If history is correct, apparently no one is more skilled at crafting and packaging deadly poisons for Italian ladies in the 17th century than Giulia Tofana.
However, this cannot be confirmed due to her confession for killing up to 600 men with her poisons between 1633 -1651 in Rome alone, is given under torture and the widespread distribution of her products.
Yet, Giulia Tofana is said to be a particularly deadly sort of Renaissance feminist who cannot tolerate the low social status of women in her time, and their complete lack of legal rights when it comes to marriage.
Others say she is the most prolific serial killer you’ve never heard of, a necro-entrepreneur whose criminal empire consists of a cosmetic business turned poison factory.
Her product Aqua Tofana is a coveted face cream or oil used by Italian ladies looking to preserve their youth or apparently procure a status of widowhood.
It later comes disguised in a bottle or a powder case often labeled as “Manna of St Nicholas of Bari,” a popular healing ointment for blemishes.
The seemingly unchecked patriarchy of the mid 1600’s Italy provides almost unlimited power to men and means women often suffered untold abuse.
Matrimonial traditions past and present, often contain the ritual actions of the father handing the daughter to the husband, expressed in the Latin phrase tradere filiam suam (to hand over his daughter), and of the husband taking the woman into his house, uxorem ducere (to lead a woman), are the essence of the ceremony.
Like the many gifts exchanged before and after the ceremony, the bride herself is an object handed from one owner to another.
Wedding processions become more elaborate during the Renaissance period and are often compared to ancient triumphal processions (part of the the spoils of war, and conflict).
The idea of the wedding as a triumph, is reflected in common imagery on cassoni (marriage chests) .
It is a period of arranged marriages and women are married off to men as a part of a business deal brokered by their parents, sometimes with little or no consideration for their feelings or often safety.
Hence, most women, irrespective of their noble status, end up being heavily abused by their husbands whether it be sexually, physically , emotionally or mentally – usually all three taking place in Baroque Rome, where art triumphs and festivals prevail, yet, the hysteria of the Inquisition Tribunal works without stop.
However, even if their spouses do not physically harm them, the accepted idea that women are property means wives do not get much say in the course their lives take.
This combination: laws primarily favorable to men, imposed marriages, and ill-treatment unpunished allows patriarchal arrogance to grow – however, these misdeeds, not even the Pope, intends to remedy any time soon.
So the very existence of Aqua Tofana is a severe challenge to what is seen as the natural order – a world in which men rule as petty tyrants over their own families. Where even the most aristocratic of daughters are auctioned off and brokered into loveless marriages.
Times are so bad, in fact a pamphlet titled Che le donne non habbino anima e the non siano della specie degli huomini, e vienne comprobato da molti luoghi della Scrittura santa: (Women do not have a soul and do not belong to the human race, as is shown by many passages of holy Scripture) is in circulation by Horatio Plato. A M. de Vigneul (a pseudonym of Bonaventure d’Argonne), in1647.
Michael Nolan,1993
One way or another, the offending book catches the attention of Pope Innocent X.
Readers will learn, with renewed regret or satisfaction, that he places it on the Index of banned books. (Decree of 18 June 1651).
Still, as you can imagine, many are not amused, by the idea that women are not human or have souls.
Many still counter-argue. Venetian-born, Benedictine nun Arcangela Tarabotti , under the pseudonym Galerana Barcitotti, publishes a work entitled Che le donne siano della spetie deggli huomini: Difesa delle donne: (Women do belong to the human race: a defence of Women).
She also wrote, “Paternal Tyranny,” and “Convent Life as Inferno,” which should tell you her opinion of the state of things.
At any rate, Tofana provides what is called an early type of “Italian divorce” for many unhappy wives – if they do not want to enter a convent.
As women have almost no standing in society, unless they wanted to enter a convent, the few opportunities to better their situations leaves 3 choices:
- They can marry and hope that their husband treated them decently
- They can remain single and rely on sex work to survive
- or They can become a widow.
The third option becomes the preferred choice among the wealthier class — women stuck in bad marriages with violent husbands who cannot count on the law for help.
The desire – freedom. The solution? The method? Poison, obviously.
History of Use in Italy
Poisons having the power of weakening the vital organs, and finally cutting short the life of human beings, has a history of use for the purpose of private murder to an incredible extent; and nowhere with greater skill than in Italy.
The Sanskrit word for red arsenic is the same as the word for perfume, but it has fewer actual corpses to show for it.
Predating to this, it was used in poison tipped arrows.
The wife of Emperor Augustus and the wife of Claudius are both rumored to have used it for murder.
Even the Pope’s own daughter, Lucretia Borgia, became a 15th-century Italian femme fatale.
Legend has it, Lucretia’s had a hollow ring that held arsenic which she used to murder many times to achieve her goals.
If she wanted to kill someone, she would open her ring over the victim’s drink… this also
was never proven.
Authoress JenLuc Piquant wrote, “My personal favorite is that she owned a hollow ring filled with poison (usually arsenic, a white tasteless odorless power first concocted by an Arab alchemist named Jabir) — the better to poison an offending guest’s drink, my dear.
There were rumors of incest with her brother, Cesare (who had her second husband strangled), and while her third marriage proved solid enough socio-politically, both partners had numerous affairs.
Who could blame Lucrezia if she took her power wherever she could find it? Lucrezia was blonde, beautiful, and able to charm hostile in-laws in a pinch.
Yes, the poor woman was treated like a chattel (a slave) and married off to one husband after another to gain political advantage for the male branches of the Borgia family tree.
She died at age 38, after giving birth to her eighth child.
But she wasn’t just a pretty face. I’m sure her poisoning victims — had one been able to ask them (and assuming the rumors are true) — would have substantially revised their assessment of her capabilities after dining chez Borgia.
Apparently, she employed both a full-time chef, and a separate, full-time poisoner.
“During the Renaissance, social climbers would commonly boast, ‘I’m dining with the Borgias tonight.’ A smaller number would boast, ‘I dined with the Borgias last night.“ It might seem excessive, but Arsenic poisoning is a pretty ugly way to go.
Basically, the poison inhibits certain key metabolic enzymes, and the victim ultimately dies from multiple organ failure. Before that merciful release, however, he will experience violent stomach pains, excessive vomiting (producing a greenish-yellow muck streaked with blood), diarrhea, pain when urinating, clammy sweats, convulsions, “excoriation of anus” (I don’t even want to know), and delirium. Oh, and then death.
In the light of this picture, is the figure of Giulia Tofana: daughter of Thofania d’Adamo.
Both Giulia Tofana (in one account , she was a courtesan upper-class prostitute, of the court of Philip IV of Spain) and her rumored mother, Teofania Di Adamo, were said to have been very beautiful, (bella donne).
Her mother was the infamous Thofania d’Amado, who was executed for murdering her own husband in 1633.
Salomene-Marino, a Sicilian antiquarian first discovered records of Teofania di Adamo written by a contemporary Palermo notary, Baldassare Zamparrone – the earliest account, his description of her execution in July 1633, accuses Teofania Di Adamo of having murdered her husband Francesco, which called into question how she perfected her technique.
A rich historyof using arsenic and belladonna (also known as deadly nightshade), but it’s significant, that the name translates as “beautiful lady”), exists as a medicine, cosmetic, and poison.
Giulia Tofana, it is said inherits the Aqua Tofana recipe from her mother, but she still needs to refine it.
No one knows the exact formulation, but the ingredients are common enough: mostly arsenic, with a touch of lead, and a dash of belladonna.
Belladonna’s in perfume is a bit hard to nail down, being alluded to as a possible ingredient in many classic fragrances, particularly at the height of 17th-century Italian perfumery, but never confirmed by neither known recipes nor perfumer’s notes.
It was also key to the recipe of Aqua Tofana, marketed as a cosmetic and sold exclusively to women, which for over 50 years to help wives speed up the timeline to widowhood.
Even today, common eye drops are frequently used in criminal poisonings, as they are highly toxic, and very few drops are enough to be deadly.
A fourth possible ingredient, solimato – that is a corrosive sublimate, a highly toxic contemporary treatment for venereal disease more usually known today as mercuric chloride.
Ademollo, records show Aqua Tofana was sold in Naples in the years 1643-45, when this city was in Spanish possession; indeed it was the capital of the Kingdom of the Two Sicilies, and was precisely the sort of place likely to attract refugees from Palermo, on the run from the Sicilian authorities.
This may be an indication the courtesan allegation is correct. It also, makes plausible she was under suspicion by local magistrates for some crime.
Above: the still-functioning 16th-century Ospedale degli Incurabili, or Hospital for the Incurables, in Naples Italy monastic complex. Protected by the impenetrable silence of the Masons for more than three centuries (photographs are still strictly forbidden), the pharmacy is testament to the place where magic and religion, alchemy, cosmetics, and early medicine first met.
A second source, Gaetano Alessi‘s Notizie piacevoli e curiose ossia aneddoti…, describes the actual product, a poison named “Acqua Tufània.”
Both sources conclude, Di Adamo first created the poison and sold it in the Sicilian capital with an accomplice named Francesca La Sarda.
Whether that has any bearing on the case or not, the unpublished despatches of Vincenzo de’Medici, a Florentine agent in Naples, note the arrest of a third woman for the crime of poisoning and gives some details of the poison’s effects, but if the same toxic ingredient was used, of course, it has the same effect and rendering it circumstantial, as to whether the crimes were related to each other.
Sicily at that time, was a part of the Spanish empire, and it was the Spanish viceroy, Ferdinando Afán de Ribera, who seems to have taken the lion’s share of credit for bringing the pair to justice.
His personal involvement in the case along with Di Adamo’s manner of death suggests her crimes were considered extremely reovolting.
One source says her death was by drawing and quartering, the other “closed and bound alive in a canvas sack… [and] thrown from the roofs of the bishop’s palace to the street below, in the presence of the populace” .
Though Giulia Tofana arrives in Rome from Palermo, a few years after the Naples poisonings, there is only a flimsy connection, made between Di Adamo, Tofana, and the Palermo poisonings from in the 1630s to those unleashed in Rome two decades later, so far.
It is worth stressing, nonetheless, that this slight connection, which is by no means proven, is the only clear link that can be made between Di Adamo and Tofana, and between the poisonings that took place in the Palermo of the 1630s and those unleashed in Rome two decades later.
Their secret is well-kept for all those years by a widening group of satisfied clients.
Salomene-Marino says that she came to the city from Palermo, and does what he can to link her to Teofania di Adamo – it was then the custom in Sicily, he notes, for the children of parents with unusual Christian names to take those names as their surnames, and on that basis he suggests that Tofana is Teofania’s daughter.
Salomene-Marino is a noted authority on Sicilian tradition, and may be right about this.
Medici’s notes, still stored in a Florence archive, do nothing to resolve this problem. They neither name the suspect, the methods, clientele nor even the fate of the Neapolitan poisoner.
However, Aqua Tofana, though, is always most closely associated with Rome, and it is there that we first encounter Giulia Tofana a few years after the Naples poisonings.
So as the story goes, inthe city on the Tiber a beautiful foreigner arrives, Giulia Tofana, a young woman of doubtful morality but with a sincere heart, trafficking arsenic and antimony, in the form of a potion cum posion, Aqua Tofana , that neither leaves traces, nor raises suspicions.
A perfect poison, therefore, a champion of justice, which Giulia Tofana only sells to dispose of the maneschi (abusive husbands), the young women have not chosen for themselves, rendering her something of a Lady Vengeance, which is one of the few constants in the various portraits and descriptions of Tofana.
Only a small amount is required to complete the poison, and the combination of ingredients masks the known symptoms of poison, such as seizures and intense pain.
Aqua Tofana is known to be tasteless, odorless, and colorless – especially handy for mixing with wine and other liquids.
Aqua Tofana also contains some of the same ingredients as normal cosmetics at the time, which helps it to blend in on a woman’s nightstand or vanity.
Husbands were none the wiser that their wife’s beauty regimen is suddenly their death warrant.
Indeed, according to the Abbé Gagliani, a worldly-wise gambler and wit who wrote a century or so later, “there was not a lady in Naples who had not some of it lying openly on her toilette among her perfumes. She alone knows the phial, and can distinguish it.”
This deadly mix gave somewhat of a revival to the femme fatale, a stock character of a beautiful, mysterious, and seductive woman whose charms ensnare her lovers, often leading them into compromising, dangerous, and even deadly situations – an archetype of history, literature, and art.
A contemporary chronicle, and the famous diary kept by a Roman gentleman named Giacinto Gigli –says Giulia Tofana arrives in the wealthy capital of the Papal States in the company of a much younger woman, Girolama Spara (her apprentance, some say her daughter.)
And ” collaborator ” who distributes, with the help of well-trained accomplices, the deadly potion that in a short time kills hundreds of men between 1633 and 1651, a time called ” the dull slaughter of the husbands “.
The pair apparently had fled Palermo in the wake of an attempted poisoning gone wrong, and quickly resume their old activities.
They expand production by recruiting two poison–makers, Giovanna de Grandis and Maria Spinola (nicknamed Grifola), and two saleswomen, or “dispensers,” named Laura Crispolti and Graziosa Farina.
Not much is known about the women, their relationships and what brings them together can only be speculated.
Some are Sicilians, others native Romans, but Tofana is apparently the leader.
Giovanna de Grandis eventually confesses she was taught to make poison by Tofana .
Maria Spinola was from Sicily, though she has been in Rome since 1627.
De Grandis and the two “dispensers,” Crispolti and Farina, were born in the Rome, and presumably use their local contacts to bring in business.
Tofana dies in about 1651 – and from then on, Girolama Spara, leads the operation.
By the late 1650’s , public notices are issued in Rome warning citizens about the symptoms of Aqua Tofana poisoning, when fear of the poison is at its height.
According to this document, the chief symptoms were agonizing pains in the stomach and the throat, vomiting, extreme thirst and dysentery.
All these are highly suggestive of arsenic poisoning, although Ademollo cites contemporary accounts suggesting that the poison made by Spara and her associates also contained antimony and lead.
The poison , as reported in the chronicles of that time, is odorless, tasteless and transparent like water.
It is prepared by boiling a mixture consisting of: two ounces of ground arsenic, a lead fist and a “sheet” (half a liter) of water in a new pot.
Though records state, high amounts kill victims in 3 days, and it seems that she and La Sarda operate successfully, years go by before their capture and trial.
The potion thus obtained, in small amounts mixed with wine or soup, provoked vomit, then very high fevers, then leads to death within 15 to 20 days.
At some point, this group obtains a regular supply of arsenic by striking up an acquaintance with a dubious priest, Father Girolamo of Sant’Agnese in Agone, a new church in the centre of Rome.
Girolamo’s brother, it appears, is an apothecary and none to scrupulous as to who he sells poisons to.
The arsenic supplied by Father Girolamo is disguised, first by turning it into a liquid and then by bottling it in glass jars that identified it as “Manna of St Nicholas” – a miraculous healing oil, supposedly sweated from the saint’s bones in far-off Bari.
Liquids for collection, from saints’ tomb are commonly available , usually in elaborately decorated bottles. The manna’s celebrated sanctity, and its reputation as a cure-all disguised in a “holy bottle” detracts suspicion and is not subject to inspection.
Unlike Tofana, the chief motive of Spara was money, but she did sometimes supply her poison free of charge to poor women in desperate situations, out of pity, angered by the abuse they suffered.
Spara is the widow of a Florentine gentleman by the name of Carrozzi, and moved comfortably in aristocratic circles.
De Grandis dealt mostly with lesser clients.
Girolama Spara operated with “deceptive casualness” and sold charms and cures to the gentlewomen and nobility of Rome.
This allowed her to be introduced to potential customers, but would also give her a shrewd idea of which potential clients were unhappy in their marriages – not to mention which might be desperate enough to seek drastic remedies.
They had be able to keep a secret, for very practical reasons, including survival and the ability to continue to make a living.
This was how both she and her clients wanted it, after all poison is usually only given to someone who has some power to cause harm.
It was a rare woman who had any of these attributes, they are often beaten, mistreated, and powerless, in these circumstances, a much better option was to become a widow, so she becomes friends with troubled wives and received many referrals.
Maria Aldobrandini, Duchess of Ceri is the most distinguished and highest ranking, Roman noblewomen caught up in the Aqua Tofana affair.
She is widely believed to have poisoned her husband in 1657, but the scandal is suppressed , so she never has to stand trial and lives until 1703.
The Duchess’s first contact with Spara’s crime circle, comes by the shady priest Father Girolamo.
De Grandis’s testimony states, the priest came to see her in search of a reliable poison, to do its work inconspicuously; because she is fearful of administering anything that might make her husband vomit a lot, and does not want to invoke suspicion.
According to De Grandis’s testimony, the Duchess fell hopelessly in love with another suitor: a handsome count, by the name of Francesco Maria Santinelli a prominent writer and intellectual in the academic circles between Venice and Pesaro, where he founded the Accademia de ‘Disinvolti .
De Grandis, nervous about the power of the Roman nobility, is reluctant to become entangled with the Duchess, but Father Girolamo reassures her by reminding her that Aqua Tofana is a gentle poison that does not cause too much vomiting, adding the Duke’s food passes through so many hands that there is little danger of any suspicion falling on them.
De Grandis agrees to supply a bottle of her poison, disguised, as usual, as “Manna of St Nicholas.”
The priest, in turn, passes it on to a trusted female servant of the Duchess, and within a day or two the Duke is dead, one version of the story, of unknown reliability, suggests it is an accident and the whole bottle was tipped into his food- in error– you know, as poison just… does.
Francesco Santinelli, also a womanizing alchemist, reputed Rosicrucian is also implemented in De Grandis’ testimony.
Santinelli showered her with love poetry, which Ademollo points out can be used to date the start of their relationship to the months before the Duke of Ceri died.
This lends at least some plausibility to Ademollo’s account, even though his information is drawn from information given by Giovanna de Grandis while she was facing by the likelihood of execution, with all that that implies for its reliability.
Aldobrandini’s infatuation gave her a pressing reason to rid herself of a husband who was – Ademollo says – in any case already ailing.
There are no immediate suspicions poison was involved, and no autopsy, even though the cause of death is scarcely clear, but when the body is placed in an open casket in the basilica of Santa Maria supra Minerva, De Grandis goes to see it. She realizes immediately it is obvious the Duke has met his death by poison.
If Maria Aldobrandini is guilty of her husband’s murder, her later actions after the solemn funeral pageant are of no use; her own family locks her up in order to prevent her rushing into a scandalous, unequal second marriage with her lover Santinelli.
But she at least escapes suspicion of causing the Duke’s swift death – until, that is, Spara’s gang is rounded up the following year.
Suspicion Mounts
How the group’s murderous activities come to light is far from clear.
The various theories are:
- cofessional – literally , too many newly widowed mourners are confessing to the priests.
- repentant wife – a woman who serves to her husband has second thoughts and told him, he then gives notice to Papal Authorities.
- body count – too many people in too short of time
- placement – evidence found
- careless dealer – leaves a paper trail of arrests.
Several popular accounts suggest Spara and her associates became dangerously overconfident and greedy, allowing their clients to commit so many murders, in so short a time, the spate of deaths are obvious of foul play to everybody.
It even came to the notice of Pope Alexander VII because great so many women, young and old, were confessing to their priests, they had poisoned their husbands with the new slow poisons.
Pietro Sforza-Pallavicini , one of Pope Alexander’s cardinals wrote, the first sign of scandal emerged from the confessional; one of Spara’s clients admitted to her priest that she had plotted to kill her husband.
A hurried consultation results in an offer of immunity, but the entire story soon spills out.
This account deserves careful consideration.
Not only is Pallavicini a senior member of the city’s government; he is also personally involved in the interrogations of the members of Spara’s group, and is in the perfect position to set down a reliable summary of the group’s downfall.
Even in the streets, it is popularly believed that young widows are unusually abundant.
None the less, another version of Roman chronicles and court records suggest the operation is exposed, not by the activities of Spara’s aristocratic contacts, but by the low class clients, whom she left to Giovanna de Grandis.
De Grandis, in this telling, is the weak link in the operation; as she comes to the attention of authorities and is detained, on no less than 3 occasions.
By her 4th arrest, it is game over, this time she is caught with a sample ( records say sample ?, wierd . ) of poison on her, which she tries to pass off as simply a potion to remove unwanted marks from clients’ faces, her captors suspect otherwise.
Cardinal Pietro Sforza-Pallavicini ‘s account states, the Roman authorities choose to act with a discretion and a willingness to play the long game, seldom exhibited by police in the 17th century.
Realizing, there was no way De Grandis was working alone, they released her, and set up an elaborate ploy to catch both her and the co-conspirators.
Signora Loreti , Florentine noblewoman ss brought in and set up with the identity of the “Marchesa Romanini.”
At first, the fake Marchesa seeks the services of an astrologer, but it is not long before she begins spreading tales of an unhappy marriage and offering huge sums for a bottle of Aqua Tofana.
She gains street cred, by moving into a substantial mansion in a fashionable district of the city, Loreti begins to pay visits to De Grandis.
An appointment is set up, and as soon as the exchange is made, two officers and a notary stepped out from behind a curtain.
The liquid in the bottle handed to Loreti is tested on a number of stray animals. It swiftly kills them, and the whole crime ring is rounded up and brought to trial.
Spara’s business is finally revealed to the Papal authorities by a customer , but she was so popular her well connected customers, protect her from being arrested.
She escapes to a church which grants her sanctuary, it is said with help from the same well connected clients.
Another version says she escaped to Rome where, no one knows why, a rumor surfaces claiming she has poisoned the public water and killed hundreds and hundreds of innocents, so police force their way into the church and drag her in for questioning.
Being put to the rack, she confesses her crimes, and acknowledges that, the day before she absconded, she had forwarded two boxes of manna to Rome, where it is actually found in the custom-house ; but it is never discovered who had ordered it.
Alexander VII, the Pope presides over the unraveling of Spara’s poisoning outfit, but the accounts of her fate leave considerable discrepancies.
- She ia afterwards privately strangled
- Labat says that she is arrested in 1709
- Keysler, another traveller, affirms, on the contrary, that she is still living at Naples, in 1730, and resides in a convent in which she is protected in a sacred sanctuary, where many strangers visit her out of curiosity
- Garelli, who is physician to Charles VI, King of the Two Sicilies, and whose authority on this point is most to be relied on, writes to a friend, about 1719, that she is still in prison at Naples.
According to those who believe she is ultimately executed in Rome, say she died along with her own daughter and 3 helpers then her body is thrown over the wall of the church that provided her with sanctuary.
Some of the users and purveyors are also arrested and executed, while other accomplices are bricked into the dungeons of the Palazzo Pucci.
It is quite, the scandalous court case, main members of the ring are rapidly convicted, and – although details of the sentences are missing from the records – it is documented on 6 July 1659, Spara , De Grandis, Maria Spinola, Laura Crispolti and Graziosa Farina are all hanged in the Campo di Fiori in Rome, in the midst of an unusually large crowd.
Five other accomplices are also tried, no existing record of their fates, and 46 of clients of Spara were subsequently “immured” (imprisoned in a wall or coffin like box) for life.
Most of the women convicted are surely De Grandis’s low-class clients; Gigli’s diary notes that they are packed off to prison rather than banished or detained in convents, a common fate of female criminals, in this period.
Casting Doubt
Though, there certainly is evidence of wrongdoing, separate from the confessions.
In this respect, signora Loreti’s testimony is particularly damning, but Spara’s sister also let the authorities search the operation’s headquarters and gather evidence.
Ademollo mentions the testimony of Francesco Landini, a captain in the Papal forces is who moved into Spara’s house after her execution and there discovered a buried flask containing a clear liquid; tested on a stray dog, it proved to be a lethal poison.
However, most evidence against the gang is probably extracted using torture, which makes it dangerous to accept it at face value.
Giulia Tofana, on the other hand, remains a thoroughly shadowy figure, though the existence of the process found by Ademollo, together with a printed warning to the citizens of Rome, containing a detailed description of the symptoms produced by poison sold in the during the 1650s, is decent evidence that arsenic was being used in that time and that place, but possibly for legitimate illnesses.
When things got really bad, like the plauge, people decided to just throw whatever they could think of at the disease. This included—but was not limited to: drinking arsenic or mercury.
Murder in the form of poison:
Though poison has been a “convenient” way to speed along an inheritance or dispose of an unwanted spouse for hundreds of years, little has been written about the personality of the criminal poisoner.
Given that 1 out of 5 verified murders by poisoning are never solved, so it’s hard to draw a definitive psychological profile of the typical poisoner.
This is partly due to confounding variables
- There were no accurate tests for detecting it until the 20th-century
- Many stereotypes of poisoners were inaccurate
- since poison is such an ideal weapon of choice, it may tell us more about the intelligence of the perpetrator than about his or her personality
The Poisonous Personality
As such, we can at best, only talk about the personalities of poisoners who get caught. Many are amazingly skilled at pretending to be something they’re not – a doting husband, caring nurse, or devoted friend,but behind the mask lies a psyche that is propelled by childish needs and unencumbered by moral restraints.
That being said, we can make some hypotheses about the personalities of poisoners by studying the nature of the crime and the personalities involved with the published cases of convicted poisonings.
Common traits :
- clever
- sneaky
- emotionally immature
- methodical
- self-centered
Common Motives
As far as the poisoners’ motives for murder, they are not much different from other homicides, in that they usually revolve around money (insurance); jealousy (“lover’s triangle”); removing an obstacle, revenge (make them pay); sadism (make them suffer); conviction (political motives, e.g. assassination, terrorism); boredom (wants to have fun by having a challenge of wits with law enforcement); and ego (belief in mental superiority).
Some poisoners revel in pretending the role of tender, self-sacrificing attendant to the victim they are slowly killing; think of the cases like Dr. Harold Shipman, whose ministrations to his victims initially aroused tearful admiration and gratitude from family members.
There are of course, rarer motivations for criminal poisoning.
In the plight of Giulia Tofana, the motive is said to be social justice for which she ran a thriving household business selling a poison — called aqua tofana (“Tofana water”) — to female clients throughout Palermo, Naples, and Rome.
Damage Control
Attempts are made to limit the scope of the scandal because very prominent and powerful people are also involved, and Alexander VII himself ordered Maria Aldobrandini’s name be stricken from Spara’s trial; the Duchess is apparently never charged with any wrongdoing.
Nor is any attempt made – publicly at least – to trace the full extent of the priest’s connections in either the Roman underworld or in high society.
Father Girolamo is another conspicuous absentee from the records of the case, though he may be dead by this point, or spirited away by the church authorities; either way, he is never interrogated and did not stand trial.
references
Dash, /. (2020, April 03). Aqua Tofana: Slow-poisoning and husband-killing in 17th century Italy. https://mikedashhistory.com/2015/04/06/aqua-tofana-slow-poisoning-and-husband-killing-in-17th-century-italy/
Michael NolanNew BlackfriarsVol. 74, No. 876 (November 1993), pp. 501-507 (7 pages)Published By: Wiley