The boldness and utter callousness [of] ... their criminal activities seems to have been equalled only by the stupidity of ... their victims.”
The midwife—known to all as Auntie Suzy—was a “smiling buddha” with a waddling gait, who kept a secret vial stashed in her apron pocket. She bustled through the village, poking her nose into her neighborwomen’s troubled lives, whispered “Why are you bothering with him? I have a way …”
Patti McCracken is an award-winning journalist whose work has been featured in Smithsonian, Wall Street Journal, Columbia Journalism Review, San Francisco Chronicle, Baltimore Sun, Christian Science Monitor, Chicago Tribune, Guardian, and numerous other publications. She was formerly on staff at the foreign/national desk of the Chicago Tribune and was twice a Knight International Press Fellow.
After nearly two decades in Europe, McCracken now resides on Martha’s Vineyard.
DROPPING ACID ... ON GRAVES
Once investigators had descended on the village, many women were desperate to stop graves from being disturbed and bodies being exhumed. They surely did not want autopsies, but many also had more immediate concerns about leftover arsenic that had been buried with the victims. They knew once the coffin was popped open, there it would be.
Read MoreARTHUR STROHSCHNEIDER
ABOVE IT ALL
“Dandy would trot off, tail wagging, toward the merchants who had set up at the weekly market on the square. He would dodge under the baskets and bags of shoppers, scoot past the tub makers and the children jockeying for bottles of homemade lemonade. He’d pass under the Austrian tightrope walker, who had fastened his highwire ...
Read MoreWHO WAS JOHN KRONBERG?
A couple of years ago, the local paper in Szolnok marked the 90th anniversary of the “Arsenic Trials” by running a full-page feature on John (Janos) Kronberg, the celebrated attorney who lead the investigation and prosecution of the women. The case would define his career.
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