20 Marriage Con Artists Who Killed For Money

In the latter half of the 19th century, H.H. Holmes (born Herman Webster Mudgett) pulled scams out of Chicago. He offered marriage or business deals to young women such as Texas heiress Minnie Williams, got them to sign over property or bank accounts, and then killed them in his building. Tabloid magazines of the time said Holmes killed over 200 people. Today we know the true count was between 9 and 12. Holmes was eventually arrested and shortly afterward was executed by hanging in Philadelphia.

Belle Gunness advertised for a husband in local Norwegian newspapers while running her farm near La Porte, Indiana. Suitors were asked to arrive with cash or bank drafts in person. After arriving, the men were poisoned or struck down, then buried on the property. When Belle’s home was destroyed by fire in 1908, over a dozen corpses were discovered, including a headless female body which could not be confirmed as hers. It is still unknown if Gunness perished in the blaze or fled with the money.

George Joseph Smith was an English bigamist who targeted wealthy women. He would marry them, get them to sign over their bank accounts, wills, or insurance policies, and then drown them in the bath. Three wives were victims from 1912 to 1914: Bessie Mundy, Alice Burnham, and Margaret Lofty. During Smith’s trial, renowned forensic pathologist Sir Bernard Spilsbury explained that pulling a victim’s feet up into the air causes water to flood the airway immediately, and there were no bruises whatsoever. Smith was executed by hanging at Maidstone Prison on August 13, 1915.

From 1914 to 1919, Henri Désiré Landru used more than 90 false names to lure in widows left behind by World War I through personal ads in wartime Paris and Gambais, France. Landru convinced women to grant him power of attorney or transfer their property and savings to him, and then killed them at a rented villa before burning the bodies in his stove. A notebook containing the names and assets of his victims provided evidence to convict him of the murders of ten women and a teenage boy, and he was executed by the guillotine in Versailles on February 25, 1922.

Raymond Fernandez met women through lonely-hearts clubs and wooed them out of their savings, and Martha Beck, pretending to be his sister, went on the road with him. Fernandez married and emptied his targets’ bank accounts, and when victims grew suspicious of Beck, the pair killed them instead. The couple was caught in Michigan in 1949 after killing Janet Fay, Delphine Downing, and Downing’s baby daughter, and both were executed at Sing Sing in 1951.

From 1860 to 1872, Mary Ann Cotton married several men with regular wages in County Durham and Northumberland, England, often while still legally married to another. She took out life insurance policies on three of her husbands and several of her stepchildren, poisoning them with arsenic in their tea. Many were pronounced dead of gastric fever by their doctors. When she predicted to a local doctor that her stepson, Charles Edward Cotton, would die shortly afterwards, her prediction raised suspicion, and she was finally caught. She was hanged at Durham County Gaol on March 24, 1873, though she was formally tried for only one murder.

Harry Powers published lonely-hearts advertisements from Clarksburg, West Virginia, and used money from his wife’s grocery store to court widows during the Great Depression, including Asta Eicher and Dorothy Pressler Lemke. Once they had withdrawn their life savings or signed over their mortgages to him, he convinced them to visit Quiet Dell, West Virginia, where he’d built a small soundproofed building. By August 1931, police discovered five bodies hidden there. On March 18, 1932, Harry Powers was hanged at the Moundsville Penitentiary.

Amy Archer-Gilligan ran a home for the elderly in Windsor, Connecticut. After she married a widower named Michael W. Gilligan, he died three months after their marriage and left her his fortune. She also pressured boarder Franklin Andrews for loans before his sudden death, prompting his sister to alert a local newspaper, whose reporters uncovered her arsenic purchases. She was eventually convicted and died in a state mental hospital. Her life was the inspiration for the play Arsenic and Old Lace.

Frederick Bailey Deeming pretended to be a rich station owner throughout Britain, South Africa, and Australia, marrying women under fake names, then stealing their money and jewels. After killing his wife Marie and four of their children in Rainhill, England, he fled to Australia with a new wife, Emily Mather, and later killed her in a Melbourne suburb, pouring cement over her body under the floorboards of their home. It was not until several months later that she was discovered, leading to Deeming’s arrest and subsequent hanging at Melbourne Gaol.

Born Nancy Hazle, Nannie Doss frequented lonely-hearts matrimony clubs all over the American South and Midwest looking for men with savings or insurance policies. Her victims included four husbands, whom she poisoned with arsenic-laced rat poison, including James Braggs, Robert Harrelson, Arlie Lanning, and her last husband, Samuel Doss. She made him her sole beneficiary, but when he died she giggled during police questioning, and that was that. She pled guilty and died in prison several years later.

Johann Otto Hoch placed personal ads in German-language newspapers throughout the Midwest, looking for wealthy single women. In Chicago, he met and married Marie Walcker. He promptly stole her savings, poisoned her with arsenic, and hours after her death, asked her sister Emilie Fischer to marry him. Fischer became suspicious and summoned the police. Walcker’s body was exhumed, and doctors found evidence of arsenic poisoning. Police in Chicago determined that Hoch had also entered into dozens of other bigamous marriages, but he was only hanged for the murder of Walcker.

James P. Watson traveled across western Canada, Washington State, and California pretending to be a wealthy businessman. There, he married about 30-50 women and took over their bank accounts and property. He murdered at least seven of them, burying their bodies in secret locations across the region. The end came in Los Angeles when Nick Harris, a private detective, discovered a trunk full of stolen marriage certificates and belongings of Watson’s victims. Watson admitted to seven murders, showed the cops where the bodies were buried, and died at San Quentin many years later.

Born Ottilie Gburek, Tillie Klimek wed men with solid jobs in Chicago’s Polish neighborhood and bought life insurance on them. Then she’d tell neighbors she had “prophetic dreams” about their deaths, and would follow up by killing them with arsenic to make her prophecies come true. Three of Klimek’s husbands, John Mitkiewicz, Joseph Ruskowski, and Frank Kupczyk, died over the years. A fourth, Anton Klimek, survived a poisoning. She got a life sentence for Kupczyk’s murder. She died at Joliet Prison many years later.

Robert Buchanan was a doctor in New York City who married Anna Sutherland, a wealthy Newark brothel owner, and convinced her to leave him her $50,000 estate. Shortly after the will was drawn up, she died of what appeared to be a hemorrhage. A newspaper reporter found out that Buchanan had boasted to his friends about dropping atropine in her eyes to prevent the characteristic pupils from developing when dying of morphine. When her body was dug up, both substances were found in her system, and he was executed at Sing Sing.

Arthur Warren Waite, a Michigan dentist, married Clara Louise Peck, who was heir to a pharmaceutical fortune in Grand Rapids. He planned to kill off her wealthy parents to fund a secret life with an opera singer. To this end, Waite infected his mother-in-law Hannah Peck with disease germs, and finished her off with arsenic. He later gave father-in-law John E. Peck arsenic and chloroform. When relatives requested an autopsy prior to cremation, the presence of arsenic was discovered. Waite confessed to the murders and was executed at Sing Sing. Clara was not punished and testified against her husband.

Born Lyda Trueblood, she went on to marry four wealthy men in Idaho, Missouri, and Montana, suggesting they all get a hefty life insurance policy with her as the beneficiary. She would soak up the poison in the arsenic-treated flypaper, mix the liquid extract with their food, and the attending physicians would diagnose them with typhoid. Once the insurance money came through, the investigators asked for exhumation, and they found the arsenic residue in the remains. She was convicted of murder for her fourth husband’s death, but she later escaped from prison and was eventually paroled.

Anna Marie Hahn was a German-born con artist who targeted elderly widowers in Cincinnati’s German-American community. She would present herself as a devoted female companion. Her victims would then give her power of attorney, sign over their properties, and change their wills. Her victims included Jacob Wagner and George Obendoerfer. Hahn poisoned them with arsenic and croton oil, killing five men in total to satisfy her gambling addiction. After an autopsy on Wagner’s body uncovered traces of arsenic, she was arrested. Hahn became the first woman to be executed in Ohio’s electric chair.

While working the roads around Lyon and Montluel, France, Martin Dumollard offered working women jobs as a go-between with rich men or introductions to wealthy suitors. They packed all of their money and valuables into trunks, and he would lead them to a dark path where he strangled them, stole all that they were carrying, and buried them. His wife, Marie-Anne Crittat, sold all the clothes she could resell at markets. He was arrested after one victim, Marie Pichon, escaped, and Dumollard was guillotined in Montluel.

Sigmund Engel is known as “The Love Bandit.” For years, the self-described retired diplomat or investor traveled the United States and Canada, charming older, wealthy widows into accepting his expensive dinner invitations and marriage promises. They handed over the money, usually in cash, stocks, or deeds, for his “investments,” which turned out to be nonexistent. He then disappeared. After he was finally caught in Chicago, police believe he has fleeced more than 200 women of between $2 million and $5 million and committed no crimes of violence whatsoever. He was sentenced to prison for grand larceny.

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