Criminalia

Julia Agrippina was a power-hungry Roman empress – power-hungry even by Roman standards – who is said to have poisoned her husband (who also happened to be her uncle) to ensure her only son's succession to the throne.

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Marie was convicted of murdering her husband by poisoning him with arsenic. But what's most notable about that in doing so, she became the first person ever to be convicted based on direct forensic toxicological evidence, like on Dexter or CSI.

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Giulia Tofana was an Italian apothecary known for her beauty, her secrecy and her poisonous proclivities. If the numbers are all to be believed, she may be the most successful serial killer you’ve never heard of.

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Sally Basset was an enslaved woman who was executed in 1730 for allegedly attempting to poison her granddaughter’s enslavers. She is known throughout Bermudian folklore, where she is, to many, a hero.

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The most interesting thing about Marie Besnard might not be that she was accused of poisoning about a dozen people. It's that she got away with it -- and got wealthier with each murder.

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French Queen Catherine de Medici may or may not have introduced the artichoke to France. And yes, she may be at least partly responsible for starting the French Wars of Religion. But were the accusations Catherine was a homicidal poisoner true?

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Sarah Chesham, or “Sally Arsenic” as she became known, was convicted of a single count of poisoning with intent -- the victim, her husband. But the evidence indicates, and the public certainly believed, that she was responsible for several poisoning deaths including two of her children.

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Dubbed Atlanta’s "Mrs. Bluebeard," a pejorative term referring to women who killed their own family members, Roberta Elder was suspected of killing three husbands, four of her children, three step-children, her mother, her grandchild, a cousin, and even probably more. 

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Also known as "The Derby Poisoner," Lydia Sherman poisoned, in total, her three husbands plus as many as eight children in her care --- six of whom were her biological children. She confessed to her murders, showing no remorse, was convicted of second-degree murder in 1872.

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Locusta, herself, wasn't a poisoner. She was a maker of poisons – think of her more like a botanist or chemist. But she was actually more like an assassin-for-hire – she provided poisons because she was hired to do so.

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Velma Barfield is probably better known for her execution than for her murders. She became the first woman to be executed in North Carolina after the death penalty was reinstated in 1976. She was also the first woman to die by lethal injection in the United States.

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Hieronyma Spara, known as "La Spara," organized instruction in the uses of arsenic for married women who were considering bettering their station in life by becoming wealthy widows. After the church became suspicious of this secret society, they infiltrated her group -- and La Spara was hanged in 1659.

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