The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits

Khalid Elhassan - October 16, 2024

The fictional criminal psychopath from TV’s Killing Eve is based on a real life criminal who killed more than twenty people in the 1980s. That is just one fascinating criminal tidbit from history, which range from a conman who conned CIA spies out of their life savings, to a depraved nun who went on a murder spree with her lover. Below are twenty four things about those and other fascinating criminal facts from history.

24. La Tigressa, the Inspiration Behind ‘Killing Eve

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Jodie Comer as Villanelle. BBC

Villanelle, the psychopathic killer for hire from Killing Eve, is one of the more memorable TV characters of the twenty first century. Each episode, viewers get to see the silver screen hitwoman, depicted by Jody Comer, stab, gas, break the necks of, shoot, and poison her victims. As it turns out, the fictional character is based on a real life hitwoman who slew more than twenty victims on behalf of a terrorist organization in the 1980s. The character’s creator, author Luke Jennings, based Villanelle on real-life assassin Idoia Lopez Riano. Also known as La Tigressa, Riano killed 23 people for the Basque separatist group Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (“Basque Homeland and Liberty”), the infamous ETA. Born in northern Spain in 1964, Riano got into Basque nationalism as a teenager. She was eventually radicalized, and joined the chief – and increasingly violent – separatist group, ETA.

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Idoia Lopez Riano. Pinterest

Riano proved herself one of the group’s most bloodthirsty members. Like the fictional Villanelle, she combined extraordinary ruthlessness with extraordinary vanity. On the silver screen, Villanelle slays her targets, then rewards herself with shopping sprees at posh stores. Riano, also nicknamed The Princess by her comrades, was of the same mold. As a former ETA member put it in a memoir, “Idoia was, above everything, a slave to her body and hair … I never met an ETA member who was more vain than this woman“. That vanity caused problems. Unlike the fictional Villanelle, Riano had a normal upbringing and education, and as a child, she dreamt of becoming a firefighter. At age eighteen, however, the increasingly Basque-nationalist Riano was recruited by her boyfriend into the ETA, just when the group kicked off a terror campaign that resulted in hundreds of military and civilian casualties across Spain.

23. The Vain Assassin

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Idoia Lopez Riano. El Mundo

Eager to prove herself, Idoia Lopez Riano killed her first victim, a businessman suspected of financing anti-ETA paramilitaries, in 1984. In one particularly lethal five month stretch, she participated in twenty murders, including a Madrid bombing that killed twelve people. She sometimes seduced victims she was assigned to kill before murdering them. Riano had a string of lovers, one of them a policeman who only discovered she was an ETA assassin when he saw her on TV after she killed his comrades. Despite her ruthlessness as an assassin, friction developed with Riano’s ETA comrades because her vanity sometimes jeopardized their missions and put them at risk. On one occasion, she delayed an operation because she lost a shoe. On another, she placed an entire ETA cell at risk at a critical moment during a mission, and missed a target, because she stopped to admire her reflection on a store window.

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Idoia Lopez Riano in police custody. EPA

A beautiful woman with curly black hair and strikingly beautiful blue eyes, Riano went out of her way to showcase herself. Her comrades tried hard to convince her that, as an assassin, she needed to be inconspicuous. As one of them wrote, “She could not move in Madrid because she attracted too much attention … none of us wanted to accompany her“. Exasperated ETA leaders finally forced her to quit Spain and move to Algeria, and then to France, where she was arrested in 1994. She spent five years in a French prison, then was extradited to Spain, where she was tried and convicted of murdering 23 people. Riano was expelled from the ETA in 2011, after she publicly condemned the group’s violence, and apologized for actions. She was released from prison in 2017, after 23 years behind bars.

22. A Cliché Prussian Trait With a Basis in Reality

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Otto von Bismarck, right, with high-ranking Prussian officers. Wikimedia

Germans have long been mocked – not least by fellow Germans – for a perceived national trait and cultural tendency to blindly obey the orders of authority figures. For generations, an often repeated cliché had it that otherwise intelligent and rational Germans could simply turn off the independent thinking part of their brains in the presence of authority figures. As a result, they are said to turn into automatons who obey otherwise questionable commands simply because they are orders issued by higher ups.

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Militarism in Nazi Germany, 1938. Bundesarchiv Bild

Sometimes, the consequences are horrific. After World War II, many Germans prosecuted for war crimes sought to evade responsibility with variations of “I was only following orders“. Many or most genuinely believed that acting in accordance with the commands of superiors absolved them of responsibility. Other times, as seen below, the consequences are merely absurd. Like when a homeless German drifter walked into a mayor’s office, and managed to order everybody around and loot the place simply because he was dressed in an officer’s uniform.

21. An Audacious Vagabond

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Wilhelm Voigt mugshots. Welt

Petty crook Wilhelm Voigt was a longtime vagabond, drifter, and petty thief. Born in 1849 in Prussia, he was first arrested at age fourteen for theft. He was prosecuted, convicted, imprisoned for two weeks, and expelled from school. That kicked off a lifelong criminal career. It was not a particularly successful career, however. Voigt was no master criminal, and was repeatedly caught. In the 27 years from 1864 to 1891, for example, he racked up sentences of 25 years for various offenses such as burglary, forgery, and theft. Then he received his longest sentence yet, 15 years, for armed robbery.

Released in February, 1906, Voigt tried his hand at an honest living, and supported himself in Berlin as a shoemaker. However, he was expelled from the German capital as an undesirable, and soon thereafter, resumed his criminal career. While in prison, he had mused to a fellow inmate: “with some soldiers, you could really do some business“. He now decided to turn his musings into action, and rob a suburban town hall by deceit that involved the use of unwitting soldiers. Voigt scouted several municipalities, and eventually picked the small town of Kopenick, near Berlin. His plan was to simply waltz in, and order town officials to hand him their town’s treasury. Amazingly, it worked.

20. From Drifter to Cult Hero

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Wilhelm Voigt’s caper, as depicted in a 1956 movie. Just Dial

In preparation, Wilhelm Voigt bought components of an army captain’s uniform from second hand stores, and researched the movement of small squads of soldiers in the Berlin region. On the afternoon of October 16th, 1906, he sprang into action. Dressed as a captain, Voigt stopped two squads of soldiers, ten men in all, near a railway station, and ordered them to follow him. He took them to Kopenick’s town hall where, barking commands and claiming to act on orders of “the highest authority“, he commandeered the place. Voigt arrested the mayor and other officials, and ordered the town treasurer to hand over all the cash in the town’s coffers – about 4000 marks. He then sent the “arrested” officials to a Berlin police station for interrogation in a car guarded by soldiers. He ordered the remaining soldiers to guard the place, left with the cash, changed into civilian clothes, and disappeared.

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Wilhelm Voigt statue at the site of his caper, in front of Kopenic’s city hall. Tranio

Unfortunately, Voigt did not enjoy his loot for long. Betrayed by the jailbird to whom he had mused about using soldiers to pull off just such a crime, he was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to four years. The public was amused by the brazen deceit, and Voigt was eventually pardoned by the Kaiser in 1908. Upon his release, he capitalized on his popularity, wrote a book, signed photos, performed in a play about his criminal exploit, and made appearances in amusement parks, variety shows, and restaurants. He eventually moved to Luxemoburg, where he worked as a shoemaker and waiter, and was supported by a pension from a wealthy heiress. Voigt bought a house and retired, but was financially ruined by the post-World War I economic downturn. He died and was buried in Luxembourg in 1922.

19. A Seemingly Slam Dunk Victorian Case That Wasn’t

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Adelaide Bartlett, Reverend Dyson, and the trial. Imgur

French-born Adelaide Bartlett moved to England in 1875, aged twenty, and met and married Edwin Bartlett, a wealthy grocer. Edwin was sickly. Among other things, he had decayed teeth, rotten gums, and breath so foul that the couple had to sleep separately. In early 1885, Edwin met and befriended the Reverend George Dyson. He became the couple’s spiritual advisor and religious tutor, and was made executor of Edwin’s will. On the reverend’s advice, Edwin modified his will to remove a condition that required Adelaide to stay single in order to inherit, and left everything to her even if she remarried. In the summer of 1885, Adelaide and Reverend Dyson were caught in the act by a maid. A few months later, on December 31st, 1885, Edwin died. An autopsy revealed that his stomach was full of liquid chloroform.

Adelaide and Dyson were charged with murder when it emerged that she had recently asked him to her chloroform. Charges were dropped against the reverend, however, in a bid to use him as a witness against Adelaide. It looked like an airtight case, but enough doubts were raised that Edwin might have committed suicide. After a sensational trial, the jury returned a not guilty verdict – although delivered with a caveat: “We think grave suspicion is attached to the prisoner“. Adelaide was set free. Contemporary physicians struggled to find an explanation for how chloroform could have gotten into Edwin’s stomach without scarring his throat. It led a famous surgeon to quip: “Now that she has been acquitted for murder and cannot be tried again, she should tell us in the interest of science how she did it!

18. The Mob in Movies vs Real Life

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Marlon Brando as Don Corleone in ‘The Godfather’. K-Pics

The Godfather is a great movie, with a memorable haunting music, a gripping plot, and one of Hollywood’s greatest ensemble casts. However, admiration for the film has blinded many to the fact that it is not real. What it depicts is fiction created by author Mario Puzo, brilliantly brought to the silver screen by director Francis Ford Coppola. It is an imagined version of organized crime, not an accurate depiction of the real thing. In real life, the mafia has always been a collection of often psychotic, parasitic, backstabbing, and grubby thugs who would do anything for money. In short, the actual mob has always been more like a malignant cancer than the romanticized band of criminals portrayed in the movie. Rather than paragons of loyalty and disciples of omerta, mobsters from the mafia’s earliest days have often snitched, and betrayed bosses and underlings alike.

Also, far from the myth popularized by The Godfather about the mafia’s avoidance of drugs, the mob has been heavily involved in narcotics from its birth. A recurring theme throughout The Godfather is “good” Mafiosi, the Corleones, who don’t deal drugs, warring with “bad” mobsters who want to sell narcotics. In real life, all mafia families from day one dealt in drugs. The mafia were never ones to leave money on the table, and illegal narcotics was too lucrative a trade to ignore. Those who did would have soon been eclipsed by the greater wealth of others who did not, and accordingly been outcompeted for influence, soldiers, and loyalty.

17. The Real Life Origins of Don Corleone

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Joe Profaci. Library of Congress

Until the rise of the Colombian drug cartels after cocaine caught on, mobsters, whose specialty was heroin, were America’s biggest drug traffickers. However, there is a key difference between real life mobsters from the era depicted in The Godfather, and today’s Mafiosi. Earlier generations of mobsters tried to be more discrete and circumspect about their involvement in drugs. They did not avoid the illegal drug trade – indeed, they went out of their way to corner the market on the stuff. However, they did try to avoid attracting attention to the fact that they were up to their necks in drug trafficking.

Mario Puzo, The Godfather’s author, created Don Corleone as a composite character based on several real life mob bosses. Puzo’s fictional Godfather used his olive importation business as cover for his criminal activities. That is based on real life Joe Profaci, founder and longtime boss of the Colombo crime family, who also posed as an olive oil importer. Don Corleone’s raspy and quiet voice is reminiscent of Frank Costello’s, the onetime boss of the Luciano – now the Genovese – crime family. Don Corleone had all the judges and politicians in his pocket. The real life Costello, nicknamed the “Prime Minister of the Underworld” because of his political clout, effectively dominated New York’s Tammany Hall in the mid-twentieth century.

16. The Mafia’s Origins as Tools of Oppression

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Joe Bonanno’s memoir. Amazon

Don Corleone’s “honorable” traits are based on the real life Joseph Bonanno, a pretentious head of the Bonanno crime family. He wrote a self-serving memoir after his forced retirement, and referred to his generation’s mafia bosses as “Fathers” who headed “honorable societies”. He claimed that he and the mob avoided drugs for the reasons described in The Godfather – moral revulsion, and to avoid the heat drugs draw. As Bonanno put it: “My tradition outlaws narcotics. It has always been that ‘men of honor’ don’t deal in narcotics“. In reality, mobsters, including Bonanno, were involved in illegal drugs since the mob’s birth. Another myth is that the mafia originated as champions of the weak, who stuck it to the rich and powerful. Instead, Mafiosi were often hired as muscle by rich Sicilian landowners and magnates to intimidate or kill peasants who objected to their exploitation and de facto serfdom.

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Late nineteenth century Sicilian Mafiosi. Wikimedia

In the New World, the mafia continued as goons for hire by the rich to keep the working stiffs in their place. Mafiosi were routinely used as strikebreakers, to intimidate or kill union organizers, and cow those who sought better conditions or higher wages from their employers. In short, the mafia were not some modern equivalents of Robin Hood and his Merry Men, who stole from the rich to give to the poor – or at least stole from the rich, rather than the poor. Instead, they were closer to the Sheriff of Nottingham’s thugs. They helped further oppress the already oppressed, exploit the already exploited, and rob the already impoverished. Mafiosi money-making schemes and rackets seldom targeted the rich and powerful. Instead, mobsters got rich by sticking their hands into the pockets of the weak and poor.

15. A Depraved Nun

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
The Nun of Monza as depicted in ‘Greetings From the World’, by Adolf Kuntz, circa 1910. Pinterest

Marianna de Leyva y Marino (1575 – 1650) was born into a family of rich Milanese bankers. Her mother died while Marianna was an infant, so her father left her with an aunt to raise her, and forgot about her as he pursued his business affairs across Europe. At age thirteen, Marianna’s father remembered her long enough to force her into a convent in Monza. She took well to the nunnery, took the name Sister Virginia, and became a role model for younger novices. However, things changed when she fell head over heels in love – or lust – with a young aristocratic womanizer named Gian Paolo Osio.

Osio had a blacksmith make him copies of the convent’s keys, and routinely snuck into Marianne’s room. With the complicity of other nuns and a friendly priest, the duo engaged in a years-long torrid affair. She birthed two children, one a stillborn, the other a daughter who was adopted by Osio. Marianna alternated between lust gratification, and guilt trips over her sins. At some point, she turned to a desperate expedient that she hoped would turn her irresistible lust for Osio into disgust: she ate his feces. As seen below, it did not work.

14. Sister Virginia’s Crime Spree

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Arrest of the Nun of Monza, by Giovannia Migliara. Antico

A nun threatened to expose the affair between Sister Virginia and her lover in 1606. Osio murdered her, with the complicity of his nun mistress. Marianne threatened the other nuns that they’d get the same if they snitched. To cover their tracks, the lovers spread a story that the murdered nun had ran off. However, rumors started to circulate about iffy goings on at the Monza convent. So Osio began to murder more people to quell the rumors. His victims included the blacksmith who had made him copies of the convent’s keys, and an apothecary who had supplied Marianne with abortion herbs.

Rumors continued to spread, however. Eventually, word reached the governor of Milan, who ordered an investigation. Osio, Marianne, 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. Marianne was sentenced to life in solitary confinement, bricked up in a small cell, four feet by nine. She stayed there for fourteen years, until she was deemed reformed and released, to spend the rest of her life in a convent.

13. The Conman and the CIA

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Ronald Rewald’s luxury home in Hawaii. Honolulu Star Advertiser

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, Ronald Rewald made a name for himself in Honolulu as a rising business star and playboy. In his youth, he had spent a year as a CIA informant, monitoring student groups at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. So when he became a seemingly successful Hawaii investor years later, the Agency was delighted when he offered to let it use his investment firm as cover for clandestine activities. Accordingly, some of America’s spies were “hired” to work at Rewald’s firm, Bishop, Baldwin, Rewald, Dillingham, and Wong. The spies got defrauded and taken to the cleaners by Rewald.

Before he moved to Hawaii, Rewald ran a Wisconsin company that sold sporting goods to schools. The business went bankrupt because of fraud, and he pled guilty to criminal charges. Rewald relocated to Honolulu, where he launched an investment firm, with its first three names those of famous rich Hawaiians who had nothing to do with him. He simply slapped their name on the letterhead to give the firm some gravitas. A bigger problem with the firm was that it was a pure Ponzi scheme.

12. Conning America’s Spies

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Ronald Rewald and his wife. Imgur

Ronald Rewald solicited investments with a false claim that they were insured by the FDIC, and had 20% guaranteed annual returns. He used funds from new investors to pay the original ones, and splurged the rest on himself to live in luxury. A preliminary CIA check had uncovered Rewald’s criminal conviction, but the Agency declined to dig in deeper because he asked them not to. Instead, CIA agents wrote glowing reviews of Rewald, and recommended that his firm be used to furnish its spies with cover employment. CIA agents hired by the firm as cover were oblivious to the fraud all around them, and invested their life savings – and those of their relatives – in Rewald’s firm. Even the CIA’s Hawaii station chief was conned.

In 1982, the IRS grew suspicious and opened an investigation, but Rewald convinced the CIA to step in and get the taxmen to back off. Eventually, a dozen or more CIA agents were given cover jobs by Rewald. Some of them liked it so much, that after they retired from the Agency, they went to work for him for real. When the Ponzi scheme finally fell apart, one CIA agent was fired because he had gone out of his way to induce other spies to invest with Rewald. At least five CIA agents lost more than $300,000 – the equivalent of more than a million dollars in 2024 – of their personal money. Rewald was eventually tried and convicted on 94 criminal charges and sentenced to eighty years, but was released on parole after less than ten.

11. Chaucer’s Murky Demise

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Geoffrey Chaucer. Shakespeare Study Guide

Before Shakespeare, Geoffrey Chaucer (1343 – 1400), author of The Canterbury Tales, was the greatest English poet and writer. Chaucer legitimized the literary use of English vernacular at a time when French and Latin were England’s dominant literary languages. He is thus widely regarded as The Father of the English Language. His works were highly eclectic, and his topics and subject matter ran the gamut from fart jokes to spiritual union with God. However, Chaucer’s writings consistently reflected a pervasive humor, even when they explored serious philosophical questions. Such humor in his writings – especially when he made fun of church figures – might have gotten him killed.

Chaucer was born into a rich family, and his father secured him a position as a royal page – a stepping stone to future advancement. In his teens, he participated in the Hundred Years’ War, was captured, and ransomed by the king for a considerable sum. As an adult, he became a courtier, civil servant, and diplomat. Chaucer became his era’s towering literary figure, and after his death in 1400, he was the first to be buried at what would eventually become known as “Poets’ Corner” in Westminster Abbey. There, he was eventually joined by English literary luminaries such as Robert Browning, Charles Dickens, Rudyard Kipling, and Thomas Hardy. Chaucer’s death in 1400 has long been shrouded in mystery. It just might have been the result of a criminal act. So, was England’s greatest man of letters before Shakespeare murdered?

10. A Writer Who Rubbed Some Powerful People the Wrong Way

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Geoffrey Chaucer. Northeast Regional Library

Nowadays, Chaucer is best known for his literary output. In his day, however, he was also a prominent government official, and a member of the courts of both King Edward III and his successor, King Richard II. Despite such prominence, Chaucer simply vanishes from the historic record after June 5th, 1400, after he signed a receipt for the payment of five pounds. To figure out why, we need to examine the reign of Chaucer’s benefactor, King Richard II. Richard has a bad rap as a tyrannical monarch. However, his reign was a relatively good one for the arts, letters, and even saw some glimmers of religious freedom, or at least tolerance. His reign was certainly good for Chaucer.

That reign ended in 1399, when Richard was deposed by his cousin Henry Bolingbroke, who took the crown as King Henry IV, and had his predecessor quietly murdered. The new regime saw the rise of new powerful figures, whose numbers included Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury – England’s most powerful church official. Arundel had not been a fan of Richard II’s religious tolerance, and sought to roll back the religious freedoms of that reign. Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales had mocked and depicted the clergy in unflattering terms. That put him in the archbishop’s crosshairs. As seen below, Arundel might have turned to criminal means to do away with a writer he loathed.

9. Was Chaucer Murdered?

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Geoffrey Chaucer. Aeon

Thomas Arundel, Archbishop of Canterbury, became a power behind the throne when Henry IV ascended the throne. Arundel used theology to go after symbols and supporters of the old regime, and to ensure total submission to the new one. Persecution of those who stepped out of line as heretics, such as the Lollards – proto-Protestants Arundel ordered burned at the stake – was used to terrify opponents or would-be opponents, and consolidate the new king’s power. Worse for Chaucer, a prominent figure in the prior regime, the archbishop had grown rich, powerful, and fat on church corruption. It is understandable that he was not a fan of the author of the Canterbury Tales, which made fun of rich and powerful clerics who had grown fat on church corruption.

Shortly after his benefactor Richard II was deposed, Chaucer, who seems to have seen the writing on the wall, moved to a house within the sanctuary of Westminster Abbey. It did not save him. Chaucer simply vanishes from the record in June, 1400, and presumably died a few months later. Some clues point to a violent end. There is a retraction inserted at the end of the Canterbury Tales. Was that an attempt to appease Arundel? Also, nobody recorded Chaucer’s death at the time – even though significantly more is known about the deaths of less prominent poets. There are also medieval references to the “tragedie” of Chaucer’s death, and that he was “slaughtered”. Put that all together, and it is probable that Chaucer’s demise had probably been a criminal act – a murder ordered by Arundel or King Henry IV.

8. The Followup to Jack the Ripper

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Thames Torso Murders Mystery. Whitechapel Jack

Some East London workers found a bundle in the Thames River in May, 1887, that contained a female torso. Over the next few weeks, the rest of the body, except for the head and upper chest, was found in bits and pieces. Nobody could figure out the victim’s identity, nor that of her killer. However, investigators concluded that whoever dismembered the body probably had medical training. It reminded police of another dismembered torso found in the Thames in 1873. In September, 1888, another dismembered female body was found, some of it in the Thames, and other bits in various London locales. The following June, yet another dismembered female torso was found in the Thames.

Police concluded that it was the work of the same serial killer. The Thames Torso Murders, as they came to be called, overlapped with Jack the Ripper’s murder spree, which began in April, 1888. Initially, it was suspected that the Thames torsos were the work of the Ripper. However, the modus operandi differed: the Ripper gruesomely mutilated his victims, while the Thames River killer surgically dismembered his. It was little comfort to Londoners to know that instead of just one maniacal murderer on the loose, there were actually two. To this day, the Thames River Torso murders, just like those of Jack the Ripper, remain an unsolved mystery.

7. A Stylish Wild West Outlaw

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Belle Starr. RJ Pastore Collection

Old West outlaw Belle Starr was a fashionable criminal. She rode her horse sidesaddle while clad in a black velvet riding habit, a plumed hat atop her head, and two pistols with cartridge belts across her hips. An associate of the James-Younger Gang, which featured the notorious Jesse James and became infamous for bank, train, and stagecoach robberies across ten states, Belle became a dangerous criminal in her own right. Born Myra Maybelle Shirley in 1848 into a well-off family near Carthage, Missouri, Belle grew up in relative comfort. She attended Missouri’s Carthage Female Academy, where she was instructed in feminine refinements, learned piano, and received a classical education. That should have put her on the typical Southern belle path of a proper young lady who aspired to marry a prosperous man, raise a family, and do nothing interesting, let alone controversial, in her life.

This belle took a different path. In her early years, Belle led the life of a coddled wealthy girl. She was a good student at the Carthage Female Academy, and a polite young lady who played the piano well. However, she liked to rub her “rich girl” status in the face of her peers, and went out of her way to become the center of attention. Unlike typical Southern belles, Belle loved the outdoors. She preferred to ride and shoot with her brother Bud, instead of stay cooped up inside her all-girls school. Belle probably got her wild streak from her father, John Shirley. Although a prosperous farmer and businessman, Shirley was nonetheless considered the “black sheep” of a wealthy Virginia family that had moved out West.

6. An Outlaw’s Origin Story

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
National Police Gazette’s depiction of Belle Starr. Library of Congress

Belle Starr’s father married and divorced twice, before he wed Belle’s mother Elizabeth Hatfield, a relative of the Hatfields of the Hatfield and McCoy feud. Growing up in Missouri, Belle became acquainted with future outlaws Frank and Jesse James, and the Younger brothers Cole, Jim, John and Bob, who went on to form the infamous James-Younger Gang. In the Civil War, Belle’s family were Southern sympathizers, and her brother rode with Confederate guerrillas until he was killed in 1864. Between that and dangerous war conditions as both sides’ forces crisscrossed Missouri, Belle’s family upped stakes and moved to Texas. In 1866, her childhood acquaintances the James and Younger brothers, now joined together in the James-Younger Gang, robbed a Missouri bank and fled to Texas, where Belle’s father often sheltered such fugitives in his house.

Such fugitives included a former pro-Confederate guerrilla turned horse thief named Jim Reed. An associate of the James and Younger brothers, Reed had been Belle’s crush ever since she was a teenager in Missouri. Soon after they renewed their acquaintance in Texas, the duo got married, and eventually had two children. The family eventually fled to California to avoid an arrest warrant for Reed because of an Arkansas murder. Not long after, Belle graduated from criminal groupie to Wild West outlaw in her own right. In 1869 Belle, her husband, and two other outlaws kidnapped and tortured an elderly Creek Indian until he told them where he had hidden about $30,000 in gold. She and her husband then returned to Texas, where Belle relished playing up the role of dangerous bandit queen to the hilt.

5. A Belle in Indian Territory

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Belle Starr and Blue Duck. Wikimedia

Belle’s husband tried the honest life for a while, and became a farmer. He soon grew restless, however, and resumed his criminal ways. The couple reconnected with the James-Younger Gang, and fell in with the Starr clan, a Cherokee Indian family infamous for dealing in whiskey, and stealing cattle and horses in the Indian Territory, today’s Oklahoma. The outlaw life finally caught up with Belle’s husband in 1874, when he was killed in a gunfight with one of his criminal associates. The widowed Belle commenced a relationship with a Cherokee outlaw named Buford “Blue Duck”, and eventually married another Cherokee criminal named Sam Starr, and settled with him in the Indian Territory. Belle and Sam lived in a ranch north of the Canadian River that she named Younger’s Bend, in honor of her childhood friend, the outlaw Cole Younger.

In the Indian Territory, Belle finally came into her own as a dangerous criminal. She bootlegged illegal whiskey to Indians, exhibited a talent for the organization of cattle rustling and horse stealing raids, and mastered the intricacies of fencing the goods stolen by other outlaws. When fugitives were on the run from the law, Belle often arranged shelter for them until the heat died down. Those whom she harbored under her roof included Jesse James. Belle’s growing wealth from her criminal ventures enabled her to bribe officials to look the other way, and to free her associates whenever they were caught. That corruption caught the attention of the straitlaced “Hanging Judge” Isaac Parker in nearby Fort Smith. He grew determined to lock her up, and had her hauled up before him on various occasions to face various charges.

4. Starr’s Demise

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Belle Starr on horseback. Jesse James Photo Collection

In 1883, Belle Starr and her husband were tried in Judge Parker’s court on horse theft charges, were found guilty, and received a nine month sentence behind bars. After her release from prison, Belle resumed her criminal ways, and Judge Isaac Parker resumed his quest to put her out of business. In 1886, the bandit queen narrowly avoided another conviction, this time on robbery in addition to horse theft charges, but it still turned out to be a bad year for her. On December 17th, her husband Sam Starr got into a gunfight with a lawman cousin of his named Frank West, and both were killed in the exchange of bullets. Belle’s right to live in the Indian Territory had been based on her marriage to a Cherokee husband.

To continue to use the Territory as a base for her criminal ventures, she married another Cherokee, a younger relative of her deceased husband named July. It was a stormy relationship, and on at least one occasion, July offered an acquaintance $200 to murder his wife. On February 3rd, 1889, Belle was ambushed while riding home from a neighbor’s house, blasted off her horse with a shotgun, and finished off with another blast while she was on the ground. The murder was never solved, but there were numerous suspects. Within her immediate family, they included her husband; her son whom she routinely whipped and whom rumors speculated she might have had an incestuous relationship with; and her daughter, whom she had prevented from marrying the father of her child. Another suspect was a fugitive murderer who sharecropped on her land, and feared that she might turn him in.

3. A Pretty Bandit, and Ugly Vengeance

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Anesia Cauacu and her daughter in 1916. Jornal a Tarde

Brazilian bandit Anésia Cauaçu was strikingly beautiful, tall, blue-eyed, with long, dark hair, and silky skin. She was also incredibly courageous. On horseback, clad in leather clothes, with a leather hat, and a distinguishing scarf, she was skilled with a rifle, and always ready to fight. Her greatest feat of marksmanship was to shoot off from a considerable distance the index finger of a police commander, as he pointed out to his men where to position themselves during a firefight with her band. Her cangaceiros, as Brazilian bandits of the era were called, dominated their local outback for years, until 1916, when Cauaçu decided to give up the criminal life. She went to live with her family, under the promise of protection of a powerful land baron indebted to her for past services. However, he betrayed and handed her over to the police, after which point her fate is unknown.

Januário Garcia Leal, known as Sete Orelhas (Seven Ears), was another remarkable bandit who operated in Southeast Brazil in the early nineteenth century. Initially a law-abiding landowner, he changed when his brother was captured and skinned alive by seven siblings from a rival family. The justice system proved indifferent and made no attempt to apprehend and prosecute the perpetrators, so Leal took justice into his own hands. He formed a private militia, and went after his brother’s murderers. He eventually killed all the perpetrators, severed an ear from each, and strung it in a macabre necklace. It was eventually decorated with seven ears – hence, the nickname. Leal’s legacy has been controversial ever since. To some, he was an honorable vigilante who pursued justice that the government failed to deliver. To others, he was merely a criminal who led a vicious bandit group.

2. Banditry in Old Brazil

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Statue of Garcial Leak, AKA Sete Orelhas, or Seven Ears. K-Pics

A traditional patron-client relationship was at the root of historic Brazilian bandit groups formed by hitherto respectable figures like Garcia Leal. Leal and landowners of his ilk were close to the cowboys who tended their cattle. Loyal cowboys were expected to defend, weapons in hand, the interests of their boss. Due to rivalries between powerful families, wealthy land barons often surrounded themselves with armed supporters: de facto private militias. Eventually, some of those armed bands slipped from their patrons’ control, and became bandits. In some regions, the powerful magnates, commonly known as colonels, retained control. Elsewhere, the bandits ran amok. Some captured the popular imagination and were likened to Robin Hoods, stealing from the rich to give to the poor. Others were seen as pre-revolutionary figures, who challenged and subverted their era’s oppressive social order.

Such banditry could not have occurred or lasted for long without significant support from some locals. Known as coiteiros, they helped the criminal bands with food and shelter. They often did so because they were relatives, friends, former neighbors of the bandits, out of self-interest, or from fear. Pitted against the bandits were small units of soldiers, usually twenty to sixty men, known volantes. They were armed and trained as paramilitaries, and sent out to seek out and destroy the criminal bands. The bandits referred to them as monkeys, because of their brown uniforms and their willingness to obey orders. Some volantes were armed with the then-modern Hotchkiss machine guns, which the bandits grew to fear, and often stole or bought from corrupt volantes for their own use.

1.     A Lethal Love Affair That Shocked Victorian Britain

The Real Life Assassin Behind ‘Killing Eve’ and Other Fascinating Historical Criminal Tidbits
Contemporary media depiction of Emile L’Angelier and Madeleine Smith. Wellcome Collection

In 1855, Madeleine Smith, the twenty-year-old daughter of a prosperous Glasgow family, fell in love with Pierre Emile L’Angelier, a warehouse clerk. Smith’s parents forbade the relationship on grounds of L’Angelier’s humble social background and poor financial prospects. Love – or lust – won over, however, and the duo commenced a torrid affair that scandalized Victorian Glasgow. By early 1857, things had run their course far as Smith was concerned, and she agreed to marry a more suitable man introduced by her parents. L’Angelier was not ready to let go. When Smith asked him to return hundreds of steamy love letters in which she had promised to marry him, he refused. Instead, he threatened to publish them unless she agreed to marry him. He never got to carry out his threat.

On March 23rd, 1857, L’Angelier died of arsenic poisoning. Police investigation revealed that Smith had recently bought arsenic. They also found L’Angelier’s diary, in which he expressed his suspicion that he had been poisoned by Smith. So she was arrested and charged with murder. The trial became a sensation. Between Smith’s beauty, and the steamy love letters whose contents were read in court, Victorian Britons were captivated. Smith’s poise swayed spectators, and she testified that she had bought arsenic not to poison her ex-lover, but as a facial cleanser. She swayed the jury, who returned a verdict of “not proven”, and she was set free. After the scandal, Smith’s family was forced to leave Glasgow. She married twice, and ended her days in obscurity in New York, in 1928.

_________________

Where Did We Find This Stuff? Some Sources and Further Reading

Adventures in History – The Saga of Anesia Cauacu (Portuguese)

Annals of Crime – The Real Father of Organized Crime in America

Capeci, Jerry – The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Mafia (2005)

Casual Criminalist – The Nun’s Tale: Sister Virginia Maria

Central European History Journal, Vol. 36, No. 1 (2003) – The ‘Captain of Kopenick’ and the Transformation of German Criminal Justice 1891-1914

Courier Evening Telegraph, November 15th, 2021 – Love and Arsenic: The Strange Affair of Madeleine Smith

Daily Mail – Real Life Killing Eve is Now Working for the Red Cross

Guardian, the, November 15th, 2003 – The Dead Poet’s Tale

History Collection – Grudge Matches, Beefs, and Rivalries Petty and Small of Famous Historic Figures

Honolulu Star Advertiser, March 18th, 2018 – Hawaii Ponzi Schemer and Professed Secret Agent Dies at 76

Jones, Terry – Who Murdered Chaucer? A Medieval Mystery (2003)

Legends of America – Belle Starr, the Bandit Queen

Mazzucchelli, Mario – The Nun of Monza (1963)

Miranda, Marcos Paulo de Souza – Jurisdiction of the Captains: A History of Januario Garcia Leal, Seven Ears (2001 – Portuguese)

National, The, May 15th, 2020 – The Real Villanelle … and How She Killed Her Victims

New York Post, February 5th, 2021 – Real ‘Killing Eve’ Villanelle Screwed Up a Hit While Admiring Herself

New York Times, September 3rd, 1985 – CIA Officers Testify at Hawaii Fraud Trial

Owlcation – 10 Famous Female Outlaws of the Wild West

Owlcation – Did Adelaide Bartlett Get Away With Murder?

Raab, Selwyn – Five Families: The Rise, Decline, and Resurgence of America’s Most Powerful Mafia Empires (2005)

Shirley, Glenn – Belle Starr and Her Times: The Literature, the Facts, and the Legends (1982)

Undiscovered Scotland – Madeeline Smith

University of Leicester Academic and Staff Blogs – Dismemberment in Victorian London: The Thames Torso Murders

Washington Post, May 5th, 2017 – Five Myths About the Mafia

Advertisement