Isabella Mueller (crime writer)
One of the most notorious female serial killers in criminal history was the Italian Hieronyma Spara, born in Rome in the 17th century and better known as ‘La Spara’. She earned her living not only as a fortune-teller but also as a poisoner, helping wives to get rid of their husbands in a simple manner with her vial of poison. The main ingredient in her poison was arsenic, an odourless and tasteless white powder. Over the years, La Spara had built up a veritable empire, which, however, one day collapsed like a house of cards when a female spy betrayed her. In the year 1659, there were an increasing number of deaths in Rome, Naples and Palermo among wealthy husbands, none of which were due to natural causes. After well-to-do women had confided to confessors in Rome that numerous women had killed their husbands using poison, Pope Alexander VII commissioned Monsignor Balazoni to get to the bottom of the matter. He soon came across a pair of sisters whose husbands had died shortly after their weddings. Both before and after these deaths, the sisters had been in close contact with the fortune-teller Hieronyma Spara. Was she the poisoner they were looking for? To answer this question, the Monsignor set a female spy on La Spara. The spy asked La Spara to procure some poison for her so that she could finally get rid of her unwelcome husband. La Spara had the poison delivered to her via a maid, who tested it on a dog, which died immediately after ingesting it. A judge, who had been waiting in the adjoining room, witnessed this incident; he then pressed the maid for the name of the woman who had sold her the deadly vial of poison. When she revealed the truth, La Spara was arrested immediately. She made a full confession, as a result of which she was publicly executed that very same year, together with four widows.
