August 7, 1760 - Anna Maria Zwanziger
Her method was patient and intimate — arsenic administered to the households she served, followed by devoted nursing of the very people she had sickened. Operating across a decade in early nineteenth-century Germany, Zwanziger used her position as a domestic worker to gain access and trust before turning against those who employed her. What distinguishes her case in the historical record is not only the calculated nature of the poisonings but her own admission at sentencing: that execution may have been the only reliable check on her continuing.
From Wikipedia
Anna Margaretha Zwanziger (7 August 1760 – 17 September 1811) was a German serial killer. She used arsenic, which she referred to as "her truest friend".
From 1801 to 1811, Zwanziger was employed as a housekeeper at the home of several judges in Germany. She would poison her employers with arsenic, and then nurse them back to health to gain their favour. She poisoned three people and attempted to poison several others. She killed four people, one of whom was a baby.
Zwanziger was judged guilty of murder and sentenced to death. Before she was beheaded, she said it was probably a good thing she was to be executed, as she did not think she would be able to stop.
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