6 Infamous Poisoners with Unforgettable Nicknames

Flagrant criminals often acquire nicknames from the media. Some refer to their area of operation, like “the Vampire of Sacramento," or to their jobs, like “Doctor Death,” giving the public an immediate taste of the killers’ M.O. from their handle. Here are six deadly poisoners with memorable monikers.

The Angel Makers

Life in rural Hungary in the early 20th century could be harsh. Women in the tiny village of Nagyrév faced arranged marriages, unwanted motherhood, and domestic abuse amid the destruction of World War I and the 1918 flu pandemic. When the problems became overwhelming, women called the midwife.

Zsuzsanna Fazekas, a folk physician who provided abortions as well as veterinary care, was also an amateur chemist. She had a unique way of boiling flypaper in vinegar to produce arsenic. Women troubled by sickly infants or cruel husbands could buy a vial of relief from “Auntie Suzy” and their troubles vanished.

In time, too many women took this route. By the late 1920s, residents of Nagyrév were dropping dead not because of a woman’s desperation, but her aspiration: the “angel makers” were killing for inheritance or property. At least 160 deaths were attributed to the poison ring. In 1929, police unraveled Fazekas’s empire, and rather than be arrested she became its final victim: Fazekas poisoned herself, but 25 of her customers were tried, some were jailed, and two were hanged.

The Teacup Poisoner

Born in 1947 in the London suburb of Neasden, Graham Young copped to poisoning four people before turning 14. He dosed a school friend with a non-fatal mix of antimony, thallium, and arsenic. He poisoned his father and added belladonna to his older sister’s tea—the origin of his nickname—and they both survived. Finally, he killed his stepmother with an overdose of thallium.

Young was sent to Britain’s Broadmoor Hospital, a maximum security facility for offenders with mental illness. Early on he told a nurse, “When I get out, I’m going to kill one person for every year I’ve spent in this place.” He was released after nine years. 

His poisonous history remained unknown to his co-workers at his new job at a chemical plant, but they started falling ill right away, and two died. Police questioned Young and discovered a lethal dose of thallium in his pocket. He ended up being sentenced to four life terms and died in 1990.

The Giggling Granny

Born Nancy Hazle in 1905, “Nannie” Doss seemed as sweet as ambrosia, giggling and smiling during her 1954 confession to poisoning four of her five husbands, giving her the Giggling Granny sobriquet. She was also called “the Giggling Nanny,” “Lady Bluebeard,” “the Jolly Black Widow,” and “the Lonely Hearts Killer,” having found two of her husbands through newspaper personal ads. She was convicted and sentenced to life in prison in 1955. 

Though seven family members, including her grandchildren, sister, and mother, also died in her care with suspiciously high amounts of arsenic in their systems, Doss never admitted responsibility for those deaths. In a 1957 prison interview (above), she even disavowed her previous confessions for poisoning her four spouses. You can catch her killer grin at the very end. 

The Prince of Poisoners

Nineteenth-century physician William Palmer, also known as the Rugeley Poisoner (after his hometown in Staffordshire, UK), loved to bet on the horses, but didn’t pick enough winners to ease his enormous racing debts. His mother-in-law, uncle, four of five children, and others in his circle dropped dead from sudden and mysterious circumstances—a not-unusual occurrence in Victorian England, where doctors weren’t always able to diagnose or cure diseases.

The deaths of his wife Ann and brother Walter were different. They passed away after Palmer had taken out policies on them from the same insurance company. He was able to collect on Ann, but the company became suspicious about the brother’s death and and wouldn’t pay Palmer the benefit. 

Finally, there was John Cook, who had good luck at the races on a day that Palmer didn’t. Palmer poisoned his friend with strychnine, likely to steal his substantial winnings. Cook’s demise finally convinced the police to bring Palmer to justice, and following his guilty verdict in a sensational 1856 trial, he was hanged. 

The Black Widow of the Riviera

Most people visit the Côte d’Azur to do other things than commit murder—but not Patricia Dagorn. According to prosecutors in France, the 57-year-old met lots of elderly men and won their affections, only to weasel her way into their wallets and their wills.

While she was in jail for defrauding one octogenarian, the police reopened cold cases of two murders of older men with whom she was connected. She had lived with one of the men, who was later found dead in a pool of blood. She had cashed a $25,000 check from the other, whose body was discovered in a bathtub. Two other men accused her of slowly poisoning them to weaken their protests as she absconded with their money and assets. It all resulted in a four-day trial in Nice in 2018, where she was charged with “murder, poisoning, and the administration of harmful substances,” the Guardian reported. She was found guilty and sentenced to 22 years in prison.

Mistress of the Murder Farm

Belle Gunness’s infamy didn’t just earn her the above nickname, but also Hell’s Belle, Lady Bluebeard, and the La Porte Ghoul. 

The Norwegian immigrant, initially going by the pseudonym Belle Peterson, married her first husband in 1884; by 1900, he and their two young foster children were deceased (allegedly from poisoning) and Peterson had collected on all of their life insurance policies, plus insurance payouts from two large fires at their Chicago home and store. She used the money to move to Indiana, bought a pig farm, and married Peter Gunness in 1901. He and his two daughters were dead within eight months, mostly likely from strychnine poisoning.

Belle was left with three remaining foster children and a huge farm in La Porte, Indiana. She put ads in Scandinavian-language newspapers seeking men to marry, making promises of love and telling them to bring their life savings to the farm. Come they would, and disappear days later.

The brother of one missing man raised the alarm, and Belle finally seemed trapped. But just then, a fire broke out at her farmhouse. Found in the ashes were the remains of three children and a woman’s headless torso, which investigators assumed was Belle’s—until police discovered the remains of dozens of people buried in the pig pen. The identity of the torso, and the whereabouts of Bell Gunness after the fire, remain a mystery.

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