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You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking Killers in True crime History and the authors that have written about him Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
The Angel Makers is a true crime story like no other. A nineteen twenti's midwife who may have been the country's most prolific killer, leading a murder ring of women, responsible for the deaths of at least one hundred and sixty men. The horror occurred in rustic farming enclave in modern day Hungary. To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses, village wives, mothers and daughters was to come to the shocking realization
that this could have happened anywhere and to anyone. At the center of it all was a sharp minded village midwife, a smiling Buddha known as Anti Suzi, who distilled arsenic from flypaper and distributed it to the women of Nagriev. Why are you bothering with him? Auntie Suzie would ask, as she produced an arsenic filled vial from her apron pocket. In the beginning, a great many used the deadly solution
to finally be free of cruel and abusive spouses. But as the number of dead bodies grew without consequence, the killers grew bolder. With each vial of poison emptied a new reason surface to drain yet another. Some women disposed of sickly relatives. Some used arsenic as inheritance powder to
secure land and houses. For more than fifteen years, the unlikely murderers aided death unfettered and tended to it as if it were simply another chore, spooning doses of arsenic into soup and wine, stirring in to coffee and brandy. By the time their crimes were discovered, hundreds were feared dead. Anonymous notes brought the crimes to light in nineteen twenty nine as a skillful prosecutor hungry for justice, ran the investigation.
Newsmen from around the world, including The New York Times, poured in to cover the dramatic events as they unfolded. The angel makers captures in expertly researched detail. The entirety of this harrowing story from the early murders to the final Hanging, the story of one of the most sensational and astonishing murder rings in all modern history. The book that were featured in this evening is The Angel Makers, Arsenic a Midwife and modern History's most astonishing murder ring,
with my special guest, journalist and author Patti McCracken. Welcome to the program, and thank you very much for this interview. Patti McCracken.
Thank you, Dan, I'm thrilled to be here.
Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book, The Angel Makers.
Thank you. I appreciate that.
Talk about how you came and wanted to be involved with this story and this book.
Yeah, well, I was a freelance reporter. I was living in a village in Austria and I was, like a lot of reporters do, just traveling down the back roads of the Internet. One day kind of with an eye out for stories, and I don't know what I clicked into Google, but I came upon this story that was written in a British publication. If I remember, it wasn't
very long. It was a few paragraphs and it was written kind of tongue in cheek, but it talked about this woman named Auntie Susie in this village in Hungary, and it obviously piqued my interest. And my neighbor at the time was a photographer named Harold. He's not a professional photographer, but a quite a good amateur photographer. And so I knocked on his door and I said, Harold, you want to take a road trip? And he's like, yeah, that sounds great. So, along with an interpreter, we went
to the village. It wasn't too far from where we were living. I can't remember how far, but maybe one hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty miles away, right. It was just bizarre, you know, when we set foot in the village. The village was very much like many remote Easturopeen villages I've been in before. But it was just a story that just stayed with me. You just couldn't shake it off, and so it just progressed from there. I started with an article, and then the article it
just didn't go away. It just, you know how things just kind of gnawed you like there's got to be more, There's more to it, and so there was more. It turns out there was a lot more.
You take us to what you write as part one the Murders nineteen sixteen to nineteen twenty five. Now you talk about you take us to the village of Negreev and in Hungary in nineteen sixteen, and you introduce the central character Antie Susie. But tell us about Hungary at this time in nineteen sixteen briefly, and also the use of midwiffery in Hungary at that time, and this relation to this story as you began.
Yeah, so let me start with the first part of that question. Hungary in nineteen sixteen was suffering greatly. It had fallen from a great height in World War One, and in nineteen sixteen. It pains me to even think about it. I get because I can sort of visualize it and see it. They had, for example, in Budapest, which had once been a grand, grand one of the grandest cities in Europe, was just filthy and ruined by war, absolutely ruined. They had no medical care for their soldiers,
people had no food to eat. It was kind of apocalyptic. I don't want to use too much hyperbole, but it was a whore. And this was a proud nation and in just a couple of years time had been really brought to its knees, so it was suffering. The villages didn't suffer as much because they had enough self sustaining. They had enough food, they had enough, and they also had healthcare through their midwives. It's not unusual. It was not unusual at all at that time for midwives to
be pretty much the doctor of the villages. They were expertly trained herbalists. They knew how to use plant medicine as the best of them, and they cared for the farmers, they cared for the animals, they cared for the people, and a doctor would come in, you know, if they were lucky, they'd come in once a week and sort of checked maybe the harder cases or cases, maybe setting a broken arm or something, and possibly a lot more. But generally for their healthcare, people all over Europe still
at that time relied on midwives in the villages. But the midwives also had a rather mystical, magical quality to them. They were called quote unquote wise women. They were also I mean, I think the best word I could use is like a shaman. So they also had a spiritual quality to them that villagers I guess were in awe of. They feared and respected at the same time, so it was kind of a mix, that odd mix in between. And there were other midwives in the villages who practiced,
but they were unofficial. They weren't appointed by the village council, as my main character, Auntie Susie was.
You also talk about how she was appointed this incredible position, but also another person named Edner was also on the city council.
Yes, yeah, Edner was pretty much ran the show in the village and he was a member of the gentry class, so he was had an esteemed role in Hungary itself, just because he's born into a higher class, if I could use that word. And the villagers were peasants, you know, they were the common folk. So Edner was pretty much appointed. It was a lifetime, I mean, to get that position and you just stay with it. So that was common. Again,
that was common among all the villages in Europe. It wasn't or at least in Hungary, I should say, it wasn't unusual to inaugurate.
You right that she received a healthy salary, but she could also was allowed to exact fees from her patients. But there was a rule that she wasn't supposed to get anything from the poor. But you write that she managed to get something from everybody. In the transactions that she did tell us what her role was as midwife in this community, and also what the role of this old doctor Sagetity what his role was.
So her role was really like any midwife. She would be there for any kind of medical conditions, any of the So for example, the farmers, this is a farming community. A farmer might come to her with some pains, you know, he hurt himself in the fields, or he's gotten a hernia something like that, so she would go and administer his health care. They also administer the healthcare that was beyond the farmers to administer for their animals, for their livestock.
She would also be available kind of like a counselor as well well. In that role, she would be the one they would go to mostly the women would go to for card readings and divining information and that's it kind of thing. So she was kind of a one stop shop for everything basically in that sense, their spiritual and mental and physical health, I guess. And doctor Segeti was just a classic old doctor who would come in with this black medical bag and treat patients once a week.
He came on Tuesdays, but he couldn't get in most of the year because the roads there would get washed out in the winter. So pretty much from the winter season, you know, November through March or April or October through April, couldn't get there. I mean you'd really have to use let's say, a lot of horsepower, right, and so a lot of times they wouldn't see him for months. But when they did see him, they would make an appointment with them, you know, just like we make an appointment
to go to the doctor. They would go to the village hall and the helper, the out the town crier who was sort of the right hand helper man to Ebner, would make an appointment for them. But a lot of times anything they had either cleared up but before he got there, or they went to Auntie Susie presumably or something. But yeah, he was like a typical doctor who would come with a black bag and do what he could and administer potions, you know, medicines and stuff. She administered
potions and he would administer medicines. If you want to put a fine point on it.
There was a woman you introduced named Anna Scissor, and she has a dilemma that she discusses with Auntie Susie. And you also introduced one of the secret solutions ointments that she had concocted Auntie Susie, and the materials that she used in this concoction.
This would be Anna Chair. And so sometimes the last names are sometimes a little bit hard to pronounce. But what specifically are you talking about with Anna the special solution that Auntie Susie used on many many people. Is that what you're talking about?
Well, right away you talk about this solution and the fly paper that was used and the vinegar that she uses to reduce down this concoction.
I think with what Susie would do is she would go over to the store on the main street and she would buy perhaps a bundle or two of a flypaper, and then she would go back to her kitchen and she would painstakingly distill from the flypaper arsenic and then she would put that potion of arsenic into a vial. And she usually kept a vial with her in her
apron pocket. So if you imagine like a babushka who wears sort of dark clothing and an apron that's that's a good way to imagine Auntie Susie kind of always wearing the same kind of clothing and such, and she would kept this vial with her and she would go often to the neighbor women and she would say, sort of poke her nose and she was gonna go, what's going on with your husband? You know, how's everything going?
And when there was trouble that she sniffed out, she would say, you know, why are you bothering with him? I have a solution, And then she would literally pull a solution out of her pocket, there it was, and offer it to them.
Wow, in her powers as the midwife of this village, she was also responsible for the determination of the cause of death. Now, even though she was responsible for that, can you explain how this old doctor Sagedni really worked to her benefit.
Well, he had once been, as I understood it, a pretty vital, clever doctor and pretty respected. He was on lots of boards in the town nearest Nagarev in Soulnolk, and he was on he was a pretty influential but he was a very involved doctor. But he was an older doctor by this point, and he had a bit of a drinking problem and was just past his prime. And so the fact that is alcohol, and I kind of presumed the fact that he knew Auntie Susie and
trusted her, He didn't really question her. So I think it was sort of a it's never really one thing, is it. It's sort of a combination of things that made people turn another turn a blind eye to things. But he did have a liked alcohol quite a bit, and he was a quite older guy, and I think he just was kind of a doddying old man at a certain point. It's not very effective as he had been in his earlier years.
Now what happens in regard to his replacement? Who is the replacement and does that cause any concern for somebody like Auntie Susie.
Yeah, Well, the replacement was his son, who was like how he had been in his earlier years. He was younger, more enthusiastic, wanting to make changes. You know, anytime you get a new job, you want to sort of make your mark. And when he comes along, it's after the war and Hungary is on a kind of mission to modernize the villages as far as medicine is concerned, and so he's very enthusiastically involved with that, and so he kind of comes in with the fresh eye and yeah, Auntie,
Susie is very alarmed. Her little system has been disrupted and she's put on alert for a time now.
We talked about some of the things that Susie used this special solution for and the people she called upon, and you write about some of the problems that she thought she was taking care of, very much like keeping the population down, a boy and a girl in each family, and she just thought was part of her duty as a midwife. Tell us what happens in regards to the replacement doctor and why.
Yeah, well, this is a good time to introduce the notion that midwives were not just delivering the babies and villages. Midwives are also the family planners. This is not new. That's how family planning has been going on since the ages. Normally, what they would do, and normally what Susie did was to use very equivalent of an abortion pill, which would
be a plant medicine to abort an unwanted pregnancy. They would also try to and I don't have the knowledge to speak to this, but also try to use birth control methods in the first place, so pregnancy doesn't occur. But when a pregnancy would occur is they would use
an herbal medicine to try to halt the pregnancy. In some cases, which I do think were rare, the pregnancy was carried to term and it was an unwanted or unable to care for a baby through poverty, and so the solution she used for other purposes, which was usually to get rid of abusive husbands, was used on babies. But I do want to make it clear that was
not something that was done commonly. It was something that was done when the pregnancy was carried to termine it was clear that the mother would not be able to take care of the baby.
How does it come to be that the replacement, the younger doctor Sageity, How Auntie, Susie and anyone else came to be the focus of his attention? What happened?
Yeah, So he comes in, he's, you know, taking over from the old doctor Segety. And he comes in and he's asking to review the logs. I want to see the death records and the birth records. And he does see a surprising trend where he says, Wow, all these families in the last X number of years, so many of them only have two children and they're a boy and a girl. That's odd, you know, that's an unusual thing. And so he is very suspicious and he takes that
to the gendarmes. And gendarmes are really is just a French word for local police, excuse me, or country police in the countryside. So he takes his suspicions to the authorities. And it's worth noting at this point that there were no gendarmes in Naugarev. The gendarmes were over in a neighboring a neighboring village of Tissa Kurt, a neighboring village, but a village hard to get to, nonetheless, But anyway, he takes his concerns there and starts raising all kinds of alarms.
Those raising alarms and the gendarmes, how what is their response to this investigation.
Bring in the midwife, bring her in, you know, hauler into the village hall and start doing what any police officer would, well maybe not any They were quite harsh, and they were known to be quite harsh. It wasn't a friendly questioning. So they brought her into the village heart and the village hall, and they said what are you doing? We know you're doing something. What are you doing? Confess? Look, we've got all these logs here showing what you've been doing.
And so it was quite a little scene there.
As far as this scene that you talk about, was reluctant to say anything, but at some point she does what's considered a confession. But in this it is very revealing her true attitude about these deaths. What does she say in response to their questions?
Finally, yeah, Well, she goes in there thinking that she's like, all right, this is a my life of distributing arsenic to the neighbors to get rid of abusive husbands, which was much more prolific than her the family planning. She thought, this is this is it I'm done for And then she realizes, oh wait, that's not what I'm in here for. I'm in here for the abortions. Well, yeah, I'm an abortionist, that's what. Yeah, then that's what they used to call abortionists.
They used to call them angel makers. She's yes, I'm an angel maker, of course i am. Well, also, do you think we would not have children? We're peasants and we're poor and we can't afford you know, ten babies. So you know, her logic was, yes, I do that. I know, how can I I sit here and let families have ten babies and let these babies starve to death. The lesser evil is to put them out of their misery earlier.
So with that response, they arrested her. She has taken into custody and she's put it in a pretty severe conditions in prison, isn't she.
Yeah, prisons were no fun at that time.
He has the support of her family and they pull their money together to get a very one of the better attorneys in the area to represent the family member. He advises her to recant this confession and then they go to trial. What happens at this trial tell us.
She gets convicted. So she did what he said to do, and she said, I didn't do it, and the gend arms are really mean to me, and they forced they forced the confession out of me that that's not true. I just they were beating me up. And to get them to stop beating me, I said, yeah, you know, I said, yes, I did it, but I really didn't do it. And this is not a jury trial, this is just a judge and too cohorts And she was convicted the first time.
Yes, well, with that, her attorneys make the obvious appeal, and I don't know if it's a surprised but she is released on a bail waiting for this retrial.
Yes, you're right.
It's very interesting when she goes back to that village how she was regarded before she was taken away for this questioning, it's a little different. When she goes back, she is stripped of her powers as this midwife. She is looking at possibly losing the house that was given to her as well, and so she is very worried she's penniless, and also she is looking at things much differently given this appeal that's going to lead to this retrial.
Tell us what she does in the interim and then finally the retrol Auntie.
Susie was afraid of Primarily the thing she feared most was losing her her house and losing her family, the people closest to her. So, after panicking for a bit, she used her influence with the village council that she still did have some influence there and her daughter was appointed to become the next midwife official midwife, and so that did secure her a place to live because at
the time. You know, her daughter, she shared the house. Actually, as it turns out, she shared the house with her daughter, or her daughter stand the house with her. And so once she her daughter became the midwife, it was Auntie. Susie just pretty much was still and had the same power that she'd always had. It was just sort of a kind of a puppet situation. Even though her daughter did perform the births, Susie just as often did or was sort of pulling the streams at the same time.
Now you talk about the prosecutor that wants to make this case, and also the doctor is very excited about this trial because it can lead to or their investigation, and he thinks he's just at the tip of the iceberg of what he may be able to find. Finally, this appeal comes, this retrial comes, what happens.
Yeah, so doctor Segety felt like he was at the tip. His mission was to bring midwives out of the village and put it in the care of doctors, male doctors who were being trained in obstetrics, and so he really wanted to get rid of this old, what he felt was an old tradition of midwives in the village and so he's thinking, great, you know she got brought up on abortion charges. I've got other villages that I can say are probably are doing this or probably doing this.
He was thinking that this could be sort of a wider trend that he could get going. But to his surprise and to everyone surprised, she was exonerated. She was, Yeah, her conviction was overturned. And I think, to her surprise as well.
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your subscription today now, Patty. In light of this reversal in the conviction of Susie at Susie, what happens next in this incredible saga.
Well, she feels empowered, and many of the villagers by this point had been suspicious and fearing her. It took them a while to get there, but they were concerned about what was going on in the midst not with the abortions, but with the murders. They weren't being called murders at the time. They were, you know, somebody died of a heart attack, somebody else died of some other disease.
But they were suspicious, and they were trying to get the attention of the officials, and they were being ignored. And so what they saw as her acquittal was nothing short of she must be doing she must be doing something that is mystical and beyond our reach, and that she has power that we just don't have, and that she has powers over us that we don't have. And so she became emboldened, and they became more fearful, but not all of them. So many of the women saw
that this was an opportunity. Well, she didn't get caught, so maybe we should do something about our husbands too.
You right about Susie expecting cousin from physic Kurt. Her cousin Christina Casortis, And she was also a midwife in this other village of a physic. Kurt tell us about this what Susie thought might be a partnership of sorts.
Yeah, well, I think it's worth going back before we go there is to say the reason these women were doing this was because in large part, now some of the ones I highlight in the book were nefarious, but they were doing this in large part because they didn't they didn't feel like they had any other choice. They were being abuse, their husbands were abusing alcohol and then going and abusing them. Many were coming back from the war. Many of the men were coming back from the war
just absolutely shattered emotionally, mentally and very violent. So violence that had occurred naturally all the time of husbands against wives was even worse because they were just suffering from what we now call PTSD with no help, and the women were receiving the abuse. One woman was chased out of her house, not just one, but one eyesight in the book, was chased out of her house with her
husband with the firing a gun at her. And so I just want, I do want to point that out because it's not just they're thinking, oh, let me kill my husband for pleasure. This was something where they didn't have any police in the village. Nobody was protecting them. They were second class citizens as women and second class citizens as peasants, which was double strikes against them. And they've got the triple strike with no gendarme. So there
was a reason her business flourished with Tisa Kurt. Yes, she joined forces with her cousin there who yeah, so just carry it on to another village, expand the business, so to speak.
You write about this relationship with a person in the grade of in the village and her name is Maria. Now you write about that Auntie Susie got a pretty good wage. You write that early on in the book. And plus she also exacted fees from other people, but with Maria. We're talking about the kinds of fees that she was charging, and Marie later agreed. Maria agreed to were exorbit where they were incredible wages for that time,
even compared to now. Tell us about why she particularly was adamant with Maria.
Well, when you can get fees from a rich lady, you guess you do it. I don't do it, but I guess some people say, you know, if she could afford it, you know, why not. I suppose that's what she was Maybe that's what she was thinking. Maria could well afford it. Maria was a peasant, but she was a wealthy peasant, and she married a member of the gentry named Michael, and he had a certain type of wealth as well in terms of properties. And so if it was a sliding scale, basically with the midwife is
the better way to put it. So if somebody could afford more, she would charge more.
Tell us about how all of this incredible behind the scenes background in history is finally slowly unravels.
How it all comes to light. Yes, Well, a new sheriff comes to town, so to speak, in the form of a new village clerk, and he notices basically anonymous notes bring everything to light. And these were anonymous notes that have been written over the years, people slipping them under the door of the village hall and naming suspects. Mame who they thought was suspicious, and so they had been ignored for many, many years by Ebner, the former leader of the village, and with the new guy in town,
they were not ignored. So it was a surprise, a surprising thing for him to find. And it did take a little while for the officials to recognize that what he was saying was merited the alarm he was giving it. He was somebody who was rather persnicity and everything everything was so equal alarm. So people were like, oh, there he goes again. But no, he was like no, no, no, wait, this is big.
So you talk about two officers eventually, John Bartok and John Friska, and they are involved with interrogations eventually.
Yes, they were quite good with coming up with ways to bring in suspects, and they did what might be done even today. So you sort of plant a seed. I guess ensnare ensnare Auntie Susie in her own trap is what did And so she unsuspectingly didn't know that they were watching her and following her and watching where she went. And I don't want to get too much away because this is kind of a It was fascinating. It was fascinating what they organized with the prosecutor to
bring her in. But they did get her sort of. They definitely. What they did was they saw who her clients were and so they were able to round up all of the other women who were involved as well.
And what he did this bar talk. What he did here was a very incriminating conversation that while he was following her, And like I said, I don't want to give it away, but the incredible surveillance that he did and the extraordinary things that he overheard, and then that was this part of some of the things that I don't know, dirty tricks that he employed to get even
more information in this investigation. Now, ye about this prosecutor Kronberg, and now this story gaining traction not only just in the area, but throughout Hungary and soon the world.
Yeah, well, Prosecutor Cronberg was very adept at his job, and it was interesting to look at what he did and think that's exactly what a good prosecutor would do today. He was somebody who knew how to He knew what to do with the press. He knew to keep one person close and push the rest away, and he was able to use the press to his advantage. It got out in the newspaper, it got out, you know, there were just short little things and then it just ended
up catching like wildfire. But that was pretty much orchestrated. And when it finally did reach Budapest and then reached Vienna and reached everywhere beyond, it was it was quick to catch the attention of international reporters and everybody descended on this story, everybody. And you have to also think that this was the age of what they called jazz age journalism, where the birth of tabloid journalism was born.
When you had on the front page of some New York tabloids, you would have photograph of a woman can't remember her named Schneider, I think, being put in the electric chair for accused of killing her husband. So these were there was an appetite for this kind of thing at the time. But these were reputable newspapers going, including the New York Times, that were descending on this story. It was quite quite a story to come out and this was also with the birth of radio, so you
know radio was covering it as well. What was at that time the New Time magazine covered it. I mean it was it was an international story from in America, in the UK, in Germany, France. It was big.
The investigation led to this Esther Shabo hard Me and Missus Madiaz. But this Missus Madiaz really gave a fair amount of information to these prosecutors and also gave up information which linked this whole investigation to Auntie Susie.
Yeah, yeah, So they basically hooked into an attempted murder which was in real time at that time, and this was in the neighboring village of Tia Sakurt. And the woman you mentioned, Esther Sabo, she was the suspect in this, but that was the link back to Nagarev. Nagarev was
the hornet's nest. So when the gendarmes descended on Esther's house and you have Esther and you have Missus Maderas both were involved in some criminal activity, you know that kind in Tea Sakurt, and it was Missus Marpos who's like, yeah, so they were they figured it out. They sort of pulled on these threads and it's like, oh, okay, so it's the this is actually Auntie Susie back in Naugarith. Oh wow, okay, so they were. It was a huge
surprise to the gendarmes. They had no ideal. They had absolutely no idea, and all these anonymous notes have been coming in, but they had they had no idea.
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Now you talked about this this trial that had the international interest. Now because of all the particulars and all of the members that were coming up, and you talk about that this involved the forensic investigation and bodies disinterred and then and actually some people eliminated from suspicion in this and numerous arrests, numerous suspects and then suspicion of possibly one hundred and sixty two men being killed or
people being killed period. Tell us a little bit more about some of the headlines and some more about the fury fur over this trial.
Yeah, well, some of the headlines were Nagarev the village of death, you know, and they had it was in the cities, like especially in Budapest. They were absolutely outraged and it was rather unfortunate because they were outraged at the peasant class and they were, you know, everybody in
the village is there's this horrible, this is horrible. What is our society in the village, you know, they have no religion, that type of thing, and so there was ups there was horror and outrage and a lot of backlash against innocent villages, you know, who were just trying to live their villagers, trying to live their lives. So for during the investigation, when they came for her, it was a huge It was just hard to impress upon how it was such a big deal for the nation.
It was. It was even like such as you'd have people like Truman, Capoti or esteemed writers who were writing about this enraged and they were you know, putting on their journalists cap and going in and seeing what was
going on. You had people from neighboring villages getting to Nagarev, which is not an easy village to get to, but not even neighboring, actually kind of far away, who were coming in and they were in the graveyard while the bodies were being dug up, and they were looking into the hut where some of the autopsies were taking place, and some of the autopsies were taking place right out in the graveyard under the son. I believe, I believe
that this was orchestrated by Kromberg. It may not have been, but it would have been something he would have done to make it as horrific as a scene for the journalists to show up at toe, Yeah, here's this hit, this is what's going on. And you had actually it's hard to imagine for me to imagine this, but you actually had villagers in the village of Nairiv digging up bodies of their neighbors and their uncles, and the grave diggers. They had to have extra grave diggers come in and
dig up all these graves. And at some point the county put a stop to it because they just they were getting they were getting so many bodies with arsenic that they realized that they could never really get a full handle on the full number, so just they wouldn't allow anything to go back. I think deaths past twenty years.
They said, no, we have to put a stop to it because you know, they just didn't have the money and they felt like Hungary was outraged enough to just kind of have to put some kind of fences around it. But it would be interesting to see what if they had gone beyond the twenty year mark, how many more bodies would have shown how much parsonal.
I want you to talk about the attempted arrest of Susie Anti Susie, but also the people that didn't escape justice, in particularly the hanging of Maria.
Yeah, Maria Cardos, Yeah, yes, Well, I would just say that Susie was bound and determined not to go back to prison again, and we will leave it at that. I think that's a good place to sort of leave that the other as far as justice being served, Maria was one who was hanged. Maria was in Maria was a good friend of Auntie Susie for a long time.
She was the one who was the wealthy peasant married to Michael, and Maria also in addition to working with Susie to kill Michael, she also worked with Susie to kill her her son, who was suffered from a long illness. But he was a young man, he was only twenty three. And so she was hanged, and she was actually hanged before that. In the press, the press was said a lot of things about her that were unpleasant, and there was many got off, Many had life sentences that were
then overturned. Some had sentences that were you know, eight to fifteen years, and some were acquitted because there was no what I could tell really honestly, if there wasn't a confession, it was much harder to convict. So even if somebody, they would keep people in solitary confinement for a month, for a month and trying to force the confession out, and in some cases they did and when you know, they confessed, but immediately after their confession like
I didn't do it. I didn't do it, I just you know, So there was there was very actually similar tactics that might be he might find today. And you know, what do you have. You have a confession, and you have somebody who was poisoned with has arsenic poisoning in their body, and you have people saying I think, you know, pointing the fingers at certain people. But if you don't have a confession and you can't you know, no witnesses. It was circumstantial evidence. Absolutely.
Yes.
At the end of this book takes a bit of a twist and you take us to modern times and to London, Ontario, Canada, and a person named Tamara Chapman and another person named Diane. Can you tell us about this and why you've included this?
Yes, well, this was sort of like Auntie Susie's hand reaching up from the grave. So in nineteen eighty five Miss Chapman, well, I would say, Diane was accused of trying to murder Miss Chapman. And the police officers who were charged with case, or you know, was under their authority, one of them believed that there was One of them believed that Diane was the great granddaughter of Auntie Susie.
It's no way. He didn't have internet, but he was an avid historian and he was often It's no way to tell if she said something to him in interrogation. It's no way to know if he found this through his active research that he would like to do, because he passed away a few years later. Certainly, so that is what it is. You can't say with one hundred percent certainty, but he believed that she was the great granddaughter.
In closing this particular case that you describe so well in this book, what happened in Hungary as a result of this trial, of this roundup of midwives, What happened in Hungary as a result of this case and this trial.
Well, what the prosecutor wanted to have happened was to have police officers in Naugarev. That didn't happen. So it's hard to say really what happened to sort of better
the situation there. You know, there was a lot of cry among the everybody else outside of Nagarev saying that oh, these these people, don't these are immoral souls and they're you know, have lost their way, and so what they did do was replace the pastor with a new pastor, but not really to my knowledge, I would say, to my knowledge, not much happened in the way of doing things differently or getting I would have liked to have seen getting help mental health, help for people and help
for women. That didn't happen, at least at that time. Not a whole lot that I know of. There could be other things that you know, I don't know about that have happened to keep this from happening again, or to help the people in the villages.
This as I let you go tell us the why you call this book the angel Makers, and for people that might want to take a look, do you have a website and do you do any social media?
Yeah? So I called it the angel Makers because that's really what the case was called. It was known as that before and I don't know how it was who originated that for these ladies, but the angel Makers is an old German word for an abortionist, so that you can kind of find the roots there. Yes, I do have a website. It's Patti McCracken dot com and you can find out more about the books there and on
the website. I also do some behind the scenes there maybe certain scenes that were cut or just little tidbits here and there. And social media. Yes, I'm on Facebook and Instagram. You can find me at Patti McCracken, author on both of those.
Thank you so much, Patti McCracken, The Angel Makers, Arsenic a Midwife, and modern History's most astonishing murder ring. Thank you so much for this interview. And you have a great night. Good night, Thank you.
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