Mahin Qadiri, born in Qazvin in 1977, robbed and killed elderly people in the city, choosing victims she judged unlikely to resist. Her first killing, of an elderly man in 2006, brought an immediate arrest and a murder charge, but the court found the evidence insufficient and acquitted her.
Three years later she killed five elderly women between February and May 2009, approaching them near shrines in the city, drugging them and then strangling them. She was arrested in mid-May 2009 after an intended victim escaped and went to police. In her confession she said she had taken methods from Agatha Christie novels, a detail reported at the time by the Guardian and the Telegraph. She was convicted on six counts of murder and six of robbery, and hanged at Qazvin Central Prison on December 20, 2010. She is generally described as the first Iranian woman convicted as a serial killer.
The figure of five that appears in most English-language accounts comes from a single IRNA item carried by AFP on the day of the execution, which also gave the span as February 2008 to May 2009. Court-based accounts give six victims and place the run of 2009 killings in February to May of that year, with the sixth death in 2006. This entry follows the court figure.