November 17, 2020 • 28 mins
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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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia.
This season, we're exploring the lives and motivations of some
of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Holly
Frying and I'm Mariach from Marquis. If you've been a
(00:20):
listener this season, you may agree with the following assessment.
Modern scholars generally agree that the Victorian era was kind
of the heyday for poisoners. There were many poisons to
choose from then, and I mean there still are today,
but at that time, arsenic was the poison of choice,
primarily because it was really easy to get. Plus it
(00:42):
was tasteless and it was odorless, so it's really easy
to hide as well, And these are all good things
when you're assessing poisons. Arsenic is, as we've mentioned before,
naturally occurring, but in terms of human knowledge of it,
it's been around since about twelve fifty, when a German
scholar named Albertus Magnus is credited with discovering it, although
(01:02):
we also probably want to air quote the word discover
since arsenic was surely used before Albertas put his name
on it, right, But he put his name on it first.
This was a time when there were very few rules
(01:22):
about how one might acquire a poison, and there were
even fewer rules about who might acquire a poison. And
some of the world's most infamous poisoners seemed to come
from the Victorian era. But let's be super clear here,
poisonings were happening long before Victorian times. The very first
(01:43):
person to commit homicide with poison lived probably at least
modern scholars estimate about seventy thousand BC. Where they mail
where they female? Was this to settle a score or
maybe a hungry power play, It was so long ago
we can only speculate on the circumstance. Interestingly, historians recently
(02:05):
believed that they have found more substantial evidence of a
tribe using poison tipped arrowheads on the African continent, and
that very likely jumped from human poisoning animal to human
poisoning human. But what we do know is that humans
have been poisoning one another for a very very long time. Poisoning, too,
has always been seen as a dramatic type of murder.
(02:29):
It's been romanticized. It even makes its way into our entertainment, say,
like Shakespeare, for instance, he writes several instances I believe
seven actually of murder by poison in his works, and
six of those poisonings, curiously are administered by a woman.
In the sixteen hundreds, Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher, who followed
(02:52):
in Shakespeare's footsteps, described poisoning as the coward's weapon. Well,
I mean, you know, you don't have to be there
for it. So but if you go all the way
back I'm talking like back, back, back, back, back to
the ancient Sumerians, which takes us back to like, you know,
(03:13):
you'll find evidence that they too used plant toxins such
as wolf spain, which we've we've talked a lot about
in our episodes this season. Um, and they used it
to poison the tips of their hunting arrows, also very
likely used it to kill a person or two. Um.
And when you're talking that far back in history, though,
things get a little bit tangled between what was reality
(03:35):
and what was mythology. The Sumerians, for instance, worshiped a
goddess named Gula who ruled over charms and spells and
also poisons. But it's the Sumerians who also may have
been the first to document the effects of different poisonous substances,
so they didn't believe it was all magical. They did
(03:56):
sort of know that it was also based in reality.
They were into the science of it. If we jump
forward a bit to around three thousand BC, during the
time of the ancient Egyptians, there is evidence that they
definitely kept records of poisonous plants and their side effects,
and included pretty detailed records of how you could extract
(04:16):
those poisons and how to distill them into poisonous substances.
The ancient Greeks are also really well known for using poisons,
specifically as a capital punishment, which is a sentence that
they called state poison. And if you know your history,
you also know that that's how Socrates was executed and
(04:37):
the ancient Persians, Yep, they two were poisoners. There's a
story about Queen Parasites, who lived in the fifth century BC,
poisoning the carving knife before she used it to serve
her daughter in law. Chinese history, India's history, there are
stories spanning the globe of poisoning in almost every culture
(05:00):
going back centuries. The earliest whispers of widespread murder by
poison and by women specifically. UH dates back to about
three hundred BC, and it involves a group of something
like a hundred and seventy women who decided to use
(05:20):
the plague as an alibi for poisoning a bunch of
Roman men. Unfortunately for them, their rus didn't work, and
I suppose unfortunately for the Roman men as well. Um
and all of the women who were involved were convicted
of their crimes. I would love to see how that
group came about. I know that's a pretty big group
(05:41):
to get and everybody be cool, but here's what we're
gonna do. That is a large group of people to
get on board with one thing exactly and not have
one person sort of like tell their cousin, who tells
their sister, you know, and then anybody's in jail. Right
before the popularity of arsenic in the Middle Ages and
(06:02):
into the Renaissance, the ancient Greeks and Romans were more
inclined to use hemlock as their poison of choice. Hemlock, incidentally,
is also part of the Parsley family. I actually thought
that was really interesting, you know, like may inform your
your culinary presentations going forward right, be careful of wild
carrots like it's also in the family. So regardless of
(06:28):
whether you're talking about arsenic or you're talking about hemlock
or any other poison really for that matter, one thing
is really clear. Throughout human history, poison has been a
potent weapon in every assassin's toolkit. It is discreet, it
is quick if you want it to be um and
it could make a woman a wealthy widow, and it
(06:50):
could set in motion a change in power. And there's
a reason we're setting up all of this assassination shock.
When we look at ancient women and their knowledge of poisons,
there is one that stands out and one that we
have in fact mentioned before. So our scene becomes ancient Rome,
and our poisoner is a woman named Locusta. When we
(07:14):
come back, we're going to dive into the life and
crimes of this ancient poisoner. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's
get into who Locusta was and why the Roman elite
might have been interested in her skills. Locusta was an
(07:40):
active poisoner during the first century in the final two
reigns of the Julio Claudian dynasty. During the Roman Empire.
You may recognize her name from some of our previous episodes,
but she has mainly been in the shadows. As we've
been talking about this season, there's a long list of
women who are remembered for their poisoned fuel like a
(08:00):
sees right, but regardless of whether or not they actually
committed the deed or in some instances deeds plural u.
Sometimes there was rat poison in the eggnog, which we've seen,
but we've also learned that sometimes it was simply deadly gossip.
Poisoning in Rome was so common in the first century
(08:21):
that it was often just assumed that if anyone in
the Imperial court died, it was not natural causes, and women, women,
well women, were considered the most notorious poisoners. At one point.
As we mentioned before, the word for adulters was kind
of synonymous with that of poisoner. Among the Romans, there
(08:42):
was a pretty strong belief that Roman women poisoned for love,
just romantic but not always true because they are so
poisoned for money. Yeah right, So Locusta is mentioned all
over the place when you're reading about the Roman Empire,
yet not a ton of information of out who she
is has remained over the centuries. Other than the fact
(09:04):
that she was a woman who poisoned for money, we
do know that she came from Gaul, and sometimes she
is actually referred to as Locusta of Gaul, and at
the time Gall was the outer province of ancient Rome.
Today it is part of France. There is no record, though,
of how she came to be in the center of
Roman power. There is one super sketchy story about her
(09:26):
being a real sketchy kidnapped. There's a lot of sketchy
when it comes to her story. Yes, um, there's one
sketchy story about her being kidnapped in the year fifty
four and being brought to Rome to exploit her skills,
which would suggest she already had a reputation. But that
story is very unlikely, mainly because she was also already
(09:47):
allegedly in jail on a poisoning charge in Rome in
the year fifty four, and that story makes more sense
in her timeline. She probably was in Rome in jail
awaiting a sentence the accused to herself. She actually wasn't
a poisoner. She was a maker of poisons, and it's
(10:11):
kind of smart to think of her more like a
like a botanist or a chemist, and she would have
been really right at home making drugs an apothecary. But
we've mentioned this man once before. He's a nineteenth century
toxicology expert who was brought in several times as a
court witness. His name is Dr Alfred Swain Taylor, and
he once said, and we quote him, a poison in
(10:34):
a small dose is a medicine, and a medicine and
a large dose is a poison. It's a subtle difference, yeah,
and probably one that Locusta was very very keen on maintaining.
I'm just making compounds, right, But being an apothecary strictly
in the apothecary sense was not the path that she chose,
(10:57):
regardless of whether it was medicines or poison. Though she
was an expert in her craft. She's often called a
serial killer, but Locusta could really also be called more
of an assassin for hire. She provided poisons because she
was hired to do so. Professor of forensic psychology Dr
Katherine Ramsland has called Locusta's business necro entrepreneur. I just
(11:22):
I when I saw that, I was like, she's right,
I think that's a great business card title. If we've
learned anything this season, it's that Romans loved their poisons,
and in particular, they loved mixing them into their politics. So,
(11:43):
as you can imagine, Lokista was in great demand among them,
and stories of Locusta suggests that she was also discreet.
She didn't need to know why you needed poison or
who you may have hoped to kill with it. I
don't want to know about your beefs. I'm just selling
you some chemic goals. I just wondered if you want hemlocker,
opium und okay. All she needed to know was how
(12:06):
you might want a theoretical death to play out. For instance,
were you thinking about a quick and sudden death or
were you imagining more of an agonizing lye long and
painful affair. Either way, poison was always the matter of
the day. It was a silent killer and perfect, always
perfect for the job. She didn't just create and mix poisons.
(12:30):
She advised others on which poisons would be best for
their desired result, and she took on apprentices, which I
thought was actually pretty cool. Usually if you're discreet, you
don't do that um And eventually she was running a
sort of training academy for poison assassins, and she encouraged
and taught the poison arts too many, although to be honest,
(12:51):
most of the poisonings that were happening at this time,
we're all happening in the Imperial court. Emperor Caligula, for instance,
is said to have had a trunk filled with various poisons.
Poison was serious business in politics, so no wonder she
started this cottage industry, as like the University of poison,
(13:12):
there are there. Actually, when I was doing some research,
I found that there were there were sort of three women,
Locusta being one of them, and two other women who
were well known for poisoning at the same time, but
they had been apprentices of hers, so they really weren't
necessarily part of her story. They just happened to be
other poisoners, which I'm sure there were hundreds of across
the city. So she, getting back to Locusta, was one
(13:36):
of the few women we've talked about this season who
didn't rely on our favorite poison arsenic. Her poisons would
have actually included mostly vegetable poisons, and and that meant
that she would have relied on plants like Belladonna and
deadly nightshade, mandreg hemlock opium. Those are just a few examples.
(13:56):
H Wolf Spain was another good one that was surely
part of her tool kids, and it was known as
the Queen of Poisons. It said that when she formulated
new poisons, she tested them at the emperor's request, on
convicted criminals and enslaved persons. And actually the reality was
that she tested her poisons on anyone she wanted to
(14:16):
test them on, because frankly, she could. It's true. One
of the great Roman historians, Tastus, described her as, and
we quote him, a woman lately condemned as a dealer
in clandestine practices, but reserved among the instruments of state
to serve the purposes of dark ambition. So he was
(14:40):
also known to play up the stereotype that women were
much more likely to be poisoners than men were, and
that stereotype has led the public to label women like
the Cuesta as a witch. And we've seen it time
and time again, no matter what century we've talked about. Yeah,
he was not the only one to link female poisoners
with witches or witchcraft, not at all. This there was
(15:03):
this pervasive and very popular belief that has carried on
through the centuries that any woman who could make and
who administered poisons couldn't just have scientific knowledge, she had
to be a sorceress or or that she was at
least somehow involved with magic. And that is a belief
that we talked about through the centuries when we talk
about accused female poisoners, never science, magic. Sir, this is
(15:30):
going a good time for us to take a quick break. Um,
when we come back, we're going to go deeper into
how Locusta was influential among the Roman elite. Welcome back
(15:51):
to Criminalia. Let's now get into how Locusta's skills could
make or break an emperor. So we've talked briefly, very
briefly about Locusta in an episode earlier this season, very
early on, when we told the story of Empress Julia Agrippina.
So Julia was said to have poisoned her husband to
(16:14):
ensure her only son, who became Emperor Nero, would ascend
to the throne. It was Locusta who provided the goods
to make all of that happen. And Locusta, while she
had what seemed to be a pretty steady business. She
didn't work completely unscathed, though she paid prices for this
line of work that she chose. She was arrested and
(16:37):
thrown in jail several times. Twice she was bailed out
when high ranking, ambitious and impatient Roman politicians intervened. After all,
you can't have your assassin sitting in jail when they
are political rivals to be poisoned. Murder by poison gave
an easy alibi. We've mentioned this time and time again
(16:57):
that you probably wouldn't be around when the victor and died,
so it was really important to a lot of people
that her business stayed up and running. Right. It's not
the same as being stabbed like you're going to be
there for that event, you know. That is that they
couldn't have it. So if you recall him just a
bit earlier, we mentioned that Lakista was not known just
for her skills, but for her discretion, and that was
(17:19):
surely by design. Since she didn't want to know what
her client's business was regarding their plans for the various
compounds she was concocting, she couldn't then share any details
with authorities. If she was caught and interrogated. That engendered
a level of trust in her, which is another reason
why Rome's High and Mighty would step in to help
(17:40):
her when she got all jammed up. The third time
Locusta was imprisoned, it was actually the embress herself, Julia Agrippinma,
who sprung her. Of course, she had a specific purpose
in mind. Well, it's Julia. Julia wanted to poison her husband,
Emperor Claudius, and Locusta was happy to oblige. It's here
that we take another turn to show just how enterprising
(18:03):
Julia Agrippina was. So instead of payment, which Locusta was
very likely expecting and maybe a thank you, Julia instead
turned her into the authorities and accused her of poisoning
the emperor, which yes, sure technically she had provided the poison,
but it was actually Julia who did the deed. Locusta
(18:24):
was arrested again, surely a surprise to an assassin waiting
for her payment for services rendered instead of being paid
with um uh, traitorous moves man, and at this point
she was sentenced to death. However, not long after the sentencing,
(18:45):
Julia's son and now Emperor Nero, freed Locusta and absolved
her of all of her crimes and allegedly gave her
a get out of jail free card for any future crimes.
That's a pretty sweet set up. It's a fantastic setup.
When I was reading about it, actually checked it in
multiple sources because I was like, I was like, he
(19:07):
not only gave her absolutely he absolved all of her
sins for before this, but any future ones. Like wow,
So Nero, Um, if it sounds like something that an
emperor would do, if he said, maybe wanted to make
an ally of a poisoner, it was very likely that
Nero did, in fact want to be allies with a
(19:27):
poisoner or at least have this one on speed dial.
So mainly because there were political parties he wanted to
get rid of, he wanted look used to out into
the room, and elite poison was the obvious way to
make that all those stuffs happen. It's important to point
out that Locusta was very instrumental in Nero's rise to power,
(19:48):
not just getting him on the throne, but beyond that.
She provided the murder weapon for him over and over,
which he mainly used against members of his own family
and those in the Imperial Court. We have no idea
how many people were actually poisoned by the results of
concoctions coming out of Locusta's lab, but we do know
(20:11):
Nero was very very busy, it wasn't he. So he
then actually rewarded her for all of her great work
with him with an official title. She was called the
Imperial Poisoner, which I mean, that's not very subtle, but
then everybody already seemed to know who she was, so
subtlety was really already out the window here and her.
(20:35):
You know, I'm picturing the cocktail parties we're taking. What
do you do? I'm the Imperial Poisoner, I see, and
you draw your hand away and slowly back out of
the room, back out and find somebody else to talk to. Cool.
That must be very um can get dental with that.
Like her career and her school for poison there's also
(21:00):
really flourished under Nero's fourteen your rain, and she just
she had a great decade. But of course, if you
are close to power that was gained in troublesome ways,
eventually it all falls apart. And when Nero's rain ended,
so did Locusta's. Now there's something that we have to address,
(21:21):
So bear with us. There's actually a really terrifying rumor
about Locusta's death that is not and I repeat not
all caps, not an ot true. But we're going to
talk about it, if only to be one more voice
on record saying that this did not happen. The story
(21:42):
is terrible, so we're just gonna give you the short version.
It's so gross, so gross that someone even concocted this
as a fiction. Uh, it's no secret that the Romans
enjoyed watching prisoners be tortured. Watching someone torn apart by
wild animals was considered pretty good fun. Is not that uncommon.
(22:02):
And while this terrible story suggests that that happened to Locusta,
that she was torn apart by wild animals, it also
suggests that she was first raped by an animal, by
a giraffe. It is, as I said, horrifying. So let's
say this one more time. That's not a real thing.
This is not how Locusta died. This is something that
someone concocted somewhere along the way. The Internet will tell
(22:26):
you this story over and over that is not based
in any kind of fact. No matter what the Internet says,
do not believe it. This is not the true story.
The real story is that Locusta was executed in the
year sixty nine, shortly after nero suicide. So suicide was
an acceptable way to end your life in Rome. So
(22:46):
this part of his story actually was one of the
least scandalous things that he probably ever did in his life. Nero,
by the way, though died by a dagger, not by poison,
though Locusta had provided a pinch for him in a
small gold box in case he ever needed it. Nero
was succeeded by Emperor Galba, who actually only reigned quite briefly,
(23:07):
not even two full years, but that small period of
time was long enough to put to death all of
Nero's favorites, and we quote the scum that had come
to the surface in Nero's day, and that included Nero's
favorite poisoner Locusta. So, without Nero's protection anymore, and her
(23:28):
skills were so well known, she was sentenced to death
for her role in the murders of dozens of members
of the Room and elite. She was put in chains
and she was paraded through the streets of the city
to her public execution. Now popular methods of execution did
include wild animals sometimes, but it also very much included
(23:49):
things like beheading, strangulation, being buried alive, drowning, and a
big favorite at the time was crucifixion. So although we
don't know exactly which one of these her execution would
have been, we know that it had nothing to do
with a giraffe. Yeah, the story ended on a down note,
(24:11):
It really did. Thanks a lot, Maria. Sorry, she was
the coolest ascid bar higher and then I just check
it to a bad place. One of the things that
I really liked about her story was this idea that,
especially because she was working primarily with um, you know,
vegetable based poisons and was a botanist. Really, I felt
(24:31):
like you really sort of bonded at the idea that
she was kind of a botanist chemist type, right, she's
just busy figuring out what plants do. Um. So it
got me thinking about fun things that I could make
with plants and that might be unusual. As of late,
I have been in the evenings as part of my
(24:52):
wine down ritual, having a very milk heavy kind of
like a chi that's not kelf and eated. Uh, And
it just got me to thinking that something in that
space might be very, very fun. So I came up
with something that I called the Botanists Latte. And this
starts with two cups of almond milk. You could also
(25:13):
use any other milk that you desire. I do usually
almond or oat, a bag of earl gray tea I
opted for decalf in this case, and then a quarter
cup of culinary rosebuds. These are easy to find. If
you just do a in a search online for food
grade rosebuds or culinary rosebuds, you'll find all kinds of
(25:34):
sources for them. They're easy to get. Uh. And then
I put all this in a saucepan and I just
let it heat on medium uh until the milk got
kind of steamy and just started to bubble around the edges.
You don't want it to actually boil, just get nice
and nice and warm, and then you turn off the heat,
give it a quick stir to make sure the rosebuds
(25:55):
are all covered with the milk, and then you just
leave that to sit for several minutes while you go
put on your pajamas or whatever that got strained into
a mug because you don't want to eat all those rosebuds,
and then I put sweetener in mine, which, however you
want to do that if you just want to do sugar,
if you have some sugar free sweetener, you can also
add a little vanilla syrubber, a simple syrup, whatever your
(26:17):
pref to the point where you like it, and then
it's not a heavy hitter in terms of alcohol. You
could drink it just as it is at that point.
But I also added just an ounce of brandy brandy.
I was waiting to see what you might add into that.
So it's interesting when you mentioned that you used Earl Grey.
Have you ever seen You're not really a citrus person though,
have you ever had Lady Gray? Yeah? Um, I imagine
(26:39):
you probably like a real better than Lady, But like
Lady adds this some more citrus to it, and I
would probably try this with with that type because I'm
I'm a citrus kind of a person. But that was
immediately I was it was it's the first time that
you've had a drink where I've gone, I'm going to
try it, but I'm gonna swap out this ingredient like usually,
I'm just gonna try it the way that it is.
(27:02):
I love ingredients swaps because everybody does have different tastes. UM.
You could also use different food grade flowers in here
if you wanted to. You could use chrysanthemums or food
grade lavender if you wanted to. UM, there are all
kinds of options. I really like a rose flavored things.
(27:24):
I feel like I'm in the wrong century because nobody
ever has that anymore. Well, you have to just make
it yourself. I will say, this smells so beautiful, so beautiful.
It smells like soft and it smells creamy. Even though
like I used almond milk, there is still the almond
milk combined with the rosebuds makes this very creamy scent.
(27:47):
It's quite pretty. Um. And then the brandy is just
like a perfect little And if two cups of almond
milk sounds like a lot, you lose a good bit
In the steaming, it does reduce down a bit um.
And if are like me, when you try to pour
it out of the saucepan through the strainer into a mug,
you lose a little more because I'm a sloppy gloppy
(28:09):
And like I said, you don't have to add the brandy.
It's quite yummy just on its own. That is the
botanist latte. We hope you enjoyed this particular little concoction
and that it sounds like a yummy thing to try.
That is it for today's Criminalia, and we will talk
to you again next week with more poison stories. Criminalia
(28:33):
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Welcome to Criminalia, a production of Shonda Land Audio in
partnership with I Heart Radio. Hello, and welcome to Criminalia.
This season, we're exploring the lives and motivations of some
of the most notorious lady poisoners in history. I'm Holly
Frying and I'm Mariach from Marquis. If you've been a
(00:20):
listener this season, you may agree with the following assessment.
Modern scholars generally agree that the Victorian era was kind
of the heyday for poisoners. There were many poisons to
choose from then, and I mean there still are today,
but at that time, arsenic was the poison of choice,
primarily because it was really easy to get. Plus it
(00:42):
was tasteless and it was odorless, so it's really easy
to hide as well, And these are all good things
when you're assessing poisons. Arsenic is, as we've mentioned before,
naturally occurring, but in terms of human knowledge of it,
it's been around since about twelve fifty, when a German
scholar named Albertus Magnus is credited with discovering it, although
(01:02):
we also probably want to air quote the word discover
since arsenic was surely used before Albertas put his name
on it, right, But he put his name on it first.
This was a time when there were very few rules
(01:22):
about how one might acquire a poison, and there were
even fewer rules about who might acquire a poison. And
some of the world's most infamous poisoners seemed to come
from the Victorian era. But let's be super clear here,
poisonings were happening long before Victorian times. The very first
(01:43):
person to commit homicide with poison lived probably at least
modern scholars estimate about seventy thousand BC. Where they mail
where they female? Was this to settle a score or
maybe a hungry power play, It was so long ago
we can only speculate on the circumstance. Interestingly, historians recently
(02:05):
believed that they have found more substantial evidence of a
tribe using poison tipped arrowheads on the African continent, and
that very likely jumped from human poisoning animal to human
poisoning human. But what we do know is that humans
have been poisoning one another for a very very long time. Poisoning, too,
has always been seen as a dramatic type of murder.
(02:29):
It's been romanticized. It even makes its way into our entertainment, say,
like Shakespeare, for instance, he writes several instances I believe
seven actually of murder by poison in his works, and
six of those poisonings, curiously are administered by a woman.
In the sixteen hundreds, Jacobean dramatist John Fletcher, who followed
(02:52):
in Shakespeare's footsteps, described poisoning as the coward's weapon. Well,
I mean, you know, you don't have to be there
for it. So but if you go all the way
back I'm talking like back, back, back, back, back to
the ancient Sumerians, which takes us back to like, you know,
(03:13):
you'll find evidence that they too used plant toxins such
as wolf spain, which we've we've talked a lot about
in our episodes this season. Um, and they used it
to poison the tips of their hunting arrows, also very
likely used it to kill a person or two. Um.
And when you're talking that far back in history, though,
things get a little bit tangled between what was reality
(03:35):
and what was mythology. The Sumerians, for instance, worshiped a
goddess named Gula who ruled over charms and spells and
also poisons. But it's the Sumerians who also may have
been the first to document the effects of different poisonous substances,
so they didn't believe it was all magical. They did
(03:56):
sort of know that it was also based in reality.
They were into the science of it. If we jump
forward a bit to around three thousand BC, during the
time of the ancient Egyptians, there is evidence that they
definitely kept records of poisonous plants and their side effects,
and included pretty detailed records of how you could extract
(04:16):
those poisons and how to distill them into poisonous substances.
The ancient Greeks are also really well known for using poisons,
specifically as a capital punishment, which is a sentence that
they called state poison. And if you know your history,
you also know that that's how Socrates was executed and
(04:37):
the ancient Persians, Yep, they two were poisoners. There's a
story about Queen Parasites, who lived in the fifth century BC,
poisoning the carving knife before she used it to serve
her daughter in law. Chinese history, India's history, there are
stories spanning the globe of poisoning in almost every culture
(05:00):
going back centuries. The earliest whispers of widespread murder by
poison and by women specifically. UH dates back to about
three hundred BC, and it involves a group of something
like a hundred and seventy women who decided to use
(05:20):
the plague as an alibi for poisoning a bunch of
Roman men. Unfortunately for them, their rus didn't work, and
I suppose unfortunately for the Roman men as well. Um
and all of the women who were involved were convicted
of their crimes. I would love to see how that
group came about. I know that's a pretty big group
(05:41):
to get and everybody be cool, but here's what we're
gonna do. That is a large group of people to
get on board with one thing exactly and not have
one person sort of like tell their cousin, who tells
their sister, you know, and then anybody's in jail. Right
before the popularity of arsenic in the Middle Ages and
(06:02):
into the Renaissance, the ancient Greeks and Romans were more
inclined to use hemlock as their poison of choice. Hemlock, incidentally,
is also part of the Parsley family. I actually thought
that was really interesting, you know, like may inform your
your culinary presentations going forward right, be careful of wild
carrots like it's also in the family. So regardless of
(06:28):
whether you're talking about arsenic or you're talking about hemlock
or any other poison really for that matter, one thing
is really clear. Throughout human history, poison has been a
potent weapon in every assassin's toolkit. It is discreet, it
is quick if you want it to be um and
it could make a woman a wealthy widow, and it
(06:50):
could set in motion a change in power. And there's
a reason we're setting up all of this assassination shock.
When we look at ancient women and their knowledge of poisons,
there is one that stands out and one that we
have in fact mentioned before. So our scene becomes ancient Rome,
and our poisoner is a woman named Locusta. When we
(07:14):
come back, we're going to dive into the life and
crimes of this ancient poisoner. Welcome back to Criminalia. Let's
get into who Locusta was and why the Roman elite
might have been interested in her skills. Locusta was an
(07:40):
active poisoner during the first century in the final two
reigns of the Julio Claudian dynasty. During the Roman Empire.
You may recognize her name from some of our previous episodes,
but she has mainly been in the shadows. As we've
been talking about this season, there's a long list of
women who are remembered for their poisoned fuel like a
(08:00):
sees right, but regardless of whether or not they actually
committed the deed or in some instances deeds plural u.
Sometimes there was rat poison in the eggnog, which we've seen,
but we've also learned that sometimes it was simply deadly gossip.
Poisoning in Rome was so common in the first century
(08:21):
that it was often just assumed that if anyone in
the Imperial court died, it was not natural causes, and women, women,
well women, were considered the most notorious poisoners. At one point.
As we mentioned before, the word for adulters was kind
of synonymous with that of poisoner. Among the Romans, there
(08:42):
was a pretty strong belief that Roman women poisoned for love,
just romantic but not always true because they are so
poisoned for money. Yeah right, So Locusta is mentioned all
over the place when you're reading about the Roman Empire,
yet not a ton of information of out who she
is has remained over the centuries. Other than the fact
(09:04):
that she was a woman who poisoned for money, we
do know that she came from Gaul, and sometimes she
is actually referred to as Locusta of Gaul, and at
the time Gall was the outer province of ancient Rome.
Today it is part of France. There is no record, though,
of how she came to be in the center of
Roman power. There is one super sketchy story about her
(09:26):
being a real sketchy kidnapped. There's a lot of sketchy
when it comes to her story. Yes, um, there's one
sketchy story about her being kidnapped in the year fifty
four and being brought to Rome to exploit her skills,
which would suggest she already had a reputation. But that
story is very unlikely, mainly because she was also already
(09:47):
allegedly in jail on a poisoning charge in Rome in
the year fifty four, and that story makes more sense
in her timeline. She probably was in Rome in jail
awaiting a sentence the accused to herself. She actually wasn't
a poisoner. She was a maker of poisons, and it's
(10:11):
kind of smart to think of her more like a
like a botanist or a chemist, and she would have
been really right at home making drugs an apothecary. But
we've mentioned this man once before. He's a nineteenth century
toxicology expert who was brought in several times as a
court witness. His name is Dr Alfred Swain Taylor, and
he once said, and we quote him, a poison in
(10:34):
a small dose is a medicine, and a medicine and
a large dose is a poison. It's a subtle difference, yeah,
and probably one that Locusta was very very keen on maintaining.
I'm just making compounds, right, But being an apothecary strictly
in the apothecary sense was not the path that she chose,
(10:57):
regardless of whether it was medicines or poison. Though she
was an expert in her craft. She's often called a
serial killer, but Locusta could really also be called more
of an assassin for hire. She provided poisons because she
was hired to do so. Professor of forensic psychology Dr
Katherine Ramsland has called Locusta's business necro entrepreneur. I just
(11:22):
I when I saw that, I was like, she's right,
I think that's a great business card title. If we've
learned anything this season, it's that Romans loved their poisons,
and in particular, they loved mixing them into their politics. So,
(11:43):
as you can imagine, Lokista was in great demand among them,
and stories of Locusta suggests that she was also discreet.
She didn't need to know why you needed poison or
who you may have hoped to kill with it. I
don't want to know about your beefs. I'm just selling
you some chemic goals. I just wondered if you want hemlocker,
opium und okay. All she needed to know was how
(12:06):
you might want a theoretical death to play out. For instance,
were you thinking about a quick and sudden death or
were you imagining more of an agonizing lye long and
painful affair. Either way, poison was always the matter of
the day. It was a silent killer and perfect, always
perfect for the job. She didn't just create and mix poisons.
(12:30):
She advised others on which poisons would be best for
their desired result, and she took on apprentices, which I
thought was actually pretty cool. Usually if you're discreet, you
don't do that um And eventually she was running a
sort of training academy for poison assassins, and she encouraged
and taught the poison arts too many, although to be honest,
(12:51):
most of the poisonings that were happening at this time,
we're all happening in the Imperial court. Emperor Caligula, for instance,
is said to have had a trunk filled with various poisons.
Poison was serious business in politics, so no wonder she
started this cottage industry, as like the University of poison,
(13:12):
there are there. Actually, when I was doing some research,
I found that there were there were sort of three women,
Locusta being one of them, and two other women who
were well known for poisoning at the same time, but
they had been apprentices of hers, so they really weren't
necessarily part of her story. They just happened to be
other poisoners, which I'm sure there were hundreds of across
the city. So she, getting back to Locusta, was one
(13:36):
of the few women we've talked about this season who
didn't rely on our favorite poison arsenic. Her poisons would
have actually included mostly vegetable poisons, and and that meant
that she would have relied on plants like Belladonna and
deadly nightshade, mandreg hemlock opium. Those are just a few examples.
(13:56):
H Wolf Spain was another good one that was surely
part of her tool kids, and it was known as
the Queen of Poisons. It said that when she formulated
new poisons, she tested them at the emperor's request, on
convicted criminals and enslaved persons. And actually the reality was
that she tested her poisons on anyone she wanted to
(14:16):
test them on, because frankly, she could. It's true. One
of the great Roman historians, Tastus, described her as, and
we quote him, a woman lately condemned as a dealer
in clandestine practices, but reserved among the instruments of state
to serve the purposes of dark ambition. So he was
(14:40):
also known to play up the stereotype that women were
much more likely to be poisoners than men were, and
that stereotype has led the public to label women like
the Cuesta as a witch. And we've seen it time
and time again, no matter what century we've talked about. Yeah,
he was not the only one to link female poisoners
with witches or witchcraft, not at all. This there was
(15:03):
this pervasive and very popular belief that has carried on
through the centuries that any woman who could make and
who administered poisons couldn't just have scientific knowledge, she had
to be a sorceress or or that she was at
least somehow involved with magic. And that is a belief
that we talked about through the centuries when we talk
about accused female poisoners, never science, magic. Sir, this is
(15:30):
going a good time for us to take a quick break. Um,
when we come back, we're going to go deeper into
how Locusta was influential among the Roman elite. Welcome back
(15:51):
to Criminalia. Let's now get into how Locusta's skills could
make or break an emperor. So we've talked briefly, very
briefly about Locusta in an episode earlier this season, very
early on, when we told the story of Empress Julia Agrippina.
So Julia was said to have poisoned her husband to
(16:14):
ensure her only son, who became Emperor Nero, would ascend
to the throne. It was Locusta who provided the goods
to make all of that happen. And Locusta, while she
had what seemed to be a pretty steady business. She
didn't work completely unscathed, though she paid prices for this
line of work that she chose. She was arrested and
(16:37):
thrown in jail several times. Twice she was bailed out
when high ranking, ambitious and impatient Roman politicians intervened. After all,
you can't have your assassin sitting in jail when they
are political rivals to be poisoned. Murder by poison gave
an easy alibi. We've mentioned this time and time again
(16:57):
that you probably wouldn't be around when the victor and died,
so it was really important to a lot of people
that her business stayed up and running. Right. It's not
the same as being stabbed like you're going to be
there for that event, you know. That is that they
couldn't have it. So if you recall him just a
bit earlier, we mentioned that Lakista was not known just
for her skills, but for her discretion, and that was
(17:19):
surely by design. Since she didn't want to know what
her client's business was regarding their plans for the various
compounds she was concocting, she couldn't then share any details
with authorities. If she was caught and interrogated. That engendered
a level of trust in her, which is another reason
why Rome's High and Mighty would step in to help
(17:40):
her when she got all jammed up. The third time
Locusta was imprisoned, it was actually the embress herself, Julia Agrippinma,
who sprung her. Of course, she had a specific purpose
in mind. Well, it's Julia. Julia wanted to poison her husband,
Emperor Claudius, and Locusta was happy to oblige. It's here
that we take another turn to show just how enterprising
(18:03):
Julia Agrippina was. So instead of payment, which Locusta was
very likely expecting and maybe a thank you, Julia instead
turned her into the authorities and accused her of poisoning
the emperor, which yes, sure technically she had provided the poison,
but it was actually Julia who did the deed. Locusta
(18:24):
was arrested again, surely a surprise to an assassin waiting
for her payment for services rendered instead of being paid
with um uh, traitorous moves man, and at this point
she was sentenced to death. However, not long after the sentencing,
(18:45):
Julia's son and now Emperor Nero, freed Locusta and absolved
her of all of her crimes and allegedly gave her
a get out of jail free card for any future crimes.
That's a pretty sweet set up. It's a fantastic setup.
When I was reading about it, actually checked it in
multiple sources because I was like, I was like, he
(19:07):
not only gave her absolutely he absolved all of her
sins for before this, but any future ones. Like wow,
So Nero, Um, if it sounds like something that an
emperor would do, if he said, maybe wanted to make
an ally of a poisoner, it was very likely that
Nero did, in fact want to be allies with a
(19:27):
poisoner or at least have this one on speed dial.
So mainly because there were political parties he wanted to
get rid of, he wanted look used to out into
the room, and elite poison was the obvious way to
make that all those stuffs happen. It's important to point
out that Locusta was very instrumental in Nero's rise to power,
(19:48):
not just getting him on the throne, but beyond that.
She provided the murder weapon for him over and over,
which he mainly used against members of his own family
and those in the Imperial Court. We have no idea
how many people were actually poisoned by the results of
concoctions coming out of Locusta's lab, but we do know
(20:11):
Nero was very very busy, it wasn't he. So he
then actually rewarded her for all of her great work
with him with an official title. She was called the
Imperial Poisoner, which I mean, that's not very subtle, but
then everybody already seemed to know who she was, so
subtlety was really already out the window here and her.
(20:35):
You know, I'm picturing the cocktail parties we're taking. What
do you do? I'm the Imperial Poisoner, I see, and
you draw your hand away and slowly back out of
the room, back out and find somebody else to talk to. Cool.
That must be very um can get dental with that.
Like her career and her school for poison there's also
(21:00):
really flourished under Nero's fourteen your rain, and she just
she had a great decade. But of course, if you
are close to power that was gained in troublesome ways,
eventually it all falls apart. And when Nero's rain ended,
so did Locusta's. Now there's something that we have to address,
(21:21):
So bear with us. There's actually a really terrifying rumor
about Locusta's death that is not and I repeat not
all caps, not an ot true. But we're going to
talk about it, if only to be one more voice
on record saying that this did not happen. The story
(21:42):
is terrible, so we're just gonna give you the short version.
It's so gross, so gross that someone even concocted this
as a fiction. Uh, it's no secret that the Romans
enjoyed watching prisoners be tortured. Watching someone torn apart by
wild animals was considered pretty good fun. Is not that uncommon.
(22:02):
And while this terrible story suggests that that happened to Locusta,
that she was torn apart by wild animals, it also
suggests that she was first raped by an animal, by
a giraffe. It is, as I said, horrifying. So let's
say this one more time. That's not a real thing.
This is not how Locusta died. This is something that
someone concocted somewhere along the way. The Internet will tell
(22:26):
you this story over and over that is not based
in any kind of fact. No matter what the Internet says,
do not believe it. This is not the true story.
The real story is that Locusta was executed in the
year sixty nine, shortly after nero suicide. So suicide was
an acceptable way to end your life in Rome. So
(22:46):
this part of his story actually was one of the
least scandalous things that he probably ever did in his life. Nero,
by the way, though died by a dagger, not by poison,
though Locusta had provided a pinch for him in a
small gold box in case he ever needed it. Nero
was succeeded by Emperor Galba, who actually only reigned quite briefly,
(23:07):
not even two full years, but that small period of
time was long enough to put to death all of
Nero's favorites, and we quote the scum that had come
to the surface in Nero's day, and that included Nero's
favorite poisoner Locusta. So, without Nero's protection anymore, and her
(23:28):
skills were so well known, she was sentenced to death
for her role in the murders of dozens of members
of the Room and elite. She was put in chains
and she was paraded through the streets of the city
to her public execution. Now popular methods of execution did
include wild animals sometimes, but it also very much included
(23:49):
things like beheading, strangulation, being buried alive, drowning, and a
big favorite at the time was crucifixion. So although we
don't know exactly which one of these her execution would
have been, we know that it had nothing to do
with a giraffe. Yeah, the story ended on a down note,
(24:11):
It really did. Thanks a lot, Maria. Sorry, she was
the coolest ascid bar higher and then I just check
it to a bad place. One of the things that
I really liked about her story was this idea that,
especially because she was working primarily with um, you know,
vegetable based poisons and was a botanist. Really, I felt
(24:31):
like you really sort of bonded at the idea that
she was kind of a botanist chemist type, right, she's
just busy figuring out what plants do. Um. So it
got me thinking about fun things that I could make
with plants and that might be unusual. As of late,
I have been in the evenings as part of my
(24:52):
wine down ritual, having a very milk heavy kind of
like a chi that's not kelf and eated. Uh, And
it just got me to thinking that something in that
space might be very, very fun. So I came up
with something that I called the Botanists Latte. And this
starts with two cups of almond milk. You could also
(25:13):
use any other milk that you desire. I do usually
almond or oat, a bag of earl gray tea I
opted for decalf in this case, and then a quarter
cup of culinary rosebuds. These are easy to find. If
you just do a in a search online for food
grade rosebuds or culinary rosebuds, you'll find all kinds of
(25:34):
sources for them. They're easy to get. Uh. And then
I put all this in a saucepan and I just
let it heat on medium uh until the milk got
kind of steamy and just started to bubble around the edges.
You don't want it to actually boil, just get nice
and nice and warm, and then you turn off the heat,
give it a quick stir to make sure the rosebuds
(25:55):
are all covered with the milk, and then you just
leave that to sit for several minutes while you go
put on your pajamas or whatever that got strained into
a mug because you don't want to eat all those rosebuds,
and then I put sweetener in mine, which, however you
want to do that if you just want to do sugar,
if you have some sugar free sweetener, you can also
add a little vanilla syrubber, a simple syrup, whatever your
(26:17):
pref to the point where you like it, and then
it's not a heavy hitter in terms of alcohol. You
could drink it just as it is at that point.
But I also added just an ounce of brandy brandy.
I was waiting to see what you might add into that.
So it's interesting when you mentioned that you used Earl Grey.
Have you ever seen You're not really a citrus person though,
have you ever had Lady Gray? Yeah? Um, I imagine
(26:39):
you probably like a real better than Lady, But like
Lady adds this some more citrus to it, and I
would probably try this with with that type because I'm
I'm a citrus kind of a person. But that was
immediately I was it was it's the first time that
you've had a drink where I've gone, I'm going to
try it, but I'm gonna swap out this ingredient like usually,
I'm just gonna try it the way that it is.
(27:02):
I love ingredients swaps because everybody does have different tastes. UM.
You could also use different food grade flowers in here
if you wanted to. You could use chrysanthemums or food
grade lavender if you wanted to. UM, there are all
kinds of options. I really like a rose flavored things.
(27:24):
I feel like I'm in the wrong century because nobody
ever has that anymore. Well, you have to just make
it yourself. I will say, this smells so beautiful, so beautiful.
It smells like soft and it smells creamy. Even though
like I used almond milk, there is still the almond
milk combined with the rosebuds makes this very creamy scent.
(27:47):
It's quite pretty. Um. And then the brandy is just
like a perfect little And if two cups of almond
milk sounds like a lot, you lose a good bit
In the steaming, it does reduce down a bit um.
And if are like me, when you try to pour
it out of the saucepan through the strainer into a mug,
you lose a little more because I'm a sloppy gloppy
(28:09):
And like I said, you don't have to add the brandy.
It's quite yummy just on its own. That is the
botanist latte. We hope you enjoyed this particular little concoction
and that it sounds like a yummy thing to try.
That is it for today's Criminalia, and we will talk
to you again next week with more poison stories. Criminalia
(28:33):
is a production of Shonda land Audio in partnership with
I Heart Radio. For more podcasts from Shonda land Audio,
please visit the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H
Hosts And Creators
Holly Frey
Maria Trimarchi
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