A typical "Black Widow," Lyda Catherine AMBROSE left a trail of five dead husbands and lovers in her quest for insurance policy payoffs. Born in 1891, nothing is known about her early life until 1917 when she killed her first fiancee in Keytesville, Missouri.[ReadOn]

Born October 23, 1932, in Cumberland County, North Carolina, Margie Bullard would look back on her childhood as a cruel period of "permissible slavery," made worse by the attentions of a father who began molesting her at age thirteen. [ReadOn]

Born in 1877, Marie Alexandrine had always been a beautiful woman; she never had any trouble attracting the men in her hometown of Liege, Belgium. When 33 years old, she wed Charles Becker, who considered himself fortunate to have won such a lovely woman. And for twenty years she was indeed a faithful wife. [ReadOn]

Bleached blonde barmaid Betty Lou Beets seemed to be very unlucky in her choice of husbands. Out of the five, four disappeared without trace and the other (number 3) left her after she planted a bullet in his back after a nasty fight. [ReadOn]

The publicityseeking merry widow Elfriede "Sugar" Blauensteiner had 2 obsessions: Gambling and a vivid interest in pharmacy.
Her last victim, retired and wealthy Alois Pichler (77) answered her personal ad in 1995 - and survived the Black Widow´s care just 5 weeks. [Read on ]

38 year old Mary Ann Britland suffered at Strangeways, for poisoning Mary Dixon, becoming the first woman to be hanged there. She had also poisoned her husband and daughter as she was having an affair with Mary Dixon's husband - although he was apparently completely unaware of her criminal intentions.

Dubbed "The Black Widow" for preying on her family and leaving a dead husband, boyfriend and son in her trail, Judy Buenoano was executed on Florida's temperamental Old Sparky on March 30, 1998. [ReadOn]

On May 1, 1922, police in Cleveland jailed a local woman on suspicion of poisoning her husband for the sum of $ 11,000 in life insurance. Announcing her arrest the next day, prosecutor Edward Stanton told reporters that the suspect had been married five times, divorcing her first two husbands, after which the next three died in mysterious circumstances. [ReadOn]

Some people collect stamps; others postcards. Bordello Madame Eva Coo collected insurance policies on her friends, colleagues and employees. One employee in particular, Harry Wright, a slow witted handyman had been taken under Eva's wing when his mother died at her request. [ReadOn]

A mother, wife and nursemaid, Mary Anne COTTON had all the credentials for a respectable place in Victorian society. Beneath her caring exterior, however, she was a cold, calculating serial killer.[ReadOn]