March 20, 1903 - Vera Renczi
Renczi's case occupies an unusual position in the history of documented crime: widely repeated, luridly detailed, and largely unverifiable. The charges as reported — 35 deaths by arsenic poisoning across two husbands, numerous lovers, and a son — would represent an extraordinary concentration of domestic violence, yet no authoritative record of her trial, conviction, or even birth date has been confirmed. By 1972, the Guinness Book of World Records had declined to credit the claims. She endures in the literature less as a confirmed historical actor than as a case study in how criminal legend propagates in the absence of documentation.
From Wikipedia
Vera Renczi (dubbed the Black Widow, Ms. Poison or Chatelaine of Berkerekul), was a Romanian serial killer who was charged with poisoning 35 individuals including her two husbands, multiple lovers, and her son with arsenic during the 1920s.
Journalist Otto Tolischus published the earliest known related article in the United States in May 1925 based on letters from the readers without naming any reference. Renczi's story has surfaced repeatedly, but without traceable details such as specific dates of her birth, marriages, arrest, conviction, incarceration or death.
Most sources place the murders at Berkerekul, Yugoslavia (present-day Serbia), or Bečkerek, which was renamed Zrenjanin in 1946; however, the spelling "Berkerekul" is unknown for this city. In 1972, the Guinness Book of World Records found no authoritative sources to support the claim that 35 people were killed by Renczi in early 20th-century Austro-Hungarian Empire.
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