A MURDEROUS SECT.

Thames Star, Volume XVI, Issue 5052, 23 March 1885, Page 2

A MURDEROUS SECT.

An Odessa correspondent writes, under date of Dec. 31 j—" A case tried yester* day before the Criminal Tribunal of tbii city has brought to light some further proofs of the diabolical tenets held by a secretly organised and fanatical Russian sect, against which sareral prosecutions hare from time to time been instituted. Some account of this sect, whose members,' so far as the prosecutions hare' been able to elicit, appear to consist entirely of women, appeared in your columns some, time ago. The female fanatics, or rather female Thugs, hare become infamous under the domination of ' Angel makers.' They secretly destroy the children, generally infants at the breast, committed to their charge. As nurses generally, and more frequently as caretakers of illegitimate .children, they destroy their charges in any manner which promises the safest means against detection but preferably by strangulation and secretion of the corpses in the case of illegiti~ mate children whose disappearance is.not likely to arouse suspicion., They profess their mission is to murder for the assured salration of the souls of their innocent rictims, and at the same time to earn for themselres eternal glory. It is difficult, howerer, to obtain any exact account of the origin and erganisation of this sect, whose members, it would appear, are under a row of secrecy. The prisoner tried yesterday was charged under the name of Rachel Ostrorskafa, but is known to the police by sereral aliases. She is a married woman, 28 years of age ; one of her known rictims being her owo and.only child. Three cases of child murder, one by strangulation, were prored against the prisoner, who was too leniently condemned to 15 yean' hard labour. The woman appeared entirely unaffected, and when called upon by the judge, replied simply, and with the utmost composure, 'Do with me .what you will; lam in your hands/ "