By Kristy Matthews
As fans of the true crime genre, we’ve all heard about serial killers such as Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, The Hillside Stranglers, and John Wayne Gacy. But there are so many others out there that never gained public recognition. There are many others out there, whose murders were hidden from public eye. This series is designed to highlight those killers who never gained their fifteen minutes of fame, as well as shedding new light on old favorites. This is the Killer ABC’s. You could say it’s a real killer compilation!
Howard Arthur Allen:
Allen was a serial killer of African American descent. He had a particular liking for senior citizens and used his hometown of Indianapolis as his hunting ground. During the month of August in 1974, when he was just 24 years old, he broke into the home of Opal Cooper, an 85 year old woman. He beat her to the death in the course of his robbery of her home, which led to his conviction on a lesser charge of manslaughter. His sentence was termed 2-21 years in state prison, however he was paroled in January of 1985. After his release, he returned to his hometown, and took employment at a car wash in order to bide his time until he resumed his hunt.
May 18, 1987, a 73 year old elderly woman barely escaped death when she was beaten and choked by a prowler in her home. An 87 year old woman by the name of Laverne Hale was attacked in a similar manner two days later, and unfortunately was killed by the injuries she sustained during the attack on May 29. These raids continued, and on June 2, the home of an older gentleman was torn apart by a burglar just five blocks away from where the Hale murder took place. Thankfully, the tenant of the home was not there during the time of the burglary, however, the angry crook took his revenge by setting the man’s house on fire. July 14 saw the death of yet another woman. Ernestine Griffin, aged 73, was stabbed 8 times with a 10 inch butcher knife, having also a kitchen toaster smashed into her skull numerous times. Sadly, it was reported that her killer only profited a camera that belong to Griffin, and around $15 cash.
The case finally came to a head on August 4, 1987 with Howard Allen being arrested on multiple charges. Eye witnesses were able to connect him to the attack the occurred on May 18, which led to Allen being indicted on charges of burglary, battery, and unlawful confinement. He was then, also charged with, arson and burglary from the attack that happened on June 2, and the murder of Ernestine Griffin. However, as it turns out, Laverne Hale was the neighbor living directly beyond Allen’s house, which led to him being a prime suspect in her murder, based on the killer’s modus operandi. Early August revealed that detectives were holding Allen as a suspect in 11 other cases that involved elderly victims being robbed or assaulted in their homes around Indianapolis. Finally, in the spring of the year 1988, Howard Allen was convicted of burglary and felony battery in the assault that took place on May 18, with an additional count of habitual criminal behavior. He was sentenced to 88 years behind bars for those charges. However, the worst was still yet to come. On June 11, 1988 he was convicted for the murder and robbery of Ernestine Griffin, which led the jury to pursue Capital Punishment. At this time, Allen remains on death row awaiting his execution.
“Angel Makers of Nagyrev”
There are little known facts concerning the life Julia Fazekas had, before she came to the Hungarian village of Nagryev, located roughly 60 miles to the southeast of Budapest on the River Tisza, in 1911. At the time, she was soon to be middle aged, and a widow by her own account with no one seeming to know what really happened to her husband. She was in and out of jail 10 times between the year 1911 and 1921 for performing illegal abortions as a midwife. However, judges were sympathetic to her and eventually acquitted her in each of her cases. But unbeknownst to police, all the while she was committing one of Europe’s most bizarre and deadly murder sprees. The beginning of this murder spree, has its roots in World War I, during the draft of Nagyrev, when all able men were sent to fight for the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Nagyrev was deemed a perfect camping site for the containment of prisoners of war. This is the exact ideal situation for sex starved women who were suddenly deprived of their men. The prisoners were allowed limited freedoms among the village, and it wasn’t long before the new trend was boasting a lover of foreign descent, or in some cases boasting about 3 or 4 at a time. Ultimately, this led to a life of promiscuity for many women, and husbands returning home from the war often found their wives were liberated and dissatisfied having only one man in the marriage bed.
As wives began venting their frustrations with boredom and abuse being suffered at the hands of their husbands, the midwife Julia Fazekas, was there with open arms to offer them release. She gave them all supplies of arsenic, which she obtained by boiling fly paper and scraping off the toxic residue. Peter Hegedus was the first person to fall victim to this crime in 1914, with many other husbands following behind him. However, soon, poisoning became the new fad in the village, and the list of casualties grew to include parents, children, aunts, uncles, and neighbors. By the time the 1920s rolled around, Nagyrev was known simply as “the murder district”. During this time, it is estimated that as many as 50 women were using arsenic to “trim their family trees”. Considering that Fazekas was the closest thing Nagyrev had to a physician, and the fact that her cousin was the person responsible for filing all the village death certificates, it should be no surprise that it was easy to deter homicide investigations for so long. Although the final death toll remains a mystery, it has been estimated that nearly 300 victims were murdered during her 15 year reign of wholesaling murder.
However, the “Angel Makers” would soon see their reign of terror come to an end. In July of 1929, a choir master from a neighboring town accused Mrs. Ladislaus Szabo of serving him poisonous wine. His life was spared thanks to a stomach pump, however police were still contemplating the crime, when a second victim emerged complaining of being poisoned by the same “nurse” Mrs. Szabo. While in custody, seeking a leniency for herself, Szabo pinned another friend for the crime, a fellow practitioner named Mrs. Burkenoveski. When faced with charges herself, Mrs. Burkenoveski named Julia Fazekas as the person who provided the arsenic used to kill Burkenoveski’s 77 year old mother. After which they dumped her body in the Tisza in order to simulate that she had accidentally drowned.
Fazekas was taken into custody for questioning and abruptly denied everything. Without having any solid evidence, the police were forced to release her, however they began surveillance on her and trailed her everywhere she went around Nagyrev. As she met with her various clients, the police arrested each one in turn. 38 women in total were arrested on suspicion of murder, and the police finally descended on Fazekas to arrest the ringleader. However, when they arrived at her home, they found that she was dead from ingesting her own products, surrounded by pots of soaking flypaper.
Of the 38 women arrested, 26 were held for trial at Szolnok, with 8 being sentenced to death, 7 were sentenced to life in prison, and the others were sentenced to lesser prison terms. Among the condemned to die were, Susannah Olah, a self-proclaimed witch who claimed she trained venomous snakes to attack her victims in bed and competed with Fazekas in sales with “Aunt Susi’s inheritance powders”, Olah’s sister Lydia, a septuagenarian who was unimpressive to the jury when she claimed innocence, Maria Kardos, who murdered her husband, a lover, and her 23 year old ill son, Rosalie Sebestyen and Rose Hoyba were condemned for murdering their “boring husbands”, Lydia Csery was convicted of murdering her parents, Maria Varga confessed to buying the poison from Fazekas to kill her blind, war hero, husband for complaining about her bring lovers home. Juliane Lipke whose seven victims included her stepmother, an aunt, a brother, a sister-in-law, and the husband she poisoned on Christmas Eve, and lastly Maria Szendi a true liberationist who told the court she murdered her husband, “because he always got his own way. It’s terrible the way men have all the power”.
“Angels of Death”
Lainz General Hospital was built in 1839 and is the 4th largest medical facility in Vienna, Austria, employing 2,000+ staff. Pavilion 5 is designated for special problem cases, usually consisting of patients in their 70s with terminal illnesses. The reign of terror at Lainz General Hospital began in the spring of 1983 and lasted through until the early weeks of 1989, with an official body count standing at 42, however it is estimated that the final tally is closer to 300 for the hospital’s “Angels of Death”.
Waltraud Wagner was a nurse’s aide on the graveyard shift working Pavilion 5 when she claimed her first victim at the age of 23 in 1983. It would later come to light for the police, that Wagner got the idea to begin eliminating patients, when an elderly woman asked her to “end her misery”. Wagner granted the woman’s request with an overdose of morphine, and in the process found that she greatly enjoyed playing God, holding the lives of patients in her hands and deciding whether they would live or die. In her eyes, it was too much fun to stop, and too good to keep to herself. Eventually, Wagner managed to acquire three accomplices, all of which were working the nightshift on Pavilion 5. Maria Gruber was a dropout of nursing school and an unwed mother. Irene Leidolf had a husband at home, but preferred spending her nights out with the girls instead, and Stephanija Mayer was a divorced grandmother, emigrated from Yugoslavia in 1987, and found herself at Lainz joining in on Wagner and the other accomplices’ murder ride.
The prosecutors at her trial described Wagner as the sadistic ringleader of the group that instructed her disciples on the proper techniques of lethal injection, teaching them the art of “the water cure” in which a patient’s nose is pinched shut, the tongue is depressed, and water is poured down the throat. Dying like this appears as though the death is from natural causes, even though the death itself is slow and agonizing. According to the police, “Wagner had woke up their sadistic instincts, and soon they were running a concentration camp, not a hospital ward. With the slightest annoyance or complaint from a patient, they would be planning that patient’s execution for the following night.”
In Wagner’s book, these “annoyances” consisted of patients snoring, messing their beds, refusing to take their medications, and even buzzing the nurses station at times deemed inconvenient. In some cases, Wagner would state, “This one gets a ticket to God”, and thus executing the murder herself, or by having one of her accomplices help her. However, even with the four killers all working together on the ward, it still took time for their deadly game to gain recognition. Most of the murders were linked to Wagner and her crew after early 1987. Pavilion 5 soon became known as the ‘death pavilion’. By 1988, rumors ran wild that a killer was on the loose at Pavilion 5, and shortly thereafter, Dr. Xavier Pesendorfer who was the head of the ward at the time, was suspended in April of 1989 for not launching an investigation in a timely manner.
Ultimately it was negligence among the group that led to their downfall. They liked to go out for drinks after a kill and reliving certain cases they found particularly entertaining. In February of 1989, the group was giggling over the death of Julia Drapal, a patient in which they had given the “water cure” death to, for refusing to take her medication and calling Wagner a common “slut”. Inadvertently, a doctor was sitting nearby and overheard parts of their conversation. He was horrified at what he heard and went directly to the police with what he knew. This launched a 6 week investigation, leading to the arrests of all four suspects on April 7, 1989. While in custody the Angels of Death confessed to 49 specific murders, of which 39 were personally claimed by Waltraud Wagner as her own. Wagner commented, “The ones that got on my nerves were dispatched directly to a free bed with the good Lord. Of course, they resisted, but we were stronger. We could decide whether these old fogies lived or died. Their ticket to God was long overdue in any case.” Chancellor Franz Vranitzky was quoted as saying, “The Lainz murder spree is the most brutal and gruesome crime in Austria’s history”.
Neither the judge, nor the jury, were sympathetic of any of the four defendants when they went to trial in March of 1991. Although prosecutors were unable to convict them on 42 counts of murder, they were able to sell enough to get the job done. Wagner was convicted of 15 murders, 17 attempted murders, and 2 counts of aggravated assault, which gave her a life sentence in prison. Irene Leidolf was convicted of 5 murders, and two botched murder attempts, which also gave her a life sentence. Stephanija Mayer received 15 years for a convicted manslaughter and 7 counts of attempted murder, and Maria Gruber was given the same sentence for two murder attempts.
Editor's note: this is the first of two “Killer ABC's” articles by this author, both published here. Checked against this archive's own records, three of its counts need holding at arm's length, and in each case the roster is narrower than the article.
Howard Arthur Allen was convicted of three murders in Indianapolis, and further deaths in the 1987 series are attributed to him and were never charged. He died on death row in 2020 before any execution took place.
Julia Fazekas is the harder figure. She supplied the arsenic in the Nagyrev poisonings in Hungary and was never tried: she killed herself in 1929 when the arrests began. Between 45 and well over a hundred deaths across eighteen years are attributed to the whole Nagyrev group rather than to her personally, and no court ever apportioned them. Any single number attached to her name alone is an estimate.
Where the article names Dahmer, Bundy, the Hillside Stranglers and Gacy as familiar reference points, those are the archive's most heavily covered subjects and their convicted counts are recorded on their own pages.