscribe to that as well. That thing is blowing up there around linkedin that linkedin has got some stuff going on here some stuff it's really hot right now to quote zoolander uh anyway we're going to be talking about uh murdering murderesses on the show today we have patty mccracken a brilliant author as she's written her newest book the angel makers arsenic a wife a midwife and modern history's most astonishing murder ring she's on the show with us talk to us about

her new book came out march 14th is it march 14th yet i think it's uh comes out tomorrow wow that tells you where we're at uh we're having a bit of comedy before the show. Patty pointed out that I was in the doldrums of depression and grief stricken with the daylight savings time conversion where we sprung forward over the weekend. And I said, I'm feeling under the weather. I'm feeling kind of low. And she says, you're suffering from the eight stages of grief of the loss of an hour. And I realized that she is correct. Not only that, it's Monday, which is also another grief loss. So I'm either in the stages of fear, anger,

denial, acceptance, confusion, despair, contact, content, rules. I don't know what that means. And celebration. I'm certainly not in the celebration mode. I think I'm at confusion. So I think that's what we land on. Welcome to the show, Patty. How are you? I'm doing well. I'm also in, you know, some stage of grief at my lost hour. So, you know, we can cry together. Maybe we should have just a quiet moment on the show for a second. So we mourn the loss of... Moment of silence.

Moment of silence for the loss. Moment of silence for the loss. Yeah. All right. Well, we don't have to give it a lot of time. I think just a little space there was good enough because it was only an hour. See, now I'm at the point of grief where I'm minimalizing it.

That's probably denial and minimization. Anyway, for those of you who are suffering from the loss and the grief and the stages of grief for your last hour, we have fine entertainment brought to you by Patty. Patty, congratulations on the new book. This is an awesome real story that's going to be really interesting. I think you're going to love this, folks, if you love true crime. Patty, give us your dot com so people can find you or wherever you want people to look

at you on the internet and get to know you better. Yeah. My name is Patty McCracken, so it's pattymcracken.com. There you go. And so you've written this new book. Give us like a 30, what motivated you to want to write this book? Let's start with the who, how, where, and why. Well, I started with an article, and actually this is not my newest book.

This is my first book because it actually took me so long to write. I could have probably written like three or four more in the time that it took me to write this one. But yeah, I wrote it as an article and I thought it was done. You know, when we're journalists, you sort of like, all right, move on to the next one. And this just wouldn't leave me alone. So I found myself at parties going, you know, I read this weird article a year ago, a couple of years

ago, three years ago. And everyone's like, that sounds like a book, you know? And you're like, yeah, but I don't write books. You know, I do 1500 words, 2000 max. And you know, that caught up with me because 130 some thousand words later, you know? Yeah. So it just was one of those things where I couldn't put the baby to bed. She kept getting back up again, you know, so it just was one of those things where i couldn't put the baby to bed she kept getting back up again you know it's like story's done it's done nope it's not done so um i it wasn't done and so i just went digging into the archives and decided you know if i'm going to stay up at night i may as well stay up at night actually working on the story rather than thinking about working on it.

There you go. So you're a award-winning journalist. Your articles appeared in Smithsonian, Wall Street Journal, The Guardian, many other publications. You worked in various newsrooms, including the Chicago Tribune and twice a Knight International Press Fellow. What publication

did you put this out on that got the first going? And evidently it influenced a few other publications on the story and stuff as well. It kind of did. It actually was supposed to be slated for The Guardian and The Guardian that's in the UK. And it was slated for their Sunday magazine. And I got bumped out because another paper that I had pitched and didn't hear back from decided to run their own story. So I got scooped on my own story, basically. Wow.

Yeah. And it ended up appearing in an obscure, I don't even know if it exists anymore. I don't remember the name of it. But it did get out there. And it did get the ball rolling in some weird ways that sort of the end of the story comes back. But, yeah, it did get it out there, and it got the attention of did what it needed to do, and here I am today. Okay. So give us a 30-foot overview of what the story's about.

Well, there was this midwife. You got your jammies on, and you got your little bed. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. All right. there was this midwife. You got your little, you got your jammies on and you got your little bed. I'm going to tell you a bedtime story. All right. Oh, this sounds good. This is the one where I'm not going to sleep for us tonight. This is the one where you need to leave the light on. I think we did those in the Boy Scouts. Yeah. All right. Yeah. Yeah. We have to have the flashlight. I'm ready. Let me grab my pillow here. Yeah. there was a midwife in a very small village in hungary and she would uh trot over to the local uh store and she'd buy a handful of um flypaper and she'd go back home and she would distill arsenic from the flypaper took a long time it's a painstaking

process and she would put the vials in her pantry and she would save one vial and put it in her apron pocket. So you imagine she's like a babushka. She would walk around in the babushka uniform and the apron. And she would go around to her neighbor women and she would say, why are you bothering with him? I have a solution. And she literally had a solution. And she would say, I can help you. I have a way, she would say. So she would go to women who she knew were having trouble, difficult situations in their marriage. I put it that way. Yeah. And she kept doing that.

And she kept doing that. And there were actually other women in the village who were doing this. And there were actually other women in the village who were doing this. And there were actually other women in other villages in Hungary, villages in Austria. This was a quiet way to get rid of a husband that was abusing you. But most of the women, all of the women except Auntie Susie, were doing it as a compassionate thing to help their sister or their friend or their mother or something. And weren't expecting anything in return. It was just a way to get out of a difficult situation. But with Auntie Susie, it was a business.

She made a lot of money on it. Yeah, she did. Yeah. She made a lot of money on it. Yeah, she did. And you bill her as the 1920s midwife who may have been the century's most prolific killer, leading a murdering of women responsible for the deaths of at least 160 men. That's quite a business going on there. Yeah. Well, you know, she didn't do it overnight. She did it. It happened over the course of the book starts in 1916. there yeah well you know she didn't do it overnight she was you know she did it it happened

over the course of the book starts in 1916 she started before then but i i could never pinpoint when and it ends in 1929 when all when everything sort of came to light but yeah it happened over course of um some years and she would it was always the same method and she would um make a deal with them and she would say you know you can give me half the money up front then another portion um not at the funeral when he dies and then another final portion six months after he dies so she had a whole plan she had a business plan for it um for better or for worse this is interesting you know there's no what's that old line arsenic and old lace yeah there's a movie about it yeah this is a real life arsenic and old lace except it's not know, but there definitely was that. And these were the, she was helping them get rid of abusive husbands. You know, that's where it all starts and ends really.

But as you see in the book, there are also some women who were nefarious. They were very, you know, they were out to just gain from this so it was a really mixed everyone does keep trying to draw a straight line as to who are the good guys who are the bad guys and it's like everybody and nobody i mean there's no straight line in any of this this happened in the sense that definite definitely the reason it really happened and the reason it really took off was because of abuse and because there was nobody in the village also to either help the women get out of their situation or to and there was no police force in the village so there was nobody sort of watching them and the village the head of the village would be like the mayor, was absolutely uninterested in anything that was going on with the peasants.

If it didn't involve hunting and it didn't involve drinking, he didn't want anything to do with it. People were desperate to get his attention at a certain point. They were figuring it out. And he was just like, no, no you silly peasant stop complaining you're always making a mountain out of them all go solve your own problems so they were pretty much left to their own devices whether it's yeah excuse me whether it be their husband that was abusing them or whether it be you know the murders that were going on around them that people were trying to report nobody was paying any attention wow now

some use the arsenic you build it as inheritance powder uh that's kind of a cheap term that is a yeah and it doesn't necessarily apply in my story it didn't really apply to the one but the french used to call it inheritance powder oh okay so this is why i'm saying now your rib didn't invent this as a means for murder you know wow they in hungary didn't invent this as a means for murder this was Oh, okay. passionate as I can towards a woman who would be in that situation. If she loses her property, then she loses her means of living or something. You could imagine an extreme situation or you can imagine somebody more nefarious who just goes, Oh,

more for me. Now, how does this story come to light? Cause you know, we haven't, it hasn't been, it's kind of a, I think a newer story.

How did it come out? Like it, how did they discover this and stuff? And what sort of research did you have to do to put this together? Well, it came to light through anonymous notes. Finally, finally through anonymous notes. And there was also an attempted murder in a nearby village that sort of finally, you know, wake up these police officers and get them to do what they're paid to do and get wake them up to go oh my god something's

going wait what you know um so finally and it was just this frenzy of activity i mean it was an absolute frenzy and so all the people in the village were like, people in the village were like, they had never seen so many what they called trouser wearing men, you know, men in the suits. They just come in droves and taken over their village and put guards at the village so nobody could leave unless, you know, burrow out. Yeah. And so it was just absolutely taken over and as far as the research goes i mean that's why it took me so long because there's so much to look into and i wanted to also look at you know the research everything around it you know the village what was it like you know and the other everything that was going on in hungary at that time which was also

an absolute circus of things going on at the end of World War I and stuff. But I did hire an assistant who was just an absolute gift. He was and is a historian of that specific region. And he knew exactly what I wanted. I had to get through a couple till I got him. He knew exactly what I wanted I had to get through a couple till I got him he knew exactly what I wanted when he started just going in through the details of like what movies were playing I'm like I found my man I found my man knows exactly what I need to get more more information than I could ever need and just sift through what was going to be useful to

me to build back to life. Yeah. And this is interesting. The New York times, I guess, covered it in, uh, when the story came to light in the 29,

in 1929, was there a lot of detail that you were able to gather from them? There was a lot of detail. They weren't always accurate, but as, as that would happen, you know, like,

um, but most, they were mostly accurate, but it was crazy. I mean, you imagine people descending on this village in this, in the town where the trials were taking place, they had to sell tickets to the trials because so many people wanted to get in. Wow. And the press was there from the New York Times,

from German newspapers, British newspapers, French. I mean, it was just a mob, an absolute mob. There you go. Well, I've been single all my life, and I think you just cemented that I will stay single all my life after I read this story. So now I'm not going to sleep for sure. Just watch the wine being poured. Know its source.

Well, I've had a few girlfriends look me dead in the eye after we were breaking up or after a breakup and said, if I could kill you, I would, just so you can't be with any other women. And they were dead serious. Hell has no fury. So I've seen that.

I've seen that look. Yeah, I'd say don't use this as a user manual. Okay? Yeah. By the i'd say don't use this as a user manual okay yeah and by the way they don't um have arsenic on flypaper anymore so don't also you're gonna find any recipe there so i'm gonna prepare my own drinks from here on out with all my girls that's what i'm gonna do um and a lot of a lot of husbands right now are getting really nervous i actually joke with my husband friends i'm like i'm like he's like oh i don't feel well today i'm like it's it's the it's the And a lot of husbands right now are getting really nervous. I actually joke with my husband friends. I'm like, he's like, oh, I don't feel well today.

I'm like, it's the arsenic your wife's putting in your coffee. And they're like, really? I'm like, yeah. I mean, have you seen yourself? I mean, you're awful. You're a horrible husband. You're losing your hair. That's why.

You're losing your hair. I mean, she wants to, she's, you know, when we travel with my friends, we do like a big events together and I'll be like, uh, I'll be like, Hey, you know, like your wife will call or something.

Or my wife's not answering the phone or something. Like she's probably with the pool boy and my friends will go, but we don't have a pool. And I'm like, yep, that's kind of the problem. She has a pool boy and you don't have a pool. You get it.

She's either with the pool boy or plotting your murder so exactly both probably yeah right yeah they're both probably plotting your murder so you'll end up drowning in the pool and people won't go that's weird that happened he had a pool boy why didn't the pool boys name him anyway uh so i give my husband friends a lot of jokes so now you're giving them a new terror to live by. Well, this is pretty insightful. And what a historic story, the interesting things that you do. So should we give away what happens at the end? There's a big trial and they flush out all these murderers and stuff? Yeah, there is several trials and the trials happen in groups.

And I think it was really like orchestrated. The prosecutor was brilliant. The prosecutor was absolutely brilliant and while i was researching this it was really fascinating because you think oh 100 years ago had they do things this guy could have prosecuted any case today in america and they used the same tactics you know knew, knew what he was doing. He was a smart guy. He knew to make friends with, um, one of his closest friends was a local reporter and it was a deep friendship, but it was also a calculated friendship because he knew how to contain the

press. He knew who to feed it to and how, how it would sort of fan out. He knew exactly how to feed it to and how it would sort of fan out. He knew exactly how to play it. And he also knew exactly how to play the trials and get what he wanted. And it was all really dramatic. But he was, you know, full of flair. Very, very smart guy.

He's hungry, should be proud of him. But yeah, they tried them over the course of like a year and a half really and they did it in groups of groups of women who had some kind of connection and wow to the deaths that they were doing that they'd committed the murders they'd committed this is really interesting i mean like i said when i first saw the book i thought this must be a novel and then the more i looked into i'm like this is this is for real like people are really really doing this this is for real you know and it was sort of like when somebody asked me early on they said well you know why did they do this and it was more like why became why not you know if nobody's catching your sister-in-law who did it to her husband or, you know, somebody you grew up with, nobody's catching them and you're dealing with your husband who's beaten you. And, you know, you're like, well, I get away with it, too, because nobody's been caught.

And so they just started getting away with it. And, you know, it's the midwife seemed untouchable wow and it's important also to know midwives were central figures in villages in europe and they were also they were the doctor they were like practicing really high level plant medicine they were the doctor who couldn't get into the village so they you know they, she was fixing hernias. She was fixing headaches. She was everything to them. And she was also like a shaman.

So they had a certain respect, awe, and fear of her because she sort of dealt with the spirit world as well. And this was typical not just of Auntie Susie, the midwife in Nagarith. It was typical of all midwives in that point in europe even you know up through world war one so they were kind of scared of her too so the kind of you know she kept on their toes you know so uh in the in the in the uh thing here it says 160 deaths but i'm reading down below uh below, it could have been anywhere from 600 to 300 deaths over 15 years. Is that? The prosecutor felt that there were 162 men that he could dig up their graves and find arsenic in.

Wow. dig up their graves and find arsenic in. He wasn't allowed to prosecute all those because they didn't have the money. They didn't have, you know, some of the women who would have killed him were already dead anyway by now, you know, because it happened so long ago. So the courts put a stop on him that he could not dig past 20 years. He felt the records would show that that that it went to 162 he felt that it was possible that there could be 300 or more wow that is crazy this is this make a great movie you know it would make a great movie we also had people and this wasn't just nagar this like i said before

it's fanned out into other villages you know and there were other women doing it so you can't really draw a line for auntie suzy being responsible for 162 or 300 but the john jack mccormick the new york times uh reporter said she brought wholesale murder to nagar and he's right about that. Wow. That is crazy, man. I mean, I, I would have been killed off a long time ago by my exes. I mean, my,

my biggest crime according to them and in most relationships is leaving my socks and shoe and underwear on the floor in the morning. Um, and then, uh, not committing. So there's that, but yeah, I would have been,

I would have been aced a long time ago just over that. Leave that dirty underwear, you know, after eight, nine, 10 days, I would have been aced a long time ago just over that. Leave that dirty underwear. You know, after eight, nine, 10 days, it's enough to like, you know, where's the fly paper? Well, I don't wear it that long. I mean, I just set them on the floor in the morning in the socks, but it's always funny. They'll, they'll pick up the 200 items from the kids that are every day, but somehow I'm the, you know, I don't know.

Well, there's a lot of issues. I just see a big stick with your underpants on the end of them. that are every day, but somehow I'm the, you know, I don't know. There's a lot of issues with me. I just see a big stick with your underpants on the end of them. Yeah. One day I made a giant pile of all the kids things that were on the floor or kids things. And I was like, so my four items here in these 200 items that were left on the floor here this morning. And I'm the the i'm the horrific uh boyfriend you know her answer to that her answer to that is you're not a kid well she did laugh

really hard because i caught her uh she was like you go you busted me uh it was all negotiation but in the end uh i uh you know i'm probably never going to get married now that I can find it. Again, bring your own bottle. P-Y-O-V-E and pour your own bottle. There's a funny TikTok thing that's going around where wives will bring their husband a coffee after they've had a fight.

He looks at her and goes, you made me coffee? What? We just had a fight. I'm going'll go out. Oh, I'm going to go outside. Let's see, you know,

throw it out. So maybe this is a real big thing that husbands are worried about. I don't know. Men get a little bit nervous and they're, I sort of, you know, like what, what are you doing?

What's going on? What's going on? There you go. Hell has no fury. Like a woman scorned. Uh, don't pit, don't make them angry um so anything more we want to tease out of the book before we go um i would

say that you know it wasn't just the wine she would been auntie suzy wanted to say um she would always say the first method so you got to be careful anything you eat she always liked to put it in something thick like she would say yeah so liked to put it in something thick, like soup, she would say. So she would put it in wine because they were always drinking wine, and that was the easiest access to it. So I'd say be careful whatever you eat. So if you need to sleep with the light on tonight, sleep with the light on. If I ever get married, I'm going to have one of those,

like Putin had a taste tester. Kings have someone to test their food. I think that's, I'm going to have one of those, you know, like Putin had a taste tester. You know, kings have someone to test their food. I think that's what I'll have. I think that's why you have kids is so that you feed the kids first and the kids live. Then you go and eat your wife's cooking. So there's that. I don't know. Yeah, you practice on the littles.

I don't know. Feed something to the dog, you know, Make sure the dog doesn't croak over. There you go. Well, this will keep my arsenic husband joke and pool boy joke going for years to come. Thanks, Patty. This has been fun to have on the show and lots of great jokes we got out of it. And, of course, I'm going to have to go work the rest of the week through my stages of grief. So I'm glad you brought that joke to light that was very funny yeah we we absolutely have to grieve

this lost hour yeah you know say goodbye do what you need to do hold space for it i think the service for the missed day will be held tomorrow on the podcast we'll hold a whole full service there'll be um priests and probably some singing at the chapel or something and some sort of memorial with an organ or something we'll have on the show. That might be a whole show. Maybe we can make that happen. You can maybe do some chanting or something. Ladies and gentlemen, we're here today to mourn the loss of Sunday.

Of an hour. Yes. Most people remember that hour. They did some video games. Some people got some extra sleep. Most people were extra sleeping. Now that hour is gone. It's kind of like jet lag that just kind of lasts forever.

You're going to spend the next six months or something wishing you could get that back. Just constantly wishing you could get it back. Then you'll get it back and they'll get it taken away from you. It's just a constant tease. you want it oh no no you almost had it oh no no there you got oh no it's gone again um but uh yeah so maybe there'll be a memorial service uh next next podcast for tomorrow thank you r.i.p in a tombstone there you go there you go we'll order one up and uh we'll spend some time off to find how much it's going to cost.

This might cost some money. It usually does to bury an hour. I don't know how big of a box do I need for that? Anyway, Patty, it's been wonderful to have you on the show and very insightful. Give us your.com. So we can find you on the interwebs.

Yeah. I'm a www. Uh, patty McCracken.com. There you go. And thank you very much for coming on the show. Itracken.com. There you go. And thank you very much for coming on the show. It's been an absolute pleasure. There you go.

Lots of fun and great jokes. And an insightful book of history. The one thing man can learn from his history is man never learns from his history. So damn it, people. Start learning from your history already. There you go. Please. Thanks so much for tuning in.

Go to goodreads.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss. Go to youtube.com, 4Chess, Chris Voss, and our big LinkedIn networks and all the stuff we do over there. Thanks for tuning in. Be good readers. Stay safe. Don't give people arsenic, and we'll see you next time.