True Crime Campfire - Poisonous: A Grab Bag of Vintage Bad Bitches

Episode Date: March 28, 2025

For at least the past 200 years or so, there’s been a lot of debate about women and the role we’re supposed to play in society. Historically, we’ve been expected to be the nurturers, the caregivers—the gentler sex, as we used to be called. We cook the food, we nurse the sick, we mind the children. Some of us are perfectly content in that role. But all throughout history, there have also been women who’ve chafed against these expectations. Some of them rebelled in a healthy, heroic way—fighting for women’s right to vote, to manage our own money, to pursue careers. And some have rebelled in a darker, more toxic way, using the very tools of stereotypical womanhood—food and drink—to commit the deadliest crimes. Today we’ll tell you about two of those women. Case 1: Tillie Klimek. Case 2: The Marquise de Brinvilliers.Join Katie and Whitney, plus the hosts of Last Podcast on the Left, Sinisterhood, and Scared to Death, on the very first CRIMEWAVE true crime cruise! Get your fan code now--tickets are on sale now: CrimeWaveatSea.com/CAMPFIRESources:Lady Killers by Tori TelferBritannica: https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marie-Madeleine-Marguerite-dAubray-marquise-de-BrinvilliersBounjour Paris: https://bonjourparis.com/history/mystery-and-murder-in-paris-the-infamous-madame-de-brinvilliers/PBS: https://www.pbs.org/kenburns/unforgivable-blackness/mann-act-full-textMedium, Heather Monroe: https://heathermonroe.medium.com/the-strange-murders-of-tillie-klimek-effa70912b5bFollow us, campers!Patreon (join to get all episodes ad-free, at least a day early, an extra episode a month, and a free sticker!): https://patreon.com/TrueCrimeCampfirehttps://www.truecrimecampfirepod.com/Facebook: True Crime CampfireInstagram: https://www.instagram.com/truecrimecampfire/?hl=enTwitter: @TCCampfire https://twitter.com/TCCampfireEmail: [e-mail]! https://true-crime-campfire.myspreadshop.comBecome a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/true-crime-campfire--4251960/support.

Hello, campers, grab your marshmallows and gather around the true crime campfire. We're your camp counselors. I'm Katie. And I'm Whitney. And we're here to tell you a true story that is way stranger than fiction. We're roasting murderers and marshmallows around the true crime campfire. For at least the past 200 years or so, there's been a lot of debate about women and the role we're supposed to play in society. Historically, we've been expected to be the nurturers, the caregivers, the gentler sex, as we used to be called. We cook the food, we nurse the sick, we mine the children. Some of us are perfectly content in that role, but all throughout history, there have also been women who've chafed against these expectations.

Some of them rebelled in a healthy, heroic way, fighting for a women's right to vote, to manage our own money, to pursue careers. And some have rebelled in a darker, more toxic way, using the very tools of stereotypical womanhood, food and drink, to commit the deadliest crimes. Today, we'll tell you about two of those women. This is poisonous, a grab bag of vintage bad bitches. Case 1. Miss Fortune Teller, the story of Tilly Climack. So, campers, we're starting this one on a train from Milwaukee to Chicago in 1914. Passengers sat on thin seats of dark wood as the train clacked along, the rough smell of coal smoke drifting back from the steam engine at the front of the train.

Two of those passengers were a pair of not-so-young lovers, Tilly Varek and her boyfriend, Joseph Gaskowski. Tilly was pissed. She'd sprung for a romantic trip to Milwaukee in the hopes of getting a marriage proposal out of Joseph, but despite endless bratwurst and cheese curds and slits that flowed like water, the question remained frustratingly unpopped. Showing Joseph a good time hadn't worked, so Tilly decided to try and scare a proposal out of him instead. She leaned forward, fixing Joseph with her steely eyes. In Polish, she basically said,

you should try to stay on my good side. My first two husbands, they didn't stay on my good side. They died, and they didn't die naturally. In fact, Tilly told Joseph that her previous two husbands had been repeatedly poisoned until they were dead. Poisoned by Tilly herself. Hearing this did not actually encourage Joseph to step up and become husband number three. Understandably, he just looked shocked. Tilly turned the screws tighter. If he didn't marry her, she'd see him prosecuted under the Man Act. This law was theoretically intended to combat interstate human trafficking and prostitution, but included vague language targeting debauchery or any other immoral practice. And in theory, they could use it to prosecute perfectly consensual interstate nookie. Joseph pushed back. If Tilly

wasn't careful, he'd go to the police and tell them she was a murderer. I can only assume the rest of the trip back to Chicago is pretty awkward, which tends to happen once you introduce mutually assured destruction into your relationship. Still, Tilly tried to patch things up with her bow, bringing over some candy for him and his sister, Stella. A few days later, Stella was deathly ill, and Joseph was just plain dead. No, no, y'all. We've all heard not to take candy from strangers. I'd just like to add, don't take candy from admitted poisoners who you've just threatened to expose to the police. Like, God dang, like, bless his heart, but what were you thinking, man? She's like, yeah, I'll kill you if you don't ask me to marry you. Here, have some candy.

Really? I mean, bless his heart and everything, but dang. Must have some good candy. I know, right? Tilly arrived in Chicago in 1876 when she was just one year old, part of a wave of mostly poor Polish immigrants. Her family settled in what is now the Ukrainian village neighborhood, which was called Little Poland at the time. It was an appropriate name.

Tilly rarely had to speak English, and she'd never be fluent in it. In 1890, she married a man named John Mitkowitz. She was just 14 years old at the time, which, A, wasn't uncommon back. then and B, yikes. Yeah. 24 years of married life passed by. People in the neighborhood thought Tilly and John seemed happy. They were popular locally and Tilly had a reputation as a great cook. Then, in January of 1914, John died of heart trouble. Retrospectively, there's no shortage of motive if you believe Tilly's claim of murdering John. She got $1,000 in life insurance. That'd be around

30 grand today, not a whole lot in the grand scheme of things, but we've seen people killed for less. And then there's the fact that someone other than John was plucking at Tilly's heartstrings.

In February, a month after her husband number one was in the ground, Tilly was married again to Joseph Raskowski. The death of her first husband, John, wasn't a huge shock to the locals.

See, Tilly had developed a reputation in the neighborhood as someone with a strange, creepy gift. She had prophetic dreams, morbid ones. When Tilly started having dreams about somebody dying, they'd usually be dead within a few weeks. Coincidentally, these dreams were usually about Tilly's annoying neighbors, stray dogs that barked too much, or anyone else who got on her bad side. A couple of weeks before her husband John died, Tilly started having dreams that he was sick with some terminal affliction.

Yeah, her. He had a terminal case of Tilly. As for her new marriage to Joseph, to quote Commander Spock of the USS Enterprise, you may find that having is not so pleasing a thing, after all, as wanting. A month after the wedding, Tilly once again started to have disturbing dreams about her husband getting sick and dying. Joseph, a sturdy guy who had been the picture of health before he met Tilly, died on May 20th. Tilly inherited $1,200 in cash and $722 in insurance. For the next few years, Tilly's story becomes kind of murky.

We know she moved into an apartment on North Winchester Avenue with a man named Myers who went missing. Gee, I wonder what happened to him. Then in 1990, Tilly married Frank Kupich, and he moved. moved in with her. As soon as he had, Tilly was telling her neighbors that Frank probably wasn't going to live long. As it happened, Frank lasted a little longer than Tilly's last husband. He didn't get sick until two years after the wedding. Not that they were living a life of bliss before that. Straight after the wedding, Tilly started smooching with a mysterious lover called John on the porch of her apartment building after Frank had gone to work. But by 1921, Tilly had her eye either on

another man or on Frank's $1,000 life insurance policy, and she started having the forbidding dreams of death again. A couple of weeks later, Frank was incredibly ill. It'll be any day now, Tilly told him. She was in high spirits. One afternoon

she bounced out of her apartment and happily shoved a newspaper under her landlady's nose. It showed an ad for a $30 coffin. My man, he's only got two inches to live, Tilly said, delighted. She sat by Frank's bed, knitting a black hat.

In Frank's rare lucid moments, Tilly waved the half-finished hat in front of his face. I'm going to wear this at your funeral, she said. Damn, Tilly, that shit is cold, girl. This woman just kills me. She was so gleeful about it. It's just, wow. Frank died on April 25th.

Before the funeral, as Frank lay in the $30 coffin in the living room, Tilly played dance music from her Victrola turntable and danced around. She grabbed Frank's ear and yelled into it, You devil, you won't get up anymore. She got $675 in life insurance. One of those attending Frank's funeral was Joseph Climack, a 50-year-old widower with a reputation in the community as a gentle, hard-working man.

By the standards of Little Poland at the time, he was also wealthy. He barely knew Frank, but friends had been encouraging him to remarry and suggested he go to the funeral to get a close look at the newly. single Tilly. Tilly had a fairly checkered reputation locally, but not because her husbands kept dropping dead. As far as the neighborhood was concerned, that was just evidence that Tilly's morbid psychic powers were the real deal. They were more concerned with the fact that there had been a lot

of other men, both in between and alongside the husbands. Even in the freewheeling Chicago of the 20s, it was possible for a lady to have a little too much fun. Against that, in the eyes of a prospective husband, though, was Tilly's rep as a spectacular cook, and Tilly herself. Just to flash forward a little here, when Tilly would eventually go on trial, the Chicago Papers, as was the style at the time, had a lot of cruel fun with Tilly's appearance, basically describing her as a lumpy peasant, which she wasn't, but the standard of female beauty at the time was very much in the direction of soft and fay, and Tilly definitely wasn't that. But the fact was she had men chason after her her entire life, and obviously Joseph Climick liked what he saw at Frank's

funeral, because 90 days later, he and Tilly were married. They had one happy year before things turned sour. These were the days of prohibition, and like a lot of people, Joseph had a taste for moonshine. Tilly could live with that, but Joseph, especially when he was in his cups, had an eye for the ladies, too, and that was something Tilly would not put up with. She'd cheat on her men, but he wasn't going to let him cheat on her. When she complained to her cousin Nelly, Nellie said she should get a divorce. Eh, I'll get rid of him some other way, Tilly said. Nellie had very similar opinions to Tilly's when it came to removing people who make the road of your life bumpier than you'd like.

Before her cousin left, Nellie handed her a tin labeled Ruff on Rats, a poison you could buy at any corner drugstore. It was just arsenic mixed with coal dust to color it black. Tilly, though, wanted to make sure she got some buck for her bang. She pestered Joseph to take out a life insurance policy. A couple weeks after he had done so, Joseph started to experience shooting pains in his legs and numbness in his arms. His breath smelled like garlic. A few weeks later, his legs were paralyzed.

Oh, Lord. In one way, Joseph's wealth meant Tilly had potentially hit the jackpot. But another, it was to be her downfall. Her previous husbands hadn't had any other option than to stay home and let their loving wife nurse them through their illness, but Joseph had the money to call a doctor. The doctor immediately saw that Joseph was in serious danger and had an ambulance taken to Cook County Hospital. The doctors there suspected arsenic poisoning immediately, and tests told them that they were right on the money. When they spoke to Joseph, he told them his dogs had died after eating food till he had prepared for him,

and that the soup she'd been giving him while he was sick had tasted strange. Hospital officials called the police who arrested Tilly for attempted murder. She told the lieutenant who put the habeas gravis on her, the next one I want to cook dinner for is you. You made all of my troubles. Wow.

Man, you got to hand it to her. She ain't caving in for nobody. She's got like evil moxies. Like some kind of dark, dark moxie. Dark moxie. She's got doxy. Doxy. Apparently, not everyone in Little Poland had bought Tilly's psychic act.

The police received anonymous letters saying they should dig up the body of Tilly's third husband, Frank, as well as cousin Nellie's first husband. Both bodies were riddled with arsenic, and Nellie was also arrested. Oh, my Lord. I don't know why, but authorities took Tilly to visit Joseph in the hospital. When he asked a nurse for a glass of water, Tilly yelled at her. If he makes any trouble for you, take a two-by-four board and hit him over the head with it. What? Then she tenderly kissed Joseph goodbye, just deeply confusing the cops who were watching.

Holy crap. This is so weird. This is like, this is like that, like, kind of misogynistic, like, crazy, hot ratio, like, mean. Like where they say, you know, where does she, where does she lie on the crazy hot ratio? It exists for women, too, except, like, you know, you get fucking murdered if he's too crazy. Sometimes you get murdered anyway. Yeah, you know. As we're proving with this episode.

Right. The police were soon busy. After Tilly was arrested, two of her cousins came forward saying when they were younger, four of their siblings had died after one of Tilly's dinner parties. Oh, my God. Their mom and Tilly had been fighting, which was apparently motive enough for Tilly to kill her children. Two neighbors said they'd almost died after Tilly had given them candy.

One had gotten into an argument with Tilly just one time. The other had been chatting to Joseph Climack and had seen Tilly glaring at her. Wow. Tilly was charged for the murder of Frank Kupchuk. and cousin Nellie for the murder of her first husband. Accusations kept coming forward. When Nellie had given birth to twins during her first marriage, her husband had said they weren't his.

One twin died at eight months, the other a month later. Oh, no. At one point, Nellie's adult daughter decided to stick her nose in her mom's business and criticize her for something or other. Not long after, her own infant daughter died in a way that retrospectively looked suspiciously like arsenic poisoning. Beyond these somewhat verifiable claims, there was a flood of reports

about suspected poisoning all across Little Poland. Newspapers described it as the poison belt and called to Tilly the high priestess of the Bluebeard clique. In jail, Nellie smiled a lot, spoke hardly any English, and frequently fell to pieces. Tilly, though, was all ice and defiance. she told reporters, I didn't rob nobody. I didn't shoot nobody. I didn't poison nobody. I didn't kill nobody. I didn't. Everybody pick on me. Everybody make eyes at me like they're going to eat me. Why do they make eyes at me? I tell the truth. Oh my God, she's Tommy Wiseau. It's the room. I did not hit her. I did not. Oh, hi Mark. That's silly. I didn't poison nobody. Oh, hi Mark. The trial was a circus on both sides of the bench. The judge asked for a

psychopathic lab report on both women, which determined they were both, quote, subnormal mentally. What seems likely is that the tests were in their second language, English, and didn't take that into account. And because one of Nellie's kids had previously been found to be, quote, of feeble mind, the judge declared, if we had a field worker, a eugenics expert, to check up on the history of this whole family at the time one moron was discovered, then the police might have been warned to watch this woman. When we find one case, we can seek out and locate the nest. Holy crap. Every sentence in that was just god-awful. I feel like I need to get on Twitter and cancel somebody. I just,

can we buy this and go back in time and like, you know, smack this guy around a little bit? Cheez and crackers. So, the nest. So you got that? If you're because, Cousins' kid is kind of weird. The police are going to be all up your ass. I don't think I even know my cousin's kids' names, but okay. All three of Tilly's former husbands had been exhumed, and all three showed evidence of arsenic poisoning. Tilly, wearing the black hat she'd made beside her dying husband Frank, denied killing them. I loved them. They loved me, she said. They just died, same as other people. The prosecutor wanted not only a conviction, but a death sentence, and made it clear to the all-male jury. that they'd better watch their backs if they did anything less. This defendant is like a good many other women in this town, he said. She thinks she can get away with it. There are a lot of women, gentlemen, who are awaiting your verdict in this case. In fact, a lot of women solidly accused of murder in Chicago had been acquitted,

most often after various levels of weeping and flirting in court. Tilly, stony, and silent did neither. She and Nellie were together in jail for a year before their respective verdict came down. Tilly enjoyed tormenting her cousin. Whenever guards came to take Nellie away for something, Tilly whispered in Polish, oh, they're going to hang you today, Nellie. Her gullible cousin screamed as the guards dragged her out. This woman is bonkers. Like, she was, she just delighted in evil. It's wild. Nellie actually wasn't hanged. In fact, her charges were dropped after a hung jury. By that time, Tilly had been convicted, and everyone seemed eager to put the

poisoning spree behind them. Although everyone accepted that Tilly had an unknowably large count of victims, she was only convicted of Frank Kupchek's murder, for which she was sentenced to life in prison with no possibility of parole. She apparently enjoyed prison, where she spent most of her time sewing. She said the food was better than she had at home, which I'm sure it was, because it wasn't full of fucking arsenic. She died in 1936 at the age of 60 behind bars. Now, after her conviction, another body was most likely added to the pile. Just a few years after Tilly went to the slammer, Joseph Climack, the only husband to survive

her, died apparently of tonsillitis. But his autopsy showed his body to be still absolutely steeped in arsenic, like he'd been marinating in it. She'd probably been dosing him for months. before he died, so most likely that had weakened him enough that when he got sick a little bit, that was it. Now, moving on to Case 2, Poison in the Sun King's Court. For this one, we're in Paris, France, July 17, 1676.

Marie Madeline Marguerite Dobre, the Marquise de Branvillet, sat stiffly in the cart as it rumbled over the cobblestone streets toward Notre Dame, pulled by the captors who had spent the last five hours torturing her. People lined the streets to watch the cart go by, and the Marquise saw many familiar faces. Noble men and women she'd partied with, drank with, gossiped and danced with. If they expected her to be sobbing in terror, they were disappointed.

The Marquise's eyes were full of fire. If you had to put a name to the expression on her face, you'd probably call it fury. People shouted at her as she rode past. Murderous, killer, you deserve to die. When the cart reached its destination, a scaffold outside the cathedral, one of the Marquis's guards pulled her out and forced her onto her knees. Say your penance, he said. She hesitated only for a moment, then spoke in a clear voice

that rang out across the crowd of onlookers. I confess that wickedly and for revenge I poisoned my father and my brothers and attempted to poison my sister to obtain possession of their goods. I ask pardon of God, the king, and my country's laws. Then she stood up, and the guards steered her to the scaffold. Her head was high and defiant as she climbed it. Her executioner was waiting for her there. As a priest whispered prayers in the Marquise's ear, the executioner shaved her head,

lock after lock falling to the ground around her feet, souvenirs for anybody fast enough to run up there and grab them after the deed was done. When she was bald, the executioner tore open the cheap shirt she was wearing, exposing her bare neck. Then he slipped the hood over her head. Marie began to pray out loud as the executioner raised his shiny sword, and then, shing! For a breathless moment, the Marquise's head stayed in place, and she remained standing like nothing had happened. But then, with a sound that I'm sure stayed in the minds of everyone watching for the rest of their life, the head slid slowly off her neck and thumped to the ground, and the Marquis

crumpled. She was dead. Out of the depths, I cry to you, O Lord, whispered the priest. That was a smooth one, don't you think? said the executioner and took a swig of wine. After the beheading, the body of the late Marquise de Pontier was burned on a pyre until it was nothing more than ashes and pieces of bone. This had been some top-tier entertainment for the Parisians who came to watch, and some of them stayed all the way to the end to watch her ashes blow away. Some people joked, now that we've breathed her in, we're going to have a sudden urge to murder. So, who was the Marquise de Bonvier, and how did she become public enemy number one in Paris? Well, Marie Madeline Marguerite Dobre grew up in a well-to-do family in Paris.

Her dad was the city's civil lieutenant, which meant he made very good money and had quite a bit of influence too. Marie was the oldest in the family. She had a younger sister and two younger brothers, and by all accounts, she was a star of all of them. She was pretty with dark hair and blue eyes and a perfect complexion, and she was sharp as a knife. This was the age of King Louis XIV, aka the Sun King, and if you've ever seen the movie Dangerous Liaisons, you probably have a decent sense of what King Louis' court was like, even though that movie is said a little bit later. Basically, Paris High society in Louis's time was about as shallow, bitchy a place as you could possibly imagine. Reading about it, it honestly sounds like just about every noble man and woman was basically

a sociopath whose favorite sport was trying to ruin the other nobles. There was a lot of drinking, a lot of screwing around with people you weren't married to, a lot of gambling, a lot of partying, and a lot, lot of plotting and scheming. Everybody was always spreading vicious rumors about everybody else, reputations rose and fell so fast it could give you vertigo just watching it. Sounds like a private boarding high school for like little asshole trust fun teenagers, doesn't it? Or Twitter. Ooh boy, good times. When she was old enough, Marie leapt into the fray with glee and she fit right in. By the time she hit 21, she'd married a guy named Antoine Goblin.

The main thing Marie liked about Antoine was his bank account and his title. Not only had the guy made bejillions in the dye manufacturing field, he was also a marquee, which meant she was now the marquise of Brunvié. Nice. They were a power couple, and they mostly seemed to get along okay, but it didn't take long before they were both having affairs. This was pretty much par for the course for the rich folks in 17th century Paris, though, so whateves. I mean, taking a leva was one of the things that got you gossiped about. And if you weren't being gossiped about, what was the point of anything? There's a point in everybody's life when their whole future takes a term, where nothing will

ever be the same again. It might be because you took a new job, moved to a new city, or met a new friend. In Marie's case, her turning point was meeting Godin de Saint-Croix. Saint-Cois sounds like he spawned out of a trashy period romance novel, an officer in the Parisian army, gorgeous, brilliant, educated, and best of all, a bad boy. Ooh, Lord. He sounds like quite the rep, Scallion. A bodice ripper to the core. He and Marie fell for each other hard, and they didn't even try to hide their affair.

Marie liked flaunting her hot new man, and neither one of them gave a shit about the Gospi Cordiers. they thought the whole thing was kind of funny. They liked riding around town in a fancy carriage and making out in there. Somebody who did not find this funny was Marie's dad. He was a starchy sort of fella and he didn't appreciate his married daughter just blatantly slutting it up all over Paris, which I feel like if you're going to be a slut, Paris is kind of the place to go. Absolutely, especially at that particular time. but it just cracks me up that image of them riding around in the carriage and making out. It's like that could be at any point in human history.

Like that could be 1950. It could be 1985. It could be right now, you know, two teenagers making out in the back of the car. I love it. But Marie's dad thought it brought shame on his family's good name. Yep. His daughter's marriage wasn't going great anyway, even without a new boyfriend. Antoine was pretty much a gambling addict, and he was bleeding money like a sieve.

So he lost a ton of his fortune, and before long, he had so many creditors after him that he had to flee the country. Oh, jeez. Marie had her own money from her dowry, but still, the whole thing was sorted. And Marie, catting around town with this flashy young lover, didn't help with the optics, especially because she was buying him extravagant gifts instead of like helping her hubs get out of debt. So, Daddy made a decision. At this time in France, if you had money and influence and you wanted somebody out of your hair, you could get what was called a letter de cachet.

Basically, a letter from the king ordering that this pest be put in jail. No trial or anything, apparently. Aren't monarchy? he's fun. It really does sound kind of nice, to be honest. I have a few people I'd like to get a left de cachet about. So Marie's dad got one on poor

Saint-Cois, sent some guards to put the habeas grabbous on him, right in the middle of a date with Marie. Mr. Hansom was thrown in the Bastille, which I hear was not a very nice place. He was there for a few months, and it just so happened that in the cell right

next to his was a guy named Exist. L.E. Guess what XLE was in there for? Ooh, was it? Murder? Yes, yes it was. Murder by poison. Dun, done, done. Now, our sexy, sexy bad boy, Sankoa, had an interest in chemistry. So one day, these two got to talk in, and XLE shared everything he knew about the dark

alchemy of poison. At least that's what Marie claimed later. But she told other people that he learned it from a Swiss apothecary named Glacet. So who the hell knows what the truth was? I think it's just as likely that she learned it herself. She was a smart cookie. And I mean, you could buy poison at the drugstore. I kind of hope it was Glaze because his poison recipes were metal as hell. According to Tori Telfer, whose book Lady Killers, was one of our sources for this case. One of them called for, quote, the skull of a man dead of a violent death. It's like, weak, a wak and whew! I guess you were supposed to, like, crush it up.

Holy shit. Like, presumably this would be listed as an inactive ingredient on the childproof bottle. Oh, Lord. So when Sunkhaw finally got out of jail, he went running. right back into the Marquis's love and arms. They were both super pissed at Marie's daddy for trying to put a wedge between them. Marie was so mad the day of her man's arrest that she threw an epic glass-smashing tantrum. That rage, plus a growing realization that her husband was gambling all his money away and her dowry wasn't going to last forever, made Marie pretty damn receptive

when Sank Quas sat her down one day and said, so, uh, babe, how about we poison your dad? So let me just boil this down. Your girlfriend's dad gets pissed off. Has you thrown in the Bastille for Stupin' his daughter? You get out and immediately help your girlfriend poison the guy. Now that is some classic French revenge right there. Also, it reminds me of so many of the cases we've seen before where some teenage couple kills one of them's parents

because they tried to prevent them from seeing each other, right? Unreal. So using Marie's money, Saint-Quas rented some space and set up a laboratory. It was time to experiment with poisons. And for the next three years, they experimented by coming up with various formulas and testing them out. How did they test them, you ask?

Well, Marie suddenly discovered her charitable side. She started paying visits to the sick and elderly at a nearby hospital, and coincidentally, that hospital's death rate took a bit of a spike. She also tried some of the poison out on one of her maids. The girl didn't die, but she got violently sick, and her stomach wasn't right for years. I mean, what good were poor people's lives anyway, right? It was crucial from Marie and Saint-Quas that old daddy's death looked like natural causes,

so they needed to check out the effects of their poisons ahead of time. They needed to find just the right one. Finally, they felt like they had the perfect formula. Inheritance powder, Marie called it, which is horrible. So horrible, but also just. just a little bit funny. Just a little bit. Now, interestingly enough, although the Marquise had been perfectly willing to poison the poor folks

herself, she decided not to get her delicate hands dirty with her daddy. Instead, she sent a mole. Bribed a servant to start dosing the poor old guy with the inheritance powder, the main ingredient of which was arsenic. The year, by the way, was 1666. Ooh, evil. Over the next eight months, the servant, poisoner fed Marie's father dose after dose of poison, little by little. The amount of suffering this

must have caused, we can only imagine. Sick all the time, but not sick enough to die yet, just in horrible gastrointestinal distress all the time, getting weaker and weaker and not knowing why. Poison might seem like a kind or gentler way to kill somebody than like stabbing or something until you really learn what it does to people. I'd rather be shot in the head any old day. When she felt like she had her dad on the ropes, Marie took a little carriage ride out to the family estate and took over the poisoning duties. I guess maybe she was feeling a little left out of the process,

wanted to finish the old guy off herself. While playing the loving daughter, mopping his brow and sympathizing with his awful stomach pains, Marie fed him more arsenic day by day. And in September of 1666, Monsieur Dobre breathed his last. The coroner listed the cause of death as gout. The young lovers had succeeded. Marie inherited one-fourth of her wealthy papa's estate.

It was all shared out among the siblings. Now, Marie and Saint-Quas were a lot of things, but frugal wasn't one of them. It only took them a few years to blaze through every penny of that inheritance money, and when the bank account started running low, they started looking around for the next financial opportunity. It was time to break out the first. inheritance powder once again.

Lucky for Marie, she had three whole siblings, two brothers and a sister who were a lot better with money than she was. Her sister was actually a nun, so she didn't have a lot of expenses and her two brothers lived together. The older brother was married, and Marie and his wife had hated each other on site. The sister-in-law must have had good radar. She disliked Marie so much that our girl figured she'd better not try and sneak into the kitchen to dose the food.

That bitch would be on to her like white on rice. So she and the boyfriend decided to plant another servant slash assassin to do the dirty work for them. A guy named La Chose. This guy was a piece of work in his own right, a former lackey of Saint-Quas with a rap sheet and a dead-eyed stare. Apparently, he'd do anything for a paycheck. If Marie's father's slow death sounded awful, it was nothing compared to what she put her brothers through. As Tori Telfer put it, we're talking months of suffering, vomiting, inability to eat, cramps, loss of eyesight, bloody stools, swelling, weight loss, and a constant fire gnawing away at their stomachs. Their bodies grew so stinking and affected that it was hard to be in the room with them.

Oh, my holy God, those poor dudes. It really makes you feel like there was more to this than greed. Greed was part of it, certainly, but there was something else in the mix, a long. with it. Vengeance. Marie's brothers had been firmly on dad's side when he tried to separate her from Sontqua. They made her feel like a filthy slut. I think she wanted to make them pay. And look, this in no way even slightly excuses what Marie did. So do not come at me. That is not the point I'm making here. But this was a time when women had basically no rights. Marie's family pressured her into marrying a guy she didn't love, and they put the guy she did love in the Bastille.

I don't think it's an accident that this period in history saw an incredible rash of poisonings. Usually men at the hands of women who wanted to get away from them. Yeah. And like men could do whatever they wanted. They could have whatever mistress they wanted and women couldn't do the same. So there's like, there's levels to it. Again, it does not exceed murder. And they could ask for a divorce, but we couldn't.

You know, like they could say, I don't want this woman anymore. But like, you know, what are you supposed to do? You can't, if you can't own your own property, you can't have a job, like, you know. the the the options are limited again does not excuse murder i'm sorry absolutely not no if the options are either live in quiet desperation or commit murder i say live in quiet desperation okay but i'm saying i can see it like there were so many poisonings around this time and like well and she you know i see why it's not that she didn't have resources either she could have just kept oh maria especially yeah Saint-Cois.

Like, it's not like, she's a terrible example. She could have kept, like he got out of the Bastille and she could have just kept sleeping with him in secret, just not, you know, going on, you know, voyeur carriage rides around Paris. Like, whatever. The brothers died a few months apart. And since they were so young and healthy before this, they both had autopsies done.

The results were pretty suspicious. This is disgusting. So take a breath. These poor guys had basically just rotted. inside. Their GI tracts were gangrenous and falling apart, and the coroner felt like they'd been poisoned. Oh, my God. But for whatever reason, he didn't pursue it. Maybe because poisoning was so hard to prove back then, read the poisoner's handbook by Deppre Blum, if you want to get an inside look on why poisoners were so hard to catch until, like, 100 years ago. It's super fascinating. It was also

partly because they didn't have a suspect. Our Madame de Bromvier, made sure she wasn't anywhere near the brothers when they died. And La Chasse had everybody convinced he was loyal to the core and would never dream of hurting anybody in the family. So once again, Marie and her boy toy scooped up more of the family inheritance. It pissed Marie off that her sister-in-law got some of the money, too. But she couldn't kill everybody at once. It would look too suspicious.

She decided she'd get her brother's widow later. And in the meantime, she turned her attention to her biological sense. sister, who had taken her holy orders and was happily ensconced at a convent and sitting on a shitload of money. Money Marie felt belonged in her bank account instead. It might be a bit tricky to poison somebody in a convent, though, so it was going to take a little strategize it. But there was a bit of a problem beginning to rear its ugly little snout. The bloom had started to wilt off the rose a little bit in her relationship with Sancroix. And buckle up for this, y'all, because it's my favorite part of this story by far. After years of torrid forbidden love, Marie kind of wanted

Saint-Qua to make an honest woman out of her. Well, I mean, not honest, but she did want him to put a ring on it. And to do that, she knew she'd have to get rid of her degenerate gambler of a husband, Antoine. So she got to work, putting the magic formula into his food and drinks. But here's the thing. Saint-Quas was not in support of this whole marriage thing. He liked things just the way they were, having sex, plot and murder, spending lots and lots of Marie's money on him. He enjoyed being Marie's kept man, but he didn't want to be tied down, babe. So for months, he and Marie played this perpetual game where she'd poison poor Antoine and Sankh Cua would come in and slip in the antidote before he could expire.

They did this like five or six times. Marie would just about have Antoine on the ropes, then Sunk Cua would come in and give him the cure. Back and forth, back and forth, like Satan's pants. ping pong table. How Antoine didn't catch on to this, I can't imagine. He doesn't sound too bright, bless his heart, too busy losing in cards, I guess. The really wild thing about this is, although Marie acted like a total drama queen about this whole thing, writing Sankhua a letter, threatening to poison herself if he didn't marry

her, she'd actually already started seeing another guy on the side. Girl, oh my God. Now she's cheating on two guys, the skank. She met Jean-Baptiste Brian Corre when she hired him as a tutor for her kids, and it didn't take her long to move in on him. Now, this guy was as different from Saint-Quas as humanly possible. He was like a good person and stuff, at least compared to Marie and Saint-Quas. But then again, that's a pretty low bar.

But he was like a normal guy. Brian Corr was besotted with the Marquise at first, but our girl was not using her head. She'd always been pretty loose-lipped about her hobby as a poisoner. She'd let plenty of little jokes slip at parties over the years. But while her courtier friends were apparently fine with murder and mayhem, Brian Kour was shocked when she started talking about poison. I guess Marie assumed her new side piece would be as cool with her serial killer

resume as Saint-Qua had always been. But he was not. He was scared shitless, and he started getting paranoid. Would she kill him too? Nah, surely not. And then one night, Brian Kour showed up to Marie's bedroom. room a little earlier than they'd planned, and caught her shoving an annoyed Sankwa into the closet. Get in there, hide, hide.

Best did. So, Bioncourt stormed over to the closet door. Marie tried to distract him by pulling him onto the bed, then tried to block the way to the closet, then just straight up jumped on his back and screamed, No, no, don't open that or I'll poison myself. Oh, my God. But Bioncourt knew what he'd just seen, and he yanked open the closet door to find, boyfriend number one staring right at him.

This confirmed our poor young tutor's worst suspicions. You're here to kill me, he screamed at Sankhua, and hauled ass out of the room, out of the house, and out of town. And that was it for that relationship, smart man. As you can imagine, this didn't do her romance with Sankhua any favors either. He was firmer than ever now about not wanting to marry her. And then, in 1672, the bastard went and died on her. Of natural causes, Marie didn't kill him.

Who was going to help her kill her sister now, damn it, rude? Somehow, Succois managed to die with his reputation intact. Nobody knew about his crimes except the marquise and that servant that they paid off. And that would have been good for Murray, but our boy had left some treasure behind. He died with some pretty hefty deaths, so after the funeral, a judge sent a court official over to his house to go through his accounts and settle his estate. state. And much to a surprise, the guy found a scroll all tied up with my confession, scribble on the outside. Like Whitney said, Sankoa wasn't a suspect in any crimes at this point. So the accountant dude decided to respect the dead man's privacy. He threw the scroll into the fireplace and let it

burn. Oh my God. Really? I'd have read that shit immediately. You guys have to let me know if you would have. I guess I'm not as good a person as this dude because I would have had that thing ripped open five seconds flat. I'd already have my popcorn, my soda, I'd be ready for the hot goss. And, you know, the guy said later that he threw it in the fire because he felt it was a private confession from a dying man to his God, right? But I kind of feel like God loves us and he wants us to have the hot goss. So, you know, I don't think God would mind me snooping. God doesn't need you to write down your confession. Well, yeah, God knows already, right? Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I'm with you. you, Whitney, I would have read it. And in fact, Whitney, I will read your search history and then

immediately delete it afterwards, because I got your back. Thank you. But I'm reading that shit first. Come on. I'm like, God. But the scroll wasn't all he found. Sancroix had also left behind a carved wooden box. When the accountant opened it, he found it full of little glass bottles and tiny envelopes full of some kind of powder. He also found some sealed envelopes that all said, to be burned in the event of my death, and on top of everything, a note. It said that in the event of Saint-Quas's death, he wanted the box and everything in it to go to the Marquise de Bromvilliers,

and the things in there concerned her and her alone, and were nobody else's business. If the Marquise was not around, the box. was to be burnt. Also was an envelope marked, I love this, sundry curious secrets. Wow. I bet that dude was kicking himself

for burning that scroll now, huh? This all looked suspicious as hell, so the court gathered it all up and turned it over to the police. Before they even had a chance to go through it, our girl Marie somehow got wind of the box and beat the land speed

record hauling ass to the police station to demand they return it to her. I bet she did. If she hadn't shown up all freaked out and crazy-eyed, they might have given it to her, but the way she was acting only convinced the police that they were sitting on something sinister. They sent Marie away with a whole swarm of bees in her bonnet and started testing liquids and powders they found in the box. And I hate this part, they fed several of them to animals to see what would happen. When all of the animals died, it confirmed their suspicions about what was in the vials and envelope.

It didn't take long for word to spread about the box full of death. Anybody who had thought the Marquise was joking about inheritance powder, all those years now realized, yeah, she wasn't. When Marie's sister-in-law found out, she flipped her shit. She'd never liked or trusted Marie, and now she was convinced the bitch had murdered her husband. Didn't take her long to realize who'd done the dirty work either. their trusty servant, La Chose. She raised a huge outcry, having La Chasseh, arrested, and demanding the cops arrest the Marquise, too.

It took them a few years, though, because Marie had gone on the lamb as soon as she realized she was about to be found out. But eventually, they got her and hauled her in. In typical Marie fashion, she tried to kill herself by swallowing glass, but she must not have tried very hard because it didn't even a little bit work. By now, the investigation had uncovered not only the poisonings of her family members, but her visits to the local hospitals, too. Some sources put the number of people she poisoned there as high as a hundred, though I don't think we have any way of knowing for sure. At her trial, Marie was defiant and steely-eyed.

When her old boyfriend, Briancourt, testified against her, she glared at him and called him a coward. She showed hardly any emotion, even when she took the stand and admitted to killing her father in Brom, brothers and pretty much just creeped out the whole of Paris. And of course, the verdict was guilty. Marie was sentenced to death by beheading. But before her execution, they wanted to have a little word with her to see if she had any more secrets she'd like to confess. Like, for example, involvement in a poisoning ring? In her confession, she'd talked about selling poison to another

woman who had somebody she wanted rid of. Could this be part of something bigger? The justice system in 17th century France was not kind and in order to get her to confess and repent they put Marie through the literal ringer they went and I mean this with all seriousness medieval on her ass

there was this form of torture that was basically like yieldy waterboarding where they'd bend you backwards shove a funnel in your mouth and pour gallons of water down it and then they did this awful thing they called breaking you on the wheel which just sounds horrific

They stripped you naked, tied you to this big wheel thing, and just beat the crap out of you with metal bars. Now, torture as a means of extracting information is pitifully ineffective because people will say anything to get out of that kind of pain. But there was no doubt about Marie's guilt. Not only had she talked about her crimes freely to all sorts of people, they also found a pages-long written confession in her bedroom when they arrested her. even after hours of torture Marie didn't give up anything extra though so her captors gave up and we know the rest of the story

the Marquis's story had captivated all of Paris people followed it the way we'd follow a murderous Kardashian now and it ended up having long-reaching effects it kicked off years of poison witch hunts with people getting accused right and left both

rightly and falsely of poisoning of participating in witchcraft holding black masses it was was a lot like the weird satanic panic of the 1980s. And King Louis was so distressed about all this torrid stuff going on in his court that he ended up dissolving it. No more fun allowed. It's too much bad press. So for one psychopath, Marie did a hell of a lot of damage. And look, we're still telling our story today. The two women in today's episode could not have been more different. One came from a world of opulence and luxury, a beautiful young woman who got pretty much everything

she wanted. She made sure of it. The other was from a much poorer, humbler world, but both resorted to the darkest art to get what they wanted, revenge or money or both, and both embodied the total opposite of what women were supposed to be, kind and nurturing and selfless. It's interesting to me that the weapon in both of these cases was food and drink, delivered by the gentle hands of someone the victim trusted. We've seen it a million times by now, in cases today. day and cases from hundreds of years in the past. Charm is a verb, and you trust it blindly at your peril. So that was a wild one, right campers? Two wild ones, in fact. You know, we'll have another one for you next week. But for now, lock your doors, light your lights, and stay safe until we get

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