The Angel Makers Arsenic, a Midwife, and Modern History's Most Astonishing Murder Ring

Patti McCracken

eBook - 2023

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-fil...led 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.... more