March 8, 1863 - Mary Cowan
The nickname history assigned her — "The Borgia of Maine" — reflects both the method and the intimacy of the harm: poison administered within her own household, to husbands and children alike, over the course of a decade. What makes Cowan's case historically notable is the sustained, domestic nature of the crimes, repeated across two marriages and into a third attempt before the pattern was recognized.
From Wikipedia
Mary A. Cowan (née Knight; March 8, 1863 – September 17, 1898), known as The Borgia of Maine, was an American serial killer who poisoned two husbands and four children between 1884 and 1894, and attempted to murder a third husband. Convicted of killing her step-son Willis Cowan in September 1894, Cowan was sentenced to life imprisonment and sent off to the Maine State Prison, where she died a few years later from an unspecified illness.
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