November 6, 2019 • 26 mins
Not the avenger. Following up on our episodes around female killers, Anney and Samantha return to the black widow killer, digging into definitions, explanations, and examples. Come get caught in our web.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:05):
Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your prediction of I Heart Radio's House
at Words. For today's episode, we're sort of continuing our
conversation we had around female serial killers and a specific
(00:27):
type of female serial killer that kept coming up. It's
the black widow, right, um. And we said in those
episodes we were going to come back and do an
episode on this. So we are women of our Words.
Yeah we are. It just sounded like we are a
new group or a squad or something. Women of our Words.
We could be woo, women of our Words. It's wow,
(00:56):
w o o W. It's a small oh and a ago. Yeah,
there we go. We've got a whole group. And before
we get into this trigger warning for violence, sexual assault, death,
and general gruesomeness. Although not as bad as our female
(01:16):
serial killer episodes, they were a rough, um yeah, So
we wanted to focus specifically on this black widow type
of killings, type of killer. And of course we're not
talking about the Avenger today, sorry Annie one day, and
we're not talking about the Spider, although the Spider probably
(01:38):
inspired the name, um, the so the black Widow as
a killer, not either of those things refers to a
female serial killer who kills three or more people, typically
husbands or significant others, or both, for financial gain. Their
method of choice is usually poison, and they are usually
across between a serial killer and the con artist. Several
(02:02):
of our examples of female serial killers in those episodes
were black widows, and the FBI uses the term black
widow as an official label for this type of killer,
which is interesting and from the report on serial killers.
Financial gain is a motivation in which the finder benefits
monetarily from killing. Examples of these types of crimes are
black widow killings, robbery homicides, or multiple killings involving instruments,
(02:25):
or welfare fraud. Yeah, so that's an official FBI report. Now,
black Widow, the Avenger, I will say, did make researching
this topic very difficult. You had to be very specific
with a lot of quotes around the yes. Yes, because
most of the search results came up to be her,
(02:46):
and because she is technically a murderer and a killers,
so that was another layer of difficulty. She's a trained assassin, right.
And then also because I kept getting distracted reading the comics,
you know, Yeah, I had a very big spoiler for
the most recent issue, and I'm excited to have read it. Um,
do you ever know where the research will lead you?
(03:10):
Although I guess it should have been obvious. There is
a meme of black widow marrying Spider Man and then
killing him, and that that made me laugh pretty good.
Does he have money? I don't know, Peter and Parker, No,
he has no money. I think it's just a joke
because he's a spider Spider Man, you see. And yes,
(03:32):
we do call black widow killers black widows because female
black widow spiders eat their mate after conception. And also
black widow has been a web of lies. That's just
some extra that I added in there. Um, a black
widow usually the killer, not the spider are the avengers,
(03:54):
So now I'm going to say the killer. Yes, we're
not talking about those other things from here on out.
They usually search for somebody who is lonely, sad, maybe grieving,
um in some way vulnerable. The black widow praise on
that vulnerability, becoming what the target needs, perhaps sharing them
with gifts, affection, those kinds of things. She is also
(04:17):
likely to target friends and family, basically anyone in her
orbit that can make her rich, are just richer is
a threat. So on average, the black widow starts on
her path around twenty five and then murders for a
decade before she gets caught. Decade a decade. Yeah, black
widows frequently employ things like newspaper ads or these days
(04:39):
online dating or some other type of wanted ads or
dating tools to find their victim. Now, there are some
variations of black widow that I wanted to touch on,
one of them being the Curtwright curse. So this is
basically anyone who dates the protagonist dies and they usually
(04:59):
die quickly. And it's named for the Cartwright family in Bonanza,
which is a reference that I I am not familiar with, yes,
but that's where it comes from. Um. Some examples are
the Owens family from Practical Magic. There's a curse on
the family that means that the women's husbands will tragically
meet their ends. UM Xander Harris from Buffy, Buffy from Buffy,
(05:24):
Sam from Supernatural and one episode Dean even asked him,
have you forgotten the average lifespan of your hookups? Um
Soshiko Sato in Torchwood, Jack from Sydney, Bristow from Alias
and depending on your choices Shepherd from mass effect, so
this is basically your main character. James Bond is another
great one. Whoever they date dies usually putty immediately, exactly exactly,
(05:50):
So that's one variation. Um. Then there's the blue Beard
from Stephen King's The Shining. From there upon the floor
was blood, and on the walls were wives, for blue
Beard first had married them, then cut their throats with knives.
So this is essentially the male version of the black widow.
(06:11):
A dude who appears charming easily finds a mate to
marry and then kills her. There is a major difference
in motivation. Blue beards are not usually motivated by greed.
The name comes from the Seven fairy Tale, in which
the character blue Beard murders wives who opened a forbidden
door disobeying his direct orders. The earliest versions were meant
(06:33):
to be interpreted as a warning to women who disobeyed
their husbands. Typically, the woman who opened the forbidden door
would discover the bodies of blue beards past wives, and
she decided to die. Obviously, Yeah, that's the only way.
So sleeping your way to the top trope the self
explanatory and often weaponized against women. Whether it's true or not,
(06:53):
as we see often. Then there's a gold digger, which
is similar but typically involves one partner who has riches
and status clarice from it takes two both versions of
the parent trap. And have you seen the latest withinnis
Quaid's new fiancee of course, I have a fantastic And
then Ron's first wife Kami, who tries to get back
(07:13):
with Rod after learning he has gold buried in several
places around his property, a literal gold diggirl. Yeah, I
love it. I love it. So we do have a
lot of real life examples but also a lot of
me examples. But first we're gonna pause for a quick
break for from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsored,
(07:47):
and we're back with one of yours. So for many
of the media examples, one of my favorites, of course
is Snapped. I think I've referred to them now like
four or five. Look, it's fantastic, um, It's one of
my ever and does involve many different female incidents of
murder or attempted murder, including those who would be could
could be qualified as black widows. But just a reminder,
(08:09):
they have twenty four seasons yea, the seasons. Yes, so
that it's a big show and has even expanded with
killer couples. Yeah, you know, partner killers. All of these different.
When I say partner killings like spouses or significant others,
there's also killings where it may involved domestic violence. I
think there's a couple of several, whereas women being jealous
(08:30):
of women. So yeah, so it's a whole thing. But yeah,
it's it's lasted twenty four seasons. Long, twenty four seasons
for some reasons, I thought it was relatively no no, no, no,
and if you start like watching from the beginning. Um,
the narration is Sharon Martin. She won an Emmy. I'm
(08:51):
not sure for which I think she because she's narrated
on several different things. But yeah, yeah, it's legit. It's
been around for a man for at least I think
two thousand four fifteen years. Well that's a reality check.
There you go. I'll deal with that later. You're gonna
(09:12):
process that. Um. We also mentioned in one of our
female serial Killer episodes, the nineteen forty four Carrie Grant
film Arsenic and Old Lace, which we have seen Samantha
um featured two black widow type murderers, and as you
might guess from the title, these elderly women poisoned victims
with arsenic lace pie and a smile, and a smile
(09:36):
that sounds like the perfect slogan the seven movie Black Widow,
where the female serial killer continues to kill even after
she is wealthy. Then there's Debbie Jelinski from Adam's Family Values.
And another one that I've already mentioned previously, which parodies
this is So I'm married an X murderer went through
(09:58):
several husbands, But of course that's a always a ending
twist this one. Have you said, I haven't seen it,
but I read about it for this episode, so I
know what the spoilers. I'm not gonna do it even
those years old, because it's just fantastic. And then Mrs
White from Clue, which again another one of my favorite
favorite movies. Five of her husbands had died. One was
(10:19):
an illusionist who disappeared and never reappeared, and of course
Mrs White said of this he wasn't a very good illusionist,
and one had his head chopped off by someone and
something else, and then she points downwards as she Yeah,
it's a fantastic She's like head chopped off, and it's fantastic.
(10:44):
I think I've watched it recently. It is one of
those Halloween movies to me because it's so fun and
you wanted to kind of just reminisce. Of course, not
the guests aged very well, but it's still great. I'm
trying to get a party together. You might have been
there when I was planning it. I'm always planning a
party or two. Are trying to get a Tim Curry
party together where everybody comes as a different Tim Curry.
(11:06):
I think that would be spectacular. I'm trying to remember
the character and Mrs White Madeline Cohan, which is a
great comedian from the eighties, eighties and nineties. He's a
fantastic actress. She was the one that betrayed Mrs White.
Another example from the media we have is Queen Ravenna
from Snow White and the Huntsman, who killed snow White's
(11:28):
father after marriage so that she can rule solo um. Similarly,
the stepmother from Phoenix and Ashes Mercedes like he's take
on the Cinderella Tail. There's a Get Smart where Maxwell
had to marry an agent named Widow often Annie Yep
who used these methods in her work. And then Samantha
(11:51):
Carter from star Gate st on one of my favorite shows,
although actually more accurately an example of the Cartwright curse
because all of her boyfriend don't last long before dying.
The writers jokingly called her Black Widow Carter and almost
gave an episode that title. Yeah. Well, there's also Rebecca
Carlson from the Body of Evidence, who went to trial
(12:12):
on accusations that she went out and found wealthy men
with health problems to have sex with until their hearts
gaped out. Um. And then there's Catherine from Basic Instinct
and oh my goodness, that movie itself was just as
a young mind, you're like, I do leave it at that. Yeah,
that's another one I've missed, and it's I've seen, you know,
(12:35):
the clip that everyone shows, and for me, as a
young child, I thought, maybe I don't want to see that,
Maybe I don't. Blaze A Beanie's mother is implied to
be a black widow in the Harry Potter series. Uh
seven marriages of hers and with husband's dead under mysterious
circumstances and their money transferred to her. Blaze A Beanie.
(12:58):
Oh Amantha WHI by the way I did my crosswords,
not crossing war starches. Last night. I stayed up a
little too long doing them. Placed is kind of a
side character from Southern and I believe it's in the
sixth one half blug Prints where he's invited to the
slug Club and he's the son of this model, famous
(13:18):
model in the Wizarding World, and it kind of comes
up about his mother. It's very passing thing that is
very specific. It is thank you. I'm going to take
it as a compliment. Uh. Then there's of course the
Black Widow song by Azalea the re read it or
I totally forgot about that until it was all of
(13:39):
a sudden stuck in my head. I don't know that song. Well,
I'm not saying I'm not saying it. Uh. And then
your favorite ride, The Bride from the Disney ride the
Haunted Mansion who murdered five husbands with an ax. Yeah,
you know, it wasn't bad when I was seeing it
from afar and then they came close, I was like, nope.
(14:00):
I got stuck on that ride once, right at the
part where something just pops up at you over and over.
And he told me about that. I think that actually
kind of had me going, oh, don't let that happen.
It was quite it was quite funny for a while,
but yeah, eventually a little tiresome. So those are some
media examples, but of course there are plenty of real
life examples. One is Britain's Mary Anne Cotton, frequently misattributed
(14:26):
as their first female known serial killer. She was born
on Halloween in two killed twenty one people via poisoning
before she was caught, and that included three spouses and
up to eleven of her own children. Her first murder
took place sometime in eighteen sixty five, she probably had
killed before then. As we said in that Female serial
(14:48):
Killer episodes, a lot of information around female serial killers
is hard to get to the truth of what really
happened and what was legend, and then what didn't go
documented and what did um So this is sort of
what a lot of people seemed to land on around her.
She was caught in eighteen seventy three and quickly found
(15:10):
guilty and hanged, And there's even a poem or perhaps
song about her, Marianne Cotton. She's dead and she's rotten.
She lies in her bed with her eyes wide open,
sing sing, Oh, what can I sing? Marianne Cotton is
tied up with string? Where where up in the air
selling black Puddin's a penny a pair. There's also Daisy
(15:33):
Luisa de Melcher, who went on to become the first
woman to ever be hanged in South Africa. She married
her first husband in nineteen o nine. Three of their
five children died as babies, and her husband died in
ninety three. He left in his wake a really big inheritance.
De Melca was married again within three years, and within
three more years he was dead, picked into an illness
(15:54):
very similar to the one that took the life of
her first husband. Four years later, and she had herself
an another husband. Within a year of that marriage, her
son died after drinking coffee his mother made dot dot
dot dot. The brother of Demlicra's second husband pushed for
an investigation, and the authorities discovered arsenic and demlicas son's system.
(16:14):
Bodies of our first as second husbands were found to
have poison in their systems as well. Wow. Then there's
France's Queen of poisoners, Marie Bisnard. She killed her first
husband in the very next year. She had a second husband.
They moved into his parents house, and both parents were
dead months later. Their daughter, who shared their inheritance, died
(16:38):
soon after. Bausnard's father died. Within this period too, a
couple of boarders died as well, and then they bequeathed
their state to the Besnard's. Besnard's mother and a handful
of other relatives also died, leaving everything they owned to
the Besnard's. By this point they were rich, but Basnard's
(16:58):
husband did have his doubts about his wife. He told
a lover he was afraid Marie might be trying to
kill him. After his nine death and Marie subsequently coming
into his inheritance, people began to suspect foul play. Arsenic
was deemed to be the cause of death, and several
other bodies were exhumed and showed the same thing. Marie
(17:19):
was charged with thirteen murders. Three trials later, she was acquitted.
She died in nineteen sixty one. Wow, how did you
even get away with that? That you can't help but
just be sad and upset and someone impressed? I suppose
we did talk about that a little bit, and we
(17:40):
did an episode while back about like, why are we
so interested in scam queens and is a part of
us sort of rooting. I'm not rooting for that, Please
understand I'm not, but he was kind of like Wow.
The nineteen eleven Chicagoan and self proclaimed psychic Tilly Clement,
began accurately predicting the death of dogs in her neighborhood Rude.
(18:00):
A couple of years later, she upped the auntie and
predicting the death of her longtime husband, and in less
than a month, sure enough, he was dead. When she
had cashed in on his life insurance policy, she marched
right over to the matchmaker. Not three months later, she
had remarried and then predicted her second husband's death and
he died. Her third husband met a similar fate, and
(18:21):
when a woman in the neighborhood voiced her concerns about
her presto another prediction, and she was dead. Husband number
four made it four years before a prediction and death.
She also had predicted about three of her more troublesome
children's death, all of whom ended up dying. Um When
husband number five fell ill, his family took him to
the hospital, where it was discovered he had arsenic in
(18:42):
his system. She received a life sentence for attempted murder
and was forbidered from cooking food for the other prisoners. Smart, yeah, smart,
I would agree with that. We do have some more
examples for you, but first we have one more break
for word from our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsoring,
(19:14):
and we're back with Texas's black Widow of Henderson County's title.
Yeah yeah, you know. And Betty Lou Beats was arrested
for the murder of her fifth husband and bearing him
in her backyard. Police found his body, along with the
bodies of all of her other victims. You know. Then
(19:35):
there's Milli Weeks, who used online dating to find her
targets after serving six years in prison for manslaughter. She
had drugged her husband and then ran him over with
her car. She met a second husband at a Florida
Christian retreat a couple of weeks after her release, who
died mysteriously a year after their marriage. Weeks was arrested
(19:56):
after a strange drug was found in the system of
her third husband, whose hell had inexplicably rapidly deteriorated. She
was sentenced to five years for stealing his funds, and
he survived. Her third husband so there's also jessuck Okay Kahy,
the black widow of Kyoto from She killed at least
(20:18):
seven men she was dating or married to for their
life insurance equally about seven million dollars. She says she's innocent,
doomed by faith, doomed by fate. In two thousand five,
Stacy Castor's second husband died in what was believed to
be a suicide. Upon further investigation, authorities found he had
ingested anti freeze. Now suspicious, the body of her first
(20:39):
husband was exhumed and his system also contained anti freeze.
Castor panicked, inviting her daughter, Ashley over for a drink.
She laced her daughter's cocktails with drugs, and after she
passed out, Castor wrote a fake suicide note as Ashley,
claiming that Ashley had killed her father and stepfather and herself. However,
Ashley's sister found her struggling to breathe in the morning,
and she was taken to the hospital, where she was
(21:01):
quoted to have been only fifteen minutes from death. When
she awoke, she was shocked to hear that she had
allegedly written a suicide note confessing the murders of her
father figures castors story quickly unraveled and she's serving twenty
five years. Yeah. Then there is the Black Widow case.
In two thousand and eight, at the ages of seventy
(21:22):
seven and seventy five, respectively, Helen Golay and Olga rudder
Schmidt were convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences. They had taken in to homeless men, clothed
and fed them for two years before killing them with
their cars, but not before taking out millions in life
insurance policies, dozens of life insurance policies. According to the
(21:45):
detective that caught them, Helen was the brains and was
worth millions. The two actually didn't seem to really get along.
I was one of the number one questions from interviews
I read were like, were they friends? The answer seems
to be no. Um When it interviewed by vices, detective said,
I think how one is a completely psychotic person. She's
probably one of the evilest minds I have ever come across.
(22:05):
In thirty one years of doing this, I've never seen
anyone who was that calculating and evil. I want to
say this is a snapped episode. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure. Well,
it certainly was interesting because a lot of the detectives,
so the way they were caught is because people were
kind of in awe that so many insurance policies have
(22:27):
been taken out, and the insurance person showed up kind
of like, what's this is weird? And one of the
detectives mentioned in past say, I remember a similar case
a couple of years earlier, and it was them as well.
And um, one of the things that detectives were sort
of um scratching their head about is they're pretty old,
(22:49):
and so the millions of dollars, if I remember correctly,
there was no one in the family they would want
to pass that too. So I guess that's one of
the reasons why they didn't really consider to them at first,
you know, you don't think about old women killing people
too often. And then yeah, yeah, anyway. Um. There's also
(23:11):
the nonfiction book Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets,
and in that one of the FBI profilers mentioned that,
unlike the Hollywood black widow trope that's very fimbtal, most
real life like widows are older and more plain. So yeah,
big on that. Um, Okay, that's just a whole different conversation. Well, again,
(23:33):
it goes back to what we said in that that
episode around females zero killers, is that we always have
to judge them based on their looks somehow. Ah. Anyway,
that about brings us to the end of this Black
Widow episode. If we miss anybody or you have any
additional information, you can always write to us. But first
(23:54):
we do have a shout out UM to a friend
of ours shouts. So, yeah, we wanted to shout out
a friend of ours. Jenny. We first ran into when
we were at Podcast Movement in Orlando and she came
to our panel, which thank you, Jenny. And then we
were recently speaking at Sheet Podcasts here in Atlanta and
Jenny came to our panel there as well, and the
(24:15):
panels about women supporting women, so it was greatly appreciated UM.
And she has her own podcast that we wanted to
shout out from her, uh quote, I want to make
sure and share the information with you about our podcast,
so you had everything you needed to know. We just
released a new episode today on Supreme Court and the
l g B t Q case that they heard recently
(24:35):
and are looking forward to the abortion case that they
will be hearing in the spring. Repros fight Back is
a reproductive health rights and justice podcast that interviews the
people who are fighting for our sexual and reproductive health
and rights at home and abroad. Each episode we dig
deep into a specific reprotective health rights and justice issue,
talking about what it is, what's happening around it right now,
(24:55):
and what you can do to fight back against this
unprecedented assault on our rights. So it sounds like a
lot of our listeners would be interested in it. You
can go find them on their website, which is Reprose
fight Back like reprotective so lower case R E capital
p r oh. You can find them at Twitter at
Reprose fight Back and on Facebook at Reprose fight Back
(25:16):
and on Instagram at repros f B. Yeah, and then
also want to shout out to Mental Health and Color,
which is a podcast that focuses on having an open
platform where people of color are sharing their stories concerning
mental health and helping to break down the barriers and stigma. Also,
just a quick shout out to our friend Charlene, congrats
on your new job as a flight attendant. Yeah, she
(25:37):
just flew into Atlanta recently. I don't know when this's
gonna air. Um, and we didn't get to hang out
with her, but just congratulations. Yeah, yes, I mean any
listeners who want to send in their new jobs get
a shout out, you want to come hang with us.
She wanted to come hang with us, so we just
couldn't work out the schedule. But yeah, I just want
to say congrats, yes, congrats, and uh we would love
(25:59):
to hear what stuff all all the cool stuff you
listeners are doing. If you want to send that to us,
please do you. You can email us at Stuff Media,
mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told to You. Thanks as always
to our super producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you
for listening Stuff I've Never Told You his production of
(26:21):
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For More podcast from
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Hey, this is Annie and Samantha, and welcome to stuff.
I never told your prediction of I Heart Radio's House
at Words. For today's episode, we're sort of continuing our
conversation we had around female serial killers and a specific
(00:27):
type of female serial killer that kept coming up. It's
the black widow, right, um. And we said in those
episodes we were going to come back and do an
episode on this. So we are women of our Words.
Yeah we are. It just sounded like we are a
new group or a squad or something. Women of our Words.
We could be woo, women of our Words. It's wow,
(00:56):
w o o W. It's a small oh and a ago. Yeah,
there we go. We've got a whole group. And before
we get into this trigger warning for violence, sexual assault, death,
and general gruesomeness. Although not as bad as our female
(01:16):
serial killer episodes, they were a rough, um yeah, So
we wanted to focus specifically on this black widow type
of killings, type of killer. And of course we're not
talking about the Avenger today, sorry Annie one day, and
we're not talking about the Spider, although the Spider probably
(01:38):
inspired the name, um, the so the black Widow as
a killer, not either of those things refers to a
female serial killer who kills three or more people, typically
husbands or significant others, or both, for financial gain. Their
method of choice is usually poison, and they are usually
across between a serial killer and the con artist. Several
(02:02):
of our examples of female serial killers in those episodes
were black widows, and the FBI uses the term black
widow as an official label for this type of killer,
which is interesting and from the report on serial killers.
Financial gain is a motivation in which the finder benefits
monetarily from killing. Examples of these types of crimes are
black widow killings, robbery homicides, or multiple killings involving instruments,
(02:25):
or welfare fraud. Yeah, so that's an official FBI report. Now,
black Widow, the Avenger, I will say, did make researching
this topic very difficult. You had to be very specific
with a lot of quotes around the yes. Yes, because
most of the search results came up to be her,
(02:46):
and because she is technically a murderer and a killers,
so that was another layer of difficulty. She's a trained assassin, right.
And then also because I kept getting distracted reading the comics,
you know, Yeah, I had a very big spoiler for
the most recent issue, and I'm excited to have read it. Um,
do you ever know where the research will lead you?
(03:10):
Although I guess it should have been obvious. There is
a meme of black widow marrying Spider Man and then
killing him, and that that made me laugh pretty good.
Does he have money? I don't know, Peter and Parker, No,
he has no money. I think it's just a joke
because he's a spider Spider Man, you see. And yes,
(03:32):
we do call black widow killers black widows because female
black widow spiders eat their mate after conception. And also
black widow has been a web of lies. That's just
some extra that I added in there. Um, a black
widow usually the killer, not the spider are the avengers,
(03:54):
So now I'm going to say the killer. Yes, we're
not talking about those other things from here on out.
They usually search for somebody who is lonely, sad, maybe grieving,
um in some way vulnerable. The black widow praise on
that vulnerability, becoming what the target needs, perhaps sharing them
with gifts, affection, those kinds of things. She is also
(04:17):
likely to target friends and family, basically anyone in her
orbit that can make her rich, are just richer is
a threat. So on average, the black widow starts on
her path around twenty five and then murders for a
decade before she gets caught. Decade a decade. Yeah, black
widows frequently employ things like newspaper ads or these days
(04:39):
online dating or some other type of wanted ads or
dating tools to find their victim. Now, there are some
variations of black widow that I wanted to touch on,
one of them being the Curtwright curse. So this is
basically anyone who dates the protagonist dies and they usually
(04:59):
die quickly. And it's named for the Cartwright family in Bonanza,
which is a reference that I I am not familiar with, yes,
but that's where it comes from. Um. Some examples are
the Owens family from Practical Magic. There's a curse on
the family that means that the women's husbands will tragically
meet their ends. UM Xander Harris from Buffy, Buffy from Buffy,
(05:24):
Sam from Supernatural and one episode Dean even asked him,
have you forgotten the average lifespan of your hookups? Um
Soshiko Sato in Torchwood, Jack from Sydney, Bristow from Alias
and depending on your choices Shepherd from mass effect, so
this is basically your main character. James Bond is another
great one. Whoever they date dies usually putty immediately, exactly exactly,
(05:50):
So that's one variation. Um. Then there's the blue Beard
from Stephen King's The Shining. From there upon the floor
was blood, and on the walls were wives, for blue
Beard first had married them, then cut their throats with knives.
So this is essentially the male version of the black widow.
(06:11):
A dude who appears charming easily finds a mate to
marry and then kills her. There is a major difference
in motivation. Blue beards are not usually motivated by greed.
The name comes from the Seven fairy Tale, in which
the character blue Beard murders wives who opened a forbidden
door disobeying his direct orders. The earliest versions were meant
(06:33):
to be interpreted as a warning to women who disobeyed
their husbands. Typically, the woman who opened the forbidden door
would discover the bodies of blue beards past wives, and
she decided to die. Obviously, Yeah, that's the only way.
So sleeping your way to the top trope the self
explanatory and often weaponized against women. Whether it's true or not,
(06:53):
as we see often. Then there's a gold digger, which
is similar but typically involves one partner who has riches
and status clarice from it takes two both versions of
the parent trap. And have you seen the latest withinnis
Quaid's new fiancee of course, I have a fantastic And
then Ron's first wife Kami, who tries to get back
(07:13):
with Rod after learning he has gold buried in several
places around his property, a literal gold diggirl. Yeah, I
love it. I love it. So we do have a
lot of real life examples but also a lot of
me examples. But first we're gonna pause for a quick
break for from our sponsor, and we're back, Thank you sponsored,
(07:47):
and we're back with one of yours. So for many
of the media examples, one of my favorites, of course
is Snapped. I think I've referred to them now like
four or five. Look, it's fantastic, um, It's one of
my ever and does involve many different female incidents of
murder or attempted murder, including those who would be could
could be qualified as black widows. But just a reminder,
(08:09):
they have twenty four seasons yea, the seasons. Yes, so
that it's a big show and has even expanded with
killer couples. Yeah, you know, partner killers. All of these different.
When I say partner killings like spouses or significant others,
there's also killings where it may involved domestic violence. I
think there's a couple of several, whereas women being jealous
(08:30):
of women. So yeah, so it's a whole thing. But yeah,
it's it's lasted twenty four seasons. Long, twenty four seasons
for some reasons, I thought it was relatively no no, no, no,
and if you start like watching from the beginning. Um,
the narration is Sharon Martin. She won an Emmy. I'm
(08:51):
not sure for which I think she because she's narrated
on several different things. But yeah, yeah, it's legit. It's
been around for a man for at least I think
two thousand four fifteen years. Well that's a reality check.
There you go. I'll deal with that later. You're gonna
(09:12):
process that. Um. We also mentioned in one of our
female serial Killer episodes, the nineteen forty four Carrie Grant
film Arsenic and Old Lace, which we have seen Samantha
um featured two black widow type murderers, and as you
might guess from the title, these elderly women poisoned victims
with arsenic lace pie and a smile, and a smile
(09:36):
that sounds like the perfect slogan the seven movie Black Widow,
where the female serial killer continues to kill even after
she is wealthy. Then there's Debbie Jelinski from Adam's Family Values.
And another one that I've already mentioned previously, which parodies
this is So I'm married an X murderer went through
(09:58):
several husbands, But of course that's a always a ending
twist this one. Have you said, I haven't seen it,
but I read about it for this episode, so I
know what the spoilers. I'm not gonna do it even
those years old, because it's just fantastic. And then Mrs
White from Clue, which again another one of my favorite
favorite movies. Five of her husbands had died. One was
(10:19):
an illusionist who disappeared and never reappeared, and of course
Mrs White said of this he wasn't a very good illusionist,
and one had his head chopped off by someone and
something else, and then she points downwards as she Yeah,
it's a fantastic She's like head chopped off, and it's fantastic.
(10:44):
I think I've watched it recently. It is one of
those Halloween movies to me because it's so fun and
you wanted to kind of just reminisce. Of course, not
the guests aged very well, but it's still great. I'm
trying to get a party together. You might have been
there when I was planning it. I'm always planning a
party or two. Are trying to get a Tim Curry
party together where everybody comes as a different Tim Curry.
(11:06):
I think that would be spectacular. I'm trying to remember
the character and Mrs White Madeline Cohan, which is a
great comedian from the eighties, eighties and nineties. He's a
fantastic actress. She was the one that betrayed Mrs White.
Another example from the media we have is Queen Ravenna
from Snow White and the Huntsman, who killed snow White's
(11:28):
father after marriage so that she can rule solo um. Similarly,
the stepmother from Phoenix and Ashes Mercedes like he's take
on the Cinderella Tail. There's a Get Smart where Maxwell
had to marry an agent named Widow often Annie Yep
who used these methods in her work. And then Samantha
(11:51):
Carter from star Gate st on one of my favorite shows,
although actually more accurately an example of the Cartwright curse
because all of her boyfriend don't last long before dying.
The writers jokingly called her Black Widow Carter and almost
gave an episode that title. Yeah. Well, there's also Rebecca
Carlson from the Body of Evidence, who went to trial
(12:12):
on accusations that she went out and found wealthy men
with health problems to have sex with until their hearts
gaped out. Um. And then there's Catherine from Basic Instinct
and oh my goodness, that movie itself was just as
a young mind, you're like, I do leave it at that. Yeah,
that's another one I've missed, and it's I've seen, you know,
(12:35):
the clip that everyone shows, and for me, as a
young child, I thought, maybe I don't want to see that,
Maybe I don't. Blaze A Beanie's mother is implied to
be a black widow in the Harry Potter series. Uh
seven marriages of hers and with husband's dead under mysterious
circumstances and their money transferred to her. Blaze A Beanie.
(12:58):
Oh Amantha WHI by the way I did my crosswords,
not crossing war starches. Last night. I stayed up a
little too long doing them. Placed is kind of a
side character from Southern and I believe it's in the
sixth one half blug Prints where he's invited to the
slug Club and he's the son of this model, famous
(13:18):
model in the Wizarding World, and it kind of comes
up about his mother. It's very passing thing that is
very specific. It is thank you. I'm going to take
it as a compliment. Uh. Then there's of course the
Black Widow song by Azalea the re read it or
I totally forgot about that until it was all of
(13:39):
a sudden stuck in my head. I don't know that song. Well,
I'm not saying I'm not saying it. Uh. And then
your favorite ride, The Bride from the Disney ride the
Haunted Mansion who murdered five husbands with an ax. Yeah,
you know, it wasn't bad when I was seeing it
from afar and then they came close, I was like, nope.
(14:00):
I got stuck on that ride once, right at the
part where something just pops up at you over and over.
And he told me about that. I think that actually
kind of had me going, oh, don't let that happen.
It was quite it was quite funny for a while,
but yeah, eventually a little tiresome. So those are some
media examples, but of course there are plenty of real
life examples. One is Britain's Mary Anne Cotton, frequently misattributed
(14:26):
as their first female known serial killer. She was born
on Halloween in two killed twenty one people via poisoning
before she was caught, and that included three spouses and
up to eleven of her own children. Her first murder
took place sometime in eighteen sixty five, she probably had
killed before then. As we said in that Female serial
(14:48):
Killer episodes, a lot of information around female serial killers
is hard to get to the truth of what really
happened and what was legend, and then what didn't go
documented and what did um So this is sort of
what a lot of people seemed to land on around her.
She was caught in eighteen seventy three and quickly found
(15:10):
guilty and hanged, And there's even a poem or perhaps
song about her, Marianne Cotton. She's dead and she's rotten.
She lies in her bed with her eyes wide open,
sing sing, Oh, what can I sing? Marianne Cotton is
tied up with string? Where where up in the air
selling black Puddin's a penny a pair. There's also Daisy
(15:33):
Luisa de Melcher, who went on to become the first
woman to ever be hanged in South Africa. She married
her first husband in nineteen o nine. Three of their
five children died as babies, and her husband died in
ninety three. He left in his wake a really big inheritance.
De Melca was married again within three years, and within
three more years he was dead, picked into an illness
(15:54):
very similar to the one that took the life of
her first husband. Four years later, and she had herself
an another husband. Within a year of that marriage, her
son died after drinking coffee his mother made dot dot
dot dot. The brother of Demlicra's second husband pushed for
an investigation, and the authorities discovered arsenic and demlicas son's system.
(16:14):
Bodies of our first as second husbands were found to
have poison in their systems as well. Wow. Then there's
France's Queen of poisoners, Marie Bisnard. She killed her first
husband in the very next year. She had a second husband.
They moved into his parents house, and both parents were
dead months later. Their daughter, who shared their inheritance, died
(16:38):
soon after. Bausnard's father died. Within this period too, a
couple of boarders died as well, and then they bequeathed
their state to the Besnard's. Besnard's mother and a handful
of other relatives also died, leaving everything they owned to
the Besnard's. By this point they were rich, but Basnard's
(16:58):
husband did have his doubts about his wife. He told
a lover he was afraid Marie might be trying to
kill him. After his nine death and Marie subsequently coming
into his inheritance, people began to suspect foul play. Arsenic
was deemed to be the cause of death, and several
other bodies were exhumed and showed the same thing. Marie
(17:19):
was charged with thirteen murders. Three trials later, she was acquitted.
She died in nineteen sixty one. Wow, how did you
even get away with that? That you can't help but
just be sad and upset and someone impressed? I suppose
we did talk about that a little bit, and we
(17:40):
did an episode while back about like, why are we
so interested in scam queens and is a part of
us sort of rooting. I'm not rooting for that, Please
understand I'm not, but he was kind of like Wow.
The nineteen eleven Chicagoan and self proclaimed psychic Tilly Clement,
began accurately predicting the death of dogs in her neighborhood Rude.
(18:00):
A couple of years later, she upped the auntie and
predicting the death of her longtime husband, and in less
than a month, sure enough, he was dead. When she
had cashed in on his life insurance policy, she marched
right over to the matchmaker. Not three months later, she
had remarried and then predicted her second husband's death and
he died. Her third husband met a similar fate, and
(18:21):
when a woman in the neighborhood voiced her concerns about
her presto another prediction, and she was dead. Husband number
four made it four years before a prediction and death.
She also had predicted about three of her more troublesome
children's death, all of whom ended up dying. Um When
husband number five fell ill, his family took him to
the hospital, where it was discovered he had arsenic in
(18:42):
his system. She received a life sentence for attempted murder
and was forbidered from cooking food for the other prisoners. Smart, yeah, smart,
I would agree with that. We do have some more
examples for you, but first we have one more break
for word from our sponsor and we're back. Thank you sponsoring,
(19:14):
and we're back with Texas's black Widow of Henderson County's title.
Yeah yeah, you know. And Betty Lou Beats was arrested
for the murder of her fifth husband and bearing him
in her backyard. Police found his body, along with the
bodies of all of her other victims. You know. Then
(19:35):
there's Milli Weeks, who used online dating to find her
targets after serving six years in prison for manslaughter. She
had drugged her husband and then ran him over with
her car. She met a second husband at a Florida
Christian retreat a couple of weeks after her release, who
died mysteriously a year after their marriage. Weeks was arrested
(19:56):
after a strange drug was found in the system of
her third husband, whose hell had inexplicably rapidly deteriorated. She
was sentenced to five years for stealing his funds, and
he survived. Her third husband so there's also jessuck Okay Kahy,
the black widow of Kyoto from She killed at least
(20:18):
seven men she was dating or married to for their
life insurance equally about seven million dollars. She says she's innocent,
doomed by faith, doomed by fate. In two thousand five,
Stacy Castor's second husband died in what was believed to
be a suicide. Upon further investigation, authorities found he had
ingested anti freeze. Now suspicious, the body of her first
(20:39):
husband was exhumed and his system also contained anti freeze.
Castor panicked, inviting her daughter, Ashley over for a drink.
She laced her daughter's cocktails with drugs, and after she
passed out, Castor wrote a fake suicide note as Ashley,
claiming that Ashley had killed her father and stepfather and herself. However,
Ashley's sister found her struggling to breathe in the morning,
and she was taken to the hospital, where she was
(21:01):
quoted to have been only fifteen minutes from death. When
she awoke, she was shocked to hear that she had
allegedly written a suicide note confessing the murders of her
father figures castors story quickly unraveled and she's serving twenty
five years. Yeah. Then there is the Black Widow case.
In two thousand and eight, at the ages of seventy
(21:22):
seven and seventy five, respectively, Helen Golay and Olga rudder
Schmidt were convicted of murder and sentenced to two consecutive
life sentences. They had taken in to homeless men, clothed
and fed them for two years before killing them with
their cars, but not before taking out millions in life
insurance policies, dozens of life insurance policies. According to the
(21:45):
detective that caught them, Helen was the brains and was
worth millions. The two actually didn't seem to really get along.
I was one of the number one questions from interviews
I read were like, were they friends? The answer seems
to be no. Um When it interviewed by vices, detective said,
I think how one is a completely psychotic person. She's
probably one of the evilest minds I have ever come across.
(22:05):
In thirty one years of doing this, I've never seen
anyone who was that calculating and evil. I want to
say this is a snapped episode. Yeah, yeah, I'm pretty sure. Well,
it certainly was interesting because a lot of the detectives,
so the way they were caught is because people were
kind of in awe that so many insurance policies have
(22:27):
been taken out, and the insurance person showed up kind
of like, what's this is weird? And one of the
detectives mentioned in past say, I remember a similar case
a couple of years earlier, and it was them as well.
And um, one of the things that detectives were sort
of um scratching their head about is they're pretty old,
(22:49):
and so the millions of dollars, if I remember correctly,
there was no one in the family they would want
to pass that too. So I guess that's one of
the reasons why they didn't really consider to them at first,
you know, you don't think about old women killing people
too often. And then yeah, yeah, anyway. Um. There's also
(23:11):
the nonfiction book Homicide, A Year on the Killing Streets,
and in that one of the FBI profilers mentioned that,
unlike the Hollywood black widow trope that's very fimbtal, most
real life like widows are older and more plain. So yeah,
big on that. Um, Okay, that's just a whole different conversation. Well, again,
(23:33):
it goes back to what we said in that that
episode around females zero killers, is that we always have
to judge them based on their looks somehow. Ah. Anyway,
that about brings us to the end of this Black
Widow episode. If we miss anybody or you have any
additional information, you can always write to us. But first
(23:54):
we do have a shout out UM to a friend
of ours shouts. So, yeah, we wanted to shout out
a friend of ours. Jenny. We first ran into when
we were at Podcast Movement in Orlando and she came
to our panel, which thank you, Jenny. And then we
were recently speaking at Sheet Podcasts here in Atlanta and
Jenny came to our panel there as well, and the
(24:15):
panels about women supporting women, so it was greatly appreciated UM.
And she has her own podcast that we wanted to
shout out from her, uh quote, I want to make
sure and share the information with you about our podcast,
so you had everything you needed to know. We just
released a new episode today on Supreme Court and the
l g B t Q case that they heard recently
(24:35):
and are looking forward to the abortion case that they
will be hearing in the spring. Repros fight Back is
a reproductive health rights and justice podcast that interviews the
people who are fighting for our sexual and reproductive health
and rights at home and abroad. Each episode we dig
deep into a specific reprotective health rights and justice issue,
talking about what it is, what's happening around it right now,
(24:55):
and what you can do to fight back against this
unprecedented assault on our rights. So it sounds like a
lot of our listeners would be interested in it. You
can go find them on their website, which is Reprose
fight Back like reprotective so lower case R E capital
p r oh. You can find them at Twitter at
Reprose fight Back and on Facebook at Reprose fight Back
(25:16):
and on Instagram at repros f B. Yeah, and then
also want to shout out to Mental Health and Color,
which is a podcast that focuses on having an open
platform where people of color are sharing their stories concerning
mental health and helping to break down the barriers and stigma. Also,
just a quick shout out to our friend Charlene, congrats
on your new job as a flight attendant. Yeah, she
(25:37):
just flew into Atlanta recently. I don't know when this's
gonna air. Um, and we didn't get to hang out
with her, but just congratulations. Yeah, yes, I mean any
listeners who want to send in their new jobs get
a shout out, you want to come hang with us.
She wanted to come hang with us, so we just
couldn't work out the schedule. But yeah, I just want
to say congrats, yes, congrats, and uh we would love
(25:59):
to hear what stuff all all the cool stuff you
listeners are doing. If you want to send that to us,
please do you. You can email us at Stuff Media,
mom Stuff at iHeart media dot com. You can find
us on Twitter at mom Stuff Podcast and on Instagram
at Stuff I've Never Told to You. Thanks as always
to our super producer Andrew Howard, and thanks to you
for listening Stuff I've Never Told You his production of
(26:21):
I Heart Radio's How Stuff Works. For More podcast from
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