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Speaker 6: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 6: Killers in True crime History and the authors that have
Speaker 6: written about him Gaesy Bundy Dahmer, The Nightstalker VTK Every
Speaker 6: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 6: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your
Speaker 6: host journalist and author Dan Zufanski, Good Evening.
Speaker 4: The Angel Makers is a true crime story like no other.
Speaker 4: A nineteen twenti's midwife who may have been the country's
Speaker 4: most prolific killer, leading a murder ring of women, responsible
Speaker 4: for the deaths of at least one hundred and sixty men.
Speaker 4: The horror occurred in rustic farming enclave in modern day Hungary.
Speaker 4: To look at the unlikely lineup of murderesses, village wives,
Speaker 4: mothers and daughters was to come to the shocking realization
Speaker 4: that this could have happened anywhere and to anyone. At
Speaker 4: the center of it all was a sharp minded village midwife,
Speaker 4: a smiling Buddha known as Anti Suzi, who distilled arsenic
Speaker 4: from flypaper and distributed it to the women of Nagriev.
Speaker 4: Why are you bothering with him? Auntie Suzie would ask,
Speaker 4: as she produced an arsenic filled vial from her apron pocket.
Speaker 4: In the beginning, a great many used the deadly solution
Speaker 4: to finally be free of cruel and abusive spouses. But
Speaker 4: as the number of dead bodies grew without consequence, the
Speaker 4: killers grew bolder. With each vial of poison emptied a
Speaker 4: new reason surface to drain yet another. Some women disposed
Speaker 4: of sickly relatives. Some used arsenic as inheritance powder to
Speaker 4: secure land and houses. For more than fifteen years, the
Speaker 4: unlikely murderers aided death unfettered and tended to it as
Speaker 4: if it were simply another chore, spooning doses of arsenic
Speaker 4: into soup and wine, stirring in to coffee and brandy.
Speaker 4: By the time their crimes were discovered, hundreds were feared dead.
Speaker 4: Anonymous notes brought the crimes to light in nineteen twenty
Speaker 4: nine as a skillful prosecutor hungry for justice, ran the investigation.
Speaker 4: Newsmen from around the world, including The New York Times,
Speaker 4: poured in to cover the dramatic events as they unfolded.
Speaker 4: The angel makers captures in expertly researched detail. The entirety
Speaker 4: of this harrowing story from the early murders to the
Speaker 4: final Hanging, the story of one of the most sensational
Speaker 4: and astonishing murder rings in all modern history. The book
Speaker 4: that were featured in this evening is The Angel Makers,
Speaker 4: Arsenic a Midwife and modern History's most astonishing murder ring,
Speaker 4: with my special guest, journalist and author Patti McCracken. Welcome
Speaker 4: to the program, and thank you very much for this interview.
Speaker 4: Patti McCracken.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Dan, I'm thrilled to be here.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, and congratulations on this extraordinary book,
Speaker 4: The Angel Makers.
Speaker 2: Thank you. I appreciate that.
Speaker 4: Talk about how you came and wanted to be involved
Speaker 4: with this story and this book.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I was a freelance reporter. I was living
Speaker 2: in a village in Austria and I was, like a
Speaker 2: lot of reporters do, just traveling down the back roads
Speaker 2: of the Internet. One day kind of with an eye
Speaker 2: out for stories, and I don't know what I clicked
Speaker 2: into Google, but I came upon this story that was
Speaker 2: written in a British publication. If I remember, it wasn't
Speaker 2: very long. It was a few paragraphs and it was
Speaker 2: written kind of tongue in cheek, but it talked about
Speaker 2: this woman named Auntie Susie in this village in Hungary,
Speaker 2: and it obviously piqued my interest. And my neighbor at
Speaker 2: the time was a photographer named Harold. He's not a
Speaker 2: professional photographer, but a quite a good amateur photographer. And
Speaker 2: so I knocked on his door and I said, Harold,
Speaker 2: you want to take a road trip? And he's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: that sounds great. So, along with an interpreter, we went
Speaker 2: to the village. It wasn't too far from where we
Speaker 2: were living. I can't remember how far, but maybe one
Speaker 2: hundred and fifty one hundred and sixty miles away, right.
Speaker 2: It was just bizarre, you know, when we set foot
Speaker 2: in the village. The village was very much like many
Speaker 2: remote Easturopeen villages I've been in before. But it was
Speaker 2: just a story that just stayed with me. You just
Speaker 2: couldn't shake it off, and so it just progressed from there.
Speaker 2: I started with an article, and then the article it
Speaker 2: just didn't go away. It just, you know how things
Speaker 2: just kind of gnawed you like there's got to be more,
Speaker 2: There's more to it, and so there was more. It
Speaker 2: turns out there was a lot more.
Speaker 4: You take us to what you write as part one
Speaker 4: the Murders nineteen sixteen to nineteen twenty five. Now you
Speaker 4: talk about you take us to the village of Negreev
Speaker 4: and in Hungary in nineteen sixteen, and you introduce the
Speaker 4: central character Antie Susie. But tell us about Hungary at
Speaker 4: this time in nineteen sixteen briefly, and also the use
Speaker 4: of midwiffery in Hungary at that time, and this relation
Speaker 4: to this story as you began.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let me start with the first part of
Speaker 2: that question. Hungary in nineteen sixteen was suffering greatly. It
Speaker 2: had fallen from a great height in World War One,
Speaker 2: and in nineteen sixteen. It pains me to even think
Speaker 2: about it. I get because I can sort of visualize
Speaker 2: it and see it. They had, for example, in Budapest,
Speaker 2: which had once been a grand, grand one of the
Speaker 2: grandest cities in Europe, was just filthy and ruined by war,
Speaker 2: absolutely ruined. They had no medical care for their soldiers,
Speaker 2: people had no food to eat. It was kind of apocalyptic.
Speaker 2: I don't want to use too much hyperbole, but it
Speaker 2: was a whore. And this was a proud nation and
Speaker 2: in just a couple of years time had been really
Speaker 2: brought to its knees, so it was suffering. The villages
Speaker 2: didn't suffer as much because they had enough self sustaining.
Speaker 2: They had enough food, they had enough, and they also
Speaker 2: had healthcare through their midwives. It's not unusual. It was
Speaker 2: not unusual at all at that time for midwives to
Speaker 2: be pretty much the doctor of the villages. They were
Speaker 2: expertly trained herbalists. They knew how to use plant medicine
Speaker 2: as the best of them, and they cared for the farmers,
Speaker 2: they cared for the animals, they cared for the people,
Speaker 2: and a doctor would come in, you know, if they
Speaker 2: were lucky, they'd come in once a week and sort
Speaker 2: of checked maybe the harder cases or cases, maybe setting
Speaker 2: a broken arm or something, and possibly a lot more.
Speaker 2: But generally for their healthcare, people all over Europe still
Speaker 2: at that time relied on midwives in the villages. But
Speaker 2: the midwives also had a rather mystical, magical quality to them.
Speaker 2: They were called quote unquote wise women. They were also
Speaker 2: I mean, I think the best word I could use
Speaker 2: is like a shaman. So they also had a spiritual
Speaker 2: quality to them that villagers I guess were in awe of.
Speaker 2: They feared and respected at the same time, so it
Speaker 2: was kind of a mix, that odd mix in between.
Speaker 2: And there were other midwives in the villages who practiced,
Speaker 2: but they were unofficial. They weren't appointed by the village council,
Speaker 2: as my main character, Auntie Susie was.
Speaker 4: You also talk about how she was appointed this incredible position,
Speaker 4: but also another person named Edner was also on the
Speaker 4: city council.
Speaker 2: Yes, yeah, Edner was pretty much ran the show in
Speaker 2: the village and he was a member of the gentry class,
Speaker 2: so he was had an esteemed role in Hungary itself,
Speaker 2: just because he's born into a higher class, if I
Speaker 2: could use that word. And the villagers were peasants, you know,
Speaker 2: they were the common folk. So Edner was pretty much appointed.
Speaker 2: It was a lifetime, I mean, to get that position
Speaker 2: and you just stay with it. So that was common. Again,
Speaker 2: that was common among all the villages in Europe. It
Speaker 2: wasn't or at least in Hungary, I should say, it
Speaker 2: wasn't unusual to inaugurate.
Speaker 4: You right that she received a healthy salary, but she
Speaker 4: could also was allowed to exact fees from her patients.
Speaker 4: But there was a rule that she wasn't supposed to
Speaker 4: get anything from the poor. But you write that she
Speaker 4: managed to get something from everybody. In the transactions that
Speaker 4: she did tell us what her role was as midwife
Speaker 4: in this community, and also what the role of this
Speaker 4: old doctor Sagetity what his role was.
Speaker 2: So her role was really like any midwife. She would
Speaker 2: be there for any kind of medical conditions, any of
Speaker 2: the So for example, the farmers, this is a farming community.
Speaker 2: A farmer might come to her with some pains, you know,
Speaker 2: he hurt himself in the fields, or he's gotten a
Speaker 2: hernia something like that, so she would go and administer
Speaker 2: his health care. They also administer the healthcare that was
Speaker 2: beyond the farmers to administer for their animals, for their livestock.
Speaker 2: She would also be available kind of like a counselor
Speaker 2: as well well. In that role, she would be the
Speaker 2: one they would go to mostly the women would go
Speaker 2: to for card readings and divining information and that's it
Speaker 2: kind of thing. So she was kind of a one
Speaker 2: stop shop for everything basically in that sense, their spiritual
Speaker 2: and mental and physical health, I guess. And doctor Segeti
Speaker 2: was just a classic old doctor who would come in
Speaker 2: with this black medical bag and treat patients once a week.
Speaker 2: He came on Tuesdays, but he couldn't get in most
Speaker 2: of the year because the roads there would get washed
Speaker 2: out in the winter. So pretty much from the winter season,
Speaker 2: you know, November through March or April or October through April,
Speaker 2: couldn't get there. I mean you'd really have to use
Speaker 2: let's say, a lot of horsepower, right, and so a
Speaker 2: lot of times they wouldn't see him for months. But
Speaker 2: when they did see him, they would make an appointment
Speaker 2: with them, you know, just like we make an appointment
Speaker 2: to go to the doctor. They would go to the
Speaker 2: village hall and the helper, the out the town crier
Speaker 2: who was sort of the right hand helper man to Ebner,
Speaker 2: would make an appointment for them. But a lot of
Speaker 2: times anything they had either cleared up but before he
Speaker 2: got there, or they went to Auntie Susie presumably or something.
Speaker 2: But yeah, he was like a typical doctor who would
Speaker 2: come with a black bag and do what he could
Speaker 2: and administer potions, you know, medicines and stuff. She administered
Speaker 2: potions and he would administer medicines. If you want to
Speaker 2: put a fine point on it.
Speaker 4: There was a woman you introduced named Anna Scissor, and
Speaker 4: she has a dilemma that she discusses with Auntie Susie.
Speaker 4: And you also introduced one of the secret solutions ointments
Speaker 4: that she had concocted Auntie Susie, and the materials that
Speaker 4: she used in this concoction.
Speaker 2: This would be Anna Chair. And so sometimes the last
Speaker 2: names are sometimes a little bit hard to pronounce. But
Speaker 2: what specifically are you talking about with Anna the special
Speaker 2: solution that Auntie Susie used on many many people. Is
Speaker 2: that what you're talking about?
Speaker 4: Well, right away you talk about this solution and the
Speaker 4: fly paper that was used and the vinegar that she
Speaker 4: uses to reduce down this concoction.
Speaker 2: I think with what Susie would do is she would
Speaker 2: go over to the store on the main street and
Speaker 2: she would buy perhaps a bundle or two of a flypaper,
Speaker 2: and then she would go back to her kitchen and
Speaker 2: she would painstakingly distill from the flypaper arsenic and then
Speaker 2: she would put that potion of arsenic into a vial.
Speaker 2: And she usually kept a vial with her in her
Speaker 2: apron pocket. So if you imagine like a babushka who
Speaker 2: wears sort of dark clothing and an apron that's that's
Speaker 2: a good way to imagine Auntie Susie kind of always
Speaker 2: wearing the same kind of clothing and such, and she
Speaker 2: would kept this vial with her and she would go
Speaker 2: often to the neighbor women and she would say, sort
Speaker 2: of poke her nose and she was gonna go, what's
Speaker 2: going on with your husband? You know, how's everything going?
Speaker 2: And when there was trouble that she sniffed out, she
Speaker 2: would say, you know, why are you bothering with him?
Speaker 2: I have a solution, And then she would literally pull
Speaker 2: a solution out of her pocket, there it was, and
Speaker 2: offer it to them.
Speaker 4: Wow, in her powers as the midwife of this village,
Speaker 4: she was also responsible for the determination of the cause
Speaker 4: of death. Now, even though she was responsible for that,
Speaker 4: can you explain how this old doctor Sagedni really worked
Speaker 4: to her benefit.
Speaker 2: Well, he had once been, as I understood it, a
Speaker 2: pretty vital, clever doctor and pretty respected. He was on
Speaker 2: lots of boards in the town nearest Nagarev in Soulnolk,
Speaker 2: and he was on he was a pretty influential but
Speaker 2: he was a very involved doctor. But he was an
Speaker 2: older doctor by this point, and he had a bit
Speaker 2: of a drinking problem and was just past his prime.
Speaker 2: And so the fact that is alcohol, and I kind
Speaker 2: of presumed the fact that he knew Auntie Susie and
Speaker 2: trusted her, He didn't really question her. So I think
Speaker 2: it was sort of a it's never really one thing,
Speaker 2: is it. It's sort of a combination of things that
Speaker 2: made people turn another turn a blind eye to things.
Speaker 2: But he did have a liked alcohol quite a bit,
Speaker 2: and he was a quite older guy, and I think
Speaker 2: he just was kind of a doddying old man at
Speaker 2: a certain point. It's not very effective as he had
Speaker 2: been in his earlier years.
Speaker 4: Now what happens in regard to his replacement? Who is
Speaker 4: the replacement and does that cause any concern for somebody
Speaker 4: like Auntie Susie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Well, the replacement was his son, who was like
Speaker 2: how he had been in his earlier years. He was younger,
Speaker 2: more enthusiastic, wanting to make changes. You know, anytime you
Speaker 2: get a new job, you want to sort of make
Speaker 2: your mark. And when he comes along, it's after the
Speaker 2: war and Hungary is on a kind of mission to
Speaker 2: modernize the villages as far as medicine is concerned, and
Speaker 2: so he's very enthusiastically involved with that, and so he
Speaker 2: kind of comes in with the fresh eye and yeah, Auntie,
Speaker 2: Susie is very alarmed. Her little system has been disrupted
Speaker 2: and she's put on alert for a time now.
Speaker 4: We talked about some of the things that Susie used
Speaker 4: this special solution for and the people she called upon,
Speaker 4: and you write about some of the problems that she
Speaker 4: thought she was taking care of, very much like keeping
Speaker 4: the population down, a boy and a girl in each family,
Speaker 4: and she just thought was part of her duty as
Speaker 4: a midwife. Tell us what happens in regards to the
Speaker 4: replacement doctor and why.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, this is a good time to introduce the
Speaker 2: notion that midwives were not just delivering the babies and villages.
Speaker 2: Midwives are also the family planners. This is not new.
Speaker 2: That's how family planning has been going on since the ages. Normally,
Speaker 2: what they would do, and normally what Susie did was
Speaker 2: to use very equivalent of an abortion pill, which would
Speaker 2: be a plant medicine to abort an unwanted pregnancy. They
Speaker 2: would also try to and I don't have the knowledge
Speaker 2: to speak to this, but also try to use birth
Speaker 2: control methods in the first place, so pregnancy doesn't occur.
Speaker 2: But when a pregnancy would occur is they would use
Speaker 2: an herbal medicine to try to halt the pregnancy. In
Speaker 2: some cases, which I do think were rare, the pregnancy
Speaker 2: was carried to term and it was an unwanted or
Speaker 2: unable to care for a baby through poverty, and so
Speaker 2: the solution she used for other purposes, which was usually
Speaker 2: to get rid of abusive husbands, was used on babies.
Speaker 2: But I do want to make it clear that was
Speaker 2: not something that was done commonly. It was something that
Speaker 2: was done when the pregnancy was carried to termine it
Speaker 2: was clear that the mother would not be able to
Speaker 2: take care of the baby.
Speaker 4: How does it come to be that the replacement, the
Speaker 4: younger doctor Sageity, How Auntie, Susie and anyone else came
Speaker 4: to be the focus of his attention? What happened?
Speaker 2: Yeah, So he comes in, he's, you know, taking over
Speaker 2: from the old doctor Segety. And he comes in and
Speaker 2: he's asking to review the logs. I want to see
Speaker 2: the death records and the birth records. And he does
Speaker 2: see a surprising trend where he says, Wow, all these
Speaker 2: families in the last X number of years, so many
Speaker 2: of them only have two children and they're a boy
Speaker 2: and a girl. That's odd, you know, that's an unusual thing.
Speaker 2: And so he is very suspicious and he takes that
Speaker 2: to the gendarmes. And gendarmes are really is just a
Speaker 2: French word for local police, excuse me, or country police
Speaker 2: in the countryside. So he takes his suspicions to the authorities.
Speaker 2: And it's worth noting at this point that there were
Speaker 2: no gendarmes in Naugarev. The gendarmes were over in a
Speaker 2: neighboring a neighboring village of Tissa Kurt, a neighboring village,
Speaker 2: but a village hard to get to, nonetheless, But anyway,
Speaker 2: he takes his concerns there and starts raising all kinds
Speaker 2: of alarms.
Speaker 4: Those raising alarms and the gendarmes, how what is their
Speaker 4: response to this investigation.
Speaker 2: Bring in the midwife, bring her in, you know, hauler
Speaker 2: into the village hall and start doing what any police
Speaker 2: officer would, well maybe not any They were quite harsh,
Speaker 2: and they were known to be quite harsh. It wasn't
Speaker 2: a friendly questioning. So they brought her into the village
Speaker 2: heart and the village hall, and they said what are
Speaker 2: you doing? We know you're doing something. What are you doing? Confess? Look,
Speaker 2: we've got all these logs here showing what you've been doing.
Speaker 2: And so it was quite a little scene there.
Speaker 4: As far as this scene that you talk about, was
Speaker 4: reluctant to say anything, but at some point she does
Speaker 4: what's considered a confession. But in this it is very
Speaker 4: revealing her true attitude about these deaths. What does she
Speaker 4: say in response to their questions?
Speaker 2: Finally, yeah, Well, she goes in there thinking that she's like,
Speaker 2: all right, this is a my life of distributing arsenic
Speaker 2: to the neighbors to get rid of abusive husbands, which
Speaker 2: was much more prolific than her the family planning. She thought,
Speaker 2: this is this is it I'm done for And then
Speaker 2: she realizes, oh wait, that's not what I'm in here for.
Speaker 2: I'm in here for the abortions. Well, yeah, I'm an abortionist,
Speaker 2: that's what. Yeah, then that's what they used to call abortionists.
Speaker 2: They used to call them angel makers. She's yes, I'm
Speaker 2: an angel maker, of course i am. Well, also, do
Speaker 2: you think we would not have children? We're peasants and
Speaker 2: we're poor and we can't afford you know, ten babies.
Speaker 2: So you know, her logic was, yes, I do that.
Speaker 2: I know, how can I I sit here and let
Speaker 2: families have ten babies and let these babies starve to death.
Speaker 2: The lesser evil is to put them out of their
Speaker 2: misery earlier.
Speaker 4: So with that response, they arrested her. She has taken
Speaker 4: into custody and she's put it in a pretty severe
Speaker 4: conditions in prison, isn't she.
Speaker 2: Yeah, prisons were no fun at that time.
Speaker 4: He has the support of her family and they pull
Speaker 4: their money together to get a very one of the
Speaker 4: better attorneys in the area to represent the family member.
Speaker 4: He advises her to recant this confession and then they
Speaker 4: go to trial. What happens at this trial tell us.
Speaker 2: She gets convicted. So she did what he said to do,
Speaker 2: and she said, I didn't do it, and the gend
Speaker 2: arms are really mean to me, and they forced they
Speaker 2: forced the confession out of me that that's not true.
Speaker 2: I just they were beating me up. And to get
Speaker 2: them to stop beating me, I said, yeah, you know,
Speaker 2: I said, yes, I did it, but I really didn't
Speaker 2: do it. And this is not a jury trial, this
Speaker 2: is just a judge and too cohorts And she was
Speaker 2: convicted the first time.
Speaker 4: Yes, well, with that, her attorneys make the obvious appeal,
Speaker 4: and I don't know if it's a surprised but she
Speaker 4: is released on a bail waiting for this retrial.
Speaker 2: Yes, you're right.
Speaker 4: It's very interesting when she goes back to that village
Speaker 4: how she was regarded before she was taken away for
Speaker 4: this questioning, it's a little different. When she goes back,
Speaker 4: she is stripped of her powers as this midwife. She
Speaker 4: is looking at possibly losing the house that was given
Speaker 4: to her as well, and so she is very worried
Speaker 4: she's penniless, and also she is looking at things much
Speaker 4: differently given this appeal that's going to lead to this retrial.
Speaker 4: Tell us what she does in the interim and then
Speaker 4: finally the retrol Auntie.
Speaker 2: Susie was afraid of Primarily the thing she feared most
Speaker 2: was losing her her house and losing her family, the
Speaker 2: people closest to her. So, after panicking for a bit,
Speaker 2: she used her influence with the village council that she
Speaker 2: still did have some influence there and her daughter was
Speaker 2: appointed to become the next midwife official midwife, and so
Speaker 2: that did secure her a place to live because at
Speaker 2: the time. You know, her daughter, she shared the house. Actually,
Speaker 2: as it turns out, she shared the house with her daughter,
Speaker 2: or her daughter stand the house with her. And so
Speaker 2: once she her daughter became the midwife, it was Auntie.
Speaker 2: Susie just pretty much was still and had the same
Speaker 2: power that she'd always had. It was just sort of
Speaker 2: a kind of a puppet situation. Even though her daughter
Speaker 2: did perform the births, Susie just as often did or
Speaker 2: was sort of pulling the streams at the same time.
Speaker 4: Now you talk about the prosecutor that wants to make
Speaker 4: this case, and also the doctor is very excited about
Speaker 4: this trial because it can lead to or their investigation,
Speaker 4: and he thinks he's just at the tip of the
Speaker 4: iceberg of what he may be able to find. Finally,
Speaker 4: this appeal comes, this retrial comes, what happens.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so doctor Segety felt like he was at the tip.
Speaker 2: His mission was to bring midwives out of the village
Speaker 2: and put it in the care of doctors, male doctors
Speaker 2: who were being trained in obstetrics, and so he really
Speaker 2: wanted to get rid of this old, what he felt
Speaker 2: was an old tradition of midwives in the village and
Speaker 2: so he's thinking, great, you know she got brought up
Speaker 2: on abortion charges. I've got other villages that I can
Speaker 2: say are probably are doing this or probably doing this.
Speaker 2: He was thinking that this could be sort of a
Speaker 2: wider trend that he could get going. But to his
Speaker 2: surprise and to everyone surprised, she was exonerated. She was, Yeah,
Speaker 2: her conviction was overturned. And I think, to her surprise
Speaker 2: as well.
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Speaker 4: in the conviction of Susie at Susie, what happens next
Speaker 4: in this incredible saga.
Speaker 2: Well, she feels empowered, and many of the villagers by
Speaker 2: this point had been suspicious and fearing her. It took
Speaker 2: them a while to get there, but they were concerned
Speaker 2: about what was going on in the midst not with
Speaker 2: the abortions, but with the murders. They weren't being called
Speaker 2: murders at the time. They were, you know, somebody died
Speaker 2: of a heart attack, somebody else died of some other disease.
Speaker 2: But they were suspicious, and they were trying to get
Speaker 2: the attention of the officials, and they were being ignored.
Speaker 2: And so what they saw as her acquittal was nothing
Speaker 2: short of she must be doing she must be doing
Speaker 2: something that is mystical and beyond our reach, and that
Speaker 2: she has power that we just don't have, and that
Speaker 2: she has powers over us that we don't have. And
Speaker 2: so she became emboldened, and they became more fearful, but
Speaker 2: not all of them. So many of the women saw
Speaker 2: that this was an opportunity. Well, she didn't get caught,
Speaker 2: so maybe we should do something about our husbands too.
Speaker 4: You right about Susie expecting cousin from physic Kurt. Her
Speaker 4: cousin Christina Casortis, And she was also a midwife in
Speaker 4: this other village of a physic. Kurt tell us about
Speaker 4: this what Susie thought might be a partnership of sorts.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, I think it's worth going back before we
Speaker 2: go there is to say the reason these women were
Speaker 2: doing this was because in large part, now some of
Speaker 2: the ones I highlight in the book were nefarious, but
Speaker 2: they were doing this in large part because they didn't
Speaker 2: they didn't feel like they had any other choice. They
Speaker 2: were being abuse, their husbands were abusing alcohol and then
Speaker 2: going and abusing them. Many were coming back from the war.
Speaker 2: Many of the men were coming back from the war
Speaker 2: just absolutely shattered emotionally, mentally and very violent. So violence
Speaker 2: that had occurred naturally all the time of husbands against
Speaker 2: wives was even worse because they were just suffering from
Speaker 2: what we now call PTSD with no help, and the
Speaker 2: women were receiving the abuse. One woman was chased out
Speaker 2: of her house, not just one, but one eyesight in
Speaker 2: the book, was chased out of her house with her
Speaker 2: husband with the firing a gun at her. And so
Speaker 2: I just want, I do want to point that out
Speaker 2: because it's not just they're thinking, oh, let me kill
Speaker 2: my husband for pleasure. This was something where they didn't
Speaker 2: have any police in the village. Nobody was protecting them.
Speaker 2: They were second class citizens as women and second class
Speaker 2: citizens as peasants, which was double strikes against them. And
Speaker 2: they've got the triple strike with no gendarme. So there
Speaker 2: was a reason her business flourished with Tisa Kurt. Yes,
Speaker 2: she joined forces with her cousin there who yeah, so
Speaker 2: just carry it on to another village, expand the business,
Speaker 2: so to speak.
Speaker 4: You write about this relationship with a person in the
Speaker 4: grade of in the village and her name is Maria.
Speaker 4: Now you write about that Auntie Susie got a pretty
Speaker 4: good wage. You write that early on in the book.
Speaker 4: And plus she also exacted fees from other people, but
Speaker 4: with Maria. We're talking about the kinds of fees that
Speaker 4: she was charging, and Marie later agreed. Maria agreed to
Speaker 4: were exorbit where they were incredible wages for that time,
Speaker 4: even compared to now. Tell us about why she particularly
Speaker 4: was adamant with Maria.
Speaker 2: Well, when you can get fees from a rich lady,
Speaker 2: you guess you do it. I don't do it, but
Speaker 2: I guess some people say, you know, if she could
Speaker 2: afford it, you know, why not. I suppose that's what
Speaker 2: she was Maybe that's what she was thinking. Maria could
Speaker 2: well afford it. Maria was a peasant, but she was
Speaker 2: a wealthy peasant, and she married a member of the
Speaker 2: gentry named Michael, and he had a certain type of
Speaker 2: wealth as well in terms of properties. And so if
Speaker 2: it was a sliding scale, basically with the midwife is
Speaker 2: the better way to put it. So if somebody could
Speaker 2: afford more, she would charge more.
Speaker 4: Tell us about how all of this incredible behind the
Speaker 4: scenes background in history is finally slowly unravels.
Speaker 2: How it all comes to light. Yes, Well, a new
Speaker 2: sheriff comes to town, so to speak, in the form
Speaker 2: of a new village clerk, and he notices basically anonymous
Speaker 2: notes bring everything to light. And these were anonymous notes
Speaker 2: that have been written over the years, people slipping them
Speaker 2: under the door of the village hall and naming suspects.
Speaker 2: Mame who they thought was suspicious, and so they had
Speaker 2: been ignored for many, many years by Ebner, the former
Speaker 2: leader of the village, and with the new guy in town,
Speaker 2: they were not ignored. So it was a surprise, a
Speaker 2: surprising thing for him to find. And it did take
Speaker 2: a little while for the officials to recognize that what
Speaker 2: he was saying was merited the alarm he was giving it.
Speaker 2: He was somebody who was rather persnicity and everything everything
Speaker 2: was so equal alarm. So people were like, oh, there
Speaker 2: he goes again. But no, he was like no, no, no, wait,
Speaker 2: this is big.
Speaker 4: So you talk about two officers eventually, John Bartok and
Speaker 4: John Friska, and they are involved with interrogations eventually.
Speaker 2: Yes, they were quite good with coming up with ways
Speaker 2: to bring in suspects, and they did what might be
Speaker 2: done even today. So you sort of plant a seed.
Speaker 2: I guess ensnare ensnare Auntie Susie in her own trap
Speaker 2: is what did And so she unsuspectingly didn't know that
Speaker 2: they were watching her and following her and watching where
Speaker 2: she went. And I don't want to get too much
Speaker 2: away because this is kind of a It was fascinating.
Speaker 2: It was fascinating what they organized with the prosecutor to
Speaker 2: bring her in. But they did get her sort of.
Speaker 2: They definitely. What they did was they saw who her
Speaker 2: clients were and so they were able to round up
Speaker 2: all of the other women who were involved as well.
Speaker 4: And what he did this bar talk. What he did
Speaker 4: here was a very incriminating conversation that while he was
Speaker 4: following her, And like I said, I don't want to
Speaker 4: give it away, but the incredible surveillance that he did
Speaker 4: and the extraordinary things that he overheard, and then that
Speaker 4: was this part of some of the things that I
Speaker 4: don't know, dirty tricks that he employed to get even
Speaker 4: more information in this investigation. Now, ye about this prosecutor Kronberg,
Speaker 4: and now this story gaining traction not only just in
Speaker 4: the area, but throughout Hungary and soon the world.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, Prosecutor Cronberg was very adept at his job,
Speaker 2: and it was interesting to look at what he did
Speaker 2: and think that's exactly what a good prosecutor would do today.
Speaker 2: He was somebody who knew how to He knew what
Speaker 2: to do with the press. He knew to keep one
Speaker 2: person close and push the rest away, and he was
Speaker 2: able to use the press to his advantage. It got
Speaker 2: out in the newspaper, it got out, you know, there
Speaker 2: were just short little things and then it just ended
Speaker 2: up catching like wildfire. But that was pretty much orchestrated.
Speaker 2: And when it finally did reach Budapest and then reached
Speaker 2: Vienna and reached everywhere beyond, it was it was quick
Speaker 2: to catch the attention of international reporters and everybody descended
Speaker 2: on this story, everybody. And you have to also think
Speaker 2: that this was the age of what they called jazz
Speaker 2: age journalism, where the birth of tabloid journalism was born.
Speaker 2: When you had on the front page of some New
Speaker 2: York tabloids, you would have photograph of a woman can't
Speaker 2: remember her named Schneider, I think, being put in the
Speaker 2: electric chair for accused of killing her husband. So these
Speaker 2: were there was an appetite for this kind of thing
Speaker 2: at the time. But these were reputable newspapers going, including
Speaker 2: the New York Times, that were descending on this story.
Speaker 2: It was quite quite a story to come out and
Speaker 2: this was also with the birth of radio, so you
Speaker 2: know radio was covering it as well. What was at
Speaker 2: that time the New Time magazine covered it. I mean
Speaker 2: it was it was an international story from in America,
Speaker 2: in the UK, in Germany, France. It was big.
Speaker 4: The investigation led to this Esther Shabo hard Me and
Speaker 4: Missus Madiaz. But this Missus Madiaz really gave a fair
Speaker 4: amount of information to these prosecutors and also gave up
Speaker 4: information which linked this whole investigation to Auntie Susie.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, So they basically hooked into an attempted murder
Speaker 2: which was in real time at that time, and this
Speaker 2: was in the neighboring village of Tia Sakurt. And the
Speaker 2: woman you mentioned, Esther Sabo, she was the suspect in this,
Speaker 2: but that was the link back to Nagarev. Nagarev was
Speaker 2: the hornet's nest. So when the gendarmes descended on Esther's
Speaker 2: house and you have Esther and you have Missus Maderas
Speaker 2: both were involved in some criminal activity, you know that
Speaker 2: kind in Tea Sakurt, and it was Missus Marpos who's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: so they were they figured it out. They sort of
Speaker 2: pulled on these threads and it's like, oh, okay, so
Speaker 2: it's the this is actually Auntie Susie back in Naugarith.
Speaker 2: Oh wow, okay, so they were. It was a huge
Speaker 2: surprise to the gendarmes. They had no ideal. They had
Speaker 2: absolutely no idea, and all these anonymous notes have been
Speaker 2: coming in, but they had they had no idea.
Speaker 4: The Sensus has an opportunity to stop for a second
Speaker 4: for these messages.
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Speaker 4: Now you talked about this this trial that had the
Speaker 4: international interest. Now because of all the particulars and all
Speaker 4: of the members that were coming up, and you talk
Speaker 4: about that this involved the forensic investigation and bodies disinterred
Speaker 4: and then and actually some people eliminated from suspicion in
Speaker 4: this and numerous arrests, numerous suspects and then suspicion of
Speaker 4: possibly one hundred and sixty two men being killed or
Speaker 4: people being killed period. Tell us a little bit more
Speaker 4: about some of the headlines and some more about the
Speaker 4: fury fur over this trial.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, some of the headlines were Nagarev the village
Speaker 2: of death, you know, and they had it was in
Speaker 2: the cities, like especially in Budapest. They were absolutely outraged
Speaker 2: and it was rather unfortunate because they were outraged at
Speaker 2: the peasant class and they were, you know, everybody in
Speaker 2: the village is there's this horrible, this is horrible. What
Speaker 2: is our society in the village, you know, they have
Speaker 2: no religion, that type of thing, and so there was
Speaker 2: ups there was horror and outrage and a lot of
Speaker 2: backlash against innocent villages, you know, who were just trying
Speaker 2: to live their villagers, trying to live their lives. So
Speaker 2: for during the investigation, when they came for her, it
Speaker 2: was a huge It was just hard to impress upon
Speaker 2: how it was such a big deal for the nation.
Speaker 2: It was. It was even like such as you'd have
Speaker 2: people like Truman, Capoti or esteemed writers who were writing
Speaker 2: about this enraged and they were you know, putting on
Speaker 2: their journalists cap and going in and seeing what was
Speaker 2: going on. You had people from neighboring villages getting to Nagarev,
Speaker 2: which is not an easy village to get to, but
Speaker 2: not even neighboring, actually kind of far away, who were
Speaker 2: coming in and they were in the graveyard while the
Speaker 2: bodies were being dug up, and they were looking into
Speaker 2: the hut where some of the autopsies were taking place,
Speaker 2: and some of the autopsies were taking place right out
Speaker 2: in the graveyard under the son. I believe, I believe
Speaker 2: that this was orchestrated by Kromberg. It may not have been,
Speaker 2: but it would have been something he would have done
Speaker 2: to make it as horrific as a scene for the
Speaker 2: journalists to show up at toe, Yeah, here's this hit,
Speaker 2: this is what's going on. And you had actually it's
Speaker 2: hard to imagine for me to imagine this, but you
Speaker 2: actually had villagers in the village of Nairiv digging up
Speaker 2: bodies of their neighbors and their uncles, and the grave diggers.
Speaker 2: They had to have extra grave diggers come in and
Speaker 2: dig up all these graves. And at some point the
Speaker 2: county put a stop to it because they just they
Speaker 2: were getting they were getting so many bodies with arsenic
Speaker 2: that they realized that they could never really get a
Speaker 2: full handle on the full number, so just they wouldn't
Speaker 2: allow anything to go back. I think deaths past twenty years.
Speaker 2: They said, no, we have to put a stop to
Speaker 2: it because you know, they just didn't have the money
Speaker 2: and they felt like Hungary was outraged enough to just
Speaker 2: kind of have to put some kind of fences around it.
Speaker 2: But it would be interesting to see what if they
Speaker 2: had gone beyond the twenty year mark, how many more
Speaker 2: bodies would have shown how much parsonal.
Speaker 4: I want you to talk about the attempted arrest of
Speaker 4: Susie Anti Susie, but also the people that didn't escape justice,
Speaker 4: in particularly the hanging of Maria.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Maria Cardos, Yeah, yes, Well, I would just say
Speaker 2: that Susie was bound and determined not to go back
Speaker 2: to prison again, and we will leave it at that.
Speaker 2: I think that's a good place to sort of leave
Speaker 2: that the other as far as justice being served, Maria
Speaker 2: was one who was hanged. Maria was in Maria was
Speaker 2: a good friend of Auntie Susie for a long time.
Speaker 2: She was the one who was the wealthy peasant married
Speaker 2: to Michael, and Maria also in addition to working with
Speaker 2: Susie to kill Michael, she also worked with Susie to
Speaker 2: kill her her son, who was suffered from a long illness.
Speaker 2: But he was a young man, he was only twenty three.
Speaker 2: And so she was hanged, and she was actually hanged
Speaker 2: before that. In the press, the press was said a
Speaker 2: lot of things about her that were unpleasant, and there
Speaker 2: was many got off, Many had life sentences that were
Speaker 2: then overturned. Some had sentences that were you know, eight
Speaker 2: to fifteen years, and some were acquitted because there was
Speaker 2: no what I could tell really honestly, if there wasn't
Speaker 2: a confession, it was much harder to convict. So even
Speaker 2: if somebody, they would keep people in solitary confinement for
Speaker 2: a month, for a month and trying to force the
Speaker 2: confession out, and in some cases they did and when
Speaker 2: you know, they confessed, but immediately after their confession like
Speaker 2: I didn't do it. I didn't do it, I just
Speaker 2: you know, So there was there was very actually similar
Speaker 2: tactics that might be he might find today. And you know,
Speaker 2: what do you have. You have a confession, and you
Speaker 2: have somebody who was poisoned with has arsenic poisoning in
Speaker 2: their body, and you have people saying I think, you know,
Speaker 2: pointing the fingers at certain people. But if you don't
Speaker 2: have a confession and you can't you know, no witnesses.
Speaker 2: It was circumstantial evidence. Absolutely.
Speaker 6: Yes.
Speaker 4: At the end of this book takes a bit of
Speaker 4: a twist and you take us to modern times and
Speaker 4: to London, Ontario, Canada, and a person named Tamara Chapman
Speaker 4: and another person named Diane. Can you tell us about
Speaker 4: this and why you've included this?
Speaker 2: Yes, well, this was sort of like Auntie Susie's hand
Speaker 2: reaching up from the grave. So in nineteen eighty five
Speaker 2: Miss Chapman, well, I would say, Diane was accused of
Speaker 2: trying to murder Miss Chapman. And the police officers who
Speaker 2: were charged with case, or you know, was under their authority,
Speaker 2: one of them believed that there was One of them
Speaker 2: believed that Diane was the great granddaughter of Auntie Susie.
Speaker 2: It's no way. He didn't have internet, but he was
Speaker 2: an avid historian and he was often It's no way
Speaker 2: to tell if she said something to him in interrogation.
Speaker 2: It's no way to know if he found this through
Speaker 2: his active research that he would like to do, because
Speaker 2: he passed away a few years later. Certainly, so that
Speaker 2: is what it is. You can't say with one hundred
Speaker 2: percent certainty, but he believed that she was the great granddaughter.
Speaker 4: In closing this particular case that you describe so well
Speaker 4: in this book, what happened in Hungary as a result
Speaker 4: of this trial, of this roundup of midwives, What happened
Speaker 4: in Hungary as a result of this case and this trial.
Speaker 2: Well, what the prosecutor wanted to have happened was to
Speaker 2: have police officers in Naugarev. That didn't happen. So it's
Speaker 2: hard to say really what happened to sort of better
Speaker 2: the situation there. You know, there was a lot of
Speaker 2: cry among the everybody else outside of Nagarev saying that oh,
Speaker 2: these these people, don't these are immoral souls and they're
Speaker 2: you know, have lost their way, and so what they
Speaker 2: did do was replace the pastor with a new pastor,
Speaker 2: but not really to my knowledge, I would say, to
Speaker 2: my knowledge, not much happened in the way of doing
Speaker 2: things differently or getting I would have liked to have
Speaker 2: seen getting help mental health, help for people and help
Speaker 2: for women. That didn't happen, at least at that time.
Speaker 2: Not a whole lot that I know of. There could
Speaker 2: be other things that you know, I don't know about
Speaker 2: that have happened to keep this from happening again, or
Speaker 2: to help the people in the villages.
Speaker 4: This as I let you go tell us the why
Speaker 4: you call this book the angel Makers, and for people
Speaker 4: that might want to take a look, do you have
Speaker 4: a website and do you do any social media?
Speaker 2: Yeah? So I called it the angel Makers because that's
Speaker 2: really what the case was called. It was known as
Speaker 2: that before and I don't know how it was who
Speaker 2: originated that for these ladies, but the angel Makers is
Speaker 2: an old German word for an abortionist, so that you
Speaker 2: can kind of find the roots there. Yes, I do
Speaker 2: have a website. It's Patti McCracken dot com and you
Speaker 2: can find out more about the books there and on
Speaker 2: the website. I also do some behind the scenes there
Speaker 2: maybe certain scenes that were cut or just little tidbits
Speaker 2: here and there. And social media. Yes, I'm on Facebook
Speaker 2: and Instagram. You can find me at Patti McCracken, author
Speaker 2: on both of those.
Speaker 4: Thank you so much, Patti McCracken, The Angel Makers, Arsenic
Speaker 4: a Midwife, and modern History's most astonishing murder ring. Thank
Speaker 4: you so much for this interview. And you have a
Speaker 4: great night. Good night, Thank you.
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