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Bonkers Crimes and Criminals In History

Khalid Elhassan February 7, 2020 32 min

Thomas Blood - Royal Academy of Arts — Colonel Blood Stealing the Crown Jewels. Royal Academy of Arts

25. Getting Bricked Up Into a Cell

Arrest of the Nun of Monza, by Giovannia Migliara. Antico

Marianna and her lover tried covering their tracks by spreading a story that the murdered nun had ran off, but rumors soon spread of iffy goings-on at the Monza convent. So Osio started murdering more people to quell the rumors, including the man he had commissioned to make copies of the convent’s keys, and an apothecary who had supplied Marianna with abortion herbs.

It didn’t work, and eventually, word reached the governor of Milan, who ordered an investigation. Osio, Marianna, and their complicit enablers were arrested in 1607 and tortured to reveal what they knew. Osio escaped and was sentenced to death in absentia. He was killed soon thereafter by an acquaintance. Marianna was sentenced to life in solitary confinement, bricked up in a small cell measuring four feet by nine. She stayed there for fourteen years, until she was deemed reformed and released, to spend her remaining days in a convent.

Written by

Khalid Elhassan

A lifelong history buff, I developed a particular passion for WW2 history as a child, when I spent hours listening to my grandfather, enraptured, as he recounted his wartime experiences in the British East African Campaign and with the British 8th Army in North Africa.

I graduated with a history BA from George Mason University, then went on to get a JD from the University of Virginia School of Law. After lawyering for a decade, I moved to sunny Rio de Janeiro and a less demanding career, opening a tourism agency in Copacabana.

A big chunk of my free time is spent blogging (you can follow me on Quora https://www.quora.com/profile/Khalid-Elhassan ) or freelance writing, mostly about my favorite subject, history.