Black Widow

Okay, so let's look at one of our darkest human stories of the modern day age. Perfect for re-telling on a Halloween night. Read on for a weird and wonderful tale of the serial killer Vera Renczi and her obsession with murder and black dresses. .

It's 1931 in deepest darkest Romania and house-bound wife of rich local businessman Vera Renczi is a bag of bones in a dank corner of their rancid wine cellar, riddled with paranoia, her mind pregnant with fictitious situations concerning the whereabouts of her comfortably oblivious husband.

 

"Which tainted wench is he fondling today? Whose crimson lips are leaving bloody traces on his collar this time?!" she wonders. The vacant, neutral expression painted across Vera's face and the glassy eyes set in dark, hollow concaves beneath her tense brow would never portray the chaotic fire of fury and webs of fabricated sagas that tormented Vera to insanity. Spending the remainder of the day and a hefty proportion of the evening conspiring about her husband's various imagined lovers, something in Vera's mind just snapped.

Any rationale that she had managed to salvage in order to endure another day of burning jealousy had fled from her capabilities and whilst reaching into her purse for the vial of arsenic she had stored, Vera found herself unusually calm. She also found the same sense of tranquility, even relief or happiness as she watched the poison tumble over her husband's supper.

It was indeed an unfortunate end that Vera's first husband met that night after wolfing his meal with such greed. Vera told an elaborate tale of a tragic car accident that had snatched her beloved husbands life then left the unknowing friends and relatives, including their young son Lorenzo to grieve.

Husband number 2

Husband number two met the same gruesome end after Vera's unrelentless craving for undivided male attention would not slacken and her suspicion and over-possession grew like a malignant tumour on her romances. This time she recalled a letter that he had written, addressed to her, explaining how he was eloping and so his distraught family and acquaintances were left to mourn.

black dresses

It was this pathological desire for constant male attention, born in her teenage years when she was involved with lovers who were many years her senior, that lead her to conduct a number of sordid affairs with a myriad of men, married or not.

Appropriately dubbed 'The Black Widow', Vera set her sights on her victim, charming him into her web with her alluring black dresses and flowing ebony locks where they would then be seduced and poisoned.

Vera's lovers vanished with an eerie air of mystery within months, weeks, even days of being romantically involved with the dark temptress. As the police officers, who had been called by the wife of one of Vera's recent lovers, stepped down into the damp wine cellar, a hard wall of pungent aroma flooded their nostrils and the puzzling whereabouts of Vera's many lovers was resolved.

Strewn across the moss ridden concrete floor were a total of thirty-two zinc-lined coffins each inhabiting a rotting male corpse, all at various stages of decomposition, surrounding a creaking wooden chair. In this chair Vera sat, seemingly at peace amongst the sea of deceased carcasses with a look of complete accomplishment on her porcelain face.

Amongst the bodies lay the son that she had bore to her very first husband, after discovering his mother's coffins and realising the truth surrounding his father's fate.

Vera Renczi was convicted with a horrifying total of thrity-five murders and sentenced to life imprisonment where she spent the rest of her miserable days. Her little black dress still hangs elegantly in her wine cellar to this day enchanting anyone who may happen to come across it into her poisonous web.

Okay. . .so anyone feeling abit spooky now? Happy Halloween!