A Wholesale Murderess

Manawatu Standard, Volume 3, Issue 34, 5 January 1883, Page 2

A Wholesale Murderess

At Gress Beaskerek South Hungary the trial has commenced of Lhokla Popoy, a peasant woman, .and over a hundred accomplices who are charged with poisoning their husband. The guilt' of the prisoner has been already proved m thirty five cases and thirty mere are strongly suspecteds. Thekla Popoy is a very remarkable character destined to occupy a position at once unique and picturesque m tbe annals of crime. She lived m a little village named Meleneze and, it may almost be said that murder was her trade. People say she had her B gents and emissaries, whose buisness it was to keep up her "connection", and it must have been a horrid and. gruesome spectacle to see the grizzly hag seated m her armchair, every day receiving customers during business hours, and giving them the diabolical advice and aid they sought. They were all married women from the neighboring country side eager for some reason or another to cet rid of husbands who obstinately refused to die m the ordinary oourse of nature, but who by Thekla friendly o^ces might be made amenable to the resources of art. These wretches paid the old gipsy a fee of from fifty to a hundred florins for each bottle of poison they bought, and were duly instucted by her m the safest method of its 'exhibition.' Thekla Popoy's clients were, however, not always married women. Sometimes she had dealings with young girls who quarrelled with their sweethearts, and who from jealousy or rage had determined to kill them. This woman's terriblo trade prospered amazingly for two years, and if it had not been for the confession made by her daughter might have gone oh for some considerable time. She excited no suspicion because the drugs she administered acted slowly though surely, and m their effects simulated the symptoms of; disease. Even now that the bodies of some of her victims have been exhumed, they show no signs of poisoning, though the stomachs are eaten away. •