Mahin Qadiri was a married woman with two daughters who lived in Qazvin, a city in northwestern Iran. In 2009 police there arrested her in connection with a series of killings of older women that had frightened the city for months. According to investigators, as their account is set out by the writer Mitzi Szereto, she had approached her victims at a shrine, offered them a ride, and took their gold jewelry after killing them.
She was convicted of murder. The official news agency IRNA, as reported by Agence France-Presse, said she had killed five middle-aged women between February 2008 and May 2009, and that she was hanged in a prison in Qazvin. Iran Human Rights, a group that monitors executions in Iran, lists her among the women executed in Iran in 2010. Investigators' account of her confessions, as Szereto tells it, put the total at six, counting a relative by marriage.
Qazvin lies about 95 miles northwest of Tehran, at the foot of the Alborz Mountains, and had a population of more than 400,000, according to Szereto.
By Szereto's account, the story began with a man. In 2006 his body was found in Qazvin, and nothing about the death suggested a series. The case went cold.
Later, when police were searching for the woman who drove the car at the center of the 2009 killings, they found that the same woman had been questioned about that death years before, and nothing had come of it. No charge or conviction for the man's death was reported, and the AFP report of IRNA's announcement does not include him among the people she was convicted of killing.
Close to three years after the man's death, Szereto writes, another body was found, and then more. Between February and May 2009, five women were killed in Qazvin. They were older women, aged from their mid-fifties to their early seventies. They had been strangled, and their gold jewelry had been taken. The frequency of the deaths and the apparent randomness of the choice of victims alarmed people across the city.
IRNA's account of the case, as carried by AFP at the time of the execution, used a wider frame: five middle-aged women, killed between February 2008 and May 2009.
The names of the women killed in Qazvin have not been reported. Szereto writes that investigators came to believe the women had probably known or trusted the person who killed them, and that the killer seemed to look for a particular kind of victim.
The case was taken over by the Qazvin prosecutor, Mohammad Bagher Olfat, who assigned a team to it, according to Szereto, and special investigators were brought in from Tehran.
Investigators worked from several directions. The stolen gold had to be sold somewhere, and a sale in Iran requires a purchase invoice, so police followed the jewelry through the gold market and through security camera footage. Witnesses gave descriptions. A footprint left on one victim's headscarf helped persuade investigators that the killer was a woman, and the accounts they gathered pointed to an older, light-colored Renault.
The publicity brought its own problems. Szereto writes that the police in Qazvin received several tips a day, some from people who falsely claimed to have survived an attack, and that each had to be checked, which cost time.
The break came from a woman who did survive. On April 2, 2009, by Szereto's account, an older woman was praying at a shrine in Qazvin when a younger woman approached her and the two began talking, among other things about jewelry. Later the younger woman offered her a ride in a Renault. The older woman became uneasy in the car, refused what she was offered, and banged on the window until the driver stopped and let her out.
She went to the police and helped them build a composite image of the driver. Her name has not been reported.
Police then installed cameras at the shrine. What led them to a name, as Szereto tells it, was a piece of luck. A car belonging to a police captain had been ticketed near the shrine, and when traffic officers looked at the other tickets issued that day, they found one Renault that had been ticketed on the day the survivor took her ride.
The Renault's driver turned out to be a woman who had been questioned years earlier about the man found dead in 2006. The killing of a woman related to her by marriage had also been the subject of inquiries, with family members and friends questioned. When police showed the survivor a photograph, she identified the driver. The driver was Mahin Qadiri.
Armed police, with female officers among them, arrested Qadiri at her home in Qazvin, according to Szereto. Her husband was taken in as well.
Investigators wanted answers to three questions, Szereto writes: whether she was responsible for all the killings, whether other deaths could be tied to her, and whether she had acted alone.
At first she denied everything and refused to speak for 48 hours. Investigators meanwhile assembled what they had found. Police said they recovered from her home a substance they linked to the killings, a shoe that matched the footprint on the victim's headscarf, invoices for gold sales and an item belonging to one of the dead women. Forensic examiners found traces of blood on the car seat that someone had tried to wash out. Qadiri said it came from meat; tests showed it was human.
Then she began to talk. By Szereto's account she first admitted five killings and denied the sixth, the death of a relative, who was the sister of Qadiri's mother-in-law. Investigators believed her reluctance had to do with her daughters. Her mother-in-law was described as the only member of the family who had tried to help her, and Qadiri confessed to the sixth killing once she had been assured that her mother-in-law would care for the girls.
Investigators did not easily accept that she had acted alone. They suspected her husband, or a criminal group, of taking part. Qadiri insisted that she had worked by herself. Reconstructions of the crimes, based on what she told them, matched the evidence, and investigators concluded that she was responsible.
Szereto's account carries the line "They had gold and my baby was sick," without saying where or when the words were spoken.
IRNA, as AFP reported it, said she had been convicted of murdering five middle-aged women. Iran Human Rights, in its annual report on the death penalty in 2010, lists her as convicted of murder.
The name of the court, the date of the verdict, the length of the trial and any review by Iran's Supreme Court were not reported. Nor have any sentences for theft, or any punishment beyond death, been reported. Her husband, detained at the time of her arrest, was not reported to have been charged.
Mahin Qadiri was hanged in a prison in Qazvin. IRNA announced the execution on a Monday, and AFP, reporting IRNA's announcement, said that by its own count the hanging brought the number of executions in Iran that year to at least 151, against at least 270 in 2009. The AFP report noted that Iran, China, Saudi Arabia and the United States carried out the most executions in the world, and that Iran described the death penalty as essential to maintaining law and order.
Iran Human Rights, in its annual report on 2010, published on February 23, 2011, counted at least eight women executed in Iran that year according to official Iranian sources, of whom three were identified by name. Mahin Ghadiri, as the group spells her name, was one of the three, listed as convicted of murder.
Szereto's account sets Qadiri against the other Iranian serial killing cases of the early 21st century: Saeed Hanaei in Mashhad, Mohammed Bijeh near Tehran, Farid Baghlani in Abadan and Khorramshahr, and Omid Barak around Karaj. All of them were men. Szereto's account closes by naming Qadiri as the city's serial killer.
The description of her as Iran's first known female serial killer has outlived the case. When the Persian-language channel Iran International reported in September 2025 on Kolsoum Akbari, a woman sentenced to death for poisoning her husbands, it described Akbari as the second known female serial killer in Iran, after Qadiri. The same report gave a wrong account of Qadiri's case, saying she had been executed in 2006 for poisoning her husbands, which matches none of the reporting from 2009 and 2010.
How many people she killed. IRNA's announcement of the execution, as reported by AFP, spoke of five middle-aged women. The account of investigators given by Szereto counts six, adding a relative by marriage. Whether the court treated the relative's death as one of the killings for which she was sentenced was not reported.
When the killings took place. IRNA, via AFP, dated them from February 2008 to May 2009. Szereto places the five killings of older women between February and May 2009 and says the first of the bodies in that series was found nearly three years after the death of the man in 2006.
The man found dead in 2006. Qadiri was questioned about his death, according to Szereto, and nothing came of it. No charge, confession or conviction for his death was reported.
Whether she acted alone. Her husband was detained with her, and investigators suspected him or a criminal group of involvement. Qadiri insisted she had acted alone. No later charge against anyone else was reported.
2006: A man's body is found in Qazvin; Qadiri is questioned about the death, nothing comes of it, and the case goes cold (Szereto).
February 2008: The start of the killings as dated by IRNA (AFP).
February to May 2009: Five older women are killed in Qazvin (Szereto).
April 2, 2009: An older woman escapes from a stranger's car after a visit to a shrine in Qazvin and helps police make a composite image of the driver (Szereto).
2009: Police trace a light-colored Renault ticketed near the shrine on the day of the escape; Qadiri and her husband are arrested at their home. She denies everything for 48 hours, then confesses (Szereto).
May 2009: The end of the killings as dated by IRNA (AFP).
2010: Convicted of murder, she is hanged in a prison in Qazvin; IRNA announces the execution on a Monday (AFP; Iran Human Rights).
February 23, 2011: Iran Human Rights lists her among the women executed in Iran in 2010.
March 13, 2024: CrimeReads publishes an excerpt about the case from Mitzi Szereto's book Women Who Murder.
September 23, 2025: Iran International describes Kolsoum Akbari as Iran's second known female serial killer, after Qadiri.