Although she only lived to 36 — and she died by her own hand in prison — Jeanne Weber was a notorious killer at the turn of the 20th century. She started her killing spree by murdering her sister’s children, killing an 18-month-old girl and her 2-year-old sister in rapid succession. Doctors declared the deaths accidental. She was also to play on her gender and the public’s willingness to forgive a distraught woman for heinous crimes: although she was found trying to choke her nephew, she was acquitted when the defense said she was grief-stricken over the death of her own child. (A death she actually caused.) She was eventually charged with murder and sentenced to imprisonment in an asylum in 1908. Two years later, she hanged herself in her cell. No one was ever able to diagnose the mix of hate and insanity that had plagued her.
