In the quiet kitchens and shadowed bedrooms of a forgotten Hungarian village, death came silently and without mercy. Corpses slumped over breakfast bowls, crumpled in beds, and even lay still in baby cribs. Wine glasses tipped over, untouched, as lives ended mid-sip. This wasn’t the work of a plague or a war—it was a deadly conspiracy born from desperation, whispered among women who had endured too much.
Nestled in the Tiszazug region, Nagyrev was a speck on the map: a cluster of single-story homes surrounded by endless farmland, home to fewer than 1,500 souls at the dawn of the 20th century. But from 1911 to 1929, it transformed into the epicenter of one of history’s most chilling murder rings. Here, women—wives, mothers, midwives—turned to homemade arsenic poison to eliminate husbands, parents, lovers, and even children. Some killed for revenge or freedom; others out of grim necessity. What began as hushed conversations over kitchen tables exploded into a network of death that ensnared 43 suspects, with at least 28 dragged into court for over 100 confirmed murders. Police whispered the true toll could be triple that—up to 300 souls poisoned. Nagyrev wasn’t just a village; it was a cursed graveyard, built by the hands of women who learned to kill in order to survive.
Life in Nagyrev was a brutal grind. Families scratched out a living from the soil, with women shouldering the heaviest burdens: tending the land, managing households, and raising children. Men, meanwhile, drowned their days in alcohol—booze flowed freer than water, with nearly every home boasting its own vineyard. Pálinka, a potent fruit brandy, fueled gambling sprees, shattered furniture, and vicious beatings. Domestic violence was woven into the fabric of existence, normalized and ignored.
Then came World War I, ripping through Europe and leaving Nagyrev’s men shattered. Those who returned were often broken: blind, maimed, or haunted by what we’d now recognize as PTSD. Homes became prisons, marriages eternal sentences of suffering. For these women, trapped in cycles of abuse, escape seemed impossible—until one enigmatic figure offered a lethal alternative.
Enter Zsuzsanna Fazekas, known to all as Auntie Zsuzsi. Born in 1862, she was the village’s certified midwife—a pipe-smoking, sharp-tongued rebel who defied convention. With her hair pulled into a tight bun and a disdain for societal norms, she stood apart. Trained in the city of Nagyvarad—a rarity for women—she returned around 1890 with three children and no husband, estranged from him long before. The village council granted her a modest home, grand by local standards, where she delivered babies, healed the sick, and quietly dealt in death.
Above her kitchen cupboard, her midwife certificate hung proudly. On top sat rows of glass jars: some filled with harmless herbs, others brimming with poison. Zsuzsi’s deadly recipe was deceptively simple. She’d soak strips of flypaper—branded Millios Legypapir and laced with arsenic—in water or vinegar. The resulting liquid was clear, odorless, and nearly undetectable, perfect for slipping into food or drink. She distributed it to desperate women, accepting payments in eggs, chicken fat, or sometimes nothing at all.
The first documented kill struck in 1911. Rozalia Takacs had suffered three decades of marriage to Lajos, a violent drunk whose fists and insults knew no bounds. When he fell ill in late 1910, neighbors urged her to end it. Rozalia sought Zsuzsi’s guidance, learning the flypaper method. Seven attempts failed, but desperation led her to rat poison—arsenic acid—stirred into his porridge. On January 11, 1911, Lajos died. Two decades later, in court, Rozalia confessed with a twisted sense of pride, later aiding other women in their own poisonings.
As the years unfolded, the killings escalated, fueled by wartime horrors. Husbands returned as tyrants, raping wives, beating children, and turning homes into hells. Maria Papai endured constant assaults from her husband, once savagely chained and beaten. In 1923, she confided in Julianna Lipka, another poison-maker shrouded in dark rumors. Orphaned young and hardened by servitude, Julianna had been accused of killing an elderly couple she served, and even her half-brother and sister-in-law.
Julianna advised Maria against surrender: no need to confess—just make it look natural. The poison failed once but succeeded the second time, mixed into coffee. Doctors ruled it a stroke, as promised. Julianna, like Zsuzsi, spread the knowledge freely, helping women like seamstress Maria Koteles dispatch her abuser with a vial slipped into pálinka.
The web widened. In nearby Tiszakurt, midwives Eszter Szabo and Krisztina Csordas traded poison for butter, fat, or roses. Healers, widows, and servants joined the fold. Tragically, the victims included innocents: newborns poisoned by mothers too broken to care for them. Anna Cser, battered through pregnancies, laced her third child’s sugar water with arsenic; the infant died days later. Such acts became a heartbreaking norm for women overwhelmed by poverty and abuse.
By the mid-1920s, death stalked the region unchecked. Doctors turned blind eyes—some bribed—while police ignored patterns. Anonymous letters accusing poisonings piled up, mostly dismissed. But in June 1929, suspicion ignited when Rozalia Holyba’s war-veteran husband died suddenly after seeming healthy. A doctor’s probe led to arrests, including Zsuzsi’s. Released on bail—a police ploy to track her—she was cornered on July 19. Pulling a vial from her dress, she swallowed her own poison, convulsing in agony as officers failed to save her.
That summer, authorities swept through Tiszazug, arresting dozens amid brutal interrogations, midnight raids, and cunning traps. Sergeant Janos Bartok famously hid under a bed to overhear confessions. Ultimately, 28 stood trial—20 from Nagyrev alone—for nearly three-quarters of the confirmed victims, their own neighbors.
Five women, including Rozalia Takacs, Julianna Lipka, Eszter Szabo, and Krisztina Csordas, faced hanging. Julianna and Rozalia’s sentences commuted to life imprisonment. Others took their lives before justice could.
In the end, the women of Nagyrev—dubbed the ‘Black Widows’—wielded poison not as villains, but as warriors reclaiming stolen lives. Justice, for them, didn’t come from courts or laws; it brewed in kitchen jars and stirred with teaspoons. Their legendary secret exposed a world where survival meant striking first.
Taken from the book The Women Are Not Fine by Hope Reese (Brazen £22) out now.